Advanced Apologetics

Beginning next week, I'll be teaching a Wednesday evening class on Advanced Apologetics at Kilns College. I've had folks asking just how advanced it's going to be.

Are there prerequisites? What if I haven't taken Intro to Apologetics? Do I need to understand quantum mechanics?

As I see it, this course will cover the basics. So, no, there are no prerequisites (like Intro Apologetics) and no, you don't need to worry about your grasp of physics. Where the "advanced" comes in is that we will go in-depth on the apologetics issues we tackle. Rather than spread ourselves a mile wide and a centimeter deep (how's that for mixing measurement systems?), we'll plan to thoroughly thrash out the arguments we take on.

I'm really looking forward to it; I hope you'll consider joining us (for credit or audit).

Four Approaches

(10th and last in a series on New Testament textual criticism)

As I summarize this series on New Testament textual criticism, let me mention four general approaches to the use of internal and external evidence in attempting to determine what the autographs contained. Two of these approaches are radical, and two are moderate.

One radical approach is to acknowledge that each of the manuscript traditions or text types is equally old (which is likely correct), but then to dismiss the external evidence altogether. Critics taking this approach only consider the internal evidence (which, as we have seen, is often subjective).

Another radical approach is that taken by the "King James only" folks, and consists of simply counting manuscripts. In other words, go with the variant that is found in the majority of ancient manuscripts. This always falls in favor of the Byzantine reading, since there are far more copies of that manuscript tradition (albeit from much later than the earliest Alexandrian manuscripts). Some in this school of thought believe that God would not have allowed so many copies of an error to exist, nor would He have allowed an erroneous text type to persist so long (the Byzantine tradition was the most popular one in Christendom from the 9th century right up until Wescott and Hort published their Greek New Testament in 1881).

God did see fit, however, to allow a wealth of copies to persist, all of them containing the sorts of variants we have been discussing. Moreover, any claim that depends upon saying what God would or would not do is subjective at best and may be blasphemous at worst. I believe there are many places in which the variant included in the text of the King James is the original, even though it is relegated to the margin of the other English translations. But to claim that the KJV is the only accurate translation (or even the most accurate one) does not seem reasonable (to me or to the majority of scholars who understand these issues).

Far and away the most popular approach today is that taken by Wescott and Hort. It has been called Reasoned Eclecticism. Although it considers the internal evidence and other principles of external evidence, the primary criterion for this approach is "Prefer the oldest reading." As I have shared, I believe that this approach, common though it is, places too much emphasis on the few oldest manuscripts, all of which come from the same region of early Christendom.

The fourth approach might be called Reasoned Conservatism, and is the one I have been arguing for. It would acknowledge that each text type arose equally early (and thus de-emphasize "Prefer the earliest reading"). But it would involve considering both the internal evidence and the external evidence, and particularly the principle "Prefer the most widespread reading." If you agree that this approach makes the most sense, then you can assess for yourself (assuming you're using a Study Bible that identifies the significant variants) the evidence for the best reading.

I hope this series has piqued your interest in learning a bit more about the ancient manuscripts that have survived to our day. The history of each (the circumstances surrounding its discovery or rediscovery and such) can be fascinating. At a minimum, I trust that you now have a better understanding of all that lies behind those marginal notes in your Study Bible that say, "Some manuscripts..."

Thanks for reading.

Textual Considerations Part 2

(This is the 9th post in a series. Reading the previous posts would be helpful...)

In the last post, we looked at a pretty clear-cut case (Mark 1:2) in which the Byzantine variant (the one found in the text of the KJV and NKJV but in the footnotes of the NIV, RSV, ESV, and NASB) was likely the scribal error and the Alexandrian variant (in the text of these other English versions but in the marginal notes of the KJV) was likely true to the autograph. But is it always this way, with the errant variant appearing in the KJV and the accurate one in these other translations? No. Almost no unbiased textual critic would say that any single Greek New Testament or any single English translation has with 100% accuracy made the correct determination with regard to every place where variants occur in the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament. Let me offer an example where--in my opinion--the evidence is pretty clear-cut in the opposite direction.

There is a significant variant found among the ancient copies surviving to today of what we call Matthew 5:22, a portion of Jesus' teaching known as the 'Sermon on the Mount.' The following translation, from the ESV, is representative of the translations that adopt the essentially Alexandrian text found in Wescott and Hort and in the more recent Aland et al. editions of the Greek New Testament.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

After the word 'brother' my ESV Study Bible has a superscript directing me to a footnote that informs me that "Some manuscripts insert 'without cause.'" At this same place, a King James Study Bible has

But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment.

and the footnote informs us that "Some ancient manuscripts omit 'without a cause.'" So which is the original--inclusion or omission of this phrase--and which is the the result of an early scribe's having changed it (either accidentally or intentionally)? Let's consider the evidence, beginning with the external evidence.

The oldest manuscripts, including Aleph, B, and P67, do not include the phrase at issue. It is for this reason that most modern English translations (and the editors of the Greek New Testaments from which they were translated) leave the phrase out. The vast majority of ancient copies contain the phrase, but all of these are from later (many of them as late as the 9th century). For the editors and translators who leave the phrase out (as in the NIV, RSV, ESV, and NASB), the principle "prefer the oldest reading" wins out here. Before coming back and arguing why I believe this is wrong, let's first look at the internal evidence.

Most critics believe that this is a case of intentional error rather than that some scribe accidently omitted or inserted the phrase in question. But as I have mentioned, internal evidence can be subjective. Some argue that the autograph did not include the phrase and that some later scribe inserted it in order to soften Jesus' teaching on anger. Others argue that the autograph contained the phrase and that some later scribe--believing Jesus to have taken too soft a line--omitted it. I believe that several other considerations make the latter the much more likely scenario.

