The Preservation of the New Testament

I just wanted to press start on the thing.

We'll jump in online a little earlier.

So, what this means is that only later manuscript copies exist,

and these copies sometimes are separated by hundreds or thousands of years from the original.

So, given all this, given that we only have later manuscript copies remaining of the New Testament,

how can we be confident that the original wording of the Scriptures has been preserved for us?

How do we trust that errors haven't crept in this process?

Well, there are certain skeptical scholars, like this guy right here.

His name is Bart Ehrman, and they don't believe that the New Testament has been preserved.

In fact, he claims that this process of copying the New Testament out by hand

introduced so many mistakes and errors and corruptions

that we cannot trust that we have the original text of the New Testament.

So, look what Bart Ehrman says here in his famous book.

This is a quote from his book, Misquoting Jesus.

He says,

What good is it to say that the autographs, i.e. the originals, the original manuscript copies,

what good is it to say that they were inspired?

We don't have the originals.

We have only error-ridden copies.

And the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals

and different from them evidently in thousands of ways.

There are more variations among our manuscripts

than there are words in the New Testament.

Ouch.

So, is he right about this?

Do we only have error-ridden copies?

Are the vast majority centuries removed from the originals

and different from them in thousands of ways?

Are there more variations among our manuscripts of the New Testament

than there are words in the New Testament?

It's important that we get to the bottom of this,

not only because it affects our faith,

but also because we as Christians are followers of Jesus,

and he calls us to follow the truth wherever it might lead.

So we should never be afraid to examine

and test the factual claims of our faith.

And I want you to know that whenever you come across claims like this,

if they happen to crop up in your classroom or at work,

whenever you encounter claims like this that are challenging to your faith,

don't be afraid to investigate these things.

In fact, I urge you to do so.

And you'll find that you don't need to be afraid

to test your faith in Jesus against the facts,

because the facts are always on Jesus' side.

And that's what we're going to find out tonight with this quote from Bart Ehrman.

We'll see that Bart Ehrman here is being very tricky.

Some statements that he's saying are misleading,

and some are just plain wrong,

because the fact is we do have very good reasons to be confident

that the manuscripts of the New Testament are of excellent quality,

and that we can identify any errors that happen to have slipped in,

and therefore we can be confident

that we possess the original wording of the New Testament.

Now, to show you why this is true,

I'm going to describe to you what scholars do

to determine the original wording of an ancient publication.

And then I'll show you what this process looks like for the New Testament.

So when scholars want to determine the original reading,

the original wording of an ancient text,

the very first thing they do is they gather all of the surviving manuscripts

and textual witnesses.

And then they group these together into lines of transmission

that lead back to the autographs.

And the idea here is to group textual witnesses together

that are related to one another

in order to build a genealogy of transmission lines.

And this grouping of textual witnesses is called the manuscript tradition.

Sometimes it's also called a manuscript stemma.

You can see a picture of an example of one of an ancient text on the screen.

It's a chart of how all these textual witnesses and manuscripts fit together,

and it leads back chronologically to the original autograph manuscript.

And in this way, scholars can reconstruct the transmission history of a text.

They can check for errors in its transmission,

and then ultimately zero in on the original reading.

Now, the best manuscript tradition is one where scholars are the most confident

in finding the original reading of an ancient publication.

And the best manuscript tradition has the following four characteristics.

The first thing that it has, that the best manuscript tradition has,

is a large number of manuscripts.

This gives scholars a large number of opportunities to check for errors.

The second thing that scholars hope for

is to find a large number of early manuscripts.

These are manuscripts that are close in date to the original.

And this limits the number of generations of copying

that separate the early manuscript from the original,

and thus it limits the number of errors that can creep in.

In other words, the closer a manuscript is to the original chronologically,

the more accurate it tends to be.

So having a lot of early manuscripts is very important.

The third thing scholars look for is

they look for a large number of ancient translations.

Back in the ancient world, books were often translated,

just like they are today.

And these ancient translations give scholars many opportunities

to check for how a text has been transmitted over the centuries,

and therefore it gives them many opportunities to check for errors.

So if a work was written in ancient Greek,

it's very helpful to look at an ancient Latin translation

that was done in the West,

or an ancient Syriac translation that was done in the East,

in order to identify errors.

Now the fourth thing, and the last thing,

that scholars look for in a good manuscript tradition

is a large number of quotations.

Quotations are quotes of the work they're interested in

that are made by another ancient work.

