The Biblical Textual Criticism of Bart Ehrman

Ram-Man1 Comment

Bart Ehrman has become quite (in)famous for his views on the textual accuracy of the Bible. Having read Bart Ehrman’s books Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities and watched his debate with James White, I’ve noticed a common thread.

Bart holds that we cannot know the original text of the books in the Bible. His argument boils down to this: the oldest manuscripts we have are also the ones with the greatest number of textual variants. He reasons that, if you go back farther to the period of 50AD to 350AD where we lack manuscripts, these were the periods where the least skilled individuals made copies, thus producing the greatest number of errors. This did not sit right with me from a logical standpoint and it seemed like both an oversimplification and overconfidence.

An obvious problem is that if you keep going back in time, you do not get an ever increasingly larger number of variants, because eventually you must get fewer and fewer copies until you arrive at the single original. When did the percentage of variants and errors reach its peak? Was it closer to 350AD or 100AD? 350AD is just after the time of Constantine. Before this period the church had been expanding in geographic scope consistently. There is no reason to believe that the number of copies (and thus cumulative errors) being made had slowed in any way. On the contrary, we have plenty of reason to believe that the peak of textual variants was towards the end of this period, right around the time of Constantine when the religion was “standardized” and scripture canonized.

This is important to keep in mind for the rest of this post, but it was not the point Ehrman was making. He was saying that the chain of custody during that period was far worse before 350AD than it was after, so we can have little confidence that what we have now is anything close to the original. So let’s look at this more closely.

His first assumption is that the chain of custody was much “dirtier.” His second assumption is that the common ancestor (a single document or family of documents) for the diverging manuscripts we have now is late. If they shared a common ancestor from around 120AD, then the chain of custody must have been very good for the later divergent manuscripts to be as close to each other in content as they are. But if they shared a common ancestor from the Council of Nicea in 325AD, then we’d essentially have only one document family stretching in a single line back almost 300 years. In this latter case we would have very little confidence at all that the text was close to the original.

Both probability and intuition would suggest that they must have shared an ancestor that was neither very early nor very late. Still, this is an unknown and being dogmatic on the point is unwise as the margin of error in any estimate will be quite high.

Chain of Custody

His first assumption is that the chain of custody was much “dirtier.”

Let’s look at what happened to the documents during this period. When the originals were written, they were delivered to a particular Christian community. From there, copies were made, and those were distributed. More and more copies were made at that location and the process continued. Obviously the original didn’t simply cease to exist. It could have stayed at the original location where more copies were made. Or the letter could have been passed on and the copies stayed behind. We don’t know.

Nevertheless, the most accurate early copies would have been the sources that were spread quite rapidly throughout the geographical spread of Christianity. Many of these copies would have been made when some of the apostles were still alive and able to correct false doctrines that may have arisen from forgeries or errors.[1]

One possibility is that the spread of the early copies was extreme and that the early manuscripts we had were based on a broad geographical set of texts. This is important because the faster the spread the more any single error could not be reproduced in all the copies, meaning the original still existed in at least some of the copies. It also prevented corruption from any single authority trying to enforce a particular textual variant.[2]

The earlier the time, the less likely that any meaningful variants could ‘stick’. Factors include the apostles correcting the errors directly. This would extend to the second generation as well: those who knew the apostles directly, church elders, would be able to correct certain errors.

200 years is a long time, but if we’re going to extrapolate what we know about humanity in order make conjectures about the number of variants, let’s use the KJV as an example. This beloved translation is just over 400 years old, and people are still using it. The original texts would have been cherished by the Christian communities. Sure they would have been copied any number of times, but these communities would have formed their own rigid doctrines, much like the communities we are familiar with. The rigidity that the religious are accused of serves to support the idea that they would have kept their copies close.

These were also not the same types of folk that we are. Many were illiterate, but they had superior capacity for memorization compared to the average modern person. These people would have memorized vast sums of the texts that they heard read to them and would have had decades to detect any errors in copies made. Sure errors would and did creep in, but large scale doctrinal changes would be much more difficult to insert and survive to become the only or “most probable” version of what we have now.