For one thing, the 2nd- and 3rd-century church tended to be more legalistic even than the church in Matthew's time. This argues against a scribe of that period desiring to soften Jesus' teaching.

Secondly, there are several other cases in this very same sermon of Jesus' in which He qualifies His statements in a similar manner (in 5:32, for example, an exception is made to Jesus' prohibition against divorce). In these other cases, all ancient manuscripts agree--that is, there are no variants, and we know that Jesus must, indeed, have so qualified His statements.

More importantly, we learn by comparison with other New Testament passages, that anger in itself is not always sinful. There is such a thing as righteous indignation, and Jesus Himself displays it (as with the money lenders at the Temple and with the pharisees and their hypocrisy). Indeed, we are commanded elsewhere in Scripture (Eph. 4:26) to "Be angry." These examples would seem to offer irreconcilable contradictions to the bald prohibition against anger in Matthew 5:22, unless the autograph there did in fact include the disputed, qualifying phrase.

For all of these reasons, I believe the internal evidence argues persuasively to the conclusion that the autograph contained the words translated "without a cause." Let's turn back now to the external evidence.

In my opinion, there is good reason--in this specific case and more generally--to question the uncritical acceptance of the principle 'prefer the oldest reading.' For one thing, in this and many other cases, both the Byzantine and the Western text types are united against the Alexandrian in having the other variant.* That is, while we can be certain that the Alexandrian variant existed at an early date, it may very well be that the region immediately surrounding Alexandria, Egypt was the only place in the world of that time where that variant could be found. In other words, everywhere else in the Christian world of the third century, a follower of Christ reading the text of Matthew's gospel would have found at this point the words 'without a cause.'

That this was the case is made very probable by the recognition--shared by almost all textual critics, if only they would stop to think about it--that virtually all of these variants arose prior to the late third century, by which time the process of discerning the canon of Scripture had begun. When this is considered, it becomes almost a moot point as to whether we have any manuscripts surviving from that early date.

Let me put it another way... The different variants are believed to have arisen prior to the end of the third century AD, and subsequent copying is believed to be true to the variant found generally in any given region. Thus, whatever variant existed by the turn of the fourth century in, say, Rome, would have been copied with great precision from then on in that region. The variant existing in Alexandria at that time would have been faithfully copied throughout that region by every subsequent Alexandrian scribe. B and Aleph date only to the early fourth century. The fact that they survived to the present while their contemporary Western and Byzantine manuscripts (with their unique variants) did not survive is an interesting artifact of climate, but would seem to have no bearing on the question of which variant preceeded the other. Both Aleph and B--the most complete and important early manuscripts--date from after the time at which the variants are believed to have been 'fixed' (as it were) in the respective areas of Christendom.

So this is a case (and not a unique one), where I believe that the evidence (internal and external) is overwhelmingly in favor of the variant that in most modern English translations is relegated to the marginal notes or foot notes. And the problem here is an unwillingness (on the part of the editor) to examine these significant variants on a case-by-case basis.

Fortunately, any serious student of the New Testament can fairly easily (and without knowing Greek) determine for herself (on a case-by-case basis) how persuasive is the textual evidence for and against the decision made by the editors of a particular version with regard to the choice among significant variants in the ancient manuscripts.


*In 1881, Wescott and Hort argued that the Byzantine text tradition was a conflation of the Western and Alexandrian. In support of this thesis, they identified 8 sets of variants in which the Alexandrian and Western texts were in agreement with one another and against the Byzantine. But this line of reasoning can be demonstrated to involve special pleading. A greater number of cases can be identified where it is the Alexandrian (Wescott and Hort's preferred text type) that stands alone against the Western and Byzantine traditions.

Textual Considerations

(This is the eighth post in a series. Reading the others would be helpful in understanding this one.)

So, in our modern English translations of the New Testament, we tend to have either an essentially Byzantine set of variants (King James and New King James) or an essentially Alexandrian set of variants (NIV, NASB, ESV, RSV, etc.). Remember that no essential Christian doctrine depends upon any of these variants. Indeed, if we were to eliminate every passage in which variants occur--and use only those passages in which all the relevant copies agree completely--what would be the result? We would have the very same picture of Jesus--a miracle-working, divine Son of God who died by crucifixion and three days later was raised in a glorified physical body.

But which is better, the Alexandrian set of variants or the Byzantine? Do both have their merits? What are the criteria that would help us decide?

Let's review the sorts of evidence available to textual critics and the principles involved in assessing that evidence, and then I'll discuss four approaches to using that evidence (identifying where the various editors seem to fall).

Textual criticism looks at two types of evidence, internal and external evidence. The primary principle of internal evidence is that we should prefer the reading that best explains how the other readings arose. This principle summarizes others (like prefer the more difficult reading or prefer the shorter reading). Here's an example...

Two variants are found in Mark 1:2. Some ancient manuscripts read "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet...", whereas others read "As it is written in the prophets..." The Scripture that is subsequently quoted is found in both Isaiah and Malachi. Considering the internal evidence, most scholars would agree that the autograph (what Mark wrote) was probably "in Isaiah the prophet" and that some early scribe 'improved' the verse by changing it to "in the prophets." It is more difficult to understand why any scribe would have changed it the other way--from "in the prophets" to "in Isaiah the prophet."

Consideration of external evidence involves looking at the number and date of the manuscripts associated with each variant. The two main principles here are 1) prefer the oldest reading and 2) prefer the more widespread reading.

