A. A definition
1. The final process
Inspiration is the process of special revelation. This is the means by which God has spoken to mankind in an understandable way.
Canonicity is the recognition of what is inspired. This is the means by which man has come to understand what God has spoken. The Bible is God’s word but it doesn’t simply contain words of God. The Spirit moved a man to write a biblical book. Books of the Bible are in there because they are recognised as being inspired.
Transmission is the preservation of inspired Scripture. This is the means by which God’s words have been made available to all mankind of all times and places. It’s necessary because we do not have the autographs, the originals, so we rely on copies.
1. The need to understand it.
Why do we need to understand it?
1. To understand the relationship between our twenty-first-century versions and the original texts. Does the twenty-first-century Bible accurately represent the original writings?
2. To explain the existence of so many versions.
3. To show the need for continued revisions as we, a. Gain access to more sources. b. Better understand ancient languages. c. Change the use of our own language.
For hundred years ago, you could be killed for having a Bible. The Bible is our book! It was written at the express will of our Father, breathed by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, penned by our forefathers in the faith and our brothers in Christ, and copied and preserved by fellow saints.
It’s not the property of any publishing house, nor is it the property of any library or museum. This is our book. Let us cherish its words, learn its lessons, live its life, teach its message, and let us be of no doubt that this is what God has spoken.
How did it get from their pens to us today? We don’t have the originals, but we do have manuscripts. They are copies of what was written and copies of copies and so on.
How can we trust the manuscripts? The general rule is that the older the manuscript, the more accurate it is likely to be. The closer to the time when it was originally written, the more accurate it will be, but this is not a universal rule. What matters is what generation copy it is. How many times has it been copied? A copy of a copy and so on.
A. Some difficulties of Transmission
1. Autographs.
We don’t have original documents, anything written by Moses or Isaiah or Paul. The dating of documents, autographs and the material on which they were written makes it highly unlikely that we have the original texts. If we had them, they would be idolised.
2. Manuscript copies
We do have copies, but there are no two copies which are identical because of numerous errors.
a. Aural or visual confusion.
What we hear, and what we see. Words or letters that sound and look the same. Similarly sounding or appearing words or letters are confused with one another when text is being dictated or copied.
Examples: Did you ever see a bun dance on the table? Did you ever see abundance on a table? Did you see abundance on a table? God is nowhere! God is now here! God is nowhere!
The Codex Sinaiticus is written in capitals, without word divisions. Dittography is the accidental duplication of one or more letters or words. Haplography is the accidental omission of one or more letters or words occurring twice in close proximity.
Parablepsis means ‘Looking by the side’, literally. The scribe’s eye has wandered between two separate phrases or lines with identical endings and has either duplicated or omitted the intervening section.
For example, in the Codex B in John 17:15, the word ‘them’ occurs twice. The person would look away and write part of the section and pick up on the same word, but further on misses the middle section. ‘My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one,’ John 17:15. Error, ‘I do not ask you to take them from the evil one’.
Glosses are remarks or comments that might be inserted into the text and later preserved as part of the text itself.
A. The documents of Transmission
Manuscripts are both the Old Testament and New Testament copies in the original languages. The Old Testament is written mostly in Hebrew, and the New Testament is mainly written in Greek. Versions are early translations of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Syriac, the Vulgate, LXX. It was through the Vulgate that the bible was made known to Europe.
Damasus asked Jerome to make a version. Jerome was to make a version of the Vulgate in the fourth century. A revision of the four gospels was done in Latin, and a revision of the Psalms. His first revision of the Psalms was known as the Roman Psalter.
He revised the rest of the New Testament. The Codex B, was similar to it. He used an Alexandrine type of text. He changed the text of the Latin where it was distorted. In 384, he completed the version, and in 386, he settled in Bethlehem and lived there as a monk.
He produced a second revision of the Psalms. It is now called the Gallican Psalter, which the Catholics now use. He translates the remainder of the New Testament from the Septuagint. He translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. He completed this in 405. He was called a heretic and accused of Judaizing because he depended on the Hebrew text.
The Vulgate means common. The Old Testament was a version of the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament was more of a revision of a text of the Old Latin text. He wanted to get back to the pure text of Jerome. Alcuin of York. He revised a Vulgate manuscript. Eight thousand plus Vulgate manuscripts exist today.