Just like today, when authors back then were writing books,

they're often quoted from other books.

And you can go back to those quotations

and see if they line up with the manuscripts we have today

in order to check for errors.

And scholars do this

so that they can increase their confidence

about identifying the original reading.

So let's review.

For scholars to be most confident

in finding the original reading of an ancient publication,

they want to find a large number of manuscripts,

a large number of early manuscripts,

a large number of ancient translations,

and a large number of quotations.

So what I want to know is how the New Testament

stacks up in these four categories,

and how we would evaluate the quality

of the New Testament's manuscript tradition

up against these four categories right here.

So let's do that right now.

We'll start at the bottom.

We'll start with the last category of quotations.

Does the New Testament have a large number of quotations

that scholars can use

to check its transmission history?

Well, yes, in fact it does.

There are so many quotations

that no one has been able to count them all.

We don't even know how many there are

because no one has had the time to do it.

In fact, there are so many

early and medieval Christian writings

that quote the New Testament

that if you go to Yale Divinity School

and you go to a certain aisle of books,

you'll find that an entire aisle of books

still does not contain all the writings.

And in these writings,

there are hundreds of thousands

of quotations of the New Testament,

and every single one of them

can help scholars identify any errors

that have happened in the transmission process.

And these quotations come from Christian writings

that date back to the very beginning of Christianity,

all the way up to the medieval era,

and spread throughout the entire Christian world,

from Western Europe and Eastern Europe,

from the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Persia,

everywhere the church was

are where these writings come from.

This is extraordinary.

There is not a single ancient publication

that even remotely approaches this number.

And in fact, it seems that if we were to lose

every single New Testament manuscript in existence,

we could still reconstruct the entire thing

simply based off of these quotations.

And in fact, I used to not actually believe that.

I thought that was an exaggeration,

but then when I started realizing

how many hundreds and hundreds

of verse-by-verse commentaries

were written on the New Testament,

I realized it was true!

You just go to these commentaries

and you can find the quotations.

But we're not done yet.

Aside from quotations,

scholars can also check for errors

in the New Testament

by looking at ancient translations.

And the more translations the text has,

and the earlier these translations are,

the better.

Now, most ancient texts

were never translated into any language.

You had to have a really special text

for someone to take the time

to do a translation.

And as far as I'm aware,

the classical text

that has the most translations

is probably some of the works of Aristotle.

He made it into four or five

different ancient languages,

which is an extraordinary number.

Aristotle has the most, that is,

except for the New Testament,

which has far, far more than Aristotle.

And this is actually because

many ancient languages

only now exist

because missionaries went there,

learned the language,

and created an alphabet

for these people,

which is why we still have

these ancient translations.

Let me give you some examples

of what I'm talking about.

Here we have

an ancient Latin translation

of the four Gospels.

It's just one page here.

And this particular manuscript

is very famous.

It comes from the 4th century.

It's extraordinarily early.

But the translation that it has

is even earlier.

It probably goes back

to around the year 200.

And so with just this manuscript,

you have this extraordinary witness

for the New Testament text

that scholars can use

to see how the New Testament text

has been translated

over the centuries.

But we're not done yet.

This is a different Latin translation.

It was done by St. Jerome

around the year 400.

This is a 5th century manuscript.

Again, it's another opportunity

to check for errors.

And we can just keep

going on down the list.

This is a Syriac manuscript.

It comes from the year 586.

It's very famous.

But the translation

comes even earlier.

It comes from the 4th century.

It's called the

Peshittis Syriac Translation.

Here's another Syriac translation.

It's called the Curatonian.

It probably comes

from the 3rd century.

This manuscript

comes from the 5th.

Here's another one.

Another Syriac translation.

It's called

the Sinaitacan Translation.

Again, it's very early.

And we can just keep

on doing this.

This is Bohairic Coptic.

Coptic was the native

language of Egypt.

This manuscript

comes from the 4th century.

But the translation

comes even earlier.

From the 2nd or 3rd century.

Here's a different

Coptic translation.

Sahidic Coptic.

Sahidic was in the south.

Bohairic was in the north.

This comes from

the 2nd or 3rd century.

The translation

and the manuscript

comes from the 3rd century.

Totally extraordinary.

And we can just keep

right on going.

And this is a Latin manuscript

but those little marginal notes

you see on the side,

that's actually in Old English.

This is the earliest

Old English document

in existence.

And it's a translation

of the Gospels.

And you can go back

and use this

to see the Gospel text

in England

at this time.

