ksen

what percentage of the bible is still in question?

I've read figures that say that text critics are pretty confident that 95% of the text we have today is reflective of the originals which means that only 5% is still being debated.

Is this true?

If there are professional text critics on this site is that your view too?

I'm not asking about any of the doctrines being drawn from those texts. I just want to get a feel for where we stand as far as being confident that we have is an accurate copy of the originals.

Thanks.

Oh, if the thread wanders off into dicussing the import of the texts still in question that'd be fine with me too.

Cheerful Charlie

Uhmmmm, no. The gospels are a different subject from the prophets, or Paul's epistles, or the old testement et al. Blanket statements don't work, it is a lot more complex and complicated than that. We have no originals.
Some works, theTorah, are complex redactions of earlier works. As far as Kings, Chronicles etc, many works mentioned in these books are no longer existent. Not all Paul's epistles seem to be from Paul.

As far as the gospels go, Mark is the basic starting point, and we know that it has been tampered with, the additions of Mark 16:91-6 is well known. John's "woman taken in adultery tale" was an addition, in some manuscripts added to Matthew instead.

So there are no real blanket statements like you want that are reliable.
A lot of this will thus always being the realm of opinion, more or less educated.

Each book of the bible has to be taken seperate on its own terms with its own problems and its own specialists and experts.

CC

Julian

This post pertains only to the NT since I know nothing about OT textual criticism.

One could easily make a case that 100% of the text of the NT was disputed since pretty much every word has a variant reading somewhere. This is, of course, not a reasonable position to take. We need to establish what we mean when we say disputed text. Truly disputed text is marked in critical editions using brackets ([]) to indicate conjectures, and double brackets ([[]]) to indicate text which is almost certainly not from the autograph. Then there are disputed texts which are not marked, other than the apparatus variants, such as the Western Non-interpolations. Other problem readings could include some of the 'wilder' readings of the Western tradition.

I would say that probably less than 1% is seriously disputed, the remaining 99% doesn't really matter.

However, and that is a really, really BIG 'however,' we have no really early exemplars. Judging by some of the larger variants, the number and distribution of texts as a function of time, canonization issues, and other factors, it is very reasonable to assume (it is an assumption but a good one) that many profound variants were effected in the first century (of the existence of the text) or so and would have left no trace in the extant manuscripts. The Western Non-interpolations is a good example of a manifestation of an early split that pre-dates our manuscripts.

Although we have mostly very good correlation and agreement between our current manuscripts, we may, in fact, be further removed from the autographs than we think, although we would have no way of knowing this with a reasonable degree of certainty.

Julian

aa5874

That question may never be answered. But my answer is this, "Nothing can be ruled in or out. Every word must be examined thoroughly, since it is suspected of being tampered with."

Julian

How is that a meaningful or useful answer? First off, 'Nothing can be ruled in or out.' In other words, nothing can be ruled on, at all. It's a tautology that never gets resolved. ('It's either in or out.') That is clearly not the case. Every word must be examined thoroughly? Why? I mean, since we cannot rule on it, one way or another...? Could they have been tampered with? Sure. Are you saying that we cannot establish criteria?

I don't mean to appear harsh, but it sounds like you don't have an opinion on this but felt like posting something regardless. Maybe you could be more specific and comment on what is disputed and/or why? Why is this correct/wrong? Something other than, "we don't know nor can we tell but we should look at all of it, even though we end up in the same place."

Julian

ksen

Thanks Julian.

Does that mean that you would say that 99% of the NT is pretty much settled?

I just want to make sure I was reading you correctly.

Thanks again.

Julian

Yeah, I would say that is correct. Things will probably remain like that until we find a really early manuscript of a decent size. This is not overly likely to happen. I believe that the gospels were written in the first half of the second century. All we have that might (date is disputed) be from that time period is p52 which is the size of a stamp. There is no good reason to assume that the gospels were written in the first century and many reasons to assume that they weren't. I am babbling on about this because I want to stress that there is a huge difference between saying that only about 1% or so of our current critical text is disputed and saying that only 1% diverges significantly from the autographs. In other words, our texts are converging but they may not be converging on the autographs but rather a slightly later version. Remember, you have fewer archetypes the futher back you go.

Julian

hatsoff

Ksen, your question cannot be so simply answered, I'm afraid. Let's be clear that you're talking about textual integrity, and not historical reliability or even ascription authenticity. In that case, we can probably say that the New Testament is over 95% reliable in its current form--again, this is strictly textually speaking. The largest chunks of text in question are probably Mark 16:9-20 (& 21) and John 7:53-8:11. After that you've got your Johannine Comma, 1Thes 2:13-16 and a few others to chew over. Then we must ask ourselves whether or not John has been redacted from an earlier work, explore the Synoptics, and parse out Jude and 2 Peter. And that's just the New Testament.

You shouldn't just say that such-and-such percent of the Bible is "settled." Such sentiments are at best misleading.

gregor

Not to be obtuse, but I don't really understand the question. Let's break it down.

Mark - Is the question is the KJV/NRSV of Mark identical to the work product the first time a person wrote the text of a complete book called Mark? I don't know any way to ever answer that question. There may have been several written stories that could be considered proto-Mark. Are they "Mark?"

There may have been oral traditions floating around for 20 years. Are these "Mark?"

Maybe the earliest written "Mark" had a copy made of it. The copy was significantly different. The "original" was lost. All subsequent copies spring from copy 1. How are we to know what the original contained?

Maybe the earliest copy ended at 16:9, as many would argue.

I guess some could say with some degree of confidence that there appears to be a version that has given rise to several text families. To say that it is the "original" - whatever that means - seems kind of difficult to support.

The same discussion could apply to the remaining books.

Doug Shaver

I've seen those figures, too, many times.

What I have never seen is any explantion of how the figures were calculated. Until we get that explanation, the numbers are meaningless.