One book about another Book

On Oct 2, 12:01*am, Jared wrote:
On Oct 1, 2:57*pm, Mark wrote:
[...]

Now apparently, the Sources Theory is being questioned
and disputed, as per the link in my OP.

I am pretty certain that the theories you've mentioned are
oversimplified, because it's clear from reading the thing that the
Bible has been revised extensively by one or more committees, more
than once.

On Oct 2, 8:14*am, Mark wrote:
On Oct 2, 12:01*am, Jared wrote:



On Oct 1, 2:57*pm, Mark wrote:
[...]

Now apparently, the Sources Theory is being questioned
and disputed, as per the link in my OP.

I am pretty certain that the theories you've mentioned are
oversimplified, because it's clear from reading the thing that the
Bible has been revised extensively by one or more committees, more
than once.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bibliographical Test for the Reliability of the New Testament

The bibliographical test is an examination of the textual transmission
by which documents reach us. In other words, since we do not have the
original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to
the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the
original and extant copy?

F. E. Peters points out that "on the basis of manuscript tradition
alone, the works that made up the Christians' New Testament were the
most frequently copied and widely circulated books of antiquity."

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

There are now more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New
Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other
early versions (MSS) and we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of
portions of the New Testament in existence today.

No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers
and attestation. In comparison, the Iliad by Homer is second with only
643 manuscripts that still survive. The first complete preserved text
of Homer dates from the 13th century.

The following is a breakdown of surviving manuscripts for the New
Testament.


Greek

Uncials
Miniscules
Lectionaries
Papyri
Recent finds
TOTAL

267
2,764
2,143
88
47
5,309 Extant Greek MSS

Latin Vulgate 10,000 plus
Ethiopic 2,000 plus
Slavic 4,101
Armenian 2,587
Syriac Pashetta 350 plus
Bohairic 100
Arabic 75
Old Latin 50
Anglo Saxon 7
Gothic 6
Sogdian 3
Old Syriac 2
Persian 2
Frankish 1

AUTHOR When Written Earliest Copy Time Span No. of Copies
Caesar 100-44 BC 900 AD 1,000 years 10
Livy 59 BC-AD 17 20
Plato (Tetralogies) 427-347 BC 900 AD 1,200 years 7
Tacitus (Annals) 100 AD 1100 AD 1,000 years 20 (-)
Pliny the Younger
(History) 61-113 AD 850 AD 750 years 7
Thucydides
(History) 460-400 BC 900 AD 1,300 years 8
Suetonius
(De Vita Caesarum) 75-160 AD 950 AD 800 years 8
Herodotus
(History) 480-425 BC 900 AD 1,300 years 8
Horace 900 years
Sophocles 496-406 BC 1000 AD 1,400 years 193
Lucretius Died 55 or 53 BC &nvsp; 1,100 years 2
Catullus 54 BC 1550 AD 1,600 years 3
Euripides 480-406 BC 1100 AD 1,500 years 9
Demosthenes 383-322 BC 1100 AD 1,300 years 200*
Aristotle 384-322 BC 1100 AD 1,400 years 49**
Aristophanes 450-385 BC 900 AD 1,200 years 10
* All from one copy
** Of any one work
The manuscript comparison

F. F. Bruce in The New Testament Documents vividly pictures the
comparison between the New Testament and ancient historical writings:
"Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in
manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other
ancient historical works. For Caesar's Gallic Wars (composed between
58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are
good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar's day. Of the
142 books of the Roman history of Livy (59 BC-AD 17), only 35 survive;
these are known to us from not more than 20 MSS of any consequence,
only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books II-IV, is as
old as the fourth century. Of the 14 books of the histories of Tacitus
(ca. AD 100) only four and a half survive; of the 16 books of his
Annuals, 10 survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant
portions of his two great historical works depends entirely on two
MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh.

"The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogues de Oratoribus, Agricola,
Germania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century. The History
of Thucydides (ca. 460-400 BC) is known to us from scraps, belonging
to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the
History of Herodotus (BC 488-428). Yet no classical scholar would
listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides
is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any
use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals."

Greenlee writes in Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism
about the time gap between the original MS (the autograph) and the
extant MS (the oldest copy surviving), saying that "the oldest known
MSS of most of the Greek classical authors are dated a thousand years
or more after the author's death. The time interval for the Latin
authors is somewhat less, varying down to a minimum of three centuries
in the case of Virgil. In the case of the New Testament, however, two
of the most important MSS were written within 300 years after the New
Testament was completed, and some virtually complete N.T. books as
well as extensive fragmentary MSS of many parts of the N.T. date back
to one century from the original writings."

Greenlee adds that "since scholars accept as generally trustworthy the
writings of the ancient classics even though the earliest MSS were
written so long after the original writings and the number of extant
MSS is in many instances so small, it is clear that the reliability of
the text of the N.T. is likewise assured."

