God Keeps His Word

The Old Testament

The Bible was largely unquestioned in its authenticity until the mid-1800’s. By then, the rise of humanistic philosophies like Humanism, Rationalism, Skepticism and Empiricism had en-trenched themselves in academia. It is an inevitability that humanistic philosophies will clash against a God-centered book. Liberal scholarship began its assault on the Bible by focusing on the Old Testament. At the time, the oldest known copies of the Old Testament were in Greek. The Codex Vaticanus -

and the Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Vaticanus

Codex Sinaiticus

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were the oldest know copies of the Old Testament, dating to the 300’s A.D., but as stated, they were in Greek. The oldest known Hebrew Old Testaments were examples of the Masoretic Texts such as the Leningrad Codex

Cover page of the Leningrad Codex

and the Aleppo Codex.

The Aleppo Codex

The issue with these books was that they came from around the end of the 1st millennia- 900-1000 A.D. The argument was that with copies so much later than the time of Jesus, how could we really know what the Old Testament said during His time on the Earth? All of that changed in 1947.

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In the early part of 1947, two young shepherds in the Qumran Valley near the Dead Sea threw a rock into some caves they had discovered.

The Qumran Valley

Qumran Caves (View 1) Qumran Caves (View 2)

The story goes that they heard something break, like pottery. Later, while exploring the caves they discovered what we now call the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls.’ The Scrolls are writings hidden by a group of Jews from around the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, about 70 A.D. Some of the scrolls were found out in the open.

Dead Sea Scrolls

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While others, the best preserved scrolls, were found in jars.

A Dead Sea Scroll Jar

‘Scrolls’ is a little bit of a misnomer. We tend to think of them as whole pieces. The majority of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ were fragments, some just bits and pieces. There were some intact scrolls.

Found in the Scrolls was what is now called “The Great Isaiah Scroll.”

The Great Isaiah Scroll

DSS Fragment DSS Fragments

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The Great Isaiah Scroll is a nearly intact scroll of the Biblical book of Isaiah. It is about 28 feet in length. The most important thing is that The Great Isaiah scroll is about 1100 years older than the two oldest previously know Hebrew Bibles, Leningrad and Aleppo. It dates to about 100 B.C. Virtually overnight, the oldest know texts of the Hebrew Old Testament went back a 1000 years and they were virtually identical to the previously held copies. Suddenly, all the liberal scholars’ ideas went crumbling down. The Dead Sea Scrolls contained portions of every Old Testament book except Esther. The oldest known Hebrew Biblical writings are the Ketef Hinnom scrolls.

The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls or Amulets

The ‘scrolls’ are more like what we would call amulets. They were made of silver and rolled up, usually worn around the neck. The Jews were commanded by God to keep His word around them constantly, even wearing it around their heads and hands. These scrolls are examples of that. The writing on the scrolls comes from the book of Numbers. It is the popular refrain “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause His face to shine on you” etc. They date to somewhere in the 600-500 B.C. range with the most opin-ions going to the earlier range. They were discovered in 1979 and it took 3 YEARS to unroll them. The largest is about an inch wide and 3 inches long. Talk about tedious!

While the evidence for the preservation of the Bible by the nation of Israel is evident, a popular notion is that ‘the winners write the history.’ While definitely true in some sense, the opposing corollary must be equally true. If an enemy of Israel writes the same thing in their history books that the Jews recorded in the Old Testament, how much more should we trust it. We find exactly that with many archaeological finds. We will look first at the Moabite Stone.

The Moabite Stone Ancient Israel and its Neighbors

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Moab was east across the Dead Sea from Judah and Jerusalem. During the time of David and Solomon, it was a vassal state of Israel. The Moabite Stone is from around 850 B.C. Contained in the writings upon it are the phrase ‘the House of David’ and the name of the God of the Bible ‘Yahweh’ (‘Jehovah’ to us). The Moabite stone is thought to be the earliest known reference of the name of God. The stone confirms things recorded in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 3. The stone also mentions the name of the Moabite god ‘Chemosh’ which is recorded in 1 Kings 11 and Numbers 21. It was discovered in 1868. Another non-Biblical source from Israel’s enemies that uses Biblical language is the Tel Dan Stele. It is Aramaen (Syrian) in origin, probably from Damascus.

