False
rumors and urban legends are not new phenomena, but with the advent of the
Internet, there is now no end to weird, strange, and often demonstrably false
claims. Such is the case when a friend gave me a copy of a note provided by a
skeptic. The note reads as follows:
“The King
James Version of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England. There were (and still
are) no original texts to translate. The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of
years after the last apostle died. There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts, with no two
alike. The King James translations [sic] used none of these, anyway. Instead, they edited previous
translations to create a version their king and parliament would approve. So 21st century
Christians believe the “Word of God” is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century
translations of 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls
that claim to be copies of lost
letters written in the 1st century. That’s not faith. That’s
insanity.”
Yes, and
George Washington had wooden teeth (He actually didn’t, but that rumor
continues). In a cursory look at the skeptic’s note I counted 10 errors, including
misleading statements that reveals an almost total ignorance of the facts. One
wonders whether truth matters anymore. For some, once they’ve heard a narrative
that is to their liking, they stick with it despite any absurdities. It reminds
me of the old adage, “Don’t confuse me with facts—my mind is made up.”
Let’s take
a look at the false and misleading claims put forth by the skeptic. This
affords the opportunity to do some introductory teaching about the history of
the Bible. The first time I taught a college-level course on the History of the
Bible was nearly 40 years ago, so I am pleased to offer the following as an
analysis of the skeptic’s claims based on five decades of study and teaching in
the field.
False Claim #1: “The
King James Version of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of
the Church of England.”
I am
surprised that this false claim got the year right. It was 1611 when the
Authorized Version, or “King James Version” of the Bible was completed. It was
not just the New Testament, but the entire Bible that was completed in 1611.
However, the translation was not done by “8 members of the Church of England.”
It was translated by 54 scholars, not all of them Anglicans.
By way of
background, when Queen Elizabeth’s nearly 50-year reign over England ended in
1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of a united England and Scotland. He
set up a conference in January 1604 at Hampton Court, and summoned his leading
theologians and churchmen to discuss ways to improve the Church, which would,
then, improve his United Kingdom. One suggestion was made by John Reynolds,
President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a great scholar and a Puritan.1
He told King James that a fresh translation of the Scriptures was sorely needed,
as Reynolds believed the common translation of the day, the Geneva Bible,2
was “corrupt.” James, himself a student of Scripture, referred to the
Geneva Bible as “the worst” translation, but his concern was not the
translation itself, but the notes, some of which James considered “very
partial, untrue, seditious, and devouring too much of dangerous and traitorous
conceits.”3 James, thus, agreed that a new translation was in order,
and several months later appointed 54 scholars (“learned men”) to translate the
Bible. The preserved list of the scholars has only 47 names, owing to
resignations and deaths between the time of the appointments and the time the
work began.4 Working in six
panels in three cities (Oxford, Cambridge, Westminster), the 47 scholars began
in 1604 and completed the translation in 1611. Marginal notes were only used to
explain Hebrew and Greek words or to draw attention to parallel passages.
Misleading Statement
#1: “There were (and still are) no original texts to translate.”
This
statement is pregnant with the inference that somehow the Bible cannot be
trusted because the original writings do not exist. In fact, if the original
writings of the Bible did exist, this would be unique among all writings of
antiquity. In fact, the original texts of Shakespeare do not exist, despite his
works being written barely 400 years ago. The originals of Josephus, Tacitus,
Suetonius, Aristotle, Pliny and all the other classical Greco-Roman writings do
not exist. This fact hardly keeps us from referencing their writings, which are
known from copies (of copies of copies, etc.) of the original. The original New
Testament was likely written on papyrus, a fragile form of paper made from
reeds that grow in the Nile Delta. Handling a papyrus document or exposing it to
the elements would hasten its disintegration. History tells us that until
Christianity was made legal in A.D. 313,5 there were specific
efforts to destroy copies of the New Testament.6
False Claim #2: “The
oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last
apostle died.”
A
“manuscript” is a handwritten copy of a document compared to a printed copy.