In the 7th or 8th centuries.

And then,

oh, this is a beautiful one.

This is called

the Silver Bible.

This is in Gothic.

It was made in the 4th century

by a missionary

named Volfila.

Very beautiful story.

This guy was a slave

of the Goths

and he escaped

and felt called

to go back

to preach them

the Gospel of Jesus.

And then he came

and he translated

the Bible for them

and created their alphabet.

And this manuscript

comes from the 6th century.

We can keep on going.

This is an Armenian Bible.

Here we have

a Georgian translation.

Here we have

a Caucasian Albanian translation.

We didn't even know

this language existed

until a couple decades ago.

when we found

this manuscript

and we realized

that someone

had translated

the Bible

into this language.

It's north of Iran

where these people lived.

This is Old Nubian.

This is from

modern day Sudan.

They had the Bible

in their language.

This is Ethiopic.

This manuscript

is one of the most

extraordinary manuscripts

in existence.

Scholars dated it

to the 13th century.

The Ethiopian church

kept saying,

no, no, no, no.

This is from like

the 5th or 6th century.

Scholars ignored them

and then they radiocarbon dated

the manuscript.

They found out

the Ethiopian church

was right.

It's probably

the earliest illuminated

manuscript in existence.

The New Testament

was translated

into more languages

in the ancient world

than any other publication.

And many of these

translations

are extremely early.

They're quite

widespread geographically.

this gives scholars

an unprecedented opportunity

to check for the accuracy

of the New Testament

at every single verse.

Sometimes even down

to individual words.

Quite literally

hundreds of thousands

of locations.

And this is totally

unprecedented

amongst ancient writings.

So, we've talked

about quotations.

We've talked about

translations.

But we still haven't

even touched on

the actual Greek manuscripts

of the New Testament.

That's the language

that the New Testament

was originally written in.

And of course,

the original language

is far more important

than translations

when it comes to

establishing the text.

And of course,

the more manuscripts

you have,

the better.

Because then you have

more witnesses

to the original

and more opportunities

to check for errors.

Now, it's difficult

to come up

with an estimate.

But it seems as though

a typical ancient publication

has about 20 or 30

manuscript witnesses

remaining.

And the ancient public,

that's like a typical number.

And the ancient publication

with the most manuscripts

is the Iliad of Homer.

It has about 2,000 manuscripts

remaining,

an extraordinary number.

But like I said,

that's the most

except for the New Testament,

which has 5,500

New Testament manuscripts

in Greek

and thousands

and thousands more

in other languages.

This number

is totally staggering.

By this measurement,

the New Testament

ranks not just very high,

but far and away

has the most number

of manuscripts

of any other ancient text.

Now, I need to say

that having a lot

of manuscripts

is a good thing,

but it doesn't necessarily

mean that a text

has been reliably preserved.

Because after all,

many or even most

of those manuscripts

could be very,

very, very, very

late copies.

Many of them

could potentially

even be poor copies

that have a lot

of mistakes.

And in fact,

this is exactly

what happens

with the Iliad of Homer.

The Iliad of Homer

has the most manuscripts

of any book

outside the New Testament,

but it doesn't have

the best manuscript tradition

because its copies

are very, very late

and they're not very good.

There's a lot of mistakes.

So let's go

to our last category.

Our last category,

we talked about

quotations,

translations,

total number of manuscripts.

Let's talk about

early manuscripts

of the New Testament.

We want to get

as ancient as possible,

as close as we can

to the originals

of the New Testament.

And this is important

because these can help us

eliminate the number

of generations of copying

and therefore eliminate

the number of opportunities

for errors to creep in.

Now, if we look

at the number

of manuscripts

that date

from within 300 years

of the publication

of an ancient text,

we find that

the vast majority

of ancient publications

have no manuscripts

from this time frame.

None.

All of those

are much later.

But with the New Testament,

we find that

we have over 60 manuscripts

that date

from within this

narrow time frame.

This number is,

as far as I'm aware,

far beyond

any other

ancient publication.

And I want to give you

some examples of these.

So perhaps

the most famous

biblical manuscript

in existence

is this one.

It's called

Codex Sinaiticus.

It dates to around

the year 350.

It contains

the entire New Testament.

This manuscript

is so early

that if we lost

every single manuscript,

except for this one,

then the New Testament

would still have

one of the best

manuscript traditions

of any ancient text,

just with this one,

because it is

so extraordinary.

It is completely

unprecedented.

