I wanted to take this opportunity to announce the release of a new monograph that deals especially with the deity of Christ, and especially from a grammatical perspective. Based on my doctoral dissertation but with significantly more material and thoroughly updated, Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin: Semantics and Significance was published last week by Peter Lang. If you’re familiar with Sharp’s Rule, which was articulated especially in relation to Christ’s deity, you will understand the need for Sharp’s name in the title. (This announcement is timely, too, since it’s Sharp’s birthday! He’s 273 years old.) The monograph represents about 25 years of research, off and on, and touches on some key passages such as Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1. It’s available at Amazon. But since it is an academic book, it’s a bit pricey: $69.95.

Besides affirming the deity of Christ in both of these passages, the book deals with constructions that do not fit Sharp’s rule and thus have a different force. “Pastors and teachers” in Eph 4:11 and “apostles and prophets” in Eph 2:20 are discussed at length, for example. In neither of these passages is it likely that the groups are identical. The fact that the book came out after Gordon Fee’s magisterial Pauline Christology has afforded me the opportunity to interact with Fee’s arguments that “our great God and Savior” refer to the Father rather than the Son. I disagree with him on this, and argue that the epithet speaks of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, the book had several typos in the Greek due to some font issues at the printer’s. But a corrigenda sheet will accompany each hard copy so that you can spot the errors and make the corrections. If you write to me (dbw@csntm.org), I can send you the corrigenda sheet (in case you buy a copy that was already dispatched to the reseller before the typos were detected).
The monograph will be on sale at the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting coming up in Boston later this month.

Join us in reclaiming the mind for Christ. Start The Theology Program in your church.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After an always exhausting and worrisome trip over the ‘Pond,’ I arrived in London with three friends on August 16 (or, as the Brits say, 16 August).

Exhausting? Yes, because I choose not to go to sleep the night before flights to Europe so that I can sleep on the plane. OK, maybe ‘choose’ is too strong of a word. The reality is that I have so much work to do before I leave for the airport that I don’t have time to sleep. But it’s a great plan for curing jetlag. Of course, if there are crying babies in the vicinity, then my scheme fails miserably. Or if one of our team happens to lose his lunch due to a migraine and turbulence, and if he happens to be my son, it’s hard to fall asleep. It’s also exhausting hauling 17 large pieces of luggage, paying the increasingly exorbitant extra luggage costs, and wondering if we’ll ever see our bags again. If we don’t, the expedition is over before it begins.

But worrisome? I admit: I’m a worrier. I wish I weren’t. I wish I trusted God much more, especially since he has a pretty decent track record with me. I wish I didn’t get heartburn as I park my big derriere in a tiny seat and try to take my mind off of all that we have to do. I wish I could just relax, believing that our gear is going to be OK, believing that we won’t have hassles from the passport folks or the customs agents when we land, believing that the four of us can haul everything to the next vehicle to take us somewhere without incident. I don’t relax until we get to our new home and I see that the gear is still in one piece. Even though it’s all insured, it’s a lot of delicate equipment. Each person is allowed to take one bag for personal belongings; the other 13 are for our work of photographing manuscripts. Continue Reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I don’t know about you, but the copyright date on my Bible is 2002 (I usually read from the ESV). What does that mean? It means that the Bible that I read from, study from, and teach from is nearly 2000 years newer than the original. How do we know that errors have not crept in after 2000 years? You may have an older version. If you use an NASB or NIV, your Bible will not be much better off. Thirty years closer to the original is not saying much. Even if you are a hard core KJV advocate, using an “original” 1611 version, your Bible is still over fifteen hundred years past the original New Testament and over two thousand years newer than the Old Testament. More than that, these Bible’s are all in English and the New Testament was written in Greek and the Old Testament was mostly written in Hebrew. More than that, the Greek and Hebrew of the Scriptures are both dead languages, meaning that they are not spoken anymore.

With all this time and change, doesn’t it seem likely that there have been many errors in transcription that have crept into the text, corrupting the original beyond repair? How can we know our Bible is reliable? Continue Reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The famous codex from St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt has begun to show up on the Internet. A joint project between the British Library, the University of Leipzig, the National Library in St. Petersburg, and St. Catherine’s Monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai, Egypt, has been underway for some time now. All four institutes own portions of this manuscript (with the BL owning the largest section, the complete New Testament—which, incidentally, is the oldest complete New Testament by half a millennium!). The project to post these images on-line has involved new digital photography and some slick search-capable tools.

One can see the images already posted by going to this site: http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/

Unfortunately, only selections from the codex are on-line currently. The entire codex should be up by July 2009.

CSNTM has the complete NT on its site, but our images are digital photographs from the 1911 black-and-white folio photographs (http://www.csntm.org/Manuscripts/GA%2001/). Continue Reading »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

By the time you read this blog post, I will be back in Athens, coming off a week-long expedition to the island of Lesbos. Yes, Lesbos. This is the third largest of the 2000 Greek islands. And yes, it’s the place where the name ‘lesbian’ comes from. The reason for the name and its association with female-to-female sex is due to the classical Greek poet, Sappho. She lived here on Lesbos and founded a finishing school for girls. Apparently (the historical documents need to be pieced together, if I recall), part of what she taught in the school was how to love one’s husband. But since it was inappropriate for the girls to be with men, they were taught such techniques by older women. Hence, the name lesbian.

The Lesbians actually don’t care much for their name being co-opted by a socio-political group with an agenda. One of the ways they’ve dealt with the problem is to have an alternate name for the island: Mytilene. But no one here, as far as I know, is known as a Mytilenian.

One travel guide book mentioned that one could frequently see women holding hands on Lesbos, since the island was a magnet for such people. The only problem with this statement is that European girls in general hold hands with each other, without any sexual connotations at all. We’ve seen absolutely nothing unusual here, nothing out of the ordinary for the rest of Europe.

But that’s not what brought us to Lesbos in the first place. We finished our photographic work on Patmos and decided to spend a week on another Greek island in search of manuscripts. Lesbos has one of the largest collections of any Greek island, so we decided to come here. The manuscripts are to be found in something like seven monasteries, spread all over the island, and two other places. That’s the interesting part of the story. One of those other places is a high school! It’s an old ‘gymnasium,’ founded in 1840, and dedicated to the highest levels of learning. They even have a professor who is earning his doctorate in paleography at Oxford University. Pretty impressive place. The gymnasium (now called the Experimental Lyceum of Mytilene) is in downtown Mytilene, but it took us a day and a half to find it. We knew of two Greek New Testament manuscripts there, but discovered that the real treasure is a third one, unknown to us previously. We are hoping to get permission to photograph these manuscripts later this year; this trip was simply intended to make initial contact. We met Vasilis Vlachos, the Oxford-trained professor. Delightful fellow, good scholar.

The other place that was a surprise is an institute called ‘Club Benjamin.’ At least that was the name of the place listed in the Kurzgefasste Liste, the standard reference book on where New Testament manuscripts are located in the world. The K-Liste is basically a Bible on Bibles. We always bring a copy of it with us on expeditions.