Here is a summary of some of the issues at play:

Memorization: Undistributed copies within a community would be vetted by the community itself. Anyone with children has seen how they can spot extremely minor changes in a reading.[3] This is stronger in the oral tradition of a largely illiterate population.

Authorization: The apostles and their authorized representatives would have had an early corrective influence. We can see some hints of this in some of the letters themselves and in the external writings of the time period.

Dogmatism: Religious communities tend to be very dogmatic about their texts, likely to hold on to them dearly, extending their lifespan. They might make dogmatic ‘adjustments’ to the text, but these are likely to be in a theme and detectable (like the Gnostic gospels), but also likely to be limited in number. Once a doctrine is established, it is very hard to change it, especially undetected.[4][5]

It is important to remember that simply because there are textual variants does not imply in any way that we do not have the original. We may have great difficulty deciding between the original and various forgeries, but that’s not the same as not having it. Interpretation of the text cannot be avoided[6], but we do have reasonable confidence that we can do it correctly. By all indications, the letters were distributed quickly and broadly.[7]

Common Ancestry

His second assumption is that the common ancestor (a single document or family of documents) for the diverging manuscripts we have now is late. If they shared a common ancestor from around 120AD, then the chain of custody must have been very good for the later divergent manuscripts to be as close to each other in content as they are.

If the transmission of documents between 50AD and 350AD was as bad as Ehrman suggests, then the common ancestor of the manuscripts we have must have been late in the period.[8] It is not only a logical deduction based on the initial assumption, but a requirement. If it could be shown that the common ancestor was not late, then his assumption falls to pieces and the chain-of-custody must have been better than he assumed.

Ehrman rightly points out that probability is of little usefulness when determining which manuscripts are more reliable than others. But his statement on the probability of error at a given point in time can be evaluated mathematically. If his statements were true, we would expect a random distribution of document families among the manuscripts we do possess so long as there was no external influence to selectively save some documents while destroying others. We would then expect to see extreme variation among those manuscripts we have to reflect the divergent nature and lateness of their origin. But this is not what we see at all. There are very few highly contested portions in the manuscripts we possess. Yes there are many variations, but most are minor and scholars are not in disagreement over many large issues. Their relative harmony does not coincide with widely divergent origins and a poor chain of custody.

Where did the manuscripts from the assumed widely divergent document families go? The manuscripts we do have come from an assortment of geographic locations and sources. Either there was a widely spread conspiracy to destroy those documents that opposed the ones that survived or the number of errors was much lower than assumed. The latter clearly favors the authenticity of the texts. What about a conspiracy?

A conspiracy implies one of the following:

1) That the documents were selectively and completely destroyed after they were transmitted. This is possible and certainly some documents were destroyed, but where is the evidence that it successfully occurred across the whole spread of Christianity? If it did, why would we still have so many other ancient documents of various competing sub-sects of Christianity, such as the gnostics? On such a widely geographically spread basis, this seems hard to accept.

2) There was editorial control over the chain of custody. This directly contradicts the original assumption that the chain of custody was significantly worse during this period. You can’t have it both ways.

Conclusion

The real problem with Ehrman’s belief is that the incidence of errors in the period 50AD to 350AD is not independent of the manuscripts we have after that period. He is extrapolating backwards based off a theory and existing documents, but he fails to extrapolate forward from his theories. If the transmission was so poor and inaccurate during the period where we have no manuscripts, then we would see evidence of that in later manuscripts, because the error is cumulative.

The evidence that we have suggests not that the documents are unreliable, but that they have a relatively early common ancestor and/or that the chain of custody was more reliable than Ehrman assumes.

Now of course we could discover additional manuscript evidence that pushes our confidence in either direction, but we can only base our belief on what we do know, and what we know is pretty good stuff.

NOTE: While I believe that I have identified inconsistencies in the presentation of the argument, this is not a refutation of Bart Ehrman’s positions. It raises a lot of questions that might be easily addressed. If they become addressed or mistakes are pointed out, I will update this article accordingly.

For a refutation of the book Misquoting Jesus, see this paper by Professor Tom Howe.

[1] It is interesting, but certainly not conclusive, that we do not have much in the way of such records. The New Testament writings do contain references to other teachers and other teachings, but not explicit corrections of errors or forgeries to an author’s own previous work, even though we do see citations of those previous works. Seeing as how even personal letters (e.g. Philemon) were cherished by the church at large, how much more so would letters that fixed doctrines caused by critical manuscript errors that Paul himself would have written to correct.