But we can do

better than that.

Why don't we go

a little earlier?

This is Papyrus 47.

It's of the book

of Revelation.

My dissertation

is on Revelation.

I love this manuscript.

This dates

from the year 200

to 300,

even earlier,

and it contains

a very large portion

of the text of Revelation.

This is just one leaf

of the manuscript.

There's a lot of leaves there.

But we can go

even earlier.

This is Papyrus 45.

It has large portions

of Matthew, Mark, Luke,

John, and the book of Acts.

And it dates

a little earlier,

200 to 225 AD,

200 to 250 AD.

And we can just

keep on going earlier.

This is Papyrus 46,

extremely famous.

It contains almost

all of Paul's letters.

Again, this is just

one leaf.

And it dates

to around the year

200 to 225.

We have a lot

of manuscripts

that date

from the 3rd century.

But I want to go

even earlier.

Let's go to the 3rd

to the 2nd century.

This is Papyrus 98.

It's of Revelation.

This is Papyrus 104.

It's of the Gospel

of Matthew.

This is Papyrus 52.

It's of the Gospel

of John.

All three of these

plausibly date

to the 2nd century.

Perhaps even

the early part

of the 2nd century.

Meaning that

these manuscripts

may have been copied

within 40 or 50 years

of the original publication.

Or even earlier.

This is extraordinary.

No ancient publication

has so many early manuscripts

attesting to it.

In fact,

there are so many

early New Testament manuscripts

that we discover

a new one

just about

every year.

What this means

is that every year

we can confirm

the original text

of the New Testament

with greater

and greater certainty.

Several years ago

I gave a version

of this talk

and I mentioned

how in the year 2015

we discovered

this manuscript

of the Gospel of John.

It was found on eBay.

Some guy died.

He had a collection

of manuscripts.

People put it on

and oh look at that.

It's really, really,

really, really early.

We found that in 2015.

But I keep having

to update my slides.

Last year

I gave a version

of this talk

and I said in 2018

we found not one,

not two,

but three

early New Testament manuscripts

and the one you see here

is the earliest fragment

of the Gospel of Mark

ever discovered.

That was found last year.

And now in 2019

I have to update them again

because it was announced

in March

that the Egyptian

Exploratory Society

had identified

20 New Testament manuscripts

that it was going

to be publishing

in the coming years

some of which date

extremely early.

So there's no expectation

that this pace

of discoveries

will pause

at any time soon.

And what this means

is that every year

our knowledge

of the original

New Testament text

gets more and more certain.

So let's sum up.

The New Testament

has the most manuscripts,

the most translations,

the most quotations,

and the most early manuscripts

of any ancient text.

And these numbers

increase and get better

every single year.

So according to these categories

and the New Testament

has an extraordinarily

reliable manuscript tradition.

But let's go back

to our friend here,

Bart Ehrman.

Remember that quote

I said in the beginning, right?

Now actually,

Bart Ehrman would agree

with probably every single

thing I just said.

And I've heard him

do things like that.

But he would have

a reply to this.

He would have an objection.

And this objection

is contained

in his original quote.

Remember that he said,

yes, but these manuscripts

are error-ridden.

It might be hard for you

to see the underline there.

But he says these are

full of errors.

And they're different

from the originals

in thousands of ways.

And then at the bottom

he says there are more

variations among our manuscripts

than there are words

in the New Testament.

That's what he would say.

He'd say, yes, yes, yes,

you have all these things.

But they stink.

They're bad copies.

They're full of errors.

We don't know

what the New Testament says.

Well, is this true?

Well, Bart Ehrman

is being very sneaky here

with what he's saying.

He is right.

There are more variations

in manuscripts

of the New Testament

than there are words

in the New Testament.

But the only reason

why this is the case

is because we have

so many manuscripts

of the New Testament.

In fact, every time

we discover a new manuscript,

the number of variants

goes up

because the scribe

who made the manuscript

may have skipped a word

or misspelled something

and we chalk it up

to a textual variant.

And indeed, I can show you

ancient works

like this one

by Athanas

that have very, very,

very few variants

because we only have

one manuscript.

Obviously, having only

one manuscript

is not a good way

to guarantee

the preservation of a work

because then you have

nothing to compare it against.

So criticizing

the New Testament

for having a large number

of total variants

is very disingenuous

because the total number

of variants

is really just a signifier

that the New Testament

has a lot of manuscripts.

And that's a good thing

to have.

