Manuscript issues

Hello in this discussion I will be talking about an justification about why we Christians don’t have first century manuscripts although having zero to little first century manuscripts isn’t even an issue to begin with since reconstruction is highly possible and avaliable it seems to me many people deal with this apparent problem when it really and truthfully isnt.

Here is my comment and justification for it pointing out to how such an thesis is plausible. ‘’I could advocate just via deduction that, the reason for a lack of manuscripts isn’t due to the actual scarcity of the transmission in of itself. For eg. if you look at it like this, it wouldn’t entail corruption and asserting that is just going to be speculation, here’s the out-look; When the Church didn’t want / didn’t need a document the would not strive to preserve it (cf. The Expositions of the Sayings of The Lord by. Papias) Historians of this day, didn’t advocate for the views of Papias) Now Eusebius wrote approximately 170 to 210 after Papias and he was aware of this (no longer existing) document, of course this doesn’t entail scarcity of manuscripts in transmission. I think we can deduct, that, because pretty early on there was not a fixed text nor transmission individuation in manuscripts wouldn’t be univocally accepted as authoritative text, where-as when texts began to attempt fixation (eg. Tatian’s Diatessaron) these would be considered more univocal, that doesn’t mean prior to Tatian the status / style of the individual un-fixed transmission wasn’t of the same substance of the fixed using Patristics we understand that Justin Martyr Tatians Teacher had a diatesserionic (that is a harmonized format) style which is to be expected as it’s reflected in (again his students) Diatessaron. As noted by J.K. Elliot;

• Whether Justin was consciously trying to assimilate apparently discrepant sources or was treating freely the oral and perhaps written sources at his disposal needs to be investigated but all we need to note now is that his attitude to the text betrays a freedom that is of relevance if we are to write the history of the New Testament text in the 2nd century. So that is unfinished business which demands attention. That Justin, Tatian’s teacher, was sympathetic to, even an originator of, a Diatessaronic type of text is not surprising. We may just remark that the Diatessaron and perhaps Justin’s combining of Gospels are not our only 2nd century harmonized Gospel texts. I extend our trawl beyond Justin and the Church Fathers to the so called Apostolic Fathers for we see that they too reveal to us how 2nd century authors — quite orthodox Christian writers at that — use and allude to the words of Jesus. Writers and books like 1 and 2 Clement, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas and the letters of Ignatius quote words of Jesus but apparently in a paraphrastic way that perhaps shows that they were dependent on the oral tradition or were treating the canonical Gospel text very freely.
• New Testament Textual Criticism: The Application of Thoroughgoing Principles: Essays on Manuscripts and Textual Variation pg. 32–33 I could also advocate for this via. the earliest attainable out-look pertaining to the textual transmission outside of patristics. Our earliest manuscripts reflect this diateserronic style, meaning they are not uniform but rather an (attempted) harmonized form of scattered text. Back to one of my original points in deduction, I don’t consider it to be the cause that scarcity in manuscripts reflects scarcity in transmission. Rather, it was the lack of need for individual manuscripts past the 2nd Century and through the 4th due to the fixation “attempted” from Tatian’s Diatessaron, you have The Marcionite Canon knowledge of GLuke-Acts and his redaction, Vetus Latina, The Old Syriac Versions, The Didascalia Apostolorum, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, and Codex Bezae. The question would then be, what is the need for ANY individual manuscripts when considering the use and authority of these collected or fixed texts.
• One of the most important studies of the scribes who copied the Christian Scriptures is Alan Mugridge’s Copying Early Christian Texts. He examines a range of writing features not only in the New Testament texts but also in “Old Testament texts,” “apocryphal texts,” “patristic texts,” “hagiographical texts,” “liturgical prayers, hymns, etc.,” “Gnostic and Manichaean texts,” and “unidentified texts” (ie, “unequivocally Christian texts that cannot be assigned to any known works”), and offers many useful tables and statistics. In the tables below, he classifies the scribes who copied the early Christian manuscripts he examined into three categories of expertise:” On this basis, I propose the following classification of papyrus handwriting into three levels or categories (Cat.) of proficiency. Categories 1 and 2 refer to professional or scribal handwriting: Category 1 is the “calligraphic” handwriting, and Category 2 is the “secretarial” or “ordinary” handwriting. Category 3 is unprofessional, the hand of a casual scribe, not a trained copyist. The minus and plus signs indicate lesser or greater degrees of proficiency within each category, based on a number of aspects of the papyrus handwriting, allowing such judgments to be made with some flexibility. [1]
• “Group B” includes the New Testament texts, and as the tables show, most of the scribes were not amateurs but trained professionals (the same goes for the Old Testament papyri, so I’ll include his observations on them as well). Alan writes:
• It seems clear that the majority vast of Christian papyri were copied by trained scribes. In Group A (Old Testament papyri) the number of inexperienced scribes (category 3 or 3+) is quite small, and their proportion does not vary significantly among papyri dating from the 2nd (6.3%), 3rd (7.8%), and 4th centuries CE (7.3%). Overall, inexperienced scribes account for only eleven out of one hundred and forty-nine cases (7.4%). The situation is similar in Group B (New Testament papyri), where the proportion of inexperienced scribes among papyri dating from the 2nd (0%), 3rd (7.5%), and 4th centuries CE (9.6%) also does not show significant differences , except that there are no cases of inexperienced scribes among the earlier papyri; the overall proportion is 7.9%. [2]
• He concludes the study:
• Overall, with the exception of Group F, the proportion of Christian papyri written by unskilled scribes is less than 12%, indicating that the vast majority of Christian papyri were copied by professional scribes. < check Experienced scribe document tab addressing this which is highlighted (B11 in the document itself or find it via word search)
• All this calls into question the view that Christian manuscripts were largely copied by unskilled scribes in the early centuries, and also suggests that any conclusions based on this view that the transmission of Christian texts was highly inaccurate need to be reconsidered.
