Loading...I’ve been providing a thread on the issue of why it’s so hard to know if we have an “original” text of any of the writings of the New Testament, both because some of the books are cut-and-pasted versions of earlier texts and because we don’t have any of the originals of the texts but only later copies with lots of differences among them.
I’ll end the thread with three posts that asking why it might matter to anyone if we don’t know the exact words of the New Testament. Here’s a succinct question I received on the matter a good while ago.
QUESTION:
How significant are these variants? I know they vary but is there anything fundamental to Christendom that would be fundamentally flawed like the virgin birth or the resurrection that does not take place in these variants that are of material value?
RESPONSE:
It’s a really good question. I don’t know if this reader is a conservative Christian or has read what my conservative evangelical critics have said about this – as they make it one of their main points. But let me respond at some length — to them, rather than to him.
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A splendid essay, Dr. E.
Do you think luke is trying to fix the failed prophecy when he says the kingdom of god is in the mist of you?
I’mnot sure he’s trying to fix something, but he is giving a different interpretation that strikes him as more plausible, that the kingdom is already present in the life of Jesus.
If, as the fundamentalists claim, the Bible is an inerrant and infallible revelation, then why would there be variants at all? What good does it do to inspire the autographs if you’re not going to protect the chain of transmission?
The explanation I generally hear is that even though there are variants we can be confident that a copy of the the autographic text is in there somewhere. But whence comes this confidence? If the chain of transmission is not protected from variants then why assume that the autographic text has not been lost and all we have are the variants?
My view is that it comes from wishful thinking.
I think though that critical to Christian belief is whether the resurrection occurred.If it didn’t then it is another myth-but if it did then establishing those variants that support this contention is only thing that matters.
Would you agree? Where are those variants that focus on the resurrection narrative? Shouldn’t we be examing them for consistency rather than worrying about the 400,000 or 500,000 variants that are inconsequential? Aren’t our souls and salvation at stake if the resurrection is true?
“And aren’t the books of the Bible themselves important? Doesn’t what each author has to say – even if it is not about a “fundamental doctrine” — important?”
Or turn this around: suppose some monastery in Palestine stumbled across a fifth gospel, a non-synoptic gospel like John, for which the evidence that it was written in the mid-first century was at least as strong as that for the four canonical gospels. What would this be worth at auction? How would scholars rank this compared to other finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Nag Hammadi library?
I’m familiar with the clever techniques that scholars use to determine which of two (or more) manuscript variants is likelier to be historical. But what about when you had two variants in, say, the second century, but then one variant was entirely lost. When reading the other variant—that is, the one that was preserved in our manuscripts—you wouldn’t even know that there was a lost variant. *Any* verse in the Bible could be one of these sibling survivors, and you wouldn’t know it.
Of course, any one of these survivors is unlikely to be significant. Still, I never hear anyone acknowledge this problem or speculate about how many of these there may be.
I have always seriously wondered about what we don’t have. To me most importantly, and albeit theoretical, whatever extinct part of Q Mathew and Luke chose not to use. If to some degree historical perhaps there is an off color quote that would make Jesus more human. Like … Yon Cephas truly is first of my disciples; but, he reeks of old fish…
“Yon Cephas truly is first of my disciples …”
You forgot the “Verily.”
Sorry for an off-topic question but I am really curious about this. Joan Taylor argues that Jesus was arrested inside a cave and, it seems, she makes a really good case for it (link provided for those who are interested). It makes sense to me that Jesus and his followers would be sleeping in a place that is warm instead of sleeping in a garden out in the cold. It also makes sense to me that if Jesus was in a garden, then he and his companions could easily have fled when they saw the mob coming to seize them. But if Jesus was in a cave, then there is no way he could have escaped. Dr. Ehrman, what do you think of Joan’s hypothesis that Jesus was arrested in a cave?
https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/the-garden-of-gethsemane-not-the-place-of-jesus-arrest/
Interesting. Well, none of the acoucnts mentions a cave, and of course jesus was not at all sleeping! I don’t see what makes it likely that Jesus and his followers could easily have fled. We just don’t know enough about the circumstances at the time from the Gsopels accounts, and they are all we have. So I don’t see any evidence for the view. But I haven’t read the article.
She provides some seemingly real good evidence in the article. It’s only a six-page article so if you can spare a few minutes to read it then I’d really like to know your thoughts on it. Anyway, best to you as always.
This line of reasoning always seems to overlook the obvious point that the books of the NT were selected based on conformance to orthodoxy. The doctrines came first and then the books were selected based on alignment. If that is the case, why would expect variations to impact doctrine?
Because not everyone had the same doctrines even after the books were “selected,” and the selection was made less on the basis of individula words and sentences than on overall perspective, even if some passages could be used for alternative views.
Hi, Bart,
What are some sources outside the Gospels that indicate that Jesus – in his culture – and his contemporaries were apocalypticists? Can we determine a period of time from which this cultural current began?
