1 New Testament Textual Evidence

When it comes to ancient writers such as Homer, Plato, or those of the New Testament, we only have copies of their writings and not the originals. As we might imagine, the original manuscripts (or autographs) have been subjected to destruction, decay, and loss. This can lead us to wonder how we can be confident regarding the words in the New Testament. Are they what the originals said? Do we have the right words?

Of course, having the right words does not automatically mean that the content of those words is accurate. As scholar Jacob Peterson points out, “A reliable text is not a guarantee of reliable content.” Nevertheless, once we are confident that we have a reliable text, then we can test the claims of that text to see whether they are reliable. This is why being confident that we have the right words is directly relevant to New Testament reliability.

TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND ANCIENT WRITINGS

If we do not have the originals, how can we be confident that our copies accurately reflect what the originals said? We all know that everyone makes mistakes, and we would expect copyists to be no different. Yet how can we know when and where these mistakes occurred without the originals?

An entire discipline known as textual criticism considers questions like these. The end result of these efforts is that when you pick up an English translation of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, the words you read “do not reproduce the text of any one manuscript; editors and textual critics try to establish the most probable Greek text by comparison of the different manuscripts.” Thus, to recreate the original text as accurately as possible, textual critics will collect and examine the available copies we have. They will then identify and assess the differences between the copies to determine which reading is more likely to represent the original (and why).

Given this process, two components are particularly helpful. First, it is normally preferable to have a multitude of manuscripts to examine. Having several copies allows us to compare the various texts and identify any differences between them. Second, it is generally the case that manuscripts closer in time to the originals are more important. The shorter time gap means fewer generations of copying and thus a lower likelihood of textual differences. From here, textual critics can really get to work comparing the different manuscripts to best determine what the originals likely said. Therefore, two initial evidential considerations that are important for textual critics are the amount of copies and the age of the texts.

Homer and Plato. With these components in mind, I can now introduce some textual data for Homer and Plato. These are two highly important and influential figures from the ancient world. To give an idea of their impact, biblical scholar N. T. Wright observes, “If Homer functioned as the Old Testament for the Hellenistic world . . . its New Testament was unquestionably Plato.” These two thus provide a good sample for comparison.

Homer (or the Homeric tradition) dates to around the eighth century BC, with the Iliad and Odyssey being well-known works throughout history. Though multiple manuscript counts have been given, and counting the manuscripts is an incredibly difficult and tedious task, there appear to be somewhere around two thousand copies of these Homeric works. The date of one of the earliest papyrus fragments of the Iliad is as early as the fourth century BC, roughly four hundred years after it is thought to have been written.

When it comes to Plato, who lived and wrote around the fourth century BC, his textual tradition has a stark difference. As with Homer, the counting of these manuscripts is difficult and nuanced. Nevertheless, one may be surprised to learn that we currently have fewer than 275 manuscripts of Plato, though recent publications indicate a number closer to 210. This is a startlingly low number of manuscripts for such an influential philosopher.

The date of the earliest substantive manuscript for this famous philosopher is equally startling. According to T. H. Irwin, “The oldest sources for the text of Plato are written in the second and third centuries AD. Unfortunately, these contain only fragments of text. Our main sources for the text are fifty-one Byzantine manuscripts, copied from the ninth century AD onward.” In other words, the manuscripts we use to reconstruct Plato’s writings are considerably later than when he actually wrote. As one classicist puts it, these copies are “closer in time to us than to him.”

The above gives us an initial idea of the textual traditions for two major ancient figures. There are significantly more manuscripts of Homer than there are of Plato. The period between the original writing and our earliest fragmentary manuscripts is several centuries for both authors. While textual critics rely on far more than simply counting the number of manuscripts and assessing how close they are to the originals, the amount and age are nevertheless significant. Moreover, these two, especially Homer, have better textual evidence compared to other ancient writings.

New Testament writings. Regarding the New Testament, two research groups have substantially contributed to our knowledge and preservation of New Testament manuscripts. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research was founded in 1959 and maintains the official database of documented New Testament manuscripts. Its database can be visited online and is referred to as the Kurzgefaßte Liste, or much more simply Liste. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts is the other important group and utilizes the latest in photographic technology. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts provides high-resolution photographs of several important manuscripts, thus preserving them in case of potential destruction, theft, or loss. If one is interested in studying and/or viewing the New Testament manuscripts, the Institute for New Testament Textual Research and the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts will be essential resources.

