The Copying of the Old & New Testaments How Did We Get What We Have Now?
Vern Peterman · Oct 19, 2003
Church History, No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262259477183

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

What we're looking at this morning is one that I've been really looking forward to going over with you. This is how the documents of the Old and New Testament, and more specifically the New Testament we'll be looking at here this morning, was copied. And one of the issues we're going to be going over...

Have you noticed, if you've been reading, say, some of the more modern translations, that you'll have some little note that says, you know, this section isn't in the oldest and best documents? or you'll see a little alternate reading off to the side and you'll say, what's that about? How much should I listen to that? How do I figure out which one to use? That's the question we'll be looking at this morning. So anyway, I've been real excited about being able to do this and one of the reasons almost everything is printed out and we even have some supplements there so you'll be able to track with me because this is something that hopefully is not just theoretically, Theoretical, but it actually is useful to you.

Let's track through it, okay? We're looking at the copying of the Old and New Testaments. How do we get what we have now? In the copying of the Old and New Testaments, there's two different stories. Why? We've got the Old Testament and the New Testament, and they were copied along different tracks. Why would that be? Why would they be copied almost separately? The time period is one. One was earlier and the other was later.

Yes, and who would have copied the Old Testament primarily? The Jews, good. And then the New Testament? The Christians, right. The only substantial crossover in that is that when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the Christians kind of tended to take on that because a great many of the Christians, being Gentile, could read the Greek but not the Hebrew. So that would be the exception. Yes, Richard?

There was always a demographic shift, if you want to call it that. You'll also notice that there was, in between the old and new testament, that the old was actually all white. In other words, you've got the Old Testament starting off with the books of Moses and then ending about 400 years before the New Testament came into being. So that 400 year period of time is one of the things that kind of promoted that shift. So that's the pattern that you see.

In terms of the Old Testament documents, it was written in Hebrew except for portions of Daniel and Ezra which were written in Aramaic. And we've got the Talmudic and Masoretic textual copying tradition, and then from the Dead Sea Scrolls. We'll go into that briefly here in a minute. The Old Testament text number into tens of thousands.

The Jews took great pains in their copying, and we'll go into that in a little bit, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which started in 1947 and stretched on, actually. Most people think it was just found once. They kept finding them for about a decade, more of them, more of them in the same general area. until 1957 into the 1950s. Before that, the earliest copies of the Old Testament we have were from the year 900.

So we're talking well over 2,000 years from the original writing of the Old Testament until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Old Testament, and this is interesting, the Jewish copying tradition, which credits Ezra as its founder, they copied the Old Testament scriptures as a sacred act.

It was something very carefully done. They had traditions, things that they had to do. For example, they were to wash their hands before and after copying. Before they could copy, they were to begin with prayer. Specific procedure. The name of God was left blank to be filled in later by another scribe with pure ink. The scribe would check the middle word of each section with the original, also counting the number of words in each section to make sure they matched from start to finish. Flawed copies had to be destroyed. If you oopsed as a scribe, it was your job to ruin them. So you didn't want to oops. You could say lots of things, but oops wasn't one of them. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in 1947 and into the 50s, here are some examples. We have in the upper left the Dead Sea Scroll storage jar. A great many of them were found in storage jars.

As a matter of fact, they were first discovered by a sheep herder who was looking around for his animals. He threw a rock. It went into one of these caves, hit a jar, and it made a sound that he said, that doesn't sound like it just hit a rock. He investigated and that's how it was discovered, okay? The Dead Sea Scroll Caves, here's some of them and you can see them now that you can look at it and say, okay, that's where they are. It was in additional ones of those that they found.

Yeah, Jack? What explanation do they have as to the Dead Sea Scrolls were put out there in those caves in the middle of nowhere? Okay, here's the story. We'll give you the quick version of it because we could take way too much time. See the upper right? This is Qumran, which is the development of the Essenes. That is the group that is usually attributed to hiding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What happened is as the Romans came in and attacked, and then they had some earlier issues where they had some attacks, These guys would go and hide these things in the caves in order that they not be disturbed and discovered and ruined with everything else. So they would be hidden in these jars in the caves. It was a dry area so the material would keep well. Being in the caves and in the jars they weren't subject to the weather and the wind and the rain and the sun and everything else. And so they survived pretty well.

