“Why I Trust the New Testament Is What God Wrote”: Contend 2024

Over the weekend, I spoke for one of the break-out sessions at Contend—an apologetics conference at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary that is geared for high school students. The title of my presentation was "Why I Trust the New Testament is What God Wrote," and that title was intentional. The talk wasn't so much to convince anybody that we do really have God's words as it was rather to tell them why I believe we do really have God's words.

My talk was based on what I presented a while back at the church where I was ordained. That itself was an interesting situation—it is a TR church that has always used the KJV or NKJV, but they also recognize that it's not an issue worth dividing over and consider other translations to be sufficient as well. My impression of the rationale at that church has always been that it was an unstated trust that TR translations are 'safe' in that God has obviously blessed their use, and since that's what the pastors typically used, they just stayed with it because there are more important things than becoming experts in textual criticism just to be sure that you have the best Bible when you already have a Bible that's not only good but perfectly sufficient. But they knew my position and actually asked me to speak about why we can trust the Bible. It was an interesting task to try to do that in a way that doesn't undermine the KJV/NKJV on the one hand or modern translations on the other (because plenty of people beyond myself at that church used translations like the ESV and LSB).

It may not be helpful to anyone, but in case it is, I wanted to post some of my slides from those two talks and give a few main points here.

1. Dunning and Kruger

I began (at the church; unfortunately this part had to be cut for Contend because I didn't have as much time) with explaining the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is named after the authors who described it in this 1999 article, and which Tom Nichols wrote about in his excellent book, The Death of Expertise (which should be required reading for anyone engaging in the TR/KJV issue). In short, when we first start to learn something, we don't know enough to know what we don't know, then there comes a time when we realize how much we don't know (and that can be unsettling), and finally, if we stick with it, we achieve competence. On a chart, these three phases are sometimes called Mount Stupid, the Valley of Despair, and the Plateau of Sustainability (I didn't come up with those names, but they fit). My casual observation is that a lot of the people who 'go wrong' when it comes to manuscripts and textual criticism do so because they get hurt falling from Mount Stupid into the Valley of Despair, so to avoid living in that pain, they climb back up Mount Stupid and build a fortress there. It's not the mountain that hurts, it's the fall. Basil Manly Jr. [The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration Explained and Vindicated] even observed this phenomenon in 1888.

2. Examples of Uncertainties

In the talk I did give a very brief "We have over 5,000 manuscripts" section, but I figure that most people who are coming to an SBC seminary for an apologetics event probably already have a baseline of belief in the Scriptures, so that part wasn't very long. It's probably what they came to hear though; sorry for the disappointment! I think it might be more helpful to dive right in to the uncomfortable part—uncertainties. Nobody likes to be uncertain about God's Word, but because of how God has acted in history, somebody has to sort out the differences among manuscripts, and if we are concerned about this, then we should have an accurate picture of what that looks like and what the degree of uncertainty actually is.

I started with Maurice Robinson's figure that for ~94% of the text, the Critical Text and the Byzantine/Majority text (however you want to describe it/them) are identical. There is no reason to be uncertain about that part of the text.

That still leaves ~6% though. It's important to keep in mind that within that 6% we are not dealing with an "anything goes" approach to the text. Instead, it's a place where we might not be sure if the text is this reading or that reading. It's a an uncertain decision within a certain and finite number of possibilities (usually 2, very occasionally 3, and off the top of my head, I can't think of any instances where there are more than 3 possibilities). Additionally, when we have made earlier discoveries, they have generally just confirmed what we already thought the text would be; they don't drastically change it. In other words, they're never going to dig up a new manuscript and because of it take John 3:16 out of the Bible. You can stop worrying about that ever happening.

I give one of my favorite examples: the spelling of Legion in Luke 8:30. Does it matter? Well it's God's Word, so of course it matters, but also, no it doesn't because it's not something that can even be represented by a translation into normal English (i.e. you'd have to go out of your way to point out that it's an issue). You might not even notice it if you were reading it in Greek.

Obviously, being uncertain about the spelling of a word when 1. we are certain what the word is, and 2. we are certain that it's either this spelling or that spelling, and 3. it's a non-translatable difference—that's an uncertainty I can live with. If you can't live with that uncertainty, then you might want to consider whether you are more concerned with being the one who is certain than you are with what you are actually trying to be certain about.

