The New Testament Documents - Are They Reliable?

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 ?

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.'

Yes, I am familiar with Maricon.

Then familiarize yourself with Irenaeus as well who wrote concerning him:

"Wherefore Marcion and his followers have betaken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and curtailing the Gospel according to Luke, and the epistles of Paul, they assert that these alone are authentic, which they themselves have shortened."

You didn't answer my question, however. How do you know Marcion changed that particular verse? Or are you just guessing?

Just guessing that according to the evidence and testimony of Irenaeus, and scholars who tell us that most of the textual corruptions took place by the year 200, culminating in the corruptions of Origen, that it was Marcion, and/or one of his followers.

Because there is evidence that Christian scribes ad-libed a great deal as they copied, adding and changing words, or even whole sections (i.e. Pericope Adulterae).

Accidental omissions by overworked scribes are understandable and identifiable and correctable, but then there are the intentional corruptions by Marcion's followers and Origen and his followers.

BTW Irenaeus wrote the following: "The doctrines of the apostles had been handed down by the succession of bishops being guarded and preserved, without any forging of the Scriptures, allowing neither additions nor curtailment."

To Irenaeus, there were no long/short/harmonized Scriptures, just the Scriptures and the forged Scriptures.

Then familiarize yourself with Irenaeus as well who wrote concerning him:

Irenaeus' reference is not specific (which is not surprising). Robert M. Grant, professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago, and author of Gnosticism, The Earliest Lives of Jesus, and The Secret Sayings of Jesus, both Harper, 1963., states the following on the Gospel of Luke and Acts (my emphasis):
"What does this evidence prove? It proves only that the text of Luke has been subject to a good deal of modification -- in various directions. We know that in the second century two tendencies were at work (if not more). On the one hand, Marcion busied himself with deleting what he regarded as interpolations from the gospel; as far as we can tell from later witnesses to his now lost work, he rejected Luke 22:43-4 and 24:12 but accepted the other passages."
To remind you, the subject of your rant against apostate Marcion, based on Irenaeus' non-specific statement you quote, was that he specifically altered Luke 4:4, and I asked you how do you know that?
As it turns out, it looks like Marcion had nothing to do with the short version of Luke 4:4 and that it was just another example of what I call "parallel" Gospels existing in different regions of early Christianity, which is partially responsible for many doctrinal variants.
Marcion, in fact, accepted the longer version of Luke rather than the shorter one, except for the those verses mentioned above, so your allegation about Luke 4:4 being altered by him is not supported.
You make it sound as if Marcion used a chopping knife to cut Luke into pieces when his revisions included a word here and there, such as removing "new" from the "new covenant", not for doctrinal reasons, but because it's not found in other Gospels, and for a good reason! We can surmise that because he doesn't remove the word "new" in the "new covenant" from the the only other one who uses it—his one and only favorite Apostle, Paul.
But for someone who studies these things, your visceral tone makes no sense considering that Luke is the source and cause of most of the Gospel alterations, innovations, neologisms, etc. He introduced as may as 2,700 new words. He habitually altered Markan passages by "embellishing" them with novel things when the same passages in Mark and Matthew have none, etc.
Scriptural 'corruption' and variations of the New Testament are as old as the writings themselves. What we read as the New Testament today is a product of centuries of deliberate and accidental man-made alterations and careful "harmonizing" to produce a text that corresponds to the agreed-upon doctrine of the Church and not the original versions.

BTW Irenaeus wrote the following: "The doctrines of the apostles had been handed down by the succession of bishops being guarded and preserved, without any forging of the Scriptures, allowing neither additions nor curtailment."

And just how did Irenaeus know that the bishop's versions were without curtailment or additions? What proof does he offer for such a sweeping generalization? Apostolic succession? Unfortunately, evidence proves Irenaeus dead wrong.

Robert M. Grant, professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago, and author of Gnosticism, The Earliest Lives of Jesus, and The Secret Sayings of Jesus

So then Grant is your authority now and not one of your own Greek fathers???? You not only have a low view of Scripture, but an even lower one of Irenaeus.

Marcion busied himself with deleting what he regarded as interpolations from the gospel

Oh so he was just deleting the interpolations and accepted everything else??? Is that right??? Is that what you are claiming???

Why am I not surprised that you would defend Marcion and throw Irenaeus to the lions???

So then Grant is your authority now and not one of your own Greek fathers???? You not only have a low view of Scripture, but an even lower one of Irenaeus

I didn't say I had a low view of Irenaeus or the scriptures. I did say that Irenaeus made a general statement about Marcion which you erreneously construed to include Luke 4:4.

It is also a proven fact that scriptures existed in various versions under the same name and that alterations of NT books was rather common in early Christianity.

It is also a (biblical) fact that Luke altered Mark's Gospel by adding and innovating. I'd be happy to provide you with fine details.

Likewise, it is true and biblically verifiable that Paul, and Luke following in his steps, used the term "new covenant" in a way it was not intended in the Old Testament. The new (post-Babylonian) covenant was to be made only with the House of Judah and the House Israel. (Jer 31:31), which the NT writer mentions in Hebrews 8:8 but then changes it to only the House of Israel(Heb 8:10), thus essentially altering Jeremiah prophesy! (the reason why being no less deceiving, but that's another topic!)

In fact, since we are on the subject of interpolations, Heb 8:10, inbedded inbetween Jeremiah's prophesy, is an interpolation entirely from the New Testament (basically Luke 22:20; 2 Cor 3:6; Heb 7:22; 8:6, 13; 9:15; 12:24), made to look like it was part of the OT!

This is not having a "low" view of scriptures but an objective consideration rather than a mythological one.

Oh so he was just deleting the interpolations and accepted everything else??? Is that right??? Is that what you are claiming???

Well, let's see what evidence do you have to the contrary?

Why am I not surprised that you would defend Marcion and throw Irenaeus to the lions???

If this is what you conclude from what I wrote then your perception and comprehension are seriously lacking.

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