Comments on: The Text of the New Testament: Are the Textual Traditions of Other Ancient Works Relevant?

By: David

David — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:23:13 +0000

This is a very common argument, especially made by evangelical scholars.

In actual fact there are around 1500 continuous text manuscripts of Homer’s Illiad. Reference is Martin. L. West, Studies In The Text And Transmission Of The Illiad, (Munich-Leipzig 2001), page 86.

There are hundreds more quotation etc…

In perspective, that is more evidence than any book of the New Testament excepting the gospels. Remember the New Testament is not a single book, but a collection of 27.

By: ntuser

ntuser — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:33:30 +0000

I think you’re right that Christianity is way more relevant than Homer to the lives of people today (especially in the West). But what difference would there be for the issues you mention if we had all the originals of the NT? Would it then be right for people to enforce a worldview or their beliefs on others? Would biblical inerrancy be more valid? Wouldn’t a person believing that they had the inerrant word of god be just as delusional with the original text from an historical point of view? Even if we had every words in these texts exact arguments would still be the same about the validity of these ancient texts, if they have any relevance to us today, can we have this or that supernatural belief, or their meaning in an ancient context. Christian fundamentalists would still be just as annoyed or challenged by historical-critical analysis concluding forgery, charlatanism, and that ancient writers just made things up. Isn’t how exactly we know the original text of the NT an issue of historical interest at this point just the same a Tacitus or Homer albeit with many more interested people looking on?

By: jimmo

jimmo — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:04:28 +0000

For me the biggest problem with arguments like Dr. Wallaces is that no one bases their worldview on Homer (or Shakespeare in the case of Randal Rauser’s argument). As I said on Randal’s site, no one goes around with “Macbeth 3:16″ painted on their face. If someone tried to pass laws based on what was in “Taming of the Shrew”, people would laugh at him. Shall we apply that same standard to the bible?

it simply doesn’t matter that either Homer and Shakespeare have been changed. Wars are not started over whether Hamlet actually said “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well”.

If Daniel Wallace, Randal Rauser or Matt Slick (on the carm.org site) want to argue over over a beer who said what in the NT, that’s OK and I will grant them the argument that we should treat the NT the same way we treat Shakespeare or Homer. However, if they want to impose laws or force behaviour based on any of them, then the standard we use *must* be much higher.

For me the best analogy is the difference between a civil and a criminal case, with the standard for the NT being like in a criminal case. I don’t see the NT as having even a preponderance of evidence to support inerrancy, devine inspiration, etc. The case for the NT most certainly has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

By: jimmo

jimmo — Mon, 07 May 2012 06:34:04 +0000

I do that for my own site and there are simply too many freetards out there that want everything on a silver platter and never donate no matter how good they think the site. In my case all of the donations go to a child I sponsor in Indonesia, but despite 50,000 unique visitors per month, I get less than $50 a year in donations. People are simply not going to donate.

I look at the articles you get with a membership like the “thank you” gift you get for donating to public TV. There is useful content for free and you get something extra if you make a donation. Then there is the added fact that all of the membership goes to charity and not to pay salaries, etc like it does with public television.

By: Christian Lindtner

Christian Lindtner — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:15:49 +0000

Dr Ehrman,

It struck me, when I considered the matter a bit further, that one and the same Buddhist sûtra has often been transmitted in two, three, four or more different recensions. When you juxtapose them, you are immediately reminded of the three different versions/recensions of basically the same story/gospel “according to” Matthew, Mark and Luke. So, as Buddhist scholars, we can certainly speak of synoptic gospels/sûtra-s. To begin with, the transmission was oral – the “living manuscripts”. It may be useful to keep this in mind when we consider the synoptic problem as NT scholars. Basically the same gospel, but according to different lines of transmission. -
You can take almost any Buddhist sûtra(m) – even in a modern translation – and you only have to read a few pages to see that any NT eu-aggelion belongs to the very same genre. The Buddhists often understood sûtram as su + uktam, well spoken (by the Lord)”. San. su- is Greek eu-, of course.
It all gets even more disturbing when I add that the names of our evangelists can also be traced back to Buddhist sources. Our MaRKoS, for instance, is KuMâRaS. This chap is said to have been kolobo-daktulos (Lat. colobo-dactylus). The – likewise – extremely rare Sanskrit compound (only attested in the instrumental case) is kutila+angulikayâ.
Why KuMâRaS had (a) crooked finger(s) is explained well in the Buddhist source – he used his finger(s) as a hook to pull a very heavy bowl. Why Mark had this problem with his finger(s) we can only guess – unless we know Sanskrit.

