Conjectural Emendation and Tenacity

Conjectural Emendation and the Tenacity of the New Testament Text

On January 21, 2009, I debated Dr. Bart Ehrman on the subject, does the Bible misquote Jesus in Fort Lauderdale, Florida? And I had hoped for a more focused topic or thesis statement, but Dr. Ehrman insisted that we stick with that one, which is fine.

It turned out very well. So, one of the questions that came up during cross-examination that really hasn't gotten any attention as yet was when I asked Dr. Ehrman about the necessity of conjectural emendations, since he had dismissed, without providing any counter-argumentation, Curt Olin's assertion of the tenacity of the text of the New Testament, using the argument from authority, well nobody believes that anymore, except for evangelicals, without dealing with the evidence that Dr. Olin presented in his work on the New Testament regarding the subject, I asked him the question that would seem natural to follow from this, and that is, if what he's saying is true, and there is no tenacity to the text of the New Testament, and hence the original readings can just disappear, have no evidence of their existence in the manuscript tradition, then I would think he should be able to provide, well, literally dozens, if not hundreds, in fact if not thousands, of examples where none of the readings that are found in the manuscript tradition could possibly be the original.

Well, the fact that he used the term possibly, he sort of focused on that as, well, anything, I mean the original just could have been just nonsense. But I think most people understand what I'm asking, and that is, at least in the past, when people did textual critical study, if you found a reading in the manuscripts that makes sense in the context, you didn't continue looking beyond that to try to come up with something else.

In other words, you didn't adopt a guilty until proven innocent posture. And so I was very surprised. I know of two possible places, one in Acts and one in Revelation, neither of which have any real meaning as far as the text is concerned, that people have suggested a conjectural inundation that at least has some, there's actual variant in manuscript.

I'm going to play the section, I had my little Casio camera, and as far as I know this would be the first place where any of the video has been seen. I always post a few clips. We're waiting for the actual video to come out.

The sound will be better. The cameras will be better. Everything will be better. Just to give you an idea of what we're looking for. Where I asked Dr. Ehrman this question, and you'll hear the response that he gives, and the one text that he lists, and I want to look at that one text after we've listened to the question, the answer here from the debate, January 21st, 2009, myself and Dr. Ehrman.

The Challenge to Conjectural Emendation

All right, Dr. Ehrman, since you disagree with, evidently, Kurt Ahlund on the issue of tenacity, could you list for us some variations in New Testament where you are willing to assert that none of the extant readings in the manuscript tradition could possibly be the original?

No, I think there's always a possibility. It's not a question of possibility. It's a question of probability. Of course, anything could possibly have been original. The original author might have written nonsense.

Why not? It's possible. And later scribes might have corrected that nonsense. So one has to weigh probability. It's interesting that Westcott and Hort, the two giants in this field in the 19th century, were quite insistent that most of the text of the New Testament was preserved in a codex like Codex Vaticanus, and yet they resorted to conjectural emendation on a large number of occasions.

If you want an example, if you want just one example, I mean, I don't know how much sense it will make in English, but one common one that my teacher, Bruce Metzger, used to talk about as being possibly a strong case for emendation is 1 Peter 3, verse 19, which follows a creedal statement about Christ.

The Greek text, well, I guess I better read it in English. It says, Christ suffered for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order that he might lead us, lead you, textual variant there, to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but having been made alive in the spirit.

And then chapter 19, the next verse says,. And Hokai, Tois, and Fulake, Pneumasi, Harutheis, and Heruxen, in which also he preached, having gone to, having gone forth, he preached to the spirits who were in prison.

Boyer and others, including Harris, have proposed emendations at this point because, well, for grammatical reasons, but also because they think that, in fact, it might be a mistake, that, in fact, this is talking about the old early Christian tradition about Enoch, who was preaching, the preaching of Enoch, according to some of the apocryphal materials.

So I mean, it strikes me that that's a plausible place where you might need an emendation.

So here we have the one text that is offered. Now, it seems that Dr. Ehrman's response was, no, I can't give you any places where the current possibilities from the manuscript tradition, even where you have some difficult variants.

I had presented some in the debate prior to this. The reading, for example, at Galatians 1 .8, that, again, doesn't have much impact in the meaning of the text, but it's a difficult variant. There are a number of different readings for the verb there.

Evidently, he's not willing to say that there are any where the original might not be there, which comes back to Alan's original assertion that the readings in the New Testament are tenacious, that the originals have not been lost.

We don't need conjectural emendation. But I was taken aback that he used this text. I was expecting Acts or Revelation. First Peter 3 .19 is not a textual variant. There's no textual variant at the point where the emendation has been presented.

Now, the Nessie-Alan text gives the conjecture. That's solely based upon interpretation. There's no interruption whatsoever of the manuscript tradition at First Peter 3 .19 and those words. There's no variant there.

And so he gave as the example of which we would think would substantiate his repetitive assertion, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know what the New Testament said, a text where every single manuscript that we possess from history says the same thing.

And so this really highlights for me the nature of this kind of perspective. This is a speculation. Well, it's difficult to interpret what's being said here, so maybe it said something else, but I have absolutely no evidence that it ever did.

So, it strikes me that if the New Testament manuscript tradition is incapable of accurately transmitting to us what was originally written, if it is that corrupted, I would think we would have pages and pages and pages of places where we must resort to conjectural emendation.

And instead we're given a place where, well, this is difficult to interpret, well, it is difficult to interpret, but not because it's bad Greek, not because there's been any evidence whatsoever that the manuscript tradition has been interrupted at this point.

And so I think we need to keep this in mind, Dr. Ehrman's original response was, no. I can't give you any place where it seems like he would say we must engage in conjectural emendation. Instead he gives us a place where, well, it's possible, and the one that he gives has no textual variance in it whatsoever.

I personally thought that that was extremely revealing, but I understand that one must have a background in the field to see how revealing it really is. It has been somewhat disappointing that what a lot of folks have focused upon has not been the actual substance of the debate, but I think those that do know what the substance of the debate is actually about will find the debate to be extremely useful and extremely revealing as well.

I want to thank everybody, I realize it's been a while since we've done any YouTube videos because the debate pretty much took up all that time, but especially those who helped to support the debate and to help it to happen.

My sincerest thanks to you, because I really do believe that over the long term that debate will be extremely helpful, especially to those who are seeking to engage the worldview and the perspectives of Dr. Ehrman and the many who simply take his word as the final word and present that especially in their classrooms.

I think we demonstrated that a believing Christian can stand with the leading skeptic and go toe-to-toe on the data in that context and that we do not have to adopt the radical skepticism that Dr. Ehrman has adopted, that many others before him looking at the exact same data did not adopt.

People like Tischendorf and those who came before him and those believing Christians who to this very day continue to labor in faithfully handling the text of the New Testament. So I hope just this thought has been useful to you, I hope to add some more at later times, some more comments on the specifics of the debate, the specifics that I felt were most important.

It'll be most useful when the DVD comes out to have a higher quality video and to be able to focus in upon some of these key issues. Thanks for watching.