In the case of Mark 1:2, the oldest manuscripts (Aleph and B and the early papyri) have "in Isaiah the prophet." Moreover, this is also a place where both the Alexandrian and the Western text types are characterized by that reading. Only the Byzantine type has "in the prophets." This case is thus a pretty clear-cut one: the internal evidence supports the reading "in Isaiah the prophet," and this reading is both the more widespread of the two variants and the one attested to by the earliest extant manuscripts.

Other cases are not so clear. For example, sometimes the internal evidence would lead to a different conclusion than the external evidence. In those cases, most scholars place more emphasis on the external evidence, since the internal evidence can often be subjective. More problematic are the cases where the external evidence itself is contradictory. That is, frequently the reading that has the oldest attestation is the less widespread one. While we can tell for certain (based on what is contained in, say, the Chester Beatty Papyri) that a particular variant dates to at least the third century, the evidence of the earliest Western and Byzantine manuscripts would suggest that Alexandria and its immediate surroundings may have been the only locale where that variant was found.

By and large, Wescott and Hort--and the many subsequent scholars who have followed them (somewhat uncritically, in my opinion)--allow the principle "prefer the oldest reading" to trump the principle "prefer the most widespread reading." This bias leads to instances where I believe that those translations (NIV, RSV, NASB, ESV) that accept the "oldest is best" thesis of Wescott and Hort have included in the main text the errant variant and have relegated to the margin or footnote the variant that was likely found in the autograph.

In the next post, I'll examine one such case, that of Matthew 5:22. Did Jesus say that "everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment" or did He qualify that anger with the phrase "without a cause"? In preparation for that discussion, look it up in your study Bible and see how its editors have chosen to treat this set of variants.

NT in the "Original" Greek

(7th post in a series...)

In the last post, we discussed the Textus Receptus, a 16th-century attempt at reconstructing the autographs of the New Testament. This work (or, more precisely, one of several editions of it) is the base text from which the King James and New King James Versions were translated.

Since the publication of the Textus Receptus, other ancient Greek copies of the New Testament have come to light, many of them older than the 9th-century texts from which Erasmus worked. These include three important sets of papyri, the John Rylands Manuscript (or P52, which contains portions of John's gospel and is dated from AD 117-138), the Bodmer Papyri (P62, P72, and P75, containing most of Luke and John and dating from AD 200), and the Chester Beatty Papyri (P45-47, dated at AD 250 and containing nearly all of the New Testament). These ancient copies also include several uncials, parchments whose writing is all capital letters. The earliest of these are Codex Sinaiticus (also known by the Hebrew letter 'Aleph') and Codex Vaticanus (referred to simply as 'B'). Aleph contains all of the New Testament and dates to AD 340, whereas B contains almost the entire Bible and dates from between AD 325 and 350.

As you might imagine, this wealth of new evidence eventually led to other attempts to compile a Greek New Testament that accurately reflects what the autographs contained. The most important such effort was produced in 1881 (Aleph was discovered in 1859) by the scholars Wescott and Hort, and bears the title The New Testament in the Original Greek.

In choosing this title, the authors claimed for their work much more certainty than was warranted, and textual critics today do not believe that they were 100% right. Nonetheless, most modern editors accept Wescott and Hort's primary thesis, which was that the oldest surviving manuscripts are most likely to be free of error--that at the places where variants occur among manuscripts, choosing the variant appearing in the papyri and in Aleph and B is the wisest course. Thus, nearly all of the important recent English versions--including the NIV, RSV, ESV, and NASB--were translated not from the Textus Receptus but from The New Testament in the Original Greek or newer Greek New Testaments that follow Wescott and Hort's lead.

And what does this mean with regard to the text types (or manuscript traditions) that we discussed earlier? Just this... that all of these other modern English versions reflect not the Byzantine text type that characterized Erasmus' New Testament but the Alexandrian text type. And this is because all of the ancient papyri and both Aleph and B are essentially Alexandrian in character. And though the translation of the New King James and (especially) the King James involve the choice of English words quite different from those chosen by these other English versions, the more important difference between the two sets of translations is from which Greek New Testament they were translated.

Does this mean that the KJV and NKJV are less reliable than these others? Many modern critics would say 'Yes!' But I've never been one to follow the majority view uncritically. So, in the next post, I'll argue that the KJV remains an excellent Bible, that the editors of no single modern English version made all the right decisions (with regard to choice of variants), and that the individual reader that understands what I have been sharing in this series can actually get even closer to the autographs by analyzing the variant readings on a case-by-case basis.

Greek New Testaments

(Sixth post in a series; understanding this post may require reading the others first.)

In the last post, I shared that most modern English translations begin with one of two Greek New Testaments. The first is the Textus Receptus, first published by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1518. At that point in history, Erasmus had available to him six Greek manuscripts from which to make his decisions about what the original New Testament books contained. Each of the six was representative of an essentially Byzantine text type, and each would have dated from no earlier than the ninth century AD.

A couple of things are important to note here. First, the Textus Receptus is an excellent Greek New Testament, and basing a modern translation on it remains a valid option.

Second, the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine text tradition are not the same thing. There existed variants even within those six manuscripts, and Erasmus would also have had at his disposal a number of early translations (especially in the Latin) and the quotations from several early church fathers with which to compare them as well. Thus, he undoubtedly made decisions much like those made by textual critics today, deciding among variants on the basis of both external evidence and internal evidence.

External evidence is that involving the manuscripts themselves. The two main principles regarding external evidence are 1) prefer the oldest reading and 2) prefer the most widespread reading. As we will see (in the next post), Erasmus did not have as much external evidence (as many manuscripts, translations, and writings of church fathers) as is available today.

