Text Tuesday – The Eichenwald Files 4

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Amy Hall from the useful apologetics website and ministry Stand To Reason [Click here to go there] has picked out a piece of Dan Wallace’s critique of the Newsweek/Eichenwald Christmas piece. She has bullet pointed this short section for ease of reading and comprehension.  

I think this is an important point from Wallace as I encounter word game / Chinese Whispers / Telephone Game models being proposed as fact with regard to how the books of the New Testament and particularly the gospels were transmitted.

Click the word response below to get to Dan Wallace’s full treatment.

In his response to the now infamous Newsweek article by Kurt Eichenwald attacking the Bible, Dan Wallace succinctly explained why the transmission of the Bible was not like a game of Telephone (bullet point formatting added by me for ease of reading):

The title of Eichenwald’s section that deals with manuscript transmission is “Playing Telephone with the Word of God.” The implication is that the transmission of the Bible is very much like the telephone game—a parlor game every American knows. It involves a brief narrative that someone whispers to the next person in line who then whispers this to the next person, and so on for several people. Then, the last person recites out loud what he or she heard and everyone has a good laugh for how garbled the story got. But the transmission of scripture is not at all like the telephone game.

• First, the goal of the telephone game is to see how badly the story can get misrepresented, while the goal of New Testament copying was by and large to produce very careful, accurate copies of the original.
• Second, in the telephone game there is only one line of transmission, while with the New Testament there are multiple lines of transmission.
• Third, one is oral, recited once in another’s ear, while the other is written, copied by a faithful scribe who then would check his or her work or have someone else do it.
• Fourth, in the telephone game only the wording of the last person in the line can be checked, while for the New Testament textual critics have access to many of the earlier texts, some going back very close to the time of the autographs.
• Fifth, even the ancient scribes had access to earlier texts, and would often check their work against a manuscript that was many generations older than their immediate ancestor. The average papyrus manuscript would last for a century or more. Thus, even a late second-century scribe could have potentially examined the original document he or she was copying.

If telephone were played the way New Testament transmission occurred, it would make for a ridiculously boring parlor game!

Text Tuesday – Is the Bible limited to 66 books?

Before my blog-break last October I had been posting (mostly re-posting other people’s thoughtful work) on the text of the new testament in particular and the Bible in general.

I plan to occasionally do that again and today is such a day. Before re-posting Rob Phillips‘ work I will give some personal context. I dialogue infrequently with some great Muslim chaps and they do love to try and tear apart the New Testament as we have it today. Howver, their concerns and criticisms have lead me to investigate this important part of the Christian faith more deeply. Much of what convincingly speaks to me has been re-posted on the Tuesday Text series – see Textual Studies in the Categories on the right hand side of the screen if you want to see more.

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However I love to refine my understanding and position on things as I go along. While I have regularly told muslim friends if an early letter by Paul or similar was found and could be authenticated I would be happy for it to be added to the New Testament (as such). This post has given me pause for thought on this matter. Over to you dear Baptist brother.

Rob Phillips: click here to get the source of this material

Some scholars today cast doubt over the canon of Scripture — those 66 books that the church has long held to be the complete written revelation of God. They justify their views by claiming: 1) that surviving texts of the Old and New Testaments are corrupt and therefore unreliable or 2) that early church leaders deliberately excluded certain books for personal or political reasons.

As Craig L. Blomberg responds in his book “Can We Still Believe the Bible?”: “… there is not a shred of historical evidence to support either of these claims; anyone choosing to believe them must do so by pure credulity, flying in the face of all the evidence that actually exists.”

But what if we discovered an apostolic writing that has remained hidden for the last 2,000 years?

For example, in 1 Corinthians 5:9, Paul alludes to an earlier letter to fellow believers in Corinth. We don’t have that letter, nor are we aware of its specific contents. Let’s say, however, that archaeologists unearth a clay pot containing a manuscript dating from the mid-first century and fitting the description of Paul’s letter.

Should the church welcome 3 Corinthians as the 28th book of the New Testament? Not so fast.

The New Testament offers hints of the process of canonization, but little more. As Jesus prepares His followers for His passion and return to heaven, He promises to send the Holy Spirit, who will enable the disciples to remember Jesus’ teaching (John 14:26), testify further about Him (John 15:26) and proclaim truth (John 16:13).

In other words, the same Holy Spirit who authors Scripture will ensure that authentic testimonies about Jesus are written, preserved and shared.

Some New Testament books receive a great deal of scrutiny before their inclusion, most notably Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Revelation. And some don’t make the cut for a variety of reasons, such as the gnostic gospels of Judas, Barnabas and Thomas.

So, what criteria did the early church use as a guide? Blomberg notes three predominant requirements: apostolicity, catholicity and orthodoxy.

Apostolicity

This does not mean that every book is written by an apostle, but rather that each book is written during the apostolic age.

In addition, no book in the New Testament is more than one person removed from an apostle or another authoritative eyewitness of the life of Christ.

Mark, for example, is not an apostle, but he is a traveling companion of both Peter and Paul. Early church tradition attributes much of Mark’s Gospel to the memoirs of Peter.