Another issue

that Bart Ehrman

doesn't tell you

in his quotation,

though he will admit it

elsewhere when he's forced to,

is that the vast, vast,

vast majority

of all these variants

he's talking about

are inconsequential differences

in spelling, grammar,

or obvious errors

that occur

when a scribe

accidentally skips

a word or a line.

In other words,

well, well over 99%

of all these variations

are either completely meaningless

or are very easy

for scholars to detect.

And this is totally different

from other ancient works.

Other ancient works

have manuscripts

whose errors

are so severe

and so pervasive

that we can no longer

recover the original reading.

In these instances,

scholars have to do something

called conjectural emendation.

That's a fancy word

for making an educated guess

about what the original reading said

because the original reading

is gone

from every single

ancient manuscript.

And this is the case

with, as far as we know,

every single ancient publication,

at least those of significant length,

require this.

Where there's a part

that just is gone.

And if it's a big part,

scholars just leave a blank.

If it's a little part,

maybe they can make a guess

about what was there.

This is not true, though,

for the New Testament.

For the New Testament,

we have no locations

where scholars are required

to conjecturally amend the text.

And the ironic part

in all of this

is that even our very skeptical

Bart Ehrman

acknowledges this

in one of his publications

that he co-did

with a very famous scholar

named Bruce Metzger.

He said,

the amount of evidence

for the text of the New Testament,

whether derived from manuscripts,

early versions,

that's translations,

or patristic quotations,

is so much greater

than that available

for any ancient classical author

that the necessity

of resorting to emendation

is reduced

to the smallest dimensions.

And then he leaves a footnote.

And he goes on to say,

well, if we wanted

to conjecturally amend the text,

maybe we could do it

in this one location.

And then he concludes,

quote,

even this cannot be accepted.

And thus,

even the most skeptical

scholar around

admits that the New Testament

does not require

conjecturally amend the text.

And because conjecturally amend

are not required

to restore the text

of the New Testament,

this inescapably means

that the original

still exists.

Now,

the only caution

I will say to this

is that scholars

are sometimes confronted

with multiple

reasonable variants

for a wording

of a particular

New Testament passage.

And they're unsure

of which variant

is authentic.

They're confident

that one of the variants

is authentic,

but sometimes they have

trouble deciding

between them.

And in important cases,

most English translations

of the Bible

will insert a note

explaining this uncertainty

and then list

an alternative manuscript

variant so the reader

will be aware of it.

Fortunately,

it is very rare

that this happens

with any significant

part of the text

and by far the two

most important instances

of this

are with the last verses

of the Gospel of Mark

and I've got a little

picture up here of that

and the woman

caught in adultery

in the Gospel of John.

These two are

by far and away

the most important areas

where this happens.

But I need to tell you

that it's also possible

that our New Testament

authors wrote multiple

editions of their work.

Ancient authors

did this all the time.

Remember back then

everything was done by hand

so it was a less formal

process to have

something disseminated.

You read something out,

people start copying it,

you go back,

you make some changes

or you update it.

That happened all the time

in the ancient world.

So it could be the case

with certain variants

that actually both

are authentic.

That could potentially

be the case.

But these places

of uncertainty

should not trouble you

because they're so minor

that no Christian doctrine

is affected

by these variants.

And do you know

who effectively agrees

with us?

Our friend

Bart Ehrman.

He says

in one of his publications

essential Christian beliefs

are not affected

by textual variations

in the manuscript tradition

of the New Testament.

Yeah.

Now I would go

even farther than that.

I would say it's not just

essential Christian beliefs

but pretty much anything

that we would identify

as a Christian doctrine

is not affected

by any of these

potential variants.

And furthermore,

there's no expectation

that any manuscript discovery

will change this

because since the advent

of modern textual criticism,

which is about 130 years,

no manuscript discovery

has provided a new

authentic variant

for any New Testament passage.

Every single one

of the many discoveries

that we have made

over the past 130 years

have only confirmed readings

we already knew about.

And I suspect

that this will continue

for the future.

So if we gather

all these points together,

the New Testament

wasn't just

accurately preserved,

it was extraordinarily preserved.

And this is because

it has the most manuscripts,

the most quotations,

the most ancient translations,

the most early manuscripts

of any ancient text.

And these combine

to make the manuscript tradition

of the New Testament

of such high quality

that no conjectural

emendations are needed

because simply put,

the entire text

has been preserved.

