Ehrman’s Definition of Textual Criticism

Following our discussion of that Dan Wallace quote about not being overly skeptical about identifying the original text of the NT, here’s a recent series Bart Ehrman has started about textual criticism on his blog. The first post introduces the subject. I draw attention to it because two things stood out to me: (1) his definition, which is quite traditional, and (2) his overall confidence in identifying the original text.

First, his definition:

Textual criticism is the technical and highly specialized discipline that works to reconstruct the original text and to figure out how, when, where, and why it got changed.

Then, his confidence, with his emphasis:

Scholars who engage in this work are not as a rule insanely pessimistic about the possibilities of getting back to a pretty close approximation of the original text in most cases. That is to say – some people reading my books have not picked up on this enough – there are good reasons for thinking that most of the time we can get back to a fair approximation of what ancient authors wrote, even if there are places (sometimes many places) (and sometimes many very important places) where there are real grounds for doubt.

We could probably reflect on why not everyone has picked up on this enough from his books, but let’s let that go for now. I suspect Bart and I would disagree a bit on how many “very important” places where variation affects the NT text (I don’t think Mark 1:1, for instance changes Mark’s Christology in any way), but that’s a matter of degree, it seems. We probably also still disagree on whether these uncertainties are defeaters for inspiration and inerrancy and that’s a significant disagreement. But it’s nice to highlight agreement with Bart on this blog when we can so that’s what this post is for.

A Non-Evangelical Reads Misquoting Jesus

Bart Ehrman has from time to time expressed surprise that Christians and particularly Evangelicals reacted so negatively to his book Misquoting Jesus. In his follow-up book Jesus, Interrupted he writes, for example, that

The conservative evangelical response to my book surprised me a bit. Some of these critics criticized Misquoting Jesus for “misleading” people—as if facts such as those I have just cited [about the originals being lost, there being hundreds of thousands of variants, that some of these mistakes matter a lot, etc.] could lead someone down a slippery slope toward perdition. A number of critics indicated that they didn’t much appreciate my tone. And a whole lot of them wanted to insist that the facts I laid out do not require anyone to lose their faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God. (pp. 184–185)

Ehrman then goes on to take issue with this last point since he thinks the facts are incompatible with belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God. Still, he clarifies that he had no intention of making people lose their Christian faith as a whole. From there he goes on to make a summary case for why he’s fine saying that the vast majority of variants don’t matter but that some still matter a lot. I don’t really have any complaint about that way of saying it, although I might demur on some of the particular ways Ehrman thinks they matter.

Be that as it may, the question I think is worth considering is the degree to which Misquoting Jesus does, in fact, mislead people. I have long felt that most of the book is quite good and makes for a nice, eminently readable introduction to textual criticism for those who know next to nothing about it. But I did close the book thinking—and I know others who did as well—that Ehrman had overcooked his goose, especially as regards inspiration. But, then, I’m an Evangelical and so, according to Ehrman, maybe that explains it.

What, then, do non-Evangelicals take away from the book? Asking that question recently reminded me of an early review of the book from an unlikely source: the creator of one of America’s most beloved cartoons and a man who is quite certainly not an Evangelical.

Evaluating Ehrman’s Comparative Argument for Textual Unreliability

We have discussed at some length on this blog the value (or lack thereof) of what I called the comparative argument for the reliability of the NT text. In particular, we discussed Bart Ehrman’s three objections to it and why I find only one of them significant. In this post, I want to return to that same objection, but this time I’m going to stack it against one of Ehrman’s own reasons for thinking the NT textual tradition is unreliable or at least not reliable enough.

