greyline

If there was divine transmission, there should surely be no mistakes.

This thread is called "Bible authenticity" but how do umpteen manuscripts, identical or not, all copied from the same sources, relate to whether their contents are true?

And how can this even be compared with the way our knowledge of Roman history comes to us?

Julian

Because the copying of books was done almost exclusively by christians, so obviously we get a lot more copies of their works. The copies of christian works were taken care of. The non-christians works were neglected and/or not copied. Simple.
Mark 1:10 was a big deal once. εις versus επ' makes a big difference.
Luke 22:20+
Actually, most of the Western non-interpolations.

I realize that nowadays these differences aren't considered as a big deal but they were huge questions once.

Julian

dzim77

It seems you are misunderstanding the doctrine of the inerrency of scripture (??) This doctrine says that the original manuscripts do not claim anything that is contrary to fact.

There may be some small errors in transmission but nothing that would affect critical Christian doctrine.

Are you suggesting that the standard, universally accepted measures for reliability of documents do not apply to the NT? That it should be held to a special standard?

In the same way - as far as reliability of the manuscripts is concerned.

'Did Jesus walk on water' is a whole other topic I suppose.

dzim77

Julian,

Thanks for the response.

How does this affect your conclusions about their reliablity? Are your conclusions different than FF Bruce's?

greyline

I was using Roller's apparent meaning (as I understood it) of "divine transmission" - ie. not that the gospels were inspired, but that the copies made by monks (etc.) were somehow divinely overseen to ensure no copying errors. Since there are very obvious copying errors, this transmission had no divine aspect.


Since we don't have the originals, we can't of course know this.


One measure for reliability is that the same information comes from different independent sources. Since two of the gospels were largely copied from a third, and all those manuscript copies are just copies of copies (not independent descriptions of historical events), the fact remains that we have far more reliable information about Roman history than about Jesus' existence or actions. Roman history is hardly a "fairy tale" by comparison (as the site claims).


Depends on how one defines the OP "biblical authenticity". But regarding your PM, which linked this thread to our previous discussion of "how do I know whether it's true?" I assumed you wanted me to consider that question in light of the information in the OP. How accurately the gospel manuscripts were copied doesn't seem to relate to that question at all. How accurate (1) the original manuscripts were, and how much corroborating independent evidence (2) there is for those events, would be pertinent, but since the answers are (1) "we'll never know" and (2) "none", I'm no closer to answering "How do I know whether it's true?" with respect to the gospels.

Iasion

Greetings,

Here is a good resource:
http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/index.html

And some more useful links :
http://www.ntgateway.com/resource/textcrit.htm


Iasion

Iasion

Sure, there are many - how about :

The ending of G.Mark (the fountainhead of all Gospels) containing the ressurrection appearances is missing from the original. The resurrection was ADDED to the story - the central belief of Christians, NOT found in the earliest MSS.

Or "son of man" changed to "son of god" in various places.

Or the words of God at the Jordan changed to suppress adoptionism.

Or the Trinity doctrine - added much later

Or redemption by Christ's blood - added later.

Or the Lord's Prayer - the (alleged) actual words from Jesus - several variants (how could the actual words of their God be forgotten?)

Even the list of apostles contains variations - Christians don't quite know who their founders actually were.


Iasion

Roller

Since the argument that the "original" manuscripts were somehow innerant is specious (we don't have any), the next possible step is to say that the transmission was somehow divinely inspired. However, many differences between manuscripts seriously weaken such approach (at least in my eyes, for what its worth).

Although this was aimed at Julian, I'll try to list a thing or two of concern here. I'm going to follow Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus here.

One of the concerns would be the treatment of Jesus' divinity. Early Christians like Ebionites considered Jesus to be fully human and not divine, adopted by God at his baptism. One example of variant text on this matter is the baptism of Jesus itself. Luke says (in most mss) "You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." However, several mss say: "You are my Son, today I have begotten you." Word "today" seems point that Jesus become the Son of God on the very day of his baptism. Most of the early quotations of this verse by church fathers say: "Today I have begotten you."

The trick here is that Luke probably didn't meant for this to be given an adoptionistic interpretation. However, proto-orthodox, out of fear that anyone could take it as such, changed it to a version without "today." (Ehrman p.158-159)

Another example is when Jesus visits the Temple and gets blessed by Simeon, again in Gospel of Luke. The text says: "his father and mother were marveling at what was said to him". The problem here is that Joseph is called Jesus' father. Apparently, some scribe asked himself how is that possible, since Jesus has no earthly father. Problem was removed by saying: "Joseph and his mother were marveling". There, Joseph is not Jesus' father.

Almost identical "fix" was made in the story of Jesus visiting the Temple as a 12yr old. Text says: "his parents did not know about it." Well, wait... "Parents"? What "parents" if Joseph is not supposed to be Jesus' father. Scribes corrected this in several mss by saying: "Joseph and his mother did not know it." (Ehrman p.158)

It is telling that scribes found some verses gut wrenching for their position and that they decided to change them and put them more in harmony with their position.

Ehrman, Bart. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (or via: amazon.co.uk) HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

gregor

dzim
Do you consider whether Jesus was divine or an adopted human a material difference?

And Roger,
please confirm that the Illiad was written by god and that the failure to believe in the accurate story of Odysseus will send one to hell.

Finally
Why do the great unwashed conflate frequency and marginal fidelity in reproduction with original authenticity from the divine writing desk.

Iasion

Here is another useful site for that :
http://www.greeknewtestament.com/index.htm

It has several Greek versions laid out for each passage - not the actual MSS, but the families (1550 TR, 1894 TR, Byzantine, Alexandrian, and the Vulgate and several English versions.)

Iasion