A Stable Flux

Bart Ehrman gave a good lecture on misquoting Jesus and the transmission of the bible through history. You can download a high quality video or audio version of this lecture from the itunes Istore for free (in the "Itunes U" section). Or you can watch a bootlegged copy on youtube here.
To transcribe a quotation from his lecture about New Testament manuscripts contradicting each other "The way i usually put it to my students is in comparative terms. There are more differences in our manuscripts then there are words in the New Testament." Even though the differences are usually small and insignificant there are still enough contradictions in manuscripts which significantly trouble lower textual criticism of the New Testament. Stating that there are only 400 contentious word differences in the New Testament manuscripts is a radical claim that I don't believe can be supported.

Roger Pearse

I feel that Ehrman is encouraging obscurantism here, then.

You see, there is only one manuscript of many works. Of course that means that there are no differences at all in the manuscript.

Yet we would consider the textual tradition of every such work rather fragile, compared to the massive attestation of NT mss. Random copyist errors mean that -- using Ehrman's criterion -- those works with the most manuscripts, and earliest mss, are those with most 'differences'.

Not compared to other texts.

It might be true, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

JoeWallack

JW:
Define "N.T.". What exactly is "N.T."?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Johnny Skeptic

What is your definition of "the Bible"? If the New Testamant Canon was not inspired by God,, then you have wasted decades of your life studying copies of documents that were not inspired by God.

However, as Toto noted,

In addition, as I said,

If early Christians were reasonably good copiers, why does that impress you? If Hindu writings were more accurately copies that New Testament writings, would you be a Hindu?

God wants people to hear the Gospel message, but only if another person tells them about it. Why is that?

Do you consider the spread of the Gospel message to be more important than the spread of a cure for cancer? If you invented a cure for cancer, and were able to make the cure available to everyone in the world who had cancer within one week, would you do so, or would you choose to allow the existing means of distributing cures for diseases to make the cure available to people who had cancer, which would result in needless suffering? Does God consider the spread of the Gospel message to be more important than the spread of a cure for cancer?

In the first century, the people who had the best chance to hear the Goispel message lived closed to Palestine. It is not likely that a loving God would show favoritism based upon geography.

It is an utterly absurd notion that a God would use copies of copies of ancient texts as a primary source of communicating with humans. What did early native American Indians know about the God of the Bible? All false relgions have to start in one place, and they have to be spread entirely by word of mouth. A true religion could easily start in many places at one time, thereby greatly increasing its credibility. A God could quickly and easily tell everyone in the world about his new religion himself. If there had been 10,000only begotten Sons of God instead of only one only begotten Son of God, the Christian church would be much larger than it is today. Consider the following Scriptures:

John 2:23

“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.”

John 3:2

“The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”

John 10:37-38

“If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.”

John 11:43-45

"And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him."

John 20:30-31

“And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

Those texts show that some people would not accept Jesus based upon his words alone, and that he provided them with tangible, firsthand evidence that convinced them to accept his words. Even after the Holy Spirit supposedly came to the church, in the NIV, Acts 14:3 says “So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.” Considering that Jesus had performed many miracles in front of thousands of people, including many miracles that were not recorded, and had appeared to hundreds of people after he rose from the dead, and had criticized his disciples for their unbelief, and that there were thousands of surviving eyewitnesses who were still around, and that the Holy Spirit had come to the church, I find it to be quite odd that God provided even more tangible, firsthand evidence. In my opinion, this brings into question the truthfulness of the claims.

Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following post that I made in another thread:

Surely the two issues are completely related in the opinions of inerrantists. Many if not the majority of Calvinists are inerrantists, not to mention lots of other Christians who are not Calvinists. Lee Merrill is an inerrantist. He once told me that if he came to believe that the Bible was not inerrant, he would give up Christianity.

Are you saying that you have spent decades of your life studying Biblical textual criticism without any concern at all for anything except that early New Testament documents were accurately copied? If your answer is yes, that will not convince me that such is the case. If there were contradictions regarding doctrinal issues, there is no way that you would not be concerned with that.

Are you concerned with whether or not Shakespeare's writings have been accurately copied?

Roger Pearse

There is no doubt some reason why you have now posted this to two threads. Please don't.

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

I've done a very quick estimate based on Appendix II in Nestle-Aland (which gives places where critical editions disagree).

This gives a very rough figure of 4,000 - 5,000 places where the text of the NT is disputed.

NB the vast majority, maybe 80-90 %, of these differences are trivial; most would have no consequences even on a very literal English translation.

Andrew Criddle

Sheshonq

Strawman. The NT isn't being positioned as mere literature. It's being positioned as divine, unerrant truth.

OF course the NT is ancient literature. But this particular piece of ancient literature has caused people to fight wars, re-architect society, laws, and their very lives.

arnoldo

Of course the NT is ancient literature written in the first century/early second century.

Johnny Skeptic

That will be fine if you will be so kind as to reply to my most recent post in the other thread.