Monthly Archives: August 2009

General Apologetics, New Testament Reliability, Textual Criticism

Where Does the English New Testament Come From?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians are often confused about this question, so I want to give a quick summary.

The 27 books of the New Testament (NT) were originally written in the common Greek language of the first century.  They were all hand-written, likely on papyrus.  These hand-written manuscripts were then copied, by hand, for hundreds of years by various Christian laypeople, professional scribes, and even monks.  In the middle of the 15th century, the printing press was invented and the NT, from that time onward, was primarily copied on printing presses.

All of the original NT documents have been lost, mostly because papyrus decays rapidly, and must be stored under dry conditions to last more than just decades.  However, we have many hand-written copies of the words of the NT that were produced between about A.D. 100 and A.D. 1450.

The words of the NT were preserved in three ways.  First, we have copies of partial and complete NT books written in Greek, the original language.  We have discovered about 5,800 of these.  Second, we have copies of partial and complete NT books written in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other ancient languages.  These manuscripts number around 19,000 and were produced starting in the late second century.  Third, we have the writings of church leaders from the first few centuries.  We have enough quotes from the NT in the church fathers (thousands of them) that we could reconstruct a good bit of the NT with just this material.

Modern scholars (called textual critics), using these three sources, then construct a Greek New Testament.  Since there are textual variants among the manuscripts, textual critics must apply tests to determine which variants likely represent the original writing of the NT authors (more about these tests in a future blog post).

There are a couple major versions of this Greek New Testament that are used by scholars and Bible translators today: Nestle-Aland (NA 27th edition) and United Bible Societies (UBS 4th edition).

The publishers of an English Bible will use these Greek New Testaments to create their particular translation.  Each translation also must decide how they will translate — word-for-word or thought-for-thought or something in between.

Typically a large committee of scholars will actually create the English translation.

It is important to understand that most English translations are using the same Greek New Testament as their source, so the differences among English versions come down to the method of translation employed by the translation committees.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Now you know the basics!

Gay Marriage, Marriage

What is the Problem with Gay Marriage?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Well, there are many, but Wintery Knight points us to an excellent article written by Robert George that explains some of the issues quite well.  George rightly asserts that we must, as a society, agree on what marriage is before we start re-defining it.  And, it is up to the people of the United States to make this determination, not the courts.

What is marriage?  Is it merely a piece of paper?  Is it two people who have strong feelings toward each other?  Is it two or more people who want to live together, for whatever reason?  Is it all about sexual pleasure?  What is it?

Just as the key issue with abortion is defining what human life is, the key issue with gay marriage is defining what marriage is, including its purpose.  Until we debate this definition, efforts to recast marriage in the courts are getting ahead of the American people and we will end up with an even more divided nation.

Cults

More Strange Tales from the World of Scientology

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I remember the first time I heard of Scientology was in the early 1990’s when I was in Atlanta attending GA Tech.  They ran one of those personality assessment offices in Atlanta and I was curious about who they were.

Then I started doing some reading and discovered some very disturbing things about the “religion” of Scientology.  Over the years, the news about Scientology has progressively become weirder and weirder.  Two days ago this article was published in the St. Petersburg Times.  Read it to see what this cult is like.

New Testament Reliability, Resurrection

Is There Evidence for the Empty Tomb?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I have been having an interesting discussion with a gentleman on the issue of the empty tomb.  We’ve touched on some of the evidence, but I decided to present a brief synopsis of William Lane Craig’s arguments for the empty tomb (from Jesus Under Fire).  Here goes!

  1. The historical credibility of the burial story supports the empty tomb.  If the burial story is accurate, the site of Jesus’ tomb would have been known to Jew and Christian alike.  Anyone could have, and would have, just marched to the tomb and produced the body.  In fact, the burial story is widely recognized as a historically credible narrative.
  2. Paul’s testimony implies the fact of the empty tomb.  The sequence in 1 Cor 15 is death- burial – resurrection.  Surely this sequence implies a tomb, or else where would Jesus be buried?
  3. The presence of the empty tomb narrative in the pre-Markan Passion story supports its historical credibility.  Scholars believe that Mark’s sources from which he wrote his Gospel contained the Passion story of Jesus.  Therefore, this source material would have been very old and date back to right after Jesus’ death (about A.D. 37).
  4. The use of the “first day of the week” (Mark 16:2) instead of  “on the third day” points to the primitiveness of the tradition of the empty tomb.  Scholars believe that the “third day” motif found in the New Testament developed later in Christian preaching.  The fact that Mark leaves those words out speaks to a very early date for the material in Mark.
  5. The nature of the narrative itself is theologically unadorned and nonapologetic.  Mark’s account of the empty tomb is simple and straightforward.
  6. The empty tomb was discovered by women.  Given the low status of women in 1st century Jewish society and their inability to serve as legal witnesses, it would be nonsensical for the New Testament writers to fabricate the story of the women finding the empty tomb.  The most reasonable explanation is that they really did.
  7. The investigation of the tomb by Peter and John is historically probable.  The visit of the disciples to the tomb is attested both in tradition (Luke 24:12, 24; John 20:3) and by John himself.
  8. It would have been virtually impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty.  When the disciples began to preach the resurrection in Jerusalem and people responded, and when the religious authorities stood helplessly by, the tomb must have been empty.
  9. The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb.  Matthew tells us in Matt. 28:15 that the Jewish opponents of Christianity did not deny that the tomb was empty.  They claimed the disciples stole the body.
  10. The fact that Jesus’ tomb was not venerated as a shrine indicates that the tomb was empty.  It was customary in Judaism for the tomb of a prophet or holy man to be preserved or venerated as a shrine because the bones of the prophet lay in the tomb.  The only reason Jesus’ followers would not have venerated his tomb is because it was empty.

Aside from those 10 reasons, there is very little evidence.  🙂