07.17.2011 Why we can Trust Modern Translations

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Father, thank You for Your word this morning.
I’ve been reminded a few times that last week Pastor mentioned that he is going on vacation – leaving me with the harder of the two part series.
Can we trust our English translations? Pastor Mike mentioned last week that we can have confidence in our English translations.
Introduction to the Bible – Paul Wagner – Tremendous book on the history of the Bible. I plug his book – not only because I had him as a professor – but because he passed me. Out of 9 questions on the midterm – I only missed seven of them!
Textual Criticism -
The study of the copies of any written document whose original (the autograph) is unknown or non-existent, for the primary purpose of determining the exact wording of the original
Daniel B. Wallace—Center for the study of New Testament manuscripts
There are four reasons it is important –
1) Translating the Bible – to have an accurate English translation, we must have an accurate translation of the original languages.
2) We do not have the original autographs, John, Mark, Matthew, Paul, Luke – we don’t have them.
3) The copies that we do have differ from one another – it can be alarming. The term for that is textual variance.
4) The manuscripts we have are ancient, but the issue is current and relevant. I call it the DaVinci Code Factor. I know it is a few years old, but Transformers never discusses textual criticism – but it is pop culture trying to undermine the Bible. Have you heard of The Jesus Seminar? They say that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs.
There is going to be a rumble between Wallace and Ehrman – coming up –
Center for New Testament Manuscripts. Because I ‘lliked’ it on facebook – I can see that the student section has sold out.
Several of these scholars like to remind us that there are no original autographs – the skeptics like to remind us of that – but what we do have is ridiculous.
Bruce Metzger – lived to be 94 – I think he passed away in 2007 – he was a giant in this field – from the 40s on – we have an embarrassment of riches –
One critical point to consider in establishing our trust in the New Testament – is the amount of MANUSCRIPTS we have.
What Bible did Gutenberg print? Latin.
What evidence do we have? Roughly 24,000 New Testament manuscripts –
5000 Greek
10000 Latin
9000 in various other languages – or lectionaries – notes/sermons from preachers who quoted Scripture.
Let’s compare this to our understanding of ancient Greek and Rome. The time between when the original was written and the first manuscript.
Tacitus – Mentions Jesus in 115-117 AD,
Tacitus, a Roman historian, in his Annals (written between 115 A.D. and 117 A.D.) states:

Tacitus was no lover of Christians but commented about them and gives historical evidence as to their creation in his Annals

Therefore to scotch the rumor Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men loath for their vices whom the crowd styled as Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius by sentence of the Procurator Pontius Pilate.
Nobody debates the historicity of Tacitus or these other guys. But they will criticize that Pontius Pilate was not a Procurator, even though Tacitus said so.
Josephus, writing between 37-100 A.D.

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one would call him a man… He won over many of the Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah…