And those locations

where scholars find

several variants

and can't be completely sure

which one is authentic,

these are so inconsequential

that no Christian doctrine

is affected by any of them.

And every year

more discoveries are made

and every year

these discoveries

do not add

any new authentic readings,

but instead they confirm

what we already

have long known.

So given this,

we can trust

that the New Testament

has been reliably preserved.

But in all of this,

I want us to remember

the purpose of Scripture.

The purpose of Scripture,

the purpose of the New Testament

is not to testify to itself.

Its purpose is to testify to Jesus.

Our faith is ultimately

not in the New Testament.

It's in the one

the New Testament talks about,

in Jesus.

And this is what

the New Testament itself says.

The Gospel of John

describes how Jesus

was talking to the Pharisees

and he said,

you search the Scriptures,

for in them you think

you have eternal life.

These are which testify about me,

but you are not willing

to come to me

so that you may have life.

So we should never make

the New Testament

the goal,

the ultimate goal

and object of our faith.

It does not have

eternal life in it.

It points to our Lord

and Savior Jesus.

And so all this information

that I've shared with you today,

it can help bolster

your faith in Jesus,

but remember that

all these statistics

about manuscripts

and translations

and quotations

and things like that,

they're useful for that purpose,

for growing someone's faith,

for witnessing to others,

but the greatest

and most powerful testimony

that you can have

with your coworkers

or classmates

or professors

is not any of this information.

It's the power of a life

that has been changed

and forgiven by Jesus

and overflows

with his love

for that person

and points that person

to him.

So why don't I just

close in prayer real quick

and then we'll see

if we have any questions.

Father in heaven,

we thank you so much

that you saw fit

to preserve your word for us

and we just give you

glory and honor for that

and we pray, Lord,

that you would boost

our confidence

in the New Testament.

You would increase our faith

so that we can share

with others,

that we can better love others,

that we can forgive

those who've wronged us,

that we can confess

our sins when we've

wronged others,

that we can share

your gospel message

with this world.

And we pray all this

in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Alright, so I think we have

time for questions, right?

Alright, yeah.

10 minutes.

So today,

many translations

are accused

of having an agenda.

Presumably that's based on

there's a couple choices

that are made

in the given translation

and the translators

have to make a choice

and then through

systematic decision-making,

you know,

an agenda is inferred.

Yeah.

Does that,

did that happen

in the ancient world

or did they just,

like in your genealogy chart,

you show that,

I think,

every translation

had, like,

a single parent.

Like,

was that the case?

Like,

were there agendas

of any sort?

And if so,

can you,

I don't know,

try to back,

infer what that agenda

was and back that out?

Great question.

Great question.

Yeah,

so I'll say two things.

One is that

some of these

translations that I showed you

and some of the manuscripts

I showed you also,

they might have had,

like,

a single parent,

but many of them didn't.

Many of them,

scribes would reference

multiple manuscripts.

And so,

the word genealogy

actually isn't always

the best term

because a genealogy

implies you just have

two parents

or one parent,

but with manuscripts,

you can have multiple parents

because you can line up

multiple texts.

And we know that

some translators did that.

Like,

St. Jerome did that.

It was Latin.

Thomas of Harkle

with Syriac did that.

So,

that's one thing.

So,

that helps get out,

you know,

an agenda that might have come in.

The second thing

about an agenda

is sometimes you do see.

I mean,

sometimes you will see.

In my dissertation,

I went through

the book of Revelation

and I looked for precisely

this thing you were talking about

in some of these translations

and in some of the copying.

And what I found

is that you could sometimes

find a place

where a scribe

or a translator

seemed to be a little

uncomfortable with something

and tried to just

tweak it a little bit.

But in the vast majority

of cases,

this doesn't happen.

And I can give you

an example.

So,

in the book of Revelation,

there's a passage

that says that Jesus

is the beginning

of God's creation.

Now,

that word beginning

can also be translated

ruler.

Ruler or beginning.

So,

you can say he's the ruler

of God's creation

or you can interpret it

and he's the beginning

of God's creation

which could imply

that he is part of creation.

He's not divine.

He's subordinate

to God the Father.

It's an ambiguous verse.

And so,

what I did is

I went to ancient translations.

I went to about

six or seven of them

and I wanted to see

how do they handle this?

Do they try to disambiguate it

to make it seem

like he's the ruler

of creation?

What do they do?

And I thought

this is a great test case

because you can make

a legitimate translation

and just say ruler

of creation

and just move on.

And then the reader

doesn't even know

this ambiguity is there.

