The New Testament
(English)
العهد الجديد
( إنجليزي )
Laurence B. Brown, MD
لورنسب براون إم دي
Gospel
<img width="281" height="327" alt="http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/images/The_New_Testament_001.jpg">Of course,Blake’s sentiment in the quote above is nothing new. The New Testamentcontains enough inconsistencies to have spawned a dizzying variety ofinterpretations, beliefs and religions, all allegedly Bible-based. Andso, we find one author offering the amusing observation:
Youcan and you can’t,
Youshall and you shan’t,
Youwill and you won’t,
Andyou will be damned if you do,
Andyou will be damned if you don’t.[1]
Whysuch variance in viewpoints? To begin with, different theological campsdisagree on which books should be included in the Bible. One camp’s apocryphais another’s scripture. Secondly, even among those books that havebeen canonized, the many variant source texts lack uniformity. This lackof uniformity is so ubiquitous that The Interpreter’s Dictionary of theBible states, “It is safe to say that there isnot one sentence in the NT in which the MS [manuscript] tradition is wholly uniform.”[2]
Notone sentence? We can’t trust a single sentence of the Bible? Hard tobelieve.
Maybe
Thefact is that there are over 5700 Greek manuscripts of all or part of the New Testament.[3] Furthermore, “no two of these manuscripts are exactly alike in all theirparticulars…. And some of these differences are significant.”[4] Factor in roughly ten thousand manuscripts ofthe Latin Vulgate, add the many other ancient variants (i.e., Syriac, Coptic,Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Nubian, Gothic, Slavonic), and what do we have?
Alot of manuscripts
Alot of manuscripts that fail to correspond in places and not infrequentlycontradict one another. Scholars estimate the number of manuscript variantsin the hundreds of thousands, some estimating as high as 400,000.[5] In Bart D. Ehrman’s now famouswords, “Possibly it is easiest to put the matter incomparative terms: there are more differences in our manuscripts than there arewords in the New Testament.”[6]
Howdid this happen?
Poorrecord keeping. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Doctrinalprejudice. Take your pick.
Noneof the original manuscripts have survived from the early Christian period.[7] /[8] Themost ancient complete manuscripts (Vatican MS. No. 1209 and the Sinaitic SyriacCodex) date from the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus’ministry. But the originals? Lost. And the copies of the originals?Also lost. Our most ancient manuscripts, in other words, are copies of thecopies of the copies of nobody-knows-just-how-many copies of the originals.
Nowonder they differ
Inthe best of hands, copying errors would be no surprise. However, New Testamentmanuscripts were not in the best of hands. During the period ofChristian origins, scribes were untrained, unreliable, incompetent, and in somecases illiterate.[9] Those who were visually impaired could have made errors with look-alike lettersand words, while those who were hearing-impaired may have erred in recordingscripture as it was read aloud. Frequently scribes were overworked, andhence inclined to the errors that accompany fatigue.
Inthe words of Metzger and Ehrman, “Since most, ifnot 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 theyreproduced them.”[10] Worse yet, some scribes allowed doctrinalprejudice to influence their transmission of scripture.[11] As Ehrman states, “Thescribes who copied the texts changed them.”[12] More specifically, “The number of deliberate alterations made in theinterest of doctrine is difficult to assess.”[13] And even more specifically, “In the technical parlance of textual criticism—which Iretain for its significant ironies—these scribes ‘corrupted’ their texts fortheological reasons.”[14]
Errorswere introduced in the form of additions, deletions, substitutions andmodifications, most commonly of words or lines, but occasionally of entireverses.[15] [16] Infact, “numerous changes and accretions came intothe text,”[17] with the result that “allknown witnesses of the New Testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixedtexts, and even several of the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregiouserrors.”[18]
InMisquoting Jesus, Ehrman presents persuasive evidence that the story ofthe woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:12)and the last twelve verses of Mark were not in the original gospels, but addedby later scribes.[19] Furthermore, these examples “represent just two out of thousands of places in whichthe manuscripts of the New Testament came to be changed by scribes.”[20]
Infact, entire books of the Bible were forged.[21] This doesn’t mean their content isnecessarily wrong, but it certainly doesn’t mean it’s right. So whichbooks were forged? Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2Timothy, Titus, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude—a whopping nine of the twenty-seven NewTestament books and epistles—are to one degree or another suspect.[22]
Forgedbooks? In the Bible?
