Posted on 08/15/2009 10:48:49 AM PDT by Mr Rogers
2. What are the dates of these documents?
The crucifixion of Christ took place, it is generally agreed, about AD 30. According to Luke iii. I, the activity of John the Baptist, which immediately preceded the commencement of our Lord's public ministry, is dated in 'the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar'. Now, Tiberius became emperor in August, AD 14, and according to the method of computation current in Syria, which Luke would have followed, his fifteenth year commenced in September or October, AD a7.1 The fourth Gospel mentions three Passovers after this time; the third Passover from that date would be the Passover of AD 30, at which it is probable on other grounds that the crucifixion took place. At this time, too, we know from other sources that Pilate was Roman governor of Judaea, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, and Caiaphas was Jewish high priest.
The New Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this. In this country a majority of modern scholars fix the dates of the four Gospels as follows: Matthew, c. 85-90; Mark, c. 65; Luke, c. 80-85; John, c. 90-100.4 I should be inclined to date the first three Gospels rather earlier: Mark shortly after AD 60, Luke between 60 and 70, and Matthew shortly after 70. One criterion which has special weight with me is the relation which these writings appear to bear to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. My view of the matter is that Mark and Luke were written before this event, and Matthew not long afterwards.
But even with the later dates, the situation' encouraging from the historian's point of view, for the first three Gospels were written at a time when man, were alive who could remember the things that Jesus said and did, and some at least would still be alive when the fourth Gospel was written. If it could be determined that the writers of the Gospels used sources of information belonging to an earlier date, then the situation would be still more encouraging. But a more detailed examination of the Gospels will come in a later chapter...
The dates of the thirteen Pauline Epistles can be fixed partly by internal and partly by external evidence. The day has gone by when the authenticity of these letters could be denied wholesale. There are some writers today who would reject Ephesians; fewer would reject 2 Thessalonians; more would deny that the Pastoral Epistles (I and ~ Timothy and Titus) came in their present form from the hand of Paul.' I accept them all as Pauline, but the remaining eight letters would by themselves be sufficient for our purpose, and it is from these that the main arguments are drawn in our later chapter on 'The Importance of Paul's Evidence'.
Ten of the letters which bear Paul's name belong to the period before the end of his Roman imprisonment.
These ten, in order of writing, may be dated as follows: Galatians, 48; I and 2 Thessalonians, 50; Philippians, 54; I and 2 Corinthians, 54-56; Romans, 57; Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, c. 60. The Pastoral Epistles, in their diction and historical atmosphere, contain signs of later date than the other Pauline Epistles, but this presents less difficulty to those who believe in a second imprisonment of Paul at Rome about the year 64, which was ended by his execution.' The Pastoral Epistle can then be dated c. 63-64, and the changed state of affairs in the Pauline churches to which they bear witness will have been due in part to the opportunity which Paul's earlier Roman imprisonment afforded to his opponents in these churches.
At any rate, the time elapsing between the evangelic events and the writing of most of the New Testament books was, from the standpoint of historical research, satisfactorily short. For in assessing the trustworthiness of ancient historical writings, one of the most important questions is: How soon after the events took place were they recorded ?
3. What is the evidence for their early existence? |
About the middle of the last century it was confidently asserted by a very influential school of thought that some of the most important books of the New Testament,including the Gospels and the Acts, did not exist before the thirties of the second century AD. This conclusion was the result not so much of historical evidence as of philosophical presuppositions. Even then there was sufficient historical evidence to show how unfounded these theories were, as Lightfoot, Tischendorf, Tregelles and others demonstrated m their writings; but the amount of such evidence available in our own day is so much greater and more conclusive that a firstcentury date for most of the New Testament writings cannot reasonably be denied, no matter what our philosophical presuppositions may be...
There are in existence about 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in whole or in part. The best and most important of these go back to somewhere about AD 350, the two most important being the Codex Vaticanus, the chief treasure of the Vatican Library in Rome, and the wellknown Codex Sinaiticus, which the British Government purchased from the Soviet Government for £100,000 on Christmas Day, 1933, and which is now the chief treasure of the British Museum. Two other important early MSS in this country are the Codex Alexandrinus, also in the British Museum, written in the fifth century, and the Codex Bezae:, in Cambridge University Library, written in the fifth or sixth century, and containing the Gospels and Acts in both Greek and Latin.
Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar's Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some goo years later than Caesar's day. Of the 142 books of the Roman History of Livy (59 BC-AD 17) only thirty five survive; these are known to us from not more than twenty MSS of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books iii-vi, is as old as the fourth century. Of the fourteen books of the Histories of Tacitus (c. AD 100) only four and a half survive; of the sixteen books of his Annals, ten survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of has two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh. The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogue dc Oratoribus, Agricola, Gcrmania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century The History of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) is known to us from eight MSS, the earliest belonging to c. AD 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era The same is true of the History of Herodotus (c. 488-428 BC). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals.
