There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning
that light, so that through him all might believe. He
himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The
true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in
the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not
recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive
him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed
in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children
born not of natural descent, nor of human or a husband’s will, but born of God.
(John 1:6-13)
There
are some who believe that neither Jesus nor his immediate disciples believed
that Jesus was and is God. Self-proclaimed “Higher Critics” claim that the
Bible was “manufactured” in the Third or Fourth Century A.D., written by men
who wanted to protect the idea of Pater familiaris and otherwise cement their
own power. Part of their evidence for this is the fact that we don’t have the
original manuscripts or even earliest manuscripts.
What we have are 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek New Testament manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and 9,300 manuscripts written in other languages. This means that we can follow the development of the text back, tracing its genealogy back to the earliest copies. Textual Analysis involves looking at the variations among the texts with the intent to discern as closely as possible what the original texts said.
According to Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of South Carolina and noted Higher Critic, there are 130,000 words in the New Testament, and more than 400,000 differences among the 25,100 manuscripts. That sounds dramatic until one considers that he counts each time a word changes spelling as a significant difference. In other words, if a copyist spelled Timothy, “Timoty,” that would account for as many as twenty-eight variations. And if whether the person copying that text spelled it “Timoty” or “Timothy,” that would count as another twenty-eight variations because it still varies from yet another text.
I don’t have my books here to look up all the statistics. According to Professor Darrell Bock and others who reject so-called Higher Criticism, the variations fall into several categories, including such insignificant variations as spellings and significant variations that actually change the meaning of the text.. In nearly every case, those differences do not change any of the major doctrines of Christianity, and most study Bibles will note, for example, passages that are not found in the earliest or most reliable manuscripts for the reader. (For example, Mark 16:9-20.) One key thing to keep in mind is that in all the cases, we are brought down to a limited number of possibilities. The original might have said A, B, or C, but it clearly did not say L, P, or W.
The geographic spread of the manuscripts is also significant. It took time for the text to proliferate the ancient world and to be translated into languages like Coptic. We have fragments of the book of John (including the passage above and yesterday’s passage) dated as early as 125 A.D., meaning that the original must have been written earlier than that. I submit that such puts to rest the nonsense that Jesus was not considered to be God by his disciples, even during the First and early Second Centuries. [1]
What we have are 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek New Testament manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and 9,300 manuscripts written in other languages. This means that we can follow the development of the text back, tracing its genealogy back to the earliest copies. Textual Analysis involves looking at the variations among the texts with the intent to discern as closely as possible what the original texts said.
According to Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of South Carolina and noted Higher Critic, there are 130,000 words in the New Testament, and more than 400,000 differences among the 25,100 manuscripts. That sounds dramatic until one considers that he counts each time a word changes spelling as a significant difference. In other words, if a copyist spelled Timothy, “Timoty,” that would account for as many as twenty-eight variations. And if whether the person copying that text spelled it “Timoty” or “Timothy,” that would count as another twenty-eight variations because it still varies from yet another text.
I don’t have my books here to look up all the statistics. According to Professor Darrell Bock and others who reject so-called Higher Criticism, the variations fall into several categories, including such insignificant variations as spellings and significant variations that actually change the meaning of the text.. In nearly every case, those differences do not change any of the major doctrines of Christianity, and most study Bibles will note, for example, passages that are not found in the earliest or most reliable manuscripts for the reader. (For example, Mark 16:9-20.) One key thing to keep in mind is that in all the cases, we are brought down to a limited number of possibilities. The original might have said A, B, or C, but it clearly did not say L, P, or W.
The geographic spread of the manuscripts is also significant. It took time for the text to proliferate the ancient world and to be translated into languages like Coptic. We have fragments of the book of John (including the passage above and yesterday’s passage) dated as early as 125 A.D., meaning that the original must have been written earlier than that. I submit that such puts to rest the nonsense that Jesus was not considered to be God by his disciples, even during the First and early Second Centuries. [1]
[1] If
you care to see a list of the textual variations for the book of John, go here
(http://www.dtl.org/alt/variants/john.htm)
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