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This is Part 6 of a critical review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

Second, Kruger points out that Ehrman’s numbers also fail to take into account the incredibly large numbers of manuscripts we possess. Possessing more manuscripts will lead to a linear increase in the number of errors one finds. Ehrman appeals to John Mill’s 1707 work in which he examined 100 manuscripts and found 30,000 variants (300/manuscript on average). He then asserts how many more variants of which we are now aware. Daryl Wingerd, in his review, does an excellent job in showing that the larger number of total variants we now have actually prove the opposite of what Ehrman asserts. Wingerd states that we now have around 16,000 manuscripts. Using the high end of Ehrman’s estimates of textual variants, 400,000, would give us an average of only 25 variants/manuscript.

The increase in manuscript evidence has greatly reduced the problem. Far more difficulties have been resolved by the discovery of more manuscripts than have been created by it.

Another important point, noted by Wingerd, is that the comparison of the total number of variants to the number of words in the New Testament is completely arbitrary and irrelevant. This seems to be another attempt by Ehrman to mislead the reader. A more appropriate comparison would be to compare the number of variants with the number of words in all the manuscripts (around 1 billion, according to Wingerd).

The third response of Kruger to the claim that the manuscripts we have are so full of errors that they cannot be trusted is that Ehrman does not consider that most of the variants are easily spotted and corrected. Robert Bowman provides an excellent table (which I cannot reproduce for reasons of space) illustrating how this process works in Scripture: Authority, Canon, and Criticism. Kruger makes the compelling point that…

… On the one hand, he needs to argue that text-critical methodologies are reliable and can show you what was original and what was not… but on the other hand, he wants the ‘original’ text of the New Testament to remain inaccessible and obscure, forcing him to argue that text-critical methodologies cannot really produce any certain conclusions.

So, Ehrman wishes to argue that we can, in fact, know which passages were changed, yet he also wants to argue that we cannot have confidence as to what is in the original text. It seems he would like to have his cake and eat it too.

Finally, Kruger points out that Ehrman’s appeal to Mill’s study in which 30,000 variants were found is misleading because Mill did not just compare manuscripts with manuscripts, but also with citations from Church Fathers and copies of the New Testament in other languages (which brings about many other possible variations in translation).

Next, I turn to Ehrman’s third main contention.

This is the Part 5 of a critical review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

Before moving on the next argument Ehrman provides, I must share one of my favorite responses to one of Ehrman’s illustrations of the difficulty scribes encountered in accurately reading a text (which he claims makes mistakes more likely) by apologist, J. P. Holding. Ehrman addresses the Greek writing style called scripto continua in which no punctuation, spaces, or upper/lower case letters were found. For example, the phrase lastnightatdinnerisawabundanceonthetable is ambiguous and could refer to a normal or supernormal event. Holding, in his review, rightly points out the simple answer to such ambiguity readily available to any scribe – the context. He illustrates that…

… if the sentence is by itself there’s no reason to check any further either way. But if it is followed by unclehenrytriedtostabitwithhisforkbutthenitdidthewatusi, or by therewerelotsofmeatsandcheesesandbreads, then your reading problem is solved.

Ehrman’s next attempted task is to show how the manuscripts which exist today are utterly unreliable and filled with scribal errors. He emphatically declares:

Some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! We do not know for sure because… no one has yet been able to count them all.

He further declares:

There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

Kruger’s response to Ehrman is four-fold. First, these numbers, obviously intended to shock the reader, are misleading. Ehrman himself admits in the last chapter that …

… of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.

Examples of these insignificant mistakes which are easily recognized include misspellings, omitted words, and changes in word order.

Next, a continued response to this argument of Ehrman.

