A Little About Textual Variations
20May. 09
About once a year my parent’s church elders like to come down and have a talk with me since I have ‘strayed from the faith’ which is absolutely welcomed by me. I love discourse and dialogue and find it an integral part of establishing truth. Along with that, they are really nice guys, I have spoken to a few different guys, and they have always been pleasant people. In fact many Christians are, in my experience, very accommodating people even when an atheist sits among the pews or isles with them. During our discussions I always like to begin with, and continue to reiterate throughout the discussion, how open minded I am to having what I believe to be true, changed on the proviso that there is evidence that warrants such a change. Often there is at least one apologist in the visit, and I use apologist in its most literal sense in the context i.e. a defender of the faith, which always makes for great, but respectful, conversation. I always take care to respect what they believe, as they do what I believe but there is a line, and it is by no means obscure or thin. A long while ago I heard the phrase uttered, ‘you’re entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts’ and I loved it, it just so happens to especially apply in our last discussion.
The question posed to me was ‘what would it take for you to come back to church meetings again?’ A short question but the explanation spanned over 2 hours. I spent much of the time showing how for the first 150 years, after the original Greek texts were penned, they were copied by non professional scribes who were probably not even entirely literate! In fact much of the texts were copied in communities by whoever was willing, able and had the time to spend on copying. It took until the fourthcentury before actual professional scribes were doing the copying and this explains why we find less variants, errors and changes in later texts relative to earlier texts. I have yet to hear a better explanation, backed with evidence, explaining why this is the case but I am open to it. In any case we do not have ANY of the originals, only copies of copies of copies etc, in some cases for the Hebrew Scriptures the only texts available to us have been copied for 1000 years, they’re not 1000 years old but are the result of 1000 years of copying! I then went on to show some of the changes made such as simple spelling mistakes, grammar errors otherwise known as accidental errors. Along with that there are plenty of occasions with ample evidence of intentional changes and these can not be denied. Scholars estimate of the 5,700 Greek manuscripts there are between 250,000 – 350,000 errors, variations and changes but this does not detract from the accuracy of the New Testament (NT). The elders kind of took this as me trying to detract from the Bible and didn’t really agree with the data and that is the point, their opinions are a not fact which is something they didn’t seem to acknowledge. I did explain, the fact that we have so many pieces of the NT means we have the available data to piece back together what the original most probable said (emphasis on probability). There is always going to be an intrinsic amount of uncertainty simply because we do not know what the actual originals said because we do not have them and that is all that can be done. The church elders were presented with the evidence and agreed with most of it; I think they struggled to see where this was going and so were happy to agree. So my answer to the earlier question was this, why is it that God would go to the effort of inspiring every single word in the Bible and not go to the same effort of preserving His inspired words?
Keeping in mind I spent almost 2 hours building this argument (when i should have been study for my chemistry exam), never have I seen the color drain from a persons face so quickly, once they realized what I had done. The apologetics then started. That is where the logical consistency ceases to exist because the answer boiled down to, ‘one must have faith’. But surely God knows there would be no dispute over what the words should be if we had the originals, and to preserve His words should be of little difficulty if he is truly omnipotent. This uncertainty is intrinsic, it is fundamental to the Greek and Hebrew scriptures and the fact is, changes were made. There is no escaping this and what i think is a very legitimate reason to remain skeptical.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Take it from one who was once as ‘young skeptic’ and is now a staunch anti-theist curmudgeon:
I’ll wager that your tacit measured respect and tolerance for these outrageous willful liars shall wane.
Possibly very quickly, the more you interact with the duplicitous bastards, should hold any value on ‘truth’.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:03 pm
The Greek texts that were translated back into Hebrew referred to a ‘young maiden’ giving birth, not a ‘virgin’. An entire and major tenet of the Christian church (especially Catholicism with its view of the perpetual virginity of May) based on a poorly translated phrase. Of course, the writers of the NT, being devote Jews, knew what the ‘prophesies’ from the Torah were, as did Jesus, so it was easy for them to ‘ride into Jerusalem on a donkey so that the scripture could be fulfilled.’
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:23 am
All good points Greek Goddess i would just add that many people were traveling into Jerusalem on the back of donkeys that day just as many people claimed to be the messiah at the time of Jesus.
As for the ‘young maiden’ or ‘virgin’ this scripture in Isaiah 7:14, as far as i am aware, should be translated ‘young maiden’ but is hardly translated this way simply because Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah but he quotes the mistranslated Hebrew! How embarrassing!
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:13 am
Firefly, that was interesting, thanks for that. Any books you can recommend that go into more of this?
My other suggestion to ‘In his service’ would be to read all accounts of the accounts leading up to Christs death. Go through each book and make some basic notes of what happens and what is said. Once you have done this put the notes in columns next to each other and see if they match up. I will give you a hint, you wont be quibbling about a few different words here and there.
Erhman argues that if you ignore all these contradictory events you ignore the real meanings and interpretations of older texts that the authors were trying to personalise. You miss their message. Remember that some of these authors knew very well they were making massive changes and they did it for a reason; whether it was political or to fit a prophecy. You miss the real history of this book (they werent considering your feelings about their actions 1000 years later). Example: John was written after the other gospels, after the death of the generation that Jesus claimed would see the end times. John experienced the same discomfort that many modern apocalyptic authors are going to feel once 2012 passes with no fanfare.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Anytime Dan, that’s some good advice btw, a horizontal presentation of the Gospels.
A book i love and use all the time is by one James. H. Charlesworth called The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s quite pricey but well wroth the $200 odd one might have to fork out. It is intricately in depth and even provides the actual Hebrew in question, great book no matter which way you cut it. It is very technical though so always do your research before you spend that much on a book. Another very popular book in the field of the DSS is Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. I also love The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, Eisenman is a leading scholar in the study of the DSS. There are also informative books such as The Dead Sea Scrolls — Oxford — A Very Short Introduction and The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls — C. D. Elledge.
These are all text book type arrangements i know, i don’t get time to read much else, and you already know about Dr. Ehrman. The only other thing i would suggest is anything by Bruce M. Metzger, hunt down his stuff because it’s fantastic Biblical criticism, just brilliant.
Hope this helps