Last October I learned about a manuscript narrating Jesus’ life that was purportedly written by Joseph of Jerusalem, a first-century follower of Jesus. Although the claims were fantastic, I wondered if the manuscript that came with the cover letter could be at least an uncatalogued Gospels manuscript, perhaps of Matthew or Luke. 

In December 2009, a team from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts was privileged to visit Christ for the Nations, a college in Dallas, to examine this peculiar manuscript. The team members included Dr. Jeff Hargis, Ms. Dana Cooper, Mr. Peter Gurry, and me. Immediately we recognized that the manuscript was not a first-century document, but was produced many centuries later. The text was written on parchment—a very fine grade of parchment—and was no earlier than the ninth century. The ink was so faint that it was virtually unreadable without UV light. CSNTM photographed the manuscript, then we studied it, and came to discover that…

OK, so that was a terrible tease! But you can read the whole story at CSNTM’s website. Just click here to read it. Peter Gurry also wrote a narrative about the manuscript at Friends of CSNTM.

In a video that’s posted on Youtube and is making the rounds in popular Christian circles, an Arab Christian claims that there are three Arabic words in Revelation 13.18, the passage that speaks about the number of the beast.

Here’s the link to the video: Walid Shoebat – Mark of the Beast

Walid Shoebat claims in this video that the mark of the beast is Islam itself. Certainly, Christians can recognize that Islam denies the deity of Christ, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection; for this reason, Islam is a false religion. We can also recognize that there are small groups of Muslims who are radical and would like to destroy Israel and America. But does this make Islam the Antichrist? That’s rather doubtful.

Shoebat’s basis is this: “When I first saw the Codex Vaticanus, I was literally shocked because I could read the text. It was Arabic!  … ‘In the name of Allah.’”

But Shoebat did not read Codex Vaticanus. This codex is the famous fourth-century Greek New Testament (and Old Testament) manuscript that ends at Hebrews 9.13. The material added after Heb 9.13 is all in a much later hand. According to the authoritative Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 2^nd edition (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), the supplement (known as codex 1957) was written in the 15^th century. What Shoebat saw was not technically Codex Vaticanus but Codex 1957, a text written over a thousand years after Vaticanus.

In his video, he explains how the three Greek letters χξς in Revelation 13.18 are not really Greek at all, but Arabic. On top of the stretch to make the Arabic words fit, there are other severe problems with Shoebat’s claims. As much as some Christians would like for Shoebat’s interpretation to be correct, it fails at many levels. Let’s examine Shoebat’s claims.

1.         Rev 13.18 specifically introduces this symbol as the number of the beast. The word ‘number’ is used three times in this verse. We are thus expecting a number, not a foreign word, to be introduced. Shoebat offers no explanation how ‘number’ can mean anything other than number here.

All he says is that “God is not the author of mysteries… His yoke is easy. God is not interested in gematria. Gematria is a process that was used in witchcraft.” These statements are self-serving, contradictory, and incorrect. To say that God is not the author of mysteries is stunningly naïve. Of course he’s the author of mysteries. “Mystery” is a word that occurs 28 times in the NT. Almost every time it is used in collocation with a positive word: ‘the mystery of godliness,’ ‘the mystery of the gospel,’ ‘the mystery of faith,’ etc. Jesus’ parables were a form of mystery (something that was unknown to the listeners until revelation about the parables was given). Furthermore, if there is Arabic in Rev 13.18, why wouldn’t that qualify as a mystery for most readers? And if no one until Walid Shoebat had properly understood the meaning here, then the text has obviously been a mystery for 1900 years. To say that “[God’s] yoke is easy” is to wrench out of context what Jesus said about what it means to follow him in Matthew 11.29–30: his yoke is easy because it does not burden someone down with legalism. The text has nothing to do with interpretation. Judging by the disparate interpretations of scripture for the several millennia, if an easy yoke means that the interpretation of the text is plain and straightforward at all points, then scripture has created a brutally hard yoke for us. Continue Reading »

As of today (November 15, 2009), there’s a Christmas sale at New Testament Textual Criticism (www.nttextualcriticism.com). Video DVDs are going for $7.50 each or 2 for $10 through the end of the year (a 25% to 33% savings), and the lifetime subscription to the TC Chart Timesaver has dropped from $40 to $30, also through the end of the year.

