Migrant Passages in the Synoptics

The Blue Book. If you're not using the Blue Book, then it depends on what translation you have, so on and so forth. And you may recall that we had some military men with us last week, and after the study, one of them came up to me and said, I'll be listening on Sermon Audio next week, because I've never heard a really understandable explanation of that particular textual variance.

So I sort of felt a certain weight of responsibility to go into a little more detail in regards to this, and I do know that when I travel around, as I do a lot of that, I do mention that I will explain these types of things to our Sunday School class, that you're all world famous for being patient, for putting up with me, and allowing such obscure conversations in Sunday School as textual variance.

But there is some method to my madness as well, and that is, I am firmly convinced, and we have a lot of visitors with us this morning, or a lot of folks that are not here regularly, so try to get a deep seat in the saddle, and just survive here for a moment, and you'll eventually figure it out, I think.

Why Christians Must Face Textual Variants

I am thoroughly convinced that the days when Christians could comfortably ignore issues that are uncomfortable to us, have passed. For example, when I'm preaching on Sundays, we're dealing with texts that are clearly uncomfortable to deal with.

We're talking about homosexuality, and the Holiness Code, and all sorts of topics that, to be honest with you, would never have been raised, talked about, or almost whispered about, in my grandparents' day in church.

But while those are difficult topics because of the nature of them, another area that we simply cannot ignore any longer are the footnotes at the bottom of our page. These are the very texts that are raised as objections.

In two weeks from today, in the afternoon, I'll be flying over to California, and on Monday, I'll be speaking at the Masters Academy's International Symposium on Global Inerrancy, the importance of inerrancy to global missions, and my task is to talk about what Muslims need to know.

And hence, I'll be talking about the fact that in doing missions work to the Muslim world, one of the most important things that must be addressed is our missionaries, our people involved in that kind of work need to know why they believe what they believe, where the New Testament came from, why we can trust it, and that means we need to know about these issues.

And we can't stick our head in the proverbial sand on these topics. I'm reminded of a one-star review I read this week of my book on the Quran on Amazon. I love Amazon book reviews. They're just so scintillating and, in fact, normally so irrelevant.

But my book has two one-star reviews, which is the lowest review you can give. And one was from a Muslim, shockingly enough, that finished saying, stop attacking Islam. And then the other one was from a quote-unquote Christian.

It started off his review by saying, I've never even cracked the binding of this book and I never will. And the whole review was about how we should not poison our minds with anything. We should just read the Bible.

We should know anything about anything else. Don't read any other books. And so we shouldn't read any books by James White. But I'm reminded of that mindset that there are certain people who have that.

And unfortunately, when it comes to the text of the New Testament, there are a lot of good people who have that mindset. We don't like the little notes at the bottom of the page. We don't know why they're there.

We have certainly discussed this in the past, maybe not in the recent past. Maybe I need to redo my New Testament reliability presentation in the not-too-distant future. It's been a number of years.

We've got a lot of folks here. It's my most popular presentation when I travel around the world. And so it should be one that I do more than once here. But the fact of the matter is that we have two major textual traditions represented in the English translations in the group today.

If you have the King James or the New King James translation of the Bible, please let me know. If you have anything else... Okay, it's about 60 -40. The King James and the New King James are based upon the same printed Greek text, which is generally known as the Textus Receptus or the TR.

There is no one TR. The TR is a family of printed texts. Mainly going back to the first seven printed Greek texts in the history of the world. The five editions of Erasmus between 1516 and 1535. The 1550 Stephanus text.

I have a 1550. Actually, I think I've brought it in. Maybe you all remember a number of years ago. I'll have to bring that back in again sometime too. An actual 1550 text. And the 1598 text by Theodor Beza.

Beza is a name you've probably heard before because he was Calvin's successor in Geneva. And those were the seven printed... Those are not manuscripts. Those are printed texts. They were based upon between half a dozen and a dozen Greek manuscripts.

They were primarily based upon a 12th century manuscript. So they don't go all the way back toward the originals, shall we say, as far as time goes. And that particular Greek text became very popular.

