NT Textual Variants

It would be good to To do so again, and it's going to take a little while. It's be a tough day for me and for you. We have this in Sunday school. I warned everybody on Facebook this morning I've got this in Sunday school, and then I'm preaching both services, and we're dealing with how to map the moral civil and ceremonial laws in the mosaic code and that's really difficult to do so it's going to be a challenge, so I Notice that Ray brought extra coffee.

For his family. I warned everybody bring your a-game attention spans because this is going to be a challenge. But hopefully one that will be of use to you. Let's start off. Who has. Who can can. Who has a ESV or.

Well, you know we have codex rickettonius right here. We have the keeper of the codex. Right here. I don't have my gloves on but but may I may I this is this is codex rickettonius. We will be looking at a number of ancient manuscripts and this is definitely one of them.

Codex rickettonius and. So it's since it is the definitely the earliest manuscript we have amongst us right now. With the keeper of the of the of the of the codex. Read for us John chapter. You can all look it up a gospel of John chapter 5 verse 4.

Look up Gospel of John chapter 5 verse 4. I thought he might have to wear special gloves when handling such ancient documents.

I had to do that when I. You don't you don't.

That's probably just a glitch in your program, right, right, so. Do you do you have have something for us brother Ricketts? It's missing from the oldest manuscript in the room. Yes, yes. It's it is it is in a footnote.

Yes. It is in a footnote and Now if you have the King James or the New King James You have it right there in the text if you have the NIV which is what codex rickettonius is a early exemplar of New American Standard, I think does NASB have it in brackets.

Anybody have an NASB boy? It's not it's not in brackets. There's no, but it's in the text. Okay ESV Doesn't have it right? But no, okay, all right so This is the kind of issue that Causes people to ask questions now.

There's all the information you could possibly ever need about John 5 -4 right there. Clear to everybody. Probably not maybe to one or two in the room that have had the opportunity. But there's of course always someone who says it's all Greek to me.

That's just the oldest Oldest lamest joke in the book. I Just sort of stand around waiting for somebody to make it so I can make fun of them. Yes, sir. Right, right. All right, right. We will come back to look at this.

One of the reasons I put that up there is just to point out to you that it's that when we talk about these things Textual variations in a New Testament are not unknown to Christian scholars or ministers.

If you go back into the earliest history of the church, there is great discussion of These issues this is not something you will very often have people saying well people sweep this under the rug and Unfortunately, we help them with their accusations because the fact that generally you will not have much in the way of discussion of these topics within the vast majority of evangelical churches the reason for that is most ministers themselves are Uncomfortable with the subject.

It's not a subject that is necessarily Focused upon even if they they took a lot of Greek. It's generally Not dealt with in a in a real in-depth way so we sort of help but the reality is that certainly Christian scholarship has Dealt with this issue for a very very very very long time now.

The reality is as we all know Yeah, it depends. Well, we don't need to turn that one off. I don't think. Yeah, it's it's pretty close, you know folks up here taking notes and they've got enough light I think everybody up here.

Naturalism, Inspiration, and the Problem of Textual Skepticism

Okay. Okay. All right. We know that naturalistic materialism rules the day in academia if you can't put it under a microscope if you can't weigh it Then it simply doesn't exist and anything that does not presuppose an uncreated universe That can be explained solely on the basis of naturalism.

It's rejected a priori Christian claims such as that of inspiration, etc, etc are relegated to the arena of myth now I tried to go get the Cart this morning. It's all hooked up with a big old TV on top of it, and I just did not have time to unhook it.

So I do not have extra Speakers and so I do not know if I'm going to be able to play my videos and anybody be able to hear it I suppose if we're quiet enough, maybe if I turn the fan off or the overhead fan there, it might help but I'm going to try a clip here and We will see if if it's going to be loud enough to be to be heard.

We might all have to stop breathing for a second. But let's let's see if this let's see if this works.

These thousands of Centuries later, they have all these changes in it. And so this Realizes that we didn't have the original that we that some places. We don't know what the original said. That is quite a profound effect on my my faith that these words have been given by God.

No, what does that do. Because to my mind as I read your book and learn more about the Bible suddenly became Okay.

So there's um, I don't think we're gonna be able to see this. Yeah, that's just not gonna be loud enough. Um, there you had Bart Ehrman on Sadly one of the sources of news for a younger generation. Talking about how all we have are copies of copies of copies of copies.

We don't know what it originally said notice. He said in some places I think he'd probably limit that to maybe a dozen places in the entirety of the New Testament, but bit as it may. That's the kind of presentation that is being made.