Another example: Assuming I counted correctly when I made this slide, there are 10 ECM split lines in Acts where the ECM editors are unsure if the Initial Text is δέ or τέ—is it 'and', or is it 'and'? Sure, they are different words, so there's nuance, but it's not a difference between 'and' and 'Jesus wasn't really raised form the dead' The difference between 'and' (δέ) and 'and' (τέ) is not something that our salvation depends on (screenshots are the beginnings of the respective entries in BDAG).

If you want to have 'maximum uncertainty' by taking all the differences between the TR and modern editions and calling each of those places uncertain, there are still times when we have something that, while it is different, it ultimately doesn't matter. For example, in Acts 18:26, is it Aquila and Priscilla, or is it Priscilla and Aquila? That's not something that a normal person should lose sleep over.

Now, to be clear, not all textual variants are meaningless. Some do make a big difference. At Luke 10, for example, were 70 or 72 sent? That matters for inerrancy because historically, an actual number of people were sent, and both 70 and 72 can't be correct—one of them can't be inerrant. I don't want to downplay textual variation and act like there aren't some significant issues—there are—but I do want to keep in mind that:

1. It isn't anything goes—it's a question of the correct reading among a finite number of knowns.
2. Any new discovery isn't going to change this. At best (or worst, depending on how you want to see it), it might shift the balance between knowns.  You can see trace this out by looking at all the possibly-2nd-century papyri and comparing editions at the text they have from before they were discovered with editions at the same place after they were discovered (I did this in an ETS paper a couple years ago).
3. Even with respect to the big issues, the truth of the Gospel is not in jeopardy when it comes to textual variants. How can we know this? Read the KJV side-by-side with the ESV and ask yourself if they are telling the same story.

3. Theological observations

That brings me to what I think is the most important part of my talk: theological observations about this stuff.

At the risk of offending someone, I'll point this out: There's an interesting difference in 1 Cor. 9:8.

If we get caught up in textual variations and think there's no epistemic foundation for Christianity if we don't adopt a particular text, then this verse isn't true—God is not able to make all grace abound to us. It is true though, even though the Greek texts differ. God doesn't just do that for people who read the ESV, and he doesn't just do that for people who read the KJV. He does it for all his children. Sufficiency doesn't mean perfection, by the way. It means 'enough'—God gives us enough—all we need. One commenter going by Christian (I assume Christian McShaffrey) said "I enjoy maximum certainty (i.e., all the certainty that any mere man can obtain, and all the certainty that we need)." I agree with that, and I think we have that even in the ESV. I also don't think that the amount of 'certainty' we have is what determines what's true or not. I don't know about you, but I've been certain before about things and found out that I was certainly wrong.

An easy way to remember this is when you are tempted to doubt God because of textual variants, ask yourself, "Do I trust God, or do I just trust myself to understand everything? Do I trust God or not?" Then, if the answer is "Yes, I do trust God," remember that God is never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. He's never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

"...no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand" (John 10:29)

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

"...I will never leave you nor forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5"

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more..." (Rev. 21:4)

"...and so we will always be with the Lord." (1 Thess. 4:17)

"...it is impossible for God to lie..." (Hebrews 6:18)

Then, I move to some quotes from Basil Manly, Jr., John Dagg [Manual of Theology], and Vern Poythress. I'll post those here as they seem to be fairly self-explanatory:

The bit in bold from Manly might be the most important thing I said the whole time.

I was particularly helped by Poythress, from his book Inerrancy and the Gospels. He has a section on what he calls intellectual suffering, which is incredibly helpful. I've recommended it to several people. His context is how to deal with apparent discrepancies among the Gospels, but it applies to the uncertainties of textual criticism as well.

So what do we do with the fact that God has done things in such a way that we have to acknowledge uncertainties at times? Are there good aspects to these uncertainties? Actually yes, there are! And no, it's not because anybody just wants to be uncertain. Nobody wants that (nobody that I know, at least), and it really can be uncomfortable, but the process of sanctification is uncomfortable at times. Maybe it hurts because it's supposed to.