We don’t have sources outside the Gospels that describe Jesus’ teachings at any length. But large numbers of Jews were apocalypticists at hte time. I give the full discussion in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of hte New Millennium (I explain the cultural / historical background and the evidence for Jesus’ views)
You might have misspoken: we do have sources outside the Gospels that describe Jesus’s teachings at length. One of them is the Gospel of Thomas–I read your translation in Lost Scriptures! I assume that you really meant to say that we don’t have any RELIABLE sources for Jesus’s teachings outside the gospels?
No, I meant outside the Gospels — but I didn’t mean only canonical Gospels. I have aa collection of all the early ones in Greek, Latin, and Coptic that I and m ycolleague Zlatko Plese translated in our book The Other Gospels
“Suppose tomorrow morning we were all to wake up only to find that the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Mark, Philemon, 2 Peter, and 3 John were no longer in the Bible.”
Interesting point Bart; but maybe worth noting that during the 19th century fourteen books *did* disappear from most printed bibles of the King James Version (all fourteen are in my family bible of 1713); and apparently many (perhaps most) conservative evangelicals cheerfully maintain this as not *important* at all?
Alternatively, might it be worth considering which specific ‘problematic’ Gospel variants *are* important? Wieland Willker has proposed this list as the ‘top five’: http://www.willker.de/wie/TCG/TOP-Variants.pdf
Mt 27:16 Jesus Barabbas – the bandit released in Jesus’s place also being named *Jesus*
Mt 27:49 Jesus on the cross being pierced by the spear *before* dying
Lk 9:55-56 “You know not what manner of spirit you are of.” – whether Jesus’s rebuke to James and John is recorded; and if so, what it was.
Lk 22:43-44 “Then an angel from heaven appeared ….” – Jesus’s bloody sweat in Gethsemane.
Lk 23:34 “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” – Jesus proclaiming forgiveness from the cross *before* dying.
Yes, but none of them affects what conservative Christian textual scholars identify as the “cardinal doctrines.” As you know, I’ve dealt with these and many mre, expeically in my book Orthodox Corruptoin of Scripture.
“none of them affects what conservative Christian textual scholars identify as the ‘cardinal doctrines.'”
Is scriptural inerrancy a ‘cardinal doctrine’ amongst conservative scholars?
The longer variant at Matthew 27:49 reads:
“And someone else, taking a spear, pierced his side and there came out water and blood”.
Then Jesus cries out and dies.
Supposing this stood in Matthew’s ‘original text’, then this account must have been in circulation *before* the composition of the Gospel of John.
But at John 19:34 it is stated that Jesus was “already dead”, when;
“Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.”
Moreover, at John 19:35 the author appears to be appealing to an eyewitness confirming that piercing with a spear indeed happened after, not before, Jesus death.
Which would be consistent with the author of John’s gospel being familiar with the tradition represented by the longer variant in Matthew; but asserting it to be false.
So, assuming the Matthew variant *is* the original, its omission might well be an ‘orthodox corruption of scripture’.
But nevertheless a tricky problem for a conservative scholar. Do you know of any such who defend this variant?
Yes, I discuss it in Orthodox Corruption. Off hand I don’t remember if anyone defends it as being original to Matthew. I certainly don’t know of any textual experts who do.
Bart,
You are chasing a rainbow when you pretend there could be some “exact words of the New testament” and we don’t have them.) We do know the exact words of whatever version of the NT we happen to be reading are, and we also know what the different words in many sentences of a different version (translation) are.
The point is: specific beliefs can be expressed in a variety of ways, and since there are strong reasons to believe (as you have taught us via your books, courses, and blog postings) that the “original authors” didn’t have reliable sources of information, thinking people know that what these authors is irrelevant. What matters is the underlying NT message: there is a higher power at work in the world and — as Jesus taught — our task is to help those in need. If fundamentalists chose to believe that the Bible they read is infallible, and chose to disregard the evidence that you, other “Bible scholars,” and those who publish research showing that NDEs and reincarnation are demonstrated real occurrences witnessed by thousands of people, that is their problem. God is still speaking.
Bill Steigelmann
Dr. Ehrman, question that might require complete speculation on your part.
Its regarding the notion of the Trinity, and its import within Christianity all these years.
I understand when you say no doctrine lives or dies on one verse (my wording, not yours). As a former fundamentalist, I get what you’re saying. But I wonder about the doctrine of the Trinity had the Johannine Comma never been added.
One day there was a scribe who felt the need to codify the belief. So the belief was already there in some manner. I suppose.
But had it never been added, do you think the import of the Trinity would have turned out the same, meaning as it has played out to our day?
The doctrine was around for a very long time before the Johannine Comma existed, so I don’tthink we can say it (the doctrine) is based on it (the passage). The Trinity has been deeply ensconced in Xn thinking even smong those who don’t even know about the comma.