• Furthermore, the fact that the sizes of Christian manuscripts are generally within the normal range for the period is consistent with the view that trained scribes were mainly used in their production.
• Groups A and B (Old Testament texts and New Testament texts respectively) stand out in that they were, on average, rewritten to “higher” standards, while Group D (Patristic texts) are somewhat “lower” and Group C (Apocryphal texts) are even lower. [3]
• Another important point made by the author is that there is no reliable evidence to suggest that the majority of scribes were Christians. This fact also casts doubt on the supposed “freedom” of the text in the earliest periods of its transmission, when scribes allegedly changed the Holy Scriptures because of their theological convictions.
• We cannot therefore establish that most early Christian papyri were copied by scribes who were themselves Christians. The most probable assumption regarding the religious beliefs of the scribes of Christian papyri of the 2nd to 4th centuries CE is that the copyists included both Christians by conviction and those who were not. It is possible that there were more Christian scribes after the time of Constantine, especially with the advent of monasticism, when the copying of sacred texts came to be regarded as a sacred work, but even this remains unconfirmed for specific papyri. One must always consider the possibility that the copyist of a papyrus containing a Christian text in the first four centuries was not a Christian by conviction.
• It follows that the suggestion that the text of some New Testament papyri was altered to suit the theological preferences of the scribes, resulting in the “orthodox corruption” of these papyri, cannot be supported, since it is based on the assumption that the scribes were Christians. the claim that some scribes felt free to change the text as they saw fit, in an effort to make it say Thus what they thought it should say or to express it more clearly, cannot be proven. Indeed, scholars rightly urge caution when attempting to explain textual variations by the beliefs, knowledge, or intentions of the scribes, especially since we do not have the originals from which the scribes copied the texts and so cannot say with certainty that anything was changed. [4]
• In conclusion, this study suggests that Christians employed trained scribes to copy most of their texts, and there is no evidence that all of the scribes were Christians. They likely included people with different religious beliefs, but most were professional scribes.
• …trained scribes have been copying most Christian texts since the second century (or, presumably, even earlier, in fact, since the very beginning). [4]
• - Sources: [1] Alan Mugridge’s Copying Early Christian Texts pg. 22 [2] ibid, pg. 23 also see the chart i’m submitting. [3] ibid, pg. 149 [4] ibid, pg. 152–153
• Daniel Wallace, citing the work of Zachary Cole, also agrees with this view:
• Although skeptics such as Bart Ehrman have discussed that the earliest manuscripts we have today contain significant variations and show evidence of disordered transmission, largely because the scribes who copied them were not professionally trained, the evidence suggests otherwise. I make three points: (1) Barbara Aland, “Der textkritische und textgeschichtliche Nutzen früher Papyri, demonstriert am Johannesevangelium,” in Recent Developments in Textual Criticism: New Testament, Other Early Christian and Jewish Literature, ed. Wim Wehren and Dietrich Alex-Koch (Assen, The Netherlands: Royal Van Gorcum, 2003), pp. 19–38, argues that the early papyri of the Gospel of John contain only a few significant variants and, except for copyist carelessness, represent a relatively reliable text; (2) Zachary Cole, in “Scribal Hands of Early New Testament Manuscripts” (MA diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2012), directly refutes the skeptics’ claim that amateur scribes were necessarily sloppy. By comparing the handwriting of early manuscripts, Cole demonstrates that there is no relationship between a professionally trained scribe and careful copying, or between an untrained scribe and sloppy copying; (3) Below is a table of early papyri that Kurt and Barbara Aland classify as “strict text” or “normal text.” In Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), by “strict text” they mean manuscripts that “reproduce the original text with meticulous accuracy” (p. 64); by “normal text” — “relatively faithful tradition, which only occasionally deviates from the original” (ibid.). The Alands also distinguish five categories of manuscripts from the point of view of textual character, where category I are texts that are as close as possible to autographs (ibid., p. 335). The table was compiled by me on the basis of the descriptions in this edition.