And I was shocked

because every single one

of the translations

except for one of them

preserved the ambiguity.

They went into their language.

They found a word

that preserved this ambiguity

even though they knew

that someone could mistake

what the intention

of this verse might mean.

They still did that.

And so,

I thought that's a beautiful testimony

that yes,

occasionally you'll find

a manuscript

where someone has clearly

been tweaking something.

But that by no means

seems to be ordinary.

It seems to be that

when there were mistakes,

they're unintentional.

Scribes are doing

their very best.

And what that means

is that we have

greater confidence

in what they have before us.

So,

I've read some Ehrman

and I think

the lack for a need

of

scholarly adjustments

to the manuscript

for clarity,

the fact that

there's no need

for doctrinal variance

within Christianity

is probably

a thorn in his side

though you would admit it.

I feel like other scholars

kind of reluctantly

kind of give in

that point.

But,

I myself have noticed

a renewed interest

in the last few years

among scholars

in a lot of those

4th century

and 3rd century

Gnostic texts,

extra-biblical gospels,

you know,

Peter,

Mary,

Thomas.

And do you think

that it is

calculated on their part

to say,

well,

let's pull this

into the scholarly

conversation,

specifically,

you know,

the reliability

of the New Testament

as a whole

because of that

coincidence,

if you will,

or just the fact

that most of the

datings of those

Gnostic texts

kind of fall into

that same,

you know,

glut of,

you know,

rich manuscripts

that we have

from around

the same period

and within

similar geographical

regions.

Yeah.

That's a great question.

The question

is about,

okay,

so the

manuscripts

of the New Testament

are good,

they're reliable,

but what about

all these other

false gospels

out there?

What about those?

So what if the New Testament

is reliably preserved?

Maybe these should be

in there,

or maybe

certain New Testament

texts shouldn't be there

and should be thrown out.

That's a great question.

We're going to talk

about that week three,

the canonicity

of the New Testament.

We'll be talking

about the false gospels

of, you know,

Peter, Mary, and John.

Just to give you

a quick preview,

you know,

this is also,

I think,

going to disappoint

the hopes

of skeptical scholars

because when you go back

and you look at these,

they really have

no historical backing

to them

like the four gospels do.

They have

very, very weak

ancient attestation.

There's numerous reasons

why these are dismissed.

And you do hear

loud voices

in the academy,

you know,

trumpeting this,

Elaine Pagels does

and stuff like that.

But most scholars,

even ones who are

not devout Christians,

they don't think

these really have

anything to do

with the historical Jesus.

They will argue

these should be considered

as variants

of Christianity.

And sure,

we can consider them

a variant of Christianity.

I mean,

I don't have a real problem

with that.

I don't think

they're orthodox

variations of Christianity.

Or variants that go

back to the apostles.

But,

I'm sure,

if you want to class them

that way,

you can.

But,

we'll be talking

about that week three.

So stay tuned.

Is there an estimate

of the number

of ancient translations

that the Bible

is translated into?

So the question is,

is there an estimate

for the number

of ancient translations

the Bible is translated into?

I have not seen one.

I've tried to come up

with one myself.

And there's a lot.

First,

it depends on what

you count as ancient.

So you have to have

a cutoff time.

And then we have

to work backwards.

And then we have

to decide,

you know,

for instance,

there's a translation

that seems to have

been done

into an African language

called Baja,

which is now

in Sudan.

And we only know

about it

because it exists

on a clay ostracon,

a fragment of a pot.

It's a version

of the Psalms

in Baja.

And,

do we count that?

I mean,

it's a scrap.

It's someone clearly

was ministering

with these people.

So,

I would estimate

that if you want to say,

like,

let's say before the year

900 or something,

I would say,

you know,

at least two dozen

were made

that we have

some witness of.

There may have been more,

like,

Jerome talks about

a Dalmatian translation

that we have no scrap

at all of.

Who knows if that

actually existed.

People wonder

if a Punic translation

existed.

It seems likely,

but we don't have it.

We didn't have

the Caucasian-Albanian

translation,

and then we found it

20 years ago.

So,

who knows what we'll dig up.

But that's an estimate,

so someday I want to sit down

and just try and get it all out.

You said new fragments

are being discovered

all the time.

Where are they coming from?

So,

most new fragments

are coming from

a collection of papyri

called the Oxyrnchus papyri.

About a hundred

something years ago,

a group of scholars

went to a garbage dump

in the sands of Egypt,

and this was an ancient

garbage dump

where people were just

throwing out manuscripts.

