There's
a thread at Victor Reppert's blog about the New Testament text, and Victor and others have made some good points. I added a post of my own, but it looks like Blogger sent it to the spam filter. If anybody is interested, I wrote a series on the New Testament textual record on this blog in 2009:
here,
here, and
here.
Here is your original comment (subscription email goes out before spam filter) without emphasis or links. Jason said:
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We have a lot of evidence for the textual record that predates our earliest manuscripts. For example, we have descriptions of the textual record from Christian and non-Christian sources predating the year 200. What do men like Justin Martyr and Celsus tell us about the contents of the documents and the textual standards of the early Christians and their opponents?
Here are several factors not often mentioned concerning the New Testament textual record:
- We have many early references to the possession of New Testament documents by non-Christians (see here for some examples), so any argument for textual corruption would have to explain how copies possessed by non-Christians were changed or left no trace in the historical record.
- We can judge the reliability of Christian scribes by how they preserved other documents, not just the New Testament. As the Josephan scholar Steve Mason notes, "in general, Christian copyists were quite conservative in transmitting texts" (Josephus And The New Testament [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005], p. 232).
- Not only are patristic quotations of the New Testament relevant, but so are patristic (and other) descriptions. If a skeptic wants to raise textual issues to cast doubt on Jesus' resurrection, for example, then it's significant if a patristic source describes a New Testament document as making reference to the resurrection, even if he doesn't quote the document.
- It was common for documents in antiquity to exist in two or more copies before being sent out to circulate more widely. Authors often kept a copy of their document before sending out another copy (Stanley Porter, in Craig Evans and Emanuel Tov, edd., Exploring The Origins Of The Bible [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008], pp. 189-190, 195, n. 106 on p. 195). Thus, an author didn't entirely give up control of the transmission of his text to other people. He kept a copy himself and could restart the copying process anytime he wanted with his own edition of the original.
- Authors often took steps to ensure the preservation of their text and to monitor the status of the text's circulation. Thus, ancient authors often commented on subjects like what titles were being applied to their works in libraries, how some people were interpreting their work inaccurately, how some people were altering their text, etc. Their concern over the text didn't end once the first copy was sent out.
- Documents were read publicly (1 Thessalonians 5:27). Thus, even those who were illiterate could become witnesses to the original text by means of hearing it read publicly. That increases the number of witnesses involved.
- Ancient non-Christian sources corroborated the reliability of the New Testament text.[link to part 3 of the series]
- Many of the objections non-Christians raise against Christianity in modern times depend on the textual accuracy of ancient extra-Biblical sources. For example, when a critic appeals to an alleged contradiction between Luke and Josephus, suggesting that we have a reliable text for Josephus, he's accepting the Josephan text on the basis of less evidence than we have for the New Testament text.
Jason: Split your post up into pieces, and it will get through the spam filter.
ReplyDeleteIf the Holy Spirit, is able to work with the imperfect text's we do have, and the imperfect readers of those texts, what does it matter?
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