Bruce Metzger in The Text of the New Testament cogently writes of the
comparison: "The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us
by the thinnest possible thread of transmission. For example, the
compendious history of Rome by Belleius Paterculus survived to modern
times in only one incomplete manuscript, from which the edito princeps
wa made - and this lone manuscript was lost in the seventeenth century
after being copied by Bealus Rhenanus at Amerbach. Even the Annals of
the famous historian Tacitus is extant, so far as the first six books
are concerned, in but a single manuscript, dating from the ninth
century. In 1870 the only known manuscript of the Epistle to
Diognetus, an early Christian composition which editors usually
include in the corpus of Apostolic Fathers, perished in a fire at the
municipal library in Strasbourg. In contrast with these figures, the
textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of
his material".

F. F. Bruce says: "There is no body of ancient literature in the world
which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New
Testament."

Geisler and Nix make a comparison of the textual variations between
the New Testament documents and ancient works: "Next to the New
Testament, there are more extant manuscripts of the Iliad (643) than
any other book. Both it and the Bible were considered 'sacred', and
both underwent textual changes and criticism of their Greek
manuscripts. The New Testament has about 20,000 lines."

They continue by saying that "the Iliad [has] about 15,600. Only 40
lines (or 400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt whereas 764
lines of the Iliad are questioned. This five percent textual
corruption compares with one-half of one percent of similar
emendations in the New Testament.

"The national epic of India, the Mahabharata, has suffered even more
corruption. It is about eight times the size of the Iliad and the
Odyssey together, roughly 250,000 lines. Of these, some 26,000 lines
are textual corruptions (10 percent)."

Benjamin Warfield in Introduction to Textual Criticism of the New
Testament quotes Ezra Abbot's opinion about nineteen-twentieths of the
New Testament textual variations, saying that they: "...have so little
support...although there are various readings; and nine-twentieths of
the remainder are of so little importance that their adoption or
rejection would cause no appreciable difference in the sense of the
passages where they occur."

Geisler and Nix make the following comment about how the textual
variations are counted: "There is an ambiguity in saying there are
some 200,000 variants in the existing manuscripts of the New
Testament, since these represent only 10,000 places in the New
Testament. If one single word is misspelled in 3,000 different
manuscripts, this is counted as 3,000 variants or readings."

Although he was dealing with fewer manuscripts than we have today,
Philip Schaff in Comparison to the Greek Testament and the English
Version concluded that only 400 of the 150,000 variant readings caused
doubt about the textual meaning, and only 50 of these were of great
significance. Not one of the variations, Schaff says, altered "an
article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly
sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of
Scripture teaching."

Fenton John Anthony Hort, whose life work has been with the MSS, says:
"The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised
above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation than seven-
eights of the whole. The remaining eighth, therefore, formed in great
part by changes of order and other comparative trivialities,
constitutes the whole area of criticism.

"If the principles followed in this edition are sound, this area may
be very greatly reduced. Recognizing to the full the duty of
abstinence from peremptory decision in cases where the evidence leaves
the judgment in suspense between two or more readings, we find that,
setting aside differences of orthography, the words in our opinion
still subject to doubt only make up about one-sixteenth of the whole
New Testament. In this second estimate the proportion of comparatively
trivial variations is beyond measure larger than in the former; so
that the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial
variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation,
and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text."

Geisler and Nix say, concerning the observations of Hort above, that
"only about one-eighth of all the variants had any weight, as most of
them are merely mechanical matters such as spelling or style. Of the
whole, then, only about one-sixtieth rise above 'trivialities', or can
in any sense be called 'substantial variations'. Mathematically this
would compute to a text that is 98.33 percent pure."

Warfield boldly declares that the facts show that the great majority
of the New Testament "has been transmitted to us with no, or next to
no, variation; and even in the most corrupt form in which it has ever
appeared, to use the oft-quoted words of Richard Bentley, 'the real
text of the sacred writers is competently exact; ...nor is one article
of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost...choose as
awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, out of the whole
lump of readings."

Schaff quotes both Tregelles and Scrivener: "We possess so many MSS,
and we are aided by so many versions, that we are never left to the
need of conjecture as the means of removing errata." (Tregelles, Greek
New Testament, "Protegomena," P.X.)

"'So far,' says Scrivener, 'is the copiousness of our stores from
causing doubt or perplexity to the genuine student of Holy Scripture,
that it leads him to recognize the more fully its general integrity in
the midst of partial variation. What would the thoughtful reader of
Eschylus give for the like guidance through the obscurities which vex
his patience and mar his enjoyment of that sublime poet?'"

F. F. Bruce in The Books and the Parchments writes that if no
objective textual evidence is available to correct an obvious mistake,
then "the textual critic must perforce employ the art of conjectural
emendation - an art which demands the severest self-discipline. The
emendation must commend itself as obviously right, and it must account
for the way in which the corruption crept in. In other words, it must
be both 'intrinsically probable' and 'transcriptionally probable'. It
is doubtful whether there is any reading in the New Testament which
requires it to be conjecturally emended. The wealth of attestation is
such that the true reading is almost invariable bound to be preserved
by at least one of the thousands of witnesses."