The Tel Dan Stele Ancient Israel and its Neighbors

Aram was a nation that was northeast of Israel. The Tel Dan Stele confirms accounts from 2 Kings 8 and 9. It, like the Moabite Stone, references the ‘House of David.’ It also mentions the Biblical Kings Ahab and Joram. The Tel Dan Stele is dated in the 800’s B.C. It was discovered in 1993 (piece 1) and 1994 (pieces 2 and 3). The Black Obelisk is a 6 1/2 foot tall monument to the war victories of the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III. It was discovered in 1846 south of what is now Baghdad, Iraq.

The Black Obelisk

Panel From the Black Obelisk Depicting Jehu’s Offering

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The Assyrians were one of Israel’s major enemies. The Assyrians eventually would con-quer the northern Kingdom of Israel and begin the siege on Judah that the Babylonians would fin-ish. The Black Obelisk dates to 858-824 B.C. The date range is so specific because it matches the reign of Shalmaneser. It confirms the Biblical account of the Israelite defeat at the hands of As-syria found in 2 Kings 9-10.

The New Testament

Most Christians would, obviously, be more interested in the textual veracity of the New Testament than the Old. The New Testament was written in Greek from around 45 A.D. to around 90 A.D. These are of course estimates. The earliest known complete or mostly complete copies of the New Testament are two books at which we have already looked. Codex Vaticanus is dated from 325-350 A.D. It is mostly complete, missing portions of the Old Testament from pages being torn out. The New Testament is missing the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) Philemon and Revelation.

Codex Vaticanus Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus is from around 330-360 A.D. It is complete in both the Old and New Testaments but for small passages here and there. Both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are written in what is called the ’uncial’ style. Basically, that means that they are in all capital letters. It was also common in the time to not add spaces between words.

Page from Vaticanus Demonstrating Uncial Style

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The earliest complete texts of the New Testament do not tell the entire story of the document. Both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus stand on the shoulders of what is called the ‘manuscript tradition.’ All told, there are some 5700 Greek manuscripts that predate both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. They are not complete New Testaments. Some are only fragments and some are only one or two books. Take, for example, P 75.

P 75 (Papyrus 75) is a Greek manuscript containing parts of the Gospels of Luke and John. It is about 51 pages long. It dates from around 175 to 225 A.D. In the portions of the Gospels that are contained in P 75, there is a high degree of agreement between P 75 and Vaticanus. This is important and shows the necessity of understanding the manuscript tradition. While Vaticanus dates to the 300’s, P 75 dates to the late 100’s or early 200’s and shows an agreement with Vaticanus. This shows that there was a high degree of care in passing down the text of the New Testament. The manuscript tradition does this for all the books of the New Testament. It, through scraps and pieces, pushes back the oldest copies we have to earlier and earlier dates.

P 75– ‘Papyrus Bodmer XV’

P 52- ‘The Rylands Library Papyrus’

The single oldest known piece of New Testament writing is P 52 (Papyrus 52). It is a portion of the Gospel of John. From John 18, it is a portion of the account of the trial of Jesus before Pontus Pilate. P 52 contains writing on the front and back. The name ‘Pilate’ appears among the surviving script. P 52 is dated from 117-138 A.D., though some scholars call for a wider range of dating, something like 100-150 A.D. Either way, if the Gospel of John was writing around 90 A.D., then P 52 is a stunningly early copy in terms of the study of Ancient Documents. One scholar quips “The ink on the Gospel of John was barely dry when P 52 was being copied!” P 75 and P 52 are just a couple of examples of early Greek manuscripts that make up the manuscript tradition. [Note: we tend to think of the term ‘manuscript’ as a completed document. Not so in scholarly realms. The term ‘manuscript’ simply means ‘written by hand.’] The most recent count I could get access to numbers the Greek manuscripts at 5752. This only counts Greek manuscripts. If you were to add in manuscripts from other languages like Aramaic, Coptic and Latin, then the number of ancient New Testament Manuscripts is in the 24,000 range.

