Christianity Matters — Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism

Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism by Elijah Hixson (Editor), Peter Gurry (Editor), Daniel B. Wallace (Foreword)

This is a book for inside-baseball apologists. The book provides a detailed explanation of the state of the art in textual criticism. The book is aimed at apologists. The book consists of fifteen essays by different scholars writing on various issues in textual criticism. These scholars basically ask that Christian apologists stop making arguments that make their ears bleed.

The gist of the scholar’s arguments is that apologists should not gild the lily. The most extreme apologetic arguments are easy to shoot down, which obscures the fact that less extreme arguments are strong.

The best example concerns the number of texts available for determining the original texts of the New Testament scriptures. Apologists have typically claimed that Christians have more than 24,0o0 manuscripts of the New Testament. This is impressive and wrong. In fact, scholars have identified around 5,500 Greek New Testament manuscripts dating to before the year 1001 AD. This does not mean that we have 5,500 copies of the New Testament. Most of these manuscripts are fragments, sometimes no more than a few lines. In addition, the dates of these manuscripts skew in favor of later centuries. There are six second-century gospels, 30 third-century gospels, twenty-seven fourth-century gospels, and approximately 730 tenth-century gospels.

This is not bad compared to what Classical scholars have for their texts, but even there, Christian apologists need to avoid “egging the pudding.” The writers explain:

Regarding the number of manuscripts themselves, a few examples will suffice. For Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Jones counts not ten (so Bruce) but 251 manuscripts.10 Again, it is far less than the manuscript attestation for the Gospels, so the comparison’s basic points remain, but 251 is a far cry from ten! Likewise, Orr-Ewing (and others) cite Plato as attested by only seven manuscripts, when there are again over two hundred.11

Hixson, Elijah; Gurry, Peter; Wallace, Daniel B.. Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism (p. 75). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

In additions:

Likewise, Thucydides is given eight manuscripts, with dates beginning AD 900, by Bruce, Orr-Ewing, and Porter and Pitts, and given twenty manuscripts by Blomberg.21 However, even by 1913 (before Bruce), a whole book was filled with papyri of Thucydides.22 The 1938 Oxford edition of Thucydides speaks of some thirty papyri and parchments in evidence.23 Such figures, of course, would require updating in later decades, and recently papyri of Thucydides have been found dating even back to the third or mid-second century BC (long before 900).

Hixson, Elijah; Gurry, Peter; Wallace, Daniel B.. Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism (p. 77). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

So, it is fair to say the New Testament is better attested by manuscripts than comparable classical texts, but apologists should not run up the numbers. Likewise, critics who apply different standards for the New Testament classical literature are using a double standard.

Because there are more manuscripts, there are more manuscript “variances,” which is to say variations in the texts. Most of these are meaningless. In an inflected language like Greek, variations in word order do not change the meaning of a sentence. Likewise, spelling errors are inevitable and obvious.

There are some significant variations. In Mark, Jesus explains in some versions that some demons can only be exorcized by prayer and fasting, and some that only say prayer. This could be a big difference for Protestants who have no tradition of fasting.

There may be half a million variations. Half are meaningless. A tiny fraction is discussed by commenters, and a few of those are given footnotes in modern translations. A few dozen affect the meaning of a text, and a handful are theologically important, such as Mark 1:1, Luke 23:34, and John 1:18. So, (a) don’t let skeptics buffalo you into thinking the text is up for grabs, but (b) recognize that there are some that are worth discussing, and © none of them change core Christian doctrines.

Another interesting chapter dealt with the claim that the New Testament can be reconstituted from quotations by the Church Fathers. This is based on a canard that has no merit. When the canard is dismissed, it seems that Church Fathers mention nowhere near the entire New Testament. (On the other hand, Origen wrote commentaries on various texts of the New Testament, including John and Romans.) So, again, this is an argument that apologists would do well to forget.

The book talks about “myths,” but many chapters don’t involve myths at all. There is a discussion about canon that notes the idea of canon was not binary. There were books that were “canonical,” books that were “spurious,” and books that were useful for edification and instruction:

Generally, they did not describe books in a binary way: canonical and noncanonical. Rather, they employed a tri-fold description of religious literature: canonical scripture, useful/intermediate scripture, and apocryphal. In Festal Letters 39.20–21, for example, Athanasius describes this literature as follows:

But for the sake of greater accuracy, I add this, writing from necessity. There are other books, outside of the preceding, which have not been canonized (κανονιζόμενα, kanonizomena), but have been prescribed by the ancestors to be read (άναγινώσκεσθαι, anaginōskesthai) to catechumens wanting to be instructed in the word of piety. . . . Nevertheless, beloved, the former books are canonized (κανονιζομένων, kanonizomenōn); the latter are (only) read (άναγινωσκομένων, anaginōskomenōn); and there is no mention of the apocryphal books (άποκρύϕων, apokryphōn).15

In accordance with the ancestors, Athanasius lists the canonical books of Old and New Testament, several books that are to be read (e.g., Tobit, the Shepherd, the Didache), and the category of apocryphal books but does not list them. Other early Christian fathers who presented a similar tri-fold description include Amphilochius (Epistula Iambica ad Seleucum 251–260), Epiphanius (De mensuris 4), Jerome (Preface to the Books of Solomon), and Rufinus (Commentarius in symbolum apostolorum 36).16 For example, in the context of a canon list, Jerome says the Shepherd is “not in the canon” (Prologus Galeatus), but in another context, he calls it “useful” and says many ancient writers quoted it authoritatively (Vir. ill. 10). Therefore, early Christians had an intermediate category of books — books considered somewhere between canonical and apocryphal; specifically, these books were considered useful for instruction in piety but not for establishing ecclesiastical doctrine.

Would early Christians refer to these books that were useful but not canonical as “Scripture” or as “inspired”? Would they cite them as Scripture alongside canonical texts? They did. For example, Irenaeus calls the Shepherd ἡ γράφη (hē graphē), usually translated “Scripture” (Haer. 4.20.2).17 Clement of Alexandria believed the Shepherd to be a genuine revelation, thus making Hermas “technically a prophet.”18

Hixson, Elijah; Gurry, Peter; Wallace, Daniel B.. Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism (p. 258–259). InterVarsity Press.

Another takeaway from the book involves the dating of texts. The summary is that anyone who claims to know exactly when any manuscript was written is just making things up. Any dating based on writing style involves an estimated date range. The “key takeaways” include “It is always unwise to assign a date range of fewer than fifty years on the basis of paleography; a range of seventy-five to one hundred is typically more preferable.”

This book also provides an in-depth discussion of how books were copied, corrected, and transmitted. I will keep this text to consult when necessary.

This is not a book for everyone. The authors are attempting to write at a popular level, but there are a lot of technical details that will go over the head of the lay reader. The authors try to make up for this by offering a summary at the end of each chapter.

Perhaps the summary of the summary is that if it sounds too good to be true, it is, and try to generalize, rather than pretend to a precision that does not exist.