VIDEO: Is the Bible Reliable? (Guest Post)

August 13, 2012 Posted by Sean OBrien Textual Criticism 5 Comments

“You can’t really believe in the Bible, right? It’s been translated so many times! Not to mention the thousands of errors and the fact that the Council of Nicaea totally suppressed stuff they didn’t like. There’s just no way you can know what it originally said.”

If you’re strangely inclined to trust the Bible, you may have heard some arguments like that before. But how to respond? Thanks to the dedicated research of a host of biblical scholars, it has become fairly easy to demonstrate that those assertions simply don’t hold water. Check out my video below, and then consider the next question: if the Bible can be shown to be reliable, how can we show that it’s also true?

Sean O’Brien earned a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Utah and has been working in Christian television for five years. He is a husband and father of three.

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About Sean OBrien

Sean is a guest contributor to The Two Cities.

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Jeremiah
· Reply

August 14, 2012 at 5:20 AM

A few points/questions: 1. What on earth is “40 lines of textual corruption” supposed to mean? 2. No doctrine is challenged by variants? What about the snake handlers? 3. Neither 2 Peter 3:15-16 nor 1 Timothy 5:8 indicate that books from our New Testament are scripture in the way the Old Testament was. Are you perhaps referring to the supposed quotation of Luke in the passage? 4. They must not have been too good at spotting pseudepigraphal texts since 2 Peter and 1 Timothy made it. 5. How is it useful to argue that textual criticism gives us the authorial text if no one can agree on what is original?
- John Anthony Dunne
  · Reply
  
  August 14, 2012 at 6:10 AM
  
  JB I have the same Q as (1). As for (2) I could possibly add John 1.18, though your example from the end of Mark is not a “major doctrine.” I would agree with (3). As for (4) that is disputable and begs the question. As for (5) I’d say it can give us a degree of confidence in the text that has been handed down to us.
- Sean
  · Reply
  
  August 14, 2012 at 1:08 PM
  
  1. 40 lines, or sentences, that are in doubt. (Geisler, Norman L., Nix, William E., A General Introduction to the Bible p 475) 2. I said “unresolved variant”. Its pretty well accepted that that passage in Mark is not original. 3. I’m not convinced the apostles or early church would share your distinction that there can be such a thing as a scripture in a different ‘way’. Yes, quote from Luke. 4. That’s not certain. 5. We don’t need some unanimous consensus from every believing or unbelieving critic who offers up an opinion on what’s original. Each will take the evidence how they will, and this is what I am convinced of. Its not about concrete proof, but a reasonable trust.
  - Jeremiah
    · Reply
    
    August 14, 2012 at 3:42 PM
    
    1. I still don’t know what that is supposed to mean or how Geisler came up with this number. Did someone count all the D’s in the UBS4 or something? Otherwise that makes no sense. There are far more than 40 sentences in the text which are regularly disputed by scholars. There are probably 40 in the book of Galatians alone, so I’m going to have to call this one deceptive. 2. I’ve heard this point a lot over the years, but it doesn’t really add up for me. To give a small example, consider the variant at Mark 1:1. The presence or absence of “Son of God” has been a source of considerable debate, and it definitely impacts how we view the Christology of Mark’s Gospel. Or to take the perennial example of Romans 5:1, is it not theological significant whether we already have peace with God or whether we are commanded to become at peace with God? No major doctrine may be at stake, but how we understand those doctrines is at stake in almost every important variant. 3. You get these absurd claims from apologists that essentially require Paul to consider his own letters on par with Torah. There is no such indication in any letter we know for sure came from Paul. The letters were kept and read in church, but that doesn’t make them the same as the Law, the Prophets, and the writings. I think we are right to be suspicious of such claims when the earliest Christian documents outside of the New Testament fail to call any letter from the New Testament scripture. 1 Clement exhorts the Corinthians to take up the letter of Paul, but when references are made to it, they lack the formula used to introduce quotations from the LXX. That is rather telling, I think. You don’t get an undisputed sense of the books of the NT being scripture until the latter half of the second when we get comments in the Canon Muratori about the universal scope of Paul’s letters and Irenaeus’ (often silly) arguments about why there are only four trustworthy Gospels. In regards to the supposed quotation from Luke, let me just say that if it is a quote from Luke’s gospel, then you can be absolutely certain that Paul did not write that letter. I don’t think that is a position you want to take. Given that virtually everyone would date Luke’s gospel to after the lifetime of Paul (an especially reasonable assertion since the two volume work Luke-Acts ends with Paul’s impending death), I think if I were you, I’d argue this to be a logia that found its way into a Gospel. 4. I will admit to being a provocateur at this point. Let me state it a different way. Given that proto-orthodox texts from the second century preserve material that we don’t consider canonical, is it fair to pretend that the process of canonization is as even and measured as you imply? 5. Let’s ignore the unbelievers. Even within the community of people who claim Jesus as Lord (that would include me by the way), there is significant debate about what constitutes the earliest text. Take Dan Wallace, text critic and inerrantist extraordinaire, who thinks Jesus was angry at Mark 1:41 even though not many of his Christian brethren do. 6. I’m adding a sixth point here. Is it useful to tell people how many manuscripts there are total (not sure where you came up with 27000) when even many Christian scholars acknowledge that a huge percentage of them (something like 85% of the Greek) are Byzantine and therefore not useful for establishing the original text, and of the remaining manuscripts only a small fraction are from before the 5th century?
    
    P.S. I typed this over a long period of time interspersed with household duties and child care, so there may be some typos and dropped thoughts.
    - Sean
      · Reply
      
      August 14, 2012 at 5:13 PM
      
      1. I think its in reference to entire lines, like at the end of Mark. 2. Since there are three more places where Jesus is the Son of God in Mark (3:11, 5:7, 15:39), I don’t think it affects his Christology. Maybe Rom 5:1 could affect your doctrinal understanding, but only if you’re convinced its unresolved. I’ve read the arguments and have no problem with it. 3. Writings are either inspired by God and authoritative or they are not, degrees of scripture don’t really make sense from that point of view. Silence on that issue could also mean the church didn’t even think a distinction was necessary at that point. Absolutely certain Paul didn’t write it? Acts ends with him arriving in Rome about 60, but he wasn’t executed until perhaps 65-68 (from what I understand). Luke could have been written years before Acts. The fact that Acts doesn’t mention his death is more telling. 4. Based on the two requirements I gave about how they picked the books, I think there’s really no reason for debate on the canon, its clear what belongs and what doesn’t. Sure there were fights and discussion about it, but hindsight being 20/20, I don’t think it could have come together any differently. 5. Remove ‘unbelievers’ from my original sentence and I still stand by it. 6. I didn’t make those distinctions for the non-biblical manuscripts I used to compare, so I didn’t think it necessary. But even if you took only the stuff from the 5th century and applied the same standards to other ancient works, its manuscript attestation is still unprecedented, which is the whole point anyway. Not everyone thinks the Byzantine stuff is useless.

VIDEO: Is the Bible Reliable? (Guest Post)

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VIDEO: Is the Bible Reliable? (Guest Post)

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