All across our land all across the English-speaking world. Believe me Bart Ehrman is the favorite apostate Christian of all Muslim apologists in the world who liberally quote him with regularity and.

So this is what this is what we're facing. This is what our young people are facing in universities. The community colleges high schools and junior high schools anymore for that matter. Not just in the realms of quote-unquote higher learning.

And so we have is we have scholars. Spinning the evidence particularly in media. Appearances they emphasize that all we have are copies of copies of copies. From hundreds of years after the originals now those of you who have seen this I would appreciate if you would not ruin The presentation by answering all the questions ahead of time.

That is unfair unkind and possible grounds of church discipline but given that we have approximately 5 ,000 771 Approximation, right? That could change next week. Especially due to the fact that Dan Wallace and the Center for the Study of New Testament manuscripts is out in the field.

Photographing manuscripts and hence they're constantly finding new ones. Or they're finding out the one that they're photographing Is actually part of one that we knew previously and so the number goes up and down as they're doing this kind of this kind of work, but Assuming the current number of five thousand seven hundred and seventy one Handwritten Greek manuscripts.

Now when I've talked about a handwritten Greek manuscript. We're talking about from the earliest that we have all the way through the age of printing even as late as the 17th century. Because took a while for printing to to catch on basically you didn't just have a sudden proliferation of printing presses and so on and so forth.

But. And and all those manuscripts are not necessarily of the entirety of the New Testament some are just fragments. Some contain the entire New Testament keeping that in mind 5 ,771 catalogued manuscripts at this point in time.

How many Variants. Now what is a variant. A variant is any place where one manuscript reads differently from another. It can be word order. It can be spelling it can be including a verse not including a verse including a word not including a word.

Having a word before another word. Any any thing like that amounts to a Variant a single variant how many variants do you think and if you know again? Please allow others who have not studied this yet to experience the joy.

Or the terror depending on how you look at it. How many variants do you think would be represented in those five thousand seven hundred and seventy-one? Handwritten manuscripts, you're all sitting there going.

We've already seen this before so we're not going to say a word. Yes, sir. I Don't know, but maybe four hundred thousand. Yeah, okay, who whispered who whispered who held that who held the sign up? Yeah, okay, so it is Approximately four hundred thousand.

Yes I Ruined that. It is interesting because normally When I when I the last time I gave this presentation for example. I gave it in Norway over about four nights. I Will I will get guesses? From like five to a hundred five to a hundred.

As the number of variants and when you just think about five thousand seven Written documents. And I've always wanted to do this. I haven't ever done it, but it would be fascinating to to hand out a or just just use the bulletin and Have Have the the first row here copy the bulletin and then give their copies to the next row and have the next row copy the Bulletin and and all the way on to the back of the room and then see how many variants develop by the time we get to the back.

It would it normally takes way too much time because most of us can't copy very fast and and in fact most of us don't Do so little handwriting anymore. That our hands start cramping up after a very short period of time.

But it is interesting that the numbers are rarely high. They are almost always very low but there are about 400 ,000 variants. Now there in the nestle and 27th edition. There are hundred thirty eight thousand one hundred and sixty two words.

I think The nestle on 28th is like a hundred eight thousand two hundred something. So there's a a few more in that particular edition. But you'll be told that's nearly three variants per word because think about if you only got a hundred thirty eight thousand words.

You got four hundred thousand variants, then what you're told is that's three options for every word. Now that's not what it is, but that's how it's explained and if you're talking with someone who has said well look, you know, I Took classes from so-and-so at Arizona State University and they told me this.

What they've probably been told is something along the lines of what I'm presenting to you and so one of the biggest challenges for us is to take somebody who has been given a Warped view even if it's based on some facts and tell the truth to them and Disabuse them of their confusion but the only way that we can disabuse someone of the confusion is to know what the facts are ourselves and Unfortunately, one of the reasons a lot of Christians don't know this is because they're too scared to face the reality of the history of Their text and that actually ends up really being a very very bad thing.

So we're confidently told no one can have any confidence the text they read today accurately reflects what was originally written and in fact, you'll see like graphics like this the blue there is the The number of words in the New Testament and then the red here is the number of variants.

And so man that looks that looks like the New Testament text is just hopelessly Corrupted and we could never really know what it originally said but what I'm gonna tell you over the next few weeks is what they don't tell you and what you need to know and what You need to be able to explain to someone else first of all 99 of all variants do not impact the meaning of the text variations in spelling and word order Make up the vast bulk of the textual variance.

So what I mean by that is that in the vast majority of instances unless you actually read the Language you would not be able to understand what the variation was because it does not translate into another language.

