Why There Are Just Four Gospels in the Bible Despite tales of conspiracy, there are good historical and theological reasons why the Church recognized four—and only four—Gospels. C. E. HillIn 2006, the world was presented with a newly-discovered, ancient Gospel – one that was excluded from the Christian Bible and thought to have been lost. The excitement in many quarters was palpable. “This changes the history of early Christianity,” one scholar announced. “This is big,” exclaimed another, who went on to predict, “A lot of people are going to be upset.” One and a half decades later, the tidal wave of media hype has died down to a faint and distant ripple. The Gospel of Judas has not changed the history of early Christianity, and perhaps the only people who are upset are those who are upset precisely because the Gospel of Judas did not change the history of early Christianity. Still, the republication of this long-lost Gospel reminds us that there were once more Gospels than just our familiar four. How is it that these four and only these four made it into our Bibles? The Most Direct Path to an Answer There are multiple paths we might take towards an answer to this question, and a very great deal has been written about it. But perhaps the best and most direct path to an understanding of why the Church has these four and only these four Gospels is simply to read them, and then read every known alternative, and let the books have their say. I suspect that most people will find what the church as a whole has confessed for a very long time, namely, that it is the portrait of Jesus that these four Gospels present, it is the life-giving message they bear, that sets these four apart from all the others. The most direct path to understanding why the Church has these four Gospels is to let the books have their say. Admittedly, this method may not sound the most scholarly, the most “objective,” or historically-grounded. Most peoples’ ideas of Jesus, one could argue, have already been formed at least to some degree by the familiar four Gospels, and so, comparing the contents of alternative Gospels could turn out to be simply an exercise in bias confirmation. Many, then, would insist we focus on the historical attestation. Their Historical Attestation If we do so, we shall find that while other Gospels were known, and very occasionally cited, in the early period (let’s say, up to the end of the second century), no other Gospel approaches any of the four in terms of its early appearance, its breadth of early geographical distribution, or in the consensus of voices recognizing its truth or Scriptural status. And no, it is not even close. This is not to say that no other Gospels besides these four were ever read. Some Gospels seem to have had a regional popularity, or a popularity with only certain groups. The Gospel of Peter is known in the east, but Irenaeus in the west, who made a collection of “alternative” books, shows no awareness of it. Irenaeus, on the other hand, knows the Gospel of Judas (probably a version of the one that was republished in 2006), but no other early, surviving source even mentions it. What’s more, most if not all of the other Gospels appear to be dependent upon one or more of the four. Some, like the Gospel of Thomas, advertised themselves as proffering “secret words” of Jesus, thus tacitly acknowledging that there were more “public words” already widely known to Christians. RelatedWhat Are the Apocryphal Gospels?Markus BockmuehlThe Jefferson Bible and the Faith of an American FounderThomas S. KiddHow the Two Testaments Became One BibleMichael Dormandy Nor is it simply that, by counting the raw numbers of Gospel citations or allusions in the second century, we can identify a clear “top four.” Why not take the top two, or the top five? The reason is much more telling. From at least sometime around the middle of that century, if not before, four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are viewed as forming a natural unit, to be read and interpreted together as a group, all ultimately coming from God. This is the notion of a “fourfold Gospel.” The author of the late second-century composition now known as the Muratorian Fragment, for instance, is not bothered by differences among the four, “since by the one sovereign Spirit all things have been declared in all [the Gospels]” (lines 19–20). This conviction of a four-Gospel canon even produced at least three “customized,” material innovations: Gospel Harmonies, Gospel Synopses, and Four-Gospel Codices. First, around 170–175, a man named Tatian created what was, as far as we know, the earliest “Gospel Harmony,” known as the Diatessaron, which attempted to combine the contents of all four into a single narrative. Some scholars assume that Tatian intended to replace the fourfold Gospel with his synthetic composition. If so, his effort still assumes the existence of a fourfold Gospel. But that this was Tatian’s intention is far from certain. Some Christians used Tatian’s tome as an aid to studying the life of Jesus, alongside and without prejudice to the four separate Gospels. Second, we know of an attempt in the third century to create a Gospel synopsis based on these same four Gospels. Ammonius of Alexandria constructed a book with four columns, the first with the continuous text of Matthew, the other three with the parallel passages from the other Gospels. In the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea used this tool to create a set of tables listing the Gospel parallels, accompanied by the first set of “cross-references” placed in the margins of the Gospel texts. Eusebius’s ingenious cross-referencing system for the Gospels depended upon the widespread adoption of a third specialized, information-technology innovation that had taken place much earlier: the four-Gospel codex. The advancing technology of the codex eventually made it possible to bind all four together in a single volume. Interestingly, never do we find any of the four bound together with any other Gospel. Get new articles and updates in your inbox. Leave this field empty if you're human: We cannot say precisely when the fourfold Gospel canon idea took hold. But before the end of the second century, the Muratorian Fragment (probably from Italy), Irenaeus in Gaul, Clement in Alexandria, and Tertullian in Carthage all know a fourfold Gospel collection, with the same four Gospels. This argues for a reception much earlier in the second century. But why, we may ask, did these four seem to form a natural cohort? Why did Christians receive them as a unit, a “canon?” Part of the answer has to do with their unique origins. Their Unique Origins For more on this question, see Dr. Hill’s book Who Chose the Gospels? Jesus, of course, never predicted that there would be four and only four authoritative Gospels. But he did, you might say, set a natural limit on the number of authoritative Gospels that could be written. He did this by calling and commissioning a limited number of people to be his authorized witnesses, his apostles, to speak in his name. The four Gospels now in our Bibles were received by the church as the direct fruit of the apostolic mission—written either by apostles themselves or by their personal assistants. And this is tantamount to saying that they were received as the ones Jesus had authorized, even as the ones the Old Testament prophets had pre-authorized! The Old Testament Scriptures, of course, promised a messianic deliverer for Israel and the world. These same Scriptures also predicted that a message of deliverance would result from his appearance. “In the latter days,” good news would travel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem…” (Isa. 2:2–3; Mic. 4:1–2; cf. also Isa. 52:7). This very passage, among others, may have been in Jesus’ mind when on the day of his resurrection he said the Scriptures predicted that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47; see also Acts 1:8). How would this prophesied, good-news mission come about? It began in earnest when Jesus told his apostles on that same day, “you are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:48), and then weeks later appointed them to “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In other words, the prophesied new “law and the word of the Lord” flowed from Jerusalem to the world as the result of Jesus authorizing a small band of apostles to speak in his name (Luke 10:16), to hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:19; 18:18), and to lay the foundation (Rom. 15:20; 1 Cor. 3:10–12), and even to become the foundation on which he would build his church (spoken first to Peter in Matt. 16:18; but extending to all the apostles in Eph. 2:20; Rev. 21:14). The unique and unrepeatable role of the apostles, to receive the true gospel from Jesus and then to deliver it in oral and written form to the church—to lay the foundation for the church—was widely recognized in the early church (see, e.g., 1 Clement 42.1–2; Polycarp, To the Philippians 6.3; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9). The apostles all died, but their authoritative witness still endures, in the writings they left to the church. The apostles all died, but their authoritative witness still endures, in the writings they left to the church. To remain faithful to that original apostolic mission, the church must carry out its ministry by constantly conforming itself to that written deposit. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were received as constituent elements of the permanent, apostolic legacy from very early on. The unique origins of these Gospels and their continual use in the church from the time they were published explain why their early attestation far surpasses that of any others. Their Self-Authenticating Power But there is one final aspect of the explanation for a “fourfold Gospel,” and it is the one I suggested could give us the “most direct path” to the answer: the self-authenticating power of these Gospels themselves. In the 160s, Justin testified that Jesus’ words (which he knew from these Gospels) “possess a certain awe in themselves, and are able to put to shame those who turn aside from the straight path; while the sweetest rest is afforded those who diligently practice them” (Dial. 8.2). Over and over again, the confession of Peter as recorded in the Gospel of John has been echoed by individuals and churches as they encounter the Jesus of the four Gospels: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68–69). In these four Gospels the church has heard the voice of its Shepherd, as he said they would (John 10:27).
How 2 Peter Made It into the Bible The story of how the most doubted book in the New Testament was recognized as canonical Darian R. LockettThe issue of 2 Peter’s inclusion into the New Testament canon is of particular interest. More than any other New Testament text, 2 Peter’s authorship and authenticity have been questioned. This is true not only in the modern period (modern critical scholarship almost uniformly deems 2 Peter as written under a false name or pseudonymous), but concerns over the authorship and thus authenticity of 2 Peter reach back to the early church as well. More than any other New Testament text, 2 Peter’s authorship and authenticity have been questioned. The central issues are a lack of citation by early church fathers and the stylistic and literary difference between 1 Peter and 2 Peter combined with the significant literary similarities between 2 Peter and Jude—such that some argue 2 Peter should actually be called 2 Jude! Authorship Problems for 2 Peter Vocabulary and Style Though the authorship of 2 Peter has been disputed from the earliest years of the church, it is only since the beginning of the twentieth century that the scholarly consensus has deemed the letter pseudepigraphal. Both ancient and modern interpreters have noted the sharp differences between 1 Peter and 2 Peter in style and vocabulary. For many, the two letters contain such discrepancies in vocabulary and style that they cannot share the same author. For example, with respect to vocabulary, 2 Peter contains fifty-seven words occurring only once in the New Testament (known as hapax legomena), the largest percentage of any writing in the New Testament. Only twenty-five of these occur in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This means that 2 Peter uses many words (thirty-two) that do not appear in any other biblical text. Because 1 Peter does not have near the number of nonbiblical terms, many have drawn the conclusion that this is evidence that 2 Peter could not have been written by the same author as 1 Peter. The two letters are also different with respect to style. Unlike 1 Peter, the Greek of 2 Peter is more complicated, repetitive, and somewhat grandiose. Interpreters as early as Jerome noted the stylistic differences: “He [Peter] wrote two epistles, which are called Catholic, the second of which, on account of its difference from the first in style, is considered by many not to be by him” (Lives of Illustrious Men 1). Use of the Old Testament Beyond vocabulary and style, perhaps more significantly the two letters differ in their use of the Old Testament. First Peter is heavily dependent on the Old Testament, either citing or alluding to the Old Testament some forty-six times. Second Peter, on the other hand, seems to hardly use the Old Testament at all, perhaps containing as few as five references.1 Many argue that 2 Peter alludes to the Old Testament only five times: Is 52:5 in 2 Pet 2:2; Prov 26:11 in 2 Pet 2:22; Ps 90:43 in 2 Pet 3:8; Is 34:4 in 2 Pet 3:12; and Is 65:17 in 2 Pet 3:13. See Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, WBC (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 138. However, references to the Old Testament might not be as sparse as some note. This difference might be more significant than style or vocabulary because it could indicate different conclusions regarding the authority and theological place of the Old Testament. However, it is possible that scholars have overemphasized 2 Peter’s lack of references to the Old Testament on account of how they track such references. A Traditional Explanation A traditional argument accounting for many of these differences, which finds its roots in the early church, is Jerome’s argument that the one author (Peter) used two different secretaries. Yet, in order to account for the differences between the letters, one would have to assume that rather than merely taking down dictation, the secretary would be given a degree of freedom to compose all or part of the letter. In other words, one, or both, of the letters could have been composed by a secretary, with Peter approving the end product at some point in the process (see Cicero, Letter to Atticus 11.5, for an ancient example). RelatedRevelation’s Place in the Greek BibleClark R. BatesOur Year in ReviewPeter J. GurryThe Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple JudaismDaniel M. Gurtner Evidence for Canonicity 2 Peter’s Own Testimony The internal evidence of the letter suggests Petrine authorship. The letter opens by naming its author as “Simeon Peter” (Symeōn Petros, 2 Pet 1:1) which uses the Aramaic form of Simon. This could indicate a Palestinian setting for the letter (James calls Peter “Simeon” in another Palestinian setting, Acts 15:14) and thus may support the authenticity of Petrine authorship. It might be assumed that a forger would either copy more closely the opening to 1 Peter or use the more common spelling of Simon. Furthermore, the author claims to be an eyewitness of the transfiguration (2 Pet 1:16–18) and refers to Paul as a “dear brother” (3:15). The Church Fathers’ Testimony External evidence, though thinner than for other New Testament letters, offers a mixed portrait of the letter. Second Peter is not included in the Muratorian Fragment which is often seen as an early witness to the New Testament canon. One should note, however, that the Fragment is incomplete and also omits 1 Peter among other texts and thus is not definitive. There are strong similarities between 2 Peter and 1–2 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas (early writings of the apostolic fathers). These similarities could be understood to indicate that the author of 2 Peter used these texts, or, quite the opposite, that these apostolic fathers use 2 Peter as their source. Definitively settling the direction of dependence is likely