Afterword: Recent Developments
AFTERWORD
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Philip W. Comfort
Twenty years have passed since the first publication of The Origin of the Bible. Most of the essays in this volume have a timeless quality and are just as helpful today as they were when they were originally written and published. However, other disciplines have seen important developments over the course of the last twenty years. New information has come to light regarding the texts and manuscripts of the Old Testament and New Testament (section 4), and several prominent English translations of the Bible have been published or updated (section 5). These recent developments are discussed in this new chapter.
THE TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Dead Sea Scrolls are now readily available for readers of both Hebrew and English. The Hebrew transcriptions of the Dead Sea Scrolls have now all been published in a forty-volume series called Discoveries in the Judean Desert, which contains the editio princeps (first published transcription) for each manuscript of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Volume 39 (by Emanuel Tov) provides an introduction for and summaries of the preceding thirty-eight volumes. The Old Testament is represented by a number of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, as follows: Genesis (17), Exodus (13), Leviticus (5), Numbers (5), Deuteronomy (25), Joshua (2), Judges (3), Ruth (4), 1 & 2 Samuel (4), 1 & 2 Kings (3), 1 & 2 Chronicles (1), Ezra-Nehemiah (1), Job (3), Psalms (34), Proverbs (2), Ecclesiastes (2), Song of Songs (4), Isaiah (24), Jeremiah (6), Lamentations (4), Ezekiel (6), Daniel (8), and the Minor Prophets (8). There is also an English translation of these manuscripts, entitled The Dead Sea Scrolls, translated by M. Wise, M. Abegg, and E. Cook (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).
Scholars of the Old Testament continue to use Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (editors, K. Elliger and W. Rudolf) as their primary Hebrew text. The work is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as presented in the Leningrad Codex, supplemented by Masoretic and text-critical notes (including evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls). The fourth revised edition was distributed in 1997. The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, dated A.D. 1008 according to its colophon.
Work is currently under way at the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft to produce the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (the fifth Hebrew Bible). This expanded work of twenty volumes will include reference to and comparisons with the recently released material from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Initial volumes of Biblia Hebraica Quinta have been published and available for sale since 2004. The completion of the project is slated for 2020.
Another edition of the Hebrew Bible has been published in this century. It is called Jerusalem Crown: The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The book is a printed edition of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), printed in Jerusalem in 2001, and based on a manuscript known as the Aleppo Codex. This codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible written in the tenth century A.D. The codex has long been considered the most authoritative document in the Masora (tradition) of the text from one generation to the next. (Unfortunately, the codex does not contain the entire Old Testament; most of the Torah is missing.) The Jerusalem Crown uses the Leningrad Codex for the portions missing in the Aleppo Codex and cites the Leningrad Codex throughout. The Jerusalem Crown is the official Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israeli Parliament.
THE TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Since the original publication of The Origin of the Bible, thirty-five new papyrus manuscripts have been published—namely P93–P127. Nearly all of these have come from the Oxyrhynchus discovery mentioned on page 186. These have added to our understanding of the dating of New Testament manuscripts as well as our knowledge of the transmission of the New Testament text. However, new discoveries aren’t the only development in the discipline of establishing the text of the New Testament. Since the first publication of The Origin of the Bible, I have published three volumes that detail my thorough study of the dates of individual manuscripts and the overall transmission of the text: The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (with D. Barrett, 2001), Encountering the Manuscripts (2005), and New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (2008). The following is a digest that comes from these works.
Dating New Testament Manuscripts to the Second Century
As for the dating of New Testament manuscripts, there are seventeen manuscripts that are clearly from the second century. These are P4 (with P64+67), P20, P27, P32 (early second century), P46 (mid-second century), P52 (early second century), P66 (mid-second century), P75 (with P103), P87, P98, P104 (early second century), P109, P115, and P118. There are eleven other manuscripts that should be dated c. 200: P1, P13, P29, P38, P45, P95, P106, P108, P113, P121, and 0189. (Where applicable, the new assessment of dates revises what is found in section 4. Space allows only for detailing the second-century manuscripts below, not those dated c. 200.) In the list below, New Testament manuscripts are listed first, and beneath is a list of non-biblical manuscripts that bear clear morphological likeness (i.e., very similar formation of letters) to them. Since we know when those non-biblical manuscripts are dated, they help to determine the date of the similar New Testament manuscript.
The Text of the New Testament
I am now more convinced than ever that textual critics should follow a documentary approach to New Testament textual criticism. As noted in section 4, Westcott and Hort, followed by Colwell, urged that knowledge of documents must precede all decisions about textual variants. They asserted that a textual critic must know the scribal tendencies at work in each manuscript before using that manuscript to make a decision about a reading. For example, if a scribe was prone to prune phrases, a textual critic should be wary about citing that manuscript in support of a shorter reading as being original.
