One of the standard challenges for New Testament textual criticism is whether we can work our way back to the original text. Some scholars are notoriously skeptical in this regard. Since we only have later copies, it is argued, we cannot be sure that the text was not substantially changed in the time period that pre-dates those copies.
Helmut Koester and Bart Ehrman are examples of this skeptical approach. Koester has argued that the text of the New Testament in the earliest stages was notoriously unstable. Most major changes, he argues, would have taken place in the first couple centuries.
Ehrman makes a similar case. Since we don’t have the originals, and only copies of copies of copies, then who knows what the text was really like before our extant copies were made.
But is it really true that we only possess copies of copies of copies? Is there really an enormous gap, as Koester and Ehrman maintain, between the autographs and our earliest copies?
A recent article by Craig Evans of Acadia University suggests otherwise. In the most recent issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Evans explores the question of how long manuscripts would have lasted in the ancient world, and whether that might provide some guidance of how long the autographs might have lasted–and therefore how long they would have been copied.
Evans culls together an insightful and intriguing amount of evidence to suggest that literary manuscripts in the ancient world would last hundreds of years, on average. Appealing to the recent study of G.W. Houston, he argues that manuscripts could last anywhere from 75 to 500 years, with the average being about 150 years.
The implications of this research on the textual stability of the New Testament are not difficult to see. Evans says:
Autographs and first copies may well have remained in circulation until the end of the second century, even the beginning of the third century…The longevity of these manuscripts in effect forms a bridge linking the first-century autographs and first copies to the great codices, via the early papyrus copies we possess (35).
In other words, it is possible (and perhaps even likely) that some of the earliest copies of the New Testament we posses may have been copied directly from one of the autographs. And, if not the autographs, they may have been copied from a manuscript that was directly copied from the autographs. Either way, this makes the gap between our copies and the autographs shrink down to a rather negligible size.
In the end, we do not possess merely copies of copies of copies (etc.) as some skeptics maintain. The early date of our copies, combined with the likely longevity of the autographs, can give us a high degree of confidence that have access to the New Testament text at the earliest possible stage.
If so, then there are no reasons to think that there were wild, unbridled textual changes taking place in this earliest period. On the contrary, Evans’ study provides good reasons to think the NT text was transmitted with a high degree of accuracy and fidelity.
If you want to check out Evans’ full article, see: “How Long Were Late Antique Books in Use? Possible Implications for New Testament Textual Criticism” BBR 25.1 (2015): 23-37.
If you want to dive even deeper into the transmission of the New Testament text, see my recent book (edited with Chuck Hill): The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 2012).
Grant says
A good post, thanks Dr. Kruger.
It does bring attention on something so obvious that it goes unnoticed: once copies were made, how were the autographs/earlier copies handled? Surely they were preserved for later use.
Since papyri endure until today, of course it is at least reasonable to think the autographs endured for a long time as well.
Ian says
Thanks Michael. It seems to me that this belongs to the increasing numbers of issues where it seems sceptical scholarship hasn’t so much made an assumption as simply not asked a basic question that needs considering.
Jason Engwer says
Bruce Metzger notes that some patristic sources refer to the preservation of some of the original copies of the New Testament documents (The Canon Of The New Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], n. 4 on 4-5). Metzger cites the example of Tertullian’s claim that the church of Thessalonica still possessed the original copies of the letters Paul sent them.
The issues discussed by Michael Kruger and Craig Evans above have implications in contexts other than textual transmission. For example, if the Thessalonian church possessed originals of both letters Paul wrote to them, a comparison of handwriting and other details would have provided them with evidence for authorship attribution. Regardless of what we make of the claims of Tertullian and other individuals on these matters, there are some principles involved that don’t depend on the credibility of any one claim or one individual, like Tertullian. The sort of lasting availability of manuscripts that Evans refers to gives us further reason to trust the early sources on issues other than textual transmission, such as the authorship of the New Testament. Autographs of the documents (and the earliest copies of the autographs) could have had, and surely often would have had, titles, tags, and other features identifying the document’s author.
Ian says
But given Paul’s letters were mostly by amanuensis, I am not sure comparing handwriting would have helped…?
Steve says
Ian, Paul’s letters end with a greeting in his own handwriting. At the end of 2 Thessalonians, Paul even instructs the church to use his handwriting to validate other letters. See 2 Thess 3:17. See also 1 Cor 16:21, Gal 6:11, Col 4:18. If you look at all of Paul’s letters – even the ones without an explicit indication that it was written in Paul’s hand, there seems to be a little change in the final paragraph.
Ian says
I think you mean ‘Some of Paul’s letters…’ I was aware of the examples you mention, but the very problem with this idea is that in each case, the other of the pair lacks any evidence of this. So 1 Thess, 2 Cor, Eph don’t have such a sign off.
What evidence are you thinking of that shows a change in writer in these cases? Has anyone argued that from an academic point of view?