impossible, but for some this is an indication that 2 Peter was used early on by these early Christian writings. The first unambiguous citation of 2 Peter by name comes to us from Origen. The first unambiguous citation of 2 Peter by name comes to us from Origen (c. 182–251) who quotes the letter six times. Origen notes that some had doubts about the letter, saying, “Peter has left behind one acknowledged epistle, and perhaps a second; for it is questioned” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.11). But it seems that he still considered the letter on par with the authority of 1 Peter (Origen, Hom. In Josh. 7.1). Therefore, in Origen’s estimation the doubts of some which he registers were not serious enough in the end for him to question 2 Peter’s membership in the canon. How much earlier than Origen 2 Peter was known is hard to determine with confidence. Though it is disputed, some argue that the phrase “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one date” (2 Pet 3:8) is used in Irenaeus (c. 130–200) and that the passage in Irenaeus (Haer. 5.23.2) is closer to 2 Pet 3:8 than to Ps 90:4 (LXX). Also disputed is the claim recorded in Eusebius that Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) cited 2 Pet 2:19 and wrote a commentary on the letter (in his Hypotyposeis) that is now lost (Hist. eccl. 6.14.1). Furthermore, Justin Martyr (c. 115–165) calls attention to both “false prophets” and “false teachers” in a single passage (Dialogue with Trypho 82.1) which is strikingly similar to 2 Pet 2:1. After the time of Origen, Eusebius (c. 265–339) also registers doubts regarding 2 Peter, noting that the letter was not quoted by the “ancient presbyters” (Hist. eccl. 3.3.1). Furthermore, he lists 2 Peter, along with James, 2–3 John, and Jude, among the “disputed books” (antilegomenoi) yet at the same time acknowledges that these books were “nevertheless … known to most” (Hist. eccl. 3.25.1–4). Church Fathers coming after Origen, including Jerome, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianus, and Augustine, all acknowledged the canonical status of 2 Peter. Testimony from Canon Lists Furthermore, in several canon lists, 2 Peter was uniformly named along with the seven Catholic Epistles (James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude). About fifty years after Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 350) notes, “Receive . . . these the seven Catholic Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude” (Catechesis 4.36).2E. L. Gallagher and J. D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 115. In the Synod of Laodicea (363), each of the Catholic Epistles were listed by name and placed after the four Gospels and Acts and before the Pauline letters. Athanasius’s Easter Letter (367) lists the “Acts of the Apostles and seven letters, called Catholic . . . one by James, two by Peter, then three by John, and after these, one by Jude”(Festal Letters 39.5).3Gallagher and Meade, Biblical Canon, 123. Roughly thirteen years after Athanasius, Amphilochius (c. 380) registers some doubt as he notes: “Of the Catholic Epistles some say we must receive seven, but others say only three should be received—that of James, one, and one of Peter, and those of John, one. And some receive three [of John], and besides these two of Peter and that of Jude a seventh” (Iambi ad Seleucum).4See Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 314. Manuscript Evidence In addition to its mostly uniform inclusion in the canon lists of the fourth century and beyond, 2 Peter was found in several early New Testament manuscripts. P72 (the Bodmer papyrus) is a third or early fourth-century papyrus codex containing the oldest complete text of Jude and 1–2 Peter along with several other ancient Christian texts. The unusual collection of texts suggest that the manuscript was possibly for private use (rather than for reading in the church). The major majuscule codices of the fourth and fifth century combine Acts and the Catholic Epistles into what’s called the Praxapostolos and place it either before (Vaticanus, 4th c. and Alexandrinus 5th c.) or after (Sinaiticus 4th c.) the Pauline corpus. All three of these majuscules include 2 Peter in the Catholic Epistles. Precisely because of its added scrutiny, 2 Peter should be given every confidence as Scripture now. Reason for Confidence Despite the misgivings of some, by the fourth century, 2 Peter was consistently included in the New Testament canon alongside 1 Peter. Though it faced some of the most serious difficulties in its journey into the canon, one might argue that, precisely because of its added scrutiny by early believers, the fact that it was eventually accepted into the canon means it should be given every confidence as Scripture now.Notes1 Many argue that 2 Peter alludes to the Old Testament only five times: Is 52:5 in 2 Pet 2:2; Prov 26:11 in 2 Pet 2:22; Ps 90:43 in 2 Pet 3:8; Is 34:4 in 2 Pet 3:12; and Is 65:17 in 2 Pet 3:13. See Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, WBC (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 138. However, references to the Old Testament might not be as sparse as some note. 2E. L. Gallagher and J. D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 115.3Gallagher and Meade, Biblical Canon, 123.4See Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 314.
The Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism A consideration of Jewish Pseudepigrapha raises the question whether the New Testament contains books written under a false name. Daniel M. GurtnerAt the time the New Testament was written, there were quite a few writings from ancient Judaism in circulation. The most obscure of these is the so-called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.” The designation “pseudepigrapha” is unfortunate, since it misrepresents what many of these texts are about in several ways. The English word “pseudepigrapha” (sing. pseudepigraphon) is the transliteration of a Greek term that refers to “falsely attributed writing,” from pseudēs (“false”) and epigraphē (“inscription, superscription”). It is often used to designate works falsely related to or even attributed to prominent individuals in the Old Testament. But these points require some clarification. First, the idea of falsehood suggests some level of deceit and thus falsely attributes negative connotations to the very nature of the writing. Second, some works within this category are not identified with a particular individual at all, including with respect to authorship. Third, putting all these writings into a single category may suggest some kind of uniformity between them. Yet unlike other writings, the texts typically identified as pseudepigrapha, even those originating from the Second Temple Period, are not attested as collections in single manuscripts. Also, nearly all the documents in question are preserved exclusively in Christian traditions. In reality, the expression “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,” then, is a “bucket” category into which documents are often lumped when they do not clearly fit into any others. To begin to understand these documents, then, we must give careful attention to the practice of pseudepigraphy in antiquity in order to gain an appreciation for the cultural phenomena at play. Understanding the Nature of Pseudepigraphy Dr. Gurtner’s recent book introduces the Jewish Pseudepigrapha Why would someone write in the name of someone else? This seems strange to us, since we are used to journalistic-type writing on the one hand, or Stephen King novels where the author has become a cultural celebrity on the other. Yet recall that Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot, and even Benjamin Franklin in his youth wrote as “Silence Dogood,” among several other pen names he used throughout his career. Authors ancient and modern may have a variety of reasons for using such pen names. In antiquity, some libraries, such as the famous Alexandrian library, collected works of well-known writers. Therefore one may write in another’s name to gain a place among well-known writers. This could be done to get a hearing for one’s own views or draw the circumstances of the ancient figure into the