Ehrman’s Argument

Here is Ehrman in his NT introduction:

In the earliest centuries, the vast majority of copyists of the New Testament books were not trained scribes. We know this because we can examine their copies and evaluate the quality of their handwriting, and we can assess how accurately they did their work. The striking and disappointing fact is that our earliest manuscripts of the New Testament have far more mistakes and differences in them than our later ones. The earlier we go in the history of copying these texts, the less skilled and attentive the scribes appear to have been.*

And here is his objection to the comparative argument as applied to the number of manuscripts:

Second, and more important: just because we are WORSE off for other authors than for those of the New Testament does not in itself mean that we can trust that we know what the NT authors wrote. I am a lot stronger than my five-year old granddaughter. But I still am not able to bench-press a half-ton truck. Yes, but you are MANY TIMES stronger than her! It doesn’t matter. I’m nowhere near strong enough. We have far more manuscripts of the New Testament than for any other ancient writing. But that doesn’t mean that we can therefore know what the originals said. We don’t have nearly enough of the right kinds of manuscripts.

Matthew 24:36 and Rapture Predictions

In case you missed, it there was another end-times prediction for yesterday.

A ‘biblical numerologist’ who goes by ‘David Meade’—no relation to John—predicted that a rogue planet would appear, the rapture would happen, and the world as we know it would generally come to an end.

And yet, here we are.

Today, then, seems to be a great opportunity to look at the variant in Matthew 24:36:

Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος.

But concerning that day and hour, no one knows. Neither the angels of the heavens, nor the Son, except the Father alone.

The variant in question is the presence or absence of οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός.

According to the NA28:

Absent in: 01^2a K L W Γ Δ f1 22 565 579 700 892 1241 1424 g^1 l vg sy co; Hier^mss and the Majority text
Present in: 01* 01^2b B D Θ f13 l2211 it vg^mss Ir^lat Hier^mss

Bart Ehrman calls this variant “one of the clearest examples of an orthodox change effected to prevent its heretical ‘misuse’” (Orthodox Corruption, p. 91). Ehrman accepts οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός as the earlier reading that scribes then omitted. Dan Wallace, on the other hand, argues that the phrase οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός is indeed original—to Mark’s Gospel. Its absence in Matthew is because Matthew removed it, only for it to be added back in by later scribes.

Ehrman summarises the theological argument for ‘Orthodox Corruption’: “it suggests that the Son of God is not all-knowing and could be used therefore by adoptionists to argue that Jesus was not himself divine” (p. 92). Wallace has a series of responses to the theological argument in his article. I would like to point out that Ehrman does acknowledge that the same phrase is nearly always present at Mark 13:32 (though just a handful of manuscripts do omit it there).

If one reads Matthew and Mark together canonically, neither the presence nor the absence of οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός changes any core doctrines of Christianity. Whether Matthew included the phrase or not, it is clear that Mark did.

Finally, regardless of how one interprets Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32, and regardless of which reading one accepts as original at Matthew 24:36, one thing is clear: Only the Father knows the day and the hour. Not the angels in the heavens, nor the televangelist end-times ‘prophets’.

If you really want to read a book on biblical numerology, I recommend this one.


For the editions of the works I cited here, see:

Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Wallace, Daniel B. “The Son’s Ignorance in Matthew 24:36: An Exercise in Textual and Redaction Criticism.” In Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Michael W. Holmes On the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Daniel M. Gurtner, Juan Hernández Jr., and Paul Foster, 178–205. NTTSD 50. Leiden; Boston, 2015.


EDIT (24 April): I corrected a typo that a reader caught, in which I mistakenly referred to Matthew 24:26 (not 24:36) in the final instance.

Kruger on Ehrman’s Latest

Over at the Gospel Coalition, Mike Kruger has a review of Bart Ehrman’s latest book. It’s another popular volume, this one on why Christianity spread so quickly, a topic Kruger and his Doktorvater have recently published on as well. The surprising thing here? Kruger likes the book and says it’s an important resource.

Here’s the conclusion.

Ehrman has written an intriguing, helpful, and well-balanced volume exploring the development, and eventual dominance, of early Christianity.

Certainly there are areas were I, and others, would disagree—for example, on the treatment of miracles, analysis of martyrdom, and the role of tolerance and intolerance. But this volume is a refreshing shift away from the tone of some of Ehrman’s earlier volumes that seemed more polemical and critical in their assessment of early Christianity. Indeed, as a whole this is an enjoyable read that is clear, insightful, and well-written.

