The Bible

General

Is the Bible inspired by God?

If you were to take a hypothetical position and say that God exists and inspired the original copies of the Bible, then that would not mean that the Bible is inspired as we have no idea what the original copies looked like.

The copies we have today have been copied from other copies, which had been copied from other older copies. Mistakes, small changes and additional text found it’s way into the books of the Bible as time went by. As such, if God existed and if he inspired the Bible, then that version which he inspired is lost to us today.

You could turn this around and ask if a supernatural being as powerful and intelligent as the Biblical god is described to be, would in fact use both Hebrew and Greek, papyrus and manual methods of copying to convey the most important message in the world to his creation. Even delivering message via DHL is more reliable than the transmission of Biblical texts and you can determine the value a message has to it’s sender by the format and process in which he sends it. The value of the message found on a post card or a post-it note will by it’s very nature be different from the value of a message delivered by registered mail or in person.

If a god existed and he wanted to transmit a life saving message to his believers, then he certainly would not have used the process used in the creation of the Bible.

Many of the historical places and cities mentioned in the Bible have been discovered. Surely that means that the Bible is historically correct?

Christians often claim that as there have been so many places and cities discovered that are mentioned in the Bible, that their existence must prove that the Bible is historically accurate.

This is a logical fallacy as it’s evidence by association. Did the Greek gods exist because Mount Olympus exists? Was the Cyclops real in the Iliad because Troy has been discovered? Does Spider-man exist because New York exists?

The logical fallacy becomes apparent when you use this same reasoning with any other piece of literature which refers to the supernatural. Even from a purely naturalistic point of view, one historically correct reference does not validate all other associated historical claims.

A good example of this would be the discovery of Jericho. When Jericho was initially discovered, Christian apologetics started using it’s discovery as an example not just of the Bible’s historical accuracy but also of God’s power as the city’s walls had been destroyed. This seemed to support the Bible’s claim that God himself destroyed Jericho’s walls. Later excavations have painted a different picture in the Jericho’s walls had been destroyed at least 7 times by different invading armies. In addition, by the time that Joshua was supposed to have invaded Jericho (late 13th century BCE), the city was actually desolate after being invaded a century earlier.

What is an “interpolation”?

A Biblical interpolation is an additional piece of text which has been inserted into to the original text of the Bible. This could also include text which have been changed from it’s original form.

Scribes or copiers making copies of the earliest manuscripts would form time to time add or change text in order to make the text easier to understand or to make it mean something completely different. Other interpolations found their way into the Bible by accident due to spelling mistakes or notes in the margin made by scribes being including by later copiers. The vast majority of these changes have no bearing on Christian doctrines, however there are some that do affect some of the more central doctrines such as Jesus’ divinity, the trinity and the virgin birth.

Old Testament

Were the first five books of the Old Testament written by Moses?

The first five books of the Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch, Tanakh or Torah were written by at least four different authors between 800 BCE and 600 BCE and were based on older oral traditions. In addition a fifth author acted as the redactor and compiled the work of these authors into what is known today as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. This theory is called the Documentary Hypothesis or the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis and it’s the most widely accepted view within the Biblical scholarship community.

The authors are generally referred to as JEDP. J stands for Jahwist, worshipped Yahweh and came from the southern kingdom of Judah. E stands for Elohist, worshipped El or Elohim and lived in the northern kingdom of Israel. D represents the Deuteronomist and wrote Deuteronomy and most of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. The same, unique literary style is used for all these books and all of them have the same political and religious agenda which was support the southern kingdom of Judah as well as centralised worship. Richard Friedman, who is generally seen as the authority on ancient Hebrew literature has identified either Jeremiah (or his scribe) as the Deuteronomist. The P was the Priestly author was primarily responsible for Leviticus and parts of Genesis. This author contributed sections on genealogies, worship and the priesthood.

Each author wrote from his own perspective and we find that J, E and P generally had similar stories interwoven by the redactor. Thus we often find duplicate or triplicate stories especially in Genesis. The evidence for these different authors is quite persuasive and ranges from internal references which relate to each one’s culture, locality and political view to the unique linguistic styles used.