Jason Engwer says
Ian,
See 2 Thessalonians 3:17, which Steve cited. It’s addressing Paul’s letters in general.
Even if we didn’t know that Paul included his handwriting in his letters, possessing the original handwriting would still be relevant. Keep in mind that handwriting doesn’t have to serve as evidence in isolation. It can be supplementary evidence. If a church, such as the one in Thessalonica, had reason to believe that Paul had used the same amanuensis both times he wrote to them, seeing the same handwriting in both letters would be confirming evidence. Or if they had reason to believe that two amanuenses had been used, yet they saw that both of the alleged originals had the same handwriting, that would be disconfirming evidence. Or if another church possessed a document that was supposed to be an original of a letter written by the same author, they could compare the handwriting in the relevant documents. And so on. There are a lot of contexts in which having the original handwriting would be significant. That’s true not just concerning authorship, but concerning other issues as well (e.g., what the original author emphasized by writing in larger letters or altering his writing in some other way).
Ian says
Jason, that might well be right. But without any other textual or historical evidence, critical scholarship will label that position as ‘naive.’
Jason Engwer says
Ian,
To the contrary, it would be naïve, among other things, to not take factors like the ones I mentioned into account. All of us, including scholars, conclude that events occurred in the past without direct evidence. We rely on indirect evidence.
Since humans require food to survive, we assume that a historical figure ate food during his life, even if we don’t have historical records stating that he ate food on each occasion or on any occasion. The conclusions we reach based on that sort of indirect evidence will range across a spectrum, from low possibility to high probability. But all of us engage in that sort of reasoning in many contexts in life, including the most radically liberal scholars. If you read much of liberal scholarship, you’ll often see them referring to what Paul supposedly would have believed as a Jew living in antiquity, what ancient pagans supposedly would have done in such-and-such a situation, etc. Similarly, we can reason about what the Thessalonian church and other groups and individuals possibly or probably would have done with the New Testament autographs. And we have some comments in the ancient sources about what the early Christians did with manuscripts (Paul’s comments about verifying his letters through handwriting, Paul’s comments to the Galatians about the largeness of his handwriting, Dionysius of Corinth’s comments about how the autographs of his writings had been corrupted, Irenaeus’ comments about variations in manuscripts of Revelation, etc.). We know that the early Christians often gave close attention to the details of manuscripts. They tell us so, and they provide many examples in a variety of contexts.
In addition to taking individual pieces of evidence into account, we have to keep the cumulative effect in mind. Given how much evidence the autographs of the New Testament would have provided for the early Christians (and other sources), what are the odds that everybody or almost everybody ignored all of that evidence or misjudged it, for example? If somebody were to argue, say, that the Thessalonians might have overlooked differences in the handwriting of the two alleged Pauline letters to the Thessalonians, how likely is it that the Corinthians did the same thing, Timothy did the same thing, everybody else outside of such Pauline audiences also failed to notice the handwriting differences when they looked at the manuscripts, everybody who noticed the differences failed to leave any trace in the historical record, etc.? All of us have to make probability judgments about such scenarios. The probability judgments that conservative Christians make are fallible and involve a lot of unknowns. But the same is true of everybody else’s probability judgments on these matters.
Ian says
Jason, the ‘naive’ observation was not about the handwriting, but in assuming that when Paul says ‘I sign all my letters’ that he did indeed sign all his letters. Given that the evidence is lacking from many of them that this in fact happened, I think we need better evidence that he did.
What is it about the change in style in the endings of other letters which tells us that Paul did indeed take up the pen himself?
Jason Engwer says
Ian,
Believing that Paul signed letters he claimed to sign isn’t “naïve”. I don’t know how you function in life if you have a default assumption that what people tell you is a lie or that you should be neutral about their sincerity. I also see no reason to think it’s probable or 50/50 that Paul would be honestly mistaken on such an issue. It’s not as though he was discussing a subject that would be difficult to be correct about. To the contrary, it would be difficult for Paul to be wrong on the matter.
Even if we were initially neutral on the passage in question, the fact that Paul was writing to an audience with a firsthand ability to refute what he was saying if it was false in the most relevant context (he had written to the Thessalonians before) gives us reason to think he was likely being careful and honest.
And he was writing in a context in which verifying handwriting was important (2 Thessalonians 2:2), which gave both Paul and his audience even more reason to be careful.
Then there’s the issue of what would lead somebody to lie or be mistaken in a context like 2 Thessalonians 3:17. What reason do we have to think that either happened?
Furthermore, you’ve given us no reason to think we should expect to see a comment like Paul makes in 3:17 in every one of his letters if 3:17 is accurate. People can see a change in handwriting without its being pointed out to them. Gene Green notes that not mentioning the change was “the most common practice” (The Letters To The Thessalonians [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002], 359). Even if readers would miss the change if left to themselves, the people who delivered the letters and others involved on Paul’s end would be able to point it out. Paul was writing in an unusual situation in 2 Thessalonians (see 2:2), one that made it more relevant than usual to make a comment like the one in 3:17, so expecting him to make the same sort of comment in every letter is unreasonable.
