The Text, its Transmission, its Translation, and the Truth

IntroductionWe are in John chapter 8 this morning. And today is not your normal sermon and you’ll see why in just a second.Let’s begin in Samuel.When you read through the book of Samuel and Kings you very quickly pick up on a pattern. Here’s the pattern: when the author introduces us to a new king, he uses this formulaic introduction that looks like this:So hopefully you are seeing the idea. This formula is used at least 16 times that I could find. Now, there’s an interesting problem when you get to 1 Samuel 13:1. 1 Samuel 13:1 is another one of these formulas and it’s applied to Saul.But when you read it, you’ll see a problem. I’ll illustrate the problem by showing you three different translations: door 1, door 2, door 3, door 4.Now what’s going on here? The answer is the text is lost. Somewhere along the way, in the process of transmission, these numbers were either intentionally left out, forgetfully left out, or got destroyed so they could not be copied.Here’s the question. How does that make you feel to know there is a fallible human process that is associated with the English Bible you hold in your lap this morning? Does that destroy your confidence? Does that mean that the Bible contains errors? Don’t we teach biblical inerrancy, that the Bible is a book WITHOUT errors?Yes we do, but it’s important to note that this doctrine applies to the original autographa, that’s a term that refers to the original documents, the actual scroll that the inspired writers wrote on, which of course we no longer have. We must acknowledge that errors have been introduced through the copying and transmission process. It’s called textual corruption.Now, the word corruption is a little unfortunate. It brings to mind corruption in politics. If we say the Bible is corrupt, that’s a pretty negative picture. But it’s a technical word that just means there is some change from the original.Imagine transferring a file from your phone to the computer. If the file makes it 99% of the way and just one bit changes then the file has been corrupted even though it still contains 99.999% of the original information. But it’s also the case that if 99.999% of the data is lost and only a fractional portion is preserved, that too is a corrupt file. So the real question is how corrupt is it? It all hinges on the answer to that question.Textual corruption can come in two different flavors. 1 Samuel 13:1 is corrupt in that something was taken away from the original text. But it is also possible to corrupt the text by adding to it.Today we come to John chapter 8:1-11. This is the story of the woman caught in adultery and all the Pharisees want to stone her and Jesus says, ‘he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ He begins writing on the ground and one by one they walk away. And then Jesus turns to the woman and says, “Go and sin no more.”It’s a beloved text. But here’s the problem. This section of the Bible almost certainly was not part of the original text. John chapter 8:1-11 is an example of corruption through addition. This was a story that had circulated around and was likely even true, but was not part of the original text and was added much later. If you’ll notice in most English Bible’s they point this out at varying levels of specificity.In my NAS you’ve got this tiny little footnote.In my Greek NT it sets it apart like this.The ESV does it like this.Maybe this is the first time you’ve heard something like this. And maybe it’s even disturbing to you. So here’s what I want to do today. The goal is to BOTH convince you that this text is not part of the Bible which means we are not going to preach it as Scripture AND to have you walk away with FULL confidence that this book can be absolutely trusted in all it’s parts even though this transmission error exists.The Transmission ProcessSo I’m actually going to start with the second part of that. Knowing that transmission errors like this exist, how can we trust that any of it is reliable at all? It’s a very good question. It’s the same feeling of uncertainty that you get when you discover someone has lied to you. Well, if you just lied right there, what kind of assurance do I have that everything else you’ve told me isn’t a lie. Is this a fluke or a habit?Many liberal scholars will attempt to attack the Bible in this very same way.Bart Ehrman’s who is one of the world’s foremost scholars in this area in best-selling book, “Misquoting Jesus” focuses on this issue as it pertains to the New Testament text:So his point here is simple: There is no need to examine the content of the New Testament if we don’t even have the New Testament. Now it’s difficult to feel competent to address a conclusion like this from a scholar.So here’s the question, “Can we defend the claim that the actual TEXT of the BIBLE is trustworthy?” From a raw textual transmission point of view, how corrupt is the text we possess today?To answer the question of how reliable the text is, we have to develop some minimum criteria for determining if a document is reliable (this criteria is not be specific to the Bible. This could be any historical document). And there really are only about three tests that matter here.Let’s start with that first point. What we mean by this is how long of a gap exists between the original writing (the autographa) - the actual scroll that was originally penned, and the first extant copy (that is, the oldest copy we have discovered that is still in existence today).As you know the Bible is made up of two halves - the OT written in Hebrew and the NT written in Greek and they represent very different processes of formation and transmission.Just think in rough terms about the differences. If you think about the Hebrew OT it records thousands of years of history and was written over roughly a thousand year period of time. So let’s assume Moses wrote the Pentateuch - the first five books. He’s around 1400BC and the last book of the OT was