Club Benjamin is in a town known as Plomari. That’s all the information we had. We drove to Plomari on hairpin mountain roads without guard rails. The drop off was deadly. The many crosses erected on the sides of this twisting, turning, tiny road are mute testimony to the treachery of driving in Greece. The one thing we didn’t want to do was to drive back in the dark.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Plomari a little late in the day due to my underappreciated navigational skills. (Anyone who knows me knows that I should never be assigned the navigator! I get lost going home!) Anyway, after a 40-mile detour, we finally found Plomari. But we didn’t find Club Benjamin. We got out of the car and asked all the locals if they had heard of the Club. No one had. We then drove another half a kilometer (on Lesbos, everything is allegedly half a kilometer away), right into the heart of this harbor town. We found some parking and Billy Todd, veteran of several Patmos expeditions, got out of the car and looked up at the two-story building right in front of us. The title of the old building was “Beniamin, o Lesbios.” Benjamin the Lesbian. Could this be the place? We found a way up to the second story (a back staircase) on this unnamed street. When we got up there, the folks in the place were surprised to see us there. In part, because we were younger than all the patrons by a good margin! This ‘club’ was not a nightclub, but a retirement home of sorts. It was a place where old, retired Greeks could play backgammon, billiards (though the pool table hadn’t been used in years), drink Ouzo, and gawk at the folks walking below in the town square. It was a place where gossip and old yarns could be spun without anyone looking at a watch. Very charming in its own way.

We noticed some glass-covered book shelves with some very old books in them. But the shelf number we were looking for was not there. So we spoke with one individual about what we were looking for, but he could hardly understand our impeccable English or Erasmian-slaughtered Greek. So, I wrote out in Greek what I wanted to say and he immediately placed a phone call. Answers were coming.

About 25 minutes later, the president of the ‘club’ and a friend came on the scene. It was about dusk now. We figured that we had better leave in the next few minutes if we were going to miss Death Trap Highway. I gave us fifteen tops before we could kiss our lives goodbye.

These gentlemen were most helpful, especially the friend. His English was excellent, making communication much easier. I asked where he learned it. He said, in a thick Australian accent, that he had been living down under for the past 44 years. Giorgio was just in town visiting old friends when the phone call came. Timing is everything.

We learned that the manuscript was no longer there, but we didn’t know where it was. Another phone call was placed and the owner of the club indicated that he had the manuscript in Athens currently (where he also happened to be). It was being photographed so that it could be published in a book, coming out next month.

Although this was disappointing news, we were able to buy a pre-release version of the facsimile with a handshake and exchange of some Euros. Before we could leave, however, food was served. Food and drinks and more old-timers showing up. Ouzo, the national drink of Greece, is especially big on Lesbos. The local Ouzo distillery was just a couple of kilometers away, and it had a great museum. The CEO of the distillery was soon at our table inviting us to take a tour of the place with him as our guide!

By the time we could say our goodbyes, daylight was a thing of the past. We were going to have to grope our way home on those unforgiving mountainous roads. When I thought that the Lord would surely protect us, I was reminded of the many crosses I had seen on the way to Plomari. Obviously, God doesn’t always work that way for his children. Sobering thoughts, but the kinds that get one to pray a bit harder.

As it turned out, driving in the dark ended up being a blessing in disguise. We could always see when an oncoming vehicle was approaching, and both could slow down and make the necessary adjustments. I suspect that many of the highway fatalities in Greece are due to small cars having to swerve to avoid big tourist busses that give no quarter. But our driver, Michael Schumacher (a.k.a. Brian Wright) himself gave no quarter. I’m just glad the police were sleeping off their Ouzo in other parts of the island!

Such are the adventures in looking for ancient copies of the New Testament. Now, we are back in our hotel—which has no telephone, no alarm clock, no television, and no air conditioning. And the Internet is unreliable, shutting down by 11 pm every night and hardly running well at other times. But since we’re on the coast, and the Aegean is especially calm tonight, I can get reception from another hotel half a kilometer away. Yes, half a kilometer away. Everything in Lesbos is half a kilometer away.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Three days after I came home from our first expedition of the season (to Albania and Greece), I took off again—this time, on a road trip. With two other guys, we drove north to Ann Arbor to photograph the Greek New Testament manuscripts at the University of Michigan. UM boasts the largest collection of Greek NT MSS in America: 1 out 6 MSS are in their collection! We will be photographing all of them except for the papyri which have already been digitized.

Two teams went to Ann Arbor this week. Four people flew in and four drove. We are a little slow in setting up, but the library has cooperated marvelously with us. We are occupying four tables in the manuscript room—about one third of the whole room! Altogether, there are over 20,000 images to shoot. But to date, far and away the most challenging manuscript has been codex 2364, or shelf number MS 182. For starters, this is an ultra-tiny manuscript. It measures 3.5 inches by 2.75 inches—barely larger than the fragmentary leaf known as P52. Think of a 3 x 5 card and cut it in half. That’s pretty close to the size of this document. But it’s also just as thick as it is tall!

The text is 12th–13th century, and it includes the four Gospels. Yes, all of them. The handwriting is so small that it’s hard to believe that such delicate work could have been achieved eight hundred years ago. I am not sure how it would have been done; if anyone has a clue, I’d appreciate the information. The font size is about 3 points. It looks like this. So, not only is it difficult to imagine someone producing this text, it is also difficult to imagine the kind of person who could read it.

I prepared the manuscript for photography. It barely opens wide enough to photograph, which presents its own challenges. But in order to prep the manuscript, I had to measure dimensions, document content, check on the date, confirm shelf number, note how many columns and lines per column it has, record its material (parchment or paper), and list any other important material. Most manuscripts’ leaves are numbered, although there are almost always mistakes with these numbers. Usually a page is skipped or two others in sequence have the same number. The ‘wee beastie’ as we are affectionately calling this tiny text is unnumbered. This creates a significant problem for photography: we must have the same amount of recto (right) side images as verso (left) side images. If we don’t, then we have to go back through the manuscript and find the error. If we accidentally duplicate a page, it might take us 10–15 minutes to find out where. If we skip a page, it might take us double that time. The wee beastie needed to be numbered very, very accurately—yet we are not allowed to write the number in pencil in the text (which most manuscripts have). So, I took slips of paper, marked with the leaf numbers, and placed them after every ten leaves. After triple and quadruple checking every section, I was satisfied that I had probably gotten the leaf count right. (I ended up being wrong twice!) It came to an astounding 492 leaves. That computes to 984 pages! That was a challenge just to prepare for shooting.

We learned that Wee Beastie had never been microfilmed before. One of the librarians tried to take a few pictures of it recently, but gave up quickly. When I told her our nickname for the manuscript, she said that she had a much more vulgar term!

Finally, the photographers took their turn. The first 61 leaves are on paper—the text was written out in a much later hand to replace the leaves that had disappeared over the centuries. These leaves are made of paper. But starting on leaf 62, the manuscript is parchment. This continues on until leaf 326, when it reverts to paper. Just over half the manuscript is thus on the original parchment, while the rest is replacement leaves.