And is still very popular amongst a number of reformed folks. Who would say, well, if it was good enough for the Westminster divines, if it was good enough for the 1689 writers, it's good enough for me.

And we'll just stick with that. Problem is, of course, that we don't have just half a dozen to a dozen Greek manuscripts today. We have, last I checked, around 5 ,771. Not all of those go from Matthew to Revelation.

The older they are, the more fragmentary they are. People wonder why that is, but I always respond to that by saying, well, let's see how good you look in 1800 years. And, but, you know, some of them do, are the entire New Testament.

But many of the oldest ones are just fragments of portions of the New Testament, or even just portions of passages, as you get into the very oldest fragments. Some of you, how many of you heard about the Egyptian funerary mask story that came out about three weeks ago?

One, two, three, four. It hasn't been published yet, but even CNN picked up on it, which is why I ask. But a number of us have known about this for years, but there has been some finds of some fragments from the New Testament.

At least one of which, I'm not sure if all of them are from this, but at least one of which is from an Egyptian funerary mask. You might say, now why in the world would you find New Testament manuscripts in an Egyptian funerary mask?

Well, less rich people in Egypt would, everyone wanted a funerary mask. And if you were a rich person, it would be made out of gold. A little less rich person would be plated in gold. And if you were just a regular old person, it would probably be made out of paper mache.

And to make paper mache, you take paper, you know, normally what we would use would be like newspaper. And that's important in the creating of the paper mache. Well, they have found some funerary masks, and as they were looking inside them, they realized you could still read the papyri that had been used to make them.

And they found a method of separating out the various pieces without dissolving the lettering on the actual pieces of papyri. And lo and behold, there are fragments of the New Testament in here. Which would make sense, I mean, if you're still a pagan, I mean, because that's an Egyptian funerary rite, would be a pagan funerary rite, you're not going to have any interest in the Christian scriptures.

And it says mainly the poorer people have those kinds of things, and you wouldn't care what you used to make your funerary mask out of. And so, lo and behold, some are saying, this hasn't been proven yet, but some are saying, that they have found fragments specifically of the Gospel of Mark.

And it's interesting to note that up until this find, the most widely documented of the New Testament books, of the Gospels, I'm sorry, the most widely documented of the Gospels in the early papyri was John.

And Mark was the least. Even though the current scholarly theory is that Mark was the earliest written, though I'm not one of the big fans of that particular theory. In fact, the earliest, the one that most scholars agree is the earliest manuscript papyri fragment that we have is from John chapter 18.

And so, interestingly enough, this fragment that has been found is from Mark. And what is interesting about this kind of a find is that if you can separate out other pieces of the papyri and find out what they came from, some of them might be dated.

They might be receipts, they might be things that refer to such and such a date. And what that does, is that doesn't tell you when the mask was made, but it tells you it couldn't have been any earlier than this particular date that was used in that material.

So you can get a lot better idea of exactly the dating of something like this in that kind of a context. Again, it hasn't been published yet. We're going on these little tidbits that are being released slowly.

It really hasn't been handled, I think, overly well. But that's what's going on. According to them, then they are saying that these fragments are from Mark or from the first century. Now, for most of us, that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot other than to remind you that on average, for books written in this time period, around the time of Christ, books we call from antiquity, that the average, if you're talking about Plato, if you're talking about historical works like Pliny or Suetonius or Tacitus, some of the Greek historians, Homer, if you're talking about books like that, the average time between when it was written and the first copy we have, either in part or in whole, is between 5 and 900 years.

That's the average for everything else. On average, it's half a millennium at the earliest before we have a manuscript copy of one of these books. So, if we have, if we actually now have a fragment of Mark from the first century, not only would this put Mark's writing, it would push Mark's writing, I think you'd have a hard time arguing any later than the 40s, but that would mean that we'd be within 50 years or 10 times earlier than the earliest of any other work of antiquity, which is just mind-boggling, though most people don't realize how mind-boggling that actually is.

Which is why there's going to be a lot of pushback and there's going to be a lot of arguments and there's going to be a lot of books written over the next number of years and just always remember something.

