Is the Bible Corrupted?

8/8/2019 Is the Bible Corrupted?

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Corrupted Bible?Analyzing Claims of Textual Corruption

J. Luis Dizon


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Unless otherwise stated, scripture quotations are taken from the

English Standard Version. Copyright 2002, 2007 by Crossway

Publishers. Used by Permission.

Copyright 2010 by J.L. Dizon. All rights Reserved.


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Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1. Counting the Manuscript Evidence 8

2. Wholesale Editing? 14

3. Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption 19

4. Textual Criticism, Inspiration and Inerrancy 29

Conclusion 33

References 35


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Introduction

In the past few decades, one of the staple arguments used by

those who seek to discredit the authority of the Bible has been

to allege that the scriptural text has become lost due to

corruption. This may have happened over the course of the

centuries, or during a decisive period in the history of the

Christian church. And this kind of attack can come from almost

any angle. Anybody who has encountered Islamic apologists, forexample, will undoubtedly have heard the charge that the Bible

(which was inspired by God in its original form) has been

changed. The level of knowledge these apologists actually have,

of course, varies. Some are absolutely clueless regarding the

textual history of the bible, and are merely repeating canards

taught to them by their imams. Others are a bit more

sophisticated, and may rely on liberal scholarship to substantiate

their point.

But how well does this argument stand when the claims in

question are actually examined? It is well worth going over the

textual history of the bible and the manuscripts that have come

down to us over the centuries in order to see whether we still

have the bible that God originally revealed to us, or whether it

has been lost in transmission during the course of time.


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Counting the Manuscript Evidence

The Bible did not always exist as this book with a leather cover,

gold-gilded pages and thumb-indexing that one can simply buy at

any bookstore today. Like any other ancient document, the Bible

has a textual history. It has been handed down to us through

generations of constant copying. The result of this is that we

have thousands of manuscripts of the bible. As Drs. Norman

Geisler and William Nix put it in their General Introduction to theBible,

The fidelity of the New Testament text rests on a

multitude of manuscript evidence. Counting Greek copies

alone, the New Testament is preserved in some 5,656

partial and complete manuscript portions that were

copied by hand from the second through the fifteenthcenturies.

1

And yet we did not always have this wealth of manuscripts. Back

in the 19th century, we did not have as many manuscripts

available to us. They have been accumulated over the past two

centuries by various persons who have worked hard to locate

these ancient manuscripts. In The Text of the New Testament,Bruce Metzger recounts the story of how the 19th century

textual scholar Constantin Von Tischendorf discovered one

particularly important biblical manuscript from an old

monastery:

In 1844, when he was not yet thirty years of age,

Tischendorf, a Privatdozent in the University of Leipzig,

1Geisler and Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. p. 385.


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began an extensive journey through the Near East in

search of Biblical manuscripts. While visiting the

monastery of St. Catharine at Mount Sinai, he chanced to

see some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket full of

papers destine dto light the oven of the monastery. On

examination these proved to be part of a copy of the

Septuagint version of the Old Testament, written in an

early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket no

fewer than forty-three such leaves The forty-threeleaves which he was permitted to to keep contaianed

portions of I Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther

In 1846 he published their contents

A second visit to the monastery by Tischendorft in 1853

produced no new manuscripts because the monks were

suspicious as a result of the enthusiasm for the MSdisplayed during his first visit in 1844. He visited a third

time in 1859, under the direction of the Czar of Russia,

Alexander II. Shortly before leaving, Tischendorf, gave the

steward of the monastery an edition of the Septuagint

that had been published by Tischendorf in Leipzig.

