The New Testament: A case of Chinese whisper?

There is a deep rooted prejudice against the New Testament and actually the whole of the Bible which goes like this:

“What you read in the Bible can’t be true, because there have been so many generations between the events and the accounts. When they passed their stories on, they got changed, distorted, embellished.”

If you encounter this, it is worth asking back: “How many generations do you think lie between the events and the writing of the first texts? And how much did the text change by the copying process?”

A nice example of this sort of prejudice is given by Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins: “Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus’ life. All were then copied and recopied, through many different ‘Chinese Whispers generations’ by fallible scribes who, in any case, had their own religious agendas.” (The God Delusion, 118)

Let’s leave the question whether having a “religious agenda” instantly cripples your ability to accurately copy a given text aside. And also let’s leave the question aside, which “scholarly theologians” Dawkins refers to (he gives us no hint).
There is a lot we actually can say about the question “how long after the death of Jesus” the new testament books were written and how much the text got distorted by copying.

The Event

What are we actually talking about? Christians affirm the historicity of the following events:

Jesus started teaching publicly in 28/29 AD, was sentenced to death through crucifixion because of High Treason by the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate, was executed on April 3rd 33 AD, died and was buried. After 3 days this Jesus rose from the dead and showed himself to many witnesses. 40 days later he ascended into heaven (May 14th 33).

Right from the beginning of the Christian faith it was clear that the death and the resurrection of Jesus were central to it. That is why Paul writes in one of his letters:

“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, ... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:14.15.17)

The Gospels:

The Gospel of Luke is acutally only part I of a two-volume work written by Luke about Jesus and the early Church. Part II can be found in our Bibles as the “Acts of the Apostles”. How does the book of “Acts” finish? With the word “unhindered”. Paul is teaching the Good News about Jesus in Rome without hindrance. Luke does not mention Nero and the persecution of Christians. He does not talk about the execution of Paul. We can conclude from that: Luke finished well before 67 AD. Actually, he was done writing Luke-Acts before that because most likely, Paul was released from arrest in 63 (and later taken into custody again).

In any case, Luke had to finish part I even earlier than part II (the other way round would be like filming Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest before The Curse of the Black Pearl...)
While Paul was imprisoned at Caesarea for two years, Luke had time to interview eyewitnesses. But he could also use existing written documents (Luke 1:1-4) and one of them was quite certainly the Gospel of Mark.

Result for the Gospels: There are 0-1 generations between the events and the writing down of them. The time span was less than 30-40 years. This is by far not enough to get legends running, because the eyewitnesses themselves were still around to correct or criticize wrong accounts.

The Letters:

There is enough evidence to state that the letters are even closer to the events (and, quite contrary to Dawkins’ claim, they do contain the most important facts about Jesus). The best example is Paul’s first Letter to the Christians in Corinth (1 Corinthians). In this letter Paul reports that Jesus died, was buried, was raised and seen. He wrote that in 55/56 AD (time span: only 23 years!)

But within this letter there is a remarkable short text which is definitely much older, 1 Corinthians 15:3-7/8: Paul mentions that he passed on just that information when he visited the Corinthians for the first time in 49/50 AD. (Time span: 17 years!)

But our time travel goes back even further: Paul writes that he himself has received this information (1 Corinthians 15:3-7/8) which is framed in a sort of regular structure, a coined formulation like a mnemonic or didactic poem.

This “poem” is very, very old – we can see this eg. from the usage of the word “Cephas”. “Cephas” is the Aramaic word that Jesus used when he gave Simon the nickname “Rock” (“Rock” = Aramaic “kepha” = Greek “petros” > Latin “Petrus” > English “Peter”). Our little formulation was coined very early, in a time when all of the “authors” and “listeners” knew and understood Aramaic. In later years, “Cephas” was used much less than the Greek “petros”. The formulation was most likely coined when all of the followers of Jesus knew Aramaic well. They probably framed this mnemonic only 2 years after the events. Paul then learnt it shortly after his conversion in Damascus in 37 (or maybe a little later when he visited the Christians in Jerusalem).
The time gap is less than a few years!

Writing and our earliest manuscripts

The next problem to tackle is the time between the writing of, eg 1 Corinthians, and the earliest surviving manuscripts. The oldest surviving manuscript of 1 Corinthians (which is called p46 Chester Beatty and can be partly viewed under ) was written around 200 AD. This time gap of 150 years (between the composition and the earliest manuscript) is ridiculously for something composed in antiquity. Just compare this with the earliest manuscript of Cesar’s account of his war in Gaul, which is 1000 years removed from the original.)