context of the real author’s setting. So, for example, the author of 4 Ezra draws from the biblical Ezra. The book of Ezra is set in a context of the return from exile and reconstitution of the temple. Fourth Ezra, drawing from Ezra’s narrative setting, is set after the destruction of the Herodian temple in AD 70, and the similarities between the biblical setting and that of the later author caused the latter to utilize the former in his message. In some instances, the genre of a work may influence the figure to whom it is attributed. Wisdom material would be attributed to Solomon, hymnic writings to David, and legal matters to Moses, etc. In the ancient world, pseudonymity received a mixed reception. In some circles writing in one’s own name may have been perceived as unethical, whereas writing in the name of another is a more modest way of expressing one’s indebtedness to a tradition. The ancient figure serves to lend credence to the views espoused in his name. Among Jews, works written in the name of an esteemed figure are intended to elaborate upon him in some sense—his life, his significance, or some particular about his Jewish piety—and thus attributed to him. In this rubric, texts expand upon traditions associated with their seminal figure. Thus the ancient figure serves to lend credence to the views espoused in his name. The Major Types of Pseudepigraphy There is little agreement about which books are included among the so-called Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, even among published collections. Almost all of them were preserved and hand-copied by Christians, while others are written by Christians in the first place. Here we can limit our overview to a selection of documents that are (1) widely agreed to be Jewish in origin and are still Jewish in their present form, and (2) date from around the time of the New Testament, or at least prior to the end of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (AD 135). Apocalypse The most widely attested genre among the Pseudepigrapha is the apocalypse, which typically depicts the reception of some divine disclosure to a person—typically a famous figure from the Hebrew Bible—alongside its interpretation by a heavenly figure such as an angel. First Enoch is a collection of five originally independent writings dating from the fourth century BC to the first century AD As a whole, 1 Enoch represents the oldest of three works associated with the biblical Enoch, the seventh from Adam (Gen. 5:21–24). Second Baruch is an ancient apocalypse featuring Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah, who is called from his role as companion and secretary to the prophet (Jer. 36:4–10, 26, 32) and placed as a nobleman (Jer. 21:12; 43:2–3; 51:59). In 2 Baruch he becomes recipient of a prophetic revelation, perhaps even successor to Jeremiah, who is an apocalyptic visionary and crucial leader of God’s people in a time of crisis. Like 4 Ezra, this work is written after the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and trying to process this inexplicable tragedy that befell the people of God. Testaments Testaments are drawn from accounts in which a revered figure, typically a father or leader, delivers a discourse in anticipation of his imminent death to his sons, his people, or his successor, similar to what one encounters in the Old Testament with Jacob (Gen. 49) and Moses (Deut. 33–34). The Testament of Moses is a farewell exhortation given to Joshua by Moses before the transfer of leadership of the people of Israel. The ending of the book has been lost, and it is generally assumed that Moses’ death was narrated at some point in the earlier text. The narrative is almost entirely attributed to Moses in the form of a prediction about Israel from their entrance into Canaan until the end of days. The Testament of Job is an embellishment of the biblical book of Job in which Job imparts wisdom to his progeny prior to his impending death with particular emphasis on the virtue of patient endurance. The Aramaic Levi Document is a testament-like text recounting the life story of the patriarch Levi. But the work gives particular attention to Levi’s establishment of the Levitical priesthood, long before the time of Aaron, and sacred laws for sacrifices that he received from his grandfather, Isaac. Related A 17th century icon of Enoch with Elijah in the Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland. Wikipedia The New Testament Use of Jewish PseudepigraphaWhy the New Testament authors sometimes drew on ancient literary works written under false names Daniel M. Gurtner Narratives A variety of narrative texts relating in various ways to the Hebrew Bible were written and preserved among Jews of the Second Temple period. For example, the Book of Jubilees is largely a retelling of the biblical books of Genesis and early parts of Exodus (chs. 1–24). It claims to have been dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai by the “angel of the Presence” (Jub. 1:29; 2:1) alongside the Law at his first ascent up the mountain (Exod. 24:12–18). The Letter of Aristeas is widely regarded as a fictitious accounting for the origins of the Greek translation of the Pentateuch from the Hebrew. Joseph and Aseneth is a fanciful tale of the patriarch Joseph and his Egyptian wife Aseneth, daughter of Potiphera, Priest of On (Gen. 41:45). It describes the repentance and conversion of the gentile Aseneth and her marriage to the pious Jew Joseph. Psalms The various expressions of religious piety among Second Temple Jews occasioned a large assortment of psalms, hymns, and prayers. Among the psalms preserved partially in Hebrew in in the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QPsa; 11Q5), there are six Psalms from the Second Temple period beyond the 150 collected in the Hebrew Bible (Psalms 151–155). A collection of eighteen pseudonymous hymns or poems, attributed to Solomon, are known as the Psalms of Solomon. In general, these convey a Jewish community’s response to persecution and a foreign invasion, likely in reference to the Romans in the first century BC. Pseudepigraphy and the New Testament When considering the pseudepigrapha and the question of canon many scholars think that early Christians adopted the mode of pseudepigraphy from Judaism. And so it is sometimes rather easily claimed, for example, that Paul did not really write the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy, Titus), but rather it was written by someone else who attributed it to Paul. In other words, they are pseudepigraphical. Get new articles and updates in your inbox. Leave this field empty if you're human: Yet a closer look raises serious objections: most importantly, one can readily recognize that in the pseudepigrapha described above there is little interest in the identity of the “real” author. The importance lies in the idea of the persona utilized by the author in the figure evoked from the Old Testament, and it seems that the identity of the actual authors and/or communities responsible for these documents are almost entirely lost to history. Yet with early Christians, authorship was exceedingly important; the authority of teachings and instructions given to Christian communities rested within the apostolic office. Already during the time of Paul there were those claiming to represent Paul in some sense (e.g., 2 Thess. 2:2). But Paul roundly rejects this (2 Thess. 2:3). Moreover, it is widely regarded that the early church beyond the New Testament likewise recognized the importance of actual authorship and its apostolic affinity, and so routinely rejected the authority of texts shown to be pseudonymous. If Christian communities rejected the practice of pseudepigraphy for its authoritative texts, it remains the case that the Jewish writings surveyed here are nevertheless helpful for understand the New Testament.