[2] A linear chain of officially authorized messengers is one way to ensure a chain-of-custody, assuming you have some way to authenticate the authorized messages, otherwise the chain is not valuable. But this is not the only way. Rapid mass transmission allows consensus to be determined to find and correct errors among many copies. There is plenty of indication in the existing manuscripts that this is, in fact, what happened, and what we know of as the Bible owes a lot to these acts—whether or not they were accurate or in error. Such an organic process makes it highly resistant to tampering: significant errors (if they happened) would almost certainly be detected, even if not resolved, allowing us to reason about whether significant errors did, in fact, occur.

[3] Have you ever had a child, who was a diligent reader, read Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and then watch the movie? They can immediately and accurately reference the book to show how the content was altered.

[4] The Roman Catholic Church has a history of expounding on non-scriptural doctrines based primarily on later writings, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation.  This is why John C. Wright rejects alternate sects: because they simplify doctrine, losing information (e.g. the Protestant Reformation): “But the truths of the Catholic faith would be compressed and corrupted and suffer simplification into a master idea. [..] Heresies are always simplifications of a complex and interdependent organism of ideas into a single master idea, which, upon consideration, has no warrant for supremacy” It is very hard to change dogma once established. Even the Roman Catholic Church experienced its largest expansion of doctrine early in its existence, mostly during the 4th and 5th centuries.

[5] There are many documented attempts of church scribes attempting to alter passages of scripture to deemphasize or condemn the role of women in the church. This type of major alteration to scripture and doctrine did not go undetected for precisely the reason stated.

[6] As a matter of semantics, this includes the Holy Spirit revealing the correct interpretation of scripture

[7] The creed that Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 is thought to originate within 3 to 5 years of the resurrection and to have spread rapidly.

[8] The greater the time elapsed, the greater and more significant the variations must be during that particular fixed time period. Thus, if the original of an extant manuscript were determined to originate in 50AD, we would expect the extant variations for it to be far, far worse than another composed in 180AD, assuming Ehrman’s initial assumption of the error rate in transmission in that period is correct. Moreover, the earlier the divergent origins of different manuscripts are, the more you would expect them to disagree with each other, due to accumulated errors accrued separately.

Creation vs. Evolution

Ram-Man3 Comments

One of the oddest facets of the creation/evolution debate is the misplaced priorities. On one hand extreme Darwinism is a philosophy that purports to explain the creation of life without any providential influence. On the other hand extreme creationism claims to explain the same without requiring even the hint of scientific consistency. Either God was completely uninvolved in the process or it was all created through magic hand waving.

Neither approach makes a lot of sense.

Evolutionary Theory has a lot of unanswered questions. We have a lot of educated guesses and assumptions, some of them have a very high probability. What we don’t have is scientific repeatability or what would normally constitute proof in scientific study. Fossil records are often ambiguous and incomplete.

We do know a lot about cells, genetics, and many other topics of interest. We can even speculate on how something as complex as the human eye could evolve. Yet for all that, we don’t know the method for which the eye evolved. The existence of “transitional forms” does not prove a causal link, only provides potential evidence. We can’t say that because we have an eye and we know evolution is true that the exact steps do not matter. This is circular reasoning unless you assume that God could not have participated.

When you know that God does not exist[1], then evolutionary theory must be true. It can’t not be true, else how would we all be here? If scientific explanation is the only possibility, then it must exist. And you don’t need scientific repeatability either, because there is really no point. It would be kind of interesting to know the exact details, but the accepted theories are more than good enough. There is no reason to demand the highest scrutiny. It doesn’t matter in a metaphysical sense. Discussion and debate are a complete waste of time.

This is why hard core creationists can’t find any common ground with hard core evolutionists. Evolutionists cannot conceive of a scenario where God would be possible. It does not fit their belief system. It could introduce all sorts of unfathomable scenarios and destroy their picture of the world and the way it is.

