Bart Ehrman is well known as a superb debater. He was on a national championship debate team in high school and has been debating ever since. This was my fifth everdebate—three now with Bart. I still have a lot to learn about debate technique. But in all three of my debates with Bart I recognized that they would either be recorded or turned into a book (the first one is now available as The Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue between Bart D. Ehrman and Daniel B. Wallace (Fortress Press, 2011). The second debate—the largest such debate in history with over 1400 people in attendance—was professionally filmed and edited and is available at www.csntm.org as a DVD for a modest price. I was as concerned for those who would be able to study the arguments in some detail as I was for those who attended each debate. Therefore, I geared my responses to those who would study these issues later on.

Andreas Köstenberger, an erudite professor at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, attended the debate and wrote up a review of it. You can access that here. Köstenberger offered a critique more on me than on the debate, and on the debate tactics of each of us more than on the substance of what was said. My response to him has been posted as a comment on his blogpost.

For P&P readers, I would like to summarize the debate from my perspective. If you attended the debate, your comments are especially welcome (but of course so arecomments by others!).

Bart’s opener focused on three questions:

1. What do we mean by original text?
2. Where are all the early manuscripts?
3. Why do scholars disagree so much about the wording of the original New Testament?

He answered the first by arguing that several NT books were composite works and that it’s impossible for us to get back to the original wording of those books. His examples included 2 Corinthians, John, Acts, Mark, and Luke. Among other things, he argued thatall critical scholars recognize that 2 Corinthians was never sent out by Paul in that form, that it was originally two different letters that Paul wrote which were later fused together. But this is not true: not all critical scholars believe this (e.g., Raymond Brown argues against it, as do Carson & Moo, Ellis, Guthrie, and a host of others). Regarding John’s Gospel, Bart said that chapter 21 was added later. I argued that this is by no means a settled belief, and that a doctoral student at Dallas Seminary, Charles Cummings, is writing his dissertation on this very topic. We also discussed Mark’s Gospel, which Bart claimed has a lost original ending. He was presupposing that the text after Mark 16.8 was lost and that scribes filled it in with what they could. I agree that later scribes added to the Gospel (there are multiple endings), but that the last leaf was almost surely not lost. The reason is that Mark almost surely wrote on a scroll rather than a codex (the modern book-form with binding on one side and individual pages). The codex form was invented late in the first century, but the best scholars on the codex-form, T. C. Skeat and C. H. Roberts, in their book The Birth of the Codex, argued that Mark’s Gospel was written on a scroll. If on a scroll, then the last leaf would be the most protected. I believe that Mark intended to conclude his Gospel at 16.8, as do most scholars of the last fifty years. Bart was overstating his case.

This first question really addresses composition criticism rather than textual criticism. It struck me that Bart was using this tactic as a way to win the debate, simultaneously detouring us from the real discussion. Yet even a scholar the stature of Kurt Aland, unquestionably the finest German textual critic of the last sixty years, said that there is zero evidence in the manuscripts for such compositions and that all the variants that ever came down the pike are still to be found in the existing manuscripts. Bart did not respond to this point.

He answered the second question by saying that we really don’t have any early manuscripts. But this again is a huge overstatement. We have as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts (six of which were recently discovered and not yet catalogued) and a first-century manuscript of Mark’s Gospel! Altogether, more than 43% of the 8000 or so verses in the NT are found in these papyri. Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the first century. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data. (In the Q & A, Bart questioned the validity of the first-century Mark fragment. I noted that a world-class paleographer, whose qualifications are unimpeachable, was my source. Bart said that even so, we don’t have thousands of manuscripts from the first century! That kind of skepticism is incomprehensible to me.)

Further, in comparison with other ancient literature, the NT has far more early copies than any other work. In the first two hundred years after the composition of the NT thereexist today well over sixty manuscripts. That’s three times the amount of manuscripts that exist for the average classical author in two thousand years.

He answered his third question by claiming that scholars have done all they can but still can’t come to agreement over the wording of the original text. Again, this is not true. Bart had acknowledged that we don’t know the exact number of variants yet because we haven’t examined all the manuscripts in detail yet. We also don’t know the exact number of Latin, Coptic, and Syriac manuscripts (our earliest and most important translations of the NT), let alone what they all say in detail. Bart further argued that a Greek NT that came out in 2005 which claimed to have the original wording differs from other texts in over 6000 places. This is true, but he was not telling the whole story: That text is one that both Bart and I would seriously disagree with, as would most textual critics and NT scholars. It is the majority text, which is based on Greek manuscripts that for much of the NT are only from the ninth century and later. I also pointed out that Ehrman and Metzger would only disagree in about two dozen places as to what the original text said. And Metzger represents pretty much the standard view today among NT scholars.

In my opener, I raised four questions:

1. How many textual variants are there?
2. What is the nature of the variants?
3. What theological beliefs depend on variants?
4. Is the original NT lost?

On the first question, I agreed with Bart that we have a huge number of variants—my estimate is about 400,000. But we have a lot of variants because we have a lot of manuscripts: over 20,000 in various languages, and about one million quotations of the NT from the church fathers, reaching back as early as the first century. And these thousands of manuscripts come from all over the Mediterranean region, showing that noearly conspiracy to conform the manuscripts to one text-form existed. I also made comparisons with other Greco-Roman literature, noting that we have on average 1000 times more manuscripts of the NT than we do for the average classical author. If Bart was going to be skeptical about the NT manuscripts, that skepticism would have to be multiplied a thousand-fold for the average classical author. If scholars actually did this, we would immediately go back into the Dark Ages.

On the second question, I noted that the vast majority of variants can’t even be translated and that less than one percent of all variants are meaningful and have a decent chance of reflecting the original wording.

On the third question, I quoted from Bart’s Misquoting Jesus, where he says that no essential Christian belief is affected by any of these variants. This is the most crucial point for most Christians and it was an important point to make, even though it was technically not within the purview of the debate topic.

On the fourth, I gave five reasons why we can be relatively confident that we have the wording of the originals somewhere in the manuscripts today:

(1) If the early MSS exhibit wild copying practices, then we are in an excellent position for recovering the original since there was no conspiracy to make just one kind of text. Further, those that were carefully produced in Alexandria reveal a careful copying process that reaches back to the earliest times. I illustrated this with Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and P75, and noted that when all three of them agree they probably reflect the original wording. Bart did not challenge this statement. I spoke at length about P75 and B, noting that the common ancestor was older than P75 and that B actually reflected a purer stream of transmission.

(2) The standard critical text used today, the Nestle-Aland 27, only follows conjecture in ONE place, and even there the two senior editors disagreed with the rest of the committee. This shows that conjecture is not needed for the NT like it is for virtually all other Greco-Roman literature. And when the MSS display coherence, this indicates that there are not gaps in the MS tradition.

(3) Not a single new reading from any of the 134 papyri has proven to be autographic. In the last 135 years, not a single new reading of any MS has such a pedigree. This shows that the autographic wording is to be found among the MSS somewhere. I concluded this point by saying, “So, what would happen if we found MSS even earlier than our earliest papyri? They will no doubt confirm the wording that we already considered to be original. If all the NT papyri that have been discovered have not been able to introduce a single original reading, why should we think that more discoveries would be any different?” This cut into Bart’s main argument, and he did not respond directly to the point.

(4) The copy of Mark that Matthew used is a first-century Mark, and yet it differs from what scholars think the original Mark said in only a handful of non-translatable places. (One of my interns, Jason Stein, is writing his master’s thesis on this very topic.One of Bart’s doctoral students, Jared Anderson, is also writing on this same topic, and he is coming to quite different conclusions. I wrote to him and asked about what methodological controls he is using.) Bart himself had indicated (in Misquoting Jesus) that we have a first-century copy of Mark, but he concluded that Matthew and Luke were ‘just like the scribes’ in that they changed the text significantly. I argued that they were not like the scribes and that the scribes hardly changed the text at all.

(5) The first-century fragment of Mark was my final point. Not only does its existence contradict Bart’s claim that we don’t have anything from the first century of Mark, but “This papyrus fragment—just like the other new discoveries that we are preparing for publication—strongly confirms what most scholars have already said is the original text.”

In the give-and-take that followed, I failed to ask Bart to lay out what he needed to believe that we had the original text of the NT. This was asked in our debate last October, and Bart said that he would need to see ten MSS of Mark, written within a week of the autograph, and having no more than a 0.001% deviation. I called him on that skepticism in the TC-List, and he conceded that he was speaking off the cuff and that it was an exaggeration. I noted that the question asked had to do with the minimum he would need to believe, so if he gave an exaggeration he was not really answering the question. Further, I noted that since there are only 57,000 letters in Mark, to require no more than 0.001% deviation would mean half a letter at most!