But it was basically, this was a rather reclusive group. We often hear in the New Testament about the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees, right? The group you don't hear about is the Essenes because they're a reclusive group. The one place where they show up in the New Testament that I can point to, Jesus is going through the Sermon on the Mount and he says, you have heard that you are... and he actually talked about hating your enemies. That was an Essene teaching, okay? not the scribes, not the Pharisees, not the Sadducees, but the Essenes taught that. So he's repeating what the Essenes had taught, this reclusive group.

Here's an example of the Isaiah scroll. They found copies of every Old Testament book, at least one, sometimes multiple copies, every Old Testament book except for Esther. So we have at least one copy of every book, sometimes as many as three or four copies, of each book in the Dead Sea Scrolls, except for the Book of Esther. The Old Testament traditions, they have the Masoretic Text, that's the one that was basically the basis of the Old Testament before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You see that's after the scribal tradition, I have the reference there, Mark 2, 6, and 7. You have the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we have one or more copies of every book except for Esther.

Matthew 5.43 is the reference I was telling you, where it says, That was in the scene teaching, so they're showing up there in the New Testament. Here's the Samaritan Torah. Remember, here's Jesus in John 4, and he's talking to the Samaritan woman.

They're sitting at Jacob's well. This is from almost 2,000 years earlier, named Jacob's well. They're sitting at Jacob's well, and Jesus is talking with the woman, and she's talking about, you know, this discussion about, we worship on this mountain, where they're sitting at Jacob's Well, they're looking up at Mount Gerizim. And there's the place where the Samaritans, because they couldn't go to Jerusalem, they weren't welcome there, they put their temple up on the top of this mountain that they could see from Jacob's Well. And that's the discussion you see in John 4, 20 and 21. They had the first five books of the Bible except for the editing to put the different location for the temple. Very similar. They made it fit their situation. Other than that, it's virtually identical.

And the last one is the Septuagint. This is the one that you'll find most New Testament quotes in. Sometimes you'll look at a quote of the Old Testament and you'll say, well, that's not exactly like the Old Testament reading. One of the reasons is because the Christians typically used the Greek Old Testament, which had been translated from Hebrew into Greek first. And now that we get it into English, it's been through two translations. So that's why you see some slight variation.

So those are the four main Old Testament textual traditions. We get in the New Testament documents, and we have at least 5,300, I'll call it, surviving hand-copied Greek manuscripts that contain all our parts of the New Testament. I say at least that because the number keeps growing. They keep finding more. They keep finding additional ones.

There are more than 19,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts in Latin, which has about 8,000, Syriac, Armenian, and other languages, Coptic and things of that sort. The oldest copies of the New Testament known to exist are the Syriac and Old Latin versions, not Greek. Isn't that interesting? And, all told, more than 24,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament have survived.

A whole bunch. Okay? Lots. Now, the copies of the New Testament didn't have the consistent tradition like the Jews did. Okay? And so one of the things that you find is that the copy quality from one to the next is more variable. There is more variation. But the numbers of copies we have to work with is vast compared to any other ancient document. Okay. For both the Old and New Testament What they have in order to determine, okay, what's reliable and what's not? How did this get to us?

Studying that, including looking at analyzing the inks and the materials written on, the language patterns, everything else, this is called textual criticism. Now, this is not what textual criticism is. It's not a, I don't like your shoes, your shirt has too many flowers, your pants are too short, etc. That's not what textual criticism is. It's not saying, I don't like this text, or this text is too long, or anything like that. The idea is, in spite of the word criticism, the idea is instead what we want to do is look at all these documents they have to work with.

Here's the century, see that? The century, that's the column at the top. And here's the number in each category of the kinds of documents that we have. And what this list excludes is any document where they weren't quite sure which century, they just didn't include it. So there's actually more than what's up there. Now, what's this telling us? Let's go over this.