Thereupon the steward remarked that he too had a copyof the Septuagint, and produced in his cell a manuscript

wrapped in a red cloth. There before the astonished

scholars eyes lay the treasure which he had been longing

to see. Concealing his feelings, Tischendorf casually asked

permission to look at it further that evening. Permission

was granted, and upon retiring to his room Tischendorf

stayed up all night in the joy of studying the manuscripts

He soon found that the document contained much more

than he had even hoped; for not only was most of the Old


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Testament there, but also the New Testament was intact

and in excellent condition2

Of course, this was not the end of the story. The manuscript

came into the hands of the Soviet Union, and remained in their

possession until England bought the manuscript for one hundred

thousand pounds.3

Today, this manuscript is known as Codex

Sinaiticus, and is one of the most valuable early witnesses we

have of the bible.4

And Codex Sinaiticus is just one of many important manuscripts

on which we base the text of our bible. As was already explained

earlier, we have thousands of manuscripts of the New

Testament, some of which actually go back to within mere

decades of the writing of the originals. K.A. Kitchen puts it this

way in The Bible and Its World:

Among works of classical (Greek and Latin) literature, the

writings of the New Testament4 gospels, 21 letters, the

history of Acts and visions of Revelationhave a

manuscript attestation second to none, and superior to

most. No one blinks an eyelid at depending for the Latin

text of Julius Caesars Gallic Wars (Composed within 58-56

BC) upon manuscripts all of which are 900 years later than

Caesars time, only nine or ten of the manuscripts being

good textual copies. No-one doubts that we still read the

real text of the works of Herodotus or Thucydides (450

2Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. pp. 43-44.

3 Dailey. Mysteries of the Bible. p. 66.4

Today, Codex Sinaiticus may be viewed online at The Center for

the Study of New Testament Manuscripts:

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BC), even though the oldest available full manuscripts

(only eight or so) date from 1,300 years later!

For the New Testament, how different and how vastly

superior is the manuscript evidence. Some 5,000 Greek

MSS (whole or fragmentary) are known, not a mere eight

or ten. The most notable MSS are the Codexes Vaticanus

and Sinaiticus of c. 350 ADonly 250 years after the end of

the New Testament period (100 AD), not 900 or 1,300

years! Older still are the Chester Beatty and Bodmer

biblical papyri, including six new Testament MSS of the

second and third centuries AD, only 150 years after the

New Testament period.

Further back still, there is a Rylands fragment from a

manuscript of Johns Gospel [containing John 18:31-33,

37ff] datable by its script to about 130 ADlittle more than

a generation after the New Testament period itself. As this

fragment came from Egypt, it is evident that Johns gospel

had been composed, recopied and begun to circulate well

beyond Palestine before 130 AD. Hence, on this evidence

alone, it must have been composed (at latest) by 90/100

AD, and more probably earlier.

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To the modern mind, a few decades may seem like a long period

of time, but when we are talking about ancient times, this time

period is just a blink of an eye. This is primarily because of the

culture of memorization and the strong emphasis on accurate

transmission of tradition that existed in ancient Middle Eastern

cultures. In the words of Sir Frederic Kenyon (as quoted by thelate F.F. Bruce):

5

Kitchen. The Bible and Its World. p. 131.


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The interval between the dates of original composition

and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to

be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt

that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as

they were written has now been removed. Both the

authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the

New Testament may be regarded as finally established.6

And we have similar documentation for the Old Testament. This

is demonstrated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dating

to as early as 250 B.C.E., these scrolls are centuries earlier than

the next earliest manuscript of the Old Testament that we have,

which is the Nash papyrus (a papyrus that contains portions of

Exodus and Deuteronomy, and dates to around the second

century C.E.).7

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a remarkable testimony

of Gods promise to preserve His Word. As the Royal OntarioMuseum explains it,

The Dead Sea Scrolls are widely considered among the

greatest archaeological finds of the past century. They

include the earliest written sources for the Hebrew Bible

(Christian Old Testament), as well as other less well known

writings. Many of the ideas and beliefs contained in thiscollection of ancient parchments have resonated through

the centuries and remain influential today. Indeed, they

reflect the foundations of important religions such as

Judaism and Christianity and have influenced Islam.

Dating from around 250 Before Common Era (BCE) to 68

Common Era (CE), the Scrolls include some 207 biblical

6Bruce. The New Testament Documents. p. 20.

7Adair. Nash Papryus.


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manuscripts representing nearly all of the books in the

Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). Approximately

900 Scrolls were discovered; some almost entirely

preserved and others in fragments. Together, they

comprise one of the most important collections of writings

ever discovered. The Scrolls are a collection of biblical

writings, apocryphal manuscripts, prayers, biblical

commentary and religious laws. Prior to the discovery of

the Scrolls, the oldest known copies of biblical texts werewritten 1,000 years later.

