Textual Criticism: Confidence in the Bible

Confidence in the Bible

In the acknowledgements, Ehrman dedicated Misquoting Jesus to Bruce M. Metzger, his "Doctor-Father." In the introduction he explained Metzger as "the world's leading expert in the field, a scholar named Bruce M. Metzger who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary." (1)

Lee Strobel interviewed him when it came to the question, was Jesus's biographies accurately preserved for us? Not surprisingly, Metzger wasn't aware of any threatened doctrine (and if there were he would know)(2). At the end, Metzger said that what heavy scholarship did to his faith was "built it. I've asked questions all my life, I've dug into the text, I've studied this thoroughly, and today I know with confidence that my trust in Jesus has been well placed."

Metzger took a second to look at Strobel's face, and then emphasized, "Very well placed." (3)

In the next chapter was Edwin M. Yamauchi, a razor-sharp intelligent scholar. Strobel reported how after being asked how his journey of about forty years of scholarship in archeology and ancient history had affected his faith, Yamauchi took a second to pause and look at the floor. But then he lifted his head and locked eyes with Strobel, saying in a sincere and firm voice:

"There's no question--my studies have greatly strengthened and enriched my spiritual life. They have given me a better understanding of the culture and historical context of the events.

"This doesn't mean that I don't recognize there are some issues that still remain; within his lifetime we will not have full knowledge. But these issues don't even begin to undermine my faith in the essential trustworthiness of the gospels and the rest of the New Testament." (4)

I realized, when journaling about this, that all Christians who study evidence and have a good knowledge, from textual to archeological evidence, can and should respond like them. See, the book of Mormon has a test which Latter-Day Sainthood theology teaches as a proof for its inspiration. If you read the book, having prayed over it for God to show you the truth and with an open mind, He will show you it's true, it is said. This can affect their witness, even bringing them to the brink of tears with dedication for the LDS church. 

But people's feelings can be a poor basis for reason. They can be manipulated. Once, when I was about 16, I started to take the test and read 1 Nephi. When I was going through it I started to think, who could come up with such awful lies about the church? For in there was the Christian church messing up their scriptures. 

But I realized I had no other feelings than when I read portions of the Quran in Mark A. Gabriel's Jesus and Muhammad. I mean, right now I'm overwhelmed with this big blog project. I have received no formal education about this at all. I say 95% of my learning is just accredited to me (Jesus's help goes without saying), with the other 5% including people who only referred books for me to learn from myself! I realize just now I should add in my two and a half years with Awana. The leaders were interested in apologetics, and that atmosphere was the only one I really liked, but it wasn't the place for me to study and come up with my arguments. So it's really probably like 99% me and Jesus holding me in existence. 

Anyway, I explain that to say I can feel very unstructured, and when it comes down to it am an emotional, young person all alone with a changing brain. I was not in a reliable state to take the test of the book of Mormon. But it's not just, like, puberty that affects people. Feelings often change all the time (some people even have conversion disorders). We all know someone, usually stereotyped as an older woman, who will get all unreasonably hyped up over something. What about a person seeking, hoping for answers? The point is feelings can be a very tough basis for indicating truth. Technically feelings don't even reveal truth, one has to reason about why they have certain feelings. So I don't advocate feelings as a proof of Christianity or any religion.

Moreover, "Many Muslim apologists point to the transformation of lives and culture by the Qur'an as a proof of its divine origin. But critics point out that this is an insufficient test for its alleged heavenly origin." (5)

Also in their response, Geisler and Saleeb quote William Paley's famous Evidences of Christianity(6). He presented the situation with Christ:

"We compare Jesus, without force, without power, without support, without one external circumstance of attraction or influence, prevailing against the prejudices, the learning, the hierarchy, of his country, against the ancient religious opinions, the pompous religious rites, the philosophy, the wisdom, the authority, of the Roman empire, the most polished and enlightened period of its existence.. [the rapid spread and conquest of Islam is something] in which we can see nothing that resembles the causes by which the establishment of Christianity was effected."

Does the popularity of Christianity, changing so many lives the church grew to be the "dominant spiritual force in the Roman world" (6) before they got power by Constantine in A.D. 313, prove the copies we have of scripture before then are right when they contradict LDS theology? And we have the NT at least complete in its message by about A.D. 325. We know beyond a shadow of any rational doubt what the original text looked like, especially when it comes to later centuries. 

If the message really is corrupt, the evidence of manuscript tradition is going to have to be overturned by something else, and why God didn't leave direct evidence of this claim. Next post I show that even skeptics like Ehrman know we can be confident we piece together the original text.

However, I must keep the reader from an illusion. In their book on answering Islam, expert Christian apologist and former Muslim Abdul Saleeb include the fact that the Qur'an is a very neatly preserved book (not perfectly, but very well-evidenced)(7). This is surely a fact, because Geisler is an expert Christian and Saleeb was Islamic for a time. Of course, they aren't going to argue that we can't get back to the original of the Qur'anic text, at least very significantly. (We can get back to what was written down, the Uthmanic recension, but this isn't exactly the way it was from Muhammad, they say.)  Yet that is no proof of inspiration. In fact, I remember reading something that said while the evidence for the NT can't be overstated, a significant amount of manuscripts found are in places where they most likely would be preserved, or at least very well could be. I guess when you have such important books, people go about making a lot of copies. Maybe more than they would for histories or non-religious books. While evidence fits God preserving His word the Bible, the manuscriptural evidence is not proof.

Citations:

1. Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (HarperCollins: New York, NY. 2005), 7.

2. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 68.

3. Ibid., 75, emphasis original.

4. Ibid., 96.

5. Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, The Crescent in Light of the Cross (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI. 2002), 206. 

6. Ibid., 208. They cite William Paley, Evidences of Christianity (London: 1851), 257. 

7. Ibid., 196, 238.