Two Reasons There Are Variants in Our Copies of the Bible For historical and theological reasons, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bible’s manuscripts have differences. Peter J. GurryTo err is human; to forgive, divine” is surely the most famous line of the English poet Alexander Pope. Written when he was only 23, the first line presents a truism that explains why our English Bibles have notes about differences in our copies of the Bible. We can take an example from the venerable King James Bible. At James 2:18, the text says, “shew me thy faith without thy works” but the margin records that “some copies read, by thy works.”1Thanks to the discovery and study of older manuscripts than were available in 1611, most translations today print “without works” with enough confidence not to give a note. For more textual notes in the KJV, see here. These same types of textual notes were found before the King James and, of course, they have been used by all major translations since. But why do we have variants at all? There are essentially two answers to this question. The first answer is historical and tends to be one that Bible translators need to think the most about. The second is theological and tends to be one that regular Bible readers are most interested in. Historical The historical reason for variants goes back to Pope’s quote. Humans make mistakes. And, until the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, all copies of the Bible had to be made by human hands. Copying by hand is hard. It takes not just hand-eye coordination but something more like hand-eye-mind-finger-pen-ink-and-parchment coordination. And the Bible is a BIG book. In the original languages, it consists of about 300,000 words in the Old Testament and 140,000 in the New Testament. New Testament scribes were sometimes paid by the line and one early copy of Paul’s letters required 1,000 lines just for Romans. With so much to copy, it’s no wonder scribes made mistakes. We might be tempted to think that the printing press eliminated human error in Bible production. But it didn’t. The “Wicked Bible,” for example, is a printing of the King James Bible from 1631 where a typesetter’s error changed the sixth commandment to “thou shalt commit adultery.” (The result did not go over well with the powers-that-be.) The arrival of the printing press did mean, however, that, for the first time, you could have hundreds of copies that all preserved the same mistakes at exactly the same place on the page. In this way, mistakes were easier to contain. Two things are important to know about the mistakes that scribes made. The first is that the majority were accidental—a slip of the pen, a confusion of letters, an accidental omission—things like that. Not all were, of course. Some differences show clear signs of deliberation. Certainly, in the case of larger differences like the longer ending of Mark or the additions to the book of Esther, we are dealing with something much different than a slip of the pen. But many mistakes are ordinary and easy enough to find and fix. The second thing to know is that the copying of the Bible was not a long process of introducing more and more errors so that by the end we couldn’t hope to get back to the original. In other words, it was not like the telephone game we played as kids. The reason is that scribes not only made mistakes, they also corrected them. They knew firsthand that copying was hard, and they could check their own work and even the work of their predecessors. This is why some of our most important Bible manuscripts—especially on the New Testament side of things—often have corrections. Near the start of Romans 4, the original scribe of Codex Vaticanus (4th c.) accidentally wrote verses 4b–5a twice because of the repetition of words. A later scribe caught the problem and fixed it by not re-inking the duplicated text. (Image: Vat.gr.1209, f. 1448) They didn’t always get it right, of course. Sometimes a scribe’s “fix” made the problem worse. One scribe using Codex Vaticanus certainly thought so. The exasperated note he left at Hebrews 1:3 reads, “You untrained and unskilled man—leave the old reading, don’t change it!”2ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν, μὴ μεταποίει. The note is found on folio 1512. But, overall, scribes worked hard to do a faithful job with the task at hand—even if they didn’t always succeed. So, the first reason we have differences in our manuscripts is because copying by hand is hard. Theological This historical answer is simple enough. It’s also true of all works published before the printing press, not just the Bible. But Christians often wonder if the Bible shouldn’t be different. After all, if God violated Alexander Pope’s famous principle with the Bible’s authors (so they didn’t err) why didn’t he do it with the scribes who copied them (so that they too didn’t err)? RelatedA Newly Digitized Bible Reveals the Origins of the King James VersionTimothy BergThe Day the Bible Became a BestsellerJeffrey KlohaThe Bible Jesus ReadJohn D. Meade The answer can’t be because he wasn’t able to. Surely God could have if he had wanted to. (Although we should admit that keeping thousands of copyists from error over thousands of years would be an even more impressive miracle than keeping the authors from them.) The simple answer is that we have errors in our manuscripts because God never promised to keep them out. The Bible teaches that its authors were inspired (e.g., 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21); it nowhere teaches that scribes who copied them were. This is actually right in line with God’s normal way of working. He usually seems to follow up his extraordinary acts (what we call miracles) with his ordinary ones (what we call providence). Take the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus miraculously feeds thousands of people from just five loaves and a few fish. That’s extraordinary. But we can be confident that the way that this miraculous food was ingested and then digested was anything but miraculous. Likewise, Mary’s conception of Jesus was certainly extraordinary; her actual pregnancy and delivery of the baby were presumably ordinary. In the same way, we shouldn’t be surprised that God’s extraordinary work of inspiring the Scriptures was followed by the ordinary process of copying it—variants and all.3This point comes from C.S. Lewis who writes, “Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.” Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 95; emphasis added. What about when Jesus says, in Matthew 5:18, that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”? Isn’t that a promise that the text would be perfectly preserved even down to the letterstroke? From the context, the answer is clearly no. We know the metaphor is about Scripture’s full authority and not about copying because the next thing he says is a rebuke, not to scribes, but to anyone who “relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same” (Matt. 5:19; cf. Luke 16:17). The authority of Scripture is certainly one reason why Christians care about differences in the manuscripts, but that doesn’t mean the differences invalidate Scripture’s authority. The authority of Scripture is certainly one reason why Christians care about differences in the manuscripts, but that doesn’t mean the differences invalidate Scripture’s authority. One reason they don’t is because, despite our use of the term “error” when talking about scribes, we should not confuse scribal error with theological error. It is rare that scribal error results in something approaching a theological error. In James 2:18, for example, the difference in the KJV text and the KJV margin affects how James makes his point about faith and works but it doesn’t change his point that faith without works is dead. As Christians, we certainly care about Scripture even in the details, but we would be wrong to conclude that because there are variants in some details, the Scriptures have no authority as a result. In fact, because scribes did such a faithful job overall; because they left us so many manuscripts; and because we have careful principles for identifying scribal mistakes, our confidence in the text as we have it is remarkably high. That’s why the differences in modern English translations are far more often due to differences in translation philosophy than they are to textual differences. Many important variants can be found in the notes of our modern Bibles—just like they were in the King James Bible. Conclusion In the end, we have two reasons why there are differences in the manuscripts of the Bible, one historical and one theological. The historical reason is the same as for all other ancient literature: copying by hand is hard and scribes made mistakes. The theological reason is because God never promised to keep scribes completely free from error. We should not commit God to promises he never made. In the end, we can be extremely thankful for the countless unnamed scribes who did their work—not always perfectly—but, overall, faithfully. We can also be thankful for God’s ordinary providence at work in their copying so that we can have confidence in God’s enduring word. Notes1Thanks to the discovery and study of older manuscripts than were available in 1611, most translations today print “without works” with enough confidence not to give a note. For more textual notes in the KJV, see here.2ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν, μὴ μεταποίει. The note is found on folio 1512.3This point comes from C.S. Lewis who writes, “Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.” Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 95; emphasis added.