And they,

you know,

1,500 years ago,

and so they collected

all of these

into boxes,

tons and tons of boxes,

brought them back

to Great Britain,

and they are still

going through these.

So,

actually,

that fragment of Mark

I said

was from that collection.

Those 20 more manuscripts

that have been found

are from that collection,

and it's because

they found hundreds

of thousands

of manuscripts.

And most of these

are little fragments,

and most of them

are like tax receipts,

bills of sale,

things like that.

But,

you know,

sometimes you find

a little piece

of the New Testament

in there.

some of the,

most of the early

manuscripts that we have

actually are from

that one,

that location,

Oxyrnchus,

has been very fertile

for finding manuscripts.

What are the ways

you think that the

New Testament

has got inspired?

What are some of the ways?

Yeah,

what are the

reasons

or like that?

What do you think?

I'm going to be talking

a lot about this

next week,

but there's numerous,

there's numerous reasons.

One,

the most fundamental

reason is that

there's this

self-authenticating

nature of it.

The New Testament

changes lives.

People are redeemed,

they're forgiven,

they're brought into

new life through the

writings and teachings

of the New Testament.

But there's many others.

There's historical

veracity,

there's a lot of

historical reasons

why what the New Testament

says can be considered

to be true and accurate,

which we'll talk about

next week.

And this even goes

to the miracles of Jesus,

that we have lots of

reasons for trusting

what the documents say

about his miracles

and about his statements.

And there's other

prophecies also that

I'll mention next week

too,

that we can confirm

today are accurate,

that Jesus made,

that points to him

having some divine

inspiration,

that increases our

reliability for things

like when he says,

I'm the way,

the truth,

and the life.

Well,

this guy just said

something no one

could ever know.

And then he knew it.

So he probably knows

what he's talking about.

But we'll talk more

about that next week.

Do other religious texts

have the same reliability?

Very good question.

Do other religious texts

have the same reliability?

I've done,

I've tried my best

to look into this.

Certainly the Old Testament

is much older,

so if you want to talk

about the Jewish scriptures,

they have very good arguments,

but they don't,

we don't have as early

manuscripts because

they're very,

the documents are much

later.

or much earlier.

In terms of other religions,

like let's take the Quran.

The Quran,

the sacred text for Islam,

was written early 600s,

and it has a big advantage

because it was written

500 years after the New Testament.

That's 500 less years

of variation.

It also was written

in a climate

where Muslims were in charge,

where they had the political

and financial means

to preserve this.

It was also written

in a very arid environment,

which is ideal

for preserving manuscripts,

but I would say

the New Testament

is still far better

than the Quran.

The Quran has a lot

of problems with it

textually.

If you go to

Zoroastrian texts

in Iran,

it's like,

you know,

the earliest Zoroastrian texts.

We have Zoroastrianism

as a very ancient religion.

It's older

than the New Testament,

not as old

as the Old Testament,

but older

than the New Testament,

and their manuscripts,

you know,

come from like

the 16th century.

Like, you know,

and then if you go

to Buddhism,

Buddhist texts,

unfortunately,

India is very hot,

wet climate.

Manuscripts just deteriorate

like crazy there

and that means

that their stuff

is really recent.

And so Buddhism,

you know,

the Buddha lived,

you know,

we don't really know

500 BC,

400 BC,

something like that.

The earliest life

of the Buddha

was written in Sanskrit

several hundred years

after he lived

and the earliest manuscript

in Sanskrit

we have of it

comes from the 1800s

in Nepal.

Now,

in China,

you do have

some early manuscripts

like the Tao Te Ching.

We've got some very early manuscripts

of the Tao Te Ching.

That's really the only

even possible comparison,

I would say,

for an ancient document

would be the Tao Te Ching

but I haven't been able

to look into it.

I know there are

some issues there also.

So when I say

ancient publications,

I'm talking about everything.

The Quran usually

is considered medieval

and usually we have,

like for instance,

we have documents

from the time

when the Quran was written

and we have

the original documents.

The Quran doesn't have that.

We don't have the originals.

We have later copies

and things like that.

So certainly relatively

to other medieval documents

the Quran is not,

would not be considered

well preserved

by medieval standards.

It's 9.50.

I don't know

if we should wrap up.

Okay.

Why don't we wrap up?

Come next week

and the next two weeks

and I'd be happy

to answer more questions

you guys have.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.