I had asked in my opening statement, “How does [Bart know that these early MSS do not give us the original wording]? What criteria does he use to determine that they made mistakes? Either such errors are patently obvious—like ‘Onion’ for ‘Union’ [I used the illustration of the preamble to the Constitution in which a scribe wrote, ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Onion…’]—or he is judging these early papyri by later MSS that have an excellent pedigree—later MSS whose wording reaches back to the time before our earliest papyri.” Bart said I pitched him a softball because he was able to determine that the MSS were defective by patristic comments from the second century. I responded that this was overstated—that is, he was using the great uncials as well as patristics to point to the autographic wording. And precisely because of the majuscules of the fourth century scholars have concluded—with Metzger—that the wording of their texts is hundreds of years older than the MSS themselves.

We each had a one-minute closing statement. Bart had said, during the Q&A from the audience, that the bloody sweat passage in Luke 22.43–44 was not part of Luke’s Gospel originally and that it changed Luke’s passion narrative significantly. I agreed. In my closing statement I pointed out that this presupposed that Bart knew what the original text of Luke was saying. I think this was perhaps my strongest point in the debate. Even Bart ultimately has to claim that the original wording is available to us. Further, I noted that the scholarship of the last two thousand years has presupposed that we have the original wording in broad strokes and even in most particulars. To assume otherwise is to be radically skeptical.

Similar Posts:

• New Testament Textual Criticism 101
• Scholars Find Treasure Trove of Early New Testament Manuscripts
• The Number of the Beast
• New Testament Textual Criticism: Answer Key to Quiz
• The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace

That’s how the verse reads in the KJV: Avoid every appearance of evil. It’s 1 Thess 5.22 and it puts a damper on everything. But does it really mean this? Does it really mean that even if something looks like it’s evil to some, we can’t enjoy it? Hardly.

The Greek text really should be translated, abstain from every form of evil. There is a genuine correspondence between form and evil: that is, stay away from evil things. But the reason that form (or, in the KJV, appearance) was used is because Paul is speaking about false doctrine. This verse, in fact, was more often attributed to Jesus than to Paul in the early church, suggesting that Paul got this line from his Lord and that it was one of the sayings that for some reason didn’t make it into the gospels but was nevertheless an authentic saying of Jesus. It was used with literal reference to coins; to abstain from every form of evil was to avoid counterfeit teaching. Further, in the context, it seems clear that Paul is speaking about false teaching. Verses 19-22 read as follows:

Do not quench the Spirit;
Do not despise prophecies;
But examine all things: cling to the good, abstain from every form of evil.

In context, Paul is saying that false teaching should be avoided, but true teaching should be what believers follow. They shouldn’t be duped, shouldn’t become gullible, but must test prophets and see whether they are from the Lord. They need to examine all these teachings and cling to the good and throw out the bad.

If we look at the broader context of the New Testament as a whole, we see that Paul was certainly not speaking about avoiding every appearance of evil in 1 Thessalonians 5. His own mission was governed by the mantra, I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might save some (1 Cor 9.22).

Further, consider the life of Jesus. The distinct impression one gets from the gospels is that Jesus simply did not have the same scruples about his associations that the religious leaders of the day had. They avoided the appearance of evil at all costs; Jesus seems almost to have had the opposite approach to life and ministry (see, e.g., Luke 7:39). Even his disciples had been oppressed by all the rules and traditions of men. But Jesus freed them from such nonsense. In Matt 15, the Pharisees were stunned that Jesus’ disciples did not perform the Jewish hand-washing ritual before they ate. They hammered on the disciples and on Jesus for not obeying the oral commandments. Jesus did not say, Sorry, boys. I didn’t mean to cause offense. It won’t happen again. Instead, he very boldly pointed out that these religious leaders had exchanged the laws of God for their own self-made rules. He called them hypocrites who had no heart for God. The most remarkable verse in this whole pericope is verse 12: Jesus’ disciples came to their Master and said, Did you know that the Pharisees were offended by what you just said? Didn’t they know that offending the Pharisees was part of Jesus’ job description!

To wield 1 Thess 5.22 as a weapon to restrict a believer’s personal freedom is against the general tenor of the New Testament and of the Lord’s life in particular. Ironically, to avoid every appearance of evil is far more in keeping with the Pharisees’ model of righteousness than with Jesus’! I like John Piper’s notion of Christian hedonism for it falls in line with the Westminster Confession’s statement that our prime objective is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Gee, maybe that’s what the Christian faith is all about? What a novel concept!Similar Posts:

• Was James Being Legalistic in Acts 15? or “Can I Eat a Rare Steak?”
• The Myth of “Abraham’s Bosom”
• Don’t forget to enjoy life
• Inviting Jesus into your Heart (Dan Wallace)
• Walid Shoebat Youtube Video on the Mark of the Beast

Here are some highlights:

• Work done on the Hebrew Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem “would startle many readers of the Old Testament” because what was written in the past is not what we read today.
• “Scholars…have been quietly at work for 53 years on one of the most ambitious projects attempted in biblical studies—publishing the authoritative edition of the Old Testament… and tracking down every single evolution of the text over centuries and millennia.”
• “And it has evolved, despite deeply held beliefs to the contrary.”
• “For many Jews and Christians, religion dictates that the words of the Bible in the original Hebrew are divine, unaltered and unalterable.”
• An unspecified verse from Malachi in which ‘in my name’ was added later is mentioned, as is an unspecified verse from Deuteronomy which changes ‘you’ to ‘us.’ The changes are claimed to be ‘significant.’
• Most revealing, the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah is one-seventh longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls text, written about 1000 years earlier. The longer text also apparently has a prophecy in it that was added after the fact.
• “Considering that the nature of their work would be considered controversial, if not offensive, by many religious people, it is perhaps surprising that most of the project’s scholars are themselves Orthodox Jews.

These are the statements from a reputable news source. Prima facie, this looks rather disturbing. In particular, the article doesn’t accent the fact that absolutely none of these textual issues are new to biblical scholars. Ever since the Dead Sea Scrolls were made public decades ago, scholars have recognized the differences between the older Hebrew Jeremiah and the Masoretic text. In fact, the older Hebrew form was already known for hundreds of years because it is found in some old Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint. And the prophecy added after the event? Here’s the statement: “Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.” I’m not sure which text the author is referring to, but Jer 28.6 makes this same prophecy and that’s a passage found in the Septuagint. So if the same prophecy has been duplicated elsewhere in Jeremiah, is it really honest to speak of the prophecy as “added after the events happened”? Yes, those words in that place would be, but not this specific prophecy since Jer 28.6 is found in the earliest forms of the text.

Now what about startling the masses by claiming that the Bible has evolved over the centuries? It is true that there are many Christians who have failed to look at the marginal notes in their Bibles, notes that have been there since the 1611 King James Version and before. And these notes speak about other ancient authorities (i.e., manuscripts) that have variants from the translated text. But that this news should be shocking to people either indicates that they are not careful readers of the Bible or the marginal notes are not worded strongly enough to indicate that in those places scholars are not completely sure what the original text said. To the informed believer—and all believers should fit into this category—this ‘shock and awe’ article is almost a yawn.

The emphasis on the evolution of the text is a bit misleading, too. To be sure, textual critics are always attempting to identify spurious readings. But the purpose for doing so is not to trace the development of the text as much as it is to recover the wording of the autographs. Ironically, the author of the piece, Matti Friedman, seems to have gotten many of his facts wrong, and made the article far too sensationalist; Friedman’s article has apparently evolved away from reality. The very fact that Orthodox Jews are the main scholars working on this project should raise a flag about how concerned Christians and Jews should be about this project. Friedman simply suggests that this is surprising. In reality, it is the orthodox—both Jews and Christians—who are most interested in what the original text had to say because they believe that the original text is the word of God. There is no surprise that the orthodox would lead the charge on this project, then. Informed Christians and Jews should not only be unconcerned about this, they should be excited that this project is underway.

“For many Jews and Christians, religion dictates that the words of the Bible in the original Hebrew are divine, unaltered and unalterable.” This is the line that came the closest to yellow journalism. I suppose it is technically true. It is certainly the belief of most Muslims regarding the Qur’an (even though it is not true of their sacred text either). But as I mentioned earlier, virtually every Bible in the last 400 years has had marginal notes that discuss textual variants. Anyone who has read the Bible at least semi-consciously is aware of textual variants. So, though it is true that “many Jews and Christians” think the Bible is unalterable, they are outliers in their faith communities.

The reality of this project is quite different from what the Associated Press reported. For half a century, Hebrew Bible scholars have labored at finally constructing a critical text of the Old Testament. The New Testament has a critical text, one that is based on the best manuscripts, versions, and Fathers, rather than a copy of a single manuscript. The critical work started in 1831, and has continued with several scholars examining the data and wading through the evidence for every textual variant. But what the published Hebrew Bibles have is different from this. They represent what is known as a diplomatic text, an exact reproduction of the text of a single manuscript.