The Bible Jesus Read The Bible of Jesus’ day was not too different from the list of English translations available on your phone’s Bible app. John D. MeadeHave you ever wondered if the Bible you take down from your shelf, or pull up on BibleGateway.com, is the same as the Scriptures Jesus would have read? We tend to think of what Christians term the Old Testament as the Bible of the Jewish people, but are the 39 books of today’s Protestant Old Testament synonymous with what Jesus would have considered Scripture? And what would Jesus’ Bible-reading experience have been like? We’re used to having a wide choice of English Bible translations, so if we want to explore multiple interpretations of a given passage there are plenty of different editions to compare. What different versions of Scripture would have been available for Jesus to read? Looking at the first-century evidence, a mixed picture emerges. Jesus’ “Bible” (if we can call it that) may not have had an absolutely fixed list of books in the way that a modern English Bible does. However, the concept of multiple translations was already in evidence by the time of Jesus. He would have been familiar with a popular Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture commonly known as the Septuagint, which had already been around for a long time, as well as other Greek and even some Aramaic translations. We could say that Jesus’ Scriptures were like a modern Christian bookshop with its plethora of English translations, each for different purposes. While it is difficult to compare Jesus’ Bible with any one English version of our own day, we could say that Jesus’ Scriptures in their different Hebrew forms and Greek translations were perhaps like a modern Christian bookshop with its plethora of English translations, each for different purposes. What Books Were in Jesus’ Bible? The ancient Near East had many writings and scriptures, but we don’t have a surviving list of Bible books, or a table of contents naming the works of the Hebrew Scriptures from before the time of Jesus. We can look at this period only as through a glass dimly, with few clues. However, a good place to look for what clues there are is at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. All the books that the Essenes—the Jewish sect which probably produced the scrolls—wrote commentaries on and cited as Scripture (with the words “it is written”) eventually became part of the Jewish canon. (There is one exception to this rule, a citation of a work known as Jubilees, which was very popular at Qumran if the many manuscript remains are any indication.) RelatedHow the Two Testaments Became One BibleMichael DormandyThe Jefferson Bible and the Faith of an American FounderThomas S. KiddThe Bible in the Language of JesusPhilip M. Forness Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who died in about AD 40, cited as Scripture the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy (the Pentateuch) as well as other texts that we would recognize from our modern Old Testaments, but he did not provide us with anything like a list of books. The closest statement to this effect from around the time of Jesus comes from the Jewish historian Josephus, who died in around AD 100. Although he doesn’t name the books, he tells us that Jews have only 22 books that are rightly trusted: five books of Moses, 13 books of prophets, and four remaining books of hymns and instructions for life. Although researchers debate the identity of some of these books, Josephus describes a closed canon and claims it had been so for some time (you can read this in his book Against Apion 1.37–42). His 22 books reflect early numbering where several individual books now in the English Old Testament are counted as one. For example, at the time of Jesus, the twelve Minor Prophets were thought of as one book or scroll. However, perhaps the best witness to the books that Jesus would have considered Scripture is the New Testament, which cites and quotes the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), many books of the former and latter Prophets, Job, Psalms and Proverbs. The New Testament authors do not cite as Scripture books outside of the Jewish canon but neither do they cite every book of the Jewish canon. By the second century, when early Christians began to list their books, they included only the books of the Jewish Scriptures. Along with the great majority of Jews, Jesus would have had a more or less closed set of Scriptures that mirrors our own. So we can see from this that Josephus was probably right in saying that by the time of his writing every Jew had long considered the 22 books to be divinely inspired. The evidence indicates that some Jews held as Scripture the texts eventually named and listed in the second century, but not all Jews agreed on the status of every book. Along with the great majority of Jews, Jesus would have had a more or less closed set of Scriptures that mirrors our own. It would have included the core books—the Torah, the prophets, the Psalter—but it’s difficult to say what he would have thought about the books at the edges of the canon (such as Esther, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes). What Versions Did Jesus Read? By Jesus’ day, the Hebrew Scriptures would have long been completed, and ancient scribes would have already copied them seemingly countless times. In the first century they would have been translated into Greek, and those early Greek translations would have been in the process of revision. We know for certain that the Scriptures were in at least three languages in the Judaea of Jesus’ day. The Dead Sea Scrolls reflect this reality with their Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek manuscript remains. Jesus and his Apostles, therefore, lived in a time when the textual situation was quite complex. Hebrew Manuscripts The textual history of the Hebrew Bible on the whole shows remarkable care and preservation—but not uniformity. The Hebrew text that became the source for the Medieval manuscripts on which our modern Old Testaments are based—known as the Masoretic Text—was the dominant but not the exclusive form before and after the time of Jesus. Other textual forms existed at the time of Jesus, since some scribes copied that dominant text in freer and more creative ways for different purposes. For example, by the time of Jesus, there was a revision of the Hebrew Torah now known as the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). In John 4:20, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well and they discuss the difference between Jewish religion and Samaritan religion. She tells Jesus, “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain [Mount. Gerizim]” indicating that she must have been familiar with Samaritan scriptures that located the altar for worship on Mount Gerizim (SP Exod. 20:17). Likewise, she knew that the Jewish Scriptures located the place of worship on Mount Zion in Jerusalem (for example Ps. 132:13). Greek Translations In about 280 BC, around the time that the Samaritan Pentateuch was being produced, Jews in Alexandria were engaged