You will only hear the anti-faith conclusions in CNN and even Fox News and everything else. They'll never tell you about the response from the other side. You'll only hear one side, media. Just write that down, it's a fact.

So, it's going to take a while and I'm certainly interested in seeing what the result of all this is going to be, but that's what we're looking at. So, anyway that aside aside the modern Greek text known as the Nestial and 28th edition or the UBS 5th edition anybody have any of those?

I know we have some Greek students in here. Anybody carrying their Greek New Testament with them today? No? Nobody? Most of them I think are probably over teaching someplace. I know that Warren normally has his and Casey and stuff like that.

Anyway those Greek New Testaments are based upon all of those manuscripts plus the Latin Vulgate there were early translations into the old Latin and Syriac and Boheric and so on and so forth. It takes into consideration a very wide variety of information.

The Textual Tradition Behind Modern Greek New Testaments

All that to give you a background to migrant passages. There are two substantial blocks of text in the New Testament that appear in more than one place in ancient manuscripts of the New Testament. What do I mean by that?

Well, one of them you probably already know about. I've talked to you about it before. It is, as Dan Wallace describes it, his favorite story that's not actually in the Bible. It's official name is the Pericopae Adulterae that is the story of the woman caught in adultery, John 7, 53 through 811.

Remember just a couple weeks ago, as we read through the Gospel of John it may have even been last week I made comment on the fact that since we're reading the New King James from the pulpit that we read John 7, 53 through 8, 11 and that in reality the first Greek manuscript that contains that is from the 5th century and it is the most notoriously unreliable of the ancient manuscripts.

It's called Codex Beze Cantabrigiensis and it's sort of the living Bible of the ancient world and what is significant, extremely significant about that story is that not only does it appear in some manuscripts elsewhere in John in other words it doesn't follow 7, 52 there are some other places where it pops up someplace else in the Gospel of John but most importantly to me there are two families of manuscripts.

One is called family one, it's called family 13 for our manuscripts and that particular story is not even found in John in those manuscripts it's found in Luke in two different places so there's at least four different spots that that particular story has found a place in New Testament manuscripts well that to me is almost an open and shut case in regards to this particular text there is no other explanation that I can possibly think of as to why this story would appear in different places other than it was an extremely popular story and if movies about Jesus are any indication today it is a very popular story Mel Gibson managed to sneak it into the Passion of the Christ movie when it really didn't have any place there anyways so it had to become a flashback but it still ended up in there someplace so it's an extremely popular story like Dan Wallace says, it's his favorite story that's not in the Bible and so it seems to have been a story that a lot of people knew about it was passed along orally but it was always looking for a place to land and it eventually did in later manuscripts but the earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospels of John or Luke, all of them prior to the 5th century do not contain this particular text and so it is a clear later edition and when I have been asked, as I have been asked many many times in various contexts if you were preaching through the Gospel of John would you preach John 753 through 811 as scripture that's normally combined with.

Would you preach Mark 16 9 through 20 as scripture. Because those are the two largest textual variants in the New Testament those are the only two large blocks of text that are variants in the New Testament and it's the longer ending of Mark and I say longer ending because there's about 4 or 5 different endings of Mark when you look at the manuscript evidence but would you would you preach these texts as scripture.

And my very consistent answer has always been no. I would not. I would explain why probably have a Bible study on the subject like we're sort of doing right now and have done so in the past. I know when I've done my New Testament reliability presentation in the past we've talked about John 753 through 811, it's not the first time for a lot of you I'm sure George could look up somewhere in his encyclopedic notes the last time that we mentioned something about this.

But I would not because I could not defend it and of course for me I have a rather interesting standard, I could not defend its originality even if I believed in it in meaningful debate against an equally well prepared debater just couldn't do it.

The evidence is too strong against it. Well interestingly enough when I talk about migrant passages the only other migrant passage I know of that has the same kind of character to it is the one that we encountered last Sunday morning and that we're looking at now specifically Luke chapter 22 verses 43 through 44 you will see it.

Well we didn't pass out the blue things. But those of you who have it it's on page 297 at the bottom and it says, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him and being in agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.

And so these two verses are in. Well I'd be interested, let me just do a quick survey. If you have the New King James, there is a text note and it says something along the lines of NU text omits these verses, correct?