Why have Old Testament scholars not produced a critical text yet? One reason is historical. In the 1760s, Benjamin Kennicott, the great Hebraist of Oxford University, announced plans to produce a critical text of the Old Testament. But a young self-taught man named Granville Sharp spoke to Kennicott, pleading with him not to do this yet. Sharp reasoned that the state of Old Testament textual criticism was not yet at the point where a critical text could be constructed. He was especially fearful that the wording of the autographs might get relegated to the footnotes or even disappear from the page altogether. His pleas went unheeded; Kennicott was advancing with the work. So Sharp wrote a book against Kennicott’s project. That was sufficient to cause him to abandon his task. Inertia set in and has continued until 1958.

The other reason has to do with a significant increase in the materials to work with. By the time that scholars began to seriously consider such a project again, the great manuscript caches, especially of the twentieth century, had multiplied their workload. Their labors for the past fifty years are the gifts to Jews and Christians that selfless, truth-seeking scholarship offers. And although the resulting text will finally be a critical one that certainly differs in places from the Masoretic Text, it should be one that all orthodox Jews and Christians are grateful for, since it brings them that much closer to the wording of the originals.

What shouldn’t surprise us in all this is that here is yet another piece by a respected journalist, writing for a highly regarded news agency, in which he turns a straightforward story about serious biblical scholarship into a sensationalist piece that borders on yellow journalism. When will journalists learn that the story as is is interesting and significant in its own right? Historically, journalists simply can’t relay the narrative of discovery or research of biblical manuscripts without midrashing the story and taking cheap shots at believers. This may reveal something of the shallow soil of their own theological convictions in which a robust orthodoxy never had a chance to take root.Similar Posts:

• New Testament Manuscripts Discovered in Albania
• New Testament Textual Criticism 101
• Christmas Sale at nttextualcriticism.com
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• Has God Preserved the Scriptures? . . . (Part 1)

In Mark 2.26, as found in Nestle-Aland²⁷, Jesus is reported as saying: πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγεν, οὓς οὐκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἰ μὴ τοὺς ἱερεῖς, καὶ ἔδωκεν καὶ τοῖς σὺν αὐτῷ οὖσιν; Or, in English, “Haven’t you ever read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry? How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the sacred bread that is not lawful for anyone but priests to eat, and also gave it to his companions?” (Mark 2.25-26). The fundamental problem with the phrase “when Abiathar was high priest” is that this incident in David’s life is recorded in but one passage in the OT, 1 Sam 21.1-7. But there, Ahimelech is mentioned as the priest; Abiathar, his son, would later become high priest, but he is not introduced into the narrative for another chapter (22.20).

On the one hand, the prepositional phrase, ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως, has caused some angst for evangelicals because it ostensibly is a historical error. And if so, whose error is it? Did some early scribe corrupt his copy of Mark, which then influenced other witnesses and became the predominant text? Or did Mark add this as an editorial comment on his own? Or did he copy down accurately what his source said (which, according to patristic writers at least, would have been the apostle Peter)—a source that created the historical discrepancy? Or is it possible that Mark’s source repeated Jesus’ words accurately, but that Jesus made a mistake? Or did Jesus summarize the OT text accurately, but the OT was in error? Assigning error to someone is one route that is taken today in dealing with this problem. What I wish to contend, however, is that several presuppositions are at work in assigning blame; the matter cannot simply be isolated to a bibliological problem. Yet even here, there are rather different approaches to the problem by evangelicals.

In addition to the bibliological issue is the question of which Gospel came first. Those who embrace Markan priority tend to argue for an error on Mark’s part that would have been detected and eliminated by Matthew and Luke. Those who embrace Matthean priority tend to downplay any error on Mark’s part by various, although rather brief, explanations.

Then there is the christological issue. Very few scholars even entertain the notion that Jesus could have had a mental lapse. Here is where both liberal and conservative scholars are usually in agreement, but for different reasons: the more conservative scholars, because of their high christology and high bibliology, almost never raise the possibility that Jesus could have erred for that would apparently impugn the character of both the Lord and the Bible. Less conservative scholars (moderate as well as liberal) often see only part of the pericope going back to Jesus, and v 26 is sometimes relegated to a later source. But Jewish scholars have no problem seeing this pericope going back to Jesus and attributing error to him.

Textual criticism also plays a role in this passage. There are variants that either alter the prepositional phrase and its subsequent translation or eradicate it altogether. But one’s text-critical theories inform his decision here—or at least they should!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, the interpretations of this text are so vast and our time so short that we will have to park ourselves on that part of the iceberg that is above water. Perhaps that is the safest place to be though after all.

The fundamental problem in this text is that Abiathar was not the high priest when David went into the sanctuary and ate the showbread. This raises several questions; in the least, someone or something seems to be wrong. Here are the facts: (1) 1 Sam 21.1-7 mentions Ahimelech as the priest when David entered the sanctuary; (2) Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son; although he was a priest when this incident occurred, he was not the high priest but would become so later (after Saul murdered his father and eighty-four other priests); (3) Ahimelech’s ministry was in Nob, while Abiathar’s would especially be in Jerusalem; (4) except for the possibility of text-critical solutions, Mark’s Gospel has the words ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως, normally translated “when Abiathar was high priest.” In addition, there are several other, less significant differences between the dominical version of this story and that found in 1 Sam 21.1-7 (Gundry lists seven).

In addition to the differences between Mark 2.26 and 1 Sam 21.1-7, there are differences between Mark 2.26 and the parallel accounts in Matthew and Luke. The parallel in Matt 12.3-4 reads, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry—how he went into the house of God and they ate the bread of presentation, which was not lawful for him or those with him to eat, but only for the priests?” And Luke 6.3-4 has, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry, how he entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the Presence (which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat) and gave it to those with him?” Except for a few stylistic changes between Mark 2.26 and the parallels in Matt 12.4 and Luke 6.4, the only difference is the omission of Mark’s “when Abiathar was high priest” (ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως) by both Matthew and Luke. It is hard to resist the notion that Matthew and Luke deliberately expunged this line from their respective copies of Mark so as not to impugn the character of Jesus. But if one holds to Matthean priority, then a softer explanation for the differences must usually present itself.

What possible avenues for a solution do we have for the Abiathar problem? The leading contenders[1] are as follows:

1. Text-critical: the text is wrong and needs to be emended;
2. Hermeneutical: our interpretation is wrong and needs to altered;
3. Dominical: Jesus is wrong (or intentionally midrashic) and this needs to be adjusted to;
4. Source-critical: Mark’s source (Peter?) is wrong (or intentionally midrashic);
5. Mark is wrong (or intentionally midrashic).

The third, fourth, and fifth responses especially need to be examined more carefully, as they are usually rejected by those who embrace both a high bibliology and a high christology. It is imperative that we do not allow our presuppositions to preclude a solid historical investigation. The problem is that some evangelicals—especially members of this society—frontload their investigation with the explicit premise that the scriptures cannot err.[2] Ironically, by starting with this presupposition, they may inadvertently pit Christ against the Bible. The incarnation demands that we do careful historical work, for God became man in time-space history. As such, he invites us to examine the data about his life and death, rather than take a fideistic stance of naïve, uncritical acceptance. As painful as it may be to think about some of these possibilities, if we do not wrestle with them then we will be dishonest in our handling of the text. Each of these approaches will now be examined; our order of investigation will be 1, 3, 4, 5, and 2. That is, we will leave the hermeneutical solution till the end.

(N.B. We are renumbering everything according to the new scheme below. This will be referred to later in the paper.)

1. Text-Critical: The text as it stands is incorrect and needs to be emended.

There are two basic alterations in the ancient witnesses here: D W 271 Itala Syriac^s and a few others omit ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως, no doubt in conformity to the parallels in Matthew and Luke. This is thus almost strictly a Western reading. Those who adopt this these textual variant are, generally speaking, more inclined to embrace Matthean priority. For example, in William Farmer’s The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis[3], the author enlists the help of V. H. Stanton[4] in treating the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke.[5] Farmer quotes from Stanton’s volume, apparently with approbation, that ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως in Mark 2.26 is “erroneous” and that it “may have been an addition by a ‘badly informed copyist.’”[6] Mann also entertains the possibility of scribal corruption, as does Sanders.[7]

As a sidenote, it is interesting that the Western scribes expunge the wording here. In the least, this seems to be evidence that they were concerned about protecting the Lord’s reputation when citing scripture. It is texts such as this (and there are hundreds of them, and in all text-types) that reveal early scribal piety across the board, suggesting that Dean Burgon’s condemnation of the early uncials as products of wicked men was unfounded.

A C Θ Π Σ Φ 074 1 131 209 f¹³ and many others add τοῦ before ἀρχιερέως. The significance of the article is that it turns ἀρχιερέως into an appositive, while the anarthrous noun remains a predicate genitive to Ἀβιαθάρ. (This will be discussed in some detail later.) The addition of the article gives the meaning “in the days of Abiathar the high priest,” suggesting a more general time-frame.[8] This reading thus has a mixture of some Byzantine, Caesarean, and even semi-Alexandrian support. Neither reading has significant external support and both are obviously motivated by scribal piety toward the text. It is difficult to imagine scribes intentionally creating a problem by adding ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως to Mark’s gospel and only to Mark’s gospel. Though perhaps easier to understand, the omission of τοῦ before ἀρχιερέως would hardly have occurred intentionally. And there is little good reason for it to occur accidentally as well. Thus, when it comes to determining which reading gave rise to the others, ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως clearly is superior and obviously authentic.

