withallyourmind.net

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.