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When we compare the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ninth

century Masoretic texts on which our modern Old Testaments

are based upon, the amount of preservation that has taken place

is quite remarkable. Apart from some minor variations in the

text, the only real significant difference is the inclusion of vowelmarkers to the Masoretic text (which were not yet invented

during the first century) to make recitation easier. Richard Deem

ofEvidence for God remarks,

How do we know the Bible has been kept in tact for over

2,000 years of copying? Before the discovery of the Dead

Sea Scrolls, our earliest Hebrew copy of the Old Testamentwas the Masoretic text, dating around 800 A.D. The Dead

Sea Scrolls date to the time of Jesus and were copied by

the Qumran community, a Jewish sect living around the

Dead Sea. We also have the Septuagint which is a Greek

translation of the Old Testament dating in the second

century B.C. When we compare these texts which have an

800-1000 years gap between them we are amazed that

8Dead Sea Scrolls.


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95% of the texts are identical with only minor variations

and a few discrepancies.9

In other have more copies of the Bible than we do for any other

document that has ever been written prior to the invention of

the printing press. In the words of renown textual scholar Dr.

Daniel B. Wallace, what we have here is an embarrassment of

riches. But now comes another question: Do these manuscripts

accurately preserve the words of the Bible for us, or are they all

hopelessly flawed due to edits? Some people would allege that

these manuscripts are no good because they have been changed

beyond recognition, and it is to this claim that we turn our

attention next.

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Deem. Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the Original?


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Wholesale Editing?

Back in 1982, a popular conspiracy book entitled Holy Blood,

Holy Grail, was released by three authors: Michael Baigent,

Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. This book was popular amongst

conspiracy theorists due to its rejection of mainstream

historiography in favour of a revised version of history (Here is an

interesting side note: This is the same book that Dan Brown

would use to come up with his own conspiracy thriller The DaVinci Code two decades later. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy

Grail have actually sued him for this). In particular, the authors

attack the authenticity of the Bible by alleging that it is the

product of the fourth century:

In AD 303, a quarter of a century earlier, the pagan

emperor Diocletian had undertaken to destroy allChristian writings that could be found. As a result Christian

documentsespecially in Romeall but vanished. When

Constantine commissioned new versions of these

documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to

revise, edit, and rewrite their material as they saw fit, in

accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most

of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were

probably made and Jesus assumed the unique status he

has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantines

commission must not be underestimated. Of the five

thousand extant early manuscript versions of the New

Testament, no complete edition pre-dates the fourth

century. The New Testament, as it exists today, is

essentially a product of fourth-century editors and


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writerscustodians of orthodoxy, adherents of the

message, with vested interests to protect.10

Of course, this is a bogus claim. First of all, Diocletian only

managed to destroy manuscripts of the bible in certain portions

of the Roman Empire. At this time, Christianity was already so

widespread that no amount of persecution can get rid of all

copies of the Scriptures. Second, even if Diocletian did somehow

manage to wipe out all Christian writings throughout the Roman

Empire, that would still not touch the Christian communities and

their Scriptures that have been established in other lands such as

Ethiopia, Persia, Armenia, etc. And finally, in order for the

custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit and rewrite anything,

one would have to presuppose that they had access to the

Scriptures in the original form. And if this original form had been

lost, as Baigent et. al. would have us believe, then we have noway of actually proving that the copy of the Bible that we have

now was edited back in the fourth century.

Also, it is just highly misleading to say that no complete edition

of the New Testament did not exist prior to the fourth century.

Every book that makes up the modern New Testament was

already written by the end of the first century. However, becauseof the difficulties faced by the early church, it took centuries

before all of these books can be gathered into a single codex.

The process was gradual, with the books first being arranged into

collections before finally being gathered into a single document.

As renowned textual scholars Kurt and Barbara Aland state,

It is probable that by the third century the Gospels werecirculating as a single corpus rather than separately, and

10Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. pp. 368-369.