At the end of the day, denying God is metaphysics. But if God did exist, it could have a major influence on the way life developed. Even if you didn’t know anything about God, He could potentially change any variable in an unexpected way, changing any scientific theory in an instant. It wouldn’t even have to be miraculous. Just place two genetically mutated creatures in the right place so they mate to produce the desired mutated offspring: Just “tweaking the probabilities” to make astronomically low likelihood events happen.[2] It is roughly analogous to the way that we breed plants and animals now.[3] There is no metaphysical need for God to make sweeping wand-waving changes, although he could because miracles don’t contradict the laws of science.

But this is not the most shocking scenario. Nature is extremely complex, intricate, delicate, and adaptable, all at the same time. The billions of variables in the right configurations required for life to arrive where it is today are beyond human comprehension and should make statisticians shake. We are like newborn babies trying to drive a race car. And yet the notion that God was powerful enough to set an automated system in place that could do this? That is astounding. It is a masterwork.

And yet this is not God’s most amazing work of creation. We are. The human species is unique in the universe. There has never been anything quite like us. Where did our sentience come from? Where did H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neandertalensis go? Why are we so different? Are we really just a bunch of genes and cells and random mutations? Is our sentience just an elaborate natural simulation?

“God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27 (WEB)

“God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7 (WEB)

God set the whole thing in motion for the purpose of creating you and I. He granted us sentience. It didn’t happen by accident, but it did happen. And the more we learn about evolution, the more amazing the consequences.

Atheism and agnosticism are not new concepts, but it is in modern times that spirituality has not been the default truth. The default belief has changed. The burden of proof has shifted. Exclusive belief in science has trumped belief in God. But it is still the case that the more difficult belief is the one that does not involve God. It is not enlightenment to believe that God does not exist: it is arrogance.

Science points directly to God, but many cannot or more likely will not see it.

“The heavens declare the glory of God.
  The expanse shows his handiwork.”
Psalm 19:19 (WEB)

Nature is not proof of God. It is not evidence of God. It is a message from God.

[1] See this article for one of the various proofs for God from science.

[2] Although popular with creationists, this is the more unlikely scenario. The need for God to intervene directly in nature could indicate a “flaw” in the process. This is not to say that God would not do such things (think the immaculate conception), only that it makes more sense logically that he would not have to.

[3] It is not chance that humans, created in the image of God, engage in acts of creation. We may not have the same ability as God to craft new species, but look at the vast variation in dog breeds or the development of maize as proof of what capabilities we do have.

The Sacrifice of Jesus

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One of the most important questions of Christianity is “What Did Jesus Sacrifice?” The concept of sacrifice was briefly touched upon on the discussion of biblical trinities. But what is the mechanism by which the death of God’s son means we are absolved of sin? What does it mean to say that the humanity of Jesus died on the cross? From Irreducible Complexity:

I’ve heard sermons preached with statements such as “Jesus gave up everything, even his life, for your sins.” or “It cost God everything to restore relationship with you.”

These statements might sound good, but they are hard to explain without delving into complex topics such as penal substitutionary atonement or the governmental theory of atonement. It sure seems problematic to suggest that we are not completely sure why Jesus had to die for sins. Isn’t this the primary point of Jesus? Anthony Buzzard states the following in his book on Jesus:

And what drove the whole career and mission of Jesus? Let him answer. “I came to preach the Gospel (Good News) of the Kingdom of God. That is what I was commissioned to do.”. Yes, that is what Jesus was sent by God to do – to announce the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Since that was Jesus’ mission statement, that is the heart of the Christian faith.

In fact if one scans the words of Jesus, at no point does he state that salvation is based on “believing that Jesus died for your sins”. There is no “Sinner’s Prayer”. Jesus demands one path, and one path only: repent [of your sins] and believe in the good news of [coming] Kingdom of God [on earth].

Jesus taught salvation apart from his death and resurrection. Paul taught that salvation is through the death of Jesus on the cross. Is there a conflict here? What was the purpose of the death of Jesus if we could have salvation without it? Are there multiple paths to God? The solution to this problem is not nearly as difficult as it might seem, but I have never seen this addressed adequately in church.

While Jesus walked the earth, he did not abolish the sacrificial system. How could those who repented and believed in the kingdom of God been saved? Through what they were already doing: following the sacrificial law set down in the Torah. The blood-price that God demanded as payment for sin was still in full force.

