Both read the Bible day and night,
\nBut thou read\u2019st black where I read white.<\/p>\n
\u2014William Blake, The Everlasting<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of course, Blake\u2019s sentiment in the quote above is nothing new. The New Testament contains enough inconsistencies to have spawned a dizzying variety of interpretations, beliefs and religions, all allegedly Bible-based. And so, we find one author offering the amusing observation:
\nYou can and you can\u2019t,
\nYou shall and you shan\u2019t,
\nYou will and you won\u2019t,
\nAnd you will be damned if you do,
\nAnd you will be damned if you don\u2019t.[1]<\/p>\n
Why such variance in viewpoints? To begin with, different theological camps disagree on which books should be included in the Bible. One camp\u2019s apocrypha is another\u2019s scripture. Secondly, even among those books that have been canonized, the many variant source texts lack uniformity. This lack of uniformity is so ubiquitous that The Interpreter\u2019s Dictionary of the Bible states, \u201cIt is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS [manuscript] tradition is wholly uniform.\u201d[2]<\/p>\n
Not one sentence? We can\u2019t trust a single sentence of the Bible? Hard to believe.<\/p>\n
Maybe
\nThe fact is that there are over 5700 Greek manuscripts of all or part of the New Testament.[3] Furthermore, \u201cno two of these manuscripts are exactly alike in all their particulars\u2026. And some of these differences are significant.\u201d[4] Factor in roughly ten thousand manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, add the many other ancient variants (i.e., Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Nubian, Gothic, Slavonic), and what do we have?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A lot of manuscripts that fail to correspond in places and not infrequently contradict one another. Scholars estimate the number of manuscript variants in the hundreds of thousands, some estimating as high as 400,000.[5] In Bart D. Ehrman\u2019s now famous words, \u201cPossibly it is easiest to put the matter in comparative terms: there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.\u201d[6]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Poor record keeping. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Doctrinal prejudice. Take your pick.<\/p>\n
None of the original manuscripts have survived from the early Christian period.[7]\/[8] The most ancient complete manuscripts (Vatican MS. No. 1209 and the Sinaitic Syriac Codex) date from the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus\u2019 ministry. But the originals? Lost. And the copies of the originals? Also lost. Our most ancient manuscripts, in other words, are copies of the copies of the copies of nobody-knows-just-how-many copies of the originals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the best of hands, copying errors would be no surprise. However, New Testament manuscripts were not in the best of hands. During the period of Christian origins, scribes were untrained, unreliable, incompetent, and in some cases illiterate.[9] Those who were visually impaired could have made errors with look-alike letters and words, while those who were hearing-impaired may have erred in recording scripture as it was read aloud. Frequently scribes were overworked, and hence inclined to the errors that accompany fatigue.<\/p>\n
In the words of Metzger and Ehrman, \u201cSince most, if not all, of them [the scribes] would have been amateurs in the art of copying, a relatively large number of mistakes no doubt crept into their texts as they reproduced them.\u201d[10]<\/p>\n
Worse yet, some scribes allowed doctrinal prejudice to influence their transmission of scripture.[11]<\/p>\n
As Ehrman states, \u201cThe scribes who copied the texts changed them.\u201d[12]<\/p>\n
More specifically, \u201cThe number of deliberate alterations made in the interest of doctrine is difficult to assess.\u201d[13]<\/p>\n
And even more specifically, \u201cIn the technical parlance of textual criticism\u2014which I retain for its significant ironies\u2014these scribes \u2018corrupted\u2019 their texts for theological reasons.\u201d[14]<\/p>\n
Errors were introduced in the form of additions, deletions, substitutions and modifications, most commonly of words or lines, but occasionally of entire verses.[15] [16]<\/p>\n
In fact, \u201cnumerous changes and accretions came into the text,\u201d[17]<\/p>\n
with the result that \u201call known witnesses of the New Testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixed texts, and even several of the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregious errors.\u201d[18]
\nIn Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman presents persuasive evidence that the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:12) and the last twelve verses of Mark were not in the original gospels, but added by later scribes.[19]<\/p>\n
Furthermore, these examples \u201crepresent just two out of thousands of places in which the manuscripts of the New Testament came to be changed by scribes.\u201d[20]<\/p>\n
In fact, entire books of the Bible were forged.[21]<\/p>\n