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the Pauline corpus even earlier. Acts, however, was

probably at first associated with the Gospels (cf. P45, and

also Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis). Then in the fourth

century, when Acts began to be grouped with the Catholic

[i.e. General] letters, this meant bringing manuscripts

together from different sources; even if the Catholic

letters were already in circulation as a single group, they

must have been brought together from manuscripts of

different origins when the group was first formed.

11

So we see that rather than a single event in history, the

canonizing of the New Testament was a gradual process that

culminated in various provincial synods in the late fourth century

(not the Council of Nicaea, as many historical revisionists would

like to claim). Even then, these provincial synods did not invent a

biblical canon out of thin air, but were expressing the long-established beliefs of those provinces where these synods took

place.

That being said, we do have an interesting papyrus known as the

Muratorian Canon which dates back to 170 C.E. and mentions

the existence of four gospels (two of which are explicitly named)

plus many other books that appear in the New Testament.

12

Also, as has been pointed out before, we actually have many

manuscripts that predate the fourth century. The Chester-Beatty

papyrii, for example, date to around the second and third

centuries and contain several portions of the Old and New

Testaments, plus the apocryphal book of Enoch and an early

Christian homily.13

And finally, we have the John Rylands Papyrus

11Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. p. 50

12Marlowe. The Muratorian Fragment.

13Bruce. The Chester Beatty Papyrii. The Harvester.


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(otherwise known as manuscript P52

). Why is this little papyrus

so important? It would be well worth noting the details behind

this manuscript:

This small fragment of St Johns Gospel, measuring less

than nine centimetres high, is one of the collection of

Greek papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. On

one side it contains parts of verses 31-33, on the other

side parts of verses 37-38 of the eighteenth chapter of

Johns Gospel.

It was originally discovered in Egypt, and may come from

the famous site of Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa), the ruined city

in Upper Egypt where Grenfel and Hunt carried out some

of the most startling and successful excavations in the

history of archaeology; it may be remembered that among

their finds of new fragments of Classical and Christian

literature were the now familiar Sayings of Jesus.

The importance of this fragment is quite out of proportion

to its size, since it may with some confidence be dated in

the first half of the second century A.D., and thus ranks as

the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any

language.

It provides us with invaluable evidence of the spread of

Christianity in areas distant from the land of its origin; it is

particularly interesting to know that among the books

read by the early Christians in Upper Egypt was St Johns

Gospel, commonly regarded as one of the latest of the

books of the New Testament.


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Like other early Christian works which have been found in

Egypt, this gospel manuscript was written in the form of a

codex, i.e. book, not of a roll, the common format for non-

Christian literature of that time.14

Now, if Baigent et. al. are right about the claim that the Bible was

edited wholesale during the early fourth century, then we should

be able to compare this revised Bible with the early copies of

the scriptural books that predate this revision and see what the

original Bible really looked like. Now, if we look at these pre-

fourth century manuscripts, we find that the contents of the

Bible have remained largely intact. In fact, even if we didnt have

these early manuscripts, we can still verify the contents of the

Bible as having been preserved for us, since we have the writings

of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, who quote hundreds of thousands of

times from the Scriptures and verify for us that their reading hasbeen preserved.

15All of these things testify against the allegation

that there had been any kind of wholesale editing that has been

performed on the Scriptures. With that out of the way, it must

be pointed out that the allegation of textual corruption still

exists. This allegation comes not from conspiracy theorists but

from recognized scholars who provide us with a more subtle and

nuanced argument against the textual reliability of the Bible. To

this, we shall now turn.

14

St John Fragment: A fragment of the fourth gospel.15 The writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and the scripture

passages they cite from are widely available online. The best source

for their writings would be the Christian Classics Ethereal Library:

.