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The 5700 Greek manuscripts tradition boils itself down into this summation: the New Testament manuscript tradition begins with manuscript fragments from within 30-50 years of the completion of the New Testament and continues through until the complete copies of the New Testament from within 240 years of the completion of the Testament. While that may seems like an abundance of years, one has to put that in perspective with the documentary evidence of other works of antiquity. Comparing apples to apples, the New Testament is the best evidenced work of antiquity. It is not even close. Even if one sticks only to the Greek manuscripts (excluding the ones in other languages), the New Testament has 8 times more documentary evidence than any work of antiquity (Homer) and 285 times more than the closest competitor from its own timeframe (Tacitus).

Ancient Documents and their Manuscript Tradition

“If the New Testament Documents were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.” - F. F. Bruce The New Testament Documents

The New Testament far outstrips any work when it comes to a document tradition. As noted New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce says, “If the New Testament Documents were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.” Were we to add to the manuscript tradition the roughly 19,000 other manuscripts in other languages, the disparity would become truly oppressive.

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Attestation of the New Testament text does not rely on the massive manuscript tradition alone. Corroborating the contents of the New Testament document tradition is the works of a group of men called the Early Church Fathers (also called the Ante Nicene Fathers). Several of these men used New Testament passages in letters that they wrote to one another and different churches. Some of these letters predate even the oldest portions of actual New Testament copies that exist. Some scholars quip that we could recreate the entire New Testament text from the quotations of the New Testament in the works of the Early Church Fathers alone. The earliest of these comes from Clement of Rome. Writing sometime at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd (late 90’s or early 100’s), Clement, according to tradition, became a Christian under the teaching of Peter or Paul. Again, according to tradition, he was made a bishop (elder) by Peter. One of his letters, written probably 96 or 97 A.D., is the oldest surviving Christian work except for the New Testament itself. There are other works attributed to Clement, but their veracity is not agreed on. For our purposes, what is important is that in Clement’s works he quotes or alludes to: Matthew, John, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, James and 2 Peter. This shows a precedent for the impact of the New Testament books and their role in the early Church.

Clement of Rome

Ignatius of Antioch

Another of the Early Church Fathers that extensively quoted the New Testament was Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius is though to have lived from 38-50 A.D. to 98-117 A.D. He was martyred in Rome under Emperor Trajan. Early images of Ignatius commemorate his death in the Coliseum when he was given to the lions. While on his way to Rome to be martyred, Ignatius wrote at least 7 letters to different churches and individuals. There are 10 more letters attributed to Ignatius, but these letters authenticity is in doubt. In his letters, probably written around 108 A.D., Ignatius quotes the New Testament from: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon. Polycarp of Smyrna was another martyr of the early church whose letters give us insight into the New Testament Biblical text. Stabbed after an attempt to burn him failed, Polycarp was killed around 155 A. D. Polycarp was recorded as being a disciple of the Apostle John. Writing anywhere from 110 to 150 A.D., it is easier to tell you what Polycarp did not quote from: 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 3 John, Jude and Revelation. All other New Testament books are referenced by him. There are many more authors who quoted or named as authentic the different portions of the New Testament. When the heretic Marcion around 140 A.D. began to teach that only certain books of the New Testament were to be used, the Church began an effort ‘canonize’ which books were to be official and which weren’t. Different individuals and councils put out lists to settle the question. The important note is that while some lists do not have ALL the books we include, none have MORE than we include.

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Early Quotations and Citations of Authenticity

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The incredible amount of manuscripts and quotations of the New Testament from antiquity does come with an issue that must be dealt with: textual variants. A textual variant is when a quote or section of the same text appears differently in different sources. For example, if ‘fragment of John A’ says something differently than ‘fragment of John B,’ you have a textual variant. While an exact number is not known, the number of textual variants in the New Testament manuscript tradition numbers around 400,000. [Note: I am choosing the median number that I have seen. Some put the number at 100,000 and some at 1,000,000.]

Textual Variant: differing readings from the same text from different sources.

The question becomes: because of the textual variants, how many of the 5700 manuscripts are alike. The answer is– none. They all differentiate from each other in some way or another. The critical question for the believer is “can we still trust the New Testament will all of these variants?” The question is made even more difficult by many Christians’ misunderstanding of Biblical inerrancy.