written maybe around 400BCCompare that to the NT. The NT records roughly about 50 years of history and was written in that same amount of time. So they are quite different documents. So it makes sense to discuss the transmission process of these two portions individually.The OT WitnessLet’s start with the OT. When it comes to the OT, by far, the most relevant and interesting discussion is the dead sea scrolls. Here’s why.If you were alive prior to 1947 and someone were to ask you, “What is the oldest complete copy of the OT you possess?” what would your answer be?Well you’d have to answer the Codex Leningrad B19A.Codex is the word for book and B19A is a cataloging identifier. It’s housed in the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. Here’s a picture of the inside of the book. It’s quite beautiful.Now there were other fragments and parts that were older. The other really famous manuscript is the Allepo Codex. It’s mostly complete but isn’t much older. So this is the oldest complete copy of the OT we possess. And when was this written? This was written in 1008AD. That’s a HUGE GAP between when the original author wrote the book and our oldest existing copy!Let’s just draw that gap on the timeline. How many hand copies are represented here? Answer: lots. How much confidence do you have that this book has not changed? It creates a lot of uncertainty. How much does a manuscript change in 1000 years? If a manuscript wears out every 100 years (best case) that means at least 10 copies and probably a lot more than that. There’s just no way to know.Well, in 1947 there was a massive discovery. In fact, it’s hard to argue against the fact that it’s the greatest discovery of the 20th century. It happened by accident. Some Bedouines were throwing rocks and scrambling down into caves by the Dead Sea and found 7 scrolls housed in jars.These are tall jars designed to hold scrolls. Those jars were found in this cave which is now known as Cave 1. This is an extreme desert climate so the conditions were absolutely optimal for preservation.At first they had no idea what they were. They were hanging them on the post of their tent, selling them to antiquities dealers. But then they fell into the right hands and the search was on.The area was scoured and hundreds of more scrolls were discovered. There are were 972 manuscripts found and tens of thousands of fragments. 90 percent of the scrolls were found in cave 4 here.I had to laugh at one book I read. “In the fourth cave the fragments were torn into up to 15,000 pieces. These small fragments created somewhat of a problem for scholars.” If any of you like putting together impossible puzzles without a picture on a box this might be a job for you. The main guy in charge of this died before it was complete. Even to this day the study of these scrolls continues.About 40 percent of the manuscripts are actually copies of OT books. All the OT is represented except for the book of Esther.There’s one scroll in particular that is especially impressive. It’s called the Great Isaiah Scroll. It’s the complete book of Isaiah in almost perfect readable condition.If you are curious you can go to this Digital Dead Sea Scroll website and interact with the text.Here’s the significance for our purposes. We are asking the question, what is the gap between the writing of the original document and the oldest copy we possess today? Prior to 1947 and the discovery of the scrolls it was Codex Leningrad B19A at 1008AD. With the dead sea scrolls we can get to about 100 years BCE. That’s 1100 years earlier. That’s a GIANT leap. And of course the question is how much has the text changed in that 1000 year period? The answer is virtually none. It really is remarkable.Now to be sure, we still have a gap. If Moses wrote Genesis then we are still 1300 years away from the Pentateuch but only 250 years or less away from the last of the prophets. But it does give us tremendous confidence to say if the text didn’t change for 1100 years between dead sea scrolls and the Leningrad codex, it’s reasonable to assume that the text has been faithfully preserved despite the gap. So that’s the gap that exists in the OT. What about the NT?The NT WitnessIn the NT we have a much smaller gap. Let’s start with this quote.Now I don’t love the way that quote is worded and honestly a lot of the NT apologetic material because it is worded to make it sound like we have complete books. We don’t have complete books at these early stages.Here’s a list of some of the earliest manuscripts we have of just the gospels. These are all fragments but very, very early.So we have a very close gap in terms of fragmentary evidence. But what about larger sections and complete manuscripts? Every book of the NT is different in terms of it’s manuscript evidence. It would take a whole class to understand all this, but since we are in John, let’s just take John as an example.We could ask the question, "How many significant manuscripts of the book of John exist that were written before 300 AD. Circle that date 300 AD in your mind. Do we have 1? Do we have 2? The place to go to discover this is actually this website that is known as the K-List. Why is it called K list? Because it’s mercifully shortening this German phrase.