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Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption

Anybody who knows anything about textual criticism of the New

Testament has undoubtedly heard of Bart Ehrman and his

bestselling book, Misquoting Jesus. When he published his book

back in 2005, Ehrman became one of the oft-cited textual

scholars by both atheist and Muslim critics of the bible because

of the case that he attempts to present against the textual

reliability of the New Testament. Ehrmans case can be summedup in what he wrote in his introduction to the book:

It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but

the reality is that we dont have the originalsso saying

they were inspired doesnt help me much, unless I can

reconstruct the originals. moreover, the vast majority of

Christians for the entire history of the church have not hadaccess to the originals, making their inspiration something

of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we

dont have the first copies of the originals. We dont even

have the copies of the copies of the originals, or the

copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What

we have are copies made latermuch later. In most

instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And

these copies all differ from one another, in many

thousands of places. As we will see later in this book,

these copies differ from one another so many places that

we dont even know how many differences there are.

Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there


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are more differences among our manuscripts than there

are words in the New Testament.16

This is the man who is often lauded these days as the one who

has exposed the secrets of textual criticism to the light of day.

However, most of the arguments in the book have more to do

with shock value (sadly, most Christians are ignorant about these

issues, so its easy to shock them with these kinds of things) and

misinterpretation of facts (which we will be delving more into as

we go along). Most of the things Ehrman says is really nothing

new for those who are familiar with textual criticism. Many

textual critics, such as the Alands, Nicholas Perrin, Daniel

Wallace, and Bruce Metzger (whom was actually Erhmans

mentor), have known about these issues for decades, and they

do not interpret the facts the way Ehrman does. Dr. Daniel

Wallace, one of the few textual scholars who can hold a candleto Ehrman in terms of influence in the field of New Testament

textual criticism, wrote a comprehensive revew of his work

entitled, The Gospel According to Bart. Here, Dr. Wallace shows

the various flaws in Ehrmans thinking, especially the unbalanced

view that he holds concerning the reliability of the Bible:

What strikes me as most remarkable in all this is howmuch Ehrman tied inerrancy to the general historical

reliability of the Bible. It was an all-or-nothing proposition

for him. He still seems to see things in black and white

terms There thus seems to be no middle ground in his

view of the text. In short, Ehrman seems to have held to

what I would call a domino view of doctrine. When one

falls down, they all fall down.

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Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. pp. 10-11.


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it seems that Barts black and white mentality as a

fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged

through the years and trials of life and learning, even

when he came out on the other side of the theological

spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing,

he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the

security that his own views are right.17

Aside from this, it should also be pointed out that he does not

even go as far as many who wish to use his writings to attack the

reliability of the Bible go, as evidenced by certain portions of his

own writings where he shows a bit more conservatism in his

view of the Scriptural text:

These are questions that plague textual critics, and that

have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest

for the original textsince we cant even agree on what it

might mean to talk about the original of, say, Galatians

or John. For my part however, I continue to think that

even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we

can attain to, we can at least be certain that all surviving

manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which

were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and thatit is at least possible to get back to the oldest and earliest

stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of

the New Testament. All our manuscripts of Galatians, for

example, evidently go back to some text that was copied;

all our manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version

of John that included the prologue and chapter 21. And so

we must rest content knowing that getting back to the

17Wallace. The Gospel According to Bart.


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earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether

or not we have reached back to the original text. This

oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely)

related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the

basis for our interpretation of his teaching.18

Many critics of the Bible (such as the majority of Muslims) would

like to think that the text of scripture has been so badly

corrupted that its original form cannot even be discerned

anymore. Yet, as we can see, this is a totally unwarranted

assumption. The amount of resources textual critics have to

work with is great enough that the original reading of the whole

Bible can be derived from them.

When one copyist changed the wording of a text in a

fourth-century manuscript known as Codex Vaticanus, a

later copyist rewrote the original word and added the

marginal note: Fool and knave! Leave the old reading,

dont change it! Certainly, copyists did alter the text from

time to timebut the consistency of the available

manuscripts of the New Testament demonstrates that

these alterations were exceptions, not the rule.19

It is interesting to note that Ehrman mentions the same incident

in his book, saying that to him, it is a constant reminder about

scribes and their proclivities to change, and rechange, their

texts.20

This shows how ones paradigm can affect the way one

sees the evidence. What ought to be seen as an example of how

the scribes took the accurate transmission of the text seriously,

18Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 62.

19Jones. Misquoting Truth. p. 50.

20Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 56.


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Ehrman uses to lampoon the reliability of the textual

transmission of the New Testament. After all, it should be a

wonder why the later copyist would even bother to preserve the

original reading if he did not regard such accurate transmission

as important. Ironically, Ehrman himself admits that the

It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian

texts was by and large a conservative process. The

scribeswhether non-professional scribes in the early

centuries or professional scribes of the Middle Ages

were intent on conserving the textual tradition they

were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to

modify the tradition, but to preserve it for themselves and

for those who would follow them. Most scribes, no doubt,

tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they

reproduced was the same text they inherited.

21

Now, the reason why every manuscript differs is because the

scribes copying them are human. They may make slips every now

and then and make a spelling error, miscopy a word or leave out

a phrase. This is true of every ancient document, which is why

every writing that exists before the invention of the printing

press has a textual history (even the Quran). In The King JamesOnly Controversy, Dr. James White talks about the difficulties

early scribes faced when they copied out:

The scribes of old made errors Even the best

professionals had bad days. They made mistakes in what

they were copying, even when they were copying the

Scriptures. They worked under much more difficultsituationsoften in the cold or the heat, almost always

21Ibid., p. 177.


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with inferior lighting. Today we have glasses, or even Lasik

surgery, and other accessories of which the men of old

could not even dream. Many of them had to work long,

arduous hours. Fingers cramped, and backs ached. You

may think of one of those long essay tests from college to

get a slight idea of the rigor of the work. All of these things

contributed to the simple fact that there is not a single

handwritten manuscript of the Bible, in Greek or Hebrew,

that does not contain, somewhere, an error, an oversight,a mistake. Such is true, of course, of all ancient

handwritten documents, including those that are claimed

to be Scriptures (such as the Quran).22

Now, how about the claim by Ehrman that there are four

hundred thousand textual variants? to the untrained ear, that

sounds like a pretty big claim to make. However, Ehrman is onlygiving a part of the story. Many of those textual variants are not

what they sound like at first glance. As Dr. Wallace points out

how misleading this figure is:

Ehrman overplays the quality of the variants while

underscoring their quantity. He says, There are more

variations among our manuscripts than there are words inthe New Testament. Elsewhere he states that the

number of variants is as high as 400,000. That is true

enough, but by itself is misleading. Anyone who teaches

NT textual criticism knows that this fact is only part of the

picture and that, if left dangling in front of the reader

without explanation, is a distorted view. Once it is

revealed that the great majority of these variants are

22White. The King James Only Controversy. pp. 60-61.


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Thus, only 2.9 percent of the text contain any real meaningful

textual variants, and if we bring up the question of which of

these textual variants are both meaningful and viable, then the

number drops even lower to only 1 percent. Some scholars go

even higher than this. For example, Drs. Norman Geisler and

William Nix would point out that the text of the New Testament

has survived in a purer form than any other great booka form

that is 99.5 percent pure.25

It should be added to this that in the

remaining 0.5 percent where there is any signficant doubtconcerning the original reading, not a single cardinal Christian

doctrine is affected.

So ultimately, it is not a question of whether manuscripts of the

bible have errors in them, but whether these errors prevent us

from knowing what the original text of the bible actually says.

You can have thousands of manuscripts that all have errors inthem, but unless every single manuscript has mistakes in the

exact same spot (and really, this is where the they all differ from

one another argument falls flat on its face), this is does not

provide any evidence that the bible has been corrupted. There is

a concept in textual criticism called tenacity, which means that

when a textual variant enters into the manuscript tradition, it

does not simply disappear. Even if it is an insignificant variant

with no chance of being the original, it will nonetheless persist in

a few manuscripts over the centuries.26

Now, if such variants

manage to survive, how much more with the original readings?

We can be certain that the original reading has survived; it is

simply a matter of distinguishing it from the textual variants (and

most of the time this is actually quite easy, as there are relatively

25Geisler and Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. p. 367.

26Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. p. 56.


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that is more documented than any other in the ancient

world.27

However, is Ehrman correct in saying that the existence of these

textual variants provides evidence that God has not kept his

word in preserving the Holy Scriptures and that the doctrines of

Biblical Inspiration and Inerrancy are thereby proven false? This

shall be point of discussion for the final part of this article.

