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Author: henry

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – Summary and Conclusion

    This is the conclusion of my multi-part series responding to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Here are links to the earlier portions of this series:

    In chapter 7, The Social Worlds of the Text, Ehrman discusses how the social situation in the early church shaped changes that were made to the text. In particular he discusses the status of women, and mentions several instances of textual change that relate to it. Amongst these are Junia/Junias in Romans 16:7, and the prohibition for women teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:33-36.

    Next he discusses the relationship of Christians and Jews. Some alterations in the text make the Jews look bad. By the 2nd century, Christians were a separate religion, and often engaged in polemic against Judaism.

    Finally he discusses paganism and apologetic alterations to the text. He provides numerous illustrations in each case.

    One of his major points in this section is to show how the scribes were human beings whose world shaped the way in which they transmitted the text, and thus to some extent the text itself. When you hold a Bible in your hands, you hold the complex product of numerous people, each of whom have had a small part in shaping the text you will read.

    Conclusion

    It is in the conclusion that a differ significantly from Ehrman’s view. In technical terms, he is certainly expert, and he displays that expertise throughout the book. As a popularizer, he is clearly one of the best. I have not seen a clearer explanation of the basics of New Testament textual criticism for the non-scholar.

    The fundamental difference in our conclusions results not from the content, but from our starting points. I begin with the view that inspiration is something that happens to people, and that people express that inspiration in various forms, including text. While a person experiences God, individually or in community, the expression of that experience is distinctly human.

    Ehrman seems to accept the standard evangelical view of Biblical inspiration that assumes that God’s breathing of scripture is essentially the impartation of data to be expressed in words.

    How radical are the changes?

    If you see inspiration as involving the impartation of data to be accurately expressed in words, and expect those words themselves to be divine, then the alteration of such words must come as a shock. This is the experience expressed by Bart Ehrman in his conclusion. He sees the changes as radical and important because they alter the words, and to him the words are the vehicle of inspiration, or in the end of the lack of it.

    For me these changes are not nearly so radical, because I assume that the writers chose their own words, and in most cases their own facts. Thus alterations are interesting, but neither shocking nor dismaying. If one studies a broad enough basis of the text, one can get to who Matthew, Luke, John, or Paul really were, and to me that is the key to inspiration. God spoke to the community through these people in a special way and I want to get to know them.

    One quotation will illustrate this point:

    In particular, as I said at the outset, I began seeing the New Testament as a very human book. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I had regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minted “born-again” Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As I realized already in graduate school, even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant to the Bible as we have it, since the words God reputedly inspired had been changed and, in some cases, lost. . . . (p. 211)

    I would like to point out one other thing, however, and that is that those who argue Biblical inerrancy, with or without verbal plenary inspiration, as it applies to the autographs do need to respond to the issue of the relevance of such inspiration. What is the importance of the inerrancy of a document we do not possess? If we can deal with 98% accuracy in the Bibles we actually have, why would the discovery that the autographs were also only 98% accurate suddenly be a devastating blow to the authority of the Bible?

    This is why it seems to me that the doctrine of inerrancy of the autographs is more a doctrine about God than about the accuracy or authority of God’s communication. What the doctrine says is that God is perfect. Certainly, I can agree with that. But that still seems irrelevant, because the issue is how well did human authors comprehend what God revealed to them?

    Dependence on Scholars

    On one last issue I think that Ehrman makes a particularly good point. I have heard many people express either the desire to be completely independent of Biblical scholarship or even the feeling that they are independent. Sometimes these are people who do not even read the source languages, much less work with the manuscripts to determine the text. When we consider context, the history and culture that stands behind the text, many more specialized fields come into play, and nobody is able to be proficient in all of those areas. All of us are dependent at some point on the scholarship of others.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VII

    . . . in which, of course, I respond to chapter 6. I will post a directory to the whole series of responses, with the final entry, but in the meantime you will get the series by choosing category “Textual Criticism” in the right sidebar. There are other entries in that category, but all the most recent ones are in this series.

    In chapter 6, Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text, Ehrman looks at some specific points of theology and the way in which scribes altered, or tried to alter the text in opposition to those viewpoints. In our surviving texts, he notes, we don’t have many non-orthodox alterations, because it was the orthodox who won the day, and their texts were the ones that were preserved.

