comparative manuscripts for ancient documents

7/28/2019 Comparative Manuscripts for Ancient Documents

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Comparative Manuscripts for Ancient DocumentsBy Tyler Vela

The NT documents are independent sources that were gathered together BECAUSE they

were the earliest sources. There was no such thing as "Christian" sources back then. The Bible is

not A book. It is a collection of the earliest best attested documents. So is it surprising that wedont find a lot outside of it from an early time? Not really. It would be like if we gathered up allthe eye witness documents about Lincoln in a book (lets call it The L Book) and then

complained because we dont really have any early or eyewitness testimony BESIDES the

testimonies contained within the L Book to confirm what is in the L Book.

As for Alexander the Great, you believe he existed. And your comments reveal your

ignorance. He did exist. Are EARLIEST source for him is over 200 years after his death, our

BEST source for him is 400 years, and the biographies are FILLED (and I do mean FILLED)with miracle and supernatural claims about him. It is just TOTAL ignorance to say otherwise. So

to say that Alexander the Great is more plausible than Jesus based on LESS and LATER

documents that have no hope of being eye witnesses (or at least based on the testimony ofeyewitnesses such as the gospels) is why I asked you what kind of study you have put into this

before you make totally uneducated and assumptive assertions. Seems you are only a "skeptic"

when you want to be.

Again do the research on how much we know about Alexander the Great. Or how about

Cesar Augustus or Tiberius Cesar who died just several years after Jesus. We have better

documentation and information about Jesus' life (biographies written within 65 years at the latesteven by liberal dating with our first manuscripts coming only a half a century after) than we do

about either of them (with the best biographies not coming for 100+ years later with our first

manuscripts coming hundreds of years later.) This is why the consensus among historians and

text critics on this regardless of if they are theists or atheists, is that Jesus existed, was anitinerant preacher, was arrested as a political criminal, died on a roman cross and then his

followers went around saying he rose from the dead. You even have some atheist historians

saying that it is a historical fact that Jesus rose from the dead. To say that we dont have goodevidence just puts you at odds with nearly every historian who specializes in this area. Read

anything from Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses to Ehrman's newest Did Jesus Exist.

Ehrman is not writing to convince specialists. He was writing to the public to get them to stoppassing on the nonsense that we cant know that Jesus existed when scholarship has long

abandoned that view.

So for example let us compare the textual evidence of Jesus with that of Alexander the Greator Tiberius Cesar (the Roman Cesar during the life of Jesus... pretty famous and important guy

right?)

Alexander the GreatD. 330 BCEHad biographies contemporary to himwe dont have any of them and only hear about them in

other sources.

Earliest source for Alexanderwritten 300+ years after his death.Best sourcesPlutarch and Arianwritten 425+ years after his death


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Tiberius CesarD. 37 CE

About the same amount of sources for Tiberius as Jesus.Earliest source for TiberiusContemporary and we have it. The problem is that it is the LEAST

usable/valuable source.

Best SourceTacitus at 80+ years.Next SourceSuetonius at 85+ years.Next SourceDiocassius at 180+ years.

So for the RULER of the whole Roman Empire during the same time as Jesus - 4 sources. Thebest coming at 80+ years.

So what about Jesus? 4 primary sources starting within 40 years (the most liberal date for Mark,

within 10 if we give more conservative dates) and if we include creedal statements we get towithin only 6 months of the death of Jesus. This is just basic historical Jesus scholarship on this

point. From NT Wright, Bart Ehrman, James D.G. Dunn, E.P. Sanders, and so on.

Comparative Manuscripts for Ancient Documents

1. Author: Caesara. Composition: 100-44 BCEb. First Extant Manuscript: 900 CEc. Time Gap: 1,000 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 10

2. Author: Platoa. Composition: 427-347 BCEb. First Extant Manuscript: 900 CEc. Time Gap: 1,300 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 7

3. Author: Thucydidesa. Composition: 460-400 BCEb. First Extant Manuscript: 900 CEc. Time Gap: 1,300 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 8

4. Author: Tacitusa. Composition: 100 CEb. First Extant Manuscript: 1100 CEc. Time Gap: 1,000 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 20

5. Author: Suetoniusa. Composition: 75-160 CEb. First Extant Manuscript: 950 CE


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c. Time Gap: 800 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 8

6. Author: Plinya. Composition: 61-113 CEb.

First Extant Manuscript: 850 CEc. Time Gap: 750 yrs

d. Total Extant Manuscripts: 77. Author: Homers Illiad

a. Composition: 900 BCEb. First Extant Manuscript: 400 BCEc. Time Gap: 500 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 643

8. New Testamenta.

Composition: 45-95 CEb. First Extant Manuscript: 125 CE

c. Time Gap: 25-50 yrsd. Total Extant Manuscripts: 24,000 (This does not include the early citations from

letters, treatises and lectionaries in the 1st

and 2nd

century by the church fatherswhich can reconstruct the entire NT save 11 verses of which there are over

80,000. With those included there are over 100,000 manuscripts of the NT, most

within 100 years of composition)

Textual Criticism:

We have all heard it said that there are over 400,000 variants in the Greek New Testamentalone (thank you very much Dr. Ehrman). The first problem with this is simply methodological.

Without describing how these variants are counted, Ehrman does his reader a massive disservice.