The video DVDs are both of Dr. Daniel B. Wallace. One is called, “Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?” and the other is “Challenges in New Testament Textual Criticism for the 21st Century.” The first one is a great introduction for a general audience on the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts as witnesses to the original text. It’s suitable for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Go here to place your order.

I have received a lot of questions about this subject, so here it is again:

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 Bibles 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?

What is Textual Criticism?

This is where the discipline of “textual criticism” comes in. Don’t be afraid of the word “criticism” in relation to the Bible. Textual criticism is the art and science of reconstructing the original text of the Scripture. A “text critic” is one who examines the available evidence and makes important decisions as to how the Bible we hold two thousand years later should read. There are not many text critics who are trained and skilled enough to make these type of decisions. It is both time consuming and expensive to devote yourself to this field. One has to be highly trained in the language in which he or she is working, they have to devote much time to tedious examination of ancient texts, and they have to travel—a lot! This all gets expensive.

As well, it is not a job that will get you much recognition. The work of a text critic forms the background of all our studies in the Scriptures, yet we hardly give this issue a first thought.

The first thing that must be understood is that we don’t have the originals of the various books of the Scriptures. We don’t even have an original fragment. All we have to work from are copies of copies of copies, etc. Before the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, all copies of the Scriptures were hand produced. There are approximately 6000 handwritten copies of the New Testament in Greek that we have cataloged. There are far less of the Old Testament. These copies date from around 125 A.D to the fifteenth century. These copies are referred to as extant (existing) manuscripts.

Are there errors in the manuscripts?

This question is somewhat misleading. What some may call an error, text critics will call a “variant.” A variant is where one text differs from another. There are, in the New Testament alone, somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 variants. Ouch! This means that among the 6000 extant New Testament Greek manuscripts, there are nearly half a million differences. This amounts to about four variants per verse.

Don’t get scared, just hang with me . . . Continue Reading »

If you don’t know Greek, this blog post is not for you. Stop reading now.

If you do know Greek and are studying the New Testament, then this may be a lifesaver. OK, not a lifesaver, but at least a great timesaver. In fact, that’s part of the name, so it must be true!

TC Chart Timesaver (TCCT) converts text-data in the Nestle-Aland apparatus into a usable text-critical chart. It is available at www.nttextualcriticism.com. This current release (version 1.2), a web-based application for increased compatibility, works exclusively with “gothic M” manuscripts. (Later releases will expand on the manuscripts to be charted.) Deciphering and categorizing gothic M manuscripts has always been a time-consuming task for anyone working with the Nestle apparatus. To do it properly, one has to look at the front of the Nestle text and note which manuscripts belong to gothic M for the particular genre being studied (gospels, Paul, Acts, catholic letters, Revelation). These witnesses will only be cited explicitly when they disagree with gothic M. (Many don’t realize that not all the manuscripts under the gothic M umbrella are Byzantine manuscripts. Placing all these manuscripts under gothic M is simply a convenient way to list the manuscripts without swelling the apparatus. Clarity and cost are sacrificed to concision; it’s a good trade-off, but has created some time-consuming activities for those working with the text of the NT.) Continue Reading »

One of the most important ancient manuscripts has just gone on-line. The manuscript, Codex Sinaiticus, was penned in Greek in the mid-fourth century and originally contained the whole Bible as well as some writings of the apostolic fathers. The manuscript is currently in four locations: St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt; British Library, London; National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg; and Leipzig University, Germany. The British Library has the largest portion (about 350 leaves), Leipzig University has 43 leaves, St. Catherine’s has something like 18 complete or fragmentary leaves, and St. Petersburg has just a few leaves. This week marked the first time that all these leaves could be seen since the manuscript was dissembled 150 years ago.

I’ve written about the story of its discovery in previous blogs, noting that the well-known tale of Tischendorf stopping the monks from using leaves of this codex as kindling for the ovens needed significant revision in light of discoveries made at St. Catherine’s in 1975. But I’ll not go into that now.

The significance of the manuscript can hardly be overestimated. Some highlights are as follows:

• Sinaiticus contains the oldest complete New Testament in the world; the next oldest is half a millennium younger.
• In the opinion of most New Testament scholars, Sinaiticus is one of two or three of the most important manuscripts for establishing the wording of the autographic text of the NT.
• Like the other fourth-century majuscule manuscript, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus lacks the story of the woman caught in adultery and Mark 16.9–20.

