Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 01:53:08 EDT
From:         JEK@NIHCU.BITNET
Subject:      Bible manuscripts

Jeff Dilcher wrote to the list, asking how to reply to someone who
says: "But the Bible has been handed down through the centuries,
and various Church councils have added to it, or suppressed bits
they did not like, until what we now have probably bears no
resemblance to the originals."

I wrote a reply, and am now adding an afterthought.

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940's, the
earliest surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Scriptures dated from
around 900 AD. It was natural to wonder whether, as scribes had
copied and recopied them over the centuries, quite a number of
mistakes had crept in. But the DSS included a scroll of Isaiah,
certainly made before 70 AD, probably earlier. It contained only a
few trivial variations from the standard text as found in the
manuscripts from 900 AD and after. Of course, this still leaves some
earlier centuries during which errors may have crept into the text.
But it does suggest that scribes copying what they believe to be
sacred texts tend to be careful.

When we have copies of a book preserved by two groups that do not
exchange ideas very much (if they are suspicious of each other, so
much the better), then any passages that are alike in the copies
from both groups are likely to be faithful renditions of the books
as it was found before the two groups split. Even if there are some
differences in the copies, whatever is alike is likely to be old, as
old as the isolation between the groups.

Now, the Samaritans and the Jews have both preserved copies of the
Pentateuch, also called the Five Books of Moses (Genesis through
Deuteronomy). They have been suspicious of each other for at least a
couple of centuries before the birth of Christ. Conclusion: Anything
found in the books preserved by both groups is older than their
quarrel.

Again, around 175 BC, Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, Egypt,
obtained a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the
Septuagint. This later became the standard Old Testament version for
Christians, most of whom could read Greek and few of whom could read
Hebrew. The Jews promptly abandoned the use of it and prepared other
Greek translations for Jewish use. Conclusion: any verse that reads
the same in the Hebrew and in the Septuagint is likely to be an
accurate copy of a version found before, say, 135 AD. After that
date, no change in the one would have been imitated by the
custodians of the other.

Now, the three versions I have mentioned -- the standard Hebrew
text, called the Masoretic Text (MT), the Septuagint (LXX), and the
Samaritan text (ST), do have some differences. For example, they
often differ in numbers. If you want to use the opening chapters of
Genesis to calculate the number of years from Adam to Abraham, you
will get one result from the Masoretic Text, another from the
Samaritan, and still another from the Septuagint. If you think that
Christ will return exactly 6000 years after the creation of Adam (a
highly speculative conjecture), and you want to know exactly when
that will be, the discrepancy can be frustrating. (My own reaction
is that you are supposed to be frustrated. "It is not for you to
know the times or the seasons....") And there are other variations.
For a sample, look at the footnotes in the RSV Bible, for example in
2 Samuel 17. But if you take your Bible, and cross out every word
where the various manuscripts are not in agreement, you may lose a
favorite verse here and there, but you will still have the gist of
the message unimpaired.

For the New Testament, there is no such convenient rivalry. But
there are a substantial number of early manuscripts. Moreover, we
have translations. The Latin Vulgate was translated slightly before
400 AD, and became standard in the West, and was not likely to be
influenced by changes in the Greek after that date; and Greek
scribes would certainly not be influenced by changes in the Latin.
The translation of the New Testament into Syriac (Aramaic) is
a bit earlier, and the same considerations apply here. Moreover, we
have quotations. The writings of many of the early fathers are
loaded with quotations of various lengths from the Scriptures, and
anyone who undertook to revise the Scriptures would have to go
through the Fathers and chase down all the quotations and change
them -- no easy task. I have a hard time figuring out when there was
any central authority (whether Emperor, Pope, or council of bishops)
that would have been able to make a change in practically all copies
of the Bible -- Eastern and Western, Greek, Latin, and Syriac -- and
get away with it. (Jerome tells the story of a bishop who read to
his congregation the story of Jonah, and in the closing verses
corrected "ivy", which was what they were used to hearing, to
"gourd," which he thought more closely translated the Hebrew. His
congregation was outraged, and he was forced to give in, and let
them have the version they had grown up with.)

 Yours,
 James Kiefer
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