Thus, Ehrman’s volume will be an important addition to any reading list exploring the emergence of Christianity in the first four centuries.

How about that.

Nothing new under the (skeptical) sun

The Swiss Protestant divine,
Louis Gaussen (1790–1863) 

Sometimes it’s useful to remember that most of objections to the Bible have been raised before. It provides some perspective, especially to those just made aware of some sensational objection and now feel they’ve been duped or had things hidden from them. In fact, most criticisms of the Bible have been raised (and answered) long before we came along.

Today I found one pertinent to this blog from a 160 years ago that bears remarkable similarity to a now well-known criticism leveled in our day.

From 2005: “What good is it to say that the auographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.” (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 7)

From 1841: “What matters to me (it would have been said [by one objecting to the Bible’s inspiration]), the assurance that the first text has been dictated by God, eighteen hundred years ago, if I have no longer the assurance that the manuscripts of our libraries contain it in its purity; and if it be true (as we are assured,) that the variations of these ancient transcripts are at least in number, thirty thousand?” (François Samuel Robert Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, 86.)

Noting the similarity does not answer the objection, of course. For that, you’ll have to read more of Gaussen’s book linked above. But for some, just knowing that an objection is not new and earth-shattering can help calm a person down.

What goes around comes around

Sometimes we need to know the history of our discipline better. In his brief bio of Kirsopp Lake in the Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, J. K. Elliott writes,

The link between textual criticism and interpretation was one already made by Lake as early as 1904 with his study The Influence of Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the New Testament. This was based on the inaugural lecture he gave on January 27, 1904, at the University of Leiden, and it shows how he made that theme pivotal for this professorial appointment. It has taken nearly a century for his general thesis that textual variants must be used as an invaluable source for our study of the history of the church to bear fruit in a determined way. B. D. Ehrman, following Lake’s example, published The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture in 1993... That book was justifiably well reviewed, but for many readers it was as if such opinions were new. Lake had already been preaching some ninety years earlier that text critics had a duty to do more than establish a supposed original text. According to Lake, exegetes must expound the meaning not only of one printed text but also of the ecclesiastical Bible in use at different times, and to see textual variants as a window on the exegesis of the church. To do that, they need to keep a close eye on the critical apparatus (pp. 637–638).

Here is a taste of Lake on this point:

In the first place, he will need to expound the meaning, not of Westcott and Hort’s text, but of the ecclesiastical Bibles in use at different times; for I take it that to explain what a passage in the Gospels ought philologically to mean, or what it probably did mean originally, is only the beginning of exegesis: we need to know what the early Church thought it meant and how it altered its wording in order to emphasize its meaning (pp. 11–12).

C. S. Lewis: Why the miracle of inspiration does not require the miracle of preservation

In his little book on miracles, C. S. Lewis has a chapter explaining why miracles should not be thought of as breaking the laws of nature. Instead, he says, they should be thought of as God introducing something new to nature which nature then acts on in typical fashion. He illustrates with a series of examples, one of which touches on the question of divine preservation.

If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate [but don’t tell Baptists], miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.*

What constitutes the peculiarity of a miracle, Lewis goes on to say, is that it does not “interlock” with what comes before in the way that it does with what follows after. “And this,” he says, “is just what some people find intolerable.” They assume that nature is all there is and so they cannot tolerate anything invading it from beyond.

Related to textual criticism and inspiration, there is an unexpected agreement on this issue between Bart Ehrman and KJV-onlyists that Lewis is inadvertently touching on. The agreement lies in the belief that the miracle of inspiration must walk hand-in-hand with the miracle of preservation such that if you lose one, you end up losing both. For KJV-onlyists, this explains why they insist on the miracle of divine preservation; for Ehrman, if we are to believe what he says in Misquoting Jesus (p. 211), it explains why he came to deny the miracle of divine inspiration.