The manuscript has been in the news of late because of going on-line. Unfortunately, the media tend to get a lot of facts mixed up. A perusal of a few newspapers, magazines, and on-line sites revealed the following incorrect statements about the manuscript (with corrections following): Continue Reading »

For the past twelve months, I’ve been on sabbatical from my teaching duties at Dallas Seminary. The sabbatical officially comes to an end on June 30, but the work goes on. We photographed about 80,000 pages of text, went to ten different countries, and discovered almost forty manuscripts. We have been granted permission to post several of these manuscripts on line. Some recent postings at the CSNTM website (www.csntm.org) are as follows:

36 MSS from Athens have been uploaded to the web site in the past several weeks. The uploads include 30 MSS from the Benaki Museum and six from the National Historical Museum; 17 are continuous-text manuscripts and 19 are lectionaries for a total of nearly 14,000 images. They cover a range in date from the 8th century to the 18th and include five palimpsests.

More will be uploaded in the next few weeks from other sites as well. Many readers of Parchment & Pen support our mission, and we are extremely grateful.

An article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled, “The Next Age of Discovery,” appeared in the May 8, 2009 issue. Written by WSJ’s reporter, Alexandra Alter, the article discusses several organizations that are digitizing ancient documents. Among them, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts is mentioned. It’s an interesting piece, with some remarkable images (most of which are only available on-line). You can see the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124173896716198603.html

I was in Athens when I got the email from Ms. Alter. I gave her my phone number and she called the next day. We spoke for 30–40 minutes. I haven’t looked at my cell phone bill yet, and I’m not sure I want to!

CSNTM is mentioned in one sentence, followed later in the article by a full paragraph. My only concern about the piece, and this is really a minor quibble, is that it juxtaposes what CSNTM’s costs for expeditions are (about $10,000 a week) with those of another institute. The other institute, a very fine organization, can get manuscripts scanned at a site for $20,000 a year. The way they do it is to train locals to do the work, then leave them alone (presumably for a year). That’s a remarkably efficient model, but I don’t think it’s the best one for what CSNTM does. The equipment we use requires a technician on-site. Things break down, especially the cameras—sometimes on a daily basis. And they need to be refurbished after about 30,000 pictures. If we had 23 sites where our equipment was being used (as this other organization does), the cost just for the equipment alone would exceed $400,000. This does not include the ongoing costs of paying locals to do the work. Also, CSNTM goes through multiple check-points to ensure the highest quality of images. We do all this on-site. We realize that we have only one shot at shooting (pardon the pun!) the manuscripts, and we must get it right. See our “Showroom” for the evolving standards that CSNTM uses on our site www.csntm.org.

The next paragraph indicates that Google can scan books for about ten cents a page, but up to a dollar a page for some books. And for rare works, it costs as much as $1000 a book. CSNTM’s costs are, on average, $3300 per manuscript (the average New Testament manuscript is more than 500 pages long). Such documents need to be handled with special care. Rare books are not in the same category as unique manuscripts, some of which are more than a millennium older than the rarest books. Our primary objective is to protect and preserve the manuscripts. There are no short-cuts to this process.

We believe that the Word of God is worth the extra care required. Each manuscript is a unique handwritten testimony to God’s providential care of scripture.

Later in the article is a paragraph on the work of CSNTM. It notes, among other things, that we have discovered 75 manuscripts (all of which are Greek New Testament manuscripts; we’ve also discovered quite a few others that we don’t count), and that our goal is to photograph 2.6 million pages of text.

Overall, the article is very well researched and well written. Kudos to Ms. Alter and the Wall Street Journal for a fine piece that lets the public know about this ‘new renaissance’ that has become possible because of technology.

By the way, tens of thousands of images are already posted at our site. Come take a look.

Kalo Pascha! Christos anesti! Happy Easter! Christ is risen!

Saturday night, April 18. It’s Easter tomorrow in Greece, and the festivities are in high gear. We’re staying in the Athenian suburb of Pikermi, situated exactly half way between Athens and Marathon. Much of Marathon Road, just a block from where we are staying, is shut down at night so that the faithful can light their candles and walk on the road to their church. They did this last night, Friday night. Marathon Road has signals and is only two lanes, but people at night typically drive 60-75 mph. The speed limit is half that. Drag races are commonplace.