27

Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 87.


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Textual Criticism, Inspiration and Inerrancy

As he points out in Misquoting Jesus, what drove Bart Ehrman to

lose his faith in the reliability of the text of scripture is the idea

that God had not preserved the text of scripture:

This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I

came to realize that it would have been no more difficult

for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would

have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he

wanted his people to have his words, surely he would

have given them to them (and possibly, even given them

the words in a language they could understand, rather

than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we dont have the

words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not

preserve them for us. And if he didnt perform thatmiracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he

performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words.28

It would seem that the bit where Ehrman complains about the

language the Bible written in is a momentary lapse in logic on his

part. He asks why God would give the words of scripture in

Hebrew and Greek rather than in a language the people couldunderstand, when in fact, Hebrew and Greek were the languages

the people who the biblical books were originally written to

could understand. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew

because that was what the Jews to whom it was revealed to

understood, and the New Testament was written in Greek

because that was the common language of much of the near and

28Ibid., p. 11.


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middle eastern world at the time of the New Testament (Koine

Greek is basically the first century equivalent of English today).

To make the point clear, think of a hypothetical scenario where

the official language of the United States of America changed

from English to Spanish. The vast majority of people would no

longer be able to read the Constitution in the original English it

was written in, but would have to rely upon a Spanish translation

of the American Constitution. And suppose that there were

different Spanish translations of the Constitution, which function

on different translation principles or whose translators thought

certain Spanish words conveyed the meaning of the original

English better. Now, would it be fair to accuse the founding

fathers of the United States of having been so inconsiderate as to

have written the Constitution in English rather than Spanish,

which is what most people can understand? Well of course not,because English was the common language of the American

people when the Constitution was written!

That being said, has the existence of textual variation

compromise the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy? Not at all. Now,

perhaps if the original reading of the scriptural text has been

lost, this argument might hold water, but since it are still with us,this does not pose any problems for the doctrine of inerrancy. As

Dr. Wallace points out,

Inspiration relates to the wording of the Bible, while

inerrancy relates to the truth of a statement. American

evangelicals generally believe that only the original text is

inspired. This is not to say, however, that copies cant beinerrant. Indeed, statements that bear no relation to

scripture can be inerrant. If I say, I am married and have


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four sons, two dogs, and a cat, thats an inerrant

statement. Its not inspired, nor at all related to scripture,

but it is true. Similarly, whether Paul says we have peace

or let us have peace in Rom 5.1, both statements are

true (though each in a different sense), though only one is

inspired. Keeping this distinction in mind as we consider

the textual variants of the NT should clarify matters.

Regardless of what one thinks about the doctrine of

inerrancy, the argument against it on the basis of the

unknown autographs is logically fallacious. This is so for

two reasons. First, we have the text of the NT somewhere

in the manuscripts. There is no need for conjecture,

except perhaps in one or two places. Second, the text we

have in any viable variants is no more a problem for

inerrancy than other problems where the text is secure.Now, to be sure, there are some challenges in the textual

variants to inerrancy. This is not denied. But there are

simply bigger fish to fry when it comes to issues that

inerrancy faces. Thus, if conjectural emendation is

unnecessary, and if no viable variant registers much of a

blip on the radar called problems for inerrancy, then not

having the originals is a moot point for this doctrine.29

Even in the two cases where there are conjectural emendations

involved (which are Acts 16:12 and Revelation 21:17), there is

hardly any difference. In Acts 16:12, the emendation involves the

inclusion of a single word that has very little impact on the

meaning of the text.30

In Revelation 21:17, the emendation

29Wallace. The Gospel According to Bart.

30Metzger. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. pp.

393-395.


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concerns a variation in spelling that has zero impact on the

meaning of the text at all. Apart from those two very minor

emendations, the text of the New Testament can be deduced

from all the manuscripts that we have available to us. As Dr.