When it comes to the number of New Testament manuscripts, there are over five thousand copies. This is a remarkable wealth of material for textual critics and far greater than that of Homer and Plato combined. Bart Ehrman, a leading New Testament textual critic and atheist/agnostic, summarizes the New Testament textual situation, writing,

We have more manuscripts for the New Testament than for any other book from the ancient world—many, many more manuscripts than we have for the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, or any other important author . . . along with manuscripts in many other ancient languages (e.g., Latin, Syriac, and Coptic). That is good news indeed—the more manuscripts you have, the more likely it is that you can figure out what the authors originally said.

Undoubtedly, the vast number of Greek manuscripts helps textual critics as they seek to confidently establish the original text. The New Testament is therefore in an excellent evidential position with such vast numbers of manuscripts.

As with Homer and Plato, I am using general figures and estimates regarding the New Testament. This is even more important here because the sheer volume of manuscripts makes giving a definitive figure difficult. New manuscript discoveries, the risk of accidental double counting, loss, incorrect additions to the Liste, and material bias are all factors that require constant updates to these counts. Thus, while figures can vary and/or change over the years, the conclusion remains that there is a plethora of New Testament manuscripts, over five thousand, and more than any other ancient author in terms of volume. Additionally, this figure reflects only Greek manuscripts and does not include those in other languages (Latin, etc.) or references from the early church.

When were these manuscripts written? The earliest copies are fragments from around AD 100–200. The most famous example is from the John Rylands collection and is a small fragment of the Gospel of John, which is commonly referred to as P52. P52 is considered the earliest manuscript of the New Testament in our possession, with various dates given. Ehrman dates this manuscript to around AD 125, but others think a broader time frame for the dating of P52 is more appropriate and date it within the second century more generally. As I will discuss later, this Gospel is often believed to have been written around the mid-90s. This means that there is a particularly short time from the original to our earliest copy, especially compared to Homer and Plato.

There are more complete manuscripts starting around the third century. The Chester Beatty Papyri is an example of a substantive collection of manuscripts from this period. It is one of the earliest that contains a significant portion of the Gospels, Pauline epistles, and more. Ehrman points out that, for the Gospel of John, the “first reasonably complete copy . . . is from around 200 C.E.” He notes that while this is just over a century or so from when John wrote, it is “still pretty old—older than most manuscripts for most other authors from the ancient world, by a wide margin.”

ASSESSING THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

Now that we have an idea of the amount and age of the New Testament manuscripts, we can look at how scholars assess them to best determine what the original said. Analyzing the various differences between copies is part of this process, and not all differences are created equal. I will briefly introduce three types of differences that textual critics encounter. Many differences, indeed the overwhelming majority, are easily explained as unintentional errors and/or spelling mistakes. Other differences affect how a text is interpreted but are not well evidenced textually. Last, the smallest group is the one that is more difficult to reconcile.

Category one. As one might assume, and as Ehrman makes explicit, “the single most common mistake in our manuscripts is misspelled words.” If we make typographical mistakes copying today with computers, spellcheck, and keyboards, how much more likely were ancient scribes to have made similar mistakes?

Another reason for unintentional differences is the difficult task of copying ancient texts. One example of such challenges is that ancient Greek had no spacing, punctuation, or distinctions between capital and lowercase letters. One need not imagine how this added difficulty to copying a text.

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Understandably, this could lead to all sorts of inconsequential (accidental) copyist mistakes. As a result, Ehrman points out that the majority of differences are “completely and utterly unimportant and insignificant and don’t matter at all.” Textual typos are the typical trouble.

Category two. The second category of differences is a little more complex than the first. These differences are meaningful to the text, but the evidence for the difference is not strong (not viable). In other words, if there is a significant difference to the text but it is only found in a single and/or late text, then it is unlikely to be a viable (or probable) reading.

