Chapter 6: SEPARATE ARTIFACTS FROM EVIDENCE
Chapter 6
Principle #6:
SEPARATE ARTIFACTS FROM EVIDENCE
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the most important piece of forensic evidence the prosecution has in this case demonstrates the fact that the defendant had nothing to do with this murder.” The defense attorney paused as his projector splashed an image of a cigarette butt on the courtroom screen. The jurors sat quietly with their eyes fixed on the photograph. Several jurors were taking notes.
I knew that this cigarette butt was going to be a problem for our case from the moment I first saw it in the collection of evidence. The victim in this crime had been murdered in his front yard in 1990. The murder occurred early in the morning, long before sunrise. When officers were called to the scene, they correctly taped off the area to preserve it for the criminalists. They were careful to overestimate the possible crime scene, capturing a large area within the tape, just to be sure that they didn’t miss anything. While it is always wise to tape off the biggest possible area, it often results in an excessive collection of items. Some of these items are related to the crime and can be correctly identified as evidence; some of these items are simply uninvolved artifacts that get caught up incidentally. The jury will eventually have to decide which is which.
“The prosecution failed to perform a DNA test on this cigarette butt, even though they knew it was important to the case. They collected it, after all. Why would they do that unless they thought it was a piece of evidence?” The defendant’s attorney paused with his hands on the podium, waiting for the jury members to turn their eyes back toward him. “As you know, our team conducted the appropriate tests and learned that there was, in fact, DNA on the cigarette, and this DNA, although it remains unidentified, does not belong to my client. The DNA belongs to the true killer. The police never even examined the DNA and missed the chance to find the real murderer.”
It was true that we never tested the cigarette for DNA. It was also true that the partial DNA found by the defendant’s team did not belong to the defendant and remained unidentified. But it was not true that the cigarette butt was a piece of evidence. Yes, we collected it because it was inside the tapeline at the crime scene. But that yellow tape captured both evidence and artifacts.
The cigarette butt was discovered in a neighbor’s side yard, approximately fifty feet from the point of the murder. It was at the outmost edge of the taped area. If the officers had taped an area that was just six inches smaller in radius, this butt would not even be part of our case. The defense argued that the suspect was hiding in this location, fifty feet from the victim’s front door, and must have smoked a cigarette while he was waiting for the victim to exit his house. They wanted the jury to view the cigarette butt as evidence of the killer’s identity.
I knew better. The location of the cigarette was directly visible from the street and the front porch. If the suspect had been standing there, he would have been exposed and visible to anyone driving by (and to the victim as soon as he exited the front door). If the killer was relying on the darkness to hide his presence, the glowing ember of the cigarette and the smell of the smoke would be a sure giveaway. More importantly, I knew from the victim’s family that this area was used by his daughter’s friends to smoke cigarettes while they were visiting and working on their cars in the driveway. We never tested the cigarette as evidence in this case because we never viewed it as evidence in the first place. It was simply an artifact at the scene.
Like all our cases, this investigation was built on circumstantial evidence. I had no direct evidence, and the defense knew it. The defendant had been very careful and had gotten away without leaving a trace of his presence at the scene. While over thirty other pieces of circumstantial evidence pointed to the defendant as the killer, the only physical item collected at the scene happened to be an unrelated cigarette butt. The jury would now have to consider the circumstantial case surrounding the cigarette before it could consider the circumstantial case surrounding the defendant.
That’s exactly what they did. The jury came back in less than three hours. They were able to distinguish between the evidence and the artifacts, and they properly kept the cigarette butt in its place as an artifact of the crime scene. They convicted the defendant of murder.
The Story of the Woman Caught in Adultery
THE TEXTUAL ARTIFACTS OF THE BIBLE
Like crime scenes, historical scenes can be reconstructed with the evidence we have at our disposal. We have to be careful, however, to distinguish between evidence and artifacts. The testimony of an eyewitness can be properly viewed as evidence, but anything added to the account after the fact should be viewed with caution as a possible artifact (something that exists in the text when it shouldn’t). The Gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts, but you may be surprised to find that there are a few added textual artifacts nestled in with the evidential statements. It appears that scribes, in copying the texts over the years, added lines to the narrative that were not there at the time of the original writing. Let me give you an example.