This is part 4 of a critical review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

First of all, let me be clear, mistakes were made in transcription. No knowledgeable Christian of whom I am aware claims that the scribes made errorless copies. Michael Kruger, a New Testament professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. in his review, makes two responses to Ehrman’s assertions. First, if the overall copying of texts was as bad as Ehrman makes it out to be, we have no grounds to believe anything of ancient history. This would be especially the case, seeing how we have so few copies of secular works when compared with copies of Scripture. Furthermore, Ehrman bolsters his claims with quotes from ancient manuscripts, which he has already asserted are so full of errors that it is difficult to trust them. It seems Ehrman is quite selective about what texts he believes present accurately the words of the author.

Second, Kruger states that Ehrman must be able to show that Christian copying was worse than the efforts of others. Ehrman fails in this task, instead presenting us with a false dichotomy by claiming either copying was done by formal scriptoriums which were most accurate in their work or with haphazard, non-professional copying filled with errors. We have reason to believe that early Christian copying was reliable. Respected papyrologist, T. C. Skeats, claims that scribal features such as the nomina sacra (a method of abbreviating criticized by Ehrman) show…

… a degree of organization, of conscious planning, and uniformity of practice among the Christian communities which we have hitherto had little reason to suspect, and which throws a new light on the early history of the church.

Craig Blomberg, professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, in his review, claims…

… the actual textual evidence of the second and third centuries, though notably sparser than for later centuries, does not demonstrate the sufficiently greater fluidity in the textual tradition that would be necessary to actually support the hypothesis that we cannot reconstruct the most likely originals with an exceedingly high probability of accuracy…

Gundry also makes the point:

Nor does he take account of the possibility, even probability that multiple copies of the originals were made and that in the 2nd century the originals themselves were still available for checking.

This is Part 3 of a critical review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

So, what is to be made of Ehrman’s thesis and the reasoning which led him to embrace it? Well, let me begin with a quick word about the large amount of autobiographical data in the book. Some have taken issue with its inclusion in a scholarly work, although I was not bothered by it. Misquoting Jesus was written for laymen, according to the author. In fact, I think the presence of this material provides added insight into the goal of the author in the publishing of this book. His goal is not just to inform, but to convince his readers that they should follow his lead, by denying the evangelical viewpoint and become “happy agnostics.” Robert H. Gundry, in his review of the book, states:

He (Ehrman) makes it quite clear his further and ultimate purpose to dysangelize them – in other words, to proclaim New Testament textual criticism as bad news to all who believe the Bible to be God’s word.

New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, in his review, claims…

… he is trying now to deconstruct orthodox Christianity, which he once embraced, rather than do ‘value neutral’ text criticism.

Ehrman is certainly not a dispassionate observer of the facts, but is presenting a viewpoint to which he is “fully committed.”

Now, I proceed to Ehrman’s main arguments. Ehrman’s first contention is that the early scribes were incompetent and unable to accurately copy and transmit the text of scripture. He makes several claims, however, which fail to stand up under scrutiny. Regarding copying of texts in general during the first few centuries, Ehrman claims…

… that this process could be maddeningly slow and inaccurate, that the copies produced this way could end up being quite different from the originals.

The process was worse for Christians, asserts Ehrman:

Because the early Christian texts were not being copied by professional scribes, at least the first two or three centuries of the church, but simply by educated members of the Christian congregations…, we can expect that in the earliest copies, especially, mistakes were commonly made in transcription.

Next, what to make of Ehrman’s claim?

This is Part 2 of a series reviewing Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

In the first two chapters, Ehrman lays out his first main argument, that is, that the early scribes were incapable of accurately copying and transmitting the texts of scripture. Most Christians, he claims, were illiterate, and the non-professional scribes who copied scripture were error-prone and incompetent.

In chapters three to five, Ehrman’s goal is to show how the manuscripts which exist today are utterly unreliable and filled with scribal errors. He asserts the errors number in the hundreds of thousands, making it impossible to trust the accuracy of the manuscripts. Additionally, he asserts that…

in my judgment the translations available to most English readers are based on the wrong text, and having the wrong text makes a real difference for the interpretation of these books.

Starting in chapter six, Ehrman presents his third main point, that is, that…

… the texts of the New Testament were modified for theological reasons.