Internal evidence refers to issues regarding what type of "error" occurred. Several principles are used, things like "prefer the shortest reading" (though this is not always appropriate) and "prefer the more difficult reading." But all of these principles can be more or less subsumed by or summarized under the principle "prefer the reading that best explains how the other variant(s) arose."

The primary English translations in use today that are based on the Textus Receptus are the King James Version and the New King James Version.

More on Textual Criticism

(This is the fifth post of this series. Understanding this post will likely require reading the previous ones...)

Now, as you might imagine, the thousands of ancient copies of the New Testament vary in other ways, like age and distribution. The Alexandrian text type is represented by many of the oldest manuscripts, but this manuscript tradition is also deemed to be the most localized of the three. What goes this mean? Well, if at a particular place in Scripture we find only two variants, one represented exclusively in the Alexandrian text type and the other shared by the Western and the Byzantine, two conclusions follow. First, we can be certain that the variant found in the Alexandrian is a very old reading.

On the other hand, that variant may have been found (at that early date) only in a very small portion of the Christian world, the area immediately surrounding Alexandria. This is true because (as you'll remember from the last post) scholars believe that virtually all of the variants arose by the middle of the third century. (This paragraph foreshadows a point I'll argue a bit later.)

Now, in the process that leads to an English translation of the New Testament, most of the significant textual criticism--the wrestling with the issues we've been discussing--does not occur at the translation phase, but rather is done by those who have previously worked up an entire Greek New Testament. The translators, of course, are conversant with the issues, and have decisions to make about whether to include (as a footnote or marginal note) a particular alternate reading. But by and large, an editorial team will begin by choosing a Greek New Testament from which to translate, and will make very few (if any) amendments to the textual decisions made by that Greek NT's editors.

Two such Greek New Testaments far surpass in importance any others, and all of the major English translations are based upon one of the two. These are the Textus Receptus, published by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1518 and another, The New Testament in the Original Greek, published by Wescott and Hort in 1881.

In the next post, we'll take a look at what textual evidence was available to these editors and the decisions they made in compiling their respective Greek New Testaments.

Three Text Types

(Fourth post in a series...)

So, textual critics seeking to reconstruct the original Greek of the New Testament have at their disposal a wealth of evidence, including more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts, some 8,000 early Latin copies, important copies in Syriac and Coptic, and voluminous quotations from the early church fathers.

The problem is that none of these represent exact copies. Rather, they contain variant readings, and though the majority of these are insignificant, about 2,000 are not.

How did these variants arise? Well, as I shared (with examples) in the first post in this series, some were accidental and some were intentional. But what's important to understand is that virtually all of these variants arose by the middle of the third century. Because from that time onward, the texts in question were recognized as Scripture--as the Word of God--and so great care was taken in subsequent copying. Prior to that, however, some scribes believed that they were merely copying letters, biographies, and such (albeit ones that were important to the church). That being the case, such scribes apparently took greater editorial license than did later scribes working after the canonization process had begun.

So, in any reconstruction of the Greek New Testament (and in any subsequent translation--as into English--of those Greek reconstructions), decisions have to be made as to which of any set of variants was likely to have been the original. Again, for most sets of variants, such a decision is easy, or the ramifications insignificant. For the significant variants, any good Greek New Testament and any good English Study Bible will make the existence of variants (at that particular spot) apparent to the reader. That is, the editorial team will make its own call as to what was likely the original (and represent this in the main body of the text) but will share (usually as a footnote or marginal note) the variant reading(s).

Now, while variants exist between any two copies (at least of any substantial length), textual critics have identified three different manuscript traditions or text types, each of which is associated with a different part of the ancient Christian world. These are the Byzantine type (originating in Greece and Asia Minor, the Western (from Italy, Spain, Gaul, and North Africa), and the Alexandrian (associated with Alexandria, Egypt). That is, the Byzantine manuscripts, though differing from one another slightly, tend to have the same set of variants as one another, whereas a different set of variants is common to the group of manuscripts originating from Alexandria, and yet a different set is held in common by early copies from the West.

Each of these manuscript traditions is supported by its own set of Greek manuscripts. Each is also supported by its own set of early translations (Byzantine by Syriac and Latin translations, Western by other early Latin manuscripts, and Alexandrian by Coptic and some Latin translations). Each tradition is also supported by its own set of writings by church fathers (e.g., Chrysostom's writings attest to the Byzantine type, Polycarp's and Tertullian's support the Western, and Origen's support the Alexandrian tradition).

I trust you're hanging with me here. Although you usually have to be in seminary to be given this stuff, it's pretty interesting and not all that difficult. My real point is to explain the main differences between the New King James Version and other modern English translations, and we're only a couple posts away now...

Attestation of the Early Church Fathers

(This is the third post in a series.)

I've already shared that there exist an astounding 5,366 ancient Greek manuscripts that are copies of the books of the New Testament. I have also alluded to the fact that there are thousands of ancient copies of translations of the New Testament writings. The most important of these are Latin, Syriac, and Coptic, and these, too, help textual critics gain certainty about what the autographs contained.

But there is a third line of evidence that leads to a correct understanding of the content of the original New Testament writings. That is the quotations of those books that are found in the writings of the early church fathers.

As Christianity began to spread (against all odds, humanly speaking), post-apostolic Christian leaders wrote letters, sermons, treatises, commentaries, and defenses of Christianity. And in these writings, they liberally quoted the gospels, letters, histories, and apocrypha that make up our New Testament. In fact, so extensively did they quote those writings that it is said that if we had no copies of the Greek manuscripts themselves, we could still piece together the entire New Testament simply by compiling the quotations of it in these writings.

Who are these early church fathers? They include men like Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Clement, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jerome, Origen, and Augustine. Their writings provide important additional information for textual critics attempting to reconstruct the New Testament autographs with certainty.