The oldest little scrap of the New Testament is a tiny papyrus containing a part of the Gospel of John Interestingly it was just that Gospel which was dated far into the second century by “scholarly theologians” of the “nineteenth century.” And then you find a part of it in the desert of Egypt – just think of how long it took to get there! – which can be dated to the year 120 AD! The oldest full text of the New Testament which has survived the tides of time can be dated to 350 AD, which is mega-ancient in comparision with other texts of that time.

Chinese Whisper copying?

Of course, we can still ask whether copying could also distort and change the text in such a short time – such that they carry a completely different story.

If we start from the evidence – which is the amazing heap of ancient documents – and that is where an argument should start, we see that we have quite a number of variants but nothing that changes the meaning of the text.

Take our short text from 1 Corinthians as an example. You will find quite a few differing documents. If you take ALL those manuscripts PLUS the oldest translations (which were based on old manuscripts as well) PLUS all the early quotations of the texts in the church fathers you will get the following result:

• Verse 3: Three (!) latin (!) texts (1 translation + 2 church fathers) omit the words “what I received.”

• Verse 4: No variants at all (in more than 20.000 manuscripts).

• Verse 5:
- The best and oldest manuscripts contain the word “then” (gr. eita), one other group of manuscripts contain the word “then, thereafter” (gr. epeita) and one more group contains “and after these things” (gr. kai meta tauta).
- One group of western manuscripts and a small note on the margin of a Syriac translation contains instead of the word “the Twelfe” to which Jesus appeared the word “the eleven”. Most likely the “name of the team” (much like “Jesus United”/ “Jesus FC”) was replaced by the actual number of people that Jesus was appearing to (Judas, one of the Twelfe, was dead, so there were only 11 left).

• Verse 6: Some manuscripts, among them many later additions in older manuscripts change “though some have fallen asleep” into “though some have also fallen asleep.” (That is, they insert a “and, also” which is one small Greek word, kai.)

• Verse 7: Some manuscripts read “then, thereafter” instead of “then” much like in verse 5.

• Verse 8: Nothing.

This means that if we start from the evidence, the data we have, we see that the text is not 100% identical in all cases but that there are no differences whatsoever in meaning. This is comparable to the rest of the New Testament. We can be sure that we have the original textual meaning. And this original message was: Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead.

For a dyed in the wool historical-comparative linguist like the author of these lines it is even great to find a whole lot of small, unimportant variants like them. On the one hand they don’t change anything as to the original textual meaining (eg. what harm is done by the copyist of Codex Vaticanus who constantly “misspells” John’s name as “ioanes” instead of the more common “ioannes”? That’s no big deal!)

On the other hand those different variants give us valuable hints to the original (which can be reconstructed according to all the rules of the trade). For one thing, it tells us that the original must have been even older than those ancient manuscripts.

Fallible scribes

The copyists were fallible – and they knew that! It is very important to note that the scibes were aware of the danger of copying errors. They tried to do their best.

There is a very interesting note on the margin of Codex Vaticanus of a later writer concerning the text of Hebrews 1:3. It says:
“Fool and knave can’t you leave the old reading alone and not change it?”
Apparently the author of these lines was refering to a change of
“carrying (pheron) all things by his powerful word” in
“revealing (phaneron) all things by his powerful word”.
That means, this later hand knew there was something wrong here! And his goal was to preserve the original text without alterations.

Scribes with an agenda

This also tells of of “their own religious agenda” – they wanted to preserve the original text as well as they could. It is fanciful to imagine that the scribes tried to change the text to their liking. Of course we cannot rule out the occasional unintentional change (like the one were a scibe changed the speck you try to remove from your neighbour’s eye into a fruit!)

But what reason would an early copyist have to change the basic facts?
• Would you consider changing them if you think they are important and if they themselves contain severe warnings against alteration or point out the importance and significance of those words?
• In the beginning the church was small, unimportant, poor and persecuted (when spotted). Not much in it for power play or gain.
• During the times of persecution it was dangerous to even have these books – why would you risk your life for them and then try to change them?
• Later, during and after the Constantinian turnaround it was too late to change them – they were already too widespread (and old).

The question of data

When you read the entry “distorted copies” you will notice that I intentionally used the phrase “if we start from the evidence.”
This is important because it is always possible to invent a story how the text could have been changed nevertheless. For example, it is possible that the first copyist of 1 Corinthians made a complete blunder of it and produced a sort of imaginative retelling. And then it could have happened that he burned the original. And then it might have been the case that Paul and all the early Christians didn’t mind hearing a completely different story all of a sudden.... This is possible. But there is zero evidence for it. It has NO basis in the data. You have to invent a story like that.
If you start from the evidence and stick to it, however, you will notice that there is no “overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world.” There is no chance that the New Testament might have been distorted and changed over the course of many generations.

It is a reliable text.