New King James verse, yes? Ok, are there brackets around it or how is that indicated? There's not brackets just a footnote at the bottom but there's no brackets around the text. Yes sir NU means Nestle Island United Bible Society, so it's the modern Greek text.

New American Standard. Any modern translation uses the same text platform. The Nestle Island text and the United Bible Society text are two different printed editions but as far as the actual text contained in them, they're identical.

Punctuation is different, how it's laid out is different but the actual wording is identical just how they punctuate it, paragraph it. Yes. Yes, it is right. So if you have NASV double brackets no brackets at all just a footnote but no double brackets around it.

Does anybody have brackets? ESV anybody? ESV doesn't interesting, ok always good to look at the footnotes. Let me just give you some of the data here real quickly and then explain the migrant passage comment on the board when scholars look at a variant in the text and if any of you have seen my New Testament reliability presentation, for example when I was in Norway a few weeks ago, I did it for four nights in a row, had all the time to tell all my stories and stuff it was enjoyable to do.

It's on YouTube at various places, I did it at Trinity Law School a few years ago and they put up a nice version of it but I explained there that there's about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 what are called meaningful and viable New Testament textual variants, now what you'll hear from most folks is that there are 400 ,000 variants, and that's true but 99 of them are completely meaningless couldn't even be explained to someone outside of the Greek language almost all of them are movable news.

Scribes couldn't understand movable news, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of places where whether they included the movable new or not, they did or didn't. And for those of you who don't know what a movable new is it's the same thing in English if you say a apple or an apple, you're supposed to say an apple but it doesn't change the meaning whether you say a apple or an apple and Greek has the same thing called a movable new anyway there are about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 meaningful, that is they would impact the translation and viable, which means they could represent the original variants in the New Testament some of which are very simple to resolve, some are more complex and when you look at one of these, when scholars look at one of these variants and most of down, if you've got the blue book, when you look down at the bottom of the page all those little, almost all the those notes down there are either cross references translational references or some of them are textual references to where they're giving you in English what the variant would be between different manuscripts.

When we look at them we recognize that there are different families of manuscripts. Families of manuscripts. The basic three families are the Alexandrian, the Western and the Byzantine. The Byzantine is by far the largest because manuscripts only continue to be produced in the Byzantine area after the expansion of Islam, so starting about the 9th century and so the vast majority of manuscripts come from the area around Byzantium and hence they have a Byzantine flavor or character to them.

But when we look at them we want to see what did the earliest manuscripts say because obviously the closer you can get to the original, the better. A 50th generation copy just simply doesn't have as much weight as to representing the original as a 3rd generation copy does a copy of a copy of a copy is better than a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and so on down the road now that doesn't necessarily mean the oldest are always the best.

Because we know for example two manuscripts, 1739 and 1881 which are clearly 10th century copies of a 2nd or 3rd century text. So there the age isn't so much the issue as what it was a copy of and so the number of generations is the issue when it comes to the weight that a manuscript has when it comes to these things but you want to look at that issue but you also want to look at well is this just one family.

Does only one family lack this verse or contain this verse and the other families don't. So when you find a variant that has early early attestation, the earliest manuscripts and it's found in all the families.

Wow that's heavy duty argument in favor of that particular reading. I'll give you an example. Another interesting statement we're going to be getting to soon that has theological relevance is Jesus' statement.

Father forgive them for they know not what they do that is a textual variant. Now let me ask you other than the people who have already heard me talk about this but I'll include you because maybe you forgot me talking about this.

How many of you knew that was a textual variant before I mentioned it to you right now. Don't feel bad, I graduated from seminary without knowing that so and obviously I've always had a deep interest in textual variants.

Father forgive them for they know not what they do is not found in early manuscripts and all the way across the spectrum all the families of manuscripts have manuscripts that do not contain that phrase.

And so that's a real important illustration because man have I seen some huge theological edifices built upon that particular phrase without ever acknowledging that some of the earliest manuscripts and a wide variety of manuscripts do not contain that phraseology.

