Preservation of New Testament text and the New Testament canon

• Bruce is a professor emeritus of New Testament at the Princeton Theological Seminary for 46 years
• He is also the chairman of the New Revised Standrad Version bible translation committee.
• Bruce is foremost expert on the origins of the New Testament
• Here is a page with Bruce's picture: click here

• The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450: click here
• Before 1450, hand writing was the only way to preserve textual information.

• Very ancient times:
  • Stone tablets (e.g., the famous Rosetta Stone):

    

  • Clay tablets:

    

• More recent times (around Jesus' life time)
  • Copper Scroll: click here

  • Papyrus Scroll: click here

    Here is a page from Paul's letter to the Romans from the Chester Beatty museum:

    

  • Animal skin (mostly sheep skin)

  The New Testament were written on Papyrus scrolls.

• Through usage, papyrus scrolls wears out....

• From time to time, the documents of value must be reproduced by copying by hand !!!

• Errors can be introduced by the copying process:
  • Omission Error: Word(s) or an entire sentence can be omitted (deleted)

    Matthew 5:22, NIV (using a corrupted version of ancient text) But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement Matthew 5:22, King James (using the "Received Text"): But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgement.

  • Insertion Error: Word(s) can be inserted

  • Copy Error: Word(s) can be changed

    2 Chronicle 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem. And he did the evil in the sight of Jehovah. 2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

• Clearly, the less time there is between a surviving copy and writing of the original copy, the more accurate the content will be - because the number of times that you need to make copies is reduced.

• So how does the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament texts compares against other documents that were written around the same time that the New Testament was written (we use these documents to give a fair comparison) ???

  It is also be interesting to compare it with documents written outside the above period - also for comparison reasons.

• Gospel of Matthew:
  1. Magdalen papyrus - fragment (dated around 150 A.D., but a more recent dating place it possible around 50 A.D. !)

     

  2. Chester Beatty paparys P45 - fragment (dated 200-250 A.D.)

     

  3. Codex Vaticanus: 4th century manuscript (codex) of the Old and New testament. This bible was brought to the Vatican from Constantinope as a gift to the pope in the 14th century. Old Testament missing Gen 1-46:28, part of 2-Kings, Psalms 105-137. New Testament missing Hebrews 9:14, I and II Timothy, Titus and Revelation.

     

     Magnified view:

     

  4. Codex Sinaiticus: mid 4th century manuscript (codex) (British Museum)

     

• Gospel of Mark:
  1. Qumran cave 7 (7q5 is Mark 6:52-53) - (dated around 50 A.D. !) - this may be possibly be the new earliest surviving New Testament manuscript: click here

     

  2. Codex Vaticanus: 4th century manuscript

  3. Codex Sinaiticus: mid 4th century manuscript (codex) (British Museum)

• Gospel of Luke:
  1. Codex Vaticanus: 4th century manuscript

  2. Codex Sinaiticus: mid 4th century manuscript (codex) (British Museum)

• Gospel of John:
  1. Rylands papyrus: (dated around 125 A.D. - currently considered to be the earliest surviving piece of New Testament text. Contains John 18:31-33 and John 18:37-38)

     

  2. Brodmer papyrus: (dated around 200 A.D.)

     

  3. Codex Vaticanus: 4th century manuscript

  4. Codex Sinaiticus: mid 4th century manuscript (codex) (British Museum)

New Testament texts

Work	Author's Lifespan	Date of Events	Earliest surviving fragment	Time between fragment and event
Matthew	0-70?	0 - 30 A.D.	~150 A.D.	< 130 years
Mark	15-90?	27 - 30 A.D.	~50 A.D.	< 20 years !!!
Luke	10-80?	0 - 30 A.D.	~400 A.D.	< 400 years
John	10-100?	27 - 30 A.D.	~130 A.D.	< 100 years

Non-New Testament Contempory texts

Work	Author's Lifespan	Date of Events	Earliest surviving copy	Time between copy and event
Josephus (War)	37-100	200 BC - 70 A.D.	~1050 A.D.	> 1000 years
Jesephus (Antiquities)	37-100	200 BC - 65 A.D.	~1050 A.D.	> 1000 years
Pliny's letters	60-115	97 - 112 A.D.	~850 A.D.	> 700 years

Overview:

Conclusion:

1. Time lapsed between the original copy and the earliest surviving copy of New Testament texts are far shorter than any contempory non-Christian writings

2. As a result, we can conclude that the information recorded from the surviving copies of the New Testament is at least as good if not better than ANY ancient document

   In other words, if anyone would conclude that the NT text that we have right now cannot be trusted, that person MUST - by the virtual of logic - ALSO REJECT everything that is taught about Romans and Greeks --- because the documents used in teaching Roman and Greek cilivization are less trustworthy than the New Testament text.

