April 16, 2008 | By Gary D. Myers
NEW ORLEANS – Thousands of manuscripts, produced between the 2nd and 14th centuries, provide evidence for reliability of the New Testament text, said Daniel Wallace during the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary April 4.
Wallace, an evangelical Christian and professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, made these comments during his dialog with New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, a self-described agnostic. And while both men agree that as many as 5,500 New Testament manuscripts exist, only Wallace views this as a positive development attesting the reliability of the text.
Along with all of these copies come many variations or differences. New Testament scholars call these differences “textual variants.” Variants include differences in spelling, word order, omissions and additions. According to Wallace, variants outnumber total words in the New Testament as much as 2-1 or 3-1. But, Wallace noted, even “trivial” differences count as variants.
“If [the number of variants] were the only piece of data we had it would discourage anyone from attempting to recover the wording of the original, but there is more to the story,” Wallace said. “The reason we have a lot of variants is that we have a lot of manuscripts. To speak about the number of variants without also speaking about the number of manuscripts is simply an appeal to sensationalism.”
All together, the 5,500 ancient Greek manuscripts contain around 1.3 million pages of text. Again, Wallace insisted that even this statistic is misleading. In addition to these 1.3 million pages, thousands of ancient translations attest to the reliability of the New Testament, Wallace said.
Early on, the New Testament was translated into Latin, Coptic and Syriac, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopic and Armenian. According to Wallace, scholars have discovered more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts and as many as 5,000 manuscripts in other ancient languages. In all, there are about 20,000 handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament in various languages.
Even if the Greek manuscripts and early translations were destroyed, Wallace said that other ancient documents are available to attest for the authenticity of the New Testament text. Ancient Christian leaders, “the Church Fathers or Patristics,” recorded more than a million quotations of the New Testament in their writings.
“The Patristic quotations would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament said Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman,” Wallace quipped citing one of Ehrman’s own statements. “These numbers are breathtaking.”
Wallace said a dozen of the Greek manuscripts date to the 2nd Century, 64 date to the 3rd Century and 48 date to the 4th Century. More than 120 Greek manuscripts exist that were produced within 300 years of the composition of the New Testament.
“Most of these are fragmentary, but collectively the whole New Testament is found in them multiple times,” Wallace said. “In terms of extant manuscripts, the New Testament textual critic is confronted with an embarrassment of riches.”
Second Century manuscripts are fragmentary, Wallace said. However, 2nd Century fragments attest three out of four of the gospels, nine of Paul’s letters, Acts, Hebrews and Revelation. Forty percent of the New Testament verses are found in manuscripts produced within a century of the originals Wallace said.
“I think there is a way to be relatively confident that the text of the 4th Century, where we have our first complete New Testament, looked remarkably like the earliest form of the text,” Wallace said.
Wallace pointed to two important manuscripts, a fragment known as P75 and volume known as Codex B or Vaticanus, to support his claims about the existence of reliable 4th Century manuscripts. P75 is a second Century fragment that includes large portions of Luke and John. Codex B dates to the 4th century includes most of the New Testament.
Wallace said that P75 and Codex B are very similar in quality and in content Wallace believes the two manuscripts had a common ancestor that predates P75.
Where the manuscripts differ, Codex B, the later of the two, often has the earlier reading. This fact leads scholars like Wallace to view Codex B as reliable in other areas not included in P75.
“When Codex B agrees with Codex Sinaiticus, the 4th Century manuscript that is in fact a complete New Testament, which it usually does, that combined reading almost surely goes back to common archetype deep in the 2nd Century,” Wallace said.
Ehrman agreed that copies abound, but found the evidence for a reliable text less convincing.
“We have a lot of copies of the New Testament,” Ehrman said. “Sometimes you will hear someone say, ‘the New Testament is the best attested book from the ancient world,’ and it’s absolutely right. But you need to realize these copies we have, by and large, are from later times -- centuries after this process was begun.”
According to Ehrman, over 90 percent of the New Testament manuscripts are from the 8th Century, 700 years after the originals. Throughout the copies, textual critics such as Ehrman see thousands of differences.
“The reality is, we don’t know [how many variants exist] because nobody has been able to count them all, even with developments of computer technology,” Ehrman said. “It is probably easiest to put it in comparative terms. There are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Well, that’s a lot.”
Wallace questioned Ehrman’s insistence that the message of the text was somehow controlled to protect and promote orthodox Christian theology.
“The reason that manuscripts of this text form [the Alexandrian] look so much like each other is largely because they were in a relatively pure line of transmission. There was no conspiracy, just good practices,” he said.
Wallace pointed to two attitudes that he avoids when he approaches the text: absolute certainty and total despair.
“To be frank, the quest for certainty often overshadows the quest for truth in conservative theological circles and that’s a temptation that we need to resist,” he said. “It is fundamentally the temptation of Modernism.”
Wallace said that this approach seeks to protect presuppositions rather than pursue truth. The other extreme, involves deep skepticism based in part on intellectual pride.
“On the other side are a few radical scholars who are so skeptical that no piece of data, no hard fact is safe in their hands,” Wallace said, “It all turns to putty because all views are equal.”
The view that casts doubt on the reliability of the New Testament is gaining prominence on the street, in coffeehouses, in college classrooms across America, Wallace said. The media is also fuels this growing skepticism. Wallace called this attitude the temptation of Postmodernism.
Greer-Heard Forum director and NOBTS professor Robert Stewart said he was pleased with the fourth installment of the Greer-Hear Forum. He hopes event strengthen the faith of Christians who attended the event.
“The thing that conference attendees should have come away with is that there is no good reason to lose you faith,” Stewart said. “It’s a matter of the heart.”
Stewart said the overwhelming testimony of conference presenters points to a New Testament text that is reliable.
“All these guys, who are top scholars in textual criticism, see that things that Bart sees. They all agree on the facts,” “The vast majority say, ‘There is nothing here that should destroy your faith.’”
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