Revelation

Word of the Week: Manuscripts (Inspiration Revisited)

In last week’s post on the doctrine of Inspiration, we focused on the biblical claim that the Scriptures have been inspired by God. In this week’s post, we will go a little deeper into this important topic by highlighting the quality of the manuscripts that we have for the biblical texts.

I’m confident that the Bible we have (66 books with about 40 authors over 1500 years of writing) is God’s inspired Word. But just because I’m confident doesn’t mean everyone else is confident. Textual criticism is that discipline that investigates the content and reliability of ancient texts. It is a discipline used for other manuscripts, but primarily associated with the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. If it is right to hold a high view of the inspiration of Scripture (that God is the author), then it should follow that the manuscripts we have for comparison purposes would not disagree with one another and create uncertainty in the meaning of the text. Can we have confidence in the manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments?

Here are some basic facts about the manuscripts we do have. You can find out more on this subject from Jonathan Morrow’s book, Questioning the Bible: 11 Major Challenges to the Bible’s Authority.

  • There are 5,756 New Testament manuscripts that can be compared and contrasted for quality and consistency purposes. Other ancient writings for a comparable time and place are as follows: Greek historian Herodotus, 109 manuscripts; Greek historian Thucydides, 95 manuscripts; Greek philosopher Plato, 219 manuscripts; Roman historian Livy, 150 manuscripts; Roman historian Tacitus, 31 manuscripts; Roman historian Seutonius, 300 manuscripts; Greek classic Homer’s Iliad, 2300 manuscripts. The sheer number of New Testament manuscripts affords confidence that the documents we are reading today are consistent with the original manuscripts.
  • The NT manuscripts are significantly earlier than other ancient literature, within 35 years in at least one case and all of the NT within 200 years of the events.
  • While there are variations between the manuscripts, they do not distort the consistency or meaning of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman, professor and author of Misquoting Jesus, claims 400,000 variants within the New Testament manuscripts. Ehrman uses this number to undercut the confidence in the New Testament documents. Essentially, he reasons if there are so many variants, how can we be confident in the accuracy of the text? However, Ehrman fails to look into the types of variations carefully. According to Jonathan Morrow, “A variant is any place among the existing NT manuscripts where there is not uniformity of wording” (p. 98). A variant then could be a misspelled word in 1 manuscript different from 2,000 manuscripts. This would count as 2,000 variants. Morrow notes, “the reason we have so many variants is because we have so many manuscripts to work with” (p. 98).
  • Note the types of variation within the New Testament manuscripts:
    1) Spelling=70-80% of all the variants.
    2) Minor differences such as word order or the use of the definite article with a proper name.
    3) Meaningful, but not viable differences such as, “gospel of God” vs. “gospel of Christ.”
    4) Meaningful and viable differences such as “let us have peace with God” vs. “we have peace with God” (less than 1% are meaningful and viable). 
  • The Old Testament manuscripts and the and the Dead Sea Scrolls affirm that the copyists of the OT were careful, and that the OT that we do have is consistent with the earliest manuscripts. According to Douglas Stuart, it is a safe estimate that 99% of original words in NT and 95% of original words in OT are recoverable (quoted by Jonathan Morrow in Questioning the Bible). In essence, we can be confident that we have the Word of God.
  • These basic facts can be found in Questioning the Bible, by Jonathan Morrow pages 96-105.

The Old and New Testaments have been questioned and critiqued for millennia. Particularly, the New Testament has faced textual and source criticism aimed at discounting its claims of the supernatural and the deity of Jesus. This critique should not surprise us. We live in a post-enlightenment age where we question and doubt anything that cannot be tested scientifically.

These facts about the New Testament manuscripts do not force one to believe the stories they relate. But here is what they do. The sheer number of manuscripts dating back so nearly to the occasions of writing provide confidence that the New Testament we are reading today was the same New Testament originally written.