• A new copy of a biblical book is made when the one being used is in decay.

• People in the old days treasured their (handwritten) books and the copists make every effort to copy the text without any errors.

  They even developed a system to check errors by recording the frequency of many things along with the text - e.g., word count, letter count, etc.

• Result: copies are usually very accurate

• The following anecdote illustrates just how precise the copying process was in the ancient days:
  • Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the earliest surviving copy of the book of Isaiah was the Masoretic text dated around 900 A.D.

  • The Qumran scrolls Q and Qa contains the complete book of Isaiah and are dated around 100 B.C. - about 1000 years earlier:

    

  • Remarkably: the Dead Sea scroll's copy of Isaiah follows exactly the Masoretic text - with only rare minor exceptions: click here and click here

    Think about it: after 1000 years of copying, the content of the book of Isaiah is virtually unchanged - so the copiers must have paid very special attention to copying the text accurately.

  • Here is a webpage containing Dead Sea scroll's Isaiah translation: click here

• The Bible does contain errors - but only COPYING Errors

• Example:
  • 2 Kings 24:8 reads: "Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem 3 months."

  • 2 Chronicles 36:9 reads: "Jehoiachin was 8 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 3 months and 10 days."

  Some copist made a mistake when he wrote 2 Chronicles.

• In my research so far, I have not found any NO FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES (errors) between any existing copies of the Bible (copy errors do not usually result in fundamental errors, e.g., all surviving copies of the Bible said that Jesus is the Son of God... (that is, if you do not include the apocryphal writings....))

• If you think that the New Testament was handed down to us by the disciples of Jesus, think again....

  The disciples were busy preaching the gospel (good news) and escaping Jewish and Roman persecution; most of them don't have the time to write book (but only letters)

• If you think that at the time when they compile the New Testament, the only books about Jesus were those in the present New testament... think again.... here is a list of a whole bunch of "Apocryphal" New Testament writings: click here

  These Apocryphal writing have been excluded from the Bible.... why ?

  I have in fact talked about one of them before: the Gospel of Thomas ( click here ). The reason is this "gospel" was not included because the Church Fathers in those days believe that this writing is not "correct"...

  Let us look at this decision process more closely and see if it was fair or not

• the canon is a list of authoritative books

• The need for a canon:
  The Christian faith spread rapidly and when Constantine (through a dream) established Christianity as the official faith in the Roman Empire, Christianity attracted many lesser nobel people into the Christian faith

  Some of these "less nobel people" have very different ideas that what the Bible preaches.... (you can see them nowadays too - gay bishops for example).

• When did they start working on the canon:
  Around 350 AD, it was clear to the Church leaders that they must establish a canon of books to be the "New Testament" to stop the flood of "new-age" (gnotics) materials

• Who decided what books to include in the canon:
  A list of church fathers who took part in the decision process of the canon: click here

• How did they decided what books to include in the canon:

  The principles on which they based their decisions:

  • Author of a book of the Gospel must either know Jesus personally (a disciple) or must be a companion of a desciple.

  • The book was used throughout the christian community at that time (e.g., if some writing of an early Church father quotes some verses from a certain book, that book is considered used.)

• Their verdicts on the christian writing that were known at that time:
  • click here

    Note: take some time to examine this table. It shows that the Church leaders were very careful in deciding what material to admit. They only admitted material that were - at that time - used by the a large number of churches. Obscure materials are excluded.

  Summary:

  • 20 of the 27 books of te]he New Testament were included in the canon immediately - from Matthew through Philemon, plus 1 Peter and 1 John.

  • The other 7 were questioned for a time by some church leaders and were added into the New Testament later

• The content of the New Testament that has been passed down through history is:
  • highly reliable (the canon makers made sure that only material that were used by many churches at that time was included in the New Testament)

  • highly accurate - earliest surviving copies are only a few hundred years remote from the original event. Furthermore, we have a large number of later manuscripts that testify on the accuracy of the scripture.

• According to the scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix click here :

  The New Testament has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity (i.e., there are many more copies of the New Testament from ancient times in the world today), but the New Testament has also survived in a purer form than any other book - a form that is 99.5% pure (i.e., 99.5% of the New Testament that we read today is exactly the same as the orignal copy that was written almost 2000 years ago !!!)