All posts by Bill Pratt

Bible Interpretation, General Apologetics, New Testament Reliability, Textual Criticism

How Do Textual Critics Choose Among New Testament Manuscript Variants?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Textual critics are the scholars who study the manuscript evidence for the New Testament and determine which readings among the various manuscripts are likely to be the original (see previous post for background).  Although the vast majority of the variants are simple spelling or word order errors made by copyists, there are some variants in the manuscripts that are more significant.

Textual critics use some basic criteria to help determine which readings are most likely the original and which variants were added or modified by copyists.

The first category of criteria is external.  External evidence has to do with the kinds of manuscripts that support a reading.

The first criteria is the age of a manuscript.  Generally, the older the manuscript, the more likely it contains the original text.

Second, the number of manuscripts that support a reading must be taken into consideration.  If we only have a variant reading in a single manuscript, it probably was not in the original text.

Third, the geographical range of a textual variant must be considered.  If a variant reading can be found in manuscripts from many different locations, it is more likely original.  A reading found in manuscripts from only one geographical region is more suspect.

Fourth, many, but not all, textual critics favor the readings from the Alexandrian family of manuscripts, as opposed to the Byzantine and Western families of manuscripts.  Why?  They argue that the Christian scribes in Egypt were more careful copyists.

The second category of criteria is internal.  Internal evidence has to do with the actual words of the text.

The first criteria has to do with intrinsic probabilities, probabilities based on what the author of the text most likely would have written.  Textual critics study the vocabulary, writing style, and theology of an author and see if the textual variant is something that author would have written.  If the text in question is completely different in style, vocabulary, and theology, it renders the reading somewhat suspect.  The opposite is, of course, true.

The second internal criteria is called transcriptional probability.  This criteria asks whether a textual variant is more or less likely to have been created by a scribe or copyist.  Copyists generally tended to harmonize texts that appeared contradictory and expanded upon shorter texts.  So when there are two variants to be compared, the shorter one which does not attempt to harmonize is to be preferred.  Another way to state this is that readings which are more difficult to explain and which are shorter in length are usually preferred.

None of these criteria can be applied in isolation, but these are the kinds of questions that textual critics ask.  It is obviously not an exact science, but most of the time these kinds of questions can lead scholars to the most likely reading of a text.  In fact, no essential doctrines of Christianity are in question because of textual variants.  There is almost no question that we have the words of the original authors in 99+% of the text of the New Testament.

If you’re interested in some of these variants, many of them are found in the footnotes of most English Bible translations.  Check them out for yourself!

Bible Interpretation, Theology, Will of God

Did God Tell You?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I was once having an impassioned discussion with a fellow Christian about the curriculum of the upcoming discipleship classes to be held at our church.  This Christian brother wanted to focus the curriculum on the subject of prayer, while I was adamant that we should teach a class on the attributes of God, which did not strictly align with the topic of prayer.

During our conversation, my friend made a statement to me which he believed should have ended the conversation, a statement which I sometimes hear other Christians make.  He said, in effect, “I’ve been praying about this and God has told me that the curriculum on prayer is what He wants us to teach.”

My response to him, which admittedly was a bit contentious, was, “God told me to teach about His attributes, so it looks we have a stalemate!”  I knew that a contest between the two of us about which idea God really preferred, based on our own subjective feelings, was pointless, but I wanted my friend to see where his comment would logically lead us.

The truth is that God speaks to us, foremost, from His word in the Bible.  The Bible speaks about both the subject of prayer and the subject of God’s attributes.  Nowhere, however, do you find a verse in the Bible telling our specific church which topic should be taught in the upcoming semester!  Given that we are limited in space, we cannot teach everything and choices have to be made, but those choices will have to be made without pointing to any one Bible verse.

It concerns me when Christians claim God told them something that cannot be found in the Bible, and especially when they are using this claim to shut off debate.  There are many subjects that the Bible covers which are not up for debate, but there are many subjects which the Bible does not cover which are up for debate (e.g., choosing a discipleship curriculum).  For those topics, we should have the debate and pray for wisdom to come to a reasonable answer, but we should not play the “God told me” card.

I am personally very uncomfortable claiming God told me things which I cannot point to in Scripture.  Who am I to represent new revelation from God?  If you are one of these Christians who find yourself saying this kind of thing frequently, ask yourself why.  If it is to cut off debate where debate is perfectly acceptable, then stop!  Argue your point of view, but don’t claim that God is somehow on your side when you have no objective way of knowing that.

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.  🙂

Miracles, New Testament Reliability, Resurrection, Skeptics

Did First Century Christians Believe in Miracles Because They Were Pre-Scientific?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I just finished reading a wonderful book by New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg, called The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.  In his chapter where he discusses the miracles recorded in the Gospels, he had this to say about the scientific objection to miracles.

In short, the scientific objection to the credibility of miracles is that the discovery of the natural, physical laws by which the universe operates has proved them impossible.  Those who hold this view sometimes go on to explain that people used to believe in miracles because they had only a primitive scientific understanding.  The Christian doctrines of the virgin birth and resurrection, for example, could spring from just such a pre-scientific milieu.  Only a moment’s thought is required, however, to realize that people of every age have known that two human parents are needed for conception and that death is irreversible! (emphasis mine)

Well put, Dr. Blomberg.  Well put.

Bible Interpretation, General Apologetics

Should We Read the Bible Literally?

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Post Author:  Bill Pratt

My seminary professor, Norm Geisler, used to say, “Everything the Bible affirms is literally true, but not true, literally.”  What he meant by this is that we cannot read the Bible in a wooden, “literal” way when it is clearly using figurative language.

A good Catholic friend of mine once asked me how I interpreted Bible passages.  I answered, “I try to understand what the author’s intended meaning was in the historical context in which he wrote.”  She answered, “Oh, well that’s exactly how I interpret the Bible.  I thought that evangelicals interpreted everything literally.”

Clearly we have a failure to communicate!  There seem to be at least two ways that the word literal is used.  First, literal can mean interpreting language in a way that does not allow for any symbolism or figures of speech.  If someone said, “I have traveled to the four corners of the earth,” a literalist in this sense would assume that the earth must be a flat, four sided shape, and that I actually did travel to each corner of this geometric shape.

Second, literal can mean interpreting language in the exact way it was intended by the author without unduly introducing symbolism or figurative language where it was never intended.  This is what most evangelicals mean when we say that you should interpret the Bible “literally.”  We do not mean that there is no use of figurative language in the Bible.  There obviously is.  As Bill Foster says in his book, Meet the Skeptic, “Informed Christians recognize that the Bible is full of literary devices and figurative language such as metaphor, simile, metonymy, typology, allegory, personification, and so forth.”

The reason conservative Christians tend to emphasize reading the Bible literally is because some readers do tend to interpret passages in the Bible that seem to be written in a non-figurative way as figurative.  There are those that claim that the resurrection of Jesus should be taken figuratively, for example.  Traditional Christians point out that the authors of the New Testament clearly meant the resurrection accounts to be taken literally, not figuratively.  Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead in a physical body.

So, yes, we should read the Bible literally, as long as we agree on what literal means.