Two Libraries, two traditions, two principles of inspiration

kw: opinion, spiritual musings, scriptures, verbal inspiration

I have begun to read a book in which the author, a highly-acclaimed Bible scholar, describes for a lay audience the problems of textual criticism of New Testament manuscripts (I'll present details when I review the book). His introduction describes his conversion to a very conservative Evangelical tradition, and the transitions he went through as he learned the craft of determining what the Bible manuscripts really say, what the original words of the Bible really might have been.

His self-revelation made me think. Why does he have a note of betrayed zeal? I have been a much less scholarly student of the field for many years. I had to be, because the church produced a new translation of the Bible, and we frequently found ourselves confronted with "King James only" folks, and others who cast blame on our efforts. Fortunately, among the scholars was the one modern man who was raised as a native speaker of Koine Greek, by his parents, both Greek scholars. He didn't hear English until he was four.

Anyway, turning back to my experience and musings, I think I have a minim to offer in this matter. Why is it that there are so many thousands of differences among the eight or nine thousand manuscripts of the New Testament? Isn't the Bible supposed to be God's Word, inspired verbally, preserved through the ages, to be the one perfect book for our spiritual leading?

There is this verse in the Old Testament (Psa 12:6, KJV): "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." Other versions agree, many using the word "flawless" for "pure". So, people ask, where are these words to be found? [by the way, I'm using KJV because it is familiar, not because I prefer it. I don't]

I follow a dispensational theology. The dispensational premise is that God has one purpose, but the way he works out his purpose differs in different "dispensations", or "economies" to transliterate the Greek word. Thus, he worked in one way with Adam before the fall, another way with Adam and his descendants before the flood, another way yet after the flood, in quite a different way with Abraham, and yet another with Israel after the Testimony was given at Sinai. The books of the Old Testament, as Christians call it, record these several economies.

The life and ministry of Jesus was a transitional period. After the resurrection of Jesus, God has had an economy of dealing with his church, that is distinct, as different from the Jewish economy as it is from the way God dealt with Noah or Job.

I believe a key turning point in the Old Testament was the people's request at Sinai, before the Testimony was given (Exo 19:8): "All that the LORD hath spoken we will do." God had just made many promises to the people; he had not told them they had to do anything! So, the tone changes, thunder erupts, and Moses ascends to receive the Ten Commandments, the beginning of a flurry of "things to do".

I was quite impressed when I heard that, once they studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were made public when I was quite young, they found only a few tiny differences between them and the Masoretic text, which was a thousand years later. The masoretes were fanatical, obsessively exact copyists, so such near-perfection stands to reason. As a result, it is frequently not hard at all to know with great certainty what word was where in an original text of the Hebrew scriptures.

God had (in Deuteronomy) demanded 100% literacy of Israel, so all could read His Word, and it is clear to me that He took in hand to make sure every generation of Israel has had that word, unchanged.

There are clues to a great difference to come, hidden in that near-perfect text. My favorite example is Jeremiah 31:33-4: "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

In the New Testament economy, God's Word, his written word, is critical, but even more crucial is that His people know Him. It is clear, from the way the scribes quote scripture in the Gospels, that those scriptures were nearly an idol to them. Jesus said to them (John 5:39-40): "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life."

To Jesus, life is more valuable than knowledge. He wants us to come to Him.

I have four different critical Greek texts of the New Testament, including the 23d and 26th Nestle-Aland editions, the Majority Text, and the Textus Receptus. The first and last differ the most from one another; the 23NA is most strongly influenced by the "Western" texts of the 4th-8th Centuries, and the TR by the "Eastern" texts of the 10th-12th Centuries.

The Eastern texts are from a translation made in the 10th Century, from 1st Century Greek into the vernacular of the time. The language had changed, as much change as that between Old English of 900 years ago and modern English. See this rendering of the Lord's Prayer as found in wikipedia. According to my (limited) study, the vast majority of textual differences are between any particular Eastern and any particular Western text. Within each body of texts, there is much less variation.

But even if we look only at the Western texts, there is considerable variation. Yet, on a closer look, the meaning is unchanged. One must still believe in the resurrection of Jesus and His sacrifice for our sins to become a Christian. To me, the New Testament is holographic. The crucial items are presented several times, and together they comprise a complete picture.

I see the NT as more human than the OT: more account is made for human foibles, and the writers are not mere tape recorders. I see God relating to people in a more consistently human way than He did from Moses until the Cross. It is more like the way he came to Abraham, as a traveler who ate under the sunshade before his tent. The style of inspiration in the Greek NT is different in kind from that of the Hebrew OT. Do some of the books in this marvelous Library show signs of editing? I say, "Why not?" If Paul did the best he could, but someone—wittingly or not—later "fixed things up a bit," could not the editor have been inspired also?

The way Paul wrote 1 Cor 7 is telling. Here he says, "I command, yet not I, but the Lord," there he says, "I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful." And he concludes, "and I think also I have the spirit of the Lord." How many of the words in this chapter are God's words? Does that last phrase cover everything, even where he said, "I have no commandment"?

The men wrote according to their consciousness. Mark (recording Peter's homilies) wrote of "a blind man" at Jericho, whereas Matthew (an accountant) noted "two blind men". Is this a substantive difference? The meaning of the story is the same. God didn't bother to edit this... John provides a name for the man...or one of the men: Bartimaeus. I tend to view such instances as one account supplementing another. Cannot we also view both inadvertant and witting textual differences as God providing a stereo view of His meaning: several ways to say the same thing?

Jesus and the Apostles nearly always quoted the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT) rather than the Hebrew. Did this make a difference?

For the OT, the medium and the message are one. I don't think this is so for the NT; the medium is not the message, and indeed, the diversity of the medium gives us a better fix on the message.

God had Jeremiah predict that a day was coming when ALL will know Him. If you have the Person, the book is less critical. It is still critical, but is decidedly secondary: Jesus desired that those who "search the scriptures" would "come to Me". God will not allow anything, not even the scriptures, to become so perfect that we honor it more than knowing Him.