Bruce Metzger states in his Textual Commentary on the Greek

New Testament,

During the twentieth century, with the discovery of

several New Testament manuscripts much older than any

that had hitherto been available, it has become possible

to produce editions of the New Testament that

approximate ever more closely to what is regarded as the

wording of the original documents.31

And finally, it must be remembered that even with the most

significant textual variations, we do not end up with radically

different books handed down to us. The Gospel of Matthew is

still the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Philippians is still

the Epistle to the Philippians, etc. In other words, our biblical

faith remains perfectly intact. In the words of Dr. White,

The reality is that the amount of variation between the

two most extremely different manuscripts of the New

Testament would not fundamentally alter the message of

the Scriptures! No textual variants in either the Old or

New Testament in any way, shape, or form materially

disrupt or destroy any essential doctrine of the Christian

faith. This is a fact that any semi-impartial review will

substantiate32

31

Ibid., p. 10.32

White. The King James Only Controversy. p. 67.


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Conclusion

The attack upon the reliability of Scripture by arguing that it has

not been preserved for us and has been corrupted over the

centuries is one that is very popular in this day and age, yet we

can see that there is no firm basis for believing this claim. We can

see that God has kept His word from passing away through the

sands of time. Dr. White concludes rather nicely when he points

out how great our case is for the reliable preservation of thescriptures:

There is no question that it was Gods intention to

preserve the biblical text in a particular fashion, one that

would safeguard it against the primary attacks of its

critics. The objection that We just cant know what was

originally written; it may have been changed is ruled outby the means God used to distribute the text explosively

in the first few centuries, resulting in its multifocality.

Combined with the tenacity of the text, we have been

given great confidence in the face of the faiths

adversaries.33

The Lord Jesus Christ has promised to us that His words shallnever pass away (Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31); not one jot, not

one tittle. And we see that He has kept His promise. The means

by which He has done this may not be the means that we would

desire Him to (for it is a means that requires careful study and

research on the part of those involved), but it has been most

profitable in keeping our Biblical text preserved amidst the

forces that seek to corrupt it (or, in this case, claim that it has

33Ibid., p. 87.


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been corrupted). Thus, the Christian who opens up his or her

Bible, reads and benefits from it must be thankful that it has

come down to us as it has, for the Lord God was providentially at

work in its preservation.

All flesh is grass,

and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades

when the breath of the LORD blows on it;

surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

but the word of our God will stand forever.34

34

Isaiah 40:6-8, English Standard Version.


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References

Adair, James R., Jr. Nash Papryus. Religion and Technology

Centre, Inc. .

Aland, Barbara and Kurt Aland. The Text of the New Testament:

An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and

Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (Second Edition, Translated

by Erroll F. Rhodes). Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995.

Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood,

Holy Grail. New York: Dell, 1983.

Bruce, Frederick Fyvie. The Chester Beatty Papyrii. The

Harvester (11) 1934: 163-164.

-------. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Grand

Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980.

Dailey, Timothy J., Ph.D. Mysteries of the Bible: Exploring the

Secrets of the Unexplained. Lincolnwood IL: Publications

International, Ltd., 1998.

Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World. Archdiocese of

Toronto.

.

Deem, Richard. Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the

Original? Evidence for God.

.

Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who

Changed the Bible and Why. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005.


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Geisler, Norman L. Aand William E. Nix. A General Introduction to

the Bible. Chicago IL: Moody Press, 1980.

Marlowe, Michael D. The Muratorian Fragment. Bible Research.

.

Jones, Timothy Paul. Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies

of Bart Ehrmans Misquoting Jesus. Downers Grove IL:

InterVarsity Press, 2007.

Metzger, Bruce Manning. A Textual Commentary on the Greek

New Testament (Second Edition). Stuttgart: Deutsche

Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.

-------. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission,

Corruption and Restoration. New York: Oxford University Press,

1992.

Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. The Bible and Its World. Downers

Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977.

St John Fragment: A fragment of the fourth gospel. The John

Rylands University Library.

.

Wallace, Daniel Baird. The Gospel according to Bart. Bible.org.

.

White, James Robert. The King James Only Controversy: Can YouTrust the Modern Translations? (Second Edition). Minneapolis,

MI: Bethany House Publishers, 2009.


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