It should also be noted that knowledge about the reader-reception tendencies of the scribes who produced the earliest extant documents must also precede all decisions about readings, and that a well-developed theory of scribal reception could help us understand the dynamics that created changes in the New Testament text during the stages of transmission from the second century to the fifth century. This does not call for a new canon of textual criticism, but it does call for a new awareness about the reception tendencies of each scribe. These tendencies can be ascertained through a study of individual variants. The sum total of these variants for each manuscript can allow the tendencies of the scribe who produced them to emerge. A textual critic can then take this knowledge and apply it to the task of textual criticism. (This is detailed in my doctoral dissertation, “The Scribe as Interpreter: A New Look at New Textual Criticism according to Reader Reception Theory,” which is digested in an article in Neotestamentica 38 (1) [2004]: 28–53.)
In recent years, textual critics have been able to identify some of the very best manuscripts with respect to textual purity. At the top of the list is P75, a very pure second-century text. It is also evident that P75 was the kind of manuscript used in formulating Codex Vaticanus (B)—the readings of P75 and B are remarkably similar. Prior to the discovery of P75, certain scholars thought Codex Vaticanus was the work of a fourth-century recension; others (chiefly Hort) thought it must trace back to a very early and accurate copy. Hort said that Codex Vaticanus preserves not only a very ancient text but also a very pure line of a very ancient text. P75 appears to have shown that Hort was right.
Prior to the discovery of P75, many textual scholars were convinced that the second- and third-century papyri displayed a text in flux, a text characterized only by individual independence. The Chester Beatty Papyrus, P45, and the Bodmer Papyri, P66 and P72 (in 2 Peter and Jude), show this kind of independence. Scholars thought that scribes at Alexandria must have used several such texts to produce a good recension—as is exhibited in Codex Vaticanus. But we now know that Codex Vaticanus was not the result of a scholarly recension, resulting from editorial selection across the various textual histories. Rather, it is now quite clear that Codex Vaticanus was simply a copy (with some modifications) of a manuscript much like P75. This was argued very effectively in an article appropriately titled “P76, P66, and Origen: The Myth of Early Textual Recension in Alexandria” by Fee, who said that there was no Alexandrian recension before the time of P75 (late second century) and Codex Vaticanus (early fourth) and that both these manuscripts “seem to represent a ‘relatively pure’ form of preservation of a ‘relatively pure’ line of descent from the original text.”
Some scholars are skeptical and point out that this does not automatically mean that P75 and B represent the original text. All it means, they say, is that we have a second-century manuscript showing great affinity with a fourth-century manuscript whose quality has been highly esteemed. But various scholars have demonstrated that there was no Alexandrian recension before the time of P75 (late second century) and B (early fourth) and that both these manuscripts represent a relatively pure form of preservation of a relatively pure line of descent from the original text.
The current view about the early text is that certain scribes in Alexandria and/or scribes familiar with Alexandrian scriptoral practices (perhaps those in Oxyrhynchus) were probably responsible for maintaining a relatively pure text throughout the second, third, and fourth centuries. The Alexandrian scribes associated with or actually employed by the scriptorium of the great Alexandrian library and/or members of the scriptorium associated with the catechetical school at Alexandria (called the Didaskelion) were trained philologists, grammarians, and textual critics. Their work on the New Testament was not recensional—that is, it was not an organized emendation of the text. Rather, the work of purification and preservation was probably done here and there by various individuals trained in textual criticism. This is apparent in the production of P66, which contains the Gospel of John. This manuscript was probably produced in an Egyptian scriptorium by a novice scribe who made many blunders, which were subsequently corrected by another scribe working in the same scriptorium. The first text produced by the novice could be classified as being very “free,” but the corrected text is far more accurate.
Today, most students and scholars of the Greek New Testament use one of two editions, both of which have the same text: Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th edition (eighth printing in 2004, including the papyri up to P116), or the United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament, 4th revised edition (2006). Novum Testamentum Graece has a textual apparatus displaying all textual variants (with limited manuscript support cited), and The Greek New Testament has a textual apparatus for text-critical issues that pertain to translation (with fuller manuscript support listed). Though modern translators use these two editions for their translations, not one translation follows them precisely as printed. Teams of translators often chose a textual variant over the printed text.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The twenty-first century is slightly over a decade old, and it has seen at least six significant new English translations of the Bible. One of these, the English Standard Version (ESV, 2001) extends the line of “standard” revisions of the King James tradition into this new century. Two other versions contain noteworthy revisions from previous editions—namely, an updated New International Version (2011; including the Today’s New International Version, 2001) and the New Living Translation (2nd edition, 2004). Two notable fresh translations have appeared in the first decade of the twenty-first century: the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB, 2000) and the New English Translation, better known as the NET Bible (1996–2006).