In the next post, I'll begin to discuss how these separate lines of evidence--Greek manuscripts, early translations (Latin, Syriac, Coptic), and quotations from church fathers--are used by those seeking to make an accurate modern English translation of the New Testament.

Variants in NT Copies

(This is the second post in a series, whose overall aim is to understand the differences among our modern English translations of the Bible.)

A couple of days ago, I shared that there is overwhelming reason to conclude that the New Testament was reliably transmitted from the original writings to the copies (the Greek manuscripts) that still exist. We need to acknowledge, nonetheless, that the thousands of manuscripts available to us do contain variants, places where they disagree with one another. Indeed, there are literally tens of thousands of such variants among these copies. That being the case, isn't the charge of tainted transmission a valid one?

No, not at all. For one thing, the vast majority of these variants are completely insignificant. They amount to nothing more than an alternate spelling or the fact that a single place or person was known by two different names. So the issue of the reliability of the copying comes down to approximately 2,000 places where variant readings that are not insignificant can be found among the manuscripts. Most of these will be identified (by footnotes or marginal notes) in any good study Bible.

Let me share two examples of significant variants, one accidental and one likely intentional. In Romans 5:1, the Greek word εχομεν or εχωμεν appears in the different ancient copies. The difference is the third letter--did the original contain an omega or an omicron (the two different Greek 'o's)? In English, the verse reads

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Or..

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Is Paul telling us that peace is an accomplished fact or something that we should be striving to appropriate? In this case we have a very minor alteration that leads to a rather significant difference in meaning. The incorrect insertion of the wrong 'o' would have been an easy mistake to make, especially if the scribe were listening to someone else dictate the letter.

There's an example of an intentional error in the second verse of Mark's gospel. Some copies read, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet..." This is followed by an Old Testament quote, a quote which can be found not only in Isaiah but also in Malachi. So other copies read, "As it is written in the prophets..." It would seem that some first or second century scribe, in copying Mark's written account of the events of Jesus' life, decided that Mark hadn't been on his game when he wrote "in Isaiah the prophet." The scribe 'improved' the text by changing it to "the prophets." Both variants, of course, are correct, but the first is likely what Mark actually wrote.

There is an entire field of scholarship called New Testament textual criticism that seeks to recover the autographs by careful scrutiny of the wealth of copies in existence. Scholars in this field examine external evidence (including the dates and locations of the variants in the Greek manuscripts, in the early Latin, Coptic, and Syriac translations, and in the citations from the early church fathers) and internal evidence (such as 'which variant best explains how the other arose?'). The result is a level of certainty about the originals that exceeds 99% accuracy.

It is important to note that no Christian doctrine is undermined by any of the variant readings. If we were to ignore all of the passages in which variants are found--and use only those passages in which all the relevant copies agree completely--what would be the result? We would have the very same picture of Jesus--a miracle-working, divine Son of God who died by crucifixion and three days later was raised in a glorified physical body.

The existence of errors in copying--some of them significant--should cause us no concern with regard to the reliability of the New Testament. We do need to recognize, though, that the referent of the biblical doctrine of inspiration (and of the implied doctrine of inerrancy) is not a particular set of copies--much less a particular English translation--but the autographs. These we don't have, but--through the reasoned application of New Testament textual criticism--we have a great deal of certainty about what these originals contained.

Is One English Translation of the Bible Best?

Some serious young Christians I know have been confused by claims that there is only one reliable English translation of the Bible--that being the King James Version. Those who make this claim are likely well-meaning, but are themselves confused about the issues regarding transmission (copying) and translation of the originals (autographs) of the Old and New Testament. Because I think these issues are important ones for anyone interested in studying the Bible, I'd like to address them in a series of posts. It shouldn't be difficult to make this complex topic fairly understandable. For now, I'll stick to just the New Testament, written originally in Greek.

Let's begin by acknowledging that none of the autographs of the New Testament books have survived to today. This is not surprising. The papyri (or even parchments) on which they would have been written could not be expected to last long, especially as these particular texts would have been passed around and read with great regularity. The fact is that we don't have the autograph of any such ancient text, biblical or otherwise.

So, the issue with regard to the reliability of any ancient document is not whether or not we have the autographs. The questions are 'How many copies do we have?' and 'How close are they to the date of the original?' So how do the books of the New testament compare (on these criteria) with other ancient manuscripts accepted as reliable?

Caesar wrote Gallic Wars between 100-44 B.C. Ten copies exist today, with the earliest dating to A.D. 900, about 1,000 years after the original.

The Athenian general Thucydides wrote his History of the series of wars between Athens and Sparta between 460 and 400 B.C. There are only 8 extant manuscripts, the earliest dating to A.D. 900, 1,300 years after the autograph.

Tacitus wrote his Annals in about A.D. 100 (at approximately the same time as the last NT book was written). Twenty copies have survived to today, with the earliest coming from A.D. 1100, 1,000 years after the autograph. Historians consider the copies of each of these books as providing reliable evidence for what the originals said.

The New Testament books were written between A.D. 50 and A.D. 100. An astounding 5,366 copies (in the Greek) survive to today. The earliest (a fragment) dates to A.D. 125; whole books are found as early as A.D. 200; most of the New Testament is represented in copies from A.D. 250, and copies containing the entire new Testament date to A.D. 325, only 225 years after the last autograph! The conclusion of scholars in this field is expressed by F.F. Bruce...

There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

In brief, the fact that we don't possess the originals of the New Testament books is not a barrier to our understanding what those originals said. Nonetheless, the copies we possess do contain variant readings. And the most significant differences among the various English translations are not based on choice of English words or style, but rather on which set of Greek manuscript copies the editors chose to work from when translating.