But how different is the situation of the New Testament in this respect! In addition to the two excellent MSS of the fourth century mentioned above, which are the earliest of some thousands known to us, considerable fragments remain of papyrus copies of books of the New Testament dated from 100 to 200 years earlier still. The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, the existence of which was made public in 1931, consist of portions of eleven papyrus codices, three of which contained most of the New Testament writings. One of these, containing the four Gospels with Acts, belongs to the first half of the third century; another, containing Paul's letters to churches and the Epistle to the Hebrews, was copied at the beginning of the third century; the third, containing Revelation, belongs to the second half of the same century.
A more recent discovery consists of some papyrus fragments dated by papyrological experts not later than AD 150, published in Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and other Early Christian Papyri, by H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat (1935). These fragments contain what has been thought by some to be portions of a fifth Gospel having strong affinities with the canonical four; but much more probable is the view expressed in The Times Literary Supplement for 25 April 1935, 'that these fragments were written by someone who had the four Gospels before him and knew them well; that they did not profess to be an independent Gospel; but were paraphrases of the stories and other matter in the Gospels designed for explanation and instruction, a manual to teach people the Gospel stories'.
Earlier still is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John xviii. 31-33, 37 f, now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, dated on palaeographical grounds around AD 130, showing that the latest of the four Gospels, which was written, according to tradition, at Ephesus between AD 90 and 100, was circulating in Egypt within about forty years of its composition (if, as is most likely, this papyrus originated in Egypt, where it was acquired in 1917). It must be regarded as being, by half a century, the earliest extant fragment of the New Testament.
A more recently discovered papyrus manuscript of the same Gospel, while not so early as the Rylands papyrus, is incomparably better preserved; this is the Papyrus Bodmer II, whose discovery was announced by the Bodmer Library of Geneva in 1956; it was written about AD 200, and contains the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John with but one lacuna (of twenty two verses), and considerable portions of the last seven chapters.'...
The study of the kind of attestation found in MSS and quotations in later writer' is connected with the approach known as Textual Criticism.' This is a most important and fascinating branch of study, its object being to determine as exactly as possible from the available evidence the original words of the documents in question. It is easily proved by experiment that it is difficult to copy out a passage of any considerable length without making one or two dips at least. When we have documents like our New Testament writings copied and recopied thousands of times, the scope for copyists' errors is so enormously increased that it is surprising there are no more than there actually are. Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remain' among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice
To sum up, we may quote the verdict of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a scholar whose authority to make pronouncements on ancient MSS was second to none:
'The interval then between the data of original. composition and the earliest extant evidence become so small to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scripture have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.'
Something some people argue is that the New Testament cannot be trusted because the original text is too far in the past, or has been copied too many times. The idea that a God who inspired them can also protect them seems to slip by...
The info I've seen indicates that the text of more recent manuscripts, when compared to the earliest, indicates around 98% reliability, with most of the variation in a couple of passages a few paragraphs each. Most Bibles now mark those passages as questionable, but no doctrine is tied to any of them.
Ping for anyone interested in the reliability of the New Testament texts.
Chapters available:
# DOES IT MATTER
# THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS:THEIR DATE AND ATTESTATION
# THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
# THE GOSPELS
# THE GOSPEL MIRACLES
# THE IMPORTANCE OF PAUL’S EVIDENCE
# THE WRITINGS OF LUKE
# MORE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
# THE EVIDENCE OF EARLY JEWISH WRITINGS
# THE EVIDENCE OF EARLY GENTILE WRITERS
Can one understand the text if one does not understand the context?
It isn’t impossible, but it reduces the probability.
Ping for reference
What a great post! Outstanding information. Thanks!
Most bible scholars reject that Timothy and Titus were written by Paul, as the author points out.
Thank you for posting; it’s an interesting read.
And yet people will argue for the accuracy of documents purported to be wriiten by Aristotle and other Greek Scholars when in fact there are hudreds of years between the earliest Manuscripts and when the person was purported to have lived.
People will beileve what they want in spite of, or contrary to the evidence when it comes to scripture because they do not wish to be subject to it!
Mel
I agree. Most of those I’ve talked to who reject Scripture do so because they don’t want their lives to change.
Sounds more like a wishful thinking of a zealot than a scientist.
This article is yet another attempt to obfuscate the facts and spin the issue. Rather than present evidence to the contrary, it either ridicules or tries to make disagreeable views appear absurd. In other words, patting onself on the back.
Of course, those who have already made the a priori assumption, who already "know" and don't need any proof, will agree with it. Those who now very little about the Bible, will be in awe. But anyone who researched this to any extent critically and without an agenda will not be impressed at all.