Even though you look it up there will be a note down at the bottom of the page. We just skip them when we come to this one. When we come to Luke chapter 22 this is omitted in two in two of the well let me put it this way.

It's definitely omitted by p75. The p75 is just without a doubt the most carefully made early gospels manuscript that we possess. The author was very careful as a copyist and it does not contain verses 43 and 44.

In Luke chapter 22 there is another papyri manuscript known as p69. Unfortunately this part of that page is missing. But what scholars are able to do. He was writing on this part of the page. He averaged this number of letters per line because remember back then they wrote in what's called majuscule text all capital letters no spaces between words almost no punctuation.

So you can pretty much go ok. He's writing 54 letters per line on average on this page and the bottom of the page is missing. And you go to the top of the next page and you go ok. Alright let's figure out how many letters would normally go in that space.

And you could not have put verses 43 and 44 into that space on p69. So it'll be cited but it's cited with the little letters VID VID VIDEMUS. It seems we're not certain because it's not there but we've got pretty good reason for saying no.

P69 didn't have this either because it's two verses and there wasn't enough room for that to fit given he would have had to stuck extra lines in or something along those lines. So the earliest gospel manuscript we have of this text which is p75 and possibly p69 does not contain it in Sinaiticus.

It's crossed out by the very first corrector and we know that very first corrector was working on the manuscript immediately after the first author. So before the manuscript left the scriptorium it was crossed out.

Um Alexandrinus does not have it and Alexandrinus is Byzantine in the New Testament. All the early Byzantine manuscripts do not contain this particular text either. But here's where this comes in family 13 doesn't have it in Luke but family 13 does have it after Matthew 26 39.

So this story which seems to have been an oral tradition in family 13 isn't in Luke but it is in Matthew after Matthew 26 39. Now that doesn't mean that someone moved it that it was in their copy of Luke and they moved it to Matthew instead.

It was undoubtedly a very popular story. And after narrating Jesus' prayer in Matthew 26 39 the scribe familiar with this story continues that story on and includes the angel and the great sweat which by the way the proper way of reading the Greek there is not.

He was sweating blood. He was sweating drops as if blood. So it was. It was tremendous agony that he was in. Not that it was. Unfortunately our Mormon friends think that he was actually sweating blood and that's why they believe that the atonement was actually accomplished in the garden of Gethsemane and only finished on the cross.

That was due to Joseph Smith's ignorance of what was actually being said. But anyway so in family 13 this is actually found in Matthew 26 39. And there are a number of early translations of the New Testament that likewise do not contain verses 43 and 44.

Now it is early. There's no question that it was a it was known to certain early writers as far as the story goes. But just as the woman taken adultery was a story known to writers before it appears in any manuscript of the New Testament this is in the same boat as that and as such should always be noted.

But again if you were to ask me well could you base any dogma on these words. I would say no. You cannot. No you cannot. You just simply don't have the basis for doing that. I'm not sure what dogma you'd want to base on anyways but it is interesting to me that this text is used by my Muslim friends against the deity of Christ.

Why would it be used against the deity of Christ. Well because God doesn't need to be strengthened by angels. And not only that my Muslim friends have a complete and utter lack of understanding of what's going on in the Garden of Gethsemane they see Jesus afraid of death.

And in fact one of the reasons that my Muslim friends would say that the entirety of the New Testament is unreliable is because Jesus was a mighty prophet of God and a mighty prophet of God would not do what Jesus did.

He would not cry out from the cross. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani he would not sweat as it were profusely in the garden and have to have an angel come and strengthen him because as a prophet of God he would have supreme confidence in God and therefore would not undergo these kinds of things.

And since Jesus was a prophet of God then Luke and Matthew and Mark and John cannot be accurate representations of what actually happened because they contradict the Muslim understanding of what a prophet would do in that context.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to deal with this a couple years ago when I did that quick trip over to Dublin to do those two debates at Trinity College and University College University College Dublin, yeah in both debates during the question and answer time a Muslim raised Jesus' statement.