A general caution about textual criticism I tell my students is that one should not use this discipline as a way out of a difficult problem, but as the means to determine the wording of the original. The biggest danger in textual criticism is to choose a reading that agrees with the interpreter’s preconceptions instead of choosing the reading that best explains (both internally and externally) the rise of the other readings. One has to wonder whether some Griesbachians need to heed that advice.

2. Dominical: Jesus himself made a mistake or was intentionally midrashic (i.e., he embellished the OT story to make his point).

There are two distinct options here: some think that Jesus may have erred; others think that Jesus embellished the OT text to make a point.

2.a. Jesus erred.

It might not surprise us to learn that Jewish interpreters have no problem seeing Jesus committing a historical mistake here. Thus, D. M. Cohn-Sherbok, a rabbi, argues that “though Jesus seems to have been familiar with rabbinic hermeneutics, the arguments he employs are invalid from a rabbinic point of view.”[9] But what about Christian scholars? Indeed, there are some who entertain this view.

Brown argues that Jesus may have erred here[10]:

In Mark 2:26 Jesus says that David entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the loaves of the presence. The scene is found in 1 Sam 21:2-7; there, however, the high priest is not Abiathar but Ahimelech. Matt and Luke seem to have noticed the difficulty, for their accounts of this saying of Jesus omit any mention of the high priest (Matt 12:4; Luke 6:4). Abiathar was better known than Ahimelech and more closely associated with David in later life, so that popular tradition may have easily confused the two. But if the reading is genuine, Jesus shows no awareness that he is following an inaccurate version of the story.

Brown is quick to note that he is not altogether comfortable making such pronouncements; indeed, he has been one of the strongest defenders of the deity of Christ in the 20^th century, a factor which may give him pause here. This is an intriguing though disturbing option to consider. Yet few scholars give this more than a glance. Nevertheless, some of the rationale for considering this option is as follows:

• Several verses in the NT seem to indicate that Jesus’ humanity was no different from ours, except that he did not sin. Cf. Heb 4.15 (“tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin”; Heb 5.8 (he “learned obedience”); Luke 2.52 (he “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and with people”[11]).
• These texts seem to indicate that Jesus’ growth as a human being was along essentially normal lines. Thus, a part of this almost surely involved such things as the following: (1) he probably stumbled and fell the first time he stood up to walk. Would we really expect him to rise and walk without stumbling on his first attempt? That view of our Lord seems to be more docetic than orthodox. (2) He probably hit his thumb with a hammer working for Joseph (though he didn’t swear when he did it!); (3) He probably made Hebrew (or Aramaic or Greek) grammatical, pronunciation, and syntactical mistakes as he learned the language, being gently corrected by his mother. This is almost surely the case, for to learn a language well requires interaction, trial and error, correction, and instruction. If Jesus did not say anything until he was sure he was right, then his childhood would be marked out as both ostentatious and exceedingly quiet; but if his childhood proceeded along normal lines, and if he always used the correct grammatical forms, then he would most likely have had to learn at least some of those forms supernaturally. But if that is the case, then his childhood was anything but normal, and would seem to be an implicit denial of the principles taught in Luke 2.52. And (4) he probably made a whole host of other mistakes that would not be classified as sin.
• If Jesus made mistakes in certain areas as a child—even in the area of knowledge—why should we suppose that he did not do so as an adult? Did he stop learning as an adult? Hebrews 5.8 says no; he continued to learn obedience through the things he suffered. Although the learning here is related to experiencing obedience as a human being, it is still learning and it takes place preeminently in Jesus’ adult life, reaching its climax in the crucifixion.[12]
• As well, there is clear evidence in the gospels that Jesus’ omniscience was not always on a human conscious level. Many texts address this, but chief among them is Mark 13.32: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (NIV).
• In sum, although we may well feel uncomfortable with this approach, it must be admitted that to see Jesus err in Mark 2.26 is not to deny his deity, for a mistaken identification is not the same as sin. We will revisit this approach later.

2.b. Jesus embellished.

Gundry suggests the following[13]:

To strengthen his argument, Jesus adds a number of features not found in the OT passage: (1) David’s having companions with him (contrast 1 Sam 21:2-3 [1-2]); (2) his having need; (3) his and his companions’ being hungry; (4) the house of God and David’s entering it rather than merely asking for bread; (5) Abiathar’s being a “high priest,” not just a “priest”; (6) David’s eating the loaves of presentation, either while he is still inside the house of God or after he has come out; and (7) his giving some of the loaves to his companions. Moreover, the OT text speaks of Ahimelech, not of Abiathar. … Apparently, then, Jesus not only adds a number of features. He also replaces Ahimelech with Abiathar the son of Ahimelech for a link with the added house of God, which for Jesus and his audience stands in Jerusalem, where Abiathar officiated (2 Sam 15:24, 35; 17:15; 19:12 [11]), not in Nob, where Ahimelech gave bread to David.

This line of argument is in keeping with Gundry’s earlier (and infamous!) commentary on Matthew, in which he argued that Matthew’s gospel finds its closest genre parallels in Jewish midrash. He now sees Jesus following the same hermeneutical method. In his conclusion to this problem, Gundry forcefully argues: “The fact that when Abiathar does appear in 1 Sam 22:20-23 he does so in connection with the foregoing incident at the house of God makes it easy for Jesus to use his name in blotting out Ahimelech for the sake of a link with Jerusalem.”[14] What is interesting is that Gundry apparently changed his views from his doctoral days at Manchester; his doctoral thesis, published under the title, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel with Special Reference to the Messianic Hope[15], argued essentially that Matthew’s and Jesus’ use of the OT was hermeneutically quite different from rabbinic exegesis. For example, on 215 he says, “Most of all, the theological depth and coherence of the hermeneutical principles (in sharp contrast with Qumran and rabbinic exegesis) demand the unique genius of the kind of man Jesus must have been—they cannot reasonably be set down to Gemeindetheologie.” Thus, it might not be unfair to ask ‘Which Gundry?’ when wrestling with his recent views on Mark 2.26.

Nevertheless, his rabbinic views are generally found in much older, and sometimes even conservative, literature. In the last two hundred years, such notable scholars as Christopher Wordsworth, James Morison, A. E. J. Rawlinson, Hugh Anderson, and J. Bowman have held to one form or another of the midrashic approach.[16]

What shall we say about Gundry’s treatment? At least in comparison with Brown’s approach, Gundry is more conservative than his Roman Catholic counterpart; he is an evangelical who embraces inerrancy, though his definition allows for quite a bit of latitude. Nevertheless, Gundry’s approach may well be more troubling for many evangelicals than Brown’s, for it may seem to some to be a case of scripture-twisting on Jesus’ part. Mistaken identification is one thing; intentional alteration is another. Perhaps more important is the criticism that Cohn-Sherbok leveled against a midrashic Jesus: “though Jesus seems to have been familiar with rabbinic hermeneutics, the arguments he employs are invalid from a rabbinic point of view.”[17] One wonders, along these lines, why Matthew—whose gospel is surely the most Jewish of the synoptics—omits “when Abiathar was high priest” if he learned his hermeneutics from Jesus (as Gundry earlier affirmed). Why would a midrashic Jesus here cause problems for Matthew?

3. Source-critical: Mark’s source (Peter?) made a mistake in reporting Jesus’ words, or else was intentionally midrashic.

Several scholars indicate that the problem in Mark 2.26 may have been due to the evangelist or to his source(s).[18] Now if Peter was the source behind Mark’s gospel, as early patristic writers suggest,[19] it is possible that he added to the dominical saying as he recalled Jesus’ teachings. If so, Mark could have faithfully copied down what Peter wrote, even to the point of recording his mistaken identification of the priest at Nob. This is not much different from what some scholars argue regarding Luke’s recording of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7: there may be historical errors in the speech, but Luke was faithful to record his speech, warts and all.[20] There is of course a certain attractiveness to this view: It absolves both Jesus and Mark from error, and by so doing maintains both a high bibliology and a high christology. Even though Peter was an apostle, in this instance he would not have written scripture. Thus, his oral sermons could hardly be viewed as inspired.

The problem with this view is that if Peter is the source, then that means that he would have most likely given this sermon on dozens of occasions. Surely someone would have corrected him on his historical blunder long before Mark ever wrote down Peter’s memoirs. It is quite different if Jesus or Mark is the source for the ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως. If Jesus said it, the phrase could easily have remained in the oral tradition out of respect for Jesus’ words, even if there were questions as to what was meant by them. However, if Peter is the source of the phrase, in the least one of the apostles would surely have pointed out the error of his ways. An intermediate source, especially if it is Peter, then, remains one of the least likely options.

