Bear with me, this is long, but I guarantee you will understand my argument.
Imagine you are living in 100CE. You write a document–say it’s just a page long. You make 3 identical copies. You go to someone in Jerusalem and give him one copy. You say ‘This document is sacred. I want as many people as possible to have access to this information. You may make copies of it. You may give it to others, and they may make copies of it, and so on. Please do your best to make sure to copy it accurately.’
You then go to Corinth, and repeat the same process. And then to Rome. There are now 3 identical copies –one in Jerusalem, one in Corinth, and one in Rome. At the top of the document, you write ‘this is 1 of 3 identical, original documents, 1 given to one person each in Jerusalem, Corinth and Rome’…so that centuries later, people will know how many original documents were made, and that they were given to different cities.
It is now 1000CE. The original copies no longer exist. We have no idea of the content that was in the original document. All that exists are copies of copies of copies… We want to find out whether the copyists did a faithful job. We would go to those 3 cities (obviously there would be copies in other cities as well.) We would collect all the documents we could find, and compare to see if there are significant differences. If there is very little variation, the copyists did an amazing job. Remember, we were told that there were 3 identical copies made, and given to 1 individual in each of 3 different cities.
Now, in this example, the 3 original documents parallel the synoptic gospels Matthew Mark and Luke. In the year 100, one would be lucky if to have access to one gospel, let alone all 3. This means that the gospels were copied independently of one another. Just like in our example.
Are the synoptic gospels identical, or were they ever? Of course not. But, they have several common passages that are nearly identical. And there isn’t a great deal of variation in those passages. Compare the story of the rich young ruler, in Mk 10:17ff, Mt 19:16ff and Lk 18:18ff…the authors seem to have changed the story somewhat, but so many of the details are intact in each one. We cannot know what this story looked like when it was first written, or when Jesus (or someone else) first told it…but we have this story copied independently in 3 different gospels, hundreds of miles from one another, over a period for centuries. And they come out very similar.
If the gospels had been copied poorly, we would expect bigger variations in 1000CE, when we collect the copies. The rich young ruler might be a Pharisee in one version. In one version, Jesus might tell him he needs to believe in him (Jesus) to receive eternal life, not follow the law or give away his riches. In one version, the young ruler may have actually decided to follow Jesus. Instead, what we have are minor, insignificant variations (one passage has Jesus tell him ‘you lack this’, while the other one has the young ruler ask ‘what do I lack?’)
The biggest problem with this argument, I think, is that I may be cherry picking the content of these gospels. There are other parallel passages that vary more widely–for example, Matthew’s and Luke’s beatitudes show much more variation than the rich young ruler story. Maybe the original versions of Matthew and Luke were much more similar than what we have today–and one or both got changed over the centuries.
It also doesn’t imply that the rest of the NT was translated accurately. Maybe the gospels were treated with much more respect and were copied more carefully than Paul’s letters for example. But if the parallel accounts were copied accurately, I think an argument could be made that the rest of the gospel stories were copied accurately.
mjt said
Bear with me, this is long, but I guarantee you will understand my argument.Imagine you are living in 100CE. You write a document–say it’s just a page long. You make 3 identical copies. You go to someone in Jerusalem and give him one copy. You say ‘This document is sacred. I want as many people as possible to have access to this information. You may make copies of it. You may give it to others, and they may make copies of it, and so on. Please do your best to make sure to copy it accurately.’
You then go to Corinth, and repeat the same process. And then to Rome. There are now 3 identical copies –one in Jerusalem, one in Corinth, and one in Rome. At the top of the document, you write ‘this is 1 of 3 identical, original documents, 1 given to one person each in Jerusalem, Corinth and Rome’…so that centuries later, people will know how many original documents were made, and that they were given to different cities.
It is now 1000CE. The original copies no longer exist. We have no idea of the content that was in the original document. All that exists are copies of copies of copies… We want to find out whether the copyists did a faithful job. We would go to those 3 cities (obviously there would be copies in other cities as well.) We would collect all the documents we could find, and compare to see if there are significant differences. If there is very little variation, the copyists did an amazing job. Remember, we were told that there were 3 identical copies made, and given to 1 individual in each of 3 different cities.
Now, in this example, the 3 original documents parallel the synoptic gospels Matthew Mark and Luke. In the year 100, one would be lucky if to have access to one gospel, let alone all 3. This means that the gospels were copied independently of one another. Just like in our example.
