I.

PRESERVATION: INSURING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE TEXT

God in breathed the writings of Scripture so that the writers wrote the Word of God, without error. God chose three languages for his self-revelation. First, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, a language structure that reflected the Jew. Of all the semitic languages, it is simple, solitary and straightforward. Hebrew is beautiful in its descriptive words as it was ingenious in its idiomatic expressions. Some parts of Daniel were written in another semitic language, Chaldean. The New Testament was written in Greek, at one time falsely called Holy Ghost language. This was because the Greek of the New Testament was different from the classical Greek of the philosophers. However, the archaeological excavations have uncovered thousands of parchments of common language Greek, verifying that God chose the language of common people (Koine Greek) in which to communicate His revelation. God chose an expressive language to communicate the minute colors and interpretations of His doctrine. Still others feel God prepared Greeks with their intricate language, allowed them to conquer the world, used them to influence their tongue as the universal trade language, then inspired Men of God to write in common Greek, the books of the New Testament. This made the Word of God immediately accessible to everyone. If the Bible were written in literary Greek or a special language of the Holy Ghost, Christianity would have had a language barrier to cross to reach the common people. We do not have the original manuscripts, called autographs, of any book of the Bible. These were lost, mostly during the persecution of the early church. Roman emperors felt that if they could destroy the churchs literature, they could eliminate Christianity. Others were lost due to wear and tear. The fact that some early churches did not keep these autographs, but made copies and used them, demonstrates that they were more concerned with the message, than the vehicle of the message. God in His wisdom allowed the autographs to vanish. Like the relics from the Holy Land, they would have been venerated and worshipped. Surely Bibliolatry (worship of the Bible) would have replaced worship of God. While some may have difficulty with the idea of not having an original manuscript, scholars who work with the non-biblical documents of antiquities usually do not have access to those originals. When considering the manuscript evidence, it should be remembered there are close to 5,000 Greek manuscripts and an additional 13,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament. This does not include 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate and more than 1,000 copies of other early versions of the Bible. These figures take on even more significance when compared to the similar statistics of other early writings. i AUTHOR WHEN WRITTEN EARLIEST COPY 900 A.D. TIME SPAN 1,000 yrs. NO. OF COPIES 10

Caesar

100-44 B.C.

Livy Plato (Tetralogies)

59 B.C.-A.D. 17 427-347 B.C. 900 A.D. 1,200 yrs. 1,000 yrs. 900 yrs. 750 yrs.

20 7 20* 1

Tacitus (Annals) also minor works

100 A.D. 100 A.D.

1,100 A.D. 1,000 A.D.

Pliny the Younger (History)

61-113 A.D.

850 A.D.

AUTHOR

WHEN WRITTEN

EARLIEST COPY 900 A.D.

TIME SPAN 1,300 yrs. 800 yrs. 1,300 yrs. 900 yrs.

NO. OF COPIES 8

Thucydides (History)

460-400 B.C.

Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) Herodotus (History)

75-160 A.D.

950 A.D.

480-425 B.C.

900 A.D.

Horace Sophocles Lucretius Catullus Euripedes Demonsthenes Aristotle Aristophanes * All from one copy. 496-406 B.C. Died 55 or 53 B.C. 54 B.C. 480-406 B.C. 383-322 B.C. 384-322 B.C. 450-385 B.C. Of any one work. 1,550 A.D. 1,100 A.D. 1,100 A.D. 1,100 A.D. 900 A.D. 1,000 A.D.

1,400 yrs. 1,100 yrs. 1,600 yrs. 1,500 yrs. 1,300 yrs. 1,400 yrs. 1,200 yrs.

100 2 3 9 200* 5 10

Some of the actual New Testament books were written on a prepared animal skin. We know this by other contemporary literature that has been uncovered. However, the expensive cost made it prohibitive for many copies to be made on skins, and probably some New Testament books were written on papyrus sheets. Papyrus was manufactured from a reed. 2 John 12 refers to paper, (charts), which was papyrus. The pen was a reed that was softened in the mouth and the ink was a mixture of soot from any fire and gum diluted with water. Papyrus was called chartas from which we get charter. Several pages were sewed together and called biblos or little book. Later, Ta Bibla was a collection of little books, and from this we get the word Bible. Some of the New Testament books were written by the author (Gal. 6:11) and others were dictated to an amanuensis, a scribe (1 Pet. 5:12; Rom. 16:22). The author then signed the manuscript at the end to authenticate it (2 Thess. 3:17). An amanuensis was used to give the writer greater freedom and use of language. The books of the New Testament remained in the possession of the addressee, unless they were written to more than one church (Col. 4:16). However, by the time Peter wrote 2 Peter 3:16, there was a collection of Pauls letters in one spot, and the church recognized them as Scripture equal to the New Testament.