Most of us are familiar with the biblical story in the gospel of John in which Jesus was presented with a woman who had been accused of committing adultery (John 8:1–11). The Jewish men who brought the woman to Jesus wanted her to be stoned, but Jesus refused to condemn her and told the men, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the men leave, Jesus tells the woman, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” This story is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. Too bad that it appears to be an artifact.
While the story may, in fact, be absolutely true, the earliest copies of John’s gospel recovered over the centuries fail to contain any part of it. The last verse of chapter 7 and the first eleven verses of chapter 8 are missing in the oldest manuscripts available to us. The story doesn’t appear until it is discovered in later copies of John’s gospel, centuries after the life of Jesus on earth. In fact, some ancient biblical manuscripts place it in a different location in John’s gospel. Some ancient copies of the Bible even place it in the gospel of Luke. While there is much about the story that seems consistent with Jesus’s character and teaching, most scholars do not believe it was part of John’s original account. It is a biblical artifact, and it is identified as such in nearly every modern translation of the Bible (where it is typically noted in the margin or bracketed to separate it from the reliable account).
Should the existence of this textual artifact concern us? Do late additions to the biblical record disqualify the New Testament as a reliable manuscript? How can we call the Bible inerrant or infallible if it contains a late addition such as this? This passage is not the only textual artifact in the Bible. There are a number of additional verses that are considered to be artifacts by scholars and biblical experts. Let’s take a look at a few of them to determine if their existence should cause us any alarm:
LUKE 22:43–44
“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (KJV).
These two verses do not appear in early manuscripts of Luke’s gospel, and for this reason they have been omitted from some modern Bible translations (like the RSV). While the KJV does not isolate them as late additions, other translations (like the NIV, NASB, and NKJV) identify them as such in footnotes or special brackets.
JOHN 5:4
“For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” (KJV).
Once again, this verse (along with the last few words of v. 3) does not appear in the best ancient manuscripts. Several modern translations have simply removed the verse (e.g., the NIV, RSV, and NRSV), while others have identified it in the footnotes (e.g., the NKJV and ESV).
1 JOHN 5:7
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (KJV).
The second half of this verse (“the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”) does not appear in any manuscript of the Bible until the sixteenth century (and it appears in only two manuscripts at this point in history). It has been omitted from modern translations like the NASB and NIV and identified with a footnote in the NKJV.
ACTS 15:34
“Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still” (KJV).
The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not contain this verse. Modern translations like the NIV, RSV, and NRSV have removed it, while the NASB, NKJV, and ESV have identified it with brackets or a footnote.
Skeptics have pointed to passages like these in an effort to demonstrate the unreliability of the biblical text as an eyewitness account. If these lines are fiction, how many more verses are also false? When I was an atheist, this was one of my prime complaints about the Bible, and I discovered that very few Christians were aware of the fact that these additions exist. I shook the faith of many of my Christian friends by simply demonstrating that these passages were not in the original biblical text.
SEPARATING THE ARTIFACTS FROM THE EVIDENCE
Evidence and Artifacts
It wasn’t until years later that I understood how to evaluate the existence of these late entries. I eventually learned that every crime scene presents its own set of unique questions and difficulties. Every scene contains important evidence that will guide us to the truth while also containing unrelated artifacts that will cause some uncertainty. I’ve never encountered a crime scene that was free of artifacts. In spite of these unrelated items, we, as detectives, were able to evaluate the case and determine what belonged to the crime and what did not. Yes, there were always a number of questions that needed to be answered. But our concerns were eventually resolved when we separated the artifacts from the evidence.