• The professionalism of scribes in light of the socio-historical context of the time:
• First, sociohistorical research has shown that members of early Christian communities were not exclusively poor and uneducated, but included people of middle and high social status who had access to wealth and education. Second, the evidence presented here suggests that in the second and third centuries, many of the scribes who copied New Testament texts were competent, if not professional, copyists who reproduced their models with remarkable accuracy. Scribes of this period were probably trained slaves or freedmen, Christians themselves or employed by Christian families, but previously engaged in copying receipts, records, and perhaps literary texts.
• *Scribal Harmonizations in the Synoptic Gospels by. Cambry G. Pardee See, for example, Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 51–73. Zachary Cole, whose work was mentioned above, further explores this issue in another book:**
• In fact, many scholars have recently conducted similar analyzes to determine the level of training and skill of early Christian scribes. Put simply, they have concluded that most early Christian manuscripts are clearly the work of trained and competent scribes, not zealous amateurs.
• Two such studies deserve special attention. The first is the work of Kim Heines-Eitzen. In her monograph Guardians of Letters, Heines-Eitzen asks, “Who were the scribes who copied early Christian literature in the second and third centuries?” To answer this question, she examines the evidence for early Christian scribes found in ancient literature, archaeology, and the papyri themselves. One of her findings is particularly important: “What is striking about our earliest Christian papyri is that they all show influences from both literary and documentary styles, and they all seem to occupy a middle ground in experience and skill level. The scribes who produced these copies fit well into the image of multifunctional scribes — both professional and nonprofessional — whose education included training in a semicursive style of writing.”
• All of the earliest Christian papyri show a mixture of documentary and literary influences. This means that the early Christian papyri, far from being the work of “amateurs,” actually bear features of both documentary papyri and literary manuscripts, and can therefore be placed “in the middle of a spectrum of expertise and skill.”
• Zachary also finds the term “professional” in relation to scribes confusing and somewhat anachronistic. He suggests replacing this term with “competent” and “trained”. He notes:
• Many scribes in the ancient world were slaves, servants, or freedmen who were trained and quite capable of accurately copying texts, even if they were not paid for it and it was not their primary task. These people often served as “secretaries, clerks, stenographers, and record keepers” in large households, but they were not necessarily scribes by profession or title, and were not considered “professional” in the modern sense.
• When early Christians sought to obtain a copy of a New Testament book, they probably did not commission the services of “professional” scribes from bookstores; rather, they probably turned to people from their social circles for help. But this in no way implies that these people were undertrained or inept amateurs. In fact, it was quite the opposite, and she states this quite clearly: “The fact that Christian papyri (like many classical papyri in general) show the influence of both documentary and literary styles indicates that the scribes were either confident in and experienced in both styles, or were trained in more general styles of writing that could be easily adapted to a variety of tasks; the latter seems to me more likely, since if these scribes had extensive training in literary style, their handwriting would reflect that training.”
• He also cites positively the work of Alan Mugridge:
• In other words, while it is not entirely clear that many early Christian copyists were professional scribes by trade, there is no doubt that most of them were competent and experienced.
• In 2016, Alan Mugridge published an exhaustive analysis of the physical form of early Christian papyri, examining aspects such as the scribes’ handwriting, writing materials, dimensions, number of letters per line, lines per page, punctuation, critical marks, etc. He also concludes that most early Christian copyists were capable scribes: “It is clear that the vast majority of Christian papyri were copied by trained scribes.” He continues: “All this casts doubts on the view that Christian manuscripts were generally copied by unskilled scribes in the early centuries, and also suggests that we need to reconsider any conclusions drawn from this view that the transmission of Christian texts was rather inaccurate. It is true, as Roberts has suggested, that many papyri show the hand of scribes accustomed to the production of documents. However, they still show the skill of trained scribes who produced such documents, including a number of papyri copied to calligraphic standards, although we do not know whether they were paid for their efforts or did the work voluntarily.”
• Here Mugridge generally confirms Heyns-Eitzen’s argument and shows that the manuscripts themselves expose the misconception about the early scribes.
• In general, the early manuscripts of the New Testament display the same levels of care, expertise, and accuracy that one might reasonably expect of any ancient text. To call the earliest Christian scribes “non-professionals” is therefore misleading, since it creates a picture of the evidence that is distorted by modern understanding. While they may not have been scribes by profession or by rank (though some probably were), it is clear that they were nonetheless capable of producing high-quality work.
• When we look at the early manuscripts themselves, we see that they are clearly not the work of incompetent fanatics. Rather, most of them bear the marks of the training and skill of scribes who combined documentary and literary writing techniques. So much for “amateurs.”