Other churches wanted copies of the letters that were authoritative so they could have a complete set of the teaching of the apostles and those who were companions of the apostles. Churches were the first to have complete sets of apostolic writings. Later, wealthy men collected them. The Bible was circulated in these forms. First, New Testament books were rolls of papyrus sheets. On the outside would be written, The epistle of Paul to the Romans. Second, a Codex was used, which was a collection of papyrus sheets, sewn together, not rolled. This way, they could write on both sides of the sheets like our present-day books. Third, they used skins of young animals which made a durable and beautiful finish. This was known as vellum or parchment. There were many reasons why the church collected the books into Ta Bibla. (1) The fact that the Old Testament had been collected into 39 books influenced the church to bring together a New Testament collection. Also, (2) since these books were immediately authoritative because they were written by apostles, or eyewitnesses to Christ, everyone wanted a copy. (3) The content of these books was about Jesus Christ, and every Christian wanted a copy because of their love for Him. (4) As the apostles began to die, everyone wanted a copy of their teaching. (5) The churches began using them in public worship (1 Thess. 5:27) and reading them in church services (Col. 4:16). As a matter of fact, churches exchanged copies to expand their collection (Rev. 3:1). (6) The growth of false doctrine and controversy motivated churches to expand their collection to answer all heresy. (7) The arrival of apocryphal books motivated church leaders to establish collections of biblical material and reject non-biblical material. With the church recognition of these books that were canonical, many wanted a complete set of canonical material. (8) The persecution by Dioclesion (303) when he ordered the destruction of all sacred books, forced Christians to catalogue their books, recognize what books were threatened, and hide them. Between A.D. 70 and 170, the church was circulating many copies of Scripture. From 170 to 303, the books that were being circulated were gradually gathered into a collection and were separated from the rest of Christian literature. From 303 to 397, the unity and completeness of Scripture was recognized. We are talking about church recognition of the canon, not Gods recognition. His books were authoritative even before the ink was dry. However, some books were not widely known, hence they were not accepted until later. They were inspired and authoritative the moment they were written. But in history, it took time for some books to gain recognition (canonization). A study of the Bible text is called textual criticism, but the word criticism does not mean to find fault. Rather it is an investigation of the facts to determine the credibility of the text. Criticism falls into two categories. First, lower criticism, also called textual criticism, deals with the actual text with a view of determining the original manuscript. The second is higher criticism, dealing with the area of authorship, sources, dates, and historical matters. Both conservative and liberal theologians deal with lower and higher criticism. The presuppositions that a person brings to the Bible and his conclusions determine his theological persuasion. The aim of textual criticism is to recover the actual words of the autograph. Conservative scholars admit that in some cases we do not have the actual words, but the Bible is the best attested of all ancient books. We have more manuscripts, with less interval between their original writing and the copies we possess. Due to the science of textual criticism we can have confidence that we have the very words themselves. While we do not have the originals, we have a better posture to determine the autographs for the New Testament than for any other ancient manuscripts. We have more manuscripts that were copied from the original and we have better manuscripts for our study. Whereas, we only have one manuscript of Sophocles since his death, yet we have 40,000 documents/manuscripts that are copies of the New Testament. The 40,000 manuscripts from which textual criticism draws its source is spread among the following sources. (1) The unical manuscripts are those codices of the New Testament written in capital letters that date back to A.D. 200; of all the texts in our possession, these are the best and most complete. (2) The minuscule manuscripts were written in small letters beginning around 900. (3) The early translations include approximately 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate dating back to the unicals. While Latin is not as rich as Greek, because it has no aorist tense and no article, its early date helped establish the original from which it was translated. Also, early Syrian and Coptic (Egyptian) versions have the same advantage. (4) The patristic citations are quotations of Scriptures by the church fathers. These were early and usable to locate and place a date on the various other texts. Every verse in the New Testament has

been quoted at least once by a church father, establishing credibility for the 27 book canon. (5) The Lexionaries were books of early texts used for public reading of Scripture. Over 2200 of them have been found, and they are helpful in that they insert parallel verses from other Gospels. (6) There are other sources not counted in the 40,000 manuscripts. These include a multitude of ostraca, which were broken pieces of pottery on which the poor wrote tax receipts, recipes, and other household messages. Scripture quotations were abundant by Christians, and these account for all Scripture. The ostraca take us to the heart of the people during the time the autographs were available, yet are hard to use because they were written in cursive style, with many abbreviations and quotations for memory. These nontextual sources should not be thought of lightly. Recognizing their importance to the reconstruction of the biblical text, Bruce Metzger states, Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament. ii Geisler and Nix suggest, A brief inventory at this point will reveal that there were some 32,000 citations of the New Testament prior to the time of the Council of Nicea (325). These 32,000 quotations are by no means exhaustive, and they do not even include the fourth century writers. Just adding the number of references used by one other writer, Eusebius, who flourished prior to and contemporary to the Council at Nicea, will bring the total citations of the New Testament to over 36,000. iii Of course, the greater the number of copies of those original autographs, the greater the potentiality for error in transmissions. Such was not the case with the New Testament. After comparing the textual accuracy of the New Testament and the Iliad, Geisler and Nix conclude, Only 40 lines (or 400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt, whereas 764 lines of the Iliad are questioned. This 5 percent textual corruption compares with one-half of 1 percent of similar emendations in the New Testament. iv These different readings have no impact on any major theological interpretation. Westcott and Hort suggest, If comparative trivialities, such as changes of order, the insertion or omission of the article with proper names, and the like, are set aside, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the New Testament. v EARLY PATRISTIC QUOTATIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITER Gospels Acts Pauline Epistles General Epistles Revelation Total

Justin Martyr

268

10

43

3 (266 allusions) 65 11

330

Irenaeus Clement Alex. Origen Tertullian Hippolytus Eusebius Totals

1,038 1,017

194 44

499 1,127

23 207

1,819 2,406

9,231 3,822 734 3,258 19,368

349 502 42 211 1,352

7,778 2,609 387 1,592 14,035

399 120 27 88 870

165 205 188 27 664

17,922 7,258 1,378 5,176 36,289

i. ii. iii. iv. v.

McDowell, Evidence, 48. Bruce M. Metzger, The Test of the New Testament, Second Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 86. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), 353-354. Ibid., 367. Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in The Original Greek (Cambridge and London: MacMillan, 1889), 565. Exact data unknown.