in an innovative Greek translation of the Hebrew Torah, commonly called the Septuagint. After the translation of the Torah the Jews had rendered the rest of their Scriptures into Greek by around 100 BC, with some books such as Esther and Ecclesiastes being translated slightly later. Copies of these translations probably made their way to Qumran in the first century BC as we have evidence of Greek manuscript remains of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy there. Related Illustration by Jordan Daniel Singer The Legacy of the First Revised Bible TranslationsThe modern impulse to get the Bible right in translation has its roots in the Jews who revised the Septuagint. John D. Meade Then the picture becomes more complex, because also in the first century BC some Jews began a tradition of revising older Greek translations to reflect better their interpretation of the Hebrew and to ensure their translations better accorded with the carefully copied Masoretic Text, which was by then the dominant version. A significant scroll of the Minor Prophets was found at Naḥal Ḥever, a cave in the Judaean desert, which exhibits characteristics of revision. Members of this movement for revision, called the kaige tradition, revisited previously existing translations and also produced some new ones, such as Ecclesiastes. What this shows us is that Jews before and around the time of Jesus and the Apostles were revising the older Greek translations and thus creating a complex of Greek versions that are quoted in the books of the New Testament. In this context, some quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament reflect both the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Septuagint (for example Ps. 32:1–2 in Rom. 4:7–8). In other places, the New Testament reflects the Septuagint and not the Hebrew (for example Isa. 1:9 in Rom. 9:29). However the New Testament authors clearly did not consider themselves bound to follow any specific translation, and at times either offer their own translation of the Hebrew (for example Hos. 11:1 in Matt. 2:15) or quote a revision of the Septuagint (Isa. 25:8 in 1 Cor. 15:54). What Did Jesus’ Bible Look Like? Jesus’ “Bible” probably mirrored the Jewish Scriptures, with some dispute over books such as Esther. The question of whether he and his followers read the text in Hebrew or Greek (Luke 4:17–19) is not straightforward. What does seem clear from the evidence is that, alongside the Septuagint, various translations of the dominant Hebrew text as well as revisions of older Greek translations would have been available. Jesus’ Scriptures probably resembled a Christian bookshop or the list of English translations available on a Bible app. Jesus’ Scriptures in their various texts and translations probably resembled a Christian bookshop or the list of English translations available on a Bible app. The Jews had a central, carefully copied Hebrew text that had been adapted in Hebrew manuscripts for different audiences and purposes, and they also had Greek translators conveying its meaning. Jesus’ experience of reading the Scriptures, while perhaps very different from our own in terms of the technology and language, would have had much in common. Opening up a scroll, he would see a text faithfully passed through careful traditions and scribes, not so different from the Bibles in our hands today. This article was originally published in Ink magazine.
What Pastors Should Know about Developments in Textual Criticism An introduction to new editions, methods, and digital tools for studying the Greek New Testament Peter J. GurryPastors are busy. They are expected to maintain competence in a wide range of skills from preaching to counseling, balancing the budget to carefully parsing the doctrine of the Trinity. It can be a lot to keep up with. In this article, I want to help busy pastors with a short introduction to recent developments in New Testament textual criticism. We’ll tackle this in three headings, looking at new editions, new methods, and new digital tools. But first, a word about why textual criticism matters. Textual criticism is that discipline that tries to recover the original wording of a work whose original documents have now been lost. Since no original document survives for the New Testament and since the existing copies disagree with one another, textual criticism is needed for all twenty-seven books. Since we cannot study, teach, and apply the Bible if we don’t know what it says, textual criticism—whether we know it or not—plays a foundational role in pastoral ministry. So, what’s new in textual criticism? New Editions First, there are several new editions of the Greek New Testament that have come out in recent years. The most recent is known as the Tyndale House Greek New Testament (THGNT). The result of over a decade of work, it was produced by a group of scholars at Tyndale House library in Cambridge, England, a premier study center for Biblical studies. The main hallmark of this edition is the editors’ documentary or manuscript-first approach. In practice, this means they have tried to follow the earliest manuscripts not only for the text but also for deciding paragraphing, spelling, and even accenting. In presentation, they have taken a minimalist approach with no text-critical symbols, no headings, and even no hyphens! The result is a text that is ideal for immersive reading and for challenging commonly-held assumptions about where to break the text. Two other important recent editions are the Nestle-Aland Novum Testament Graece 28th edition and the UBS Greek New Testament 5th edition. These two editions have long established themselves as the scholarly standard and they remain so for serious exegetical work on the New Testament. They share the same text between them but differ mainly in how much information they provide in the apparatus. The most important difference between these newest editions of the Nestle-Aland and the UBS is in the method used to establish the main text. RelatedThe Letter and the SpiritMaurice A. RobinsonThe Most Objective Textual Critic You’ll Ever MeetBenjamin KantorAppreciating the Diverse Evidence from the Dead Sea ScrollsAnthony Ferguson In the Catholic Letters (James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude), the editors used a new computer-assisted method to help understand how manuscript texts are related and to help make their decisions more consistent. That method is known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method or CBGM—a mouthful for sure, but an important development in New Testament textual criticism nonetheless. As a result of applying the CBGM, the NA28 and UBS5 text changed in thirty-three places in the Catholic Letters with more changes on the way for Acts in future editions. A pastor with an older edition of the NA or UBS who is preaching on one of these Catholic Letters may want to update to the new edition in order to be aware of where these changes are. Alternatively, buying the new Tyndale House Greek New Testament might be a great way to approach a familiar book in Greek in a new way. A New Method The CBGM has been in development since the early 1980s, but its results have been widely available only in the last five years. While not known for being simple, it essentially harnesses the power of the computer and the vast increase in our knowledge of New Testament manuscripts to help scholars make better, more consistent textual decisions. The method works by using the overall relationship between texts to resolve particular textual problems. For example, if the computer shows us that two distantly-related texts share the same variant reading, this might indicate that the reading was created independently by the scribes of those texts. This, in turn, could suggest that the reading is less likely to be original. Beyond that, the CBGM can even help us tell the larger story of how the New Testament text has been copied over centuries. And that too can help us determine or confirm the text. A diagram like this helps scholars use the overall relationship of texts to relate individual variants. The method has now been applied thoroughly to the Catholic Letters and most recently to Acts and Mark. The data are