On a midrashic approach, the same problems as are mentioned with #3 also are raised here, only more so!

4. Mark erred in reporting what his source said, or was intentionally midrashic.

That Mark may have been midrashic is not very likely; such would have been lost on his audience. But that he could have created the error here, or have gotten it from a written source (as opposed to oral tradition), is more likely. This is the view that is probably the most popular among critical scholars. Many commentators simply assume this is the case, without much comment beyond mere assumption. So Meyer, Wendling, Hultgren, Tolbert, O’Connell, Turner, Morgan, Kiilunen, and Pesch,[21] among others, take this route. Kiilunen is representative: he unceremoniously calls the ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως phrase “das Fehlen.”[22] Others spend much more time on the issue but come to the same conclusion. So Lagrange, Swete, Guelich, Hawkins, and Casey.[23]

A point often put forth in this connection is that the OT seems to confuse the two names at times. Hurtado, for example, notes: “It is possible that the Markan account is confused here, for the OT itself is not easy to follow in its references to Ahimelech and Abiathar. In 1 Sam. 22:20, Abiathar is described as son of Ahimelech; whereas 2 Sam. 8:17 and 1 Chron. 24:6 refer to Ahimelech as son of Abiathar and as priest under David.…”[24] This is an old view, with a long list of patristic writers and later authorities embracing some spin on it. Chrysostom, Victor of Antioch, Euthymius Zigabenus, Theophylact, Beza, Heumann, Kuinoel, Garland, Hurtado, Guelich, and many others mention it. It takes two forms. First, the OT is confused, or at least the copies are confused. Second, the OT is correct and both men shared the same name. [25] If the OT erred, this would hardly absolve Mark. As the adage goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. But what of the likelihood that both men shared the same name? In his defense of Matthean priority, Buchanan went so far as to suggest that “According to the LXX, well-known to all three evangelists, the priest who gave David the Bread of the Presence was Abiathar. It is not likely that either Matthew or Luke would have omitted the LXX account just because it did not agree with the MT.”[26] But Morgan proved that Buchanan was wrong: no extant LXX MSS in 1 Sam 21 read “Abiathar.”[27] Even if these two men’s names were sometimes confused, they are not so in 1 Sam 21. Only Ahimelech is seen there, as far as any extant witnesses reveal. And since that is the story that Jesus is referring to, the difficulty of the mention of Abiathar remains.

5. Hermeneutical: The interpretation that “when Abiathar was high priest” is incorrect.

Several solutions present themselves here, but two predominate. First, it is possible that the reference to Abiathar is not to the person per se but to the section of scripture that is being alluded to—thus, “in the portion relating to Abiathar.” Michaelis (in his Introduction to the New Testament) seems to have been the first to propose this view. So Mark 12.26: οὐκ ἀνέγνωτε ἐν τῇ βίβλῳ Μωϋσέως ἐπὶ τοῦ βάτου (“have you not read in the book of Moses, in [the passage about] the [burning] bush”). Robinson[28] finds a parallel in the Mishnah: “Whoever confesses his guilt shall have a portion in the world to come; for so we find in Achan [i.e., in the section of the book of Joshua about Achan] that Joshua said to him, ‘My son, give glory to the Lord…” Though apparently dormant for some time, Wenham resurrected the view in the 20^th century, and has been followed by Lane, Roure, and a few others.[29]

The major problem with this solution is that it requires linking ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως with οὐδέποτε ἀνέγνωτε at the beginning of v 25. But there is too much distance between the words to do this naturally. Such a reading, precisely because it is not natural, would probably never have presented itself except for the historical problem of the text. Interestingly, Lane, who apparently embraces this view, nevertheless offers an excellent critique of it:

The objections which may be raised against this proposal are that ἐπὶ Ἀβιάθαρ [sic] ἀρχιερέως is considerably separated from ‘have you not read,’ unlike Ch. 12:26; that Abiathar is by no means the central element in this section of I Samuel; that the introduction of Abiathar first in Ch. 22 constitutes it unlikely that his name would be given to the section; and that numerous instances in Tannaitic documents indicate that a section was usually designated by a term which occurs early, not late, in the section. The strongest argument for this proposal is the undoubted use of ἐπί cum genitive in Ch. 12:26 to indicate a section of Scripture.[30]

The second possible hermeneutical solution is that ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως could possibly be translated “in the days of Abiathar the high priest.” This was the view of Grotius, Wetstein, Wordsworth, Scholz, and many others. It is the wording of the KJV as well, though the KJV is based on a different text here (which has τοῦ before ἀρχιερέως). Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, in his still unexcelled treatment of the article in the Greek NT, spends much time on this interpretation, but he bases his views on the articular reading.[31] Indeed, Middleton provides the basis for this view’s rejection: “That reading [the one without the article which is adopted in NA²⁷]… would indeed mean, that Abiathar was actually High Priest at the period in question.[32] Middleton cites several classical references to back up his statement. In grammatical terms, we could say ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως involves a predicate genitive (“when Abiathar was high priest”) while ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ τοῦ ἀρχιερέως involves an appositive to Ἀβιαθάρ (“in the time of Abiathar the high priest”).[33]

Nevertheless, several modern scholars adopt this view. Standard works such as BDAG and BDR argue this without much fanfare—and, unfortunately, without much basis![34] Edwards makes a stronger case: “Mark’s wording… employs epi technically to mean ‘in the time’ (so 1 Macc 13:42; Luke 3:2; Acts 11:28; Martyrdom of Polycarp 21).”[35] But these texts do not help the case as much as he would suppose: they were cited by Swete and Middleton on behalf of the opposite view, viz., that “when an anarthrous title is added to the personal name, the period is limited to the term of office.”[36] I do not yet know of any texts in which the construction ἐπί + genitive of personal name + anarthrous title indicates the general “in the time of,” though one or two seem to come close (see appendix). To be sure, I have not searched very diligently for this construction. But I am not satisfied that BDR and BDAG have supplied sufficient evidence on its behalf.[37]

Conclusion

In 1883, Thomas M. Lindsay could write about the Abiathar problem: “Various explanations of the difficulty have been given, none very satisfactory.”[38] It’s one hundred and twenty-one years later and you may feel, as do I, that if Lindsay were to rise from the dead he’d repeat his complaint verbatim!

But we must put this problem in perspective. What is at stake? Is the deity of Christ at stake? Apparently not, for two of the leading advocates of the “Jesus erred/midrashed” view embrace the deity of Christ. Is the inerrancy of scripture at stake? Possibly so, for if either option 3(a), or 4(a) is adopted, inerrancy cannot hold up. Is the infallibility of scripture at stake? Ironically, it seems to be so only if Gundry’s view is given full force and if Jesus’ use of scripture would have been perceived as self-serving and as eisegetical, for Jesus’ invoking of scripture here is directly related to a matter of faith and practice.

Second, what options seem to be excluded by the evidence? Option 1 (text-critical) is clearly out. The others all have some merit on the basis of evidence.

Third, how and when should our theological presuppositions enter the picture as we try to handle the data of the text honestly? In the least, it is imperative that we not frontload our presuppositions to such an extent that we don’t listen to the text. Evangelicalism is populated with all sorts of academic gatekeepers whose theological a priori drives their investigation and determines its results. The tragic irony is that such people never really learn from the text, for they have already decided what it will tell them. At the same time, we must not think that exegesis can ever be presuppositionless. That notion went out with the demise of historical positivism. There is a difference between giving generally reliable witnesses—reliable as determined by a sound historical method—the benefit of the doubt and assuming that the biblical writers cannot possibly err.

Fourth, this leads to a taxonomy of the doctrine of scripture. With reference to bibliology, I believe we should first and foremost embrace the Bible as a witness to the great acts of God in history, especially to the Christ-event. This is enough for salvation. Second, we should recognize it as an infallible guide in matters of faith and practice. This is needed for sanctification as well. These two pillars seem to be the hallmark of the Church throughout its history, until recently. And third, we should see it as inerrant—true in what it touches. This basically is a safeguard for infallibility, but must never supersede the first two credos about scripture. For when it does, then the incarnation is dishonored. Thus, inadvertently, when we frontload inerrancy and refuse to really probe the tough historical questions, we end up betraying our commitment to the incarnation. The deepest tragedy along these lines is when someone never differentiates doctrinal commitments, for this leaves him wide open to chucking his entire belief system when the weakest link is broken. From experience, I can tell you that this “domino view of doctrine” is altogether too prevalent and has been the ruin of a great many evangelical doctoral students.

Fifth, how can we assess these various options? It must be admitted that views 2-5 all have a certain plausibility.[39] If you were to decide to opt for 2, 3, or 4, I would simply plead with you not to abandon Christ. If your bibliology goes down a notch or two because of this problem, the deity of Christ in the least should still be insulated—unless of course you hold to a domino view of doctrine! Further, if I were to decide that view 3 or 4 was the most compelling, and that this decision resulted in my abandoning inerrancy, it would be a gross distortion to call me liberal! At the same time, one must be very careful about making major theological shifts, especially before the data have been sufficiently examined. Caution is needed when examining material that could change your theological commitments.

