It’s common to hear people complain that the Bible has been changed many times over the years, so that it’s unreliable. This is the way many people attempt to dismiss all that Scripture tells us, and sometimes to shut us up. The temptation for the undetermined believer is to then be silenced, or to abandon the testimony of Scripture and go it alone. I’m hoping to address this matter in coming weeks, and as a down-payment of this commitment, I’ll summarize a recent video.
WALLACE vs EHRMAN
Brandon McGuire hosts a YouTube channel called “Daily Dose of Wisdom” and in a recent episode Brandon shared part of a lecture from Dr. Daniel Wallace, a leading expert on the New Testament manuscripts. Here Wallace specifically addresses the claim of well-known scholar Barth Ehrman, who regularly calls into question the veracity of the Scriptures.
VARIANTS
Ehrman, Wallace tells us, likes to assert that there are so many variants between different New Testament manuscripts that we really can’t consider the Bible to be the word of God. He’s fond of intimidating people by saying that there are more variants than there are words in the New Testament. To put it another way, the differences between manuscripts are so many that your Bible obviously can’t be seen as divinely inspired.
Wallace brings light to the subject. While it’s true that there are many thousands of variants between manuscripts, over 99 percent – almost all variants – make no change whatsoever in the meaning of the text. Many variants are simple spelling differences. Wallace tells us in one example that John the apostle spelled one word three different ways within eight verses, in the same manuscript.
JOHN LOVES MARY
Wallace then goes on to demonstrate that in Greek as used in the New Testament words can be used in many different ways to express exactly the same meaning. He makes an example of the English phrase, “John loves Mary”, and expanding on the varieties of expression, declares that it can be stated in literally hundreds of ways without losing the exact same meaning. Wallace concludes that the number of textual variants is meaningless. “What counts is the nature of these variants”, he says.
VARIANTS WHICH DO ALTER MEANING
If we consider variants in New Testament manuscripts which actually change meaning to any degree whatsoever, the number of them is less than a fifth of one percent of the total, or < 0.02%, a very small fraction. Wallace gives an example of one of these. Mark 9:29, in which Jesus is telling his disciples how to deal with a certain type of demon, states in some manuscripts that, “This kind can come out only by prayer”. Others continue this sentence with the words, “and fasting”. Such differences are hardly powerful enough to make you dismiss the authority of Scripture, unless you already have a mind to do that.
SUSPECT PASSAGES?
Wallace considers the question, “What theological beliefs depend on textually suspect passages?” In answering he mentions Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, in which Brown, who influenced so many of those open to influence, asserts that Constantine, at the first council of Nicea in 325 AD, forced upon the Church the notion that Jesus Christ was God made flesh. Before that, Brown claimed, Christians believed no such thing.
Wallace draws our attention to manuscript P66, dated to 200 AD. The first verse of John’s gospel in this manuscript states the following:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.
This manuscript was written 125 years before the Council of Nicea, and remarkably, says Wallace, makes the same statement in this verse as all other manuscripts, no matter the date or the language. Here, says Wallace, Jesus is unequivocally called “God”.
NO MAJOR DOCTRINES IN QUESTION
New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace goes on:
“The same can be said for the major passages that affirm Christ’s deity, his virgin birth, his sinlessness, his death on a cross, his resurrection and his coming again. Nowhere are these truths denied by textual variants”.
Neither are any other essential doctrines altered by variants, says Wallace.
HAS THE CHRISTIAN FAITH BEEN ALTERED?
Another question considered by Wallace is this: “Has the essence of the Christan faith been corrupted by the scribes?”
Wallace answers in part by quoting Sir Frederick Kenyan, a paleographer and principal librarian at the British Museum, who affirmed eighty years ago that related discoveries strengthen the authority of the Scriptures, “… and our conviction that we have in our hands in substantial integrity the veritable word of God”.
Wallace further points to Ehrman’s lack of candor in his writings, along with those who take them as gospel. However, even Ehrman, in his book, “Misquoting Jesus”, finds enough confidence in Scripture to state the following (on page 252 of the paperback version):
“Essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants”.
Wallace’s full lecture can be heard on this YouTube video:
HOW BADLY WAS THE NEW TESTAMENT CORRUPTED? DAVID WALLACE AT SDSU
The video I’ve summarized is this one:
HAS THE BIBLE BEEN CORRUPTED? (SCHOLAR GIVES DETAILED ANSWER!)
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 