available online. This resulted in thirty-three changes in Mark, fifty-two in Acts, and thirty-three in the Catholic Letters. Most of these don’t affect English translation let alone theology. But a small handful are significant. The most important change, in my opinion, is found at 2 Peter 3:10 where the NA28 and UBS5 now read that in the day of the Lord, “the earth and all that is in it will not be found.” The inclusion of the word “not” where before there was none is obviously important. More significant still, this reading has no known Greek manuscript support, raising serious questions about its validity. Notably, this change has already affected the CSB translation and may well affect the recently announced revision of the NRSV. The advent of the CBGM allows us to quantify scribes’ fidelity like never before. Just as important for a pastor, however, is the evidence the CBGM provides for how well the New Testament text was copied overall. To be sure, there are many variants in our New Testament manuscripts—perhaps as many as half a million. Most of these are trivial or easily resolved and, when considered in light of how many times our New Testament books were copied, what stands out most is how faithfully scribes did their work. The advent of the CBGM allows us to quantify this fidelity like never before. In the Catholic Letters, for example, there are two manuscripts that agree at 99.1 percent of all places where there is variation in the 123 manuscripts used by the CBGM. They only differ in a total of twenty-seven out of 2,859 places where they were compared. That is quite remarkable. The average textual agreement between all pairs of witnesses reaches 87.6 percent. That too is impressive. Similar numbers occur in Acts. Dr. Gurry’s book provides a complete introduction to the CBGM These new data expose just how absurd some popular claims about the Bible really are. Take, for example, the Newsweek cover story from a few years ago that went so far as to say that you and I have never even read the Bible because “at best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.” The implication that the Bible can’t be trusted is hard to miss. In fact, most of us have been reading substantially the same Greek New Testament for two thousand years thanks to careful scribes. And rather than being an impediment to faith, modern textual criticism actually supports it. Even Marcus Borg, a New Testament scholar who is far from being an Evangelical Christian, has written that “with only a few minor exceptions, we can be confident that the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole reliably report what was originally written.” Yes, verbiage will change in certain places as a result of further research, and tricky textual problems do remain. But because of the overall fidelity of scribes over 1500 years combined with the herculean efforts of textual scholars, we can be confident that the text we have in our Greek editions and in our English translations is more than enough to ground our faith in the New Testament’s witness to Jesus Christ. The advent of cutting-edge methods like the CBGM have made that more apparent than ever before. New Digital Tools Having surveyed new editions of the Greek New Testament and a new method of practicing textual criticism, let’s consider a final area of development: new resources. Many of these new digital tools are due to the hard work of various organizations and the ability of the internet to connect and share information. Let me introduce three to you. Images The first resource is digital images. In the last decade, there has been an explosion of manuscript images made available, often for free, online. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is one major organization that has been hard at work to digitize manuscripts all over the world. Whenever possible, they put these images online for free at csntm.org. The search feature is especially useful as it allows you to search by keyword or verse and to sort results by a range of manuscript feature. The manuscript viewer at CSNTM allows for incredible resolution, here showing the start of Hebrews in P46 If you were teaching on one of the Gospels, why not introduce your congregation to P45, one of the earliest copies of the four Gospels and Acts? Or maybe you are teaching on Ephesians and want to show a Sunday school class the missing words “in Ephesus” in P46, one of the earliest manuscripts of Paul’s letters (note that the book is still titled “To the Ephesians”). Or, share the beautiful artwork in GA 808, a rare complete copy of the New Testament from the 13th–14th century. Along with CSNTM, many of the world’s great libraries are busy digitizing their manuscripts and putting them online. Without leaving home, you can now explore Codex Vaticanus (03) held at the Vatican, or the palimpsest Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (04) at the French Bibliothèque nationale, Codex Bezae (05) of the British Library, or see the famous Codex Sinaiticus (01) all in one place, something physically impossible because the manuscript itself is split and housed at four separate institutions. All this is just the tip of the digital iceberg. Virtual Manuscript Room Although looking at incredible manuscripts online is thrilling, tracking them down can be tricky unless you know what to look for. That brings me to the second resource I want to mention called the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room or NT.VMR. The NT.VMR keeps the official catalogue of NT manuscripts If I can brag for a minute, the NT.VMR was largely designed and is still developed by a Phoenix Seminary graduate named Troy Griffitts. Troy has been instrumental in developing this resource which has become indispensable to academic text-critical work. At the NT.VMR, you can see the official list of New Testament manuscripts, view images of many of them, consult scholarly transcripts of manuscripts, study the history of scholarly conjectures about the New Testament text, discuss these with other people, and so much more. It is a rich resource and it keeps getting more valuable. Free Online Editions The final resources I want to mention takes us back to the new editions of the Greek New Testament mentioned earlier. Ideally, you will want to have a print copy of one of those editions because each comes with valuable detail in the apparatus or in the margins. But if all you need is the text itself for reading or study, all of these are now freely available online. STEP Bible is online software that allows work in the original languages For the Tyndale House edition, one can find the text at esv.org/gnt or at stepbible.org, complete with additional vocabulary and parsing help. The NA28/UBS5 text is also online though without the extra helps. These free, digital editions can be helpful for when you’re away from your study or if you want to copy and paste the text into your study notes for things like diagramming, color-coding, etc. Conclusion In conclusion, we can say two things about advances in New Testament textual criticism. First, the Bibles that we have in our hands now—whether English or Greek—are founded on a solid double foundation of overall good transmission and excellent scholarly study of that history. Because of that, we should not hesitate to preach and teach from these editions even as they alert us to some places that remain difficult. Second, the study of our New Testament text and how it was transmitted to us is advancing in new and promising ways. The new editions, new method, and new resources mentioned in this series give us access to the history of God’s word in ways impossible to imagine even a generation ago. In the words of B. F. Westcott in the 19th century, “It cannot be a matter of indifference to know how the New Testament … has come down to us; to look at the Manuscripts from which our fathers drew words of life, to trace the stirring history of the version through which the teaching of Apostles has been made accessible to men of other tongues.” Let us be eager to study the remarkable history of God’s book and to share it with God’s people. This article was originally published at the Phoenix Seminary blog and is also available in Polish.