    He discusses three theological points which engendered theologically motivated changes: Adoptionist christology (Adoptionism in Wikipedia), docetic christology (Docetism in Wikipedia), and separationist christology. Adoptionism holds that Jesus was not born the son of God but was adopted, docetic christology holds that Jesus merely appeared to be human and to suffer as a human, but in fact, it was all just an illusion, while separationism suggested that Jesus was completely separated from God when he died, i.e. his divinity did not suffer death with his humanity.

    In each case, these anti-orthodox positions resulted in changes. These alterations to the text did not change the theology in a major way, but in the likely view of the scribes who made the changes they prevented people from interpreting a passage in an unorthodox way.

    I would simply make two notes on this chapter. First, it’s easy to make too much of such changes. The defense, as I frequently like to say, is never to base theology on a single text, but rather on an overall message an author is trying to present. Second, the abundance of Greek manuscripts lets us get behind this type of changes.

    I do agree with Ehrman that these types of alterations should be of concern if one holds a verbal plenary view of inspiration. If the individual words are so critical, as opposed to the overall message, then how could God allow the inspired words to be replaced wholesale? It’s easy to say that the abundance of manuscripts means that we can get at the original texts with a high degree of accuracy, but what about all those believers who used the various flawed manuscripts? What about the English speaking church before the ERV? (Note that the ERV used the Westcott and Hort text, and thus corrected numerous inaccuracies in the KJV.)

    I am absolutely comfortable saying that one can access God’s message via scripture, but when that message is reduced to the word by word level, i.e. if every word is important, then the state of the manuscripts is problematic.

  • Embarrassed Again

    I knew when the news of the tragedy at Virginia Tech came out that there would be religious responses that would be obnoxious, and even some that would be downright despicable. It seems that with every tragedy there are uninvolved people available to place blame and to pontificate. I personally have no words that are worth saying to those who have lost a loved one in this tragedy, or for that matter to the Virginia Tech community. They’re going through something I have never experienced.

    I have, however, experienced tragedy, and I know how people use it for their own agendas. When our son died of cancer at age 17, and throughout the five year battle that preceded that event there were people who needed to question us. We were either grieving too much, in which case our faith was weak, or we weren’t grieving enough, and were thus in denial. We weren’t using the right treatment plan, out of the many dozens of non-traditional treatments suggested. Some thought that he would be healed if we just took him to the right church and had the right group pray for him. They couldn’t understand why we didn’t jump up and go where they suggested immediately.

    Then there were those who just looked at us pityingly. My wife and I have taught–and still teach–weekend seminars on prayer. How could we be teaching about prayer, and yet our own son was not healed. For some reason these folks didn’t check what we actually teach, or they would have found that we do not and have never made the claim that prayer should replace medical care, or that there is some certainty of healing through prayer. In fact, we behaved precisely as we teach. We sought the best medical care available, and we maintained a strong prayer life.

    Now the vast majority of our friends and neighbors were wonderful. I’m talking about a tiny minority who were nonetheless quite vocal. I learned how to ignore people. The point here is not what we or anyone else believe. The point is that everyone thinks they have the right to stick their philosophy and opinions into someone else’s decisions and grieving.

    With that in mind, I’m going to comment on a couple of “Christian” responses to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Now if the bereaved want to sound off in any way they wish, I’m not going to jump in, but these are responses from people outside. They make me embarrassed to be a Christian. I’m never embarrassed to be a follower of Jesus; just sometimes the name “Christian” gets so horribly besmirched by this type of comment.

    The first is a comment by Dinesh D’Souza:

    To no one’s surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho’s shooting of all those people can be understood in this way–molecules acting upon molecules.

    Now that paragraph is wrong in so many ways. I’ve recently responded to Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (see category “The God Delusion” on the sidebar), and while I have many disagreements with Dawkins, something that should surprise no one, I don’t see D’souza’s characterization as at all accurate. On the surface, yes. Dawkins is a materialist. But simply explaining everything as molecules acting on molecules, well, not so much. In addition, however much some Christians might like it to be so, Dawkins is not the sole atheist on the planet. Atheists work and hope, live and learn, love their families, make moral decisions, in short, they do the things that everyone else does. And there’s no evidence to suggest that they make worse neighbors.