Conclusion

Finally, a summary:

Two items from Erasmus on Stunica

I've been reading through vol. 74 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series—Erasmus' controversies with Stunica—Diego López de Zúñiga, if you prefer (not to be confused with the other Diego López de Zúñiga. Zúñiga was the main editor behind the Complutensian Polyglot and was therefore one of the more qualified of Erasmus' many critics. Still, Erasmus took issue with Zúñiga, including the way he went about his criticisms. I always enjoy reading the writings of my second-favorite Dutch textual critic who worked in Cambridge, and I found these words from his Apologia Against Zúñiga to be interesting:

Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 74, p. 245

"This man put the extracts on display once and for all in the most invidious way he could, omitting the material that softened their sharpness, and adding violent and even meaningless titles to exacerbate their effect."

Evidently, Zúñiga was circulating quotes from Erasmus' writings taken out of context—he had conveniently left out the parts where Erasmus qualified what he said to make it less severe. You can definitely get more mileage out of a quote that way, but it's simply not honest to leave out the parts that contradict the narrative you are trying to spin. As I read on, I chuckled at what Erasmus said a few pages later about Zúñiga (in the context of his responses to Erasmus' broad criticisms of abusive clergy who were not acting like Christians): "And he is an unhappy advocate if he cannot protect the honour of others except by speaking ill of me, which a pimp could do just as well."

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To shift gears, we also see this interesting comment a few pages later: "Or is it a falsehood that I say that some passages have been added? That is incontrovertibly the case at the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, to say nothing of other places" (p. 258).

Zúñiga evidently (by what I infer from Erasmus' response) didn't like that Erasmus admitted that it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that there are places in the New Testament textual tradition where something has been added. Erasmus appeals to the doxology of the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:13). I find this interesting for two reasons:

1. Despite that he says that it is "incontrovertibly the case" that the doxology is not original, Erasmus did include it in his Greek text. However, he clearly doesn't think it's original, he says as much, and elsewhere, his Paraphrase leaves out the doxology.

2. Erasmus' appeal to the Lord's Prayer is especially clever. Zúñiga was over the Complutensian Polyglot, which leaves out the doxology to the Lord's Prayer and has a rare marginal note about how it is added in the Greek copies. While it seems that Zúñiga was not the author (or at least not the principal author) of this marginal note, it's still the case that he was in charge of an edition that left out the doxology and casts doubts on its authenticity. Jerry Bentley writes, concerning the marginal note in the Complutensian Polyglot: 

"In only one note does a peculiar observation suggest its author. This is the note to Mt. 6:13 (quoted above), which discusses the authenticity of a clause found in many Greek texts, but not in the Vulgate: "for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen." The note casts doubt on the authenticity of this clause : the author suggests that the clause crept into Greek New Testament manuscripts by way of the Greek mass, where it forms part of the liturgy. The note obviously bears the mark of the Cretan Demetrius Ducas, no doubt the only member of the Complutensian team familiar enough with the Greek liturgy to have made such precise points about it. This is not necessarily to say that Ducas prepared all the annotations, for the note to Mt. 6:13 is by no means representative of all the rest. We may be fairly sure we see Ducas' influence in this note, though we must not jump to the conclusion that he was sole author of the annotations." ("New Light on the Editing of the Complutensian New Testament," Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 42.1 (1980): 154–155).

The textually-missing/marginally-present doxology and beginning of the note in the Complutensian Polyglot (page 2069 here).

Resources for Reading Greek Minuscule

Over at the Text & Canon Institute website, Clark Bates has put together a helpful list of resources for dealing with Greek abbreviations, contractions, and ligatures. It should be especially useful to students just getting started reading manuscripts. Along with Amy Anderson's article on the benefits of reading Greek manuscripts, it would be great for introducing students to manuscripts.

Ligatures galore in GA 1969, f. 125r!

Gospel of Mark in Herculaneum!

Since Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger won the Vesuvius
Challenge, we've seen more and more of the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum identified and read. The Herculaneum Papyri have a firm terminus ante quem of A.D. 79—the date of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

The latest identification was very unexpected—a copy of Mark's Gospel from the A.D. 70s at the absolute latest! I can't wait to find out of there's enough to tell if it contains Mark 16:9–20 yet so we can know if those verses are in the Bible or not.

Read more about it here.