"Are the errors in the Bible part of God's plan? If yes, why does God's plan involve the corruption of holy texts, even slightly? If no, then how can we decipher which parts of the Bible are in line with His word and which parts are not?"
The subtitle implies that there is a great conspiracy behind people changing the words of Jesus and the apostles for the cause of a hidden agenda. The truth is that Jesus is NOT misquoted in the New Testament. Professor Ehrman respectfully dedicates his book to Bruce Metzger, his professor at Princeton, who was the leading authority on textual criticism in the second half of the twentieth century. Bruce Metzger devoted his scholarly life to identifying as accurately as possible what words were original to the New Testament documents. The results that he and other textual scholars have achieved give us 99+% assurance that the text we have in the latest critical edition of the New Testament in Greek is the original text. As he writes in the introduction to the United Bible Society text he edited along with Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, et al, "By far the greatest proportion of the text represents what may be called an A degree of certainty ["the letter A signifies that the text is virtually certain"]."
In your question you ask if the errors in the Bible are part of God’s plan. Clearly the God of the Bible is great enough to have preserved the actual original copies of the books of both the Old and New Testaments. That he did not do so must indicate that such preservation was not according to his plan. He has given us a trustworthy transmission of the words of the apostles, so that we can be completely confident that we have the true words of Jesus and his commissioned agents, the Twelve. F.F. Bruce’s work, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, provides a classic case for the trustworthiness of the gospel and epistle accounts of Jesus and his teaching.
More importantly you ask how one may tell which parts of the Bible are legitimate and which are not. If we know there are errors in the Bible but we don’t know what they are, how are we supposed to pick and choose without giving way completely to subjectivism? The answer is that there are not material or content errors in the Bible anywhere. The classic doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible holds that God breathed into prophets and apostles to insure that their words would not only reflect their distinctive personalities, perspectives, and historical periods but also be the very words of God (II Timothy 3:16; II Peter 1:20-21).
This view of inspiration was Jesus’ own view that we learn from the merely historically reliable New Testament books. It is only after we learn what the historical Jesus taught about himself and conclude that he was the Son of God that we then submit to his teaching about the nature of Scripture. For the Jesus that Christians call Lord, “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He affirmed the Old Testament completely (Matthew 5:17-19) and predicted that his apostles would write a New Testament (John 14:26; 15:26-27; 16:13). So, don’t worry about substantive errors in the Bible. There are none.David Bowen, PhD
Vanderbilt University
Comments
significant errors that run counter to your argument. Many of these errors are indeed substantive and clearly indicate the highly charged atmosphere in the first hundred years since Jesus’ crucifixion. See for example Chapter 6 of Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus,
entitled “Theologically Motivated Alterations of the text.” Dr. Ehrman can and has argued this point far more eloquently than I could. Dr. Bowen How would you argue against Dr. Ehrman’s conclusions in this 6th chapter, or his evidence for that matter? It is
my belief that it appears that you may be misunderstanding his arguments, or perhaps have not really looked at them. I must conclude that perhaps your post has an ulterior motivation in that you are perhaps trying to dissuade the unsuspecting from actually
learning the reality that Dr. Ehrman has exposed.
If you have ever played the telephone game, you would understand why. The Jews also admit to embellishing the text, which is another indicator of its unreliability. Yahweh "breathed" words, that are contradictory, sexist, misogynistic, unfair, and barbaric--something
that would be impossible for an "all-loving" god to "breathe." It is interesting that unknown authors who never met Jesus (if he existed) are considered reliable sources--when we have no idea who they are and they had no idea what Jesus said. They simply heard
it from someone, who heard it from someone else...and so on. The bible does not meet the standards for historicity. That is a fact. If it did, it would certainly be taught in history class--but it is not.
I also agree with him that through the science (and art) of textual criticism we can discern the original text. One of the canons of textual criticism is "the more difficult reading is to be preferred." I agree with that canon, as do most evangelical scholars.
Professor Ehrman and I accept the same text of the New Testament. That is why I said that his book, Misquoting Jesus, is not controversial when it is addressing the textual tradition. The problem of theologically motivated tampering with the text a particular
scribe has received is answered by the high volume of ancient texts we have to compare and with their geographical diversity. I hope I have understood his point in chapter six correctly, and I hope I have not been guilty of an ulterior motive to hide reality
so I can continue to dupe unsuspecting readers. As far as I know my own heart, my motive has been to reveal reality rather than to hide it. Thank you for asking me to clarify my post.
mistrust most if not all "history" by that standard. You mention the telephone game as showing definitively that messages cannot be faithfully passed on from one hearer to another, but I am not sure that the earliest authorized followers of Jesus were viewed
as or viewed themselves as simply playing a child's game. I have a different view of the Bible's basic historical reliability (even quite apart from it's claims to inspiration and miracles), and my view is shared by many classicists and historians who do not
have a theological agenda to promote (although we should always ask on the matters of ultimate concern that are the subject of the New Testament whether anyone is free of "agenda"). Unknown authors who never met Jesus did not write the New Testament, in my
opinion, and I would marshall arguments external to the texts themselves as well as arguments internal to the texts to establish authorship. That is a different book on a different subject, moving from "lower" criticism of the New Testament to "higher," more
subjective criticism. Maybe another time would be better for that debate.
and release ourselves from the bondage of bronze age myths formulated by long dead roaming desert tribesmen in an attempt to "explain" the natural world based on their own primitive understanding. We owe ourselves more than these ancient myths can deliver
- false consolations, dissatisfying in the face of modern science and a soaring, passionate curiosity and intelligence that moves the human species ever forward. A few words from Hitchens seem appropriate: "Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal:
the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the
cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations."
original, or we are sure that 99% of the (critical) text is the same original? They are not the same. I suspect you meant the latter, you have written the former. Thus The results that he and other textual scholars have achieved give us assurance that the
text we have in the latest critical edition of the New Testament in Greek is 99+% identical to the original text.
sure that the New testament was written in some fairly advanced Greek, while it was very unlikely that any of the apostles spoke Greek let alone could write it. Moreover, given the textual analysis of the gospels puts the first, Mark, written at least 30 years
after the death of Jesus by a literate Greek speaker, How could the authors have had a personal knowledge of Jesus?
the book of Hebrews (author unknown) have more complex Greek than John's or Peter's writings. This reflects the fact that Paul was highly educated and from an area outside of the land of Palestine and Luke is widely understood to have been a gentile because
of his name and also from church tradition. Greek was the trade language of most of the Roman empire at the time of the events of the gospels so it was certainly spoken by most people living in Palestine during that time period. Peter and John were not learned
men, therefore their Greek was by no means "advanced". It is not unreasonable to assume that all of the apostles knew Greek, though some better than others depending on their life experience. I am sure Dr. Boen knows more on the topic than I, but I hope this
helps.
Part of God's Plan? is kinda vanilla. You could look at Yahoo's home page and watch how they create post titles to get viewers to open the links. You might add a related video or a related picture or two to grab readers interested about what you've written.
In my opinion, it might make your blog a little livelier.