Holy Hormones Bible Study: Teaching — If your book isn’t a buzz, it’s not the Bible.
NO ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The best protection against corruption??!!
Introduction
A naysayer troll recently mocked the veracity of the Bible by highlighting that it was useless because it was written in dead languages. I can’t make any comment on her personally because I don’t know her — she may well be a very nice person. However, it is easy to point out the absolute absence of knowledge upon which she based the comment.
I hope she reads this article so she can see the exquisite elegance of God’s Logic.
Some technicalities
Writing the Bible in dead languages keeps them locked in time and shows how clever He really is.
There was a time when (Big ‘D’) Dictionaries could be trusted because they were jealous custodians of the true meaning of words so that people could broadcast and receive ideas over time consistently retaining the meaning. Now, (small ‘d’) dictionaries delight in keeping score of the misuse of the meanings of words. The absurdity of the fluidity of what is happening with gender today shows the Wisdom of Him locking His message in time.
This article will focus on the New Testament (NT).
No original autographs
The materials used for recording the NT documents were all some form of fungible carbon, so their life was finite, even if great care was taken to protect them. Therefore, it is true that it is highly unlikely that any could exist today.
But can we be sure of that?
NO.
A characteristic of Greek grammar is that different word order changes emphasis but not meaning. Combining that with the Semantic Range (that is, words generally possess a spectrum of meanings) it is possible to come up with at least 16 viable ways to write, “Jesus loves Paul,” as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Sixteen viable ways of saying, “Jesus loves Paul,” in Greek
In his presentation, “Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?” [1] the contender for world champion Greek Grammarian, Dan Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, stated, “Even if we had the original we wouldn’t know it.”
THE BEST WE CAN DO IS NOT, WHAT TEXT WE THINK IS ORIGINAL, BUT THE TRANSLATION OF THE TEXT WE THINK IS ORIGINAL.
That just shows how unreliable the Bible is!
Don’t continue to jump to conclusions over something about which you know nothing. Despite your opinion, Christians are not stupid. Believe it or not Jesus, Himself, was into evidence.
How many copies of ancient NT manuscripts are there?
As with all things Archaeological, there are new discoveries being made daily and, at the same time, existing frauds being discovered. There are variations depending on the source material, but the general picture looks like this table. Beside the approximately 5,600 Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew texts, there are in excess of 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic languages. Bringing the total supporting New Testament manuscript base to over 25,000.
There are also more than enough copies of letters written by the early Church Fathers at the time, which contain quotes from the Scriptures, where the quotes grouped together are able to construct about 95% of a NT.
But they are hand-copies. What about all the copying errors?
This is where the multitude of copies comes into its own.
There is a methodology, verified over more than 1,000 years, Textual Criticism.
If a scholar has several versions of a manuscript but no known original, then established methods of textual criticism can be used to seek to reconstruct the original text as closely as possible. A simple example is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Simplified example of Textual Criticism
A more detailed description is given on this site.
IT MUST BE EMPHASISED THAT TEXTUAL CRITICISM IS SIMILAR, BUT NOT THE SAME AS HIGHER TEXTUAL CRITICISM. (But that’s another story for another time.)
So, what if an overzealous Mad Monk decided to tamper with the texts?
It is often claimed that “THEY” (whoever “they” are?) deleted all the important references to women out of the KJV.
I can’t argue with the morality of that until examining the feasibility of the claim.
What would have to happen for this to happen?
1. First of all, the Bible isn’t a product of Telephone Whispers. There are many say, English, translations. They are not translated in cascade. That is, one English version is used as the basis for its English successor. ALL REPUTABLE TRANSLATIONS GO BACK TO THE TRANSLATION OF THE TEXT WE THINK IS ORIGINAL. (There is a story here, but it is not important to the issue being discussed in this article.)
SO, THE KJV COULD BE TESTED AGAINST THE EARLIEST GREEK TEXTS?