The binding is tight, which means that the photographers can’t open it very far. And with a tiny manuscript, even the slightest jostling of the table, even a gust coming across the manuscript as someone walks by, can cause the letters to blur. Further, the f-stop needs to be set very high so as to maximize depth of field focus. The higher the f-stop, the greater depth of focus can be achieved. But it comes at a price: the higher the f-stop, the longer the shutter is open. The reason this is necessary is because we’re dealing with proportions: a relatively flat page on a large manuscript that varies, say, ¼” across its face can be shot at a lower f-stop because proportionately it doesn’t vary very much. But on a tiny manuscript, the same variation is proportionately equal to a 1-2” dip in the page! We had to use f-16 for Wee Beastie; it requires a good five seconds of exposure for each page.

Three people were needed to shoot the manuscript: one computer operator and two ‘page turners.’ One person holds the manuscript in place by using one hand as a block to keep the manuscript from moving. She puts her hand under the black cloth, and with her other hand holds the verso side at a right angle to the page being shot. Another person holds the recto side in place, making sure to keep the fingers from getting in the way of the text. Small hands are needed for this work! And because the vellum leaves are so thin, a white sheet of paper needs to be placed behind the vellum on every shot. The text in many places has etched through the vellum so that only a silhouette of each letter can be discerned. The whole thing looks like a miniature stencil.

Tomorrow, we should be done shooting the Wee Beastie—a manuscript that has heretofore never been photographed and hardly ever read. And when the photography is done, the work of transcription begins. But instead of having to read tiny text through a magnifying glass, we will be able to blow up each image to about 30 square feet without any pixilation! Our goal of making the photographs more readable than the original in this case will become an uncontested claim. And another copy of the Word of God will be accessible for research and study.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008. The day started at 11 am at the Greek Bible Institute in Pikermi, just outside of Athens. Late start because we thought driving to the famed monasteries of Meteora would take four hours. Four of us (Billy Todd, Tim Ricchuiti, Brian Wright, and Dan Wallace) shoehorned ourselves into a tiny car, and took off for the road north. But we were not prepared for what would await us today.

We took the E75 up the east coast of Greece’s mainland. For the most part, a very fine, modern highway. After we had traveled for about 2 & ½ hours, we got an email on Tim Ricchuiti’s cell phone from Jeff Baldwin, the director of the Greek Bible Institute and a former student of mine. Jeff grew up in Greece (his dad, Bill Baldwin, another Dallas Seminary grad, was the founder of the school decades ago) and is completely bilingual. He has many friends in low places (since he’s not Orthodox), but even low places here are sometimes high enough. As I said, we were headed for the monasteries built high up on top of rocks that ascend straight up into the heavens hundred of meters above the town below. We thought we would visit them today, and tomorrow see if we could examine some manuscripts there. The monasteries here have nearly 60 Greek New Testament manuscripts. In centuries past, the only way that people could get to the top of these rocks was to get pulled up on a rope. But once, when a rope broke, the rules changed. Now, there are steps to the heights. A veritable stairway to heaven. Led Zeppelin would be envious. We were eager with anticipation (as much as four Testoterone-laden eggheads can be). But the email from Jeff changed our plans instantly.

For the rest of the story, you’ll have to go to www.bible.org. The link to the essay is here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Spending another week on Patmos has been a great joy. It has occurred to me that I have not given you much of a detailed look at what it’s like to spend a day here, though. We walk up to the monastery after we park our car about 400 yards downhill. We’re all dressed in black (including long sleeve shirts) to honor the monks, even though it can get quite warm here. We enter the courtyard and receive stares from dozens of pairs of eyes belonging to faces from all over the world. (People wonder if we are priests. Two folks from an internationally known institution pontificated while we were a few feet away that we must be priests from a different sect, not knowing that we spoke English. We made the gentle correction.) We then enter the subterranean library to do our work. There we will be from 9.30 am until 1 pm.

The electricity is not particularly reliable and it’s very easy to trip the circuits. We cannot plug all of our computers and cameras into sockets, so we must bring batteries to backup at least one of the cameras. After breaking the circuits multiple times from minor infractions, we finally realized that we had to pull the plug to get the work done.

At about 9.45 am, the assistant librarian tells us that coffee is served. We go to the foyer and enjoy a cup of Greek coffee (non-filtered, with all the grounds in the bottom of the cup). Fifteen minutes later we’re back at the job. At 1 pm, we pack up for the day and exit the library. But our time at the monastery is not yet over.

Every day just before 1 pm, a priest rings the monastery bell, signaling that lunch is served in the dining room. Although there may be over 100 people visiting the monastery at that time, only a few are invited to the meal. This week has been especially busy with extra guests: two paleographers from Italy, and two more from Thessaloniki, have eaten with the monks, along with the four of us from CSNTM. The exact number of places are set. Only men are allowed in the dining room. We all file in and stand behind our chairs, standing in silence. The priests and monks (about half a dozen) meander in and stand behind their chairs. Finally, the abbot comes in, rings a small table bell, and prays over the meal. Then we all sit and eat while another priest reads ancient letters from the desert fathers. (Last year, he read from St. Chrysostom.) About 12-15 minutes into the meal, the abbot pounds his cane on the floor twice, signaling that the reading may cease and the priest may join those who are dining.

On normal days, the abbot will chime the table bell several minutes later, signaling the end of the meal. But on Fridays, things are different. Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days in the Orthodox world (a tradition that goes back to the Didache), and this means that meat and milk products are not allowed, as well as dessert (except for fruit) and wine. Wine is served with every lunch, so to not have it is a bit unusual. However, the wine carafes are still placed on the table. On Wednesday, those who are sensitive to Orthodox traditions will not drink the wine, even though they have the opportunity to do so.

On Fridays, things are a little different. A few minutes later, the abbot chimes the table bell once again. This signals that the fast is over: the priests start pouring the wine, which signals that the guests may do the same. A few minutes after that, the abbot chimes the bell one more time, then all the priests and then the guests rise to their feet. The abbot prays a concluding prayer, and the priests all file out. The abbot and one other priest stand at the door while the rest of the priests and monks walk out of the room, with head bowed. Then the guests walk out, also with head bowed (or they should be!). It does not matter how much one has eaten, the meal is over when the abbot rings the final chime. (However, last year the abbot told us that we may stay to eat more and were not required to leave with the rest. We said that we wished to honor the monastery and not be singled out for special privileges, so we have always exited the dining room with the monks and priests.)

Very interesting meal time! And not one for idle chit-chat (or any chit-chat, for that matter). We are there to be nourished in body and soul by the healthful meals and the reading of saints of old.

After our time at the monastery, we spent a few hours wrestling with where to go next since we finished our work here sooner than we had budgeted for. We decided to go to the island of Lesbos. There are eight monasteries there that have New Testament manuscripts. Please pray for travel mercies and open doors as we try to get into the monasteries to at least look at the manuscripts and, we hope, photograph them as well. We are all a bit weary from hauling all our luggage around, but we have two more weeks of work to do. Already the expedition has been a great success, and the rest of our time is up to us to use wisely. We are hoping to get into several sites in Greece before returning to the States. Pray for open doors!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

OK, I admit it: this is shameless of me. It’s tactless, mercenary, and almost despicable. Nevertheless, I’m going forth with it because I believe that, in this case, the ends justify the means. Not that I’ve changed my ethical convictions, but rather than the ends are so vital that a “certain moral flexibility” (as Martin Blank said in his self-description in Grosse Point Blank) is tolerable. And if not tolerable, at least I can always ask for forgiveness (I’ll take that route over asking for permission any day! (;-)).

