WHY NO CLAIMED CONTRADICTION OR SCRIBAL ERROR IN THE BIBLE MATTERS
I challenge Muslims who daily trot out their unsupported claims of Bible corruption to bring just one that puts any core doctrine of the Christian faith in doubt.
Here are three reasons Christians should not be troubled by textual variants.
1). No theologies or denominations claim a particular text.
Yes, there are differences between Bible manuscripts, and from a certain perspective, they can look alarmingly serious. For example, those manuscripts (and resultant Bible translations) which “omit” 1 John 5:7 seem to some readers to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity.
But there’s a simple way to demonstrate how trivial the differences between ancient manuscripts really are in terms of their effect on the body of truth that the Bible reveals. We have lots of doctrinal differences within Christianity, right? But there are no Calvinist manuscripts/versions, Armenian manuscripts/versions, Pentecostal, Reformed, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Congregationalist, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Integrationist, Cessationist, or Continuationist manuscripts/versions.
Take any systematic theology textbook you want, and the set of proof texts offered for particular points is for all practical purposes version-independent – the authors don’t care which translation you use, so they just give references. The difference in doctrinal character among the various manuscripts and translations is very close to zero. The “omission” of 1 John 5:7 (in the judgment of almost all textual scholars, those words were actually added very late in the manuscript tradition, not appearing in Erasmus’ Greek New Testament until its third edition) has not caused a single Christian denomination to descend into Unitarianism – because the New Testament elsewhere still clearly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, none of the Greek writings of the early church ever mentions this passage – even in their discussions of the Trinity! If the church fathers recognized and formulated that vital doctrine without referring to this verse, then its presence in the New Testament of their day is highly unlikely, and certainly its absence from a Bible text or translation today constitutes no defect in doctrinal character.
If the differences between Greek texts were doctrinally significant, you would expect theologies and tribal groups to grow out of distinctive readings of those texts—you would expect certain sects to adopt Greek texts as theological banners. But compare the positions of majority text advocates, Textus Receptus devotees, and eclectic text users on the core doctrines of the historic creeds and you’d be hard pressed to find a doctrinal difference for which they claim support in their favoured New Testament text as opposed to others.
In short different Christian groups bring somewhat different lenses to the Bible, but it’s the lenses that differ, not the Bible.
2). Even if we had absolutely perfect copies, the work of interpretation would still be required.
If we had the originals themselves – the very pieces of papyrus Paul used to compose Romans and Ephesians, for example – or if no copies contained any textual variants at all, unlocking the Bible’s power would still require us to do exactly what we do now: search for Scripture’s wisdom as for hidden treasure, interpreting carefully, with honest exegesis comparing Scripture with Scripture, and making relevant personal application. Nothing would change except that we would be able to dismiss from our minds the possibility that the text we’re working with may not preserve God’s exact inspired words with complete perfection. But my own weaknesses as a reader expose me to far more significant misunderstanding than the manuscript differences do, so by far the greatest problems that God must overcome in order to talk to me are within me, not within the transmission process.
3). Pristine perfection is a property of the next world, not (generally) of this one
It’s true that the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts we have can’t all preserve the exact wording of the originals (and by definition, a translation cannot do so). The fact that no two manuscripts are identical down to the jots and tittles means that at most only one manuscript of any given Bible book can be “perfect.” All manuscripts of any size (some are less than a page) contain some obvious scribal slips, so it seems clear that God hasn’t given us access to the one “perfect” manuscript of any book of the Bible.
The very strong pattern God has ordained is that pristine perfection is a property of the next world, not this one, so we just need to conform our expectations to that reality. The textual imperfections that generate so much angst and controversy are well within an easily tolerable range, and, while of course we must make the wisest choices we can, we can be completely at ease that, with the exception of extreme paraphrases or Bibles translated by cult groups, any Bible we may use is fully trustworthy as God’s Word. We need not fear that some of these Bibles are the devil’s. Where does Scripture warn us to ferret out and avoid the devil’s Bibles? It seems that, in his sovereignty, God has arranged that the very few Bibles possibly worthy of that categorization are obviously so, not subtly so.
At the end of the day we can safely conclude that the Bible IS the Inerrant Word of God (in the original writings). This statement is supported by the following:
• There is more manuscript evidence for the Bible than ANY other ancient document in history – more than 24,000 New Testament manuscript copies (fragments and full manuscripts combined), with the closest fragment copy being within 30 years of the original and a near complete copy between 100 -150 years after the original. Compare that to the next closest ancient document in history – The Iliad by Homer. There are approximately 643 manuscript copies with the closest copy to the original being 500 years old.