This is the papyri documents, that is those, remember, where they had the the papyrus reed, and they would have the fibers kind of go one way and then the other. And those are these here. Then they had the uncial, minuscule, and lectionary copies that were typically written on parchment or vellum, animal skins frequently. And here are these. The uncial copies look like this, all capitals. The minuscule copies are the ones that you see more often, and it's this pattern that they follow in that inner linear that you see in the few pockets here. So it's this pattern, so even if they've been written here, they take them over into here because it's a little easier to read.

These being all caps and no spaces are sometimes a real head scratcher. Yes, as he's saying, nowhere or now here. That's the kind of head scratcher you get yourself into. Of course, one of the things we do is look at those copies that aren't like this to help guide what are they trying to say if there's any question. Okay.

Now, what they're doing is, the idea is you've got these originals, right? And from some of those originals, people would make copies. From those copies, other copies would be made. And so you'd have almost just kind of a family tree of documents, right? That would be the idea. That's the general concept. We're going to revisit this in a minute. And you have a copy of this printed out. We'll revisit this in a minute. So don't worry. We'll get back to it. But I just want to present the idea.

When they're copying, this is what they're doing. And you're getting these generations from one generation to the next. Now, here's the big picture. You have a special full page handout with this. And I've added some more to it. We will also come back to this. What is this going on? Here's the original documents, from there people made copies, right?

But what would happen is you would have, for example, here's the persecutions from Theseus and Valerian and those, and Diocletian, and what would that do? That would kind of wipe out copies that have been made, right? Because those Roman emperors said, you have a copy of the scriptures, that's illegal, destroy it. And so what you see is this destruction here. This is conceptual, it's not intended to be per detail, but the point being it gets the idea across that some of the documents were lost because of this intentional destruction by these Roman emperors and their decrees.

When you get into this level where finally the documents are legal to have, what you find is that there are two main families of documents that we have. What's called the Byzantine or majority text is over here. About 85% of the documents we have are in this area. They tend to be a little bit later. 15% of the documents we have are kind of after this tradition, the minority text, and they, not always, but they tend to go a little bit earlier. So that's kind of the balance. It's kind of the conceptual picture of the documents we've got. You with me so far? Okay.

The idea is these are generations. Generations of copying. The other thing is aside these, you also have the Muslim invasions and that would take a chunk out of this copying process too, wouldn't it? The Muslims come in, are they going to care whether you've got New Testament documents? No. Get rid of that stuff. Burn it. It starts fires real good. Okay? Alright. Now, one of the things we've got to say, what are the types of text variations that people are going to see? And, you know, here's for example the all-caps. Okay?

Unshills it's called. These are the ones we're used to seeing, if you're used to seeing them. And this is called minuscule. This is usually what we use in our inner linears that you're accustomed to seeing. It is similar to this. Do you recognize this? This is a replica of a 1611 King James.

A little bit different. A big print to start the section. And notice how things like Jesus is spelled a little different. This is 400 years old. And we recognize there's been a change, hasn't there? In the way people spell things and some of the printing. It's changed since then. Well, the same thing has happened in the Greek. Over time, things change. And so some of the copying will simply have changes in spelling or printing style. So when you say, have I got differences from one document to the next? Yes, some of them are just that.

You also have local variations in spelling. We have, for example, these differences in different parts of English. Theater spelled E-R and R-E. Save here with I-O-R or I-O-U-R. Or how about this? Different parts of the country, have you noticed? Dinner, supper, and lunch mean different things in different parts of the country. Have you noticed that? Yes?

Okay, alright. And that would happen too. Somebody would be copying something and they'd say, well, we don't say it that way. Or we don't spell it that way. So they would change it to the way they did it in their area. Now, if we know that, is that a big problem? Not really, is it?

Let me give you a figure. Seven out of every eight places where there's a variation in the spelling or the words is that. That's where most of the variation is. It's that kind of changes. So somebody tells you, oh, there's all kinds of differences from one document to the next. Yeah, most of them are that. No big deal. Now, what about notes? If I make notes in my Bible, like this, you have no problem telling the hand notes from the printed notes. But when everything is hand copied, what do I do with this?