Lastly a redactor or editor collected all these variants and edited them into the five books as late as the 5th century BCE. Many scholars today believe that this redactor was Ezra the Aaronid priest. Ezra is described to have “set his heart on seeking out the Lord’s Torah” in Ezra 7:10 and finally “finding” the Torah in the book of Nehemiah when the nation was in desperate need for religious guidance following their Babylonian exile. In the 2nd century CE Jewish literature identified Ezra as the author of the Torah and even Jerome mentioned that there was no objection from within the Jewish community in regards to this claim in the 4th century CE. The redactor is also responsible for editing some the content in these books, adding and possibly removing texts where he saw fit.

Were the Old Testament scribes renowned for they accuracy in copying texts and did these contain any errors?

The idea that the earliest copiers of the OT, officially called the Scribes, were vastly accurate in their work is a fallacy perpetuated by evangelical apologists.

As we can see in the construction of the first five books of the Old Testament, this compilation of books had been edited and changed from it’s inception by a redactor in the 5th century BCE. Jeremiah who was possibly one of the authors of the Pentateuch complained in Jer 8:8 that the scribes who’s role it was to copy these texts had a “lying pen” and were corrupt. Even Jesus is reported to have likened the Scribes to the Pharisees and rebuked them publicly for being hypocrites and preventing men from entering heaven. What we can see from earlier textual evidence is that priests from Judah and Israel were fiercely opposed to each other and saw each other as heretical. This would have led them to alter texts to suit their own religious or political purposes. So we can clearly see that their reputation was already in jeopardy but what about the textual evidence?

It is said that when the Babylonians invaded Israel in 537 BCE, they destroyed many or possibly all of the existing manuscripts of the OT. When the Roman followed suit in 70 CE, we once again see many of these being manuscripts destroyed.

The earliest complete Hebrew text of the first five books of the OT that we have today is the Samaritan Pentateuch. This dates to as late as the 11th century CE. It’s worth noting that this Hebrew text differs from the Orthodox Hebrew text in 6000 places. It differs even more the Septuagint which is a earlier Greek translation of the OT.

The Septuagint was a Greek version of the OT, which was copied into Greek in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. This task was undertaken by Hellenized Jews who’s audience were no longer familiar with the classical Hebrew used in the OT. They had the challenge of modernizing the OT Hebrew and reinterpreting it for their Greek speaking Jewish audience.

The earliest copy we have of this document is in the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus manuscripts which dates to the 4th century CE. These copies themselves are based on an earlier version developed by Origen (186-254 CE) who had reviewed the various Greek OT manuscripts at his disposal and authored his own version of the bible called the Hexapla. While Origen was reviewing the Septuagint he noticed that it’s genealogy of David differed from Luke in two places. Favouring Luke, Origen changed the text in the Septuagint to reflect a more Christian friendly version. Thus we can see variants in the versions of the Septuagint in the 2nd century CE, however we have no idea how true these are to the original Greek versions which were translated 500 years earlier in the 3rd century BCE. We also do not even know what the 3rd century Hebrew texts looked like, which were used by these scribes in translating these texts. And let’s not forget Jeremiah’s warning regarding the “lying pen” of the scribes and that there were already problems in regards to errors in the Hebrew manuscripts in the 6th century BCE.

It is important to note that the Septuagint was the only version of the Old Testament used by the New Testament authors as well as the early church. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul all quote from the error prone Greek Septuagint and not the Hebrew OT versions, which is interesting in and of itself.

The versions of the Septuagint that we have today also differ vastly from the Orthodox Hebrew OT as well as the Masoretic Text. One example is that the book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint is one eight shorter than it is in the Masoretic text.

The Masoretic text was developed following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Most of the OT manuscripts had been destroyed during this conflict and Hebrew scribes worked over the next two centuries in developing an authoritative Hebrew version of the Torah. This version is today called the Masoretic text or the Orthodox Hebrew text.

Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 1947 and these contained very early pre-Masoretic fragments of the Old Testament. Some of the texts found are very similar to the Septuagint and others resemble the Masoretic text. This shows that this was simply one of the variants of OT texts in existence.