But Lewis helps us see why neither view is right. There is no reason to assume that God’s miraculous inspiration of the Bible should require him (or lead us to expect him) to miraculously preserve it from the “ordinary processes of textual corruption.” Instead, we have God, in the miracle of inspiration, introducing something from outside nature and then, in the non-miracle of transmission, letting nature take its course. (Or, as I would prefer to say it, we have God returning to his natural way of overseeing the world.)

Lewis helpfully reminds us that the inspiration and transmission of Scripture fit with the pattern of many of God’s other miracles. Just as we can expect the baby Jesus to gestate normally, so we can also expect the Bible to be transmitted normally. The miracle of origin does not require a second miracle of subsequent development.

---
*From the end of ch. 8 of Miracles: A Preliminary Study; emphasis mine

Armin Baum Responds to Ehrman on Pseudepigraphy

In the latest issue of JBL, Armin Baum has a response to Bart Ehrman on pseudepigraphy. In his big book on forgery in early Christian polemics, Ehrman argues not only that pseudepigraphical texts were intended to deceive (and were regarded as such by readers) and that forgers sometimes thought their deception was divinely sanctioned, but also that a work was considered authentic only if its words, not merely its contents, were the author’s. Baum agrees with Ehrman’s first two points but contests the third. He contends that content is enough to authenticate a work. He summarizes his own view with the following table:

		Style
		from the author	from someone else
Content	from the author	authentic	authentic
	from someone else	forged	forged

After working through his example texts, Baum concludes:

With an eye to these and other ancient statements, I cannot agree with the most innovative contribution of Ehrman’s otherwise very useful book. Ehrman has rightly joined the growing number of scholars who have raised substantial doubts regarding the once-popular thesis of innocent ancient pseudepigraphy. At the same time, his assertion that in antiquity a text’s authenticity was assessed not on the basis of its content but always on the basis of its wording goes one step beyond what the numerous relevant sources reveal.

I think Baum’s sources generally support this conclusion. Several also touch on the issue of works published without the author’s explicit consent. So the article is worth reading for an eye beyond just the question of pseudepigraphy. Some of his sources also touch on broader questions about authorship and publication which we discussed on the blog recently.

The article is “Content and Form: Authorship Attribution and Pseudonymity in Ancient Speeches, Letters, Lectures, and Translations—A Rejoinder to Bart Ehrman,” JBL 136.2 (2017): 381-403

Special ETS Session: Growing Up in the Ehrman Era

It’s just over ten years since Bart Ehrman published his bestselling Misquoting Jesus (reviewed here) and almost ten years since Christanity Today called textual criticism one of “the hottest issues in evangelical theology.” In that time, textual criticism, particularly of New Testament, has become a staple of Evangelical apologetics, with articles on the subject in study Bibles, popular apologetics, and books on the reliability of the Bible. Unfortunately, the apologetic output too often suffers from ignorance of what we all know to be a highly technical field. At times, the results can be quite embarrassing (for example). And the problem does not seem to be improving despite the increasing number of well-trained, Evangelical text-critics.

So, about a year ago, Elijah Hixson and I began planning a way to address this problem. The result is a book project that we are excited to say has recently been accepted by IVP Academic. (More on that later.) Today, as part of that larger project, we would like to announce a special session at this year’s Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Rhode Island. Rather than offering one more response to Ehrman and co., however, the idea is to hold an in-house discussion, one which takes stock of our apologetic efforts over the last decade.

The session is two-part. The first part offers selections from the forthcoming book and the second part is a panel of top Evangelical scholars who have written on the apologetic topic at hand. Elijah and I are especially excited that everyone we asked to join the panel has agreed. We actually adjusted our original schedule to give our panelists extra time. Readers will notice several fellow ETC bloggers on the panel and at least one who will be participating in ETS for the first time. Don’t miss it!

Time & Location

1:00–4:10 PM in the Omni – Providence I

Here are the details:

What Is the Value of the Comparative Argument for the Reliability of the NT Text?

There is a common apologetic argument that says we should be far less skeptical about the text of the NT than we are for the text of other classical works since we have far more and far earlier manuscript evidence for the NT. You can find the basic comparison all the way back in Bentley. Among Evangelicals, the argument was deployed best by F.F. Bruce and his numbers for classical authors are still cited as if they have’t changed in over half a century. Today, the comparison is something of a staple of Evangelical apologetics.

