Right now I've got a stack of books on my bedside table on the history of early Christianity, which I'm steadily working my way through. Just for fun, nothing serious.
But one book needs to go back to the library today (luckily I've finished it), so I'd better write down a few of my half-baked thoughts on it.
It's Bart Ehrman's 2005 book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.
I've said here before that I grew up as a sincere Christian, but started to question it as a teenager.
Twenty and more years ago, at university, I looked into the more philosophical aspects of Christianity. The reasons for and against belief, the nature of faith, the concept of God, etc, etc. I did a big chunk of my graduate studies in the area, and tutored undergraduates. (So I guess I'm moderately well-read, but far from an expert.)
My academic studies were the tail end of my steady de-conversion, and after completing my dissertation I settled into my own views as a happy atheist/agnostic. Over the years I've continued to casually check the discussions, and overall not much has changed.
But the history of Christianity is a whole other topic, and one I don't know in as much detail.
Even though the church that I grew up in was quite Bible-based, and I was pretty familiar with many of the Bible stories, I don't recall much emphasis on the history.
Reading historians on the subject now, I see several historical issues that I don't recall ever hearing in church. From what I read, I understand that these are standard topics discussed in many theology courses that church leaders graduate from. However, it seems maybe they don't often pass this information on to their congregations?
Issue One: What are the physical texts?
One thing that jumps out at me is that I don't remember hearing in church about the physical texts and their origins.
I'll try to summarise my understanding of my readings; happy to be corrected by those more knowledgeable.
It's still an open question when many of the books of the New Testament were written, but the mainstream view seems to be that the first were written about 20 years after Jesus' death. These are the seven letters that Paul wrote, with the earliest around 50 CE. The Gospel of Mark was likely written around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke-Acts maybe 15-ish years later, and John several years after that. The final New Testament books seem to have been written around 100 CE or soon after.
However, we don't have any of the original texts. Instead what we have is copies. Or rather, copies of copies of copies, etc.
Our earliest copy is a credit card sized piece containing parts of the Gospel of John (Papyrus 52). It's dated to around 150 CE.
The earliest complete books of the New Testament are dated to around 200 CE (Paul's letters in Papyrus 46, and John's Gospel in Papyrus 66). The earliest complete Bible we have is from around 350 CE.
The New Testament that we have today is, as I understand it, a pretty close reconstruction of what was being read and copied in the third century CE. But it's not what was originally written or what was originally copied and passed around, as we have lost those.
Nonetheless our modern translations are closer to the originals than the King James Version, as it was based on a twelfth century manuscript that is now seen as one of the worst available to us. (The King James Version is beautiful literature, but not so accurate to what the original writers likely wrote.)
Issue Two: The manuscripts are different from each other
But does it matter that we don't have the originals?
It turns out that, at the very least, it's an issue.
The thing is, copying manuscripts by hand is quite different from printing them. It is very hard to copy accurately, word for word, anything by hand. Mistakes creep in.
To put a number on it, apparently there are more differences between our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. That is, between the approximately 5700 Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament, there are maybe 300,000 or more differences.
So, if we want to read the Bible, which manuscript do we use, and which difference do we choose over the other?
Fortunately most of these differences are trivial. There are spelling mistakes, or missed words, lines or even pages. The scribes copying the manuscripts are just like us when copying -- their eyes sometimes jumped or misread things, and mostly it's easy for us to correct for that and reconstruct things.
But some of these differences are not trivial. There are a significant number of passages that are importantly different from each other, and sometimes it's hard to know which was the original and which was a later change made by a scribe.
And this is not just accidental changes. There are plenty of passages where it's clear that scribes intentionally made changes to the texts. On purpose they made additions, changed words, took things out, etc. We know whole sections have been added by later scribes, likely to give authority to their particular theological/political beliefs and to combat competing ideas. We also know that, more subtly, occasional words were changed to better suit their views.
What all this means is that we have manuscripts in which there are important differences and we don't always know which was closer to the original and which was the later scribal change.
Consequently, a big part of historical scholarship is textual analysis to find reasons for choosing one difference over another. In a significant number of cases there are still open questions and scholarly disagreements on which way to go.
Issue Three: Known unknowns and unknown unknowns
So, scholars know they have got manuscripts that differ from each other. We know that scribes changed the texts, as we have got the physical evidence. And we know that sometimes we don't know which manuscripts contain the original texts and which were later scribal changes.
We also know that the earliest manuscripts we have are many generations removed from the original writings.
Those earliest scribes probably changed things as much as the later ones we know about, both accidentally and intentionally.
So, we can infer that there were almost certainly scribal changes between the original texts and our earliest copies. The earliest copies that we have are almost certainly different from what the original writers wrote.
But how much, which parts, and in which ways?
We simply don't know.
Issue Four: Historical methods for reconstruction
Fortunately, despite the limits of the texts we physically have, scholars can make some educated, reasoned guesses about which manuscript versions are more likely to be closer to the original and which are more likely to be later scribal changes. But these are only ever best guesses, and not certainty. And it's still hard to jump the gap between our earliest manuscripts and the original writers.
Historians have developed a list of criteria which they can apply to unclear cases. It's not infallible, but it's good to have reasons to help with the educated guesses. An ongoing issue is which criteria to use in various specific cases, and their relative weighting.
For example, an initially counterintuitive criterion, which makes sense on closer inspection, is that the more difficult reading is more likely to be the original one. Scribes, when they make changes, are more likely to make a reading easier rather than harder. So, all things being equal, the more unusual wording or uncomfortable concept is more likely to have been written by the original author, and the less challenging one was more probably a later scribe trying to "correct" things.
To me, it has been fascinating to read specific textual examples of where known manuscripts significantly differ, and then work through the ways that historians might apply different criteria for deciding which was closer to the original and which was the later scribal change.
Issue Five: Inerrant scriptures or historical documents
A theological puzzle for Christians who say that the Bible is the inspired word of God, or that it is inerrant, is that historical scholarship seems to show that at best we are one step away from the original writings. Even if the original writings were so inspired or inerrant, that's not what we have today. And surely it seems odd if God were to inspire the original writings, but then not make sure that they were accurately preserved for later readers.
It seems to me that looking at the textual history of the Bible opens up the possibility of relaxing the need to see the Bible as always internally consistent or accurate in all respects. Perhaps more plausibly we ought treat the Bible as written by fallible historical people in their own time and to their own audience. Arguably smart, insightful, and often accurate, but without that sense of necessary textual infallibility that we often hear from believers. A slight reduction in textual authority is okay, and surely Christianity can live with that.
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So, the book is now back at the library, and other books on my bedside table await reading.
Overall I'm not enough of a textual scholar to comment on the accuracy of the information in Ehrman's book. But what I can say is that it's very clearly presented and the reasoning is strong. For now I'm persuaded.