Here’s my spiel: This past Saturday evening was the annual fundraiser dinner for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. As many of you know, we are trying to raise $500,000 for 15 months’ worth of photographic expeditions, starting next month. After the fundraiser, we now have over $150,000 toward that lofty goal. We are extremely grateful to all who have contributed to the work of digitally preserving ancient copies of the Word of God. We did a new thing at the dinner, and it’s something that I’d like to pass on to you who live in the USA. We had some blow-ups of manuscript photographs for sale. The size was 18” x 24”. Each was laminated and was glued to a stiff backboard. The resolution was outstanding. Each picture is numbered on the back; we will only make 500 copies. Then no more. Each comes with a certificate giving the details of what’s in the image, including the age of the manuscript, the text, etc. (A much briefer description is found below.)

The images are for sale at $150 apiece. Half of that money constitutes a tax-deductible donation to CSNTM; half is the market price of the image. Shipping is extra: $10 for the continental US. Many of you live in the Dallas area and could pick up the picture yourself, thus saving on shipping costs. Some of you may wish to add more to the check as a donation to CSNTM. We’ll note the difference and send you a statement to that effect.

Please understand that the reason I’m making these available to you is because I believe in what CSNTM is doing. Our goal of photographing as many as 200,000 manuscript pages during the next 15 months requires a great deal of funding. If you believe in what we are doing, then owning a piece of history while supporting our efforts may well be a win-win opportunity for you. We urge you to partner with us in this endeavor. And, of course, we urge you to invest in RMM, since that ministry is how you found out about CSNTM and since it is doing an awesome and unique work for the Lord!

These pictures are suitable for framing and would be a great conversation piece in your home. They also would look marvelous in church hallways, offices, classes. And they immediately pique one’s interest in the transmission of the text of scripture. In that respect, they become springboards, as educational tools, into the reliability of the biblical manuscripts as pointers to the essential teaching of scripture.

I’m attaching low-res images of these pictures below, followed by a brief description. If you’re interested in purchasing such a picture, please send the check to the following address:

CSNTM
5729 Lebanon Road
Suite 144, #403
Frisco, TX 75034

Make sure to specify which picture you are purchasing on your check. Allow 4 weeks for delivery.

1. “John the Apostle”: An icon of St. John, as he is sitting in the Cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, writing the Gospel of John. This is from codex 676, a 13th century Greek Gospels manuscript.

2. “Lectionary 2276”: a portion of a text that would have been read for a particular day, this leaf is of John 13.31-14.3. It thus starts with “Now the Son of Man is glorified” and ends with “I will come again.” The color photograph especially shows the beauty of the rubrication (red lettering).

3. “Codex 2882”: This is a 10th-11th century Greek manuscript of the Gospel of Luke. Although it is probably the least attractive of the four images, it is probably the most important. The text on the image begins with Luke 1.21 (“Now the people were waiting for Zechariah”) and ends with Luke 1.33 (“And his kingdom will never end”). The image was selected because it clearly shows the hair side of the parchment; this is the outside of the animal skin, and the follicles are still clearly seen.

4. “Vulgate MS of Proverbs”: This is an uncatalogued Latin manuscript, in the possession of a private owner. Written c. AD 1250, this image is the opening page of the book of Proverbs. Look at the bottom of the page to see the artwork. Written 200 years before the printing press, this manuscript was produced close to the apex of Latin iconography. They don’t get much more beautiful than this!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Of interest to the readers of Parchment & Pen: Christianity Today this week (April 23, 2008) published its article on the Greek New Testament manuscripts that the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (www.csntm.org) discovered in Albania last summer. It appeared both as a full-length interview in the on-line version of CT and a shorter treatment in the print version for May 2008. In addition, the on-line CT had a sidebar discussing the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). For this article, the reporter interviewed a few scholars (including Ben Witherington, Craig Evans, Mike Holmes, and Doug Moo) about the authenticity of the pericope and, if inauthentic, how they viewed the story. This article was included because several of the newly discovered manuscripts in Albania either lacked the story or placed it at the end of John. Interesting perspectives on whether it should be treated as scripture and whether it was historical.

The on-line interview is found here: http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2008/aprilweb-only/117-32.0.html  

The sidebar on John 7:53-8:11 is found here: http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2008/aprilweb-only/117-31.0.html

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I learned something really important on day two of the Greer-Heard Forum: fried fish and dark beer taste even better when you’re sitting around a bunch of theologues. Thoughts of blood barely trickling through my arteries were squeezed out by images of Martin Luther engaged in his famous "table talk" enjoying a catch from Katie’s fish pond and nursing a mug of her homemade brew. We didn’t have any famous scholars in our midst on Saturday night, but we were surrounded by great food and stimulating conversation about the theological controversies of our day. Indeed, the lectures we had heard just hours before provided plenty of grist for the mill.

Day two of the Forum featured Michael Holmes (Bethel University), Dale Martin (Yale University), David Parker (Birmingham University), and William Warren (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary). Each man spoke for approximately 30 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of interaction with the keynotes, Ehrman and Wallace. In keeping with the spirit of the previous night’s dialog, Holmes and Warren took Wallace’s "side" while Martin and Parker were on Ehrman’s. Each lecture was quite different and made its own contribution, as I’ll try to briefly show below.

Michael Holmes
Holmes argued against three models of what the manuscripts would have looked like in the earliest period of copying—the models proposed by David Trobisch, William Peterson, and Kurt Aland. Trobisch suggests that by mid-second century there was controlled copying and that what was being copied was a canonical text somewhat different from the original text. There is no substantial evidence for this, and Wallace had already pointed out that this model fits the Qurâ’an better than the New Testament. Peterson has argued that the text had changed dramatically in the second century, but Holmes effectively debunked Peterson’s examples. Aland argued that every reading, both original and secondary, has been preserved somewhere in the manuscripts. However, Holmes showed that some readings were barely preserved, suggesting that there would be many that had not been.

Holmes’ basic point was that copying by its very nature is a conservative practice and that what the scribes would have done early on was good enough—good enough for preserving the essence of the original text and good enough for making clear what the original meant.

Ehrman responded that we can’t project back into the first century what happened in later centuries, but Holmes said that we have to go on the basis of evidence rather than conjecture. Wallace again brought up the relation of P75 to B and argued that we can see what some of the earliest copying practices would have looked like from those manuscripts. He also pointed out that the text of Mark that Luke and Matthew used is assumed to be almost identical to the original of Mark by virtually all redaction critics. Otherwise, they cannot make claims about Matthean motifs if such existed in Matthew’s previously corrupted copy of Mark. Ehrman continued to present himself as very skeptical about what we can know, while Wallace continued to take a moderating position: we cannot know for sure, but we need to base our views on what is most probable.