Ancient Greek Science

(This post is reprinted from one of my earliest, when I first began blogging.)

Arguably the first important underwater archaeological find was a shipwreck discovered in 1900 off the Aegean Sea island of Antikythera. The ship was Greek, dated from the time of Christ, and carried a wealth of statues and pottery.

Also aboard this ancient ship was a heavily-encrusted instrument, which little-by-little came to be recognized as a navigational device. It wasn't until the 1950's, though, that with x-ray and gamma-ray examination of its internal structure investigators recognized it as a sophisticated instrument that accurately mimicked past, present, and future movements of the sun, moon, and planets. Some early Greek had developed an analog computer 2000 years ago!

Historians of science recognize that several ancient civilizations besides Greece--Mesopotamia, China, India, Egypt, and Islam--made impotant contributions to modern science (especially in mathematics and astronomy, but also in other areas). In the case of each of these cultures, however, such contributions (and the individuals that effected them) were rather anomalous. They weren't followed by further progress, or by a succession of like-minded individuals and similar innovation and advance. Science historian Stanley Jaki has argued that science was "stillborn" in these other cultures. Why?

Worldview. These cultures each had worldview inadequacies, aspects of their overall view of reality that stifled scientific advance. Modern science was conceived, was born, and flourished only within the Judeo-Christian worldview of 16th and 17th century Europe. All of the founders of modern science were either devout Christians (Boyle, Newton, Pascal, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, Mendel, Cuvier, Agassiz, Pasteur, and others) or at least operated within a Christian understanding of reality (Copernicus, Galileo, van Leeuwenhoek, and others).

And this was not just a coincidence. The very philosophical presuppositions that allowed the scientific revolution come from a biblical understanding of the world. What's more, science only makes sense within a theistic--and specifically Christian--worldview. While science can be (and increasingly is) conducted by atheistic naturalists, naturalism fails to provide a rational foundation for science. Naturalists engaging in science do so on capital borrowed from Christian theism.


(The Antikythera Device was in my local paper today, which is what prompted this repost. New research indicates that the device was also used for organizing the calendar with regard to the four-year cycle of the ancient Olympic Games.)

Spontaneous Generation

Looking for something to do to prepare yourself for celebrating next year's 150th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of Species? I suggest sitting down with a copy of Giuseppe Sermonti's Why is a Fly Not a Horse? It was originally written in Italian, and its title, Dimenticare Darwin, means "Forget Darwin." A geneticist, Sermonti writes interestingly and persuasively about the need to dump Darwinism as completely out of touch with reality and with the latest findings of science. The rest of my post today comes from reading Chapter 1, "Achilles Inspires Redi."*

For many, modern biology had its start when Francesco Redi--in 1688--disproved the notion that the origin of maggots in meat was due to spontaneous generation. He showed experimentally that maggots came to be in meat only when flies were allowed to lay their eggs in it, and generalized his conclusions to all living things--"all life comes from the egg."

But the idea of spontaneous generation did not go away, and has had to be refuted over and over again. Louis Pasteur extended Redi's principle to include the very smallest microbes (which others of his day excluded from Redi's principle), demonstrating that adequate sterilization could prevent the origin of any life. According to Sermonti,

Biology has advanced in status with every new confutation of the spontaneous generation thesis.

Despite, however, the conclusive experimental evidence (of Redi with worms, of Lazzaro Spallanzani with protozoans, of Pasteur with bacteria), belief in spontaneous generation remains a necessary part of Darwinian (and neo-Darwinian) evolutionary theory. Sermonti again...

Darwin, though a great admirer of Pasteur, regretted that the Frenchman had denied spontaneous generation. "If it could be demonstrated," he was to write to Haeckel in 1873, "this would be very important to us."

This led, of course, to the field of origin-of-life studies, of efforts to produce living things in laboratory test tubes, of the zealous teaching of perceived successes (the Miller-Urey experiments) and relative silence about the overarching failures. To this day, however, the spontaneous generation of living things from non-living chemicals remains a necessary corollary of neo-Darwinian evolution, though all of the evidene would lead to an opposite conclusion. Sermonti:

There will be only one way to refute spontaneous generation. That is to take note of the astronomic complexity of the simplest organisms, and to show that the minimum conceivable life form calls for structures so elaborate that no fortuitous accident can bring them all together. But we had to wait until the second half of the twentieth century for the proof.

* The title of this chapter of Sermonti is interesting. What apparently inspired Redi to conduct his experiments was a passage from Homer's Iliad in which Achilles recognizes that maggots arise in a corpse only if flies are allowed access to that corpse. In other words, Homer understood what Greek philosophy, medieval science, and neo-Darwinism did not, that spontaneous generation is not an accurate understanding of the origin of living things.

Church and the Homeless

So, in that last series of posts, I tried to demonstrate that true followers of Christ would be channels of grace to the poor and suffering, whether the homeless and the prisoners in our own communities or the orphans and slaves across the world. What I struggled to articulate in blogland was powerfully shared by a guest speaker at Antioch last Sunday. Mike Yankoski is the author of Under the Overpass, which chronicles his five months living as a homeless person. I highly recommend the book (as life-changing), but for now would first suggest that you hear and see what he shared with us last week. Go here to download either the video or an audio-only version of that sermon.

Busy in a Good Way

It's been more difficult to find time to blog lately, but that's been a good thing. It means I've been in the field a good deal, and I love that. What's more, I've been in a number of different habitats most weeks, seeing different trees, different flowers, different mammals, and different birds.