Here is kosta50 explaining why the NT texts are unreliable:
” All evidence shows that the Church had a myriad of beliefs up until the First Nicene Council and even beyond. And evidence also shows that either not all Gospels of Matthew were identical, and doctrinally acceptable, or that much of the New Testament had to be brought into doctrinal compliance of the post-Nicene period.
The fact that all surviving copies are “dcotrinaslly agreeable” doesn’t mean such agreement miraculously existed across the spectrum. Indirect evidence shows that not all book of the NT met doctrinal standard and that for unknown reasons such books no longer exist.”
Hmmm...who to believe? FF Bruce & Sir Frederic Kenyon, or kosta50 utilizing “Indirect evidence” & “unknown reasons”.
“Frederick Fyvie Bruce (1910 - 1990), also known as F. F. Bruce, was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester. He was born in Elgin, Morayshire and was educated at the University of Aberdeen, Cambridge University and the University of Vienna. After teaching Greek for several years first at the University of Edinburgh and then at the University of Leeds he became head of the Department of Biblical History and Literature at the University of Sheffield in 1947. In 1959 he moved to the University of Manchester where he became professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis. In his career he wrote some thirty-three books and served as editor of The Evangelical Quarterly and the Palestine Exploration Quarterly. He retired from teaching in 1978.”
http://www.theopedia.com/F._F._Bruce
And from Wikipedia:
“Sir Frederic George Kenyon GBE KCB TD FBA FSA (15 January 1863 – 23 August 1952) was a British paleographer, biblical and classical scholar. He was the director of the British Museum. He was also the president of the British Academy from 1917 to 1921, and from 1918 to 1952 he was Gentleman Usher of the Purple Rod.
Kenyon was born in London, the son of John Robert Kenyon, Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he joined the British Museum in 1889 and rose to be its Director and Head Librarian by 1909. He was knighted for his services in 1912.
In 1891, Kenyon edited the editio princeps of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens. In 1920, he was appointed president of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. He spent most of his retirement researching and publishing ancient papyri. He died on 23 August 1952.”
I took four years of Latin in high school, and one of the projects we did in senior year was to translate the writings of Julius Caesar from different surviving copies of his works. It was quite surprising to find so many differences between different sources, all claiming to be the accurate records of Caesar. Copies from Rome were different than copies from Spain or France (Gaul). Subtle differences, to be sure, but still different (usually in terms of numbers, timelines swapped, or colors).
I personally cannot believe that original writings from the first century AD, writings by a persecuted “cult” at the time, would be completely intact. I believe multiple sources were combined to reconstruct the New Testament, and given what I saw from just the variances in Caesar’s “preserved” writings, there must have been considerable editing to build the NT.
Great book written by Josh McDowell.
McDowell claims to have been an atheist attempting to disprove biblical text at the time of his research.
Utilizing secular writings, archeology, Jewish writings and biblical manuscripts of the time......McDowell claims he was convinced that the bible was indeed what it said that it was.
The inspired word of God handed to men through the Holy Spirit.
Very good book that does not take a theological preposition, rather lays out the evidence for the reader to decide.
A great book on the subject is, “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”.
Written by Josh McDowell.
McDowell claims to have been an athiest attempting to disprove biblical text at the time of his research.
Utilizing secular writings, archeology, Jewish writings and biblical manuscripts of the time......McDowell claims he was convinced that the bible was indeed what it said that it was.
The inspired word of God handed to men through the Holy Spirit.
Very good book that does not take a theological pre-position, rather lays out the evidence for the reader to decide.
If Scripture were no more important, and God no more powerful, than Julius Caesar, perhaps you would be right.
I think this passage in the article clarifies: “Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar’s Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 9oo years later than Caesar’s day. Of the 142 books of the Roman History of Livy (59 BC-AD 17) only thirty five survive; these are known to us from not more than twenty MSS of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books iii-vi, is as old as the fourth century. Of the fourteen books of the Histories of Tacitus (c. AD 100) only four and a half survive; of the sixteen books of his Annals, ten survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of has two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh.”
From “Reliability of New Testament Documents by Robert Montgomery”:
“One might say that it is nice to have a lot of manuscripts, but how different are they from one another? Is there any evidence of change over time?
When all 5,250+ manuscripts are compared, a total of about 100,000 variants are found. At first glance 100,000 seems like a large number, but this includes misspellings, changes in word order of a sentence, the omission or inclusion of the Greek definite article with proper names, and other minor variants. When all the minor variants are eliminated that do not affect the sense of meaning of a passage, we are left with only 235 variants of any significance. Of these there are only 5 which bring into question the genuineness of a part of the text. Here is a list of the 5 passages in question: Mark 16:9-20, Luke 22:20, 22:43-44, 23:34, and John 7:53-8:11. (4)”
http://www.iamnext.com/spirituality/NTrely.html
What is more important: the message of the Bible, or the actual, physical words?
If the latter, then why tolerate multiple translations? In fact, why read the Bible in any language but Hebrew and Greek?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.