Along these lines, I am reminded of what a sage wrote nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. J. A. Alexander concluded, concerning this passage, “It is best, however, as in all such cases, to leave the discrepancy unsolved rather than to solve it by unnatural and forced constructions. A difficulty may admit of explanation, although we may not be able to explain it, and the multitude of cases in which riddles once esteemed insoluble have since been satisfactorily settled, should encourage us to hope for like results in other cases…”[40]

Appendix: my present preference

My own preference is for view 5: I believe that we have interpreted the text incorrectly. I am least comfortable with Gundry’s view (2.b., and by implication 3.b. and 4.b.): to see Jesus’ use of the OT as midrashic is to overturn all the work that Gundry had done earlier; further, his view of Matthew’s hermeneutic as essentially midrashic seems to ignore the ostensibly far closer parallels of Mark and Luke. If Gundry argues that Mark is also midrashic, then Luke must surely follow, for Luke does not differ too significantly from his source. But Luke can hardly be midrashic, for he opens his gospel by echoing Thucydides’ historical principles. Further, if Luke is midrashic, then virtually everything is up for grabs in the gospels, with all the historical and archeological spadework of two millennia being tacitly ignored.

But I am also not particularly comfortable with Brown’s approach, for two reasons: (1) Although Jesus certainly displayed ignorance on occasion by way of omission (e.g., not knowing the date of his return), that seems to be qualitatively different from a statement that involved error. Further, although he almost surely made mistakes as a child while in the process of learning, I tend to view Luke 2.52 as indicating the growth that produced the adult and mature man (thus making his adulthood on a different plane than his childhood). (2) Although Brown defends the deity of Christ, as a Roman Catholic his view of God is not the same as the Protestant view, especially the Reformed Protestant view. Catholic perceptions of God’s sovereignty and majesty tend to be semi-Pelagian, while Protestant views range from Arminian to Calvinistic. Thus, in Brown’s view, it might possibly be easier to affirm an error in Jesus’ statement because such does not impugn his doctrine of God. (For example, although Catholics embrace the omniscience of God, their very doctrine of conditional election seems to presuppose a growth in God’s knowledge and on that basis he chooses.) Views 3 and 4 simply push the issue away from Jesus, making Peter or Mark the errant party. But there is actually little to commend the notion that they did not get this statement about Abiathar from Jesus.

As for view 5, my preference right now is to take the prepositional phrase as meaning “in the days of Abiathar the high priest.” Although Mark apparently does not employ the temporal use of this preposition elsewhere, he almost surely does so here—for both “when Abiathar was high priest” and “in the days of Abiathar the high priest” are temporal expressions. Further, the construction ἐπί + genitive noun is frequently used with a temporal sense outside of Mark—with a meaning similar to ‘in the days of…’ BDAG lists numerous biblical and patristic references under ἐπί with a genitive for time, all in the sense of “in the time of, under (kings or other rulers).” Cf., e.g., Luke 4.27 (‘in the time of Elisha’), Luke 3.2 (‘in the time of the high priest, Annas and Caiaphas’) and even Mark 2.26 (‘in the time of Abiathar the high priest’). Two questions remain: (1) Can any of these texts mean ‘in the time of’ as distinct from ‘when’? That is, can they mean something like “the 1990s will forever be linked to Clinton’s presidency,” even though he was not president for the whole decade? (2) If so, do any of them have ἐπί + genitive proper noun, followed by an anarthrous common noun? Without examining all the data supplied by BDAG, Luke 3.2 looks to be the closest parallel to Mark 2.26, even though ‘high priest’ comes before the two names (the grammatical meaning differs when the proper name comes second; no article is required). But if these two men did not function as high priest simultaneously—and since the singular event of the word of the Lord coming to John the Baptist was during their high priesthood, then this seems to be a clear text in support of the general time frame of ‘in the days of.’ More work certainly needs to be done, but suffice it to say that this view has a certain plausibility and cannot be hastily rejected.

Similar Posts:

• A Possible Error in the Bible?
• Case Studies in Inerrancy: 1 Sam. 26:5-16
• Is Inerrancy the Linchpin of Evangelicalism?
• The Gospels: Embarrassingly Authentic
• New Testament Textual Criticism 101

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace. The debate will be held on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 7 PM in the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. This debate will feature a dialogue on the reliability of the text of the New Testament. Though Ehrman and Wallace have held public debates in the past, this one will focus on providing a general audience with insider information regarding one of the most significant pieces of literature ever written. Dr. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, is a New York Times bestselling author who has published over 20 books. His book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, questioned the reliability of the New Testament text, arguing that Christian scribes have corrupted it beyond repair. Dr. Wallace, director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and New Testament Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, has spent his life studying and digitizing ancient copies of the New Testament. He has authored and edited numerous books; most recently he has edited and contributed to Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence. He asserts that we have good reason to believe that the New Testament text is reliable. If you are interested in the New Testament and its reliability, this is sure to be an event you will not want to miss. For more information on the debate and to purchase tickets, please visit www.smudebate.com.

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Part 1

Part 2

A standard evangelical approach to dealing with the stylistic differences of, say, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals from the rest of Paul’s letters, is to argue that the penman or secretary of these letters may have had a larger role than merely copying down via dictation what Paul said. Ehrman, however, argues (135):

Did the secretaries contribute to the contents of [Paul’s] letters? … Despite what scholars often claim, all of the evidence we have suggests that the answer is no. The same evidence applies to the authors of 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and in fact to all the other early Christian writers.

Ehrman interacts in this section with but one author who makes the claim of heavy secretarial involvement, E. Randolph Richards, whose doctoral dissertation was published in 1991 as The Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Tübingen: Mohr). In spite of denying that Richards has produced any evidence along these lines, his discussion of secretary as editor, coauthor, and even composer is collectively replete with primary documentation (43–56). Richards’ evidence for the secretary as coauthor is the weakest. Yet in his section on the secretary as composer—a role which is significantly greater than coauthor—Richards offers irrefutable evidence. He notes that, when Cicero was imprisoned, he asked his friend Atticus to compose letters on his behalf (noted on p. 50 in Richards’ monograph):

I should like you to write in my name to Basilius and to anyone else you like, even to Servilius, and say whatever you think fit. (Cicero, Atticus 11.5)

If they look for [my missing] signature or handwriting, say that I have avoided them because of the guards. (Cicero, Atticus, 11.2.4)

Now if Cicero could authorize a trusted secretary to compose letters in his own name—letters that he himself never even saw—then surely the lesser deed of editing or coauthoring must also have occurred. Ehrman camps on the latter without acknowledging the former.

And it is significant that in 2 Thessalonians 3.17 Paul says, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, which is how I write in every letter.” We can infer such a note by Paul in Romans (see 16.22), Galatians (6.11), and elsewhere. In other words, Paul apparently never authorized a secretary to compose a letter in his name that he did not see, but he did employ secretaries as editors and virtual coauthors. That he would write something at the end of all his letters would be proof that the letter was genuine, and it would indicate that Paul had authorized its contents. It should also not go unnoticed (though Ehrman never mentions this) that the only letters disputed on linguistic bases in the Pauline corpus are those that were written toward the end of his life (Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals; 2 Thessalonians is disputed on other grounds)—after Paul had spent years with some companions who could be trusted to flesh out his thoughts on paper.

Conclusion

Ehrman offers many other arguments that cannot be addressed in a short review. I must conclude with a final observation. The fact that Bart Ehrman has put forth a trade-book rather than a scholarly monograph on ancient pseudepigrapha allows him the luxury of not having to deal with counter-evidence or peer review. Nowhere does he cite E. Earle Ellis, D. A. Carson, Leon Morris, Douglas Moo, Donald Guthrie (except for one note on an article, ignoring his massive work on NT introduction), Andreas Köstenberger, L. S. Kellum, Charles Quarles, Richard Longenecker, Anthony Kenny, Martin Hengel, Alan Millard, K. J. Neumann, David Dungan, T. L. Wilder, Harold W. Hoehner, or countless other scholars whose research disputes his conclusions. To the unsuspecting layperson, Forged looks like a death knell to the NT canon. To those who labor in the discipline of NT studies, it looks like yet another sensationalist book from Ehrman that is heavy on rhetoric and light on facts.Similar Posts:

• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s “Forged” – Part 2
• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
• What If We Found The Original New Testament But Did Not Know It?
• Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin
• The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace

Part 2: Statistics on Writing Styles

So, how does Ehrman attempt to prove forgery in the NT? He uses the traditional arguments that have been debated for centuries: differences in style, conceptual/theological differences, and historical discrepancies from known facts. Arguments on both sides have been made, and continue to be made, in the scholarly literature. There is a ready answer to arguments that the authors of the NT are not those claimed; see, for example, the NT introductions by Carson and Moo; Guthrie; and Köstenberger, Kellum, and Quarles.