    But it’s not the wrongness of all this that embarrasses me. It’s the insertion of this religious (or philosophical) goal. I haven’t read any such, but if an atheist writer used the tragedy to announce gleefully that this proved there is no God, I would find that offensive as well. Let the tragedy be what it is. Especially let’s not use it to demonize any group of people. I’d also like to call attention to this very moving response (HT: Dispatches from the Culture Wars).

    Then there’s Dr. Grady McMurtry, president of Creation Worldview Ministries, who believes that teaching evolution was the cause:

    . . . people should not be surprised when mass shootings occur, such as the one on the Blacksburg university campus on Monday. “And at Virginia Tech, what do we have?” he asks rhetorically. “We have a person who, unfortunately, thought that humans had no more value than cats and dogs — and unfortunately, I think, probably felt the same way about themselves.” (source HT: Pandagon)

    Probably felt that way about themselves? Does he think it’s appropriate to be gratuitously insulting at this point? I’ve discussed this issue before and am not going to revisit it now. All I’m interested in at the moment is the way the tragedy is being used to push agendas, and not in a kind way.

    The agenda we should be pushing–and yes, I have an agenda as does everyone–is simple love and respect. I’m a long ways away and there’s remarkably little I can do, but I can speak with respect of the people involved, no matter what their religion or lack thereof. I can see them as human beings seeking a way to deal with the tragedy that has struck their lives. I can refrain from pretending I possess a one stop answer to their problems.

    I think that’s what Jesus would do in these circumstances.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VI

    . . . in which, quite logically, I discuss chapter 5. 🙂

    In Chapter 5, originals that matter, Ehrman first introduces the basics of textual criticism and tells us how textual decisions are made. This good overview, as he notes, will not prepare you to make textual decisions for yourself, but it will let you know how scholars function as they decide which variant to use in an eclectic text, and similarly which variant to translate in a Bible version.

    Ehrman then discusses three textual variants with theological significance and in each case he disagrees the the general consensus on the appropriate text. These texts are:

    • Mark 1:41
    • Luke 22:43-44
    • Hebrews 2:8-9

    I have surveyed modern versions on these with some interesting results. I’m going to survey just a few translations, and then give my own opinion on each one. Ehrman deals with the theological and interpretive issues quite well in his discussion on each of these. My interest in this section is whether the non-scholar has ready access to this information. Please note that where I list translations supporting each option, I am not being exhaustive. Each list is a subset of the subset of translations I am using for this quick comparison. In each case a subscript f indicates that the translation in question indicates the alternate choice in a footnote.

    Mark 1:41

    The issue here is whether Jesus “had compassion” on the leper or “was angry/indignant.” The evidence for this variant is presented in the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 4th Edition (UBSIV), which is a common starting point for Bible translations, though note that most English versions make their own specific textual decisions and do not follow a particular Greek edition. UBSIV places “compassion” in the text and gives it a “B” rating.

    The following translations support “compassion”: CEVf, ESV, KJV, NLTf, NRSVf, NETf, NKJV.

    The following support “angry”: TNIVf, REBf

    The best note here is in the NET. A strong case can be made for “angry” but the dominant reading in English translations is “compassion.”

    Luke 22:43-44

    Here the issue is the presence or absence of verses 43 and 44. Ehrman argues that the original text probably did not include those verses.

    Versions including 43-44: ESVf, NKJV, KJV, CEVf, NLTf, REBf, TNIVf

    Versions marking 43-44 in some way: NRSVf, NETf

    Versions excluding 43-44: None

    Again, the NET is to be congratulated on an excellent footnote. I would suggest that those who do not know Biblical languages but want to go deep into the text should access that version. It is available in an excellent online edition at NEXT Bible.

    Hebrews 2:8-9

    In this case the question is whether in verse nine it should say that Jesus tasted death “by the grace of God” or “apart from God.”

    Versions supporting “by the grace of God”: REBf, TNIV, NKJV, KJV, ESV, NRSVf, CEV, NLT, NET.

    No version supports “without God.” UBSIV rates “by the grace of God” as an A reading.