Ian says
Jason, I think you are confusing categories here. Paul is not my personal friend, and this is not just ‘part of life’.
I am an academic, working in a context of critical scholarship. As evangelicals, if we are going to make a case for something, then we need to at least engage with the norms of critical thinking. I wasn’t using the comment ‘naive’ as a slight, but as a technical observation.
In that context, it is not possible to get away with making an assumption for which there isn’t other clear evidence. There is some literature exploring the apparent contradiction between the claim in 2 Thess 3.17 with the apparent lack of supporting evidence for it.
OK?
Jason Engwer says
Ian,
Nothing I said depended on Paul’s being your “personal friend”. You haven’t interacted with anything I said.
And your reference to “clear evidence” is unconvincing. Evidence is sufficient, regardless of whether it’s clear. A high probability is preferable, but a low one will do.
Richard Ritenbaugh says
We need also to consider that the early churches would have handled the autographs or early copies with great reverence, not allowing them to be handled roughly by any means and storing them carefully when not in use. This would have added to their longevity.
Steven Avery says
The book and position sound interesting. I would agree that those opposed to the reliability of the NT are unreliable in their argumentation.
My question for you is about consistency. Since you strongly support the “Text Critical Method”, how do you explain the fact that you consider the great mass of Greek mss to be consistently in error? In hundreds, even thousands of spots. Many of primary Bible text doctrine and study.
Thanks.
Steven Avery
Michael Kruger says
Thanks, Steven. But you are misinformed about the state of the NT text (and also about my own view). You state that I consider “the great mass of Greek mss to be consistently in error.” That is not the case. Yes, there are many scribal variations (which is typical for any ancient document), but these do not threaten our ability to recover the early text of the NT because (a) the vast, vast majority of these are irrelevant scribal slips like misspellings, word order, etc.; and (b) the only reason we have knowledge of these many variations is because we have so many NT manuscripts to compare to one another. The many NT manuscripts we possess are a positive thing and should not be turned around and viewed as a negative.
Even the larger variations, and there are only two of these (LE of Mark, pericope of the adulterous woman), do not affect our ability to get back to the early text precisely because we know they are changes.
For more on this, you can read the final chapter in my book The Heresy of Orthodoxy (co-author Andreas Kostenberger) where I address precisely this issue about the number of variations and how that affects our ability to recover the original text.
Stuart (OPC) says
I think even textual criticism should not be held immune from the importance of the recognizing the supernatural factor in Christianity. Example: Ehrman argues (debate at Chapel Hill on youtube) that the very concept of an original text is meaningless and claims this is the position of the best scholars (Sounds like Flew’s true Scotsman fallacy). This is because he uses to higher criticism to inform textual criticism. He assumes based on “the scholars” that 2 Cor is composed of 2-5 letters which may or may not have been from Paul. Thus an original is meaningless. Though there is a change in tone and theme from 2 Cor 1-9 and 10-13, there is no textual evidence of two distinct letters that I am aware of. Even if 2 Cor brought together two letters of Paul (a speculative position, IMO) it would still be two original letters of Paul behind it, though. If one reasons from text to canon and then to New Testament authority (from bottom up), one cuts out the supernatural factor that we are dealing with special revelation which has its own self-preserving nature. But if one begins with the truth that we have God’s revelation and now we are just trying to fix precise boundaries where the basic boundaries have long been recognized, the nature of the debate changes. At this point the traditional argument (used by D. Wallace too) that we kill all ancient history if we equally apply the Ehrman standard to ancient literature. I view this as a sub-argument of the Van Tillian argument that failure to acknowledge the God of revelation and the revelation of God leads to impossible absurdity.
Ian says
But you need to respond to Ehrman’s claims here *not* by appealing to the supernatural, but by appealing to the evidence of the text…
Mike Gantt says
The problem for critics like Koester and Ehrman is that the extant copies demonstrate a stable text, and the only way we could have a stable text in the extant copies is if there was a stable text in the originals and copies that preceded them. Such critics are suggesting the impossible: that textual corruption decreased with the passage of time. That is, they are suggesting that sour milk eventually turns to fresh.
Bob S says
If I may say so, that we have “lost” the autographs is a bit of a red herring.
It was the belief of the Westminster Assembly that:
The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical;
so as, in all controversies of religion,the Church is finally to appeal unto them.WCF I:VIII
IOW the autographs were providentially preserved in their apographs or copies “in all ages”.
The last, is why some argue that the Byzantine texts, which have been in continuous use, get the nod over the “providentially discarded” modern critical texts.
Regardless, much more is made of the absence of the originals than is warranted. Anybody that thinks the NT is a historical fraud is a fraud themselves, who for consistency sake must also think Plato, Aristotle and Shakespeare were frauds.