The most common example of this because it's the most common Textual variant I can't come up with other good examples other than this one because it's the most common one in the English language you are supposed to supposed to Say an apple and abacus.

And elephant you're supposed to have a an N Rather than a apple or a abacus to break up the vowels for pronunciation purposes well Greek had the same concept and it was called a movable and a lot of first-year Greek students just really do not like the movable new and a lot of the Scribes who copied the New Testament over the many centuries also did not like the movable new did not quite understand.

It's its purpose and its function and so Whether you say a apple or an apple doesn't change the meaning. It's just whether someone's going to give you a job or not I suppose. Well, unless you're down south and that doesn't make any difference at all.

So So that that's it there's a huge number of the variations are along those lines or whether you spell Capernaum one way or Capernaum another way. So spelling issues like that and of course there were a number of different ways to spell many of the ancient cities the idea of Standardized spelling is a modern thing.

Now young people you can't use that as an excuse to not not work on your spelling. It is a modern thing and in fact most of you are probably aware of the fact That John Wycliffe spelled his own name 12 different ways In documents that we that we possess today.

So the idea of standardization new idea. So if there's different spellings in the New Testament in by scribes down to the ages, that's that's hardly relevant and does not exactly.

Help us. So when you think about it, yes, sir. This is.

No, no, no, it's not a computer readout because like I said, even the number of manuscripts continues to change every day. This is based upon looking at it. We the manuscripts that have been thoroughly analyzed.

And looking at the number of variations from the standardized text and extend it out from there. There has there is no possible way as yet. It's going to change but there is no possible way as yet for any kind of Encyclopedic Analysis of all the testament manuscripts because we just don't have access to them.

In fact, that's one of the big issues that Dan Wallace and CS NPM has. No. No, no okay, like I said, it's it's it's you take the manuscripts that you do have full access to and you can do this in and Mathematically extending out from the number of variants you found in the ones that you have.

The ones that you have not as yet have that kind of full access to see. We've lost manuscripts in Iraq, for example, just over the past decade. There have been there been museums in Iraq that have been trashed by ISIS.

They're gone and that's why CS NTM is so focused upon going around the world and taking high-quality digital Photographers so it can be stored in the in the cloud so that you know war and so on so forth doesn't rob from us.

Some of the greatest, you know treasures that we that we have. So no, this is based upon extending out from what we have been able to do now. Interestingly enough of all works of antiquity. This is the most studied work of antiquity.

But the problem is we have more evidence for this particular document than for any other work of antiquity. We'll talk about that later on and so there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. But more work has been done on this than anybody else.

So there this isn't a whole lot of money in this either. Let's just be you know. You have to pay people and they have to be highly trained and it's it's difficult to do. So the 400 ,000 number is is an approximation as is the 99

It could be 98 Whatever we do know however. That if you take 1 of 400 ,000 at 4 ,000 meaningful textual variants out of 138 thousand 162 words. It's 2 .9 percent or one meaningful variant every three pages, but only half of these are viable now, what does this term? viable mean.

Well, I've used the illustration a number of times. Let's say in in the year 1279 Monk Bob one morning and monk Bob is now in his late 40s and Monk Bob His like most of us who are past that age ourselves realize that our arms keep getting shorter and shorter and It's it's very difficult to see things close up anymore.

And remember this is 1279. So the idea of progressive lenses or Anything else is yet future. And so monk Bob can't see it. Monk Bob gets up one morning and for some some reason on his way into the monastery Starbucks is closed.

And so he can't get his morning fix of caffeine and When he got out of bed for some reason his his kitty cat Was in the wrong place and he tripped over the kitty cat and and stubbed his toe and he's just had a rough morning.

And so he gets into his job of copying. And It's a cloudy day and it's not as bright as it could be and and he's not seeing so well. And he's not feeling so well because he didn't sleep well and I didn't get his coffee and and his toes throbbing.

And so he's a little distracted and so monk Bob Doesn't pay attention to what he's doing and he comes up with a reading in The manuscript he's copying because his mind's a million miles away that no one has ever seen before.

No one's ever seen this reading before he just he just completely flubs it now hundreds of years later we find Monk Bob's manuscript in a in a dusty corner of of an old library in Europe someplace. And we go.

Ah, here's a variation and it is a variant. But since it's never been seen in any other manuscript anywhere. It's not in any of the early translations of the New Testament. It's not in any of the manuscripts in the area around which Bob's was copied.