Dale Martin
Martin, who is one of Ehrman’s good friends (a point whose significance will soon be seen), was the only non-textual critic on the panel. He gave perhaps the liveliest lecture of the bunch. Although he was supposed to argue on behalf of Ehrman, he essentially ripped him for not having a theology of scripture, for leaving the faith with insufficient evidence to do so, and for ignoring interpretation and tradition too much. He especially picked on Ehrman’s spiritual journey. Though Martin unleashed a few curveballs, other aspects of his presentation were much less surprising. In addition to saying that scripture should be read for its narrative and not its theology, he declared that "the original text is a myth" and "there is no original text." Consequently, he argued that any work whose aim was to get back to the original (or the closest thing to it) was wrong-headed.

Ehrman responded first with the words, "Dale and I used to be friends"! He asked Martin why he thought it was appropriate to bring up Ehrman’s personal spiritual journey. Martin simply replied, "You made it public. You put it in your books." Indeed, Martin pointed out the fact that Ehrman chose to make his own spiritual journey the first chapter in two of his popular books, and thus set the tone for the whole of each book with his opening gambit. Ehrman’s spiritual journey was in print, in the very same books where he makes his most radical pontifications. So, according to Martin, it was fair game. Frankly, what Martin said about Ehrman made Wallace’s demonstration of Ehrman’s contradictions seem like a compliment by comparison! I think this clearly shows that Wallace was in no way using an ad hominem argument when he addressed Ehrman’s published views, especially since Wallace specifically said that he didn’t know what Ehrman’s views really are.

The exchange between Martin and Ehrman got a little heated at times. This made for an interesting scene, since Martin was on the right, Ehrman was on the left, and Wallace was stuck in the middle. Wallace was quiet for a long time, appearing to enjoy watching the volleys being tossed over his head. Finally, when the moderator asked if he’d like to say anything, Wallace asked, "Why should I? I’m having too much fun just observing" ! Wallace did, however, speak for a few minutes once the dust settled. He agreed with Martin that many evangelicals flirt with bibliolatry, that they often ignore both tradition and interpretation, and that they also can pour a later theology into the New Testament. But he criticized Martin’s argument about the myth of an original text: "Just because we don’t have one today doesn’t mean it didn’t exist at some point; the scribes were copying something."He also picked up on Martin’s narrative approach and asked that if it didn’t matter which manuscript was being read, then how could Martin explain that there are two more fairly lengthy narratives (John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20) in the later manuscripts than in the earlier ones? Wallace followed that up by asking whether translators should simply not care which text they’re translating, suggesting that such a scenario would take us back to the days of Erasmus. Martin didn’t have enough time to respond to Wallace’s questions, but he acknowledged that they were significant and said he thought he could handle them all.

David Parker
Parker is one of the best textual critics in the world and has his own institute at the University of Birmingham in England. He has in recent years argued against trying to get back to an original text, even arguing that an original is irrelevant or meaningless since the original documents could have been modified significantly by the author several times. In such a case, which is the original? In his lecture he spoke about the work of Muenster and Birmingham of trying to get back to the earliest form of the text by using genealogical studies and tools to do so. He showed a couple of fascinating (but way too detailed) slides on this front, noting that scholars working on the human genome project have basically been involved in textual criticism, too. But he also argued that we can’t get back to the original, that it wasn’t particularly relevant, and that our job should simply be to get back to the earliest form.

Ehrman asked Parker why the earliest form was so important if it didn’t accurately reflect what an author wrote. Wallace pitched in and said that if Parker’s views are right, then not only should intrinsic evidence be abandoned but so should all of exegesis! He noted that Parker’s views are too narrowly focused, thinking of textual criticism as an end in itself. Parker simply said that he was not an exegete, just a textual critic.

It sure was interesting to hear Ehrman’s two team members arguing against his views! After all, when it came to Parker’s claims, Ehrman and Wallace were actually on the same side. (It’s also significant that much of what Ehrman has done in textual criticism is to appeal to intrinsic evidence, which presupposes that he has a pretty fair idea of what an author wrote.)

Bill Warren
Warren’s lecture was basically Textual Criticism 101. It would have been better placed, in my opinion, as the first lecture on Saturday, but since it was the last, people had already heard the gist of it many times over. Warren actually argued for tentativeness about several things. When Ehrman responded, he said that he basically had no problem with what Warren was saying. Wallace, however, said that he thought we could move toward greater certainty by observing what Matthew and Luke did with Mark. He used Mark 1:41 as a test-case, and enlisted Ehrman’s treatment of this in his argument. Here the text either says that Jesus was compassionate or angry when he healed a leper. Wallace noted that Matthew and Luke don’t have either word, but since they drop references to Jesus’ anger elsewhere while maintaining statements about Jesus’ compassion, Mark almost surely said that Jesus was angry in this place. If he had said that Jesus was compassionate, Matthew and Luke would surely have mentioned it. To borrow a cliche, their silence was deafening. But Wallace showed that, by using one of Ehrman’s favorite examples, textual critics are presupposing that we can get back essentially to the author’s words in order to do both redaction and textual criticism. Even Ehrman assumed this! And the fact that Wallace used an example from Mark—which Ehrman underscored as a book that had very few early copies, and thus could have been changed radically before it was found in our extant copies—showed that Ehrman’s skepticism about Mark in particular was unfounded. Wallace even mentioned p. 135 of Misquoting Jesus, where Ehrman had argued that even though we don’t have any second century copies of Mark, we do have books written within twenty years of Mark that utilize Mark.

Given its nature and placement, Warren’s lecture was the least invigorating of the weekend. But it did give Wallace a chance to articulate further his argument about Matthew and Luke’s use of Mark as a way for us to measure how the earliest copying of the manuscripts would have looked.

Ehrman’s Wrap-Up
Ehrman admitted that no cardinal belief of Christianity is affected by any variants (one of the chief points that Wallace had been arguing the whole weekend!). But he also said that since the second century is shrouded in mystery, and since almost all of our variants come from that period, the study of these variants is important and open to interpretation (as to which are closer to the original, why some variants arose, how the scribes went about their work, etc.).

Wallace’s Wrap-Up
Wallace likewise said that we can’t know exactly what the original text said, but we can have a bit more certainty than some skeptics would claim. He also argued that a high Christology was not the basic drive for the orthodox scribes; rather, historicity or harmonization in the Gospels was. (He gave a great illustration of this that would take too long to discuss here; get the recording!) Finally, Wallace summed up why he thought the study of the variants was important: because the Bible is the Word of God. Wallace was unashamed of his evangelical position on this, but he quickly added that he followed a doctrinal taxonomy that answers four questions:

1. What beliefs are essential for the life of the church?
2. What beliefs are important for the health of the church?
3. What beliefs are important for the proper functioning of a local church?
4. What beliefs should not be fought over, are speculative, and unimportant?

He pointed out the fact that textual criticism belongs to the last three categories, but that the Forum was essentially about numbers 2 and 3.

Q&A
The whole Forum concluded with some decent Q&A time. A couple of things really stuck out. First, a questioner asked Ehrman about his text-critical method, noting that Ehrman seemed to always find the least orthodox readings and argue that they were the original readings. What Ehrman said was, frankly, unbelievable. He basically said that he would find the reading that he liked, and then find the evidence to support it! This sure sounded as though he was starting from his conclusions rather than beginning with a question. Not surprisingly, some folks audibly gasped at this response.