See that? If the notes are between the lines, then it gets to be a little bit more of a head-scratcher. And then what might happen is the next copyist might not make it as a note, but include it in the text. So that's where you can get some questions about what's scripture and what isn't. We'll see how to address that in a minute here. Alright, there are copying errors. Yes, even though they're copying the stuff and they realize it's scripture, the examples we give here in English, I will go to the roof or I will go to the root.

One letter makes a difference in what that means, right? Or, here's another one, blessed are you, blessed were you. See the difference there? Or, go to my house Go to house, dropped out a word. Let's look at some definitions. I've already given some of this, but I just want to make sure I don't lose anybody with definitions here.

Majority text is the Byzantine. This is the one, remember, I said it was about 85% of the documents are that. The minority text is the Alexandrian family. This is the one that's about 15%. Textus receptus. Anybody heard of that term, textus receptus? It's from the Latin, the received text is sometimes the other word you hear, and some people will talk like the King James Version was translated from Textus Receptus. Well, the term didn't show up until 22 years after the King James was released. Two Dutch printers got carried away and they said, everybody receives our text. Okay? Only they spelled it in Latin, and that got called as Textus Receptus, and so that's how the term came up. It was a little bit of overstatement. Marketing? Okay.

Anyway, critical text is a text developed since about the 1800s based on technical methods. Most of your modern translations tend to be focused around this critical text approach versus the majority text approach, which was what the King James was based on. Okay? So what we have here, these textual critics, these guys who are coming up with the critical text, essentially what they're doing is they're trying to look at the documents and make a family tree.

You see that? They're going to take the documents and put it together. And just like you and I might investigate somebody's genealogy, they're going to say, oh, I notice that when I put this together that this particular copying error keeps showing up after that. Somebody dropped out a word in all the other later documents based on that one error seem to get carried along. So they will put together a genealogy like this with the intent being they want to arrive at what was the original. That's the intent. Make sense?

All they're doing is a document genealogy just like we would do a genealogical study of our own families for example. Sure, and they'll say, okay, here is the generation, for example, here, where the error got introduced. They'll say the earlier ones didn't have this, the later ones did. So then they can say, okay, here's where the error was introduced. That's the idea.

The King James Version used the majority text tradition. They had about 16 printings of the Greek text that were really very, very similar. up to about 1611, and they made that from about a dozen documents. They had about a dozen copies that they worked with during that period of time, just slightly more than that. And most of those were more recent, more of the Byzantine or majority text background. Then, things like the New International Version, the New American Standard Bible, they used the critical text to a greater degree. The NIV is straight critical text. They just said, here's the critical text, we're going to translate using that.

Whatever it says, that's what we're going to do. With the New American Standard, they didn't just take one or the other. They said, let's look real carefully and see what makes sense. They didn't take one or the other. They looked at it and said, okay, here's what makes sense to us. We'll take a look at that because I don't think we want to just say, well, that's the right one. I think we want to be able to have some rules and principles ourselves that are good, solid, sound things that we can use to say, what are we going to operate with here?

Okay. Now, so using this same diagram, I got additional things just to make clear. This is the substantial source for the critical text. This is the substantial source for the King James Version. And the New King James, by the way, uses that same text. All they do is update some of the language.

Okay? Okay. At times, the critical text reveals a puzzling bias. It would be nice if they just went through and said, okay, what makes sense here? Sometimes I'd have to say there's some bias, and let's take a look at that. We certainly want to get more detail.

Here's Galatians 6.15.

The King James Version reads, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." Now, the critical text does not have the phrase, in Christ Jesus. It drops it out. The basis for the deletion of these three words is that among hundreds of texts which include this phrase, only four do not. Only four are missing that phrase, but we're going to change Scripture based on the four? That doesn't sound very good to me. Well, let's take a look at some more.