Doing this, of course, was sometimes quite difficult. Over the years, I’ve developed a number of strategies that have helped me to assess what is important in a crime scene and what is not. These principles can also be used to evaluate the textual artifacts that exist in the biblical accounts.
IDENTIFY THE LATE ADDITIONS
Responding officers typically tape off crime scenes immediately in preparation for the criminalists. The criminalists then photograph everything and document the scene thoroughly. Years later, if an item of evidence is discovered that was not present in the original photographs, we have good reason to identify it as a late addition to the case. Once we are certain that something is a late addition, we can simply ignore it as we assess the true evidence.
RECOGNIZE DIFFERENCES IN CHARACTER
But what if an item was at the scene from the very beginning? How can we determine if it is important to the case? There are some things that we recognize as unrelated from the very first moment we arrive. I’ve investigated many cases in which paramedics reached the scene even before the police. They made a valiant effort to save the dying victim prior to the arrival of the first responding officers. By the time the police got there, the crime scene was littered with the paraphernalia from the paramedic team. Bandage packaging, tubing, syringes, and a variety of other obvious medical items were now part of the scene and were photographed by the criminalists before my arrival at the location. These items became a part of the case but were quickly and easily recognized as artifacts. They stood out like a sore thumb; they were evidence of the rescue effort, not the crime.
LOOK FOR AN EXPLANATION
Many items at the scene may be explained by some unrelated cause that accounts for their presence and eliminates them as evidence. I once had a case in which a shoe print was photographed outside the victim’s house. We initially thought it might belong to the killer until we matched it to the landlord, who first discovered the victim when he entered the residence to check on her. Once we had an explanation for the existence of the print, we recognized it as an artifact.
SEE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU INCLUDE IT
There have been times when it was impossible for me to determine whether an item was a piece of evidence or simply an artifact of the scene. When this happens, I will sometimes create a hypothetical case that includes the item as evidence, just to see if its inclusion would change the outcome of the case. I once had a crime scene in which a pencil was recovered on the floor next to the victim. We weren’t sure if it was part of the crime or if it belonged to the victim or the suspect. Forensic examinations provided nothing in the way of DNA or fingerprints. To be safe, I decided to think of it as evidence. I quickly realized that the pencil had no impact on the case; when I later assembled the evidence that pointed to a specific suspect, the presence of the pencil did nothing to either improve or weaken my case. There are times when we can be comfortable ignoring an item because it has no impact on the outcome, even if it were to be included.
RELY ON WHAT YOU KNOW
Some items in a crime scene present difficulties because they seem to contradict the larger group of confirmed items of evidence. Imagine that we are working a homicide and have recovered forty-two pieces of evidence that identify a man named Ben Rogers as the killer. Many of these pieces of evidence came from the crime scene, including his DNA on the victim, several of Ben’s personal items left behind at the scene, and his fingerprints on the murder weapon. In addition to this, imagine that we have an eyewitness who saw him running from the victim’s home, covered in blood. Now imagine that we also recovered a nametag belonging to Scotty Nichols, a man who worked with the victim. This nametag was sitting on a nightstand about eight feet from the victim’s body. When we question Scotty about the nametag, he tells us that he lost the item a day before the murder occurred, and he offers us a verifiable alibi for the day of the crime. He has no idea why his nametag is in the victim’s home. What are we to do with this item? In cases like this we have to ask ourselves if the presence of the nametag impacts what we do know from the other evidence at the scene. When we have overwhelming evidence pointing in a particular direction, we may have to get comfortable with the fact that there is some ambiguity related to other items at the scene.
Reasons Why Scribes Sometimes Changed the Text
SO, CAN WE TRUST THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE?
We can apply these principles as we examine the New Testament and evaluate questionable passages to determine if they are evidence or artifacts. Luckily, we have “photographs” of the early crime scene to help us. We have hundreds of early, ancient manuscripts that can give us a snapshot of what the text looked like before anyone added anything to the narrative. Once these late additions have been exposed in this way, we can simply choose to ignore the passages as artifacts and focus on the remainder as evidence.