This doesn\u2019t mean their content is necessarily wrong, but it certainly doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s right. So which books were forged? Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude\u2014a whopping nine of the twenty-seven New Testament books and epistles\u2014are to one degree or another suspect.[22]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why are we not surprised? After all, even the gospel authors are unknown. In fact, they\u2019re anonymous.[23]<\/p>\n
Biblical scholars rarely, if ever, ascribe gospel authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. As Ehrman tells us, \u201cMost scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.\u201d[24]<\/p>\n
Graham Stanton affirms, \u201cThe gospels, unlike most Graeco-Roman writings, are anonymous. The familiar headings which give the name of an author (\u2018The Gospel according to \u2026\u2019) were not part of the original manuscripts, for they were added only early in the second century.\u201d[25]<\/p>\n
So what, if anything, did Jesus\u2019 disciples have to do with authoring the gospels? Little or nothing, so far as we know. But we have no reason to believe they authored any of the books of the Bible. To begin with, let us remember Mark was a secretary to Peter, and Luke a companion to Paul. The verses of Luke 6:14-16 and Matthew 10:2-4 catalogue the twelve disciples, and although these lists differ over two names, Mark and Luke don\u2019t make either list. So only Matthew and John were true disciples. But all the same, modern scholars pretty much disqualify them as authors anyway.<\/p>\n
Why?
\nGood question. John being the more famous of the two, why should we disqualify him from having authored the Gospel of \u201cJohn\u201d?<\/p>\n
Umm \u2026 because he was dead?<\/p>\n
Multiple sources acknowledge there is no evidence, other than questionable testimonies of second century authors, to suggest that the disciple John was the author of the Gospel of \u201cJohn.\u201d[26] [27]<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most convincing refutation is that the disciple John is believed to have died in or around 98 CE.[28]<\/p>\n
However, the Gospel of John was written circa 110 CE.[29]<\/p>\n
So whoever Luke (Paul\u2019s companion), Mark (Peter\u2019s secretary), and John (the unknown, but certainly not the long-dead one) were, we have no reason to believe any of the gospels were authored by Jesus\u2019 disciples. . . .<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2007 Laurence B. Brown; used by permission.<\/p>\n
The above excerpt is taken from Dr. Brown\u2019s forthcoming book, MisGod\u2019ed, which is expected to be published along with its sequel, God\u2019ed. Both books can be viewed on Dr. Brown\u2019s website, www.Leveltruth.com. Dr. Brown can be contacted at BrownL38@yahoo.com<\/p>\n
Footnotes:
\n[1] Dow, Lorenzo. Reflections on the Love of God.
\n[2] Buttrick, George Arthur (Ed.). 1962 (1996 Print). The Interpreter\u2019s Dictionary of the Bible. Volume 4. Nashville: Abingdon Press. pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).
\n[3] Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 88.
\n[4] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 78.
\n[5] Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 89.
\n[6] Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. P. 12.
\n[7] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 49.
\n[8] Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Introduction, p. 1.
\n[9] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities and Misquoting Jesus.
\n[10] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P. 275.
\n[11] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. Pp. 49, 217, 219-220.
\n[12] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 219.
\n[13] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P. 265. See also Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.
\n[14] Ehrman, Bart D. 1993. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Oxford University Press. P. xii.
\n[15] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 220.
\n[16] Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Introduction, p. 3
\n[17] Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Introduction, p. 10.
\n[18] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P. 343.
\n[19] Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. Pp. 62-69.
\n[20] Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 68.
\n[21] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. Pp. 9-11, 30, 235-6.
\n[22] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 235.
\n[23] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 3, 235. Also, see Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. P. 49.
\n[24] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 235.
\n[25] Stanton, Graham N. p. 19.
\n[26] Kee, Howard Clark (Notes and References by). 1993. The Cambridge Annotated Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version. Cambridge University Press. Introduction to gospel of \u2018John.\u2019
\n[27] Butler, Trent C. (General Editor). Holman Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers. Under \u2018John, the Gospel of\u2019
\n[28] Easton, M. G., M.A., D.D. Easton\u2019s Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Under \u2018John the Apostle.\u2019
\n[29] Goodspeed, Edgar J. 1946. How to Read the Bible. The John C. Winston Company. p. 227.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: https:\/\/www.islamland.com\/eng\/articles\/the-new-testament<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"