The oldest confirmed manuscript of the New Testament is catalogued as P52,
a fragment of John’s Gospel that was copied around the year A.D. 125. This
date, which has been confirmed by skeptical New Testament textual critic Bart
Ehrman,7 is only 30 years after the Gospel of John was written (A.D.
95) according to the consensus of scholars. John the Apostle likely lived to
the turn of the 2nd century.8 Thus, the truth is that the
oldest confirmed manuscript of the New Testament was written about 25 years
after the last apostle died. Further, textual critic Daniel B. Wallace, a professor
at Dallas Theological Seminary, has reported the discovery of a fragment of
Mark’s Gospel that appears to date to about the year A.D. 80. This manuscript
is currently undergoing scrutiny and peer review to confirm its date before the
results are made public.
False Claim #3:
“There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts….”
There are
currently about 25,000 New Testament manuscripts catalogued. Nearly 6,000 of
these are Greek manuscripts,9 the language in which the New
Testament was originally written. There are approximately 20,000 New Testament
manuscripts that are translations from Greek into other languages, including well
over 10,000 in Latin.10 To say “There are over 8,000 of these old
manuscripts” is like saying “There are over 15 states in the United States.”
While technically true, these statements are, at best, misleading because they
woefully understate the actual number. At worst, they show an ignorance of the
actual truth.
Misleading Statement
#2: (There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts) “with no two alike.”
Prior to
the invention of moveable type (“printing press”) by Johannes Gutenberg in
1439, all documents were written and copied by hand. Mistakes in copying are
the rule, not the exception, especially when copying a large document such as
the New Testament, which contains approximately 138,000 words. A simple
experiment will prove the point—you and a friend each try to copy 3 or 4 pages
from a book without any mistakes. Chances are you can’t. But think about trying
to copy 1,000 pages (the number of pages of text in my United Bible Society
Greek New Testament) from someone else’s handwriting (not a printed copy) and
see how many mistakes you make. If you and your friend each make even one
mistake, then there are “no two alike.” Of course, this “no two alike” is true
of all Greco-Roman classical
literature. Copyists were not perfectly accurate. Changes, both unintentional
(e.g., spelling, word order) and intentional (e.g., for stylistic or doctrinal
reasons), were introduced into the text of New Testament manuscripts as with
all ancient manuscripts. The art and science of textual criticism, which
examines the textual transmission of a document by examining the existing copies,
is the scholarly way of filtering out spelling and other changes to arrive at
the original wording. New Testament textual criticism reveals that less than
1/10 of 1% of the entire text is in doubt (i.e., 1/1,000th of the
whole).11
False Claim #4: “The
King James translations [sic] used none of these [8,000 manuscripts] anyway.”
This claim
is that “no Greek manuscripts were consulted by the scholars that translated
the King James Version.” One has only to look at the title page of the King
James (“Authorized”) Version when first published to dispel the claim:
“The Holy
Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament and the New: Newly Translated out of the Originall tongues, with the former Translations
diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties speciall commandement.”
The New Testament had its own title page:
“The New
Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Newly translated out of the
Originall Greeke….”
One of the
47 translators, Miles Smith, wrote of his colleagues: “If you ask what they had
before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of
the New…..These tongues…we set before us to translate, being the tongues
wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his Prophets and Apostles.”12
The King
James translators made large use of two editions (1588-89 and 1598) of the
Greek Testament of Theodore Beza, a classical and biblical scholar who
succeeded John Calvin at Geneva.13 Beza examined (“collated”)
several Greek manuscripts and used information from others who had collated
additional manuscripts in compiling his Greek text. Most textual scholars today
would say that Beza’s text was inferior because the old parchment manuscripts
(“uncials” written on animal skins) and papyrus manuscripts that are available
today had yet to be discovered. The copies Beza used were from the 12th-14th
century, with the oldest being perhaps from the 10th century. Within
350 years from the time of Beza complete copies of the New Testament in Greek
were discovered that date from around the year 325, and complete copies of
individual New Testament books (or of several books) were discovered that date
from around 180 (e.g., P46, the Chester Beatty Papyri containing
many of Paul’s letters). Regardless of how one views the Greek text behind the
King James (which eventually became known as the Textus Receptus, Latin for “Received
Text”), it is clear that the translators used printed Greek Testaments that represented
a compilation of available Greek manuscripts. Thus, to say the translators did
not use any Greek manuscripts is patently false. The King James Version is much
more than a revision of the English text of the Bishops’ Bible or any other
existing translation.