The Codex Amiatinus. AD 700 is the best manuscript of the Vulgate. It contains the entire Bible. In the sixteenth century, they were divided into two chapters. Patristic citations and quotes from the fathers in faith. It also contains commentaries and sermons. The entire New Testament is found within them all except eleven verses.
The problems are as far as using this witness in reconstructing the text.
1. Has the quotation been correctly preserved? We don’t have the original writings of the church fathers.
2. Did the writer intend to quote the whole sentence or just paraphrase?
3. Was the quote made from memory, or was it copied?
Because we don’t know the answers to these questions, the usefulness of reconstructing the text is limited. One way is useful. They can localise and date textual readings.
What is more important is NOT the age of the manuscript, but the age of the text it contains. Why didn’t God prevent errors by copyists? God entrusted a lot in the hands of humans, people who make mistakes. He works through human means. Maybe the exact words aren’t that crucial. There is no such thing as the perfect copy.
A. Talmudic Period
During the Talmudic period, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 . In AD 60, there was a serious revolt. In AD 100, the Jews saw a need to get together to get their Jewishness back. There was a council formed, which was run by Rabbi Aqiba, and they met in Jamnia. During this time came about the consonantal text, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, without vowels.
They finally canonised the Old Testament. It was also standardised, the text. From this point on, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament has remained constant. The Dead Sea Scrolls fit into this period. Synagogue rolls were the most precious, written according to very strict regulations, sacred copies.
These were sacred copies made for use in synagogues, so that Jewish people could have them read out loud. These were written on animal skin under strict rules. They had Talmudic regulations for copying the Synagogue roll.
A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals, prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew. These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals. Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex. The length of each column must not extend over fewer than forty-eight or more than sixty lines, and the breadth must consist of thirty letters.
The whole copy must be first-lined, and if three words are written without a line, it is worthless. The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other colour, and be prepared according to a definite recipe. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate. No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him.
Between every consonant, the space of a hair or thread must intervene; between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants; between every book, three lines. The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line, but the rest need not do so.
Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink, and should a king address him whilst writing that name, he must take no notice of him. The rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned, or they are banished to the schools to be used as reading books.
Private copies were common copies written in codex form, a book. It was permissible to use different colours of ink. Some could be ornamented with comments and annotations on them. They were in book form, written on animal skins or papyrus. They were not always written in black ink, and sometimes they had pictures, sometimes they had notes written under the scriptures.
The Nash Papyrus, written probably in the first century AD. The Decalogue, following mostly the text of Exodus 20:2-17, partly Deuteronomy 5:6-21 and the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-6. Until 1947, it was the oldest known witness to the Hebrew Old Testament text.
In 1902, Nash acquired this papyrus and donated it. It was found in Egypt by W. L. Nash. Probably from an antique dealer, and he gave it to the Cambridge University library. This was part of a private copy. It is dated around 100 BC, and this is the oldest proof of the Hebrew Old Testament until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947.
B. Masoretic Period
The word ‘Masora’ comes from the Hebrew word Masorah, which means tradition. The Masoretes were editors of the Masoretic texts. They studied and copied the texts with great regulations, notes in the margins, and variants. They treated the biblical text with the greatest reverence, authoritative traditions.
The Masoretes were a group of scholars who studied and preserved their manuscripts under strict tradition, the Talmudic Regulations. They treated the text with high respect. They were the first photocopiers. They used everything they could find to avoid making mistakes. They devised a system for dividing the scriptures into verses.
In AD 500, there was a complete review of the transmission of Old Testament texts. They added vowels and also numbered the words to calculate the number of lines. They did this to produce a virtually identical copy. They were the ‘original photocopiers’.
The Masoretes thought that the more recent manuscripts were the most reliable because they trusted their work. They would bury the old manuscripts because they feared that, for example, the name of God would be written wrongly. This could explain why we have so few ancient manuscripts. They were deliberately buried with their author.
The manuscripts found in Cairo are dated sixth to the eighth centuries. In 1890, Solomon Schechter discovered them, around two hundred thousand fragments. One hundred and twenty Biblical manuscripts, remnants. The oldest fragment is dated 400 BC.
Some are in the Cambridge University Library, some are in Oxford. In 1890, Solomon Schechter discovered a secret room in an old synagogue in Cairo. The genizah was discovered in 1890. There were two hundred thousand fragments of manuscripts discovered.