Second, someone asked Wallace why he didn’t hold to a doctrine of preservation (which is something that he had mentioned earlier in the conference). He said that (1) the doctrine was recent, first articulated in the Westminster Confession; (2) the verses employed to support the doctrine don’t teach such a thing; and (3) the Old Testament text has not been completely preserved. There are, in fact, some places in which the Old Testament text requires some conjectures that have no manuscript basis whatsoever. Further, Wallace didn’t want to be a Marcionite, elevating the New Testament (in terms of inspiration) over the Old Testament. (In other words, he didn’t want to be bibliologically schizophrenic!) But, importantly, he added that although he had no doctrinal basis for believing in preservation, he has plenty of historical evidence that this is what God has essentially done.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The Greer-Heard Forum is an outstanding stage for dialogue between evangelical and non-evangelical scholars with opposing views on controversial subjects. It got off to an interesting start in 2005, when Dom Crossan and Tom Wright debated the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ. This year’s event kept the tradition—high-powered speakers and a highly-charged atmosphere—alive.

A Bird’s Eye View of the Forum

This year’s topic was the reliability of New Testament manuscripts as pointers to the original text, featuring Dan Wallace (with whom readers of Parchment & Pen are quite familiar) and Bart Ehrman. Ehrman, as is well known from his Misquoting Jesus (which made the New York Times Best Sellers List), is very skeptical about recovering the wording of the original text. He has even hinted that the original text did not affirm the deity of Christ or other cardinal Christian doctrines. Not surprisingly, then, this dialogue was (at least in many respects) about what Ehrman has published and said in the public square.

The event began Friday evening with a 40-minute presentation by Ehrman, followed by Wallace’s 40-minute salvo. About 800 people were in attendance, which is a very large crowd for something dealing with textual criticism! This was followed by a 10-minute response by Ehrman to Wallace’s lecture, then a 10-minute response by Wallace to Ehrman’s. Next, each scholar was given five minutes to wrap up. Q&A from the floor, lasting about 30 minutes, rounded out the evening.

Saturday morning, the "teams" for each scholar spoke. It had been raining very hard that morning, yet the attendance was terrific”about 500 people". Dr. Bob Stewart, the man in charge of the Forum, said that this was the best attended second day of any Greer-Heard Forum to date. Mike Holmes of Bethel University and Bill Warren of New Orleans Baptist Seminary were on Wallace’s team; David Parker of Birmingham University (England) and Dale Martin of Yale University were on Ehrman’s. Of these, only Martin was not a textual critic. But Martin is a brilliant scholar (and, I understand, one of Ehrman’s best friends). Each team member spoke for 30 minutes, and their lectures were followed by 25 minutes of interaction from Ehrman and Wallace. Holmes went first, then Parker. Martin and Warren followed after lunch. At the end of the lectures and responses by the main speakers, Ehrman and Wallace each summarized their own views in 5 minutes before fielding audience questions for the final 20 minutes.

Impressions from the Front Row: Friday Night

What follows are my personal impressions from Friday night. Most readers of Parchment & Pen will recognize me as a coauthor of Dan Wallace’s, as well as a former student of his at Dallas Theological Seminary. Though I can’t help but be unconsciously biased (who can?), I’ve tried to simply "call ‘em as I see ‘em." It’s also worth noting that I’ve tried not to “spill the beans†with respect to arguments given throughout the Forum. Audio and video recordings will soon be available through the Greer-Heard Forum website, and the presentations are slated to be published by Fortress Press. I simply wish here to provide a select taste of the event as I experienced it.

Ehrman’s Presentation
Ehrman’s opening address combined a simple PowerPoint presentation with a lively lecture. He’s an engaging speaker; witty, at times funny, and certainly provocative. What he had to say was right out of Misquoting Jesus. He noted that the earliest scribes were not professional scribes but made plenty of mistakes and would not necessarily be concerned to get the contents exactly right. He also argued that we don’t have "the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. "(I counted six generations of copies before we get to our current manuscripts. Though I doubt that Ehrman was intentional in his repetition, this provides a taste of his rhetorical strategy.) He also noted that there are hundreds of thousands of textual variants among the manuscripts, a key point also made in his book. More precisely and provocatively, Ehrman said, "there are more variants than there are words in the New Testament." Ehrman capped off his lecture by discussing a few passages, but it was apparent that he ran out of time before getting to all that he wanted to say. Nonetheless, he discussed in some detail the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), and the angry Jesus (Mark 1:41). Ehrman discussed each passage rather nicely, arguing that the first two texts were not authentic and that the last one (Mark 1:41) spoke of Jesus as being angry—rather than compassionate—when he healed a leper.

Though Ehrman was lively and offered some nice discussions, I was disappointed on a few fronts. For starters, he stammered far more than I expected. I could see that he was working from an outline rather than a full manuscript, and that might explain things. I understand, however, that he has given this same lecture many times since Misquoting Jesus came out a couple of years ago. (In fact, three people mentioned that they had heard the exact same lecture, almost verbatim, in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and California, respectively.) He did not impress me in person the way that he has in writing or short radio and television interviews. Second, and most disappointingly, Ehrman pitched his lecture at a high school (or, at most, college) level. Speaking at a theological seminary with world-class textual critics participating in the dialogue, Ehrman simply didn’t deliver an appropriate lecture. Third, he ran out of time before he could really make his major points, or at least discuss some of the disputable texts. Fourth, he spent the bulk of his time, (unwisely, in my opinion) on things that didn’t establish anything either way. Apart from some rhetoric about not having copies of copies and that we have more variants in the manuscripts than we have words in the New Testament, he didn’t make much of an argument at all.

Wallace’s Presentation
Wallace’s presentation was also lively and helpfully accompanied by PowerPoint slides. He began with some gravity-breaking jokes, even poking a little fun at Ehrman’s agnosticism. Wallace, however, made far more fun of himself. He declared that he and Ehrman had similar academic careers and showed (tongue-in-cheek) how this was so. For example, Wallace said that "while you [Ehrman] were cruising through your doctoral program, I was driving a truck to make ends meet. Similar activities and "By the time you [Ehrman] had written your 15th book, I had already written my 15th article!" Those who know Wallace were not surprised by his genuine self-deprecation, though many may have been surprised to see how much Wallace admires Ehrman and the contribution he has made to New Testament textual criticism. Wallace went on to list five points of agreement with Ehrman: (1) the high number of variants (as many as 400,000), (2) the lack of significance of the great majority of them; (3) that he and Ehrman would agree on the wording of the original text almost all the time; (4) specific agreements over special hot-button passages (Mark 16:9-20; John 7:53-8:11; Mark 1:41; 1 John 5:7); and (5) that orthodox scribes occasionally altered the text. This strategy had, as far as I could tell, the effect of removing the shock value of Ehrman’s comments about things like the enormous quantity of textual variants and the spuriousness of the story of the woman caught in adultery. (For more discussion of these points and others in Wallace’s lecture, see Tim Ricchuiti’s blog.)