Scribes intentionally made changes in the text to make certain theological points. At times, they did this simply to clarify a passage, or at least to make it clear what they think it means. At other times, they did this to counter heretical ideas with which the church was dealing at that time.

The conclusion, once again, becomes somewhat autobiographical. He reiterates how his view of scripture has changed. He came to realize that…

… even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant… Given the circumstance that he didn’t preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them.

Next, I begin to evaluate the arguments.

Over the next several posts, I will present a series reviewing a very popular book by Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus. In my previous three posts, I have attempted to provide a very brief explanation of how textual criticism works so that the review of Ehrman’s book might be more effective.

Bart Ehrman, a well-respected New Testament scholar who chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, has written this book…

… for people who know nothing about textual criticism but who might like to learn something about how scribes were changing scripture… for anyone who might be interested in seeing how we got our New Testament, seeing how in some instances we don’t even know what the words of the original writers were.

Ehrman does an admirable job explaining how the world of textual criticism works. Where he fails the reader, however, is in the interjection of his own skepticism and in his misleading spin on the facts. The title of the book itself is misleading in that almost nothing discussed in the book has anything to do with misquoting Jesus. In Ehrman’s defense, I understand this was not his preferred title, but that of the publisher.

First of all, let us overview Ehrman’s basic arguments in brief. Misquoting Jesus contains an introduction, conclusion, and seven chapters in between. The introduction is, unexpectedly, a personal testimony of how Ehrman journeyed from an evangelical view of scripture and a commitment to Christ to his present state of agnosticism and his view that the Bible is…

… a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the text of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end.

Next, a continued look at Ehrman’s basic arguments.

In a previous post, I presented six “manuscripts” with nine different “variants” to which we may apply out principles of textual criticism to arrive at the original text. Here they are again:

(M1) The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical text.

(M2) The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and tens of thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical text.

(M3) The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the ____ biblilcal texts.

(M4) The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the ____ biblical texts.

(M5) The discoveries of the DSS and 1000s of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical texts.

(M6) The discoveries of the DSS and 1000s of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmision of the bilbical texts

Step 1: First of all, we can judge the words “tens of” in M2 as an addition since that is the only version which contains them.

Step 2: The addition of “of” in M4 can be identified as a mere stylistic variant and can be judged to be an addition.

Step 3: The misspelling of “transmission” and “biblical” in M6 are variants, but they can be easily eliminated.

Step 4: M1 and M2 is the only “family” of manuscripts to use the singular “text”, so this is evidently an error.

Step 5: In M3 and M4, the singular “discovery” and the omission of a whole line (which like the line before it, ended in “of the” are evidently errors.

Step 6: The “family” of manuscripts made up of M5 and M6 alone use abbreviations, and does so frequently, so these are to be viewed as changes.

Step 7: “The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical texts.” As Bowman points out, the precise wording of this sentence is beyond reasonable doubt, even though there are nine variants on only six manuscripts of a single sentence.

So, there, in a nutshell, is how the mysterious field of textual criticism works.

In my last post I presented six “manuscripts” with nine variants for our examination. To believe critics like Bart Ehrman, we may as well throw our hands up in the air and give up on ever knowing what the original text said. As we shall see, this is not at all the case. We will be able, using the principles of textual criticism, to arrive at what was almost undoubtedly the original text.

Actually, before doing textual criticism, I must present the principles of textual criticism. These are also given by Bowman in his book, Scripture: Outline Studies in Authority, Canon, and Criticism. Here are the rules which are to be followed to arrive at the original text and to understand how the original text might have been changed over time:

1. The reading of the original language manuscripts, where it differs from later language versions, is presumed to be correct unless proven otherwise.