    In this last case, the NET does not include a footnote.

    Conclusions

    I would conclude two things from this. First, in most cases, one can access significant textual differences through various English versions. While the NET has the best notes for the first two examples, it has none for the last, which is only noted by the NRSV and the REB. This is a good argument for using multiple versions and reading the footnotes.

    In addition, if people paid more attention to the resources available to them things that Ehrman points out in his book would be much less shocking to them.

    Discussed in study notes (Learning Bible, Oxford Annotated, Oxford Study)

  • Christian Carnival CLXVIII

    . . . has been posted at Random Acts of Verbiage. A group of Christian bloggers have been pulling this all back together. Dory has been out of touch and she is in all our prayers. We are hoping she is just excessively busy.

    HT: Lingamish.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus V

    In chapter 4 of Misquoting Jesus, The Quest for Origins: Methods and Discoveries (pp. 101-125), Ehrman moves to important but slightly less engaging material. This chapter is important in laying out the basic history of textual criticism, and how Biblical scholars began the move from the corrupt Textus Receptus to a better critical text.

    Many of the debates these scholars engaged in over the centuries are similar to debates that still continue today. Even though it is well established that there are numerous textual variants, people still try to create ad hoc arguments for why the text behind the KJV is the best text, or why one can somehow ignore all these variants.

    The key element of this chapter is the discussion of Westcott and Hort’s textual methodology and where it differs from modern practices. Westcott and Hort are unduly blamed for many elements of modern textual criticism. It is appropriate to grant them a substantial place in the history of textual criticism, and to give them credit where credit is due. They pulled together principles from the work of others, brought them to completion, and produced an excellent critical text.

    Their substantial work is often used in ad hominem attacks on the modern text, as though by proving Westcott and Hort to be unorthodox in some way, one could prove that modern eclectic texts such as UBSIV or NA27 are also of no value. First, of course, such an ad hominem attack is clearly unjustified especially when all the building blocks are available for study. Only someone without the ability to deal with the substantial evidence available would resort to an ad hominem attack under the circumstances.

    Second, while Westcott and Hort were pioneers in the science and art of textual criticism, their methods have been considerably refined and improved, so that saying a modern eclectic text is essentially like that of Westcott and Hort is inaccurate. Ehrman outlines the differences at the end of this chapter (123-125).

  • Podcasts on Inspiration

    On the Running Toward the Goal podcast, I am presenting a two part series on inspiration/revelation based on Psalm 19. Today’s post is the first one, and the second will be posted on Monday. Tomorrow’s Running Toward the Goal is by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. and will focus on apologetics.

    Running Toward the Goal is posted each weekday morning.

  • Galatians 3:15-18 – Preliminary Thoughts on Seed and Seeds

    I want to make a few quick notes on this passage right after studying through Martyn’s Galatians commentary notes on it. This is a passage that has troubled many because in verse 16 Paul makes a major issue of the singular “seed,” thus pointing the passage directly at Christ. Now if one reads the passage in its original context, “seed” is a collective, referring to all of Abraham’s descendants, and thus the meaning is precisely the opposite of what Paul claims.

    I didn’t use this passage in my essay Was Paul an Exegete? but I certainly could have. In that essay I concluded that in the modern sense of searching out the original historical meaning, Paul was not, and didn’t try to be an exegete. I would add here that Paul is quite open about how he sees Jesus as the Messiah breathing new life into texts.

    There are several key points from this passage that I want to tentatively connect. Paul claims that:

    • God established the promises
    • The promises were for the seed, singular, Christ
    • Nobody other than the one who makes a will/covenant can modify it
    • The law could not modify or set aside the promise that preceded it. This involves the argument that the law was given by angels, but that goes beyond what I’m discussing right now.
    • Eventually the promise meets its fulfillment in Christ

    Now Martyn, commenting on these verses indicates that the law is not, according to this passage, another step in salvation history, but rather that the giving of the promise, and finally the act of God in bringing reconciliation through Jesus are both punctiliar events. He does not see the law as another step or another way of implementing the promise (pp. 337-352).