False Claim #5: “[The
King James translators] edited previous translations to create a version their
king and parliament would approve.”
The King
James Bible translators were required to use the Bishop’s Bible (first produced
in 1568, but the King James Translators used the 1602 edition), as their base
text, modifying it as necessary when they could more accurately translate
certain Hebrew and Greek phrases and words. The Bishops’ Bible was “to be
followed, and as little altered as the original will permit” according to the
fifteen requirements that the translators were to follow.
The longevity
of the King James Version, the Bible used by most English speaking Protestants
for 350 years, is attributable to skill of the translators, including their
knowledge of the original languages and their use of “thundering diction” at a
time considered to be the “high water mark” of the English language. The
translation was not an “edition of previous translations” and was not done for
the approval of King James or his Parliament. In fact, during James’ entire
reign over England and Scotland he almost never got along with Parliament,
disbanding them on numerous occasions. The King James Bible translators would
hardly care about approval from Parliament. As for James himself, he was
content knowing that the most skilled Greek and Hebrew scholars and linguists
in his kingdom were involved in the translation, and that their translation
would avoid the divisive “accompaniments” (notes, commentaries) contained in
the Geneva Bible.
False Claim #6: “21st
century Christians believe the ‘Word of God’ is a book edited in the 17th
century from 16th century translations….”
“To be, or
not to be? That is the question.”14 If I asked our skeptical friend
about the origin of this famous line, the likely answer would be, “Those are
the words of William Shakespeare.” Assuming that the skeptic considers the line
to be from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet,
I would point out that we do not have the original of Hamlet, and the copies we
do have contain gaps (unlike the New Testament, which has no gaps due to the
embarrassing wealth of manuscript evidence). So, is the line really the “words of
Shakespeare?” Even though all existing copies of Hamlet were written by someone
else, it is common to say that “To be or not to be” are the words of
Shakespeare. Since one cannot prove with absolute certainty that the Bard
penned the words, it could be argued that accepting the words as coming from
Shakespeare is a matter of faith.
Christians
believe that the “Word of God” is what was originally written by the apostles
and prophets as they were “borne along” (“inspired”) by the Holy Spirit. Jesus
told his disciples the Holy Spirit would “guide” them “into all the truth”
(John 16:13). Most Christian scholars would say the Spirit “superintended”
human authors so that their writings communicate exactly what God intended,
using their own writing styles and vocabularies in the process. Belief in the
inerrancy of copies is not only unwarranted, it is demonstrably false. However,
despite errors in our copies (most of which are insignificant, such as spelling
errors), the practice of textual criticism assures us that we can reconstruct
the original wording of the New Testament with a high degree of confidence. Thus,
for Christians, the Bible we have in our own language is the “Word of God” in a
way similar to how the phrase “To be or not to be?” is the word of Shakespeare.
Christian
scholars today would say that the “Word of God” technically refers to what was
originally revealed and written, and that what we call the “Word of God” today
is an accurate reflection of the original words used by the apostles and
prophets. Having taken four years of Greek courses, I can and do read the New
Testament in Greek. Based on my analysis, I confirm that our English
translations do an excellent job in conveying the words and meanings of what the
Greek text says. Therefore, one does not need to know Greek or Hebrew to access
the Word of God because its meaning is available in our own language. Thus,
virtually any translation of the Bible can be described as the “Word of God,”
with the understanding that translations are never perfect, but the meaning is
still available by reading and studying. Rather than saying, like the skeptic, that
the King James Version was “edited in the 17th century from 16th
century translations,” it would be reasonable to say it is the Word of God
translated into English.
False Claim #7: “…8,000
contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written
in the 1st century.”