It's all alone. We would not say that it is viable. That is that it could be the original reading so when you look at the number of variants we have less than half of them are Actually the meaningful ones that actually impact the meaning of the text less than half of them are viable.

Or could actually go back and be the original and so what you then have is about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 viable meaningful New Testament textual variants. And so if you any any Greek New Testaments in the in the room today.

Then well, okay. Yeah. They're all they're all appearing on on on phones now. The people used to be holding up their Nessie Allen text of the UBS text or something like that. But if you look at a printed edition of the Greek New Testament.

You will see down at the bottom of the page these notes and I remember distinctly I was talking with my Greek professor about it just this this past weekend weekend before this that I Remember the day I remember where I was sitting which direction I was facing what room I was in and Fleming classroom building at Grand Canyon College.

When I'm when we open up the Greek New Testament, and I'm I'm looking at the page I put my hand up and I say dr. Baird. What are these notes down at the bottom of the page and he says well That's where the Greek manuscripts differ from one another and I was already I was already witnessing the Mormons and so on and so forth and I knew as soon as he said that That's important stuff and That's why I was.

He will tell you He's he's told me in years sense. They said ah he said after about three years you're already so far beyond me and textual critical stuff wasn't even funny. I just couldn't tell you that so I I dove into that stuff and Really Recognize the the importance so you've got about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 viable Meaningful New Testament textual variants, and so let's take a look at that graphic We had before now.

Here's a number of words, and there's a number of meaningful variants obviously. That's a very different picture than what we were looking at before now think with me for a moment. The more manuscripts you have for a particular work The more You will have if you only have if all we had was codex ricotonius if that's all we had.

How many textual variants we have? None. Because we have nothing to compare it to. Now a lot of people want to be told we have no textual variants. But what is the cost? Because think about it. What if that's all we had.

That's not a lot is it and if all you have is one manuscript then what must be true? That that one manuscript Perfectly represents the original because if you got nothing else. There's no way you can find out one way or the other.

So there are a lot of people that would like to have it to where you know we have this the holy place on the mountain and The special Bible monks have been there and and they're like the the Muslim dude in the mummy you know that you know they're there with their big swords, and they're defending the one manuscript and and against all sorts of monsters and stuff whatever and.

And if we want to know that we have to go to the mountain and and there's the what you know. And we'd have no questions. Really. If that was the only manuscript we had. Then can you can you hear the critics?

Well, what do you think those monks have been doing up there all this time? I mean seriously. How do you know they haven't changed anything and we'd have no way of knowing the only other way around it would be what?

Chisel it in stone. Now that really doesn't work well for evangelism. Spraying the gospel around the world you know we all have to go this one mountain and reference stuff. That's chiseled in stone. But that would be about the only other way around the issue that we're discussing and that is if you want a written Communication an oral communication a written communication you want if you want communication language to be portable and translatable.

Then these are the issues you have to deal with and every work of antiquity. Has the same issues that were that we're talking about and we'll compare the new testament with these later on so the more manuscripts you have.

The more variants you're going to have because once you have two manuscripts. Okay, there's some differences between the two once you have three. There's more once you have four. There's more, but what is better, and this is I?

Need to stick this into. I need since I have the clip. I need to remind myself to stick this in. But just this week. I'm going to be speaking a week from. Yeah, week from from tomorrow at the Masters Academy international symposium in California on inerrancy in the in the global church and one of the clips that I put together was one of my Muslim friends Adnan Rashid and Adnan and I did a debate on the transmission of the new testament text at a baptist church in London a few years ago and.

At one point he gets up, and he says James says that the free transmission of the new testament text is one of the greatest evidences of its reliability. He says that's the biggest blunder. I've ever heard in my life.

How can having thousands of people copying the manuscripts and making mistakes? Give you more certainty than what we have with the Quran. And he just doesn't understand. He's not thought it through we need to think it through because it's easy to go.

That does sound weird. I mean how could you say that having more manuscripts, but then you really start thinking about like well Yeah, the more you have. Then the more you can correct any one person's errors, so if you have if you have monk Bob.

But then you have a monk Jorge, and he's actually very good. Then if you have ten Jorge's to one Bob. They're going to give you all the evidence you need to see where Bob messed up. The more you have the more you can compare with one another and see the common types of scribal errors that are made.

And so the reality is the more you got the better it does. End up being we have so much. That's difficult to collate all the information. But that's unusual. I mean the new testament is so far beyond any other work of antiquity.

It's it's not even funny. Yes, sir. You want me to say the word Jorge? Yeah, that helped okay. Well Homer is the next is the next and I've got a really cool graphic. I'll show you later on that but but There's nothing in the new testament's Family at this point because the average I mentioned this last week the average amount of time.