So as you can see we today have vastly different versions of the Old Testament which are based on manuscripts of varying textual integrity. The Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Masoretic and the Dead Sea scrolls all differ from one another. Sometimes these differences are in their spelling and on other occasions these differences are much larger. This led to various conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Christian and Hebrew, conservative scholars and liberal scholars in regards to which text is the most authoritative. One thing is certain and that is that none of these versions are 100% similar to the “original” Hebrew versions, whatever they might have looked like and this notion of there being no differences in the OT copies is a myth itself.

New Testament

How were the NT books chosen?

The New Testament (NT), as we know it today, did not mystically fall to us from heaven but it was manually developed through a long, arduous and contentious process.

During the first 20 years after Jesus’ death, the early Christian Church relied heavily on stories passed on one to another, via word of mouth. They did not place any value on writing these down, possibly because most of them were fairly uneducated and illiterate. Eventually and quite slowly they started to compile collections of Jesus’ sayings, however these were still fairly limited in their narrative, and in fact there was no mention of the virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion or the resurrection.

By the mid 1st century. numerous gospels, epistles and other texts started circulating amongst the Christian Churches. First came the Epistles by Paul such as 1 and 2 Thessalonians which are our earliest books from the NT. Gospels such the Gospel of Thomas and the Q were amongst our earliest gospels developed (however, it is important to note that the latter has never been found). Mark was the first to produce a gospel using a specific narrative structure. This structure was later copied by the authors of both Matthew and Luke. Some scholars believe this structure was “borrowed” from Homer’s epic which contains a near exact narrative structure. The Gospel of John seems to have been written around 90 AD.

In addition to this we had the Acts of Peter, the Apocalypses of Peter and John, the Book of Barnabas, Hermas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospels of the Hebrews, Ebionites and the list goes on an on. Below is the listing of the main events in the process which led to the formation of the NT:

- 95 CE: 1Clement is written by the church father Clement. He quotes sayings by Jesus that are not in any of the gospels found since. He makes references to Paul’s letters but never mentions any actual written gospels, which indicates that these were not well known or distributed at this stage. Clement also only refers to Paul’s letters as wise council and reserves the use of the word “scriptures” for the Old Testament only.

- 110 CE: The Didache is written by the Orthodox Church fathers, quoting the Gospel of Matthew (it refers to it as “The Gospel of Jesus”), and direct extracts from the Old Testament. The church fathers Origen, Clement of Alexandria and the churches in Egypt considered the Didache to be inspired scripture.

- 110 – 140 CE: Papias writes down his collection of sayings. He did not trust any of the gospels nor the epistles but decided to rely on oral tradition (stories told in the marketplace). Some of his quotations do indeed seem to come from some form of Matthew and Mark, but he never attributes these to the gospels themselves. Some of his claims have a sense of Baron Munchausen about them such as when he explains how Judas’ head swells to become “wider than the width of a wagon trail so that his eyes were lost in the flesh,” and that the place where he died “maintained a stench so bad that no one, even to his own day, would go near it.” At the very least, this serves as an indication of the nature of the stories being circulated at this time. Papias also noted that the author of Mark was a young secretary of Peter, who had never met or seen Jesus himself. Once again we don’t know how reliable this is, however Eusebius used this source to repeat the claim about Markan authorship.

- 100 – 154 CE: The book of Hermas is written by a man who, supposedly, had known Paul (Romans 16:14). The early church so revered this work that they included it in what they considered to be inspired scripture. The book of Hermas was considered inspired scripture even as late as the 4th century.

- 100 – 200 CE: The Christian Church begins to grow into various segments such as the Orthodox (later split into Catholic and Coptic), Ebionites, Nazarenes and Marcionites amongst others. Various gospels and epistles were written and copiers were changing texts to fit in with their own agendas and preferred doctrines. Due to pressure from Roman authorities, who saw Christianity as a social problem, the various Christian groups began to compete for Roman favour. The Gnostics would blame the Orthodox Church for all problems with the Roman authorities and vice versa. At this time, any anti-Roman sentiments within religious literature would be frowned upon and any anti-Semitic texts were applauded by the Roman authorities, which had a significant influence on the gospels and epistles being produced and copied. For example the verse “Give unto Caesar what is due unto Caesar” and the reduced responsibility of the Roman authorities during the crucifixion of Jesus could be viewed as possible examples of this.