Whyare we not surprised? After all, even the gospel authors are unknown. Infact, they’re anonymous.[23] Biblical scholars rarely, if ever, ascribegospel authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. As Ehrman tells us, “Most scholars today have abandoned theseidentifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknownbut relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during thesecond half of the first century.”[24] Graham Stanton affirms, “The gospels, unlike most Graeco-Roman writings, areanonymous. The familiar headings which give the name of an author (‘TheGospel according to …’) were not part of the original manuscripts, for theywere added only early in the second century.”[25]
Sowhat, if anything, did Jesus’ disciples have to do with authoring the gospels? Littleor nothing, so far as we know. But we have no reason to believe theyauthored any of the books of the Bible. To begin with, let us rememberMark was a secretary to Peter, and Luke a companion to Paul. The versesof Luke 6:14-16 and Matthew 10:2-4 cataloguethe twelve disciples, and although these lists differ over two names, Mark andLuke don’t make either list. So only Matthew and John were truedisciples. But all the same, modern scholars pretty much disqualify themas authors anyway.
Why?
Goodquestion. John being the more famous of the two, why should we disqualifyhim from having authored the Gospel of “John”?
Umm … because he was dead?
Multiplesources acknowledge there is no evidence, other than questionable testimoniesof second century authors, to suggest that the disciple John was the author ofthe Gospel of “John.”[26] [27] Perhapsthe most convincing refutation is that the disciple John is believed to havedied in or around 98 CE.[28] However, the Gospel of John was written circa 110 CE.[29] So whoever Luke (Paul’s companion), Mark (Peter’s secretary), and John (the unknown,but certainly not the long-dead one) were, we have no reason to believe any ofthe gospels were authored by Jesus’ disciples. . . .
Copyright© 2007 Laurence B. Brown; used by permission.
Theabove excerpt is taken from Dr. Brown’s forthcoming book, MisGod’ed,which is expected to be published along with its sequel, God’ed. Both books can be viewed on Dr. Brown’s website, www.Leveltruth.com. Dr. Brown can be contacted at BrownL38@yahoo.com
[1] Dow,Lorenzo. Reflections on the Love of God.
[2] Buttrick,George Arthur (Ed.). 1962 (1996 Print).The Interpreter’s Dictionary of theBible. Volume 4. Nashville: Abingdon Press. pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).
[3] Ehrman,Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 88.
[4] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 78.
[5] Ehrman,Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 89.
[6] Ehrman,Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early ChristianWritings. P. 12.
[7] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 49.
[8] Metzger,Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Introduction,p. 1.
[9] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities and Misquoting Jesus.
[10] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text ofthe New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P. 275.
[11] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. Pp. 49,217, 219-220.
[12] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 219.
[13] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text ofthe New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P. 265.See also Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.
[14] Ehrman, Bart D. 1993. The Orthodox Corruption ofScripture. Oxford University Press. P. xii.
[15] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 220.
[16] Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on theGreek New Testament. Introduction, p. 3
[17] Metzger,Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Introduction,p. 10.
[18] Metzger,Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission,Corruption, and Restoration. P. 343.
[19] Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. Pp. 62-69.
[20] Ehrman,Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. P. 68.
[21] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. Pp. 9-11,30, 235-6.
[22] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 235.
[23] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 3, 235. Also, see Ehrman, Bart D. The NewTestament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. P.49.
[24] Ehrman,Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 235.
[25] Stanton, Graham N. p. 19.
[26] Kee,Howard Clark (Notes and References by). 1993. The Cambridge Annotated StudyBible, New Revised Standard Version. Cambridge University Press.Introduction to gospel of ‘John.’
[27] Butler, Trent C. (General Editor). Holman BibleDictionary. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers. Under ‘John, the Gospel of’
[28] Easton,M. G., M.A., D.D. Easton’s Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.Under ‘John the Apostle.’
[29] Goodspeed,Edgar J. 1946. How to Read the Bible. The John C. Winston Company. p.227.
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