    The Jewish view, which in part would have been incorporated by the teachers who opposed Paul in Galatia, makes the Torah a single whole. There are not separate entities in it of “promise” and “law” and there certainly would not be a covenant without there also being a law. Sirach 44:19-21 represents Abraham as law observant, and presents God’s promise as depending on Abraham’s faithfulness in fulfilling the requirements. So Paul is hear creating a substantial difference in view between these historical events. The giving of the promise occurs before the giving of the law, and even though it comes from that same portion of scripture, the Pentateuch or Torah, it is not part of the same law. The law, given at Sinai, is something separate and different, and cannot in Paul’s view alter the original promise, nor is it an organic part of that promise.

    Gentiles are not being brought into Israel through the covenant at Sinai. Rather, they are being brought into God’s promise, incidentally given to Abraham, a promise that is superior to and unalterable by that law.

    My preliminary suggestion here is that this relates closely to what I have pointed out in my article Structural Typology and the Tabernacle, where I suggest that God’s original intent was to dwell with his people (Exodus 19:6), but that because of fear they required a separation (Exodus 20:19). The Tabernacle, far from representing God’s presence, in many ways represents God’s absence. Peter sees the fulfillment of this goal and promise of God in Jesus and the church (1 Peter 2:9).

    Where I would differ from Martyn, I think, on salvation history is that the law is indeed a step in salvation history. There may be two punctiliar acts, between which the law is a parenthesis (Martyn), but that parenthesis is an essential one, tuned to human needs. There is still salvation history, but that history is not a continuous march of progress, but rather it takes detours as God deals with people as he finds them and leads them in the direction he wants them to go.

    In this sense one can also see “seed” as an inspired “breathing-in” by Paul, through the Holy Spirit, of new meaning into the word and form, because in Jesus all the promises given to Abraham were fulfilled in one man (singular) for everyone (very plural). The spiritual application trumps the historical exegesis.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus IV

    . . . in which I respond to chapter 3.

    This response will be brief. This chapter is excellent. If you’re a Bible student of any variety, buy Misquoting Jesus and make sure to read chapter 3. While I have read many of the things presented here before in more technical works, this chapter is an exceptional job of popular writing by a scholar. You will enjoy the stories, and you will understand the transmission of the Biblical text much better. You could only get this kind of information elsewhere in fairly technical works.

    The first and major part of the chapter deals with editions of the Greek New Testament and how scholarship moved from simply using whatever manuscripts were available to building a text based on the best manuscripts and creating references of the variants in various manuscripts. When I studied Textual Criticism at the undergraduate level, I was required to take several verses and work from available photocopies of manuscripts to create a critical text of that passage. That was a truly revealing experience for me. Ehrman will help you get some of that feel.

    After that, he presents a section on the types of errors found in various manuscripts, starting with inadvertent copying errors and continuing with intentional changes. The examples are brilliantly selected and clearly presented.

    Recall that one of the basic arguments that Ehrman has with some other textual scholars is that he tends to think that more errors are intentional than some do. This is a matter of degree. Ehrman is not way out of the field, and most errors are fairly easy to classify. This chapter will give you a good idea how scholars accomplish their work.

  • Is there such a thing as a theistic evolutionist?

    Panda’s Thumb writer Pim van Meurs gave an irony award to Salvador Cordova whom he quotes as saying:

    Darwinian TE (Theistic Evolution) just doesn’t cut it scientifically.

    That is ironic, considering that young earth creationism makes many assertions that contradict archeology, not to mention geology. Young earth doesn’t even match the written record.

    But this statement does remind me of all the reasons I don’t like the label “theist evolutionist.” I’m a theist and I’m an evolutionist, but the two about as unrelated as any two ideas. As a theist I see nature as God’s handiwork, and thus evolution as God’s elegant way of producing diversity. But that doesn’t change what I see when I see nature.

    There really should be no difference between a theistic evolutionist and any other variety in the field or in the lab. Now I’m not a scientist at all, but I don’t keep inserting “and God did that” between the lines of every science book I read.

    Two commenters on Panda’s Thumb, Raging Bee and Doug S make extremely cogent comments.

    As I’ve argued in my response to The God Delusion, my theist is emphatically not a scientific thesis, nor do I claim scientific evidence for it. So in answer to my title question, I think not. But we’re probably stuck with the term to describe people like me no matter how weak it is.