It already has! Many times. Even I, who have no Theological Qualifications can do it. I haven’t tested the whole Bible but have done for specific claims and none of those hold any water!
2. Next, these copies were spread all around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea when the speed of transport was limited to horses and sailing ships.
It has been seen that a vast number of documents are involved. Everything was manually done so there would be numerous Monks participating. All of the Monks would have to agree on, and be schooled in, any changes or there would be limited correlation between the altered documents. Then there were three things the Monks would have had to do.
Step 1 — Change the early manuscripts. Taking just the New Testament, there are over 5,600 existing copies in three different languages — Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic — which were spread around the Mediterranean Sea. The Monks would have had to;
• Find every copy (>5,600).
• Steal them without being noticed.
• Change every single one of them in each language in a linguistically transparent manner. (i.e., the flow of the story would not be noticeably different.)
• Hide their ink work.
• Get them all back to where they stole them from without being noticed.
Step 2 — Within the first few centuries after Christ, the Bible was translated into Syriac, Coptic and Latin. So now on top of changing >5,600 Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts, the monks would have to find all of the >19,000 Syriac/Coptic/Latin copies, change those to match the changes they wrote in another language (which, perhaps, could not be directly translated), with all changes made on documents which did not have the advantages of word processors, get all of those back to from where they were stolen.
Step 3 — The early Church Fathers wrote a lot of commentaries on the New Testament. So much so that it is possible to produce 95% of the New Testament just from their writings. So now the monks have to find over 25,000 manuscripts and partial manuscripts, steal them, change them, not show any ink work, get them back without letting anyone finding out, find all of the translated copies, change those to match the changes they made in the originals, get those back to where they came from, and then find all of the writings of all of the early Church Fathers, change those to match the lies they made in the original manuscripts, get those back to where they came from, hope that nobody notices the differences on any of the aforementioned counterfeits, and never ever get caught. It’s a good thing they were Monks so they would never let it slip in Pillow Talk.
Obviously, an awesome task.
THIS SMACKS OF CONSPIRACY THEORY ON STEROIDS.
Need any more be said?
Conclusion
I’m open to correction but I don’t see the claim that the KJV has been altered has any merit at all.
But what if there was only one original? Surely that would be better.
If there was only the original, a single Mad Monk could sneak into the vault one night and alter the single Scroll and there would be no valid cross-check. Changes could be made easily.
The example of a metre length.
The metre was originally defined in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth’s circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar. The actual bar used was changed in 1889.
There was only one bar of a particular metal which was guarded in a room having a rigorously controlled atmosphere. Of course there was a back-up bar which was regularly cross-checked against the standard.
Because there was only one, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte could sneak in at night with a file and shave a bit off — thus increasing the area of his conquest. (That was an absurd suggestion in case you didn’t notice.)
In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. This could be measured in multiple places around the world so no one could change the standard on a whim.
The same principle applies to the New Testament. Having thousands of copies all over Europe and the Middle East, in dead languages, means that “THEY” can’t do a swifty.
Yet another example of a brain-fart becoming a possibility then turned into probability that is turned into certainty — then becoming the real truth.
When I worked for a living we had a Departmental Motto, “THINK THE EXTRA THOUGHT.” It’s a good motto. Saved lives. It’s best to do your, “Oops!” before the event.
Will this evidence and reasoning change the opinion of the person who wrote the troll comment?
I hope so BUT, it takes wisdom to understand wisdom — what’s the use of showing a photo to a blind person?
DO WHAT YOU WILL WITH THIS INFORMATION.
The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime. If you have seen something you like, I encourage plagiarism. So, always check everything I say first, then please re-cycle, re-brand, re-structure, re-issue, re-label, or re-gurgitate in any manner you please. No need to acknowledge me because the Holy Spirit Who holds the Intellectual Rights.
All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
(We all have a plank in our eye. It’s bigger than we think.)
ネ
[Ref 1] DanWallace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unlMULCNDUU