Within the past couple of weeks, what's occupied my time has included a young Swainson's Hawk in Gilliam County, a fledgling Spotted Owl in Jefferson County, a brooding Common Nighthawk and a rare paintbrush in Crook County, Yellow-breasted Chats (for you non-birding types, I'm not making that name up), Black-throated Gray Warblers, a cougar(!), and golden currants in Wheeler County, and White-faced Ibis and a western rattlesnake in Harney County. And that's just confining myself to Oregon. To top it all off, I'm (mostly) getting paid to travel around this great state communing with nature (and its Creator)!

So if a few days go by without a new blog post, don't worry about me.

Motivation for Justice

There's one more strange line of reasoning to which I need to respond regarding the issue of Christians and justice...

There are those who jump to the conclusion--when they hear of a church like Antioch being involved in human rights issues--that the motivation for such activity is an effort to earn our own salvation. This, of course, is a non-sequitur: the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. As an argument, it would look like this...

Premise: Christians are showing compassion to the poor and outcast.

Conclusion: These particular Christians must be trying to earn their way to Heaven; they must not understand the grace of God in Christ.

I know, it seems pretty silly when I write it out in its logical form. Nonetheless, this is the sort of thinking engaged in by those Christians skeptical of their brothers and sisters who are active in the area of human rights and social justice.

Obviously, there's an alternative, a quite different motivation for loving others and extending to them grace, mercy, and justice. And that is that we understand Christ's grace and mercy and desire for justice. As His close friend and follower the apostle John had it,

We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

The apostle Paul spelled it out pretty clearly...

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God... For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

In short, God has in Christ adopted us as sons and daughters. Further, He has called us (throughout Scripture) to love and show compassion to others. We therefore do those things in order to obey and to please Him. It's as simple as that.

Justice and Eschatology

So, I've been taking issue with the view--popular among the last couple of generations of American evangelicals--that says that doing justice (meeting the needs of the world) has little place in what Christians are called to do. I've been interacting with an author who defends this view (without naming him). Another misconception he has involves eschatology--one's understanding of end-time events, of the ultimate disposition of this planet (among other things).

He discusses two eshatologies (again, as if these were the only options): what he calls Covenant Theology and Dispensational Theology. According to that author,

In general, the Covenant churches emphasize social and cultural involvement. The Dispensational churches emphasize evangelizing and discipling people out of the world. The contrast was probably best stated by D.L. Moody, who said, "Don't spend too much time polishing the brass rails on a sinking ship."

For the author in question, Moody was right, Dispensational Theology is right, and that eschatology dictates that we spend little of our time concerning ourselves with issues of justice.

Now, I think there is a great deal that could be argued for the other--Covenant-- view and against the Dispensational one. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the author is correct--that things in this world are only going to get worse , that the world is a 'sinking ship' and that the "new heavens and new earth" (of Revelation 21) are to be taken concretely. The problem remains that we are not given the time of the end, nor are we given license to ignore all of the biblical mandates to do justice, love our neighbors (and our enemies), and do unto others as we would have them do to us.

Many are the times in the history of the church when things were bleaker than today, times during which Christians had more reason than we to expect the imminent return of Christ because 'things couldn't get much worse.' When barbarian hordes had overrun all of Christian Europe, followers of Christ kept His teachings alive and ministered to their conquerors, eventually winning the right to share with them the good news of Christ's desire for their reconciliation to Him.

When William Wilberforce recognized the inhumanity and cruelty of the British slave trade, he did not consider that the promise of new heavens and a new earth somehow justified his doing nothing to abolish such injustice.

When (again) Europe was overrun by the Nazis, Christians could well have refused to harbor Jews, or to enlist to go to war against the Nazis. Those would have been the sorts of decisions that this eschatological view would have logically produced. Thank God that throughout church history, Christians have not succumbed to the poor reasoning of Moody but have remained at their posts, doing those acts of justice to which God called them.

Indeed, on the view put forth by this author, Martin Luther King, Jr, should have stuck to simply preaching the gospel of eternal salvation and ignored the fact that black people were still being treated as second class citizens.

My point is this... even if Dispensational Theology is the more accurate understanding of Scripture (and I have serious doubts about this), it does not provide justification to disobey the Scripture-wide call upon God's people to do justice, and to have compassion on people (all of whom are made in God's image).

Justice and a False Dichotomy

So here's a question posed by a Christian author who has some of the misunderstandings about justice issues that I mentioned in the last post...

Should the Gospel be defined as receiving Christ or should the Gospel be defined as meeting the needs of the world?

Of course, this represents a false dichotomy. There are certainly more than just these two options and, in fact, neither option is satisfactory. The Jewish men who penned the New Testament would never have defined the great redemptive work accomplished by the Messiah as narrowly as modern evangelicals have. Throughout the history of God's dealings with humanity, His focus was not just on individuals but also on families, tribes, nations, and the world. The same is true of that ultimate act of reconciliation that is the focal point of both human and cosmic history--the atoning death and subsequent resurrection of His sinless, eternal Son.

In defending his own answer (that the Gospel should be defined as receiving Christ), the author grants that we should care for our world and the needy. As part of this admission, he cites Jeremiah 29:7, which says,

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

But if one were more open to the idea that justice is at the heart of God's desire, one could cite a vast number of Scripture passages. One of the most succinct summaries of God's requirement of His people was originally written on stone tablets. This summary included ten commandments (see Exodus 20), five of which deal with man's relationship with God, and five of which deal with man's relationship with one another. Through the prophet Micah (6:8), God spelled out His requirements even more concisely:

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Then Jesus Himself was asked what the greatest commandment was and what one must do to inherit eternal life. His response?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

This prompted the question "And who is my neighbor?", to which Jesus explained (through the parable of the "good Samaritan") that anyone in need is our neighbor. If we want it condensed to just one sentence, how about (from Matthew 7:12)...

So, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.

In our day, this means that when we find a young girl who has been sold into sex slavery, we do what we can to free her and get her back to her home and a better life.

I cannot imagine how an honest reading of the Bible or of the Gospels could ever lead to reducing the Gospel to merely the future salvation of individual souls. It's as if the 'great commission' ("Go and make disciples") were the only thing Jesus meant for us to remember, and that it somehow annulled all of His other teachings and commands.

Doing Justice

I want to do a couple of intramural posts, on a subject that frankly shouldn't be controversial among Christians. It's the subject of engaging in human rights issues, of doing justice at home and around the world.

At my church, Antioch (of Bend, Oregon, a church plant in October of 2006), we care about such issues of justice. We help feed and clothe the homeless in our own city. We have a partnership with a ministry in Uganda, where we will be adopting a very poor region, helping with providing water and education, and sponsoring children orphaned by AIDS and by rebel attacks. We're helping with efforts to free Nepalese women and girls from sex slavery and to provide them with a new life. One of our number is establishing schools in an earthquake-ravaged region of Pakistan. We're helping women in Kenya, Burundi, and Rwanda to make a living for themselves. And the list goes on.

But here's the problem. Believe it or not, there are many Christians who are skeptical of--or even opposed to--such efforts. Both the skepticism and the opposition are ill-founded, and each requires a response. But for now, let me lay out (as best I can) how these Christians tend to articulate their position.

Those skeptical of Christian efforts at justice generally offer one of two justifications. One, they may be confused into thinking that when we say "human rights" we are somehow thinking of abortion rights or homosexual rights. It is, of course, to be regretted that proponents of the homosexual agenda and of abortion-on-demand have successfully hoodwinked the general public--including Christians--into seeing these as issues of human rights. They are not, which is why many blacks take great offense at attempts to equate same-sex marriage activism with the civil rights movement of the 1950's. (But that's another post.)

Second, some Christians equate 'social justice' with liberal churches (those who don't really believe the truth of Christianity) or with secular organizations. Indeed, theologically speaking, some jump to the conclusion that we 'do' human rights thinking to earn our own salvation.

Those Christians opposed to such humanitarian efforts often come from a particular eschatological interpretation, one that says that things will only get worse (and that they can't get much worse than they already are), that Jesus will come back very soon and do away with this Earth and create a new heaven and a new Earth. On this view, the only worthwhile endeavor for the Christian is to evangelize--to teach people that the end is near but that there is salvation for their eternal souls. Thus, any attempts to make living conditions better (for the poor, the orphan, the man dying of AIDS) is like (in the words of D.L. Moody) "polishing the brass railings on a sinking ship."

These, then, are the illogical views that I'll take a stab at addressing in the next few posts.

Regaining Consciousness

Steven asks,

So how does an unconcious human being regain consciousness? Does God work a miracle every time somebody comes out of the operating room? Does God have to remember not to restore consciousness until the anaesthetic wears off, or else people will be able to see a miracle?

I suspect that Steven thinks he's either being clever here, or else coming up with penetrating and difficult questions that somehow jeopardize Moreland's conclusion (see preceding posts) that the origin of consciousness is better explained by Christian theism than by naturalism.

As an aside, it continues to amaze me how often it is the defender of theism who wants to deal with reason and evidence and the person taking the side of materialistic science who tries to bring in theological considerations. The answers to Steven's questions here depend upon one's definition of miracle as well as one's understanding of the degree of God's sovereignty. And these are issues upon which even Christians come to different conclusions.

But none of these questions address the real issue (yes, these too are red herrings), which was the origin of consciousness. In fact, the subject of regaining consciousness further highlights the problems with a materialist view of personhood (and the superiority of the Christian view). Let me offer (in support of this claim) three lines of argument, two evidential and one logical.

There is a vast and growing body of data that clearly demonstrates that the person/mind exists independent of the human body. That is, in cases of lost consciousness or (especially) near-death experiences, the human mind can relate verifiable events from elsewhere that occurred while the unconscious or lifeless body remained in one place. (The best source I know for this sort of evidence is Beyond Death by Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland.)

Another field of research that leads to the same conclusion (that mind/consciousness is independent of or separate from brain) is neurosurgery, specifically brain probing done with a conscious patient. In such cases, the surgeon can cause the patient's toe (say) to move by innervating a particular portion of the brain. The patient will frequently say (in effect), "You did that--it wasn't me." These sorts of results have led many of the leading neurophysiologists to abandon the naturalistic views with which they began and to accept that we are more than just physical beings, that we have a mind/soul/spirit.

Of course, philosophers have been skeptical of the materialist view since long before that skepticism was verified by empirical proofs. Simply put, consciousness and related things (thoughts, memories, desires, emotions) are categorically different than physical things like gray matter, neurons, brain cells. That is, we can--in discussing the latter--refer to their mass, or color, or electrical charge. But such physical characteristics are absurd for describing memories or consciousness.

This is not to say, of course, that our brains (and eyes and ears) have no role to play (at least at present) in our ability to access memories or to articulate sights and sounds. But the fact is (as science is increasingly demonstrating), persons (that is, conscious minds) can see real events while those persons are no longer associated with their bodies. The strangest examples include blind people, some of whose 'minds' acurately desribe events that their sightless eyes would have prevented them from accessing had they still been in their bodies.

The point is, human consciousness exists apart from the human body, a scientific finding that is fatal to a materialist understanding of the world. Steven's facetious attempt at raising the issue of 'lost consciousness' strengthens the theistic view espoused by Moreland in his new book (and weakens the materialist view Steven seems to want to defend).