Wallace then began addressing their disagreements, but he did so in a surprising way: he put up extensive quotations from Ehrman’s own writings and showed that what Ehrman said to professional colleagues was quite different than what he said to laypersons. In other words, Wallace showed that Ehrman disagreed with Ehrman! The implication was clear: Ehrman is too certain in scholarly circles and too skeptical in popular circles. He presents himself as an extreme modernist in one place and an extreme postmodernist in the other.

One of the sub-plots that laced Wallace’s lecture was his gibes at Ehrman, Southern Baptists, and his own tradition of dispensationalism. Wallace is known for his dry wit, and he was really on Friday night. He noted, for example, that Ehrman had listed six generations of copies before we get any manuscripts, which is more than Ehrman implies in any of his printed work. Wallace then commented, "I suppose if a story is worth telling, it’s worth embellishing!" He took jabs at the Southern Baptists, too. At one point he was speaking about how many words were in the Greek New Testament—"about 140,000 or so; but if you’re really anal, it’s 138,162 words." Then, he turned back to Dr. Stewart, who was still sitting on the stage and said, "Oh, Im sorry, Bob! Can I say anal in this place?" A good half dozen times Wallace did that sort of thing on different issues. It always got a good chuckle, yet I suspect that it was about more than humor. Wallace was innocuously distancing himself from the theological views of some Southern Baptists, who might be quick to argue for things like a doctrine of the perseveration of scripture. But the biggest laughs came when he took a swipe at dispensationalists (of which he, as a Dallas Seminary professor, is one). He was speaking about the number of the beast, and how a couple of early and important manuscripts have "616" (which Wallace said some might call "the neighbor of the beast" !) instead of "666." He asked how important such a variant is and noted that it didn’t alter any creedal statement, but that, if it proved to be the original reading, would "send seven tons of dispensational literature to the flames!"

Ehrman’s oft-repeated line that we don’t even have copies of copies of copies…†was challenged by Wallace. He said that such rhetoric comes dangerously close to saying that New Testament copying was like the telephone game. He then proceeded to show six ways in which the telephone game is not at all like New Testament copying practices. I think it’s fair to say that this evidence alone should have retired Ehrman’s non-nuanced quip, but Ehrman continued saying it for the duration of the conference!

Wallace then discussed the concrete example of the relation of P75 to Codex B. He noted that although B came 100-150 years later, it was not a copy of P75 because it frequently had older readings than those found in P75. This meant that, since these two manuscripts are very close in wording to each other, both had a much older ancestor—one that was probably from the early part of the second century. Coupled with Aleph, B’s readings are very ancient. This shows that even though we don’t have late first century manuscripts or very many 2nd century manuscripts, we can extrapolate what they would have looked like from the manuscripts that we do have.

Perhaps the most provocative part of Wallace’s lecture was his comparison of what Ehrman claimed was true about New Testament transmission with the transmission of sacred texts in another religion: Islam. Wallace gave three basic points that showed that what Ehrman wanted to see in New Testament manuscripts simply wasn’t there—specifically, an early, controlled text in which the earlier manuscripts were destroyed. Wallace noted that, You can’t have wild copying by untrained scribes and a proto-orthodox conspiracy simultaneously producing the same variants. Conspiracy implies control and wild copying is anything but controlled." As far as I was concerned, this was the silver bullet that ripped a hole through Ehrman’s entire thesis." Further, Wallace noted, the lack of controls that Ehrman argued for were only true of the Western text-type, not the Alexandrian.

Wallace then went on to discuss the nature of the variants. He argued that 99% are inconsequential, while less than 1% are both meaningful and viable (that is, possibly reflecting the wording of the original). He gave one example of this last category, the number 616 in Rev 13:18. He noted that although it may be significant, it did not affect any cardinal belief. Wallace reemphasized that no essential belief is in jeopardy because of the viable variants.

Finally, Wallace discussed the major variants that Ehrman had put forth in Misquoting Jesus. He was running out of time, so he concentrated on Matthew 24:36. Here he noted how Ehrman used it as his "bread and butter" example of orthodox corruption, but showed that there were some things in the text that Ehrman had not considered. For example, if the scribes had no qualms about deleting nor the Son why did they leave the word alone in the text? Without nor the Son the passage still implies that the Son of God does not know the date of his return: But as for that day and hour no one knows it—not even the angels in heaven—except the Father alone. Ehrman’s argument that this passage is clearly an orthodox corruption either shows that the scribes were rather inept since they didn’t cover up the Father’s exclusive knowledge or else they changed their mood once they got into the corruption and had second guesses about deleting the "alone." He concluded by saying that too often Ehrman’s views were only possible, but that Ehrman had turned possibility into probability and, at times, probability into certainty.

Overall, Wallace’s lecture was polished, focused, and clear. He dealt with the very objections that Ehrman raised (copies of copies, tons of variants) and offered a far more coherent and carefully nuanced picture of the transmission of the text. While Wallace was lecturing, Ehrman looked, at times, uncomfortable. I’m not a mind reader, but I’m guessing that he realized that he had come underprepared for this dialogue and had little time to rectify things in his remaining ownership of the floor. I was disappointed that Wallace also seemed to run out of time and couldn’t include all of his arguments. But he squeezed in far more than Ehrman, who essentially only rehashed material already in Misquoting Jesus.

Ehrman’s Response
After a short intermission, Ehrman gave a 10-minute response to Wallace’s paper. He started by saying, "I was under the impression that this was supposed to be on the reliability of the text of the New Testament, not the reliability of the writings of Bart Ehrman. "It got a laugh, but it was clear that Ehrman was not pleased with the evidence that Wallace had put forth. To be sure, Wallace never did anything that looked ad hominem, so it seemed as though this was a fair thing to do. Wallace later explained why he took the approach he did, and Dale Martin (Ehrman’s team member!) would defend this same approach the next day. Ehrman then critiqued Wallace’s lecture as simply a message meant to comfort Christians into not doubting their Bibles, even saying that Wallace had provided no evidence for his position. (This is a debater’s standard technique: instead of wrestling with the arguments that his opponent brings up, he simply says that the opponent never said anything worth saying. But in this instance, I can only conclude that Ehrman was blowing smoke.)

Ehrman then argued that we can’t, for example, really tell what the original text of Galatians looked like if it was sent multiple times to the churches of Galatia. That is, since they were churches (plural), each one of them probably got a letter, and thus the "original" of the letter would actually have been comprised of multiple copies. Ehrman suggested that such multiple copies would all look different from each other. Further, he argued that a secretary probably wrote the letter to the Galatians, with Paul signing off on it at the end of the letter. And the secretary could have made quite a few mistakes as well that would have gone uncorrected. He concluded by saying that in Wallace’s view the words of the New Testament mattered only for essential Christian doctrine—not for anything else. So he asked, Why devote your [Wallace's] entire career to the study of the wording of the New Testament text if the words don’t matter?

Wallace’s Response
Wallace basically responded to Ehrman’s critique by asking what Ehrman’s theory about Galatians means for Revelation. In other words, if Galatians was sent to multiple churches with one copy going directly to each church, what would that mean for the Apocalypse? Was the latter sent to seven churches as seven different documents? Wallace also noted that when he “writes†a letter that a secretary actually types for him, the wording may not be close to his, but it still reflects his thoughts. Otherwise, he wouldn’t sign the letter. How much more likely is it that Paul, writing an angry letter, would take pains to double-check what he had personally dictated?