If we can have confidence in the consistency and accuracy of the Old and New Testaments, then we cannot claim that over time the authors changed stories to build their case for the deity of Jesus or other theological concepts. What they wrote is what we have. You may or may not believe what they wrote. After all, that underscores the importance of faith that permeates Christianity.

But if we are honest with the data we have, we must accept that the biblical documents relate to us an accurate account of the original manuscripts. This becomes foundational to the doctrine of revelation regarding the inerrancy, sufficiency, and authority of Scripture.

Word of the Week: Revelation (doctrine, not book of the Bible)

Last week’s post dealt with an overview of theology. You can find it here if you’d like to look back at it. In these word of the week posts, we are looking at terms, doctrines, and concepts in systematic theology. Today’s word is revelation.

Theology is the study of God and God’s relation to the world. From our definition of theology, the question arises, “How do we know anything about God and God’s relation to the world?”

Answer: we know about God and his relationship to the world through what he has revealed to us.

Revelation means “unveiling, to make known.” The last book of the Bible is titled Revelation, and John’s revelation is God’s unveiling of Jesus Christ in all his glory to the world in salvation and judgment.

When we discuss the doctrine of revelation, we mean something more broad than merely the last book in the Bible. We mean that God to revealed himself to us.

Because humans are finite and God is infinite, if they are to know God, that knowledge must come about by God’s taking the initiative to make himself known.

Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine, 26.

It is important here for readers to understand the necessity of revelation. In today’s experience authority is grounded in rationalism (math), empiricism (science), or personal autonomy (choice/freedom). Without getting into the weeds, the personal autonomy that permeates Western culture can be found in either rationalism or empiricism. In short, grounding truth and authority in any of these frameworks (rationalism, empiricism, personal autonomy) is insufficient. Questions remain unanswered if these are the only places for grounding truth. For centuries, revelation was considered the primary location for absolute truth. That changed philosophically during the Enlightenment era. And while the developments from the Enlightenment through Modernism and Postmodernism have changed how culture views truth and authority, these developments can never change what is true and absolute.

It is for this reason that we need God to reveal himself and what is true to us. When God reveals himself to us, we are able to grasp the core realities of what is and what has value in the world.

With regard to systematic theology, the doctrine of revelation is the starting place. We begin here because anything we know about God, and the world, and us, finds basis in what God has revealed to us.

There are several important truths about the doctrine of revelation that help us understand its value and importance for Christian theology and experience.

  • Revelation is personal. God made us in his image and revealed himself to us so we could know him. Nothing is more important in life than knowing God. How we come to know God occurs through God’s revelation of himself to us.
  • Revelation is cognitive. We can know truths, doctrines, content about God and us because God has revealed them to us. Because God made us rational beings, we can know and understand cognitively and experientially who God is and what he wants us to know.
  • Revelation is progressive. Over time God reveals himself. As seen in Scripture, God discloses more and more of himself as we read the accounts of God and his people. The more complete our picture of revelation, the more clear we are able to be about who God is and who we are.
  • Revelation is not exhaustive. While we can know truly about God, we cannot know fully about God. In other words, we know what God has revealed, but there are aspects of God’s nature and character that he has not fully revealed.
  • Revelation can be divided into two spheres: General and Special. The posts for the next two weeks will define general and special revelation. And many of the posts following those two will dive into aspects of special revelation.

Here is the primary truth we should take away from this post.

God wants us to know him. Think about this: the God who made the world and everything in it wants you to know him. God doesn’t need anything, and yet God revealed himself to sinful humans so that we could know him personally. This is an amazing thought. It is basically for this reason that I write, preach, teach, and share God with others. It should amaze us that God wants us to know him.

Do you know God? If not, comment below, and I’ll do my best to share with you how you can know him?

If you do know God, then remember that your knowledge of him will never be exhaustive. Keep learning, keep reading, and keep seeking God’s revelation so that you can know him better.