Ehrman however ratchets up the discussion with statistical analysis. After discussing only a part of the data (word usage) that makes up an author’s style, Ehrman concludes: “In almost every study done [in the last ninety years], it is clear that the word usage of the Pastorals is different from that in Paul’s other letters” (98). The documentation at this point cites but one author, Armin Baum, who argues, contra Ehrman, that Paul wrote the Pastorals! Further, Ehrman fails to mention the most recent sophisticated computer-assisted researches by Anthony Kenny, A Stylometric Study of the New Testament (NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), and K. J. Neumann, The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of Stylostatistical Analysis (Atlanta: Scholars, 1990). Kenny’s research concludes that, according to computer analysis, only 1 and 2 Timothy of the Pastorals are Pauline, while Titus is not. Yet no scholar, as far as I know, makes this claim on other grounds: the Pastorals are virtually always seen as a unit, written by the same author, whether Paul or someone else (though sometimes 2 Timothy, not Titus, is viewed as written by a different author than 1 Timothy and Titus). And Neumann, in spite of expecting quite different results, notes somberly that “The hopes did not materialize that the greater labor connected with several syntactic-category indices might produce some very significant criteria. … there is more variability within authors than anticipated” (205). In one test, 2 Thessalonians and 1 Peter both lined up with Paul’s writing style perfectly; in another, Revelation, chapters 2 and 3 were considered Pauline! No wonder Neumann concludes, “Christian authors, especially Paul, are not distinguished by the indices chosen” (213). Surely, these are not the modern sophisticated statistical studies that Ehrman is thinking of, but neither does he mention any in support of his views.Similar Posts:

• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s “Forged” – Part 3
• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
• The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace
• I Don't Get Bart Ehrman
• Common Errors in Bible Interpretation

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Conclusion

In sum, what can we say overall about the NIV 2011? First, it is a well-thought out translation, with checks and balances through rigorous testing, overlapping committees to ensure consistency and accuracy, and a publisher willing to commit significant resources to make this Bible appealing to the Christian reader. The commitment of the CBT, Biblica, the NIV translators, and Zondervan is truly stunning. A serious investment of money and manpower has produced this translation. And why? To encourage the believer in Jesus Christ to seek his face in the scriptures, and to grow in grace because of what he or she sees. The obvious dedication of all the principals to the Bible as God’s Word must not go unnoticed. This is a translation by believers for believers. And precisely because the translators represent various denominations and countries, as well as positions about the role of women in the church, the NIV 2011 has an incredibly strong foundation. The unity that is the NIV produced from such diversity speaks well for the health of the Church today. The translators model what believers are to be like.

Second, the scholarship that produced this version is excellent, both in text and translation decisions. The textual basis and rendering of difficult expressions in the original are bold features that warrant our gratitude. This is no fly-by-night operation. Unspeakable effort has gone into the production of this version of the Bible, with thousands of decisions being made by individuals and committees, all under the purview of the prime mandate of the CBT. For this, believers everywhere can and should thank God for the NIV, because it is what it purports to be: the eternal word of God in the language of English-speaking people today.

Third, there are problems with this translation, of course. But there are problems with every translation. Not a single one is perfect, though some are significantly better than others. The New World Translation, because of its strong sectarian bias and downright impossible renderings of the text in many places where the original text contradicts the core beliefs of this group, is far and away the worst translation in English dress. On the other end of the spectrum are some gems, and the NIV 2011 is one of them. Although it is easy for people to become pseudo-informed about Bible translations through the Internet, a far more valuable exercise would be to find a good version and read it. And for readability, the NIV 2011 has no peers. Debates over which translation is better ultimately are a major distraction whose fire the Enemy loves to stoke. As with the handful of other exceptional translations, the NIV 2011 definitely should be one that the well-equipped English-speaking Christian has on his or her shelf, and one that they consult often for spiritual nourishment. Tolle lege!Similar Posts:

• A Review of the NIV 2011: Part 3 of 4
• King James Bible: Historical Timeline
• A Review of the NIV 2011: Part 1 of 4
• A Review of the NIV 2011: Part 2 of 4
• Bible Translations in a Nutshell

Part 1 of 3

The James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina Chapel Hill, Dr. Bart Ehrman, is the most recognized evangelical-turned-agnostic in the world today. He has written more than twenty books, though in recent years he has focused on popular writing more than academic. This is a strategy that will eventually backfire. His most recent iteration is yet another provocative trade-book hostile to the Christian faith. His most popular previous books have attacked the reliability of the New Testament (NT) manuscripts as witnesses to the original text (Misquoting Jesus), the historicity of the NT (Jesus, Interrupted), and the problem of theodicy—how there can be a good God with so much evil in the world (God’s Problem). Forged takes head-on the authorship of many of the books of the NT, arguing that the ancient church got it wrong on most of them.

The book has eight chapters that, at first glance, look like discrete units. This gives the impression, reinforced by the subtitle to the work, that Forged marshals hundreds of pages of evidence that the writings of the NT are forgeries. But there is extensive overlap between chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8. Furthermore, most of Forged is about books other than the NT: forgeries in early Christianity written both by the orthodox and heretics, other Greco-Roman forgeries, even modern forgeries. To the undiscerning reader, Ehrman’s relentless revelations about ancient forgeries will seem like rock-solid arguments—by their sheer volume—for NT forgeries. But surprisingly there is comparatively little on the NT itself.

Ehrman’s argument that there are forgeries in the NT is threefold: First, the ancient church, as with the rest of the Greco-Roman world, always rejected pseudepigraphical writings (or forgeries) whenever they were detected as such. Second, sophisticated computer-generated statistical tools have demonstrated that Paul, for example, did not write the Pastoral letters—1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. (Actually, Ehrman provides other arguments, but this one caught my eye since his claims regarding statistics were more than I had heard before.) Third, there is no evidence that the secretaries (technically known as amanuenses) for any ancient letters—including the NT letters—had any role other than to copy down what the author dictated. They did not do any significant editing, nor were they coauthors or composers of these documents.

This threefold argument—if true—would have devastating ramifications for the Christian faith. If Ehrman is right, we would need to toss out several books of the NT: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy, Titus, James, Jude, and 1–2 Peter. That’s ten letters assigned to the flames, since, according to Ehrman, the real authors of these letters deceived their readers into thinking that they were someone else. A brief examination of Ehrman’s arguments and evidence is therefore in order.

Ancient Forgeries

What Ehrman has to say about forgeries in the ancient world and in early ‘Christian’ circles—he gratuitously includes Gnostics and other heretics under the rubric Christian—from the second century on is quite accurate and very informative. This is an excellent primer on why ancient forgeries were produced, what forgeries were produced, what their contents are, and how we know that they are forgeries (though this last item has a rather lean discussion overall). Most of the book is actually about such non-NT forgeries. He very carefully defines a variety of categories—forgeries, fabrications, falsifications, pseudonymy, pseudepigraphy, false attributions, etc. Ehrman has been working for years on a scholarly tome on forgeries; Forged is a kind of first fruits of this scholarship and here he demonstrates a well-thought out organization of the data and what appears to be an enviable command of much of the literature.

Along these lines, Ehrman makes important distinctions between the anonymous books of the NT—the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews, and 1–3 John—and those that claim some authorship. This distinction is important: Although the traditionally assigned authorship of the Gospels, for example, has ancient and unequivocal testimony, it is not part of the original text. All the Gospels were originally anonymous. Thus, for those who hold the Bible in high regard, there is still room for debate over the authorship of these books.

What the subtitle of the book claims, however, is related only to the Bible: forgeries abound in the Bible (specifically the NT). This, of course, is where the interest and the battle-lines are drawn. But surprisingly, Ehrman sides with evangelicals against most liberal theologians for one very important point—indeed, for his main thesis—that the ancient Greco-Roman world, including the ancient church, decidedly rejected any documents written in someone else’s name. This view has been held by evangelicals for a long, long time. Moderate and liberal scholars have rejected it, finding at best paltry evidence to support their claims that the ancient church embraced benign forgeries. In his important work, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), evangelical NT scholar E. Earle Ellis discusses the possibility of benign forgeries, or “‘Innocent’ Apostolic Pseudepigrapha.” He concludes (324):

“In the patristic church apostolic pseudepigrapha, when discovered, were excluded from the church’s canon. This applied whether or not the pseudepigrapha were orthodox or heretical.