Most Christians have at some point been taught that the Bible is ‘inerrant.’ This has lead to a wide-spread misunderstanding of the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy is the idea that God perfectly transmitted to the Biblical authors what He wanted to say. Inerrancy is NOT the idea that the documents were handed down without error. It is that idea of perfect transmission that many Christians believe is the idea of inerrancy. Because of this, when faced with the fact of so many textual variants many Christians find their faith in the bedrock of Scripture shaken. This is interesting because many Bibles come with disclaimers of disputed texts printed along side the texts themselves. For example, most Bibles put some sort of note around John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20, two of the more extensive textual variants. A closer examination of their own Bibles would have relieved many questions! If you recall, when speaking about the earliest New Testament texts, I mentioned a writing style called ’uncial.’ It is basically all capital letters. One of the other noteworthy marks of writing in that time was that they did not put spaces in between words as they wrote. Now, put yourself back 2000 years. There is no electric light. You are probably using candles, if anything. There are no eyeglasses, so i f you are near-s ighted– too bad! DOYOUTHIKTHATYOUCOULDCOPYANENTIREMANUSCRIPTANDMAKENOERRORSOFANYKIND? I have problems reading that sentence alone- and I wrote it! Of course you would make errors. In fact, some of these errors are so common that scholars have given them names.

Homeoteleuton– the scribe paused, looked away, and then re-sumed copying at a different point because of similarities in the endings of lines of texts. This cuts our words or even lines of the text.

Homeoarchy– eye skip because of the similarities of the begin-ning of lines of text.

Haplography– copying only once what appears in the text twice. I.E.- ‘that that’ reduced to ‘that.’ Words twice in a row is common in Greek.

Dittography– copying twice what only occurs once. I.E.- ‘that’ increased to ‘that that.’

Metathesis– reversing words or letters.

This list does not even include common things like misspellings. Sometimes, even poor handwriting can cause textual variants. Out of the 400,000 or so textual variants, even avowed skeptics like Bart Ehrman admit that the vast majority are completely irrelevant. They are obvious, easily and quickly identified as scribal errors. The percentage of these type of errors would be around 85%.

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85% of the known textual variants are quickly identifiable as scribal errors.

That leaves us with about 15% of the 400,000 textual variants to deal with. That is somewhere around 60,000. [Note: once again, these numbers are estimates and general guidelines. They do, however, accurately reflect the ‘gist’ of the issue.] Of these 60,000 textual variants, most of them are again quickly identifiable. These categorize as things like misspellings that change the word.

Such as ‘meat’ and ‘meet’ in English. Greek likewise has words that change with the substitution of one letter for another. Another might be misspellings that are regional. There was no established dictionary at the time. Someone in Alexandria might spell differently than someone in Ephesus. More to the point, a variant must be two things in order to have any impact on the understanding of the New Testament. It must be ‘meaningful.’ It must be ‘viable.’ For a variant to be meaningful, the variant must change the text in a way that impacts it essential message. One example comes from Mark 1:41. One textual tradition says that Jesus was moved with pity. Another says that Jesus was moved to anger. The Greek words are similar in spelling. This variant is meaningful. It changes the essence of the text. For a variant to be viable, it must be evidenced early enough in the manuscript tradition that it could have been the original reading. For example, if around 300 A.D. a manuscript turns up that says in John 8 Jesus did not say “I AM” (the name of God in Hebrew) in reference to Himself but rather said “I have been”, we would have to find evidence of that variant earlier in the manuscript tradition in order to give it credence. Out of 400,000 textual variants in the New Testament, only about 1500 of them are both meaningful and viable. This means that only .375% of known textual variants are both meaningful and viable. Our New Testament is 99.625% pure. That’s pretty good!

Our New Testament manuscript tradition is 99.625% pure!

Another extremely important point is that NONE of these occur in theologically significant areas. While, for example, the variant from Mark listed above is meaningful and viable, it does not ‘change’ Christianity. None of the variants impacts