At least I think I mentioned last week I don't know the average amount of time between when a work of antiquity was written and our first Manuscript evidence of it is between five and nine hundred years for Homer Suetonius Pliny the play-doh.

Etc Etc. For the new testament we're talking 100 years. So nobody's even in the same family you're talking. Who knows what happened in five to nine hundred years? We've only got a hundred years, so there's nobody even in the same family to compare it to.

It's so far beyond any of that.

Yes, ma 'am because it's a handwritten manuscript of the new testament in Greek.

And Some of them are quite honestly irrelevant because some of them are actually handwritten copies of printed texts. So there are there are there's a set of you know probably 50 that really they're catalogued because.

They're handwritten copies in the new testament, but they're pretty much irrelevant. Even though I could tell you some interesting stories about that, but well, we'll get into that. We'll get that okay.

So let's make sure we all understand this part. As I mentioned more than 5700 catalog manuscripts in New Testament average. Which is 350 pages long that is over 2 million pages of text? Grand total so 1 ,500 to 2 ,000.

Meaningful and viable variants. Over 2 million pages of hand-copied text spanning approximately 1 ,500 years. Maybe a little more prior the invention of printing is an amazingly small percentage of text.

Reflecting an amazingly accurate history transmission one might say it is downright miraculous now the funny thing is. Even though Bart Ehrman doesn't make his money saying this he would not disagree with the vast majority of what I said he might say It's 98 97 or you probably just simply say we don't know the exact percentage.

But he will admit that the vast majority of textual variations have nothing to do with transmission of the text and when people say so I mean, I'll never forget. He was on an atheist program and the atheists were so excited to have him on.

One of the atheists said so dr. Ehrman after all this stuff about all the various stuff. What do you think the New Testament was originally about and? Bart Ehrman's like about Jesus the Son of God and Salvation and they're like huh he says well.

We know what the New Testament was about. See they think that what he's talking about is this massive amount of variation and and and it was really originally about a Sun God from Jupiter or whatever and.

The reality is when I debated him, and I asked him in cross-examination. Could you show us anywhere in the New Testament where you feel that we do not have? Any longer in any manuscript the original reading he can only point to one place where there's no textual variant at all where it's the difference between in also or the word enoch and okai and okai.

Which has zero meaning as far as any type of theology anything else one place. Like come up with so the atheists are like it was like popping a balloon. Oh, they're they're all really disappointed and sad and so on so forth.

Yes, sir. No. We might have we might get into. Once we've laid the foundation we might some very variations and work through some of that, but no there are there are certain Principles, but no there's no one big guru thing real quickly here because man this goes fast.

A few years ago. I asked the computer to compare for me the two most dissimilar printed Greek texts that we possess today for those of you who are interested this would be a Comparison of the Westcott and Hort text from 1881 with the majority text the business maybe TR so Byzantine versus Alexandrian basically and to mark the differences in green and so here's Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 through 14 and so you'll notice that There are here's place green green green green there there.

And there's a little teeny one right there, which is actually the most important textual variant in Ephesians 1 1 through 14. Right here. It's difference between ha and has whether the spirit is Identified with a masculine or a neuter pronoun neuter would actually be formally correct because pneuma is a is a neuter noun, but If it's ha then it's similar to what we have in John where the masculine pronouns you emphasize the personality of the spirit but the point is When when you hear someone saying well, there's three options for every word in the New Testament, then you look at this.

You go no, I would say the vast majority of that. There's no variation in whatsoever so you look at this and Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before him in love.

That's there really isn't any logical rational historical basis for anyone to question that that is exactly what the original reading of Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4 was and even in the verse above. Where there's a minor variant right here for those of you that read Greek, you know, that's preposition meaning in and or by depending on how you interpret it and you know that in Greek could have stole is In the lock of instrumental dative case by its form and so you don't necessarily have to have the preposition.

You'd still have to translate it in light of the form of the of the word anyways and so when you look at that you see just how Ridiculous it is when people try to say well, you know, we don't have any idea of the New Testament originally set the extent of variation is Considerably less than unfortunately people like to make it look When they use the big numbers and don't break it down into into the reality.

Unfortunately, our time is up and we have to shift gears massively For the next hour as do I so your prayers appreciated. Let's let's close with a word of prayer. Father we thank you for this time as quickly as it's gone by we ask that you would help us to understand these things that we would remember From week to week so that we might put this information together.

We might be used of you To give an answer for the faith that's within us. They hope that's within us or that you might use us to cast light in this dark world. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.