You're certainly asking why. There's one concern people who have taken a look at this, who are looking at it from a biblical standpoint, what happens with the critical text is they look at things with technical criteria alone, they're not asking spiritual questions. And my question is, is that the best way to assess a historical document with a spiritual message? Does it make sense to be asking, is there a spiritual criteria that I ought to be looking at for this?

OK. So how do you deal with a marginal reading? You're going along studying your Bible, and you're trying to compare versions. You've got one of the King James, and you've got one here with New American Standard, or NIV, or one of the other modern translations. and maybe you've got a marginal reading that says, or this. Some manuscripts have this. What do you do? What are you going to do? OK.

So commentaries by conservative scholars will very often be helpful in bringing the alternative reading into clear perspective. That is one of the approaches that you can use to look at it, because frequently they will have looked at it. Here's an example.

Philippians 3.15. We just went through that, right?

F. F. Bruce comments on, let us be thus minded. A couple of the manuscripts have, we are thus minded. He says it has no serious claim to consideration. So he's letting you know, a couple of the manuscripts have that, don't worry about it. So that's one way to kind of get behind the scenes and say, have we got anything worth looking at here? Now, another. Variant readings odd with the usual teaching and style of the biblical author are suspect. Let me give you a for instance.

What does it say in Romans 5.1? Therefore having been justified by faith. Is justified past tense, present, or what? Huh? Yeah, it's a done deal. So he makes it real clear that this is a past item. But look at this.

In Philippians 3.12, one variant reads, or have been already justified instead of have already been made perfect. So remember that passage? That's where he says, I can't claim that I've already been justified if you take that variant. Does that fit with the rest of what Paul teaches? You can't claim you've been justified? No, it doesn't.

So that means that that suspect and that variant should be set aside. turns out that just like one or two documents will have justified in there instead of already been made perfect. So on the basis of what we know about the teaching and style of that author, we would set that variant aside. Somebody, maybe they made a mistake, maybe somebody even had the idea that they didn't believe in being justified once and for all, so they might change it. But anyway, there's no good basis to take that, and so we set it aside.

This is a principle that you can use if you find a variant reading. Variant readings at odds with the flow and word pattern of the context are suspect. Here we have this same phrase, but a different principle here. It says, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect.

In Philippians 3.12, for example, Paul has already used the word perfect in 1.6 and we'll use it again in 3.15, but justified is not used anywhere else in Philippians. It's not the topic. And so what that would tend to tell you is the pattern of teaching is not focusing on justification issues, but perfect, the question of what's perfect is.

So justified by both rules needs to be set aside from that text. So you have some principles that you can use to look at some of these variant readings and say, does this make sense? In general, the approach that I would say is these modern translations where they've got variant readings, don't set it aside, but be skeptical. Be skeptical. Here's why. Let me show you a bigger instance.

The New Testament contains approximately 20,000 lines of which only about 40 lines are in question because of the variants. Is that a high degree of quality? Yes. Only one-eighth of the New Testament variants amount to anything more than a stylistic difference or evident misspelling. Where you've got some variants, that 40 lines, only about one-eighth of those variants amount to anything at all, other than just the difference between how I spell theater and theater. That kind of a difference.

Though the details of the interpretation of a specific passage might be an issue in a few places, not one essential point of Christian doctrine rests upon a disputed reading. Nowhere does a disputed reading in the context of all of Scripture really create any big issue about any major doctrine. It doesn't impact anything significant doctrinally. That to me, with the 24,000 different hand copies that we have, shows God's providence over, in spite of variations, getting us the truth.

What about major sections like Mark 16, 9-20? Anybody have Bibles that mention that? Let me bring up here. Here's a copy of the NIV. Okay, real good one here. The NIV here in Mark 16, it's got it blocked off with some lines and then it says the two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16, 9 through 20. So what is that going to tell you? Yeah, it might make you think, boy, I shouldn't even consider the scripture, right? If you read that, you might think that, huh? Well, let's take a look at that.

