I’ve been trying to point out to my conservative Lutheran friend, that the 5560 Greek manuscripts we have of the NT are not the ‘originals’. What we do have are copies written 800 years after the NT authors wrote them. We do not have anything from the 1st or 2nd centuries and therefore there are both minor and significant differences from the earlier manuscripts that scholars think are more reliable to the oriiginal text. He claims the most important ones are the Vaticanus,Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus from 4th and 5th centuries.That seesm close enough for him.
We also debated rather vigorously that Ehrman’s contention, that in fact we don’t have the kinds of manuscripts we need to determine with certainty what the NT writers originally wrote. My friend says we can probably get close. Ehrman says that there are significant differences and my friend asks what are these differences? These early manuscripts differ quite a bit from one another but Ehrman doesn’t speciify how they differ,he just says they differ. Ehrman claims that the later manuscripts (from 9th cent onwards) were copied by monks that were quite literate and trained in the art of manuscript copying and that this was of a high standard. Ehrman then goes on to state that what these monks had in front of them,(the copies), were not in fact very good so despite being excellent scribes,the texts they reproduced differed in significant ways from the earlier ones. My friend wanted to know how Ehrman would know this? My friend claims that the standard historical criterion is to trust the earlier manuscripts, to go against that would generally be unhistorical procedure. I am not sure how to answer him.
Ehrman also claims the earliest texts we do have are closer to originals but again because they were copied by less than qualified scribes who weren’t as diligent in their copying techniques. Again my friend objects by asking where does Ehrman get the evidence to support this claim?The bottom line then is that our earliest manuscripts according to Ehrman are closer as far as textual characteristics to the “originals’, but because scribes made mistakes, (however minor or major )there are error filled and more so than the later medieval ones. My friend responds by saying this> DOES HE GIVEN EVIDENCE? HOW WOULD HE KNOW? IF HE BREAKS TRADITIONAL HISTORICAL PROCEDURE, HOW COULD HE JUSTIFY SOME OTHER CRITERON? AT LEAST WALLACE SEEMS TO FOLLOW TRADITIONAL HISTORICAL CRITERIA. EHRMAN DOES NOT SEEM TO DO SO. SO THE ONUS IS ON HIM TO COME UP WITH CRITERIA AND HISTORICAL EVIDENCE THAT THE OLDER MONKS WERE WORSE THAN THE LATER ONES, AND ALSO THAT THERE WERE ACTUALLY CORRUPTIONS THAT MADE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE. I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY SUCH EVIDENCE.EHRMAN WOULD AT THE VERY LEAST HAVE TO :
1. PROVIDE JUSTIFICATION FOR NOT STICKING TO TRADITIONAL CRITERIA OF DOING HISTORY.
2. PROVIDE MAJOR EVIDENCE THAT EARLIER MONKS WERE POOR COPIERS COMPARED TO LATER ONES.
3. PROVIDE EVIDENCE THAT ANY OF THE CHANGES ACTUALLY MATTER
Anyone care to respond to my lutheran friend’s objections that Bart isn’t following traditional historical methodology?
Welcome bigalster, I look forward to your input to the forum.
There are many posts on just this subject besides explanations in many of his books for a general audience. I am sure there are more specific explanations in his scholarly texts. Just read through the many archived posts listed on the Latest Posts page of the website.
bigalster said
Anyone care to respond to my lutheran friend’s objections that Bart isn’t following traditional historical methodology?
There are two things in life where people supporting counter positions will never convince their adversary (friendly or not) of anything: politics and religion. I think Stephen said this to you in the other thread. While I bait people on Facebook about both politics and religion I know that I’ll never convince anyone of my position and I’ll always look down on theirs. Perhaps you should just accept that neither of you is going to agree with the other. You could bring Jesus back to life, have him lay hands on your friend, do a Vulcan mind meld and he still wouldn’t believe you. That’s just the way it goes.