There’s much pageantry here—candles, light bulb displays on the road in the shape of candles and ribbons, busses with “Kalo Pascha” running on the teletype. People were out in the streets last night in Pikermi and Rafina, on Good Friday no less. Stores were open. Restaurants were packed. If the Greeks are this festive and happy on Good Friday, one wonders how they’ll treat Easter.

But today was different. Stores were closed, restaurants were closed. The candles that lit the way on Marathon Road were removed. The place was dead still, as though all were in mourning.

Then, at 11.30 pm, we went outside and walked down to Marathon Road. Scores of people were walking with unlit candles to the service, held at a little Orthodox church just a couple blocks from where we are staying. A little girl had set up a card table along the main drag, selling long, thin candles. One Euro apiece. We each bought one. By the time we got to the church, hundreds of people were standing outside. The service would last until 3 am. There is no regular Easter Sunday service, just this nighttime vigil. In the midst of the joyous season (which resembles the way Christmas used to be celebrated in the States), we hear thunderous boom! boom! boom! It’s been happening for the last several nights. We at first thought it was a big gun going off, and wondered if the Anarchists were trying to temper the positive attitude that surrounds them. But nobody reacted except for dogs, big and small, and cars with alarms.

We joined the crowds at the church. The tiny sanctuary was packed with folks inside. It could only hold maybe twenty or thirty people at one time; hundreds milled around in the courtyard outside the church. Young and old, all had long, thin, unlit candles. A microphone was hurriedly set up just outside the church entrance. A few minutes later the priest came out and continued his chanting. His voice grew hoarse, but he dutifully continued. At 11.55 pm, we could see people inside the church lighting candles. Then they came outside and lit others; one by one the candles were lit and the darkness began to dissipate. Then at precisely midnight…fireworks! They came from the tops of two buildings—one across the street and one about 100 feet from the church. The fireworks lit up the sky, thundered and boomed, and dazzled the children. The priest kept chanting, but his voice was drowned out by the pyro display. The fireworks went on and on. Ten minutes…fifteen minutes…twenty minutes. And they started precisely at midnight on Easter Sunday morning.

I couldn’t help but think that the fireworks must symbolize Christ’s resurrection from the grave. And as I was watching the show, I saw in it the explosive power, the sudden transformation of the night sky, the joy, and the conquest—all that the resurrection represents. I reflected on when fireworks were used in other countries. St. Sylvester Day in Germany (New Year’s eve) is one that I’ve witnessed, as is Independence Day in America. The Chinese celebrate The National Day of the People’s Republic on October 1, Mexicans on September 16 and May 5, the French on Bastille Day (July 14), while the Brits celebrate Guy Fawkes Day every November 7^th—all with fireworks. But these all pale in significance to the resurrection of Christ. How remarkable it is to see a country celebrate the resurrection of Christ—and to do it this way! The Athens newspaper, Το Βημα, headlined its front page today with Ανασταση νεκρων—“he is risen from the dead.” From Easter until Pentecost, the Greek greeting changes from a mere γιασας or ‘hello’ to Χριστος ανεστη (‘Christ is risen’) to which one replies αληθως ανεστη (‘he is risen indeed’).

This is a good time to be here, and a good time to reflect on Jesus’ appointment at his resurrection as the ‘Son-of-God-in-power,’ as Paul said in Rom 1.4. Maybe I’ll light up a few Roman candles next Easter.

On February 23, 2009, a team of four people from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (www.csntm.org) embarked on a trip to Greece. The primary mission was to take digital photographs of the Greek NT manuscripts at the Benaki Museum in Athens. Dr. Pitsa Tsakona, the director of Benaki’s extensive library, has been incredibly helpful to us as we have sought to photograph these ancient scriptures for the sake of preservation and scholarship.

According to Kurt Aland’s Kurzgefasste Liste, second edition (1994), the Benaki has thirty Greek NT MSS in its possession. The Internet update of the K-Liste does not list any others.

As we were examining the MSS, preparing them for photography, Dr. Tsakona began to bring us others that were not to be found in the K-Liste. We also perused three catalogs—the official catalog of Benaki Museum, Καταλογος Ελληνικων Χειρογραφων του Μουσειου Μπανακη (10oV–16 ος αι.) Athens: 1991, and two in-house catalogs. And we discovered a couple of palimpsests within the MSS that we were photographing (one biblical, one yet to be determined). Altogether, there are as many as eight Greek NT MSS at the Benaki that apparently do not have Gregory-Aland numbers.

You can see the description of these MSS here.