• We must be careful not to generalize too much. Just as it would be inaccurate to say that all early scribes were untrained amateurs, it would also be inaccurate to say that they were all experts. Rather, we find a wide range of scribes’ skills and abilities among the early manuscripts, but the great majority of them appear to have been competent copyists.
• At this point, we have made some important clarifications about early Christian scribes: they were not all “amateurs” and “non-professionals.” In fact, the evidence we have suggests that most early copyists were competent, trained people who were more than capable of doing the job of transcription, whether they were scribes by trade or by title.
• When we return again to Roberts and his original comments and remove the term “professional,” the point becomes quite clear: “The Christian manuscripts of the second century, while not achieving a high level of calligraphy, generally exhibit a competent style of writing that has been called ‘reformed documentary’ and which is probably the work of experienced scribes, Christian or not.”
• However, there is little reason to believe that what we find in the late first/early second century is very different from what we see in the late second/early third century.
• Although there may have been instances of “free” and perhaps arbitrary copying in the early period, we have good reason to believe that the original words of the apostles were carefully preserved. I offer three points that support this view. First, because of the wealth of our evidence, we have security because of its quantity. Second, we have strong evidence that the text was carefully transmitted in at least one manuscript stream. Third, when we look at the nature of our textual variants, they do not look like the variants that would have arisen if scribes had been accustomed to writing anything.
• *For another approach to this issue, see the excellent discussion in Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Krueger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010) , 203–31.
• …Thousands of New Testament manuscripts have come down to us, and they continue to be discovered all the time. This abundance of riches poses some challenges, but one of its advantages is that errors in transmission can be more easily identified and corrected.
• David Instone-Brewer describes this idea as “paradoxical safety in numbers.” What he means is that the vast amount of material evidence for the New Testament text implies two important facts. On the one hand, having more manuscripts means having more textual variants; it’s simple math. All handwritten documents will contain errors. On the other hand, having more manuscripts at one time allows for greater textual stability in the long run. As Instone-Brewer describes it, “Imagine two students taking down their teacher’s dictation; we might find that both contained errors, but it would often be impossible to determine which of the two versions was correct. Now imagine a class of thirty students taking down the same dictation; there would be many more errors overall, but the correct version would be much easier to figure out because only one or two students would make the same error. So by having so many New Testament manuscripts, we have a solid basis for identifying the original text.”
• We should not worry too much about one sleepy or perhaps heretical scribe hopelessly corrupting the text for all subsequent ones. Our knowledge of the text of the New Testament is not based on the evidence of one or two manuscripts, but rather on a large number of manuscripts that come from different times, different regions, and even different languages.
• New Testament scholars have the enormous advantage of having not just one or two but dozens of manuscripts dating from the early centuries of Christianity. This wealth of evidence greatly increases the likelihood that textual deviations will be identified and corrected.
• There is no doubt that many New Testament manuscripts contain corruptions and rewritings. This is simply a fact of all handwritten texts. But to say that every manuscript is hopelessly corrupt or that the original text is beyond recovery is absurd. Textual critics widely acknowledge that many New Testament manuscripts show a conscious effort to produce a reliable, accurate text. Some of the most famous manuscripts fit this description, such as Codex Sinaiticus (01), Codex Vaticanus (03), and P75, but there are many others. Scholars have long recognized that such manuscripts contain high-quality texts and are evidence of careful, accurate copying of the New Testament.
• In particular, there is strong evidence that at least in one major center of early Christianity, the city of Alexandria, there was conscious and conscientious control over the copying of the books of the New Testament.
• The accuracy of the copying of texts 01, 03, and P75 is not only recognized by evangelical Christians; it is the majority opinion among textual critics of various theological persuasions. This fact confirms that while some early scribes may have taken liberties with the text they copied, the same cannot be said of all or even most of these early scribes. Moreover, it is important to note that many of our earliest witnesses demonstrate a tendency toward faithful transmission of the text. For example, many early papyri, such as P1, P4, P64+67, and P77+P103, show strong textual affinities with Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. This fact is important for several reasons, but one that deserves attention here is that we can demonstrate a practice of careful copying over time. In other words, scholars can trace a consistent line of careful copying from the 2nd century (P4 and P64+67), through the 3rd century (P66 and P75), to the 4th century (01 and 03) and beyond, all of which are close in textual consistency. When these early witnesses agree in their textual transmission, this allows us to have a high degree of confidence in the state of the text even at earlier stages of transmission.’’

Now this isn’t to make an positive claim or absoluteist claim but its to show to an high degree of confidence that reconstruction is VERY possible with the overwhelming variants in manuscripts using tools that are avaliable with us today. Its to just show although First century manuscripts is good it is not by no means necessary as reliability has an whole dyanmical range in what measures it and how to determine it.