That textual variations do not endanger doctrine is emphatically
stated by Sir Frederic Kenyon (one of the great authorities in the
field of New Testament textual criticism): "One word of warning
already referred to, must be emphasized in conclusion. No fundamental
doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading...

"It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the
Bible is certain: Especially is this the case with the New Testament.
The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations
from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the
Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true
reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of
these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book
in the world.

"Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text
of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to
us, of Sophocles, of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our
knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts,
whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds,
and even thousands."

Gleason Archer, in answering the question about objective evidence,
shows that variants or errors in transmission of the text do not
affect GOD's revelation:

"A careful study of the variants (different readings) of the various
earliest manuscripts reveals that none of them affects a single
doctrine of Scripture. The system of spiritual truth contained in the
standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament is not in the slightest
altered or compromised by any of the variant readings found in the
Hebrew manuscripts of earlier date found in the Dead Sea caves or
anywhere else. All that is needed to verify this is to check the
register of well-attested variants in Rudolf Kittel's edition of the
Hebrew Bible. It is very evident that the vast majority of them are so
inconsequential as to leave the meaning of each clause doctrinally
unaffected."

Benjamin Warfield said, "If we compare the resent state of the New
Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we
must...declare it to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care
with which the New Testament has been copied - a care which has
doubtless grown out of true reverence for its holy words - such as
been the providence of GOD in preserving for His Church in each and
every age a competently exact text of the Scriptures, that not only is
the New Testament unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of
its text as actually transmitted and kept in use, but also in the
abundance of testimony which has come down to us for castigating its
comparatively infrequent blemishes."

The editors of the Revised Standard Version say: "It will be obvious
to the careful reader that still in 1946, as in 1881 and 1901, no
doctrine of the Christian faith has been affected by the revision, for
the simple reason that, out of the thousands of variant readings in
the manuscripts, none has turned up thus far that requires a revision
of Christian doctrine."

Burnett H. Streeter believes that because of the great quantity of
textual material for the New Testament, "the degree of security
that...the text has been handed down to us in a reliable form is prima
facie very high."

Frederic G. Kenyon continues in The Story of the Bible: "It is
reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these
discoveries (of manuscripts) and all this tudy is to strengthen the
proof of the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that
we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of
GOD."

Millar Burrows of Yale says: "Another result of comparing New
Testament Greek with the language of the papyri is an increase of
confidence in the accurate transmission of the text of the New
Testament itself."

Burrows also says that the texts "have been transmitted with
remarkable fidelity, so that there need be no doubt whatever regarding
the teaching conveyed by them."

I believe one can logically conclude from the perspective of literary
evidence that the New Testament's reliability is far greater than any
other record of antiquity.

- Josh McDowell

---
Mark

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 05:14:27 -0700 (PDT), Mark wrote:

On Oct 2, 12:01*am, Jared wrote:
On Oct 1, 2:57*pm, Mark wrote:
[...]

Now apparently, the Sources Theory is being questioned
and disputed, as per the link in my OP.

I am pretty certain that the theories you've mentioned are
oversimplified, because it's clear from reading the thing that the
Bible has been revised extensively by one or more committees, more
than once.

http://gayincarolina.jottit.com/

There will be more coming since more Mark is better than Less Mark. So
I have been constantly told.

Mark The More

On Oct 2, 8:59*am, Mark wrote:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 05:14:27 -0700 (PDT), Mark wrote:
On Oct 2, 12:01*am, Jared wrote:
On Oct 1, 2:57*pm, Mark wrote:
[...]

Now apparently, the Sources Theory is being questioned
and disputed, as per the link in my OP.

I am pretty certain that the theories you've mentioned are
oversimplified, because it's clear from reading the thing that the
Bible has been revised extensively by one or more committees, more
than once.

http://gayincarolina.jottit.com/

There will be more coming since more Mark is better than Less Mark. So
I have been constantly told.

Mark The More

On Oct 2, 8:29*am, Mark wrote:
On Oct 2, 8:14*am, Mark wrote:



On Oct 2, 12:01*am, Jared wrote:

On Oct 1, 2:57*pm, Mark wrote:
[...]

Now apparently, the Sources Theory is being questioned
and disputed, as per the link in my OP.

I am pretty certain that the theories you've mentioned are
oversimplified, because it's clear from reading the thing that the
Bible has been revised extensively by one or more committees, more
than once.- Hide quoted text -

[...]
Burrows also says that the texts "have been transmitted with
remarkable fidelity, so that there need be no doubt whatever regarding
the teaching conveyed by them."

I believe one can logically conclude from the perspective of literary
evidence that the New Testament's reliability is far greater than any
other record of antiquity.

If there are a lot of versions and not much difference between them,
that doesn't prove the source became static at the time it is supposed
to originate from. Maybe one of the committees I mentioned succeeded
in eradicating other variants, in which case there's no telling
whether one of them was more true to the earlier manuscripts.