Here's this note from the NIV, for example. And a lot of the other modern translations have that. I looked at one called the Net Bible, and that's like the New English translation. That footnote gives more detail, but basically leans in the same direction. But when I look behind it, here's what I found. These kind of notes sometimes oversimplify it and a lot of times show some bias. And you'll see what I mean here in a minute. Many more of the ancient texts have Mark 16 9-20 than do not. By numbers, more of them have it than don't. And look at Mark 16 8 in your Bible.

Does that seem like a strange place to end the book of Mark? Take a look. Seem like an odd place to end it to you? Somebody read that for us. Mark 16 8. Alright, does that sound like a good place to end the Gospel of Mark? I don't think so. They were afraid. Good place to end it, right? It's an incomplete story. It leaves it unresolved. It doesn't sound like good news, the way it ends.

So that's one thing that just leads you to the question, hey, this can't possibly be the end. That's not all. There's a whole lot more to look at here. Some have said that Mark 16, 9-20 is a different style of writing of the rest, but a couple of scholars have taken a look at this and said we see either good reason for it or not solid basis for making that claim. There's more.

Several early church authors quote from Mark 16, 9-20 more than 100 years before the two most ancient reliable sources. And basically when they say in the NIV the two most ancient reliable sources, it's Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. This Sinaiticus was found at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. This was found in the Vatican Library. Those are the two most reliable sources, so they say. But those early church authors quoting from Mark 16, 9 through 20 include Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, Shepherd Hermas, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Vincentius. And, when I put this thing together, I also start asking, well, how good a copy is Vaticanus, for example? Look at what it's missing. Here is this most reliable. It's missing 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus. It's missing the end of Hebrews after 914. It's also missing all the Book of Revelation.

Am I going to use that to determine whether the end of Mark should be there or not? I don't think so. It's missing what we know is the end of Hebrews, and they don't have any note like that on Hebrews. So I would say I'm not going to use this as a reliable basis for telling me what's included or not. I will look at what's there, but I'm not going to determine what to exclude from Scripture based on something missing.

By the way, I haven't listed that it's missing about a fifth of the Psalms in the Old Testament, and all except the last couple of chapters of Genesis. So this is not a complete version, and the fact that it's missing the last part of Mark, I'm not going to use this document as a basis for telling me it's not in the New Testament. There's more. By the way, this is the end of Mark in that Codex Vaticanus.

This chart here, and you've got a special printout of it, here's a fellow went through and he clocked 64 documents Okay? And put them on a chart. Now, let's go over this chart here. If the document was earlier, so here's 100 AD, 200, 300, 400, up to 450, right? The document was earlier, of course, he plotted it here. If the document was more favorable to the inclusion of that section of scripture, he put it higher on the list, in other words, if it was a more reliable, more clear statement that it ought to be included, he put it higher on the chart. If it was unfavorable, saying, no, that shouldn't be included, he put it down here.

And what do I end up with? Better than a half dozen pieces of information saying, yes, this is valid scripture, before I have even one that says no. The earliest, and I'm not talking about one or two, but I'm talking about, what is that, seven? seven witnesses that this is a valid document before I have one that says it isn't. Let's look at it the other way. Here I've got about 43 favorable references up to the year 450, 13 unfavorable.

That's discounting anything that's in this neutral zone. I see on the basis of what's earlier and on the basis of just preponderance of evidence both ways It looks to me like it ought to be included. Isn't that the way it looks to you? The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of it ought to be included. So I guess my thought as I look at these kinds of notes like I see here where it says the two most reliable ones don't have it, I'm kind of skeptical. I'm not very likely to accept that.

What about John 7, 53 through 8, 11? That's another place where you will find a similar kind of note in the newer translations. And it says here in mine, this is right before, and this is the account of the woman caught in adultery, right before this section it has one of those lines, a big long dash, And it says, the earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not have John 7, 53 through 8, 11. Any of your Bibles have that? Anybody have a Bible that says that? You've got one? Okay. Yeah, NIV, for example, has that clearly in it.

Now, as I look at that, though, real interesting, I don't have the time to go through the same level of detail we did with the other passage, but it's about the same number of verses, and I found a similar kind of evidence, I've included that, I don't expect you to read this off of here, but I've included that as a special handout so that you can read that on your own time and be able to look through it.