- 140 CE: The first Canon is recorded by Marcion who was a Gnostic church father. Marcion strongly supported Paul but he believed that Jesus’ God was different from the God that the Hebrews worshipped. He included a heavily edited version of Luke and Paul’s epistles but excluded all others, even excluding the entire Old Testament. Marcion, in general, rejected anything Jewish-related, including the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Hebrews. The Orthodox Church responded to this and wrote various anti-Marcionite literature, calling him a heretic. Some scholars believe that 2 Peter was produced as part of the Orthodox Church’s response against Marcion. What is important to note is that this was the first Canon and all of Marcion’s books made it into the final Orthodox Canon centuries later. Some of Marcion’s own editing as well as his prefaces to Paul’s epistles were even included in the Latin Vulgate itself.

- 150 CE: Justin Martyr refers to the Gospels as the “Memoirs of the Apostles”, He refers to Mark as the “Memoirs of Peter”. An idea he probably got from Papias or from the same oral tradition that Papias received it from. Justin goes on to describe church services where these “memoirs” were being read alongside the Old Testament. This gave rise to an interest in these texts and helped established the idea that the Gospels should be seen as being equal to the Old Testament scripture.

- 156 CE: A new movement within the early church started to develop called Montanism. They prayed in tongues and primarily preached apocalyptic teachings such as the famous adage “the end is nigh”. They shunned educated clerics and admitted women to their clergy. In fact, you could say that they were very similar to our modern day Evangelical Churches. They were considered as demonic by the Orthodox Church due to their reliance on personal revelation as opposed to the scriptures themselves. This marked the beginning of the drive by the Orthodox Church to form an official version of the New Testament. It’s at this time that the term “New Testament” is first mentioned. Interestingly, the Church did not want to include the book of Revelation in this Canon as it was very similar to the Montanists’ apocalyptical ideas.

- 161 – 180 CE: Dionysius complains that other people had changed his own letters written to the various churches and goes on to complain that even his version of Mark contained too many errors and additions to be reliable. Eusebius, thus, became one of the main sponsors for formalising the books which would be considered “inspired”, and decide which were the preferred versions of those books.

- 170 CE: The first Orthodox Canon is produced by Tatian, a convert of Justin Martyr, from the Syrian Church. This Canon was actually a Syrian translation and not in the original Greek. He decided upon the four gospels which we have today – possibly because his mentor supported these four gospels. He included Paul’s epistles and Acts and then proceeded to forbid the reading of any other books in the church.

- 170 CE: The first attack against any questionable texts is launched by the Orthodox Church when a well meaning priest is exiled after he writes the Acts of Paul in honour of Paul. The Acts of Paul is still included in the Armenian Church’s Bible today. Interestingly enough, Tertullian attacked the book, but not because it was falsified, but because it depicted a woman teaching on the baptism, as according to the Orthodox Church only men were allowed to teach. It shows that even at this stage, texts were not necessarily accepted or rejected on their historical validity but rather on the subjective ideologies of the church fathers.

- 325 CE: The Council of Nicea meet to discuss Jesus’ divinity. Arianism, lead of Arius, opposed the idea of Jesus as Divine, as they believed that Jesus was not equal to God himself. The Orthodox Church however were in favour of the doctrine that Jesus was equal to and, in fact, part of God Himself. The council’s decision, after much discussion, was that Jesus was indeed equal to God. Subsequently, the only two bishops who voted against the notion, were exiled and lost all their material possessions and property. The canonization of scripture was also discussed but they could not agree on a single canon at this stage.

- 327 CE: Eusebius writes the fifth and final revision of the “History of the Church”. This had previously been revised following his conversion from Arianism. At this stage, there is still no agreement regarding the official Biblical Canon. In this book he states the different considerations for books that are nominated for inclusion into the Bible. He lists three types of texts categories:
* Texts that are recognized as inspired by every orthodox author he knows.
* Texts that are considered inspired by some orthodox authors but disputed by other authors.
* Texts that are considered to be heretical by all orthodox authors.