But Bart Ehrman doesn’t buy it. He thinks the comparison is baseless and he gives three reasons why in a blog response to Dan Wallace. He explains:

First, it is not true that scholars are confident that they know exactly what Plato, Euripides, or Homer wrote, based on the surviving manuscripts. In fact, as any trained classicist will tell you, there are and long have been enormous arguments about all these writings. Most people don’t know about these arguments for the simple reason that they are not trained classicists. Figuring out what Homer wrote – assuming there was a Homer (there are huge debates about that; as my brother, a classicist, sometimes says: “The Iliad was not written by Homer, but by someone else named Homer” ) – has been a sources of scholarly inquiry and debate for over 2000 years!

Two Third-Century Papyri in John 1:34

I am currently writing a chapter for an edited volume, where I treat a number of early scribal alterations relating to Christology. The following is an extract of the draft introduction of one of the examples in John 1:34:

One of Bart Ehrman's examples of possible "anti-adoptionistic" corruption  (treated on pp. 69-70 in the original edition of his Orthodox Corruption) is found in the baptism account in John 1:34. The main question here is whether John the Baptist calls Jesus ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, “the Son of God” (NRSV) or ὁ ἐκλεκτός τοῦ θεοῦ, “God’s Chosen One” (now adopted in the NIV). Ehrman prefers the latter assuming that later scribes modified the text in order to avoid an adoptionistic interpretation: “[H]ere again the idea of Jesus’ election is associated with his baptism, an association that the orthodox took some pains to eschew” (Orthodox Corruption, 70)

Certainly the variant reading ὁ ἐκλεκτός τοῦ θεοῦ deserves serious consideration, in particular in light of the external attestation, which is somewhat controversial. No papyrus witness is cited in support of the reading in the recent Nestle-Aland editions NA^27-28 leaving the first hand of Codex Sinaiticus as its single Greek witness. On the other hand, 𝔓^5vid is cited in its support in UBS⁴ but lacking in UBS⁵, whereas 𝔓^106vid is cited in UBS⁵ but not in UBS⁴.

In the most recent Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources (edited by Blumell & Wayment [Baylor University Press, 2015]) both of these witnesses are reconstructed as reading ἐκλεκτός (p. 45, p. 62), although the notes to these readings are deficient (only citing evidence from NA27/28).

In the transcription of the IGNTP, the reconstruction of 𝔓⁵ has ἐκλεκτός

High res image of 𝔓⁵ here (CSNTM).

The IGNTP transcription of 𝔓¹⁰⁶ also reconstructs ἐκλεκτός

High res image of 𝔓¹⁰⁶ (look at the second line from the bottom).

This MS is discussed by co-blogger Peter Head in an article on NT papyri from Oxyrhynchus (Tyndale Bulletin 51.1 [2000]). In a note he says, "The reading is established, though not all the letters are visible (the edition has: ο [ε]κλεκ[τος, with dots under all of the visible letters except epsilon" (p. 12 n. 22).

Based on the IGNTP transcriptions, the forthcoming Editio Critica Maior edition of John will probably cite both papyri in support of ἐκλεκτός in John 1:34 (in which case I assume they will be cited thus in NA29).

This is a tough call, but In my opinion, both witnesses, dating to the third century, should be cited (ut videtur) in support of ἐκλεκτός. Do you agree with this judgement?

Another problem concerns the reading of the fourth-century papyrus 𝔓¹²⁰. In the last line of the first page here, the editors reconstruct ο υιος ο, and the next page continues with του θ(εο)υ. Hence, a singular reading, ὁ υἱὸς ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ.

“How Did Jesus Become God?” Livestream

I’m not sure if they still count as blog contributors, but later today Mike Bird and Simon Gathercole will be participating in the annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum. The topic this year is “How Did Jesus Become God?” with other participants being Bart Ehrman, Jennifer Knust, Larry Hurtado, and Dale Martin.