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As objections against what I was saying. I love when they do that because now I have a minimum two minutes, maybe three minutes of free time to preach the gospel to Muslims, it's great, it's wonderful and I'm just ready to roll with it, I hope you are too I hope you know what was going on when Jesus said that he was quoting Psalm 22 and you need to why do you think I read Psalm 22 before the Lord's Supper so often?

Probably will this evening especially after today because it's a Messianic Psalm and how does it end? It ends with the vindication of the servant and Jesus was not saying that God the Father had abandoned him, his very next words are in the second person, Father into your hands I commit my spirit at the very point of his highest obedience, Jesus isn't saying I know it preaches real nice, but it's not biblical it sounds great but believe me if that were a biblical concept, the writer of the Hebrews would have picked up on that, never did here at his greatest point of obedience, what the Son does is he begins one of the songs that the people of Israel should have known and just as all I'd have to say is something along the lines of amazing grace, how sweet the sound or for us, we have how sweet and awful is the place, something like that, which only Reformed Baptists would get and Orthodox Presbyterians I don't have to finish the whole song to communicate that I want you to think about what this song says, well that's what Jesus is doing in Psalm 22, he is the servant he is fulfilling this and he will be justified, he will be vindicated, just as it happens in Psalm 22 and so I get to preach to the Muslims at that point but at the same time I get to explain to them the fact that the reason Jesus is in such agony in the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is not fear of death it's not fear of death.

Jesus does know what's coming and Jesus makes it very plain that he is going to do the will of the Father and that he gives his life freely, he gives his life voluntarily, so what is it? Why pray that this cup pass from him?

It's not death. I understand why the Muslims don't get it because they don't understand what happened on the cross and sadly they rarely talk with Christians who understand what happened on the cross even, but if we just had a proper theological understanding of the great transaction of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

That's why the sweat that's why the agony he who knew no sin was made to be sin he who had perfect communion with the Father as the sinless son of God would bear the brunt of the wrath of God against sin in behalf of his people.

It's not physical death, it's not the beating it's not the the horror of crucifixion itself it's what was going to happen because of that in his taking the place of his people that causes this tremendous agony on his part, that's the only explanation there is and it's the only explanation the New Testament gives to us but the Muslim doesn't understand that.

The Muslim can't understand that and that's why they object to it and unfortunately one of the main reasons that they don't understand otherwise is the vast majority of Christians with whom they've had conversation have a sentimental view of the cross rather than a biblical and theological view of the cross first and foremost.

Sentiment is great and wonderful as long as it's based upon divine truth when it's not frequently gets in the way frequently gets in the way the reality is every element of historical evidence we have demonstrates that the New Testament was transmitted to us written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple audiences.

There was never a single telephone line game to begin with when Paul wrote his epistle to the Colossians he said read the letter that's coming from Laodicea. You ever read Laodiceans? I guarantee you have.

Colossians 4 .16. It's the book of Ephesians. Ephesians was a circular letter meant to be read by all the churches in the Lycus River Valley and when that letter would arrive they would make a copy and send the copy on or maybe the original but they'd keep one.

The point is you have multiple lines of transmission phone line is what's whispered in the ear going through just one line. The New Testament was never transmitted in a single line what is written on a page is significantly less capable of being twisted than what's whispered in the ear because I may not even understand what you said and since you have multiple lines you'd have to have the same editing going on in each line to change something.

That's not a possibility and so all the historical evidence demonstrates and this is one of the main points I make in my New Testament reliability presentation is that the multifocality the fact you have multiple authors multiple times, multiple audiences there was never a time when any of the New Testament texts existed in that single phone line game.

It's just not how the New Testament came to us. So it's a common misunderstanding but it is a misunderstanding. I will have to think about bringing my projector in and doing the whole thing for you since I've raised these issues but unfortunately we are completely out of time and have gone a little late so let's close our time with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father we do thank you for the opportunity and the freedom that we have. We thank you that you have given us such a wealth of information that we might know what has happened in the past, that we are not dependent upon a particular man or group of men to tell us what to believe but we can examine these things for ourselves and yes Lord even at times struggle but Lord we thank you for that.

We thank you that we can stand firmly upon your truth. We ask that as we go into worship now you'd open our hearts and our minds. Make us to understand your truth and to worship your right we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.