Basically, Eusebius used his own subjective criteria (orthodox) to select his own Canon. He identified the four gospels, no more and no less because of mythical and numerological reasons (Irenaeus and Cyprian had used these criteria previously as well). He also includes Acts, Paul’s epistles, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1 John. He mentions that the Book of Revelation is disputed but confusingly still includes it into the first category.

He then goes on to list the disputed texts but not heretical texts, which included James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, the Acts of Paul, Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, Gospel of the Hebrews and book called the “Teachings of the Apostles”. To confuse matters further, he again includes the book of Revelation into this category.

Lastly he listed the books which he considered to be heretical, which were the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, and the Acts of Andrew and John.

- 327 CE: Eusebius states that he was commissioned by Constantine to produce 50 pristine copies of the officially recognised imperial Bible. We are not sure exactly what these copies looked like, however scholars found the Codex Sinaiticus developed in the 4th century, which is a possible copy of Eusebius’ Bible. It includes the four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s epistles, Hebrews, seven Catholic epistles, the book of Revelation, Barnabas and the book of Hermas. The Vaticanus Codex was also discovered that dates from this same period. It contains similar material in the same order. Both of these texts are incomplete however and we don’t know if any other books were included.

Finally, it is impossible to discuss Eusebius’ work without addressing his character. The 19th century historian Jacob Burckhardt, describes Eusebius as “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity”. Eusebius himself said that, “It will sometimes be necessary to use falsehood for the benefit of those who need such a mode of treatment.” This is an alarming passage as he also stated that he believed that Moses used certain falsehoods in the book of Genesis in order to persuade the people to follow in the footsteps of God. How far did Eusebius go? Did he use “falsehoods” in order to persuade people of his own ideologies? Scholars believe that Eusebius forged certain documents including official letters by Antoninus Pius and possibly even the Testamonium Flavianum itself. Unfortunately, he is our main source for much of what know regarding the church fathers and it was his personal theology which formed the bedrock on which the NT Canon was based.

- 350 CE: Bishop Cyril develops a series of lectures for the churches in Jerusalem, which would cover all aspect of Orthodox Christianity. Included in this is the first official announcement from a senior ranking official of the church as to which books are recognized by the church as the NT Canon. Cyril declares that no other books are to be read, not even privately. His canon consists of all the books we have in our NT Canon today, however he excludes the book of Revelation.

- 363 CE: The Synod of Laodicea is held in Asia Minor to decide the official contents of the Bible. The result was the following announcement: “Let no private Psalms nor any uncanonical books be read in the church, but only canonical ones of the New and Old Testament”. Once again they use the same list as the Cyril produced and exclude the book of Revelation. We have no indication as to how they came to this conclusion but it has been suggested that they simply relied on Syril’s previous Canon.

- 367 CE: Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, had previously published a book called the Festal Epistle. This book contained the dates for all Christian festivals and it was considered the authoritative statement on these events by the Catholic church. Like Eusebius, Athanasius was fiercely anti-Arian and a conservative. In 367 CE he extended the scope of this epistle and included his Canon into it as well. This was considered an authoritative statement by both the Syrian and Western churches. His Canon included Revelation and looked exactly like our modern Canon today. However, even at this stage, there was still some dispute in regards to the Canon for example, Gregory of Nazianzus continued to protest the inclusion of Revelation, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John.

- 692 CE: There was continued debate amongst the various bishops in regards to the NT canon. Finally in 692 the Trullan Synod was convened under Emperor Justinian. The synod declared that they considered both the Synod of Laodicea and Athanasius’ Canons to be authoritative, even though these contradicted each other in regards to the book of Revelation. They also included 2 letters they attributed to Clement as well as 8 other books “which it is not appropriate to make public before all, because of the mysteries contained in them.” These are now lost to us but one can only speculate what they may have contained. This contradictory decision gave rise to much confusion and there were at least 6 different Canons used by churches in the East even as late as the 10th century. The Syrian churches still exclude Revelation from their Bibles to this day.

- 7th – 16th century CE: Various Canons began to circulate in both the Eastern and Western churches. The Eastern Bibles still differ today from Western Canons.