Regards from Denmark

Dr. Christian Lindtner

By: vinnyjh57

vinnyjh57 — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:56:10 +0000

I don’t think that anybody is getting rid of any verses. As far as I know no one is trying to claim that Galatians 1:19 isn’t found in the earliest extant manuscripts. They are simply recognizing that there is more than one possible explanation for why a particular word or passage might appear in the earliest extant manuscript: (1) it was originally in the autograph and was copied correctly, (2) it was added sometime during transmission, (3) it was originally in the autograph but was emended or altered during transmission.

Obviously the earliest extant manuscript is likely to provide us with our best evidence, but does that make it strong evidence, and if so, how strong? The period for which we lack manuscript evidence is one in which copying practices were poor, theological doctrines were unsettled, disputes among rival groups were frequent, and numerous documents were forged in the names of figures who were viewed as authoritative. Should we even have a presumption in favor of the text of the earliest extant manuscript also having been the text of the original, or should we be neutral on the question until we have some positive reason to think that a particular phrase of passage does go back to Paul? Might we not want multiple appearances of the same idea in the Pauline corpus, or consistency with general themes and concerns, or outside corroboration before we conclude that something goes back to Paul? Might not that also be a scholarly approach?

By: vinnyjh57

vinnyjh57 — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:48:53 +0000

I would add to the bad news the fact that Luke uses Mark, but he omits the reference to one of Jesus’ brother being named James. Given the dissatisfaction with previous accounts that Luke expresses in his prologue, I think we have to assume that when he changes something in Mark it’s because he thinks that Mark was in need of correction. One possibility is that Luke didn’t think that Jesus had a brother named James. Another possibility is that Luke was aware that there was some confusion about what had become of Jesus’ brothers and he didn’t want anyone to make the mistake of thinking that any of the men named James in his story were the same James that Mark named.

I would think that it is just as much poor scholarship to read something into Acts as it is to read something out of Galatians.

By: Christian Lindtner

Christian Lindtner — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:08:23 +0000

Dr Ehrman,
Thanks for your R & Q:
As a rule, we only have very few manuscripts of early Buddhist texts, i.e. if you take manuscripts stricto sensu meaning written by hand.
But we can also speak of “living manuscripts”, meaning Buddhist monks or missionaries who were able to memorize very long texts. We have early reports from China where Indian monks impressed the Chinese by their ability to go on reciting the sütras for days. This reflected a very ancient Indian tradition. They are decribed e.g. in the famous Lotus Sûtra, as Dharma-reciters (dharma-bhânaka). In such cases “better attested” is a concept not merely defined by “more manuscripts”.
Even in the case of the more than 5560 MSS of the NT, we do not want to say that “more manuscripts” always means “better attested”. Surely, a few “good” MSS are better than a huge amount of “bad” MSS. All classical scholars are aware of this fact when it comes to the transmission of our Greek and Latin authors. The first thing an editor must do is to collect all available MSS, then collate them, propose a stemma, and eliminate the secondary witnesses. Thus a huge amount can safely be reduced to a smaller amount. Quality counts more than quantity, here as elsewhere.
When we speak of interpolations, original texts etc., there is, I find, an aspect that has too often been ignored.
Modern studies of Buddhist gospels as well of the Greek NT (J. Smit Sibinga, M.J.J. Menken et al.) have firmly established that the (unknown) redactors of these gospels carefully counted the number of syllables and words.
An enormous amount of analytical work remains to be done in this new field of research. (The same goes for the OT, Greek as well as Hebrew.) It has been shown recently that Greek and Sanskrit gospels in some cases share similar numerical patters. They are, therefore, somehow historically related.
The numerical patterns are objective facts that must not be ignored.
This means that before we decide about interpolations, original texts etc., we must take the objective arguments provided by numerical analysis into account.
NT scholars – that is my main point here – can learn a lot by comparing their texts with the Buddhist gospels.

Regards
Dr. Christian Lindtner (Denmark)

By: Bart Ehrman

Bart Ehrman — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:07:28 +0000

Thanks for this. By “better attested” I meant “more manuscripts” — and yes, I should have clarified, I was referring to books in Western Civilization; I’m not familiar with the textual traditions of other traditions. Are there more than 5560 manuscirpts of the Sutras? (Genuine question! I have no idea)

By: Bart Ehrman

Bart Ehrman — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:00:24 +0000

OK, thanks for your thoughts. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the 1 Thessalonians passage is an interpolation either.