Here’s a question I get on occasion, about where the Bible’s chapters and verses came from (did the original authors write that way???).   I’ve drawn my answer from my textbook on the NT, and since the answer is so brief, I’ll attach another couple of paragraphs drawn from a nearby page in the book, dealing with another somewhat related and even more important (for many people) problem: when did scholars start to think that the differences in our manuscripts were a VERY big deal?     QUESTION: About the numbers of the verses, who put them?  Who divided the text in verses and chapters, and when?   RESPONSE: Here is my answer taken from The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings:   Given the fact that ancient manuscripts did not use punctuation, paragraph divisions, or even spaces to separate words, it will come as no surprise to learn that the chapter and verse divisions found in modern translations of the New Testament are not original (as if Paul, when writing Romans, [...]

I am making this post free to everyone, so that, if you're not a member of the blog, you can see what you're missing.  Every week I make five posts on everything connected to the New Testament and  Christianity of the first four centuries.  Members can read it all, for a small fee.  Every penny of the fee goes to support worthy charities. So why not join? QUESTION: Recently you mentioned that your early work involved analysing patristic citations of the New Testament. I believe it has been said that virtually all of the NT could be recreated from such mentions if the need ever arose. Do you believe that this would, indeed, be possible, please?   RESPONSE: This is a very interesting question.  I may need to unpack what it means before giving an answer. As most of you know, we do not have the original text of any of the books of the New Testament, only copies made many years (centuries) later.   We have over 5600 copies in the Greek language in which [...]

I often get asked questions about the Qur’an, and I almost always do not answer them, most because I can’t answer them.   I’m not an expert on the Qur’an, and tend to talk only about things I have done serious and sustained research on.  Otherwise I’m just spreading stuff I’ve heard, and I’m no more authoritative on that than anyone else.  So what’s the point of my talking about it? But one question that I get frequently, especially from Muslim readers, is about the manuscript tradition of the Qur’an in relation to the New Testament.  Even though I’m not an expert on the manuscript tradition of the Qur’an (oh boy am I not an expert), I know enough to answer with some authority this particular question. The question is whether it simply isn’t true that the Qur’an is more reliable than the New Testament.   What the questioner almost always means by that is that the ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an tend to be amazingly similar to one another.  Virtually identical up and down the line.   [...]

In response to the recent flurry of posts on the question of a “first-century Mark,” I have received a very interesting question: suppose there *were* a first-century Mark that was discovered (hey, it’s possible!  And we’re holding our breaths – what an amazing find it would be)..  Would there be a way of showing it was the actual original Mark, the one the author himself wrote with his own hand? I was asked this question on the blog seven years ago, and responded to it by saying I had never thought about it before. (!)   Below is the original question and my initial reflections.  My views haven’t matured much during the past seven years (and they ain't the only thing), so I give my initial response.  If someone can improve on it, let me know. First here is this week’s way of asking the question:   QUESTION: Suppose someone did claim to have found the original….    I get that you can show something isn’t original, such as by dating it to two hundred years later. [...]