The single thing that brought Bart to the attention of the world, the thing he’s most famous for, is the one thing your friend will never accept his expertise or opinion on. This thing that brought him to prominence is a book he wrote in 1996 called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. In this book Bart discusses several (all?) of the most important textual corruptions of the New Testament. When the book came out it was an atom bomb in the domain of textual criticism and he’s been famous (at least in the scholarly NT world) ever since because of that back. The success of that research eventually snow balled into him being the prolific and popular writer that he is today.
If your friend wants to know about the most important variants and the proof then that’s the book you want. It’s a scholarly work, but in my opinion not too dense. Bart has blogged about a few of the topics in that book. There’s really no need to ask members of the blog to re-explain what is conveniently located in one book.
Your wants to complain that Bart doesn’t follow historical method, but your friends problem is that he doesn’t look at any of this critically (see the Reader Mailbag from last Friday). He wears rose colored glasses and his religion informs the answers to his own questions. As long as he can’t put his religion aside you’ll never convince him of anything.
If it were me I’d just keep telling him his religion informs his opinions and he’s incapable of forming critical hypotheses and therefore there’s no point in discussing anything. I’d do that every time he brings any of this up until you finally condition him to approach from a different angle.
#3
Video: Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace Debate Original New Testament Lost
In the debate (at 1:42) Dr. Ehrman is asked: What are the gospel manuscript inconsistencies that to you matter a lot. He gives an example that even Dan wholeheartedly agrees with.
The videos can be accessed by going to the home page where Dr. Ehrman is shown standing by his Jesus Before the Gospels.
I was just kidding, but the way the forums are setup you can only edit your post as long as it’s the last post in the thread. You posted while I was trying to edit mine which meant that my edits didn’t take effect. I sent Bart’s web guy an email asking if something could be done about that.
My brain tells me what to type faster than I can type so sometimes I leave words out and don’t notice until I’m reading what I posted. I was trying to add a couple words in that my fingers skipped.
This Lutheran friend ironically, was a philosopher/theologian.In fact, he taught me philosophy at the college level.I moved on to major in philosophy at university and he, to pastor a Lutheran church. We’ve stayed in touch for over 40 years. He has Masters and Systematic Theology degrees(two of them). What you say Greg is true. No matter how hard i try to get him to see the other side he sticks to his conservative guns claiming that one needs to adhere to what he labels the traditional historical method and he wants evidence to support this.I keep telling him Ehrman is a textual scholar and he does employ legitimate historical methodology,it’s just that he doesn’t agree with it,such as the literary-historical approach Bart mentions.
He does admit that there is really no such a thing as ‘proof’ in history, only evidence for and evidence against. He goes on to suggest that the manuscript evidence for the historicity of the Bible is immense, certainly regarding the resurrection, especially when compared to other ancient events.He believes on the basis of the evidence that the resurrection is historical fact.I have shown him that this is not an “historical fact” but a ultimately a matter of belief. He states that this cannot be ignored. He cites scholars like Montgomery among others who he thinks does a great job of presenting that evidence. In his mind the evidence for by far outweighs any philosophical prejudices that miracles can’t happen. I keep countering with what i think and some of Bart’s ideas. These include Hume’s argument against the possibility of miracles,the fact that there has been corruption of Scriptures, that just logically Bart’s whole argument that we are dealing with copies of copies relative to the NT texts and that there are significant errors and some not that major. I am not out to convert him in the least bit. We have agreed to disagree but i like trying to challenge his conservative ideas! I am simply trying to get him to open up his mind to skeptics like Bart and myself. I would like to get Bart’s book on the” Orthodox Corruption of Scripture”.Can it be ordered through this blog?
By the way thank you Judith and Greg,you’ve both been very helpful.
You can buy it from Amazon, here’s the link: ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Before you order though, I suggest you click on the book cover in the page I just linked. You can read parts of the book on Amazon. This way you can tell if it might be too scholarly or not.