The hypothesis of innocent apostolic pseudepigrapha appears to be designed to defend the canonicity of certain New Testament writings that are, at the same time, regarded as pseudepigrapha. It is a modern invention that has no evident basis in the attitude or writings of the apostolic and patristic church…”

In this regard, Ehrman has aligned himself with the historic evangelical position, though he never acknowledges this. Significantly, his argument against liberal scholarship on this point is that the evidence doesn’t support their view, even though their position would be what Ehrman often refers to as the consensus of critical scholars. That phrase is loaded: it essentially means the consensus of those people who normally agree with Ehrman on various issues regarding Scripture (hence critical). Rather conveniently, it ignores the great body of scholars who would disagree with him and with other liberal scholars—namely, evangelical as well as many Catholic and Orthodox scholars. Indeed, if one were to poll all NT professors, there would be no consensus over the authorship of the Pastoral letters, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, or Colossians (though for all of these letters, when all three confessions of the Christian faith are considered, most biblical scholars would probably see them as authentic; see Ben Witherington’s discussion on this here and here). And for the non-Pauline letters, the only NT book that would achieve anything close to a consensus against apostolic authorship would be 2 Peter. Even here, there are many notable exceptions. By reducing the pool to what Ehrman euphemistically calls critical scholars (as though evangelicals cannot be critical), he is able to shape public opinion by systematic misinformation.

Interestingly, where appeal to the consensus suits his purposes, sometimes that is his only argument. But when it goes against his views, he brings in evidence—evidence that evangelicals have long embraced.

Ehrman’s fundamental thesis, then, is refreshing in that it devours a sacred cow of liberal scholarship and puts the issue of the authorship of NT letters on an evidential basis. Finally, here is one liberal scholar with whom evangelicals can find common ground: If these books are not written by their purported authors, then they are intentionally deceptive and the early church was wrong to accept them. This focuses the debate on the data rather than sidestepping it with banal, worn-out diatribe about the canonicity of pseudepigrapha. As T. L. Wilder has argued (Pseudonymity, the New Testament, and Deception: An Inquiry into Intention and Reception [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004] 254-55), if it is true that some NT books are forgeries, such books must be expunged from sacred Scripture.

Ehrman puts himself at risk at this very point; he has to back up his assertions with other arguments that certain NT writings are forgeries. Major gaps in his presentation, however, are seen: Nowhere, for example, does he discuss the patristic testimony about the authorship of the thirteen letters by Paul. Routinely, biblical scholars wrestle with internal evidence (indications within the disputed NT letters) and external evidence (patristic testimony). And it is here that the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of apostolic authorship: the unequivocal testimony of these ancient authors—some reaching back to the late first century—is that Paul wrote all thirteen NT letters that bear his name, Peter wrote 1 Peter, and John wrote 1 John. As for the rest, there is some doubt raised about authorship from time to time—particularly over 2 Peter—a fact that shows that the ancients were not duped dolts but engaged in reason and research on the matter.

The massive amount of forgeries written in the apostles’ names that Ehrman produces demonstrates that the early church looked at the matter cautiously, since none of these forgeries—or, in Ehrman’s view, only a few of these forgeries—made it into the canon. Ehrman never mentions the fact that the ancient church sifted the documents, even though the evidence is clear. Further, he never mentions that the overwhelming majority of orthodox writings throughout church history were not forgeries, while the same cannot be said for heretical writings. Nor does he mention that it is the orthodox who unmasked the forgeries of both the orthodox and heretics; as far as I am aware there is zero evidence of any heretical group admitting forgery for any of their own writings—in spite of the fact that heretical works allegedly by Thomas, Mary, Philip, Peter, and many other of Jesus’ disciples have been found.Similar Posts:

• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s “Forged” – Part 3
• I Don't Get Bart Ehrman
• Book Review of Bart D. Ehrman’s “Forged” – Part 2
• The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace
• What if we found the original New Testament but did not know it? (Part 2)

Weaknesses in the NIV 2011

There are some niggling issues that need to be mentioned. A few categories will be listed here.

First, along with virtually every other translation on the planet, Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53–8.11 are found in the text, even though (almost) all the translators considered them to be inauthentic. But the NIV 2011 admirably puts them in a different font and has an in-text note to show that they are rather dubious. The reasons translations keep these verses in the text even when the translators themselves do not consider them authentic is due to a tradition of timidity. But with the publication of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus (2005), a popular book on the transmission of the New Testament text, the cat is out of the bag. Most biblical scholars—including evangelical scholars—have long recognized that these passages are most likely later additions. We do the living church no service by not fully admitting this fact in our translations. But because these two passages have a long history in printed Bibles and even in the manuscripts, they should not be eliminated altogether. Placing them in the footnotes would seem to be the best policy.

Second, the gender-inclusiveness of the NIV 2011 creates some problems of style and even meaning in a few places. This version has done a significantly better job in both Matt 18.15 and 1 Tim 3.2 than the NRSV, but it still stumbles over Rev 3.20 (“I will come in and eat with that person”), for example. An added note in the places where the modern English generic singular ‘they’ can be misleading, as well as a few similar instances, would more than adequately solve this problem, however. I would encourage the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) to consider adding such moves in the next iteration. At bottom, I think the gender issue has been overblown by people who have reacted to what they thought the TNIV would say, long before it was published, and the same attitude has carried over to the NIV 2011—even though for both translations it is difficult to find passages where they are at fault. 

Table 2

NIV 1984 Compared to NIV 2011

A few observations are in order. In comparison with the NRSV, the NIV 2011 has better marks on style and accuracy in Matt 18.15, and accuracy in 1 Tim 3.2. To be noted in Matt 18.15 is that ‘against you’ has been dropped from the text. This is a variant in the Greek, and I believe that the 2011 NIV has got the correct reading. In 1 Tim 3.2, instead of “the husband of but one wife,” the 2011 version interprets the Greek phrase “husband of one wife” to mean “faithful to his wife.” This, however, is but one interpretation among a myriad of views. In this instance, as in many instances throughout the NIV, I would have preferred that the translators retained a more interpretive-neutral stance as long as the English rendition wasn’t nonsense. “Husband of one wife” would fit that principle just fine, and it would not have caused angst for pastors who preach from the NIV but disagree here and there with the interpretive rendering that gratuitously show up. See also 1 Thess 4.15 for a similar text: “according to the Lord’s word” makes it sound as though this is some saying of the earthly Jesus. The problem is that “the word of the Lord” is virtually a technical phrase in the Old Testament for prophecy and Paul seems to be using it in the same way here. But that interpretive option is shut out in the NIV 1984, the TNIV, and the NIV 2011.

Third, as with the original NIV, this recent iteration still breaks up sentences from what they were in the original. Though of course this is due to modern English usage, the real problem comes when the English reader is deprived of meaning that the reader of the (especially) Greek text has. This is no more clearly seen than in subordination of thought. In 1 Peter 5.7, for example, the NIV has “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” But the Greek word for ‘cast’ is a participle (ἐπιρίψαντες) and is best seen as subordinate to the main verb of verse 6, “Humble.” The two verses should be read together, rather than as two different commands. 1 Peter 5.6 is calling for believers to “humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand.” But this is not accomplished by negatively prostrating oneself under to God’s almighty thumb, but by positively casting one’s cares on him because he cares so deeply for us! The NIV masks this relationship because of the overarching concern for today’s reader. A simple footnote in such places would resolve the matter, and allow the modern reader to gain a better glimpse of the beauty and significance of the original text. Thus, though not related to the gender issue, I am concerned about the NIV’s gratuitous interpretive renderings when a more neutral translation would be just as readable, giving the added benefit to the English reader of seeing in his or her Bible the interpretive options that the translators wrestled with.

Fourth and finally, the greatest strength of the NIV tradition is also its greatest weakness: the language is so much closer to the way people speak today than just about any other bona fide translation that it is not memorable. This version simultaneously is a joy to read because of its almost conversational style—almost as though one is listening, for example, to Paul preaching—and somewhat forgettable because it lacks the turns of expression that make the KJV, REB, ESV, and (to a lesser degree) the NET the kinds of translations that linger in one’s memory. The tension here for translators is almost palpable: a translator’s goals are fidelity to the original, clarity and memorability in the receptor language. The KJV reigned supreme on memorability (or elegance), while the NIV does this on clarity. It also scores high marks on accuracy. But these objectives—accuracy, clarity, and elegance—are cross-purposed. No translation can do them all justice. There is an old Italian proverb: “Translators, traitors!” This is similar to the English proverb: “Something always gets lost in translation.” By choosing clarity and readability above the other objectives (even though accuracy is listed as its first priority), the NIV stumbles over elegance. One can’t have everything in a translation, but it is possible to have two of the three major features. The NIV is strong on readability and somewhat strong on accuracy, while the ESV is strong on elegance and somewhat strong on accuracy and, less so, on readability. The NET is strong on accuracy, somewhat strong on elegance (though this is patchy), and semi-strong on readability. Perhaps a chart of major English translations with these objectives in mind would help the reader. 

Elegance, Accuracy, Readability

in Major English Bibles

(scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best score)

At bottom, there is a variety of factors that one must consider when choosing a translation. The three basic translation philosophies—which, incidentally, correspond to the three periods of English Bible translation: elegance (1536–1881), accuracy (1881-1971), readability (1978–present)—are just one way of looking at these translations.Similar Posts:

• A Review of the New International Version 2011: Part 4 of 4
• A Review of the NIV 2011: Part 1 of 4
• What Bible Should I Own (Dan Wallace)
• King James Bible: Historical Timeline
• Bible Translations in a Nutshell