- 1546 CE: The Council of Trent finally recognizes the Canon, and this is still the article of faith used today. During the course of the next century Protestant churches also agree on the same 27 books in the NT Canon.

The road which led to the formation of the New Testament was thus not simple and certainly not inspired in any shape or form. We had extreme disagreements not just amongst the early church fathers but also between the Eastern and Western churches. The criteria used to decide which books were included and excluded were ever changing and often church councils would contradict each other. Some of the earliest disputed texts such as Revelation and 2 Peter were included, whilst some of the texts which were recognised by the 2nd century churches such as Hermas were finally excluded. Political, geographical, religious and cultural aspects all influenced the process. It reflects how we seek out truth, deny truth, have prejudices, agree and disagree, love and hate. It is the product of 1600 years worth of humanity.

Sources:
Offline:
B. Metzger -The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
B. Ehrman – Lost Scriptures – Books that did not make it into the New Testament

Were the NT Gospels written by eye witnesses?

There is no evidence to suggest that any of the gospels were written by eye witnesses of the events described in them. Keep in mind that all the Gospel required apostolic authorship in order to be accepted into the Bible and this played a large role in how these Gospel came to be seen.

When you consider the Gospels, it is very important to understand how they were composed in the first place.

The Gospel of Mark was composed first between 65-80 CE. The church father Eusebius (late 3rd century CE) is the earliest surviving record in regards to the claim that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, a Greek translator and follower of Peter. He quotes from Papias who lived in the early 1st century BCE who said that the book was written after Peter had died and that Mark “wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered”. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him.” Thus Eusebius himself quotes that Papias stated that this Mark had never met or seen Jesus himself, i.e. he was not eye witness.
What makes this claim more questionable is the fact that Papias himself was known to exaggerate when it came to his historical claims. When describing Judas’ last days he says that Judas became so bloated that his head was wider than a wagon. We also have to remember that none of the gospels originally had any titles and titles such as “The Gospel of Mark” were only added by scribes much later on. For instance Papias mentions the Gospel of Matthew and only describes it as a collection of Jesus’ sayings. The Gospel of Matthew contains much more than just the sayings of Jesus and it leaves one wondering if Papias might have been referring to a different gospel all together. You can find more information on the Gospel of Mark here.

The Gospel of Matthew came to us as being anonymous but through church tradition, the apostle Matthew became the recognised author. Later on the Gospel was edited with the text stating that this was the Gospel of Matthew. This however is only church legend and the author was not an eye witness himself.The Gospel was most probably written between 70 CE (after the fall of Jerusalem) and before 110 CE when Ignatius quotes from it.

Nowhere in the Gospel of Luke does it state that Luke the apostle was the author, however this had become accepted church tradition by the late 2nd century. The author is the same author as that of Acts. The author also never states that he is an eye witness at all but that he did a significant amount of research before writing his book (Luke 1:1-4). The Gospel itself is difficult to date but it was most probably written towards the end of the 1st century CE. If Luke relied on on the Jewish historian Josephus, then the gospel could have been written as late as 93CE.

Both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the source for their gospels in addition to another gospel called Q, which was essentially a collection of Jesus’ sayings. Both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the source for their narrative and Q for their source for Jesus’ sayings. Why would a real eye witness rely on Mark for most of his narrative? Mark was not even an eye witness himself? Why would they need to rely on a sayings gospel when they were there to hear the words for themselves? One could use the argument of old age but by this time your whole theory of the validity of eye witnesses is thrown out of the window.

So we now know that neither Matthew, Mark or Luke were eye witnesses but based their gospels on older sources. This then leads us to the Gospel of John.

John is unique in that it does not rely on Mark at all. It was written much later than the other gospels, probably around 90 AD, which would make any disciple at least 80 years old. What makes the dating for this gospel difficult is that it seems to have been heavily edited. The first chapter for instance uses a very different style of Greek than most of the rest. When some of Jesus’ miracles are mentioned, the Greek once again reverts back to the style from the first chapter. This indicates that later additions were made to the text. The author once again does not claim to be an eye witness himself. Some evidence within the Gospel strongly suggest that the author was not an eye witness, for instance he keeps referring to Christians being expelled from the Jewish Synagogues. Any eye witness (or reader of the other gospels) would have known that Jesus himself often taught in the synagogues.