Are the synoptic gospels identical, or were they ever? Of course not. But, they have several common passages that are nearly identical. And there isn’t a great deal of variation in those passages. Compare the story of the rich young ruler, in Mk 10:17ff, Mt 19:16ff and Lk 18:18ff…the authors seem to have changed the story somewhat, but so many of the details are intact in each one. We cannot know what this story looked like when it was first written, or when Jesus (or someone else) first told it…but we have this story copied independently in 3 different gospels, hundreds of miles from one another, over a period for centuries. And they come out very similar.
If the gospels had been copied poorly, we would expect bigger variations in 1000CE, when we collect the copies. The rich young ruler might be a Pharisee in one version. In one version, Jesus might tell him he needs to believe in him (Jesus) to receive eternal life, not follow the law or give away his riches. In one version, the young ruler may have actually decided to follow Jesus. Instead, what we have are minor, insignificant variations (one passage has Jesus tell him ‘you lack this’, while the other one has the young ruler ask ‘what do I lack?’)
The biggest problem with this argument, I think, is that I may be cherry picking the content of these gospels. There are other parallel passages that vary more widely–for example, Matthew’s and Luke’s beatitudes show much more variation than the rich young ruler story. Maybe the original versions of Matthew and Luke were much more similar than what we have today–and one or both got changed over the centuries.
It also doesn’t imply that the rest of the NT was translated accurately. Maybe the gospels were treated with much more respect and were copied more carefully than Paul’s letters for example. But if the parallel accounts were copied accurately, I think an argument could be made that the rest of the gospel stories were copied accurately.
You need to consider some few objections.
Both Luke and Matthew, independently, used Mark and a lost source(Q), and created their own mix of them, like shuffling two decks of cards once, in one move. That’s why they look similar in content, but also very different, contextually.
I think the text of the NT is stable to about 62 percent, that is, these portions of the texts are identical in all extant copies.
All extant manuscripts may , just like personal genealogies, derive from one single and poor early copy-lineage. Imagine that one autograph was copied ten times. In this case all we have today may be descendants of the worst item of the first series of copies.
The authors may have made second editions.
The accuracy of the copies aren’t the only problem. Let’s say I make up a story and tell it to someone who tells it to someone word for word, line by line, verse by verse, who tells it to someone word by word, line by line, verse by verse, who tells it to someone . . . who then writes it down and then it is copied word by word, line by line, verse by verse accurately for 1000 years. Is my story true simply because it was accurately copied word by word, line by line, verse by verse? No, of course not. It’s still made up. So how do we determine that the story is made up? If it records an historical event, we might look for contemporaneous recordings not intended to make or disprove a point. That Jesus was such a non-event that no one bothered to record anything about him in Jerusalem, as literate a city as could be found in Palestine, contemporaneous with these events is astounding. That he might have appeared before people after his death and that other “saints” rose from the dead with his resurrection surely would have been recorded by someone – even the Jews. Then add the late arrival of the New Testament writings appearing for the first time in the early third century and the stories become more problematic. What’s the cure for unreliable sources? Add a healthy dose of hell and damnation for doubting the doubtful and a religion can make believers of the fearful.
I have a friend who i have deabated for 45 years.A conservative by nature.Also a follower or Hurtado advocate. I have tried going over the notion that because we don’t have original manuscripts and i mean the very first one,whoever wrote it down,we are stuck
with a copy.Bart explains this on his blog in many places and in his books. Unfortunately my friend doesn’t buy into the idea of when we have someone copying there is no way of ensuring accuracy.It is guesswork that the scribes were faithful to the original text.Maybe the first scribe,but then when that was copied and distributed and other copies were presumably made,things get lost in transmission, texts get destroyed,misplaced,ink is spilled on them etc… and when you multiply this effcet many times as scribes of different generations would have continued the copying process, we have no historical assurance that what we have now is totally accurate to that first and original text.The first one that was transcribed and from whcih the copying process continued.
Now my friend says this idea is some fanciful imaginative idea i have made up and completrly unhistorical(as if he knows that in fact the textual accuracy was maintained). So that is background and here below was his response to my my never-ending criticism of the notion that when we have folks copying things or passing down oral traditions, things,stories,bylines, get lost,rearranged etc…and the physical copies of those original manuscripts along with any copies made over the millenia also get changed, to a lesser or greater degree. Here is his response(quotes) to me and it includes what Larry Huratdo has to say about this topic.
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Hi all,
I believe the underlying problem with the transmission of the Gospels is that the primary sources in this case are written sources which are copies from copies from copies and which we do not who the real authors were.
Another point needs to pointed out is that we are discussing here is the transmission of the new testament (no the inspiration).
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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