Lets imagine that we have 20 copies of the L Book discussed above. Within those documents,

Manuscript spells the word honour while the rest spell it honor. This would count as 19

variantsthat is within the entire corpus of manuscripts, varies with the other manuscripts at

19 locations. Now imagine that each manuscript of the L Book had just a handful of spelling

errors at different locations from the others. You can see just how rapidly the number of variantswould add up. Ironically someone has pointed out that in Ehrmans own book where he makes

this claim (Misquoting Jesus) there are 12 typographical errors. Ehrman has sold millions of

copies of the book. If we counted only 1 million of those copies, then contained within the entire

corpus of Misquoting Jesus, there would be over 1.2 million errors that is more errors thanwords in the entire book! Hopefully you see the simple methodological problem inherent in

Ehrmans comments.

The main problem however with such a statement is the massive oversimplification of such a

statement. This is because of those, 99% of them are spelling (mostly), or related to word order

(something much more fluid in Koine Greek), or they are related to known contractions,omission or repetition of words. Of the 400,000 variants, only about 400 of them would affect


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the meaning of a sentence. Of those 400, only a few dozen or so are in dispute as to what the

original would have said. And of those few dozen, none of them affect a single Christian doctrine

or teaching.

Another problem with this kind of assertion is that it actually tries to make a text critical

strength into a weakness. We have 400,000 variants because we have now almost 6,000manuscripts of the Greek NT and almost 19,000 in 1st

translations. The only reason we have somany variants is precisely because we have so many manuscripts. But it is *because* we have so

many manuscripts that textual criticism is possible and a near 96.5-99% assured accuracy rate

has been achieved. As we discover more manuscripts the number of variants will increase but sowill the assured accuracy of the text. This is not to say that we can be only 96.5-99% confident

that we are reading what was originally written but rather that we can be 100% confident that we

are reading what was originally written in 97-99% of the lines of the New Testament. And

thanks to Textual Criticism we know exactly what letters, words, and phrases make up the 1-3%uncertainty and often have a pretty good estimate of the original text even in those cases.

We have other documents that we can compare as well. Here is a chart with the BEST (yesthese are the best) attested ancient manuscripts to compare to the New Testament:

Author Life/approx.

Composition

Earliest

Copy

Time

Span

# of copies Textual

Accuracy

Pliny 61-113 CE 850 CE 750 yrs 7 ----

Plato 427-347

BCE

900 CE 1200 yrs 7 ----

Demosthenes 4th

cent.

BCE

1100 CE 1500 yrs 8 ----

Herodotus 480-425BCE

900 CE 1300 yrs 8 ----

Suetonius 75-160 CE 950 CE 800 yrs 8 ----

Thucydides 460-400

BCE

900 CE 1300 yrs 8 ----

Euripides 480-406

BCE

1100 CE 1300 yrs 9 ----

Josephys 75-94 CE 900 CE 800 yrs 9 ----

Aristophanies 450-385

BCE

900 CE 1200 yrs 10 ----

Caesar 100-4 BCE 900 CE 1000 yrs 10 ----

Tacitus 100 CE 1100 CE 1000 yrs 20 ----

Aristotle 384-322

BCE

1100 CE 1400 yrs 49 ----

Sophicles 496-406

BCE

1000 CE 1400 yrs 196 ----


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Homer 900 BCE 300 BCE 600 yrs 643 95%

New

Testament

45-95 CE 125 CE 30 yrs 56001

99.5%

Another interesting side issue arises at this point. Some critics like the pit the gospels

historical reliability against contemporaneous histories. They will almost exclusively only knowof Josephus (who really is our primary source for 1st century Jewish history). They will say that

because the gospels were written around 70's CE (according to their dating), that it is not

eyewitness accounts or even based on eye witness accounts (again according to their dating), and

that we dont have have the originals, or the copies of the copies of the copies (which I think islikely false), then where they contradict with "what we already know about that time" (i.e. what

we read in Josephus) that therefore the gospels are wrong.

Although it is at this point, I have a question. What happens then when we realize thatJosephus did not write The Jewish Wars until 75 CE, and did not write The Antiquities of the

Jews until 94 CE (in some cases over 250 years after the events he is reporting) and therefore the

exact same time gap from the events the Gospels are reporting? Or that Josephus is largely notbased on eyewitness testimony? Or that we dont have our first manuscript until the 10

thcentury

800 years later? Or even that that there are only about 9 manuscripts total of the Jewish Wars

and just a handful of The Antiquities of the Jews?

So if we are not to trust the Gospels because they are supposedly too late (40-70 years later),

not eyewitnesses (though they have all the hallmarks that they are), we dont have originals, and

our extant manuscripts come late (30 years is too late?), then why should we trust Josephus whois actually worse on all those accounts? If THOSE are the criteria, then why trust Josephus over

the gospels?

Resources (date for latest revised edition):Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels(2007)Richard Bauckham,Jesus and the Eyewitnesses(2006)Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament(2005)Mark Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?(2007)F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents(2007)David Alan Black, Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism(2002)Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament(1995)Daniel Wallace, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament(2011)Robert Stewart, The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace in Dialogue(2011)Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ(1998)

Carson, Moo & Morris,An Introduction to the New Testament(2005)

1 5,600 is the number of Greek versions. If we include Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syriac versions we are up to nearly

25,000. If we include citations, quotations and homilies, then we are well over 100,000.