During the ministry of Jesus, he preached almost exclusively to the Jews.¹ He did on rare occasions interact with neighboring cultures (such as the Samaritans) that were familiar with Jewish practices, but the purpose of his ministry was to give the Jews one last chance to fulfill their part of the covenant with God. Had they chosen to follow him, he could have brought the Kingdom of God to earth, thrown off the oppressors, raised the dead, granted his followers immortality, and setup the foretold worldwide government of peace. Because he had focused on the Jews, this was their one and only chance to be God’s people, the exclusive fellow rulers with Jesus in his kingdom on earth. Obviously this did not happen. They rejected him and crucified him as prophesied.

Under the terms of the old covenant Jesus was the metaphorical spotless lamb. Instead of the blood of a real lamb, his blood was shed. Just as God accepted the sacrifice of an animal to cover over the sins of the people for a time, so much more does he accept the blood of the perfect human Jesus forever. When we take Communion (or celebrate Passover), we eat to represent the body of Jesus as the sacrificial flesh of the lamb and drink to represent the blood of Jesus as the sacrificial blood of the lamb. The body of Jesus provides us spiritual restoration and the blood of Jesus causes death to “passover” us.

The death of Jesus became the final sacrifice, the one to abolish the sacrificial system for good. The old covenant was replaced by a new one. No longer would the message of Jesus be limited to the Jews only. It is no wonder then that Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple (and with it the sacrifice). It is no longer necessary. Now anyone could believe in the kingdom of God that Jesus preached, accept Jesus as lord and master, and begin their royal training. We just have to wait and be ready for his second coming when he will setup his perfect government and we will be rulers with him over the peoples of the whole earth.

¹ For a fuller discussion see here: https://www.levitt.com/essays/feeding4000/

Miracles Don’t Contradict the Laws of Science

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John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, often uses a particular analogy when discussing the existence of God and miracles. I’m going to adapt it and hopefully lend some insight.

Let’s say that I put a ten dollar bill in the glove compartment of my car. The next day I put another $10 in the glove compartment. A day later, I open the glove compartment to discover zero dollars.

Have the laws of mathematics been violated? Is $10 + $10 = $0? How about the laws of physics? Might the bills have spontaneously disappeared? Or have the laws of the United States been violated?

Of course you immediately know which one of these it is, but how did you arrive at that conclusion? You assumed that the laws of mathematics and physics are valid and that the glove compartment is not a closed system. Therefore, someone must have taken it.

When Peter saw Jesus walking on the water, what should he have done? He knew the law of nature that person sinks in water. This was an undeniable fact. But he also knew that the lake was not a closed system. Because the law of nature was not violated[1], an external force must have acted upon it. Is it such a stretch that the creator of water might be able to do such a thing? Of course not!

When the naturalist/materialist atheist rejects miracles, what he is doing is accepting the laws of nature, but rejecting the open system and thus any possibility of a creator. There is no reason besides a personal philosophical presupposition.

Let’s be very clear: belief in a creator is not a violation of any laws of science, it is a choice to treat the universe as an closed system.

When a scientist is faced with an apparent contradiction to the laws of nature, they do have another choice: to claim that the evidence is invalid. The natural consequence therefore is that because the universe is a closed system, then the evidence must be faulty. In this way, the atheist can, quite conveniently, reject all claims of miracles automatically without addressing the evidence at all. This is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty.

If one did not assume a closed system, then miracles could be treated on their own merits as evidence for the creator. And so they are for many people. Alas, the very evidence that an atheist requires to prove God’s existence is the very evidence they cannot consider by their own assumptions.

I don’t expect this to sway anyone, and by all indications it rarely ever has. But hopefully it will help clarify the assumptions and issues at stake and why you see the reactions that you do from those who reject both a creator and miracles.

[1] A law can only be violated if the law applies. If my wife took the money out of the glove compartment, then no criminal laws were broken. Similarly, if the creator intervenes in his creation, no natural law was broken. A law of nature is merely a description or explanation of observations, but there is no scientific requirement that all observations will conform to expectations. On the contrary, this is why experiments are performed over and over again. Laws (and expectations!) sometimes don’t apply or are incomplete and must be amended.