According to the website, there will be a livestream starting at 7:00 pm (CST) tonight.

The debate, of course, revolves around the publishing coup that was Bart’s recent book on the subject and Bird’s response volume. Judging by the number of Amazon reviews, both books sold quite well.

You might remember that one of the earlier such Counterpoint Forums tackled the reliability of the NT text which was later published by Fortress Press and included contributions from some ETC bloggers.

Now back to your regularly scheduled TC work.

Who Said It?

A little fun for your Friday. See if you can guess the source of the following quote. (Remember, it’s no fun if you ask Google.)

“If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are. Barring some fantastic manuscript discoveries (like the autographs) or some earth-shattering alterations in text-critical method, the basic physiognomy of our texts is never going to change.”

Update: That may have been too easy. But Bart Ehrman it is, in his review of the first fascicle of the ECM (delivered at SBL, I think). 

“Misquoting Manuscripts? The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited”

I have published a new essay, “Misquoting Manuscripts? The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited” in the following volume:

Magnus Zetterholm and Samuel Byrskog, eds., The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions: Essays in Honor of Bengt Holmberg (Coniectanea Biblica: New Testament Series 47; Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns, 2012), pp. 325-50.

This volume is available with a 30% conference discount ($33.25) by using the SBL/AAR order form available here. From the webpage of the book you can see table of contents and further details.

I make available an excerpt of the nine first pages here. And here is the conclusion (without footnotes):

We have analysed seventeen selected examples of orthodox corruption, brought forth by Bart Ehrman in his influential work on the orthodox corruption of Scripture. Ehrman’s optimism regarding the ability of modern textual criticism, not only to identify corruption, but to reconstruct the initial text in these passages may come as a surprise. As we have seen, Ehrman accepts the initial text as adopted in NA27 with very few exceptions (Mark 1:1; Luke 3:22; John 1:18; 1 Cor 10:9).75 My examination, however, has demonstrated several problems with his procedure as he identifies various variant readings as examples of “orthodox corruption.”

The first problem with Ehrman’s text-critical analysis is the mixed nature of the sample that he uses. It seems to me that he has harvested the entire textual tradition in order to find data to support his preconceived thesis, without crossexamining the possible tendencies of individual witnesses. It will become clear that, on the level of the individual witness, it is very difficult to detect any consistent theological tendency. On the contrary, individual witnesses will often reflect directly opposite tendencies (e.g., adoptionistic/anti-adoptionistic).

The second and more serious problem with Ehrman’s procedure is the mechanical character of his treatment of individual passages. Whenever there is textual variation in a passage that somehow relates to Christology, Ehrman too easily identifies one reading as the original and another as “orthodox corruption.” Ehrman’s philological and text-critical groundwork is unsatisfactory, in that he lacks a sensitivity to the particular context and nature of the variation in the individual passage.

In a classic essay on “The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism,” Alfred E. Housman proposed that “every problem which presents itself to the textual critic must be regarded as possibly unique.” This sound view of textual criticism excludes every mechanical application of a single canon of criticism to a passage, e.g., to prefer the least orthodox reading whenever there is a grain of suspicion that a passage may have been tampered with for doctrinal reasons. Instead, the textual critic should attempt at each point to seek the most plausible explanation for the textual variation, weighing external and internal evidence and utilizing whatever principles that may apply to the individual problem.

If the criteria are found to be in conflict, which is often the case, the textual critic has to decide when to give greater consideration to one criterion and less to another. As I have attempted to demonstrate in my treatment of these examples, a balanced judgment will often require knowledge of the pecularities of individual manuscripts and their scribe(s), the citation habits of church fathers, and a familiarity with the character of a particular version and its limitations in representing the Vorlage from which it was translated.

Indeed, this close examination of a significant number of passages has confirmed the judgment of Gordon Fee who in a review of Ehrman’s work points out that, “too often [Ehrman] turns mere possibility into probability, and probability into certainty, where other equally viable reasons for corruption exist.”

My monograph The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission is available from the same publisher for an SBL supersale price – $25 – thru 31 December here.