A. The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in February or March 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd, a nomadic. Muhammad Adh-Dhib, whose name means the wolf, threw a stone into a cave to chase out wild animals before going in to look for his lost goat.
When he threw the stone in, he heard the clattering of a clay jar breaking. They went inside the cave and found loads of jars with papers inside. This was by the Dead Sea. They were old leather scrolls, and some were wrapped in linen cloth. They had been there for nineteen hundred years. Dating back to AD 68, at the top end of the Dead Sea.
What did he discover? The Dead Sea Scrolls were written just before the destruction of Jerusalem. There were five scrolls that were bought by the Archbishop of Assyria, Archbishop Samuel. In Jerusalem, in a monastery of St Mark. Three more were bought by Professor Sukenik, who is from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He bought them at the end of 1947. In February 1948, Archbishop Samuel sold them to Professor Sukenik.
The book of Isaiah scroll. This was ten inches high and twenty-four feet long. William Allbright received photographs of it, and one year after the discovery, they realised what they were. This Isaiah manuscript was over one thousand years older than any other found.
There were eleven caves excavated at Qumran between February 1949 and February 1956. Inside were over forty thousand fragments found. Some were complete, and one hundred of them were Old Testament books in Hebrew. The five scrolls that Archbishop Samuel bought were sold by him for $300,000.
The local shepherds became wise to the value of these fragments, and so they looked for more. In October 1951, one of them found another cave in Wadi Marabba ‘at. They discovered another four caves on the West Side of the Dead Sea. When the diggers came in, the shepherds were already finding manuscripts for themselves and selling them in the local markets. There were fifteen caves in all.
The Dead Sea Scrolls should be called the Qumran documents and the Wadi Marabba ‘at documents. Five hundred books altogether, of which one hundred were biblical. The Essenes were a religious group. They no longer worshipped in a temple. They established a monastery around Qumran. The documents discovered formed their library, which they hid.
1. Targum’s
As the Hebrew language became less and less familiar, a need to use Aramaic was felt, Nehemiah 8:8. It became very common throughout Jewish synagogues. They were reading it and translating it. The people at this time spoke Aramaic and not Hebrew.
The Hebrew language was less spoken at this time, so Aramaic was used. This is the beginning of the Targums. The Methuregenan was to stand beside the reader; he provided the translation and reading. Sometimes the translation would have a commentary with it.
They were oral translations. Given by word of mouth and given to memory. One verse was read out at a time and then translated one verse at a time. They didn’t want the translations to become more important than the reading itself.
1. Talmud
The word Talmud means the ‘instruction’ or the ‘teaching’. The body of Hebrew law is based upon the Torah. The Talmud represent the teachings and opinions of the Rabbinic scholars from the end of the Babylonian captivity, 300-400 BC.
The Mishnah is an ‘explanation’ or ‘teaching’. This was an explanation, the teachings, traditions, Oral law, and the second law. What can you do and cannot do on the Sabbath day? Traditional oral law. Traditions of the elders. Written in AD 200 in Rabbinical Hebrew and regarded as the second law. All quotes support the Masoretic Text.
2. Septuagint
The Hebrew Pentateuch was translated into Greek in 280 BC. The remainder of the Old Testament would have been translated after 280 BC. The Septuagint was for only the Torah, not the whole Bible. In the Alexandrian synagogues, a simple translation would be needed, which is the origin of the Septuagint. This eventually would be written down and approved.
The Septuagint is the first five books of the Old Testament. In 100 BC, the Alexandrian people approved the book, but the remainder of the Old Testament was never given approval by the Jewish authorities. The rest of the Old Testament is translated word-for-word. Job and Daniel are very free and not rigid.
The Greek version of Jeremiah is shorter than the Hebrew version by over two thousand words. The order of the text differs. The Septuagint is a collection of versions of the Old Testament. This became the early Christian Bible. The Jews lost interest in the Septuagint because the Christians were using the writings of the Septuagint against them.
Where the Old Testament text is established by the reliability of the processes by which it was transmitted, and later confirmed by the Qumran documents, that of the New Testament is dependent upon the large number of manuscripts in existence today.
Though the text of the Old Testament is represented in only a small handful of complete manuscripts, that of the New Testament is to be found in more than twenty-four thousand manuscript portions of the New Testament.