• With the exception of approximately 11 verses, the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from early church writers.
• No charge of a contradiction in the Bible has ever been sustained (this refers to EVERY apparent or alleged contradiction having a plausible answer.)
• More than 25,000 pieces of archaeological evidence support the Bible; NONE REFUTE IT.
• There are more than three dozen sources outside the Bible that support the Bible, to include hostile testimony which is among the best possible evidence that can be put forth.
• Scientific FACTS that are completely accurate in the Bible, LONG before man confirmed them.
• Several hundred Old Testament Prophecies fulfilled by Christ, combined with the principles of probability that any one person could accidentally or coincidentally fulfill all of these probabilities is astounding (See Professor Peter Stoner, George Heron and others).
• Several New Testament writers affirmed the truthfulness, reliability and divine inspiration of BOTH the Old and New Testament and NONE of their writings are in question in this category in any way whatsoever.
• Last, BUT NOT LEAST, Jesus Christ Himself put His seal upon the entire Canon of Scripture. He affirmed the reliability, truthfulness and divine inspiration of the Old Testament, AS WELL AS that the New Testament would in fact be reliable, truthful and divinely inspired and NONE of His words in this category are in any way whatsoever disputed. When He said “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” (Matthew 24:35 HCSB) we had better believe it. For that to remain true the New Testament has to have accurately captured His words and they had to remain unaltered. And not only Jesus words in red ink but the ENTIRE canon because He inspired all it through the Holy Spirit who reminded the disciples of all He had told them. (John 14.26)
If an amateur such as myself can study the Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation with all its omissions and changes trying to prove Jesus is not God and STILL irrefutable demonstrate that He is the divine Son of God in spite of their best efforts to corrupt the message to support their self serving agenda, it isn’t a difficult thing for the anyone to do. The key is one’s mind and heart MUST BE OPEN, laying aside preconceived notions and seeking TRUTH.
CONCLUSIONS
If the Bible manuscripts were hopelessly confused across their whole bodies of text about whether Paul’s gospel was justification by faith plus works of the law or justification by faith without works of the law; or if some manuscripts said that the baptism of the Spirit includes speaking with tongues and some said the opposite; or if some promised that Jesus would rapture his church before the Tribulation while others took what we now call a postmillennial view—then identifying the correct text would obviously be a matter of theological importance. Jesus called some matters of the law “weightier” than others (Matthew 23:23) – if serious differences existed among those, we’d have a serious difficulty.
But the variations we have among manuscripts raise far different questions: does the inspired text say we have redemption through Christ’s blood twice or only once? Does it testify to Jesus’ atoning blood 44 times or only 43? Does John say “his anointing” or “the same anointing” (one letter different in Greek) in 1 John 2:27?
Even the two major passages that are textually questionable – Mark 16:9 – 20 and John 7:53 – 8:11 – do not affect the doctrinal character of the New Testament. The former largely duplicates material found in the other gospels; the latter illustrates truths we know well from other passages: the scribes and Pharisees are self-righteous and Jesus is forgiving and yet demanding. If such textual variants represent Satan’s best attempt to corrupt the doctrinal character of Scripture, then God is clearly keeping him on a very short leash, indeed. Which explains why all that Muslims can do is keep on straining a gnat and become masters of pedantry, they have never disturbed a single foundation of the faith and they never will.
The bottom line is that God has arranged things so that I can take any good English Bible translation, based on any textual or translation philosophy, treat it as if its every English word were straight from him, and get everything I need from that Bible to know, love, and live for him in a way that will bring Christ’s “Well done!” when I stand before him. And what more is there to life? Wherever a problem in transmission or in my own reading may tend to lead me astray, there’s a corrective somewhere else in Scripture that, when I interpret the parts in light of the whole, will keep me within bounds.
It bears repeating, if I can take the JW New World Translation with its claimed correction of 50,000 Bible errors and still prove that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone and He is the Second person of the Trinity from eternity, then it really doesn’t matter which version you read.
And finally, appealing to sceptical scholars such as Ehrman and his like will not help Muslims. He is scornful of the Quran as a credible source, affirms the crucifixion as a “rock bottom certainty” and declares that textual variants affect NO core doctrines of Scripture, which is the main point of this Post.
#MAKE_NO_MISTAKE: Muslims will have no excuses on judgement day that they didn’t know which Bible to read in order to believe.
Anyone claiming the original writings of the Bible are errant bear the burden of proof; good luck with that …