The NET Bible, New English Translation (1996–2006)—NET
The NET Bible (also known as New English Translation) began as an attempt to provide a modern translation of the Bible for electronic distribution, free of charge. In 2005 the NET Bible became available in print form. This is a completely new translation done by a team of twenty-five scholars. The Old Testament translators used Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, which represents the text of the Leningrad Codex B, the oldest dated manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible. Of course, it is generally recognized that this text needs correction in some places according to the evidence of other Hebrew manuscripts, some early versions, and various manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Old Testament translators often noted these sources when they diverged from the standard text.
The New Testament scholars based their work on a critically constructed Greek text following the principles of reasoned eclecticism. It differs from Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition) in five hundred places. The primary value of this translation is that it has more than sixty thousand text-critical, lexical, and exegetical notes explaining the translators’ choices. This gives average readers unparalleled access to the thought processes and decisions faced by a translation team, both textually and exegetically.
Holman Christian Standard Bible (2000)—HCSB
The Holman Christian Standard Bible is a new translation that seeks to combine the best features of both formal and dynamic equivalence in what they term “optimal equivalence.” In many places throughout Scripture, where a word-for-word translation rendering is clearly understandable, the translators chose a literal translation. In other places, where a literal translation might be unclear in English, the translators employed a dynamic-equivalent rendering. Thus, the “HCSB has chosen to use the balance and beauty of optimal equivalence for a fresh translation of God’s Word that is both faithful to the words God inspired and ‘reader friendly’ to modern readers” (from the Introduction to HCSB).
This translation philosophy is close to what is claimed for the NRSV: “as literal as possible, as free as necessary.” In the final analysis, the HCSB (like the NRSV) is more literal than free. This is underscored by the fact that the HCSB retains a good deal of traditional renderings rather than present new ones. For example, in John’s prologue (John 1:1-18), which is open to many innovative renderings, I see only one: “The Word became flesh and took up residence among us” (1:14). The Greek verb eskenosen means “to tabernacle,” “to tent,” which connects with the next part of the verse that speaks of God’s glory being in the Son (alluding to God’s glory indwelling the Tabernacle). Since a literal rendering would not communicate with modern readers, the HCSB translators chose “take up residence.” This is innovative. However, four verses later we see that they have not followed the superior textual reading, “the only God,” and opted for the traditional “only Son” as a title for Jesus.
The translators of the Old Testament used the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as printed in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th edition) without feeling compelled to follow it slavishly. The New Testament translators say their textual basis was Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition), which is the same as the Greek New Testament (4th edition, corrected). However, the HCSB translation retains several verses and/or portions of a verse that are omitted in the Nestle text. Though these portions are set in brackets, their inclusion in the text reflects the King James/Textus Receptus tradition. This is the same methodology as that in the NASB. Nonetheless, the HCSB has hundreds of notes reflecting their textual differences from the KJV tradition.
The English Standard Version (2001)—ESV
The ESV is a revision of the Revised Standard Version. According to the preface to the ESV, it stands in a line of versions that go back to the Authorized King James Version (1611), the English Revised Version (1885), the American Standard Version (1901), and then the Revised Standard Version (1952, 1971). What is conspicuously missing in this list is the New Revised Standard Version (1989), which is also a part of this tradition. This is probably because the ESV translators consider their work to be the “evangelical” counterpart to the NRSV; two independent branches in the tradition that both go back through the Revised Standard Version. This is nowhere more apparent than in Isaiah 7:14, where the NRSV reads, “the young woman is with child and shall bear a son,” while the ESV reads, “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”
As part of this tradition, the translation philosophy of the ESV is “essentially literal,” which means the translators attempted to capture the precise wording of the original text by means of word-for-word correspondence. While doing this, they retained traditional terminology such as “redemption,” “justification,” and “propitiation.” Many modern readers not familiar with the traditional KJV terminology will be perplexed by these words. However, those who feel comfortable with any of the English “standard” versions will feel at home with the ESV.
The translators of the ESV followed the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (2nd edition, 1983) for their translation of the Old Testament. As for the New Testament, they followed the Greek New Testament (4th corrected edition), which has the same text as Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition). The translators diverged from this text only occasionally. The textual notes in the ESV mainly replicate the textual notes in the RSV and are not as replete as those in the NRSV.
Updating the New International Version (2001, 2011)—TNIV/NIV
The New International Version (1973, 1978, 1984) has undergone two major revisions over the last decade. Today’s New International Version, released in 2001, was advertised as “the classic translation in today’s language.” One of the more prominent features of presenting the text in modern language is the “generic use of masculine nouns and pronouns.” Thus, “the so-called singular ‘they/their/them,’ which has been gaining acceptance among careful writers and which actually has a venerable place in English idiom, has been employed to fill in the vocabulary gap in generic nouns and pronouns referring to human beings” (from the Preface to the TNIV). Though traditionalists balked at this move, many readers appreciate the gender inclusiveness it presents.