(Short List of Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament) It’s funny that they call it a short list since it catalogs every NT Greek text or fragment ever discovered.You can filter by fragment size, date, location it was discovered and every other imaginable tag. So if you filter by date and the book of John you discover that there are 20 significant, existing manuscripts of the Gospel of John written before A.D. 300 and many manuscripts. One of the most famous is P66. Here’s a leaf.This is a nearly complete copy of the book of John and many date this around 200AD. The gospel of John was written maybe around 90AD so this is about 110 years after the fact.Now that’s not bad. But it’s still a bit of a gap. But here’s a really important question: If you were the scribe copying parchment 66 what would you be using as your master copy? You’d find the oldest possible manuscript available to you because that would be closer to the original.So the Scribe of P66 is writing around 200. How old of a manuscript do you think he could find? Let me show you some pretty interesting quotes from some church fathers who lived right around this time. This is from an early church father named Turtullean who lived AD 175.This is even more fascinating since it references the book of John - the book in question. Now keep in mind this is Peter of Alexandria who wrote this in 311AD.Here he is claiming that the original still existed in 311AD. If that is true, it’s possible that the P66 manuscript which predates this quote by 100 years was hand copied from the original.I told you to circle that year 300 in your mind. It would have been possible for any manuscript of John earlier than 300AD to have been copied from the original. We know that the manuscript existed in 311. But it’s not like it exploded right after that. We don’t know how much longer that survived. So it could have lasted another couple hundred years. We don’t know. So it’s possible that manuscripts much later than even 311 were copied from the original.We could strengthen the case further still by pointing out that in many cases there was not just one autographa. We know Paul used an scribe. And since many of his letter were sent out for circulation, almost certainly from day one there would have been multiple copies increasing the chance for the original to be preserved. Here’s the point: what is certainly, certainly not the case is that there were dozens and dozens and copies upon copies and massive errors crept into the copies we possess today.So we’ve discussed these first two criteria for reliabiliy - both the proximity to the original (the gap) and the number of copies.Now let’s jump forward two hundred years. The number of copies we have of biblical texts that have survived really begins to multiply. So if we go the 5th century which would be the 0-500AD, this is what the manuscript evidence looks like. This fragmentary and whole book evidence.Five hundred years sounds pretty far removed. So again, ask yourself the question. If you are copying a manuscript from this era, what is the oldest possible manuscript to copy from? You could probably reach back 200 years. At this point it’s easily conceivable that if someone was really trying to get to the original, this is only the second copy.Now after this point, in history the number of manuscripts just explodes. I think this is a helpful chart.“Many of these are fragmentary, of course, especially the older ones, but the average Greek New Testament manuscript is well over 400 pages long. Altogether, there are more than 2.5 million pages of texts.”So our total number of Greek manuscripts is around 5800 and if you include translations of the Greek manuscripts we are talking north of 23,000.And just to get a visual impression of the total number of manuscripts; it is really overwhelming.“If the average-sized manuscript were two and one half inches thick, all the copies of the works of an average Greek author would stack up four feet high, while the copies of the New Testament would stack up to over a mile high! - Dan Wallace”Again, keep in mind, most of this is later (Medieval). Most of this is fragmentary. Only about 8% of the manuscripts we have are complete.It’s sometimes helpful just to compare this to how well preserved other ancient documents are that have come down to us through the corridors of time. So if you compare the biblical manuscript evidence to some other classical literature you see just how well preserved the Bible is.Just to be clear, these are cherry picked examples in that they are the BEST preserved documents we have. Here’s another way of visualizing the data.Okay you have all these documents but how different are they from each other? That’s our third criteria for reliability.How much variation is there from one verse text to another across manuscripts?If you count literally every single possible type of variants. 62.9 percent of verses show no variants whatsoever. This means that if you examined all 5500 scripts they would be in 100% agreement on 62.9 percent of the verses in the Bible. That’s not that great. Does that mean you can only trust a little more than half?The picture changes drastically when you realize the nature of the variants.75% of the variants are spelling errors.19% don’t actually make sense. The scribe came along and a scribe is not supposed to correct. He’s just supposed to copy so he carries forward the mistake.5% are meaningful but not viable.1% less than one percent are both viable and meaningful.The two largest discrepancies by far in terms of meaning is John 8 and the end of Mark 16 (called the longer ending). If you exclude these (which is easy to do as you’ll see in a second) after these two, the longest discrepancy is two sentences and then quickly drops off to small phrases and single words.So hopefully this assures you that what we hold in our hands today is a very accurate edition of the NT and very, very closely reflects the original autographaWhy is John 8 Suspect?So let’s come all the way back to it. So we have all this manuscript evidence that points to great preservation. Why are we saying with such certainty that John chapter 8 and this story of the woman caught in adultery is NOT part of the original text? What is the evidence for that? Well, I only need to spend 3 minutes on this point. Now that you understand how this process works it won’t be hard to convince you.Five points:These verses are present in most of the medieval Greek miniscule manuscripts, but they are absent from virtually all early Greek manuscripts that have come down to us, representing great diversity of textual traditions.Let me give you one more wrinkle of detail here. Manuscripts can easily be divided up into