To me, again, the evidence does not look real solid for casting out that portion of scripture, for setting it aside. And it looks to me like the evidence is good for leaving it there. It is, in addition to what we have here, I think it's consistent with what we read about Jesus from the rest of the New Testament. And one of the important points to make of it, and it is included in your handout there, is Augustine writes that a lot of people had, because they were concerned that this sounded like an approval of adultery, a lot of people had, and he actually says, had not included it in their scriptures. because it sounds too much like an approval. And so they just dropped it out. And so he actually makes that explanation as to why it may not have been included in some of the earlier documents.

Well, I think, you know, by the time you look at the evidence, you examine it, you say, there's no reason for me to set this aside. And given the circumstance, and especially Augustine's note there, I should just go ahead and continue with this, accept it as and set aside these little notes here. Because looking at the evidence on balance, there's no reason for me to set aside these passages.

Okay, now, I've covered a lifetime of research in about 45 minutes. So, I would be amazed if you didn't have questions. So, have you got any questions? You're so floored. Oh, okay. Overwhelmed and floored. Okay, so was I. Yes. What happens is the critical text, and by the way I say the critical text, in truth there's more than one, but in general the critical text tends to have a bias towards the minority text. This is my copy of the critical text.

This particular one is the what's called the Nestle Alond, and some people pronounce this Nestle, because it's the same as your Nestle's chocolate. But anyway, I see it pronounced both ways. What happened is initially there was the Nestle or Nestle text, and there was Kurt and Barbara Alond, and they decided to kind of throw their lot in together. So now you'll have the Nestle Alond text. And in truth, what happened, I think, Hal, you were showing me a copy of the Nestle text.

The Nestle text, tends to include more of these kinds of passages than the Alon text. And this Nessel Alon, because once they put it together, they basically adopted the Alon's notes and things of that sort. The Alon text, which is what the NIV and some of the other modern translations tend to be based on, is the one that has more of these, what seems to be biased statements. But yeah, these texts tend to follow the Alexandrian or minority text family, and the best examples they have of that are these Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and those seem to be missing some of these passages that we've talked about here.

But one thing, especially with the John passage we looked at, there's a tendency during that period of time and in that area to try to eradicate anything that sounds like immorality and so they would have a tendency to look at that text and just drop it out. The New King James follows the majority text tradition and doesn't follow the critical text. All they've done is they've taken the majority text, the text that's behind the original King James Version, they've followed that same text and updated the language but maintained the same textual background. And so, for example, the King James has about 400 words that are either changed in meaning or sometimes even reversed in meaning from the current day. and they've changed those. But otherwise, they've used the same text and they don't go with the critical text with the New King James. Yeah? How does that fit in with what you were just talking about there? Ah, OK.

This is Nestle, which is going to be, I would say, less likely to have some of these variant readings or especially to try to make the comments like you see here. And I would say that the Nestle tends to be more of a solid, critical text. Yeah, that one, the one we have in the Pew Bibles. This one, the Nestle Alond, it's the Alond, Curtin, and Barbara Alond that have tended to influence things towards excluding some of these texts that, like I say, I'm skeptical of their conclusions. And I think the better position for the believer to take is is to be skeptical of these until they've made their case.

As far as I'm concerned, they haven't. It doesn't mean that I'd say the majority text is all we should listen to, but I'm just saying that I'm going to look carefully at it, and what I have seen does not convince me. Any other questions? Totally baffled, right? Okay. Yes. I would put it this way.

The Lord has given us a massive number of documents to work with. There is no other ancient document that even comes close in terms of having documents so close to the original and having so many copies. No other ancient text even comes anywhere close We have a phenomenal number of documents, especially considering that there have been multiple times when having those texts has been illegal. To have that many copies is miraculous. And what I see is God has superintended, God has shown his providence over the preservation of this text.