To get a real taste of what’s in the book there’s a series of blog posts that Bart gave us on one of the variants he discusses in his book. I think the series of posts starts here: ** you do not have permission to see this link ** although he had been discussing the corruption of scripture for many blog posts prior to that. Starting at the link I just provided he goes on for about 5 successive posts discussing a very interesting textual variant from the Gospel of Luke.
No, not confused but wondering whether to wait until later to add that last suggestion (#3). If you were still there, I did not want a repeat of what had occurred earlier with your editing and my message getting in the way. When you did not reply after a few minutes, I went ahead and added.
Enough of this. I know! It’s not a chat page.
Greg Matthews said
I was just kidding, but the way the forums are setup you can only edit your post as long as it’s the last post in the thread. You posted while I was trying to edit mine which meant that my edits didn’t take effect. I sent Bart’s web guy an email asking if something could be done about that.My brain tells me what to type faster than I can type so sometimes I leave words out and don’t notice until I’m reading what I posted. I was trying to add a couple words in that my fingers skipped.
Why no preview prior to posting? I find that lack most frustrating… this forum’s software leave much to be desired….
maryhelena said
Greg Matthews said
I was just kidding, but the way the forums are setup you can only edit your post as long as it’s the last post in the thread. You posted while I was trying to edit mine which meant that my edits didn’t take effect. I sent Bart’s web guy an email asking if something could be done about that.My brain tells me what to type faster than I can type so sometimes I leave words out and don’t notice until I’m reading what I posted. I was trying to add a couple words in that my fingers skipped.
Why no preview prior to posting? I find that lack most frustrating… this forum’s software leave much to be desired….
I asked if we could at least get a 30 minute window to make changes. I’ve used other forums that give you a time limit. A preview would work as well although the window we type in is the preview since it looks exactly like it does when it posts (except for the font).
bigalster said
This Lutheran friend ironically, was a philosopher/theologian.In fact, he taught me philosophy at the college level.I moved on to major in philosophy at university and he, to pastor a Lutheran church. We’ve stayed in touch for over 40 years. He has Masters and Systematic Theology degrees(two of them). What you say Greg is true. No matter how hard i try to get him to see the other side he sticks to his conservative guns claiming that one needs to adhere to what he labels the traditional historical method and he wants evidence to support this.I keep telling him Ehrman is a textual scholar and he does employ legitimate historical methodology,it’s just that he doesn’t agree with it,such as the literary-historical approach Bart mentions.He does admit that there is really no such a thing as ‘proof’ in history, only evidence for and evidence against. He goes on to suggest that the manuscript evidence for the historicity of the Bible is immense, certainly regarding the resurrection, especially when compared to other ancient events.He believes on the basis of the evidence that the resurrection is historical fact.I have shown him that this is not an “historical fact” but a ultimately a matter of belief. He states that this cannot be ignored. He cites scholars like Montgomery among others who he thinks does a great job of presenting that evidence. In his mind the evidence for by far outweighs any philosophical prejudices that miracles can’t happen. I keep countering with what i think and some of Bart’s ideas. These include Hume’s argument against the possibility of miracles,the fact that there has been corruption of Scriptures, that just logically Bart’s whole argument that we are dealing with copies of copies relative to the NT texts and that there are significant errors and some not that major. I am not out to convert him in the least bit. We have agreed to disagree but i like trying to challenge his conservative ideas! I am simply trying to get him to open up his mind to skeptics like Bart and myself. I would like to get Bart’s book on the” Orthodox Corruption of Scripture”.Can it be ordered through this blog?
By the way thank you Judith and Greg,you’ve both been very helpful.
I had been reading Sanders, Vermes and others on and off over the years but the book that really got me back into the subject was Bart’s: ‘Misquoting Jesus.’ I never thought that textual criticism could be made so interesting. Hume is pretty well irrefutable on miracles – unless one wishes to believe that up is down and black, white etc.
Re-convincing the religious, my Lutheran (ex) friend, to whom I sent about 60 questions concerning Christianity in general and the Bible in particular, at his request, hasn’t been in touch since and that was about 10 years ago. One can lose friends by being a little too rational and challenging.
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