We’ve
previously discussed the “8,000 contradictory copies” nonsense. What about
“copies of 4th century scrolls?” First, I have no clear idea what
the skeptic is referring to. It has probably escaped the attention of the
skeptic that virtually no scrolls of the New Testament exist. Nearly all of the
almost 6,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are in book form (bound on
one edge, called a “codex,” plural “codices”), not scroll form. I am further
puzzled by the reference to the “4th century.” There are dozens of
New Testament manuscripts that pre-date the 4th century. Further
puzzling is the reference that these scrolls [sic] “claim to be copies of lost
letters written in the 1st century.” No biblical scholar to my
knowledge claims that any New Testament “letters” (actually, “epistles,” a
writing style essentially invented by the Apostle Paul) were lost. Paul makes
reference to two letters to the Corinthians that are not in the New Testament,
but those letters were never considered part of the Bible. The fact is that all
27 New Testament books (Matthew through
Revelation) are supported by manuscripts that were copied earlier than the 4th
century. In short, the skeptic’s assertion is blatantly false on several
counts.
The oldest
complete manuscripts of the New Testament, Codex Vaticanus and Codex
Sinaiticus, come from the early 4th century. The wording of
Vaticanus (designated as manuscript “B”) in the Gospels of Luke and John agrees
very closely (over 90%) with P75 (“Bodmer Papyrus”), a manuscript
dating from around A.D. 200. The evidence from analyzing the transmission of
the New Testament text shows that the Greek manuscripts from the 4th
century and beyond are consistent with manuscripts from the 2nd and
3rd centuries. Any changes to the text made during or after the 4th
century are fairly easy to identify by comparing the text to 2nd and
3rd century copies. There is no credible evidence that any of the original text of the New
Testament has been “lost,” with the possible exception being the ending to
Mark’s Gospel, but even that exception is far from certain. Clearly, there is
no evidence that entire New Testament “letters” were lost.
False Claim #8: That
Christians believe “…8,000
contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies
of lost letters written in the 1st century,” and such a belief
constitutes “insanity.”
The skeptic’s
assertion sets up a classic “straw man” argument. The Straw Man fallacy is
where someone’s actual position or belief is ignored and replaced with a
distorted version of the actual position. Although a straw man argument gives
the impression of refuting someone’s argument, it actually refutes an argument
that was never made. Informed Christians do not believe there are “8,000
contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls.” Christians do not
believe that the “…copies of 4th century scrolls…claim to be copies
of lost letters written in the 1st century.” Informed Christians do not believe
any New Testament epistles were “lost.” In short, the skeptic does a good job
refuting positions that Christians do not hold.
Conclusion
The actual
position of historical Christianity is that the New Testament writers were
eyewitnesses of the events or had access to eyewitnesses, used their own style
and vocabulary when they wrote about what they had seen and heard, and were
influenced by the Holy Spirit who superintended their writings. Finally, these
writings were copied and recopied, and though copying by hand changes were
introduced into the text (intentionally or unintentionally), but these changes
can be filtered out by comparing manuscripts and employing the acceptable
canons (criteria) of textual criticism to determine the original wording. The
result is that Christians can be confident that none of the Scripture as
original given has been lost, and that our English Bibles are faithful
translations of the original Word of God.
End Notes
1Puritans were Protestants that wanted to
“purify” the Church of England from all Roman Catholic practices. They were
still part of the Church of England, with the goal of reforming it from within.
2The Geneva Bible, the Bible of Shakespeare, was
completed in 1560 and was the first mass-produced Bible available to the
general public. It contained “study guides,” cross-references and marginal
notes.
3James VI letter to Richard Bancroft, Bishop of
London (soon thereafter Archbishop of Canterbury)
4Ira Maurice Price, The Ancestry of Our English Bible (Philadelphia: The Sunday School
Times Co, 1907), p. 275.
5Edict of Milan, A.D. 313.
6Roman Emperor Diocletian, in A.D. 303, sent out
three edicts attacking Christianity, one of which was to destroy all Bibles.
Within 10 years of his edict the new Roman Emperor, Constantine, issued his own
“Edict of Milan” that allowed freedom of religion throughout the Empire.