Some biblical passages appear suspicious even before we find that they were missing in the earliest copies. These passages “stand out” because they seem to possess a different character (like the paramedic paraphernalia at our murder scene). Textual critics examined the story of the adulterous woman, for example, and recognized that the Greek words used in the narrative are far more similar to Luke’s use of language than they are to John’s. The passage seemed foreign to the gospel of John, even before the discovery that it was absent prior to the fifth century.
Next, we can look for reasonable explanations that might account for the addition of these passages (just as we did with the landlord’s shoe print). Let’s take a look at the four examples I’ve given from the New Testament and think through some of the reasonable explanations. Each addition to the text appears to be an effort on the part of a scribe to make something clear, to emphasize a point, or to add some detail known to the scribe but omitted by the apostle. In Luke 22:43–44, Jesus’s agony is emphasized by the unusual description of blood in His sweat. This may simply have been an effort to make the agony more vivid, or perhaps the scribe was borrowing from a literary style of the time to make the account more robust. In John 5:4, the detail related to the pool at Bethesda may simply have been added to explain John 5:7, a legitimate verse that talks about the stirring of the water without additional explanation. In 1 John 5:7, the scribe may have succumbed to the strong temptation to take the one verse that most closely describes the Trinity and add a line that would make the doctrine irrefutable. While there are many verses that circumstantially point to the triune nature of God, this late insertion (if it were true) would remove all doubt. In Acts 15:34, the scribe added a detail about Silas staying in Antioch. This fact may have been known to the scribe (who may have been native to the area). As a result, he may have added it to the text to fill in a detail that would also be known to local readers of the account.
Some biblical passages, however, are more difficult to assess as artifacts. They may appear in some ancient texts, but not in others from the same period of time. When this is the case, we can choose to hypothetically include the passage as though it were reliable evidence (like the pencil in our murder scene) to see what effect it has on the larger case. If we chose, for example, to include the story of the adulterous woman as a reliable part of the biblical narrative, would it change what we know about any of the central claims of the Bible? No, it wouldn’t. The story seems to be consistent with what we know about Jesus’s character and teaching. We can imagine Jesus doing something like this, given what we know about Him from other passages. The story of the adulterous woman does not change our final understanding of the teaching of Scripture if it were to be included. In the vast majority of textual additions that have been made to the Bible over the centuries, the changes have been so insignificant as to have very little effect on the content of the narrative and virtually no impact on the important doctrinal claims of Christianity.
Finally, we have to learn to be comfortable with some ambiguity. No scene is free of artifacts, and the biblical crime scene is no different. There may be a few passages of Scripture that seem out of place or difficult to understand (like Scotty Nichols’s nametag). At times like these, we have to ask ourselves if the reliable testimony of the biblical narrative is sufficient to accommodate an unexplained artifact. If we find that the biblical text (with the artifacts removed) makes a case that is strong and clear (we’ll discuss this more is the second section of this book), we can allow ourselves the minor discomfort of a few unanswered questions.
PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE
Let me give you an illustration to help you think about the relationship between evidence and artifacts. Imagine that tomorrow you open a drawer in your family room and empty its contents onto the table. You find that it contains all kinds of junk you haven’t seen in quite some time, including keys and paper clips, batteries and coins. You also discover that it contains a number of puzzle pieces. In your curiosity about the puzzle pieces, you begin to sift through the contents of the drawer so you can assemble them. In order to bring together the puzzle, you’re going to have to sort the related pieces from the items that are clearly not part of the puzzle. Some of these are obvious by their very nature. You immediately know that batteries and coins, like the paramedic paraphernalia, are not going to fit in the puzzle. As a result, you push these aside and start puzzling. But it turns out that there are two additional puzzle pieces in the drawer that simply don’t fit the others. As you begin to assemble the image, you can see that these puzzle pieces don’t fit this particular puzzle; they seem to belong somewhere else.