Ehrman’s Second Response
Ehrman camped on the 1% of textual variants that mattered and even said that it doesn’t matter how many variants there are that are significant, just that several hundred are very significant. But if they don’t affect a cardinal doctrine, perhaps he is overplaying their significance. Ehrman also said that Wallace had not really answered the question of why these variants mattered if they didn’t affect cardinal doctrines.

Wallace’s Second Response
Wallace said that the reason why doctrinal criteria are important is because Ehrman made them important in Misquoting Jesus. Wallace would revisit this point more specifically on day two. For the moment, he simply said that variants matter because they affect the meaning of the text (spoken like a true exegete!). But he reminded the audience again that the Bible that we have today—in all essentials—goes back to the original text.

All in all, Wallace had a better showing than Ehrman on Friday night. While Ehrman was initially content to summarize Misquoting Jesus, Wallace came prepared to tease out inconsistencies in Ehrman’s professional and popular writings and offer some fresh research en route. Anyone assuming that Wallace merely restated things said in Reinventing Jesus, Dethroning Jesus, or his published review of Misquoting Jesus would be mistaken. But I’ll leave discovery of that fact for those who purchase recordings or publications derived from the event. In the meantime, I’ll gather some thoughts on day two of the Forum and put them in a subsequent post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Here is an ALR New Release about the CSNTM find:

DALLAS, March 25, 2008 - Normally, two or three New Testament manuscripts handwritten in the original Greek are discovered each year.

Last summer, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) found a treasure trove of them during a trip to Albania. The Center, based in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Texas, devotes itself to the high-resolution digital preservation of these early copies of the New Testament.

Scholars tried for decades to gain access to the National Archive in Tirana with little success, partly because Albania is a former police state. Until now, only two manuscripts of the 13 there known to Western scholars had been photographed, both with microfilm many years ago.

Recently though, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, the CSNTM director, received permission to send a team of four men to Albania to photograph the manuscripts with state-of-the-art digital methods. By the end of their first day in Tirana in July, they realized there were more than 13 manuscripts - far more.

"When the news came back across the Atlantic, I was stunned," Wallace said.

The catalog at the National Archive listed 47 New Testament manuscripts, and at least 17 were unknown to Western scholars. Evidence suggests that some of the other manuscripts had been presumed lost elsewhere in Albania, but no final determination has been made.

The oldest manuscript in the collection is Codex Beratinus, written in the sixth century. It contains only the Gospels of Matthew and Mark today.

The codex is the ancestor of the modern book form, replacing the scrolls and wax tablets of earlier times. Early Christians popularized the codex, adopting it for their scriptures and other writings.

Codex Beratinus was dyed in purple; only a handful of purple biblical codices exist today — with silver and gold letters on it.

The staff at the National Archives said that during World War II, Hitler tried to obtain this particular document. Several monks and priests risked their lives to hide the manuscript. Today, it is registered with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a world treasure.

Among the other notable finds were four manuscripts, dating from the 11th century on, that provided more information on a familiar Biblical controversy. The story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 is included in most Bibles today, but many scholars doubt its authenticity. These four manuscripts either have the story at the end of John or lack it altogether, suggesting it is something of an add-on.

Wallace says that no basic teaching of the Bible such things as the virgin birth and the deity of Christ — has been compromised by such study but that some of the particulars have been brought into question.

When studying these manuscripts, the age is important, but so is the pedigree (which previous manuscript it was copied from.) Experts like Wallace, also a Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, strive to trace the antecedents of a Biblical manuscript much like an expert in genealogy would reconstruct a family tree.

It’s a daunting task.

"It is like working on a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing," Wallace said. "But with the discovery of new manuscripts, more of the pieces make sense. And the result is we are getting closer to reconstructing the original wording of the New Testament in the few places where there still is question."

Wallace has personally examined manuscripts at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt; The Vatican; Cambridge University, Oxford University and the British Library in England; Dresden, Cologne and Berlin in Germany; and Florence, Italy, along with several other sites in the United States and abroad .

In its five years of existence, CSNTM has photographed manuscripts in, among other places, Istanbul, Turkey; Patmos, Greece and Muenster, Germany at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research. The Institute is the clearinghouse for original manuscripts. When a “new†manuscript comes to light, it is assigned a unique number certifying the discovery. To date, some 5,700 manuscripts containing about 1.3 million pages have been catalogued.

Photographing these manuscripts is painstaking work. Wallace says that the average Greek New Testament manuscript has about 550 pages. Optimally, a team can shoot 1,200 to 1,800 pages a day, depending on the size and condition of the manuscripts. Members of the team take extraordinary measures, including wearing white cotton gloves, not to damage the manuscripts.

The bill is high — $6 to $7 a page, when all the expenses are figured in and the task is Herculean. Wallace, not one to set his sights low, wants to photograph all 1.3 million pages of manuscripts known to scholars.

"We’ve photographed several thousand pages, but it’s just a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done,"he said. "These manuscripts are deteriorating, and older photographs done on microfilm, a much poorer quality than what we can do today, are deteriorating as well.

"Plus, some manuscripts are lost or stolen, and others are damaged by fire, worms or water. So there is a sense of urgency about this. We have to get these photographed while we have the opportunity."

For more information on the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, visit www.csntm.org.

Note to editors: For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, contact Steve Yount of A. Larry Ross Communications at 972.267.1111 or steve@alarryross.com.

For more details, go here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

For a long time, Albania has closed its doors to western scholars. Last summer, a four-person team from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts went to Tirana to photograph 13 manuscripts in the National Archive. They were unprepared for what would happen on their first day on the job. They saw an old typewritten, in-house catalog of manuscripts, and noticed that there were forty-seven (47) NT MSS! The Dallas Morning News reported on this to some degree, featuring a full-page article on the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

In addition to this article, Christianity Today is scheduled to post a more in-depth story about the manuscript discoveries on March 10 at their website. Be sure to check it out.

I’ll leave the details of the importance of these manuscripts to the CT article, and will post later about what we discovered.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Last week we looked at the Greek construction of the Great Commission (Matt 28.19-20) and concluded that the typical English translation, Go and make disciples,was pretty accurate. The participle translated Go is really dependent on the mood of the main verb (the imperative, make disciples ) for its force. However, in such constructions (known as attendant circumstance), the main idea is not shared by both verbal forms; rather, it falls on the main verb. The participle is the prerequisite needed for the fulfillment of the imperative. Thus, going is commanded rather than assumed, but the going is not the main idea, for if someone were to go without making disciples he would miss the point. But making disciples “of all the nations†cannot be accomplished apart from going. So much for the grammar.

This blog will look at the historical context. Both with reference to grammar and history, many a pastor has put the applicational horse before the interpretive cart. It is crucial that we distinguish these two, and deal with interpretation apart from application. Obviously, there is a huge intersection between the two, but we confuse them only to our peril. Too many Christians are impatient with interpretation and simply want to get to the application. Sadly, too many pastors accommodat