families. Once a certain error is introduced into the text that error gets copied and recopied and develops into a family. There are about five major families of manuscripts:In every major family of manuscript this is excluded until you get to the medieval era. There is one exception is the Western uncial D, but it is known for its independence in numerous other places. They are also missing from the earliest forms of the Syriac and Coptic Gospels, and from many Old Latin, Old Georgian and Armenian manuscripts.Moreover, a number of (later) manuscripts that include the narrative mark it off with asterisks, indicating hesitation as to its authenticity, while those that do include it display a relatively high frequency of textual variants.All the early church Fathers omit this narrative: in commenting on John, they pass immediately from 7:52 to 8:12. No Eastern Father cites the passage before the tenth century. Now that might not sound all that significant to you. But very few people realize how much material has been preserved from the church fathers. Do you realize that there are over a million NT quotations that have been preserved from the church fathers. If all we had was the church fathers we could piece together well over 95% of the NT.Although most of the manuscripts that include the story place it here (i.e. at 7:53–8:11), some place it instead after Luke 21:38, and other witnesses variously place it after John 7:44, John 7:36 or John 21:25. The fact that it is not consistently placed in the same location is pretty strong evidence that it was added later and not part of the original.Finally, even if someone should decide that the material is authentic, John almost certainly didn’t write it. The style is completely different. There are numerous expressions and constructions that are found nowhere else in John.Now that being said, it does appear to be a piece of oral tradition carried down. It most likely was true. It just doesn’t belong in the Scriptures and can’t be treated with the same sort of unquestioned authority. It would be foolish to make a theological point using this text or to preach it in the same way we preach the rest of the Bible.How Should we Respond?So we could have just skipped this section all together. But we talked about this as elders and decided it best to take this opportunity to demonstrate how we go our Bibles. Now, what I want to do now is just apply what we’ve learned today. There’s a few really important points to make here.Thank the Lord you have a Bible!We definitely take it for granted that we are able to read the Bible literally whenever we want to. It has most certainly not always been this way.The first reason that most of history has not been able to read the Bible in their language was because if you wanted your own volume you had to copy it by hand. Copying the Bible would have been a massive undertaking and took professional scribes close to a year. Contrast that to a modern printing press that can crank out 75 pages per minute. My Bible has 1106 pages for a total print time of 14 minutes. In quantity each page costs less than a penny and I can pick up this nice leather bound version for $18.95. If you want a paper Bible, grab one on the way out. They are free. You can take a whole case of them if you want. Nobody cares. They are so cheap. You can read it online, download an app and get 300 translations in a second.My friends, this has not always been so. Just try to hand copy the Bible. Long copy times means high cost. Gutenberg’s Bible which was the first printed Bible was significantly less expensive than handwritten copies and cost 30 florins in 1452.People were so incredibly excited at how drastically the prices had been slashed with the invention of the printing press. It was a moment of ecstasy. Now you could buy a Bible for 30 Florins. You want to know what that is in today’s dollars. At a very conservative exchange rate is about 100,000 dollars. How many of you could afford to purchase one? Churches might be able to purchase a single copy. And they would chain it to the pulpit.The second reason that many could not read the Bible is that it wasn’t in their language. We are so fortunate. All this careful compiling, comparing, studying the original manuscripts so that we could then have an accurate original to then translate. Our English translations are among the best in the world. We are so thankful.Read it.The claim is that this book is the Word of God. You need this. You need to be shaped by it in every way. What you love. What you do and don’t do. This is your food. It is bread to your soul. This connects you to Jesus Christ, the author of life. READ IT. It’s a treasure. It’s been passed down. Men have given their lives to preserve it. What a tragedy if we don’t read it. The great 18th-century evangelist John Wesley provides a good answer:“I want to know one thing, the way to heaven. . . . He hath written it down in a book. Give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book].”In the beginning was the WORD. This is the WORD. Application: Read Psalm 119. Make a Bible Reading Plan. Download the Dwell App.Pray for the Spirit of God to use it in your life.Don’t trust in the labor saving deliverance of technology! It’s not a life hack that is going to give you the next level of breakthrough.Let me make this point by way of 3 P’s. You have the Production of Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We don’t believe this is any old book. We believe this to be the inspired words of God. Then there’s the Preservation which we have talked about. But then there’s the Perception. How do we perceive the words? How do we understand them?You see we ultimately need the Spirit of God to ascertain and discern spiritual things. Many will look at this book and write it off as foolishness. But ultimately it’s the Spirit of God working in us that is the true test. Ultimate test of authenticity. The Holy Spirit. God gives us the Spirit of God which is the WORD in us.