Thus we are left with virtually no evidence that any of the gospels’ writers ever witnessed the life of Jesus and cannot be considered as eye witness accounts.

Did the early church make any changes to text of the NT?

Before we can answer the question about changes to the New Testament, we have to define what the early Christian church actually looked like.

Modern scholars have been able to acknowledge that the early church was not one single group of Christians whom all believed the same thing. Variations in doctrine and different Christian groups started forming as early as the mid 1st century. By the early 2nd century the Christian church consisted of Orthodox believers, Marcionites, Ebionites and Gnostics who all believed in Jesus but chose to interpret his message and his purpose differently. All these groups chose different books to be included in their collection of scripture and we have plenty of evidence to suggest that all these groups made changes to the books that we still have in our Bibles today. We know they did this because we have copies from different regions that still contain these changes today, as well the comments made by some of the earliest Church fathers.

By the late 2nd century Dionysius, the Bishop of Corinth actually complained that even the Gospels were being changed by copiers at this stage. He stated the following:
“As the brethren desired me to write epistles (letters), I did so, and these the apostles of the devil have filled with tares (changes), exchanging some things and adding others, for whom there is a woe reserved. It is not therefore, a matter of wonder if some have also attempted to adulterate the sacred writings of the Lord, since they have attempted the same in other works that are not to be compared with these.”

The earliest complete copies that we have today come from the 4th century BCE and it’s near impossible to know for certain how much these 4th century copies differ from these corrupted 2nd century copies.

What is the “Textus Receptus”?

The “Textus Receptus” or “Received Text” was the first Greek version of the New Testament printed using the printing press. For many centuries the Roman Catholic church preferred a Latin version of the New Testament as they considered Latin to be superior to Greek. One legendary story describes how the church sold a large amount of very early Greek copies of the New Testament to a Chinese businessman as he considered the papyrus to make excellent fireworks wrappers.

As the original copies of the New Testament were written in Greek, they came under certain pressure to produce an authorised version of the Greek NT. Desiderius Erasmus was commissioned by the church to produce it and he completed it 1516. Because of the urgency placed on this task by the church, he only managed to find a handful of very late Greek manuscripts to work with. In addition these manuscripts were in such a dire state that he did not have a complete version of the book of Revelation and had to translate parts of the book from a Latin manuscript. In comparison, modern translators have thousands of copies of the NT and many of them are centuries older than the copies used by Erasmus.

The Textus Receptus is generally considered to be an extremely poor version of the Greek New Testament because of the use of these late copies which contained various mistakes and additions by made later copiers. What makes this frightening is that the King James Version of the Bible, which for a long time was considered to be the authoritative version of the English Bible, was solely based on the Textus Receptus.

What is the Jesus Seminar?

The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 by the Westar Institute under Robert Funk. The purpose of the Jesus Seminar is to determine which of the saying and actions ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels actually occurred and which were largely legendary. The first seminar was conducted with 30 Biblical scholars in attendance and this number has since grown to more than 200 scholars.

Scholars from around the world voted one a series of statements and actions by Jesus in the NT. These statements and actions were placed in one of four categories
Red – Jesus most probably did do or say this
Pink – Jesus could have done or said this but there is some doubt
Grey – Jesus probably did not do or say this
Black – Jesus definitely did not do or say this

They used specific criteria in order to arrive at their conclusions. This included dismissing any miraculous events from the red category as it’s historically impossible to validate the miraculous, reviewing textual variations of our NT manuscripts, and considering what statements or actions by Jesus would have been out of context for a person like him in this region in the early 1st century.
By their own admission, the findings of the Jesus Seminar were never intended to be portrayed as the truth but instead as the culmination of the opinions of the world’s leading Biblical scholars.
The Jesus Seminar have come under severe scrutiny by conservative Christian scholars and Christian fundamentalists who consider the Bible to be inspired. They also reject the Jesus Seminar’s criteria for voting as they believe in the miraculous.

From an academic point of view the Jesus Seminar has played a vital role in opening up Biblical scholarship to those not studying Biblical Criticism at any mainstream university.