1. The New Testament message was not transmitted orally, a mode of communication that is easier to distort. Instead, it was handed down in writing. Second, there was not a singular line of transmission, that is, it was not the case that a single individual passed the message to another individual who passed the message to a different individual and so on.
Rather, there were many lines as one letter was copied multiple times and copies were copied multiple times, eventually resulting in a host of manuscript copies. Third, historians do not rely on the last person in line but look for earlier sources much closer to the original. Finally, original letters could be consulted, even after several generations of copies.
A quick look at the transmission of not only the New Testament but of all ancient documents reveals the misconceptions in the telephone game analogy. A more accurate picture of the transmission of the New Testament documents is captured by Aunt Sally’s Secret Sauce illustration, where there are multiple lines of transmission, including multiple copies in each line. As ancient documents are passed along in this manner, historians ask two primary questions to determine a text’s reliability:
How many manuscript copies do we have? How close in time are the manuscript copies to the original? Answering these two questions for the New Testament demonstrates it is the most reliable ancient document, hands down. Let’s do a very brief survey of the evidence. The number of manuscript copies of the New Testament is mind-boggling.
In Greek alone, we have more than five thousand eight hundred copies, consisting of 2.5 million pages of text. In addition, we have more than ten thousand Latin manuscript copies. If that’s not enough, there are more than five thousand manuscripts in other languages, such as Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. In total, there are more than twenty thousand handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament in various languages.
To top it off, even if all manuscript evidence for the New Testament disappeared, we could still reconstruct almost the entire twenty-seven New Testament books from more than one million quotations of the early church fathers. Clearly, we have all the manuscript copies we need to ensure that what we have is what was written.
But the question of the distance of time from the original to the copy remains. Again, the facts are on the Bible’s side. We have a dozen manuscripts from the second century, sixty-four manuscripts from the third century and forty-eight from the fourth century.
That’s one hundred and twenty-four total manuscripts within three hundred years of the composition of the New Testament. There is not a single Greek or Latin manuscript from the ancient world that comes close to the early dating of these New Testament manuscripts.
Again, the wealth of early manuscripts ensures that what we have is what was written. That’s why the majority of biblical scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, conclude that the original words of the New Testament can be known by us with more certainty than those of any other text from all of antiquity.
Fingerprints are one of the best forms of evidence. If a detective finds fingerprints at a crime scene, he has a vital clue to help identify the perpetrator. When it comes to the Bible, we also have a mystery to solve: Who is the author?
I’m not talking about the human authors. We want to know if there’s an Author behind those authors, if the Bible is indeed the ‘Word of God’ as Christians claim. And when we look carefully, we discover divine fingerprints all over this unique book.
1. The Bible contains fulfilled prophecies. Specific events are foretold with great detail many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. There are approximately two thousand five hundred prophecies in the Bible, about two thousand that have been fulfilled.
For example, in Micah 5:2, the prophet identifies the city of Bethlehem as the Messiah’s birthplace approximately seven years before the event. The prophet Zechariah predicted Jesus would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, Zechariah 11:12-13. What is the best explanation for such supernatural predictions? A supernatural ‘Predictor.’
A second divine fingerprint is the Bible’s unity despite its radically diverse origins. There were forty diverse authors with diverse backgrounds. There were diverse writing conditions, from palaces to the wilderness. There were diverse genres of writing, from poetry to history. There were diverse topics, often controversial topics. And it’s all written over fifteen hundred years.
However, there is profound unity, as God’s story unfolds from Genesis to Revelation. There is unbelievable factual and theological agreement throughout the Bible. Again, what best explains this? A single Divine Author, working through human authors.
3. The Bible has had a supernatural impact on individual lives, as well as on the world. There have been countless individuals transformed by the Bible, and that impact transcends all economic, ethnic and geographical boundaries.
Furthermore, the Bible’s impact on Western culture is immeasurable. Its influence can be seen throughout the ages in the arts, in literature, in education, in law, in science, in medicine, and on and on. Only a supernatural book with a supernatural author could bring about such a supernatural impact on individuals and the world.
Indeed, the Bible is no ordinary book. It contains the very words of God. And now that you’ve seen evidence of its divine origins, you’re confronted with another question: what are you going to do with this book?