Changes to Scripture?

[nathaniel]

Originally posted 12/14/05:

There was a program today on the radio that spoke directly to this issue. It was a talk show, and the guest was a college professor and New Testament scholar. He talked how, throughout history, scribes have changed scripture; sometimes intentionally and sometimes by mistake. one example he gave was the story of the woman caught in adultery, when Jesus says the classic, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." he said that this story isn't found in the earliest manuscripts, and isn't seen until the 12th century where it was added by a scribe. he also talked about how, many times scribes would change passages to make them easier to understand. One example he gave of this involved the story of Jesus and the leper. apparantly there was some controversy over what Jesus's reaction was to the leper when he asked to be healed. Did "Jesus become angry" or did "Jesus have compassion on the man." At some point, a scribe thought the easiest way to understand this passage was with Jesus having a compassion on him, while the earliest manuscripts seem to say otherwise. So, the scribe took the liberty to change it, and that's the form we have today. anyways...it was a very skeptical look at the New Testament in general, and very challenging to what "inspired scripture" means, and if scripture is even "inspired" at all.

The program was "Fresh Air" on NPR (91.5 fm). i think it airs again tonight at 7 p.m.. i think it would be interesting to listen to before we get into this topic, and i'm curious to what other people's reactions to the show are.

[Josh]

Originally posted on 12/14/05:

Darn, I missed it.

Well, I would just say for now that most Christian theologians, no matter how they define Inspiration, (from anywhere along the scale from total inerrency, limited inerrency, or inerrency of purpose) have always insisted that the Scriptures are really only 100% inspired in their original artifacts. A translation is only so good as it compares to the earliest documents. Since we don't have the original documents, we compare what we have to the oldest documents, which we have thousands of dating from quite early. In fact, the entire New Testament could be reconstructed just from the writings of the early Church Fathers (they quoted the books of the NT alot!).

So, we can certainly admit that there have at times been minor changes and additions. The textual variants are exremely minor and the possible 'additions' amount to about 3 or 4 small sections in the NT.

However, in modern times, we have access to older manuscripts than any previous generation of Christians since the beginning of the middle ages, so we can and are able to undo those slight changes by checking our modern versions with the ancient ones. What we've found is a remarkable LACK of change over the centuries, but even those small ones can now be analyzed afresh. If 75 out of 80 ancient documents from the 3rd Century have a certain passage rendered one way, then our text will usually reflect the majority opinion, noting the minority text in the margin.

In regard to the specifics you sited, the "he who is without sin passage" doesn't appear until the 6th century, not the 12th. Still, it certainly wasn't originally in the Gospel of John, and all modern Bibles note that.

In regard to the leper, it would be good to have the reference. I think it must be the one in Mark 1:41, but I'm not really understanding how "Jesus became angry" would fit. If I can get the reference, I'll look into my Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture to see what the early Church Fathers said about it.

All this being said, I think the very fact that Scripture has at times been changed subtly should be put into the mix when we're trying to decide our what we think Inspiration truly is and isn't.

I think you know, Nate, that I think Christians have often made elaborate definitions of Inspiration going way past the actual claims that Scripture makes about itself. That's all we'll say for now, I don't want to spoil the discussion too much. Hope this helps for now, and if you have any more details, forward them.

[Josh]

Originally posted 6/27/06

Hey Nate,

The guy from Fresh Air was Bart Ehrman, talking about his book Misquoting Jesus. I've perused it at the store and was pretty unimpressed. It has all the air of some major 'bombshell' to Christianity and really only ends up focusing on non-issues or trivial issues.

Here are two articles from Christianity Today that are quite informative, one about Bart Ehrman himself, and the next about Ehrman's books (as well as the Da Vinci code):

The Lapsed Evangelical Critic

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/june/11.26.html

Jesus Out of Focus

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/june/10.24.html

[Douglas]

Having studied Greek i had to deal with this question of scribal changes in great depth. On of the first tasks in biblical translation is to find where there have been any major changes in the passage to be translated. This really changed my views on inerrancy. To say that they are inerrant in the originals almost make me laugh because the problem is not the originals it is the copies.

The last twenty years though have seem some real breakthroughs in thought and research about scribal practices. The original thought was that scribes added to the stories to make them more full. And work to unify a collection of contradictory stories. Thus the stories that we read are more like reading Homer or some other mythology.

However, we have been blessed to have documents from many different locations and with the use of computers it has become possible to track small changes over vast numbers of documents. What has been found up to this point is that most of our earliest documents which come from Alexandria in Egypt were done by professional scribes. The main characteristic that researchers are finding is that professional scribes rather than add to document subtract from them. This was most likely done for the very practical reason that the scribe was paid for the completed project and had little or no personal interest in the subject being translated. Also very importantly as well they had no interest in maintaining the unity with the stories.

Archaeologists have located several waste dumps around major scribal areas where researchers have found work done by scribes in training. From these they have been able to see much more clearly how the scribes worked. Up until now it has been a total mystery. Most of what was considered fact was actual educated guesses at habits of professional scribes. Most of the theory of 75 years ago has been shown to be totally false in its conclusions.

The other main location that documents have been found is around the area of Antioch in Asia Minor. Most of these document show sign of having been done by private individuals within the church. Early Christians tended to add to the stories and work to eliminate disunity.

These two cities represent the two main streams of documents. Since they were geographically isolated they can be compared and contrasted to help find where the differences entered in. Work is being done now to enter all the known documents in to digital form to be analyzed. Once this is done it will be possible to put together a full document history hopefully back as to the original or at least very close. This is possible because of the vast amount of documents: 20,000 plus including lectionaries, church sermons in which the preacher copied down the passage to be read because his audience did not have their own bibles.

It is surprising to be that this author Bart Erhman would think of this as an issue for Christianity. Fifty years ago maybe. But the church has been the pioneers in scribal theory and document stream research. The problem is not new but it is now a non issue and in the future will be all but total resolved.

Douglas

[Josh]

That's interesting about the locations where most of the documents are found, I'd always kind of wondered about where exactly these documents came from.

[yeshuafreak]

ehrmans makes good points. in fact, most of the evidence he presents i woud not contradict. the conclusion he arrives at i do not agree to hoever. like someone said, it claims to focus on central issues in christianity being the founded upon false verses of the bible.

really, most of the changes if not all are realy trivial issues. the worst issue brought up is the woman scaught in adultry, which i KNOW iwas added to the bible. as for the leper, Mark often describes Jesus being angry. would it be wrong? the original text stills ays he healed the man! he was probably angry becausse the man had no right to approach him by law. now, Jesus was not mad at this, but at the fact that the man would have seen it as wrong and therre fore, to him, it is a sin. (james2:14?; Romans 14, 15 or 16- cant remember, but at the end of one of these chapters when talking about vegetarianism.)


shalom - john