death for our sins or God’s redemption of us through grace by faith. None of the variants oppose John’s understanding of Jesus as God Incarnate. While Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels and other liberal and secular scholars contend that because of the existence of textual variants we cannot know for certain the text of the original, this finding is more indicative of their presuppositions than the weight of the evidence. According to some of these scholars (in particular Ehrman), if the original is not in existence, you cannot possibly know what the original said. He basically wants video of John writing! NOTHING from history is held to this standard. This is the effects of postmodern philosophy on academia. The philosophy that one cannot know anything for certain has become the ‘science’ of one cannot know anything for certain. One has to wonder how they know they don’t know! One salient point is made, however, by this inquiry. Why did God choose to hand His Word over to many scribes who He knew would make many errors? Why didn’t He just ‘make’ the scribes copy it perfectly? We cannot know the answer for certain, but we can come up with an interesting hypothesis. First, let’s look at the idea of putting the text into the hands of one person to assure transmission rather than in the hands of many. This was the transmission style of the Islamic holy book, the Quran. After Mohammed’s death, the Quran was assembled and began to make its way around the Muslim lands. After a certain amount of time, arguments began to break out over which reading of the Quran was correct. Textual variants had appeared. One Caliph Uthman ordered that all copies of the Quran be gathered up. He then oversaw the production of a standardized text and BURNED all the copies with variants.

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The only copies left are the ones that are the ‘authorized’ version. Because historical records indicate that the different versions of the Quran were causing their adherents to accuse one another of ‘unbelief,’ one has to wonder what was in the variant versions. But that is not possible. All because the text was put into the hands of one man, Caliph Uthman. Consider the opposite, the way the Bible was transmitted. While the text was widely distributed, the text remained 99% pure, as we have seen. No one can make the charge against Christianity that is made against Islam. The text was never under the control of an ‘Uthman.’ The fact that a broad spectrum of sources confirmed and recognized the New Testament is a testimony to its authenticity. Putting the text in the hands of one person is where there can arise many questions. As for why God did not ‘control’ the authors and scribes and make them produce perfect copies, the better question is: when did God ever do that? God uses mistake prone, sinful people all through His redemptive history. The New Testament in fact, in the Book of Galatians, details a conflict between Peter and Paul. How could the two main authorities in the church disagree without sending shockwaves through the Church? God’s salvation and His works are through humans and yet never dependent on them. All in all, we can have extreme confidence that the text of the New Testament has been handed down to us free from major error. We can trust that we have what God wants us to have. The Bible is the greatest tool in the Christian’s arsenal for spiritual growth. We neglect it at our peril.

Soli Deo Gloria (For God’s Glory Alone)

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Resource List This document is intended for the teaching ministries of Fellowship Church. Any other use of the document is outside its intent. All images, charts and maps are used under the ‘Fair Use’ provisions in U.S. Copyright Law. They will be cited where possible. Chart of Ancient Documents and Their Manuscript Tradition taken from http://www.carm.org/questions/about-bible/manuscript-evidence-superior-new-testament-reliability. That site credits the following resources:1) Christian Apologetics, by Norman Geisler, 1976, p. 307; 2) the article "Archaeology and History attest to the Reliability of the Bible," by Richard M. Fales, Ph.D., in The Evidence Bible, Compiled by Ray Comfort, Bridge-Logos Publishers, Gainesville, FL, 2001, p. 163; and 3) A Ready Defense, by Josh McDowell, 1993, p. 45. Chart of Early Quotations and Citations of Authenticity taken from Systematic Theology: vol 1. Introduction and Bible. Norman Geisler, Bethany House publishers. P. 538. Introductory Resources: The Case For Christ, Lee Strobel. Chapters 1-6, Zondervan The New Testament Documents, F. F. Bruce, Eerdmans www.carm.org/christianity/bible Advanced Resources: Systematic Theology, vol 1, Introduction and Bible, Norman Geisler, Bethany House Inerrancy, ed. Norman Geisler, published by Zondervan The Historic Reliability of the Gospels, Craig L. Blomberg, IVP Academic Issue Specific Resources: The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism, G. K. Beale, Crossway On the rise of liberalism in American institutions and the effort to resist it– Ancient Word, Changing Worlds, Stephen J. Nichols and Eric T. Brandt, Crossway. On the idea that Christians hijacked mythology in the Christ story– The ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God series’ by N. T. Wright. Specifically The Resurrection of the Son of God, N. T. Wright, Ausburg Fortress. Academic Debate: Bart Erhman v James White. “Did the Bible Misquote Jesus?” Available from www.aomin.org. [Note]- It is from this debate that the examples of ‘400,000 textual variants’ and ‘1500 meaningful, viable textual variants’ originate.