Now let me ask you a few questions. Does the mere presence of the non-puzzle pieces in the drawer invalidate the reliability of the puzzle pieces? No, the non-puzzle pieces can be quickly and easily identified and set aside. Does the presence of the non-puzzle pieces change the resulting image that has been pieced together? No, these additional “artifacts” are completely unrelated to the image on the puzzle. How about the two extra puzzle pieces that don’t seem to match the rest? Does their presence in the drawer make the other puzzle pieces unreliable? No, the vast majority of pieces fit together nicely and demonstrate a coherent relationship to one another (in spite of the fact that there are two additional pieces that don’t seem to fit). What if we accepted the two additional pieces as part of the puzzle and tried to force them in? Would they significantly change the final image? No, even if we were to accept these two pieces as part of the larger group and found a way to insert them into the puzzle, the image would still be obvious to us.
Crime scenes are a lot like this drawer full of items. There are pieces at the scene that are evidence of the crime in question, and there are extra artifacts that have nothing to do with the crime. When we successfully separate the artifacts from the evidence, we can determine what happened at the scene. The mere presence of the artifacts is not an insurmountable obstacle for us. The biblical text is also much like the drawer full of items. There are passages in the text that are evidence of the life of Jesus, and there are extratextual artifacts that must be separated. When we successfully separate the textual artifacts from the biblical evidence, we can determine what happened over two thousand years ago. The mere presence of the textual artifacts is not an insurmountable obstacle for us.
A TOOL FOR THE CALLOUT BAG, A TIP FOR THE CHECKLIST
As you form your own checklist of evidential principles, be sure to include this important approach to artifacts. When I was an atheist, I believed the existence of scribal alterations in the Bible invalidated the evidential value of the text altogether. I now understand that this is not the case. Every crime scene contains artifacts; if I refused to accept any explanation of the truth simply because an artifact was present along with the reliable evidence, I could never convict anyone of a crime. All ancient documents also contain textual artifacts. If we reject the entirety of Scripture simply because it contains artifacts of one kind or another, we had better be ready to reject the ancient writings of Plato, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristotle, and Homer as well. The manuscripts for these texts are far less numerous, and they are far less reliable. If we apply the same standard of perfection that some would demand of the Bible to other ancient histories, we’re going to have to reject everything we thought we knew about the ancient past. More importantly, it’s vital to see that we do actually have a methodology that allows us to uncover the artifacts and separate them from the original text. The art of textual criticism allows us to compare manuscripts to determine what belongs and what does not. The same process that revealed to me (as a skeptic) the passages that couldn’t be trusted also revealed to me (as a believer) the passages that can be trusted. Textual criticism allows us to determine the nature of the original texts as we eliminate the textual artifacts. This should give us more confidence in what we have, not less.
I have many Christian friends who are reluctant to admit that the Bible contains any textual artifacts because they have always defended the Bible as either inerrant (containing no errors) or infallible (incapable of containing errors). But the presence of textual artifacts says nothing about the original text, and it’s this original autograph that we have in view when we talk about inerrancy and infallibility in the first place. Christianity acknowledges that God used humans to deliver His truth to His people. In the Old Testament, God used prophets to speak to the nation of Israel. In the New Testament, God used the apostolic eyewitnesses to testify of His Son. Christianity recognizes the inerrancy of the original documents these eyewitnesses provided, even though they were filled with idiosyncrasies and personal perspectives (as we described previously). Humans were also involved in the transmission of these eyewitness accounts. Like the authors, the scribes had personal perspectives and human idiosyncrasies that may have impacted the way they copied the manuscripts. While they may have occasionally altered very minute portions of the text, we possess enough comparative copies of the ancient documents to identify these alterations and remove them from the reliable accounts. The textual artifacts testify to the gritty realism of the evidential account contained in the Bible. Like other real collections of evidence, there are artifacts embedded within the reliable evidence. Like other crime scenes, these artifacts need not hinder our ability to determine (and defend) the truth.