2. Manuscripts are weighed, not merely counted.

3. The reading that most naturally accounts for the others is most likely the original.

4. The “harder” or more difficult the reading is more likely to be the original.

5. The earlier reading is more likely to be original.

6. The shorter reading is more likely to be original.

7. The reading with wider geographical attestation is more likely to be original.

8. The reading in a larger number of manuscript “families” is more likely to be original.

9. The reading in an otherwise higher quality manuscript is more likely to be original.

10. The reading that conforms to the author’s usual style is more likely to be original.

Alright. Next time, we really will do some textual criticism of our six “manuscripts.”

Robert Bowman presents a table in Scripture: Outline Studies in Authority, Canon, and Criticism which is very helpful in explaining exactly how textual criticism works. I would like to summarize this information here because I think it makes what may seem mystifying to the average laymen quite understandable. Before I get to the table which shows exactly how the process works, let’s consider what are the goals of textual criticism. Bowman explains that there are two general goals. The literary goal is to recover the original text. The historical goal is to reconstruct the history of the text, to see how the text has changed over time. These goals are not incompatible with one another.

Below I present (as Bowman does in the aforementioned table) six imaginary “manuscripts” of a single sentence. In the six manuscripts there are nine different “variants” in the text for this single sentence. As will be seen, someone who had only these six manuscripts, and no access to the original, would have no problem reconstructing the original sentence.

Manuscript 1 (M1) The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical text.

(M2) The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and tens of thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical text.

(M3) The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the ____ biblilcal texts.

(M4) The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of thousands of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the ____ biblical texts.

(M5) The discoveries of the DSS and 1000s of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmission of the biblical texts.

(M6) The discoveries of the DSS and 1000s of other manuscripts have verified the accuracy of the transmision of the bilbical texts.

In the next post, we will examine these six texts and do some textual criticism.

Adam Schreck, of The L. A. Times, recently wrote this article proclaiming the news that Democrat Pete Stark of California is the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. to make a public acknowledgement of his atheistic belief. Here is a portion of the article:

The American Humanist Assn. plans to take out an ad in the Washington Post today congratulating the congressman for his public stance and highlighting the contributions of other prominent secular humanists, such as writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Kurt Vonnegut and actress Julia Sweeney.

Fred Edwords, a spokesman for the group, said non-theistic Americans often faced discrimination for their views.

I found it interesting that Mr. Edwords lauded this act by Stark because of the discrimation often faced by non-theists. Al Mohler discusses this article here. Near the end of his post, He states:

The more important question is the one raised by Fred Edwords. He claims that resistance to atheistic candidates is a form of wrongful discrimination. Is it? Not hardly. Most voters instinctively understand that the most basic truths they cherish — including morality, freedom, and human rights — are ultimately secured by God, or they are not secured at all.

First of all, to be discriminatory is not necessarily a fault. The Miriam-Webster online dictionary has the following definitions for discriminate:

1 a : to make a distinction b : to use good judgment

2 : to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit

Discrimination in the sense of definition #2 of that which we often here of in politics and public affairs. It is certainly wrong to hire or fire someone, for example on the basis of what one’s religious convictions are. However, it seems we would value voters who discriminate on the basis of definition #1 when it comes to casting their votes for those running for public office. A discriminating (or discerning) voter would take into account the views held by the candidates and decide which views he thinks are best for the country.

It certainly appears possible that one’s denial of a supreme being would affect one’s views on morality, freedom, rights, etc. This is the point of Mohler in the above quote in which he maintains that many understand the only grounding for many of the values which America most cherishes is to be found in God. One might rightly refuse to vote for a person who is an atheist, just as one might rightly refuse to cast a vote for a theist if she feels that their worldview fails to ground the values which are important to society. This is not discrimination in the second sense, but in the first, that is, showing good judgment.

Stark’s worldview is evident in his following statement from the article:

I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services.

Mr. Starks is unable to see that a belief that there is no God is still a religious belief and has consequences for ones views and values. It shows a lack of understanding to maintain that cultural views based on belief in God are religiously loaded views, yet a view based on the belief that there is no God is somehow religiously neutral. How is his view anymore broad than the other religious views which he calls narrow.