The translators of the Old Testament used the Masoretic text as published in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (2nd edition, 1983). They also consulted the Dead Sea Scrolls and other important early versions: the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, Targums, and Juxta Hebraica of Jerome for the Psalms.
The translators of TNIV followed an eclectic text which, in the end, is not radically different than the text of Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition). Where existing manuscripts differ, the translators made their choice of readings according to widely accepted principles of New Testament textual criticism. This prompted a few significant textual changes from the NIV to the TNIV. The TNIV offset the traditional ending to Mark (16:9-20) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) from the rest of the translation by placing them away from the rest of text and setting them in italics. This was a good move. A better move would be to print the several extant endings to Mark and to place John 7:53–8:11 in an appendix.
In 2011 an updated edition of the New International Version appeared, replacing both the older version of the NIV and the TNIV, which is no longer available. The same Hebrew and Greek texts were used as for the TNIV (noted above). The reader who compares the previous NIV edition (1984) with the 2011 edition will see several textual changes and improvements in gender inclusive language, many of which are carried over from the TNIV.
In John 1:18 the reading “God the One and Only” has been changed to “the one and only Son, who is himself God.” This is an unfortunate change, in my opinion, because the new reading becomes a conflation of two textual variants: monogenes huios (only Son) and monogenes theos (only God). All the early manuscripts support monogenes theos, which is better rendered as “God the One and Only.” In John 1:34 the new edition of the NIV reads, “God’s Chosen One,” instead of “the Son of God.” This is a good change that many recent versions are reflecting (see NLT and NET). The new edition of the NIV has added a note to John 9:38-39 indicating that some early manuscripts do not include these verses. In 1 Corinthians 10:9 the wording is now “we should not test Christ” instead of “we should not test the Lord,” based on superior textual evidence. In Hebrews 4:2 the new NIV reads, “they did not share the faith of those who believed,” instead of “those who heard did not combine it with faith”—also based on superior textual evidence.
One prominent feature of new editions of the NIV relates to gender-inclusive language. For example, John 2:25 reads, “He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.” It used to read, “He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.” In Hebrews 2:6 the NIV used to read, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” The new NIV reads, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them?” In Paul’s Epistles, Paul frequently addressed his readers as “brothers” (which is the way it was rendered in the older edition of the NIV). Now it is rendered as “brothers and sisters,” with a marginal note that reads, “The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family.”
New Living Translation, second edition (2004)—NLT
The New Living Translation (2nd edition, 2004) is a thorough-going revision of the NLT first edition (1996). The first edition is a fresh translation from the Hebrew and Greek, done primarily according to the translation methodology known as “dynamic equivalence” or “functional equivalence.” The goal of this translation method is to produce in English the closest natural equivalent of the message expressed by the original language, both in meaning and in style. This allows the message to come through with immediacy without requiring the reader to struggle with foreign idioms and awkward syntax. Though “dynamic equivalence” was also the primary methodology at work in the second edition, the translators sought to be more precise in their renderings of individual words. At the same time, every effort was made to increase readability. This twofold work culminated in a complete revision of the first edition.
One of the most obvious changes from the first edition to the second is that all the poetry in the Old Testament has now been translated into English poetry. In the first edition, only Psalms was poetic. Now, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, as well as extensive portions of the Prophets, are presented in poetic language and poetic format. The reader of the second edition will notice that there are many additional notes concerning textual variations and translation alternatives.
The translators of the Old Testament used the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977), with its extensive system of textual notes. This edition is an update of Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (Stuttgart, 1937). The translators also compared the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint and other Greek manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Latin Vulgate.
The New Testament translators made a fresh translation primarily based on the Greek New Testament known as Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition) and the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th corrected edition). The New Testament translators also made judicious evaluation of the manuscript evidence itself. As a result, textual decisions often caused them to depart from the Nestle-Aland text. Serving in the role as New Testament coordinator of this project, I monitored textual decisions very carefully.
Among the many textual decisions that improved the NLT, a few are worth noting. The NLT second edition has the shorter ending to Mark and the longer ending in the text, with a note showing the other textual evidence. In John 1:34, the NLT now reads, “the Chosen One of God,” instead of “the Son of God.” In Philippians 3:3, the NLT now reads, “we who worship by the Spirit of God,” instead of “we who worship God in the Spirit.” In Hebrews 4:2, the NLT now reads, “they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God,” instead of “they didn’t believe what God told them.” In Jude 5, the NLT now reads, “Jesus first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt,” instead of “the Lord rescued the whole nation of Israel from Egypt.”