Papyri fragments have been found containing parts of John, written within 40 years of the original. Parts of Acts have been dated to the 2nd and 3rd Centuries.
List of Papyrus documents – 127
Uncials - 322,
Miniscules – 2907
Papyrus – I have a handout – it is a Biblical Manuscript – pass it around – this is a biblical manuscript – we aren’t always dealing with entire gospels, but a piece of paper 3”x3” – and that counts.
1934 – Colin H. Roberts – finds this fragment in the library – discovers that it is John 17 and the back has a couple words of John 18:37-38. Sends it off to 3 papyrologists – examined to be from 90-150 A.D. – A couple other things solidify the evidence – a copy cannot pre-date an original.
This verifies that it was any time from 10-70 years after John’s gospel.
Codex – scrolls –
P75 – we have 300 some leaves of it – 102 pages out of what was considered to be 140 pages. Dated between 175 and 225 AD –
Papyrus, 125
Uncials – 300
The weight that it carries in Textual Criticism is significant.
Constantine Von Tischendorf – 1815-1874 – Leipzig, Germany – Probably studying Greek in his teens. Professor at Leipzig – for those of you music buffs – his neighbors were Mendelsohn and Schumann (interesting story – read about the end of his life).
Some say Mendelsohn dedicated a piece to Tischendorf.
In a letter to his fiancé. 1844
Goes to Egypt – sees some monks throwing papers into a fire. He investigates – and it is manuscripts – and is appalled by it. They are copying something – so they were throwing the old away.
He gets 43 of these pieces – and discovers that he has a Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) - He knows they were burning more – so he goes back in 1853. Little luck – gets some manuscripts but none of them are what he was hoping for.
Those 43 leaves – I was able to translate them – and they were impressed.
1859 – Third visit – goes with authority of the Czar of Russia.
The last night he is there – he is presented with a stack of 300 some pages from what he thinks is the same original document.
That night – he writes in his journal – it seems like a sacrilege to sleep –
Through a series of events debated to this day, it ends up in Russia until 1933 – Stalin comes to power – more important to have money than antiquities – no Ebay – the Brits say, we’ll buy some antiquities –
½ million dollars – Codex Sinaiticus – 340 AD
Contained our first and earliest New Testament in Greek – it contains the Apocrypha and some other pieces of literature of that time – 300 years from the original.
British library in London –
14 fragments later discovered at the same Monastery.
3 still in Russia
codexsinaiticus.org – you can go and thumb around that text all you want. You can set up the page how you want – Greek, English – words in question are in blue – you can click on it – and it gives a variant.
Miniscules – there are 3000 of them – if you want to know the list, go to Wikipedia!
I don’t want to diminish or belittle their value – because they are important.
With so many manuscripts – problems arrive –
I had 1 year of Greek – I cheated half of my way through that year at Greek. Because I was at Moody – and the Holy Spirit is ever-present there – and I got convicted – and I admitted to the prof that I cheated on my take-home quizzes – You are supposed to do closed book parsing of the text – so I used my books and Greek texts.
My prof – looks at me and says – Why have you cheated on your Greek exams? I should have said, Dr. Souer, I couldn’t parse my way out of a paper bag. What I mean by this – let’s leave it to the experts.

Textual Variance: Any place in the wording of a text where there is a difference from one copy to another.
THISDOESNOTINCLUDECAPITALIZATIONORPUNCTUATION
(This does not include capitalization or punctuation.)
How many textual variances exist? 400,000 or more – in our New Testament texts.
How are they counted, and what do they affect?
They break them down into text families – Codex Sinaiticus carries a lot of weight. Another predates it – Codex Vaticanus – They are go-to texts – say you have another text family over here – and there is a misspelling – and that is copied 300 times – how many variants is that? 1? No, 300. So it gets muddy and messy.
Most variants involve wording – dealing with Greek grammar – word order, and spelling. The most common is SPELLING – and we want to undermine the text because someone spelled Jesus wrong.
75% of the variants are spelling differences.
Luke 6:41
41 "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? 42 "Or how can you say to your brother, `Brother, let me remove the speck that [is] in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the plank that [is] in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. 43 " For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
Speck – Fruit
3 times you have speck and 3 times you have fruit – what separates it in the Greek? One letter.
Karphos – speck
Karpos – Fruit
Most common mistake we have – the movable Nu – (greek letter looks like a v!)
The Movable nu – you add it to the end of a word when it is preceding a word that begins with a vowel – An apple or a apple? Does the n matter?
Try that in your English class – does the n matter?! It doesn’t change the meaning.
You have apple! You have A apple. You have AN apple? You have apple.
Woman at the well – end of Mark – these two passages are hotly debated – because they are not in the earliest manuscripts –
So today, we open our Bibles and they are bracketed or footnoted – might not be Canonical or even inspired.
New Testament scribes even criticized each other.
Codex Vaticanus – a scribe changes a word –
“Fool and knave, can’t you leave the old reading alone and not alter it”
“No cardinal belief of the Christian faith is impacted by these variants.”
“Readers of the English translations need not wonder if textual variants are lurking behind every verse they read would drastically change the meaning of the passage.
Estimates suggest that 97-99% of the New Testament can be reconstructed from the original manuscripts without any reasonable doubt.”
New discoveries may lead to more revisions – but our ability to reconstruct the original document far outstrips any other document in history.
The time gap is minute.
The variants – yes, they exist, but don’t affect any core doctrine – they mostly affect spelling.
They put in the hard work so we can study God’s word in our language.
Wycliffe – 6800 spoken languages in the world.
2000 are without any Bible or portion in their language – there is a great work to be done.
Read with confidence – and we have a long way to go in getting the word out.
Father, we thank You for being in our midst – I pray that I have not muddied that water – but what we have done with fallible humans, copying Your word – but You work and move that we have a reliable text to work from.