Healthy plants have deep roots and strong pillars have solid foundations. If we are to be Christians who are deeply rooted in Christ and built on the solid Rock, then we need more than mere sound bites. One means that the Lord has used throughout church history to strengthen His people’s faith and witness is reading good books. This book review series is identifying books that can serve as shovels that help you dig deeper in your Christian life.
Book: Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College - Michael J. Kruger
Can we really trust our English Bible today? Thousands of years have passed since the original texts were written and all we have are copies of copies of copies of the originals. Even more, in these copies we find differences – what are called textual variants. So how can I be sure that what I’m reading today is really God’s inspired Word delivered through the apostles?
In Chapter 12 of Surviving Religion 101, Michael Kruger helps us understand that the New Testament text is the most well-established text in the ancient world. If it cannot be trusted, then no ancient text anywhere can be trusted. As scholar F.F. Bruce wrote, “The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning.”
1) The Quantity of Manuscripts
Prior to the invention of the printing press, all book publishing was done by hand – both writing the book and then copying that book for distribution. The New Testament was transmitted the same way with the originals being copied by scribes. These copies are called manuscripts.
In understanding the transmission of any ancient book, historians examine the quantity of manuscripts. Generally speaking, the more copies we have of an ancient text, the better. This allows us to compare copies and examine the extent of textual variations. Even more foundational is that it gives a higher degree of confidence that the original text is preserved somewhere in those copies.
Remarkably, we currently possess around 5,500 Greek New Testament manuscripts. Some of these are just fragmentary pieces; others are complete New Testaments. Compared to other documents from this period, we have an embarrassment of riches. For instance, the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus is preserved in just thirty-three copies (with just two copies written prior to the fifteenth century)!
This means there is no credible reason to think that the New Testament text has been lost. On the contrary, the high number of manuscripts provide good reason to think we have the original wording, plus some extra variations thrown in. It’s like having a puzzle with too many pieces. Yet, given all the material we have to work with, we can gain a very accurate sense of how serious any textual variations are.
2) The Date of Manuscripts
Generally speaking, historians want as small of a gap as possible between the time a document was written and our earliest copy of that document. This narrows the time widow in which changes can occur. Thus, it is typically better to get a manuscript that dates as closely as possible to the time when that document was originally composed.
When we look at classical documents from the same time period, a large gap of time between their initial publication and our earliest copy is not unusual. Consider again Tacitus’s Annals which were written around 100 AD – our earliest copy is from the 9th century. Such a large gap is fairly common.
Again, the New Testament is an exception to this general pattern. Although the vast majority of New Testament manuscripts are dated to the Middle Ages, we have numerous manuscripts that go back as early as the second or third century after Christ.
Here’s the point: the date of our copies means we have access to the text of the New Testament at a remarkably early stage. Any significant changes made even in the first century would still be preserved in later copies. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that the text could have been meaningfully changed in the first century and then left no trace of those changes in later manuscripts.
3) The Quality of Manuscripts
Having lots of manuscripts, some of which are dated quite early puts us in a great position to evaluate how good the copies are. Bart Ehrman, a leading critic of Christianity, estimates there are between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand differences in the manuscripts. You might be surprised to discover that he is right! But there is always more to the story. A dramatic declaration about high numbers of textual variations does not at all affect the reliability of the New Testament text for a few reasons:
First, we need to consider the quality of these variations. The vast, vast majority of these differences are insignificant. That is, they do not meaningfully affect our ability to know what the author originally wrote. These are ordinary scribal slips like spelling mistakes or word-order changes (ie. “Christ Jesus” instead of “Jesus Christ”). When you come across these mistakes in a blog post or textbook, you don’t just toss it aside saying you can’t possibly know what the original author meant.
Second, we can reliably determine which text is original. Since we have so many manuscripts, we can compare them and reasonably determine which puzzle pieces – textual variants – are not part of the original text. The academic field of textual criticism is committed to studying this.
Third, the reason we have a high number of variants is not because of a badly copied text but because we have so many manuscripts of the New Testament! If we only had five copies of the New Testament, we would have very few textual variants. But since we have a great abundance of manuscripts, we have more opportunities to learn about scribal mistakes and assess them. This is a strength not a weakness!
4) What About Unresolved Textual Variants?
While the vast majority of variants are clear cut as to which is the original, there are some places where we have competing variants that seem to be equally viable. However, even these situations do not present a problem for the integrity of the New Testament. This is because no substantive teaching or doctrine is put in jeopardy by these variants. No foundational truth is hanging on a passage with an unresolved variant.
Some people think we need absolute, 100 percent assurance about every last textual variant to trust the New Testament. They think that if God really inspired and preserved the New Testament, then there would be no scribal variations at all.
The problem with this approach is that it sets up an unrealistic, arbitrary standard. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written, God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write them down incorrectly? Are we to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar, not anyone, would ever write down a passage of Scripture in which a word was left out – for the entire course of human history? Just think about how many times you’ve made errors in writing down a memory verse and you realize how unrealistic and arbitrary that standard is.
Here we come to nub of the matter. Since God gave His Word through normal historical channels, we don’t need to be surprised or alarmed to find some textual variations. That’s true of every document in history. And we don’t need assurance about every last textual variant to be certain about the message of the New Testament. We are not forced to choose between knowing everything and knowing nothing. God, through His providence and through normal historical channels, has sufficiently preserved His Word so that the glorious good news of the gospel is fully intact.
Conclusion: Unlike most documents from the ancient world, we have tremendous resources at our disposal that allows us to see whether the New Testament text has been faithfully preserved. And the good news is that by God’s providence it has been transmitted with remarkable fidelity. As Jesus promised, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College by Michael J. Kruger. Published by Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2021. Softcover, 262 pages.