We should be careful I would say skeptical of just casually setting something aside. And that what was originally translated into the English Bible and a number of other translations is something we ought not to set aside without very good evidence. And frankly, what I see in the way of evidence for these two, these are the two major passages, the Mark and the John passage, that the newer critical text tends to set aside. When I look at the evidence, I'm not convinced. I'm not impressed with the evidence. that they should be set aside.

I would say the tendency is to stay with what we've got unless you see solid evidence otherwise. I've rarely seen it. Yeah, Brad? What they have done is to include them, so you'll find those passages in here, but with notes and brackets that say this was not included in so-and-so, and the most reliable texts don't have it, and that kind of thing. They've not booted them out in those areas.

What's interesting, though, is like I give, for example, that Galatians 6.15, your In Christ Jesus will be dropped out, but there'll be no note telling you that it's included in other texts. To me, that's puzzling. I would say one thing that a person would be well to do is go ahead and look at the King James and one of these other newer translations and you can see the difference and see where that stands out. But what's odd is that they don't often, they don't always, is a better way to put it, make note of the fact that what they're including may only be a minority of the number of texts out there and may not have good support when you look at the evidence in total. So I would say, you know, the better part is, you know, keep an open mind, but open mind isn't empty headed. And in general, we can stand on what we've got. Okay.

Other questions? Yes. I've heard this comment on the two notes that you have, the NID and the NAM. Right. You know, I sort of appreciate the fact that those notes are there. Sure. I guess what I would rather have seen is maybe instead of a little note saying the two most reliable documents don't have this. Because I don't appreciate them telling me something like the most reliable or best. To me, that's a gross generalization. Right. Right. And to me, that's an inadequate statement.

To me, it should be something on the order of, you know, there's been some question about this text, and maybe someplace in a footnote. Yeah. Your little pocket Bible doesn't include five pages on it, right? But anyway, having maybe a section in the back or something like that that gives you some background to look at it on balance rather than making the judgment for you that this is the most reliable text.

I would question very much if I were to talk with them whether they made a good decision to handle it the way they did. I don't mind them saying that this is at issue. But I think the evidence doesn't support what they say, and calling them most reliable is a judgment they shouldn't make. I don't think it's a good judgment to begin with. Yes, Hal. If you just look at past proofs, then you can look at both. My question was more along the lines of do you throw them out or not? Go ahead and look at them side by side.

One of the reasons I want to bring this up is this has been an area that has been real polarized. I would say tone down the language. One is pointing to the other, you idiot, you awful person, whatever. Tone down the language. Look at this thing objectively. In reality, the differences are very small. And I brought up the biggest differences, and the reality is, if we look at it objectively, I don't really have a problem, and we can still discuss things. But look at it all. Look at them both. Compare them. Yeah. Yeah, look up both.

And the reality is that, pick one extreme or the other, you may end up with a different conclusion about a specific passage, But it is not going to change the bottom line of what does the New Testament teach doctrinally. It's not going to give you a different conclusion one way or the other. And that, to me, shows the Lord's superintendence over the whole process. Even though you have people that are polarized one direction or the other, the bottom line is you can still end up with the same doctrinal conclusion either way.

The differences are so minor, it's not worth getting into a catfight over. This is God's Word. We can count on it. I've seen different estimates between 20,000 and 30,000. I've never counted myself. Well, I think that it's beyond the textual issues. It's beyond the textual issues, but it turns more into how do I interpret scripture and what is the basis of authority. I was thinking more of the cat fight. I see, okay. Yes, the cat fight. Nancy ran into a really good joke this last week.

There was a fellow who had been deserted for years on a desert island. And as they picked him up, they noticed that there were three huts on the island. They said, well, what are these huts? I said, well, that one's my house. Yeah, but what about the other two? Oh, that one over there is my church. Yeah, but you've got another one. What's that? Oh, that's the church I used to go to.

Anyway, we won't get into that. Let's pray. Lord, thank You for Your precious Word. Thank You for the revealed truth apart from which we would not know the truth. And thank you for the revelation of your son. Lord, how marvelous a truth you've given us. We thank you and praise you. Thank you for the superintendents that you've shown over your word over all these centuries because you love us. In Jesus' name, amen.