Luke, in a similar manner, travels with Paul and interviews eyewitnesses of Jesus.

Catholicity

This has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church. The word “catholic” simply means “universal.” Catholicity means that believers throughout the world to which Christianity was spreading were in agreement on the value of these books –- and used them widely.

No books that were found only among one sect of Christianity or in a single geographical location are included in the New Testament canon.

Orthodoxy

This refers to the faithfulness of the books to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Blomberg writes, “It is a criterion that could not have developed if people had not recognized that the heresies afflicting the church in its earliest centuries were parasitic on orthodoxy. That is to say, the heresies developed in response to apostolic doctrine –- modifying it, challenging it, trying to refute it, supplementing it or simply rejecting it.”

By the late second century, we see lists of 20 to 22 books accepted as authoritative, increasing to 23 early in the third century, and finally to 27 by no later than AD 367, when Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, writes his Easter encyclical to the rest of the church and lists the books that Christians still accept today.

So, back to our original question: What if Paul’s earlier letter is discovered? While the letter would be instructive, and might pass the tests of apostolicity and orthodoxy, it would fail the test of catholicity. There is no evidence this letter was read widely in the early church.

The key is to remember that the Holy Spirit ultimately fixes the canon of Scripture. The tests of apostolicity, catholicity and orthodoxy do not determine which books are inspired; they simply help us discover them.

Tuesday Text 15 – Canon Misconceptions

From the wonderful and surprisingly young scholar Michael J. Kruger over at Canon Fodder.

Each one is hyperlinked to the original and bears some time getting to know each one more fully.

1. The Term “Canon” Can Only Refer to a Fixed, Closed List of Books
2. Nothing in Early Christianity Dictated That There Would be a Canon
3. The New Testament Authors Did Not Think They Were Writing Scripture
4. New Testament Books Were Not Regarded as Scriptural Until Around 200 A.D.
5. Early Christians Disagreed Widely over the Books Which Made It into the Canon
6. In the Early Stages, Apocryphal Books Were as Popular as the Canonical Books
7. Christians Had No Basis to Distinguish Heresy from Orthodoxy Until the Fourth Century
8. Early Christianity was an Oral Religion and Therefore Would Have Resisted Writing Things Down
9. The Canonical Gospels Were Certainly Not Written by the Individuals Named in Their Titles
10. Athanasius’ Festal Letter (367 A.D.) is the First Complete List of New Testament Books

Text Tuesday 7 – What is the truth about alleged contradictions in the Gospels?

Week 5 and last in this valauble series from Dr. Timothy McGrew hosted by Calvary Bible Church, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Alleged contradictions in the Gospels? is the subject.

I have loved this series and not just because of Dr. McGrew’s jumpers (pullovers / sweaters) but also getting to write the lovely word kalamazoo 6 times – this being the sixth.

Week 05, Powerpoint, Feb 17, 2013.pdf

Week 05, Resources, Feb 17 2013.pdf

Text Tuesday 2 – Ten Basic Facts About the New Testament Canon

Calling serious christians – do check out these Ten Basic Facts About the New Testament Canon that Every Christian Should Memorise below and get all the links directly at Michael Kruger over at Canon Fodder

Dr. Kruger is a very important scholar and thinker in the world of New Testament canon and textual studies. Spend any time with a thinking or reworking atheist or muslim and you will know these are real issues. A reworker is someone who hears something somewhere – usually on the internet – and just repeats it ad infinitum inspite of any clarification or counter arguments offered.

Without prior thought, the christian can be so easily and unecessarily disadvantaged and left stuttering our way through an awkward discussion – with a one way train of false understandings bearing down on you. In the world of healthcare there is a very famous piece of academic work entitled ‘Information, a Prescription Against Pain’. In the world of ‘truthcare’ the same is true. Have good information to offer to questions, assertions and false notions. Actually that’s what the Humble Donkey blog is about. Resources – a presciption against Pain.

Clicking any of the Ten below will bring you to the full treatment of that fact. Thank you Dr. Kruger.

Michael Kruger

For the last month or so, I have been working through a new series on the NT canon designed to help Christians understand ten basic facts about its origins.  This series is designed for a lay-level audience and hopefully could prove helpful in a conversation one might have with a skeptical friend.

Given that there are already four installments in this series, I thought would be helpful to have them listed all in one spot.  Thus, I will list the current installments below, and plan to update this list as the series progresses.  Also, note that the bottom left of my website has a link to all my blog series.

#1: “The New Testament Books are the Earliest Christian Writings We Possess”

#2: “Apocryphal Writings are All Written in the Second Century or Later”

#3: “The New Testament Books Are Unique Because They Are Apostolic Books”

#4: “Some NT Writers Quote Other NT Writers as Scripture”

#5: “The Four Gospels are Well Established by the End of the Second Century”

#6: “At the End of the Second Century, the Muratorian Fragment lists 22 of our 27 NT books”

#7: “Early Christians Often Used Non-Canonical Writings”

#8: “The NT Canon Was Not Decided at Nicea—Nor Any Other Church Council”

#9: “Christians Did Disagree about the Canonicity of Some NT Books”

#10 “Early Christians Believed that Canonical Books were Self-Authenticating.”