Dan Wallace, another leading textual critic, uses the following example. Luke 6:22 says, “Blessed are you when the people hate you, and when they exclude you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man.” Yet, as Wallace points out, Codex 2882 omits the ending: “on account of the Son of Man.” This is a meaningful difference because, according to Codex 2882, the meaning of the Luke 6:22 is that one is blessed anytime one is persecuted, irrespective of whether it is for Jesus’ sake! However, this omission occurs in only one manuscript, from a later period (ca. AD 900–1100). Thus, while textual critics can discuss how and why this omission occurred, ultimately it is not a viable reading and has readily been identified as such.

Category three. The last and most significant differences are also the rarest. These ones are both meaningful and textually viable. In short, these are the situations in which two meaningfully different readings have competitive or decent textual evidence. Mark 16:9-20 (events after the resurrection) and John 7:53–8:11 (the woman caught in adultery) are the two most well-known examples. Aside from these two, all other textual variants of this kind involve two verses or less.

While we find elements of the Mark and John passages in other texts of the New Testament, no Christian doctrine is ultimately determined by either of these two examples (or others in this category). If these texts were not in the originals, as is widely held, nothing about the core of Christianity changes. The central doctrines of Christianity are not affected, and the Gospel still stands. Wallace highlights this point when writing, “No fundamental truth is lost by them [the Mark and John passages]. To be sure, the textual decision will affect how one views these Gospels, but it does not affect any cardinal doctrine.”

These two and other textual issues have been known to textual critics for a long time. In fact, if you are looking for a collection of these sorts of potentially meaningful and viable differences, find the closest Bible. Most Bibles will bracket these texts and include a brief footnote clarifying the manuscript data.

Bottom line regarding the textual evidence. What is the bottom line regarding these differences? Arguably, two of the most well-known New Testament textual critics are Bart Ehrman (a skeptic) and Dan Wallace (a Christian). While they have quite different worldviews, their answers are strikingly similar.

Ehrman, known for questioning the New Testament’s reliability, concludes that “the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.” This is remarkable because although Ehrman need not be charitable here, he nevertheless recognizes that the essentials of Christianity are unaffected. Moreover, Ehrman’s overall assessment of the New Testament text is also positive. He writes, “Textual scholars have enjoyed reasonable success at establishing, to the best of their abilities, the original text of the New Testament. Indeed, barring extraordinary discoveries or phenomenal alterations in method, it is virtually inconceivable that the character of our Greek New Testaments will ever change significantly.” In short, “Scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy.”

Regarding various differences between texts, Wallace writes, “No viable variant affects any cardinal truth of the New Testament.” He adds that he is not aware of any “confessional statements at seminaries, Christian colleges, or major denominations that were retooled in the slightest because of the excision of any of the meaningful and viable variants.” Ultimately, for Wallace, “the text is certain in all essentials, and even in most particulars we can be relatively sure what the autographs said. Further, in the passages in which the text is in doubt, no cardinal doctrine is at stake.”

These two writers with vastly different backgrounds come to surprisingly similar conclusions. Indeed, one likely could not tell by reading these quotations who is a Christian and who is not. This is a testament to the strength of the New Testament textual evidence.

CONCLUSION

Like being overdressed for a party, the New Testament enjoys a textual tradition that stands out in a crowd and provides an “embarrassment of riches” for scholars. There are an incredible number of NT manuscripts for scholars to evaluate. As textual critics have analyzed the thousands of New Testament copies, we can continue to be confident that “no Christian doctrine or practice—major or minor—is determined by a textually difficult passage.” The result, then, is that when it comes to the New Testament, we can be confident that we have the right words, a necessity for establishing reliability.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

■Textual critics are scholars who look at different manuscript copies of an ancient writing such as Plato or the Gospel of Matthew. Since we do not have the originals (autographs), textual critics compare different copies of these works in order to make sure what we are reading today is likely what the original authors wrote.

■The New Testament is the best textually attested work in the ancient world. There are over five thousand manuscript copies of the New Testament in the Greek language alone, with some of them coming within a century or two of the writings.

■Given the plethora of copies, we would expect differences in the manuscripts of the New Testament (especially since they were all handwritten). The overwhelming majority are accidental mistakes (e.g., spelling). Textual critics, including the skeptical ones, acknowledge that core or essentials of Christianity are not affected by any textual difference.

1 New Testament Textual Evidence