The Controversial New Testament

Here is another paper I wrote for school. This one focuses on the issues surrounding the written tradition of the New Testament.

Introduction

The New Testament of Christianity is arguably the most important historical book in western civilization; perhaps even in the entire world. Its influence can be felt, either directly or indirectly, in almost every culture and society. It has been studied, disputed, debated, and translated for centuries in many countries and many languages. The book is held by some as the holy, divine, inerrant word of God which contains the only true knowledge and path that leads to salvation in the world hereafter. Others consider it no more than a collection of ancient writings containing a few good principles and valuable life lessons. Christians have referred to it for hundreds of years and it has converted millions to believe in the works and teachings of Jesus and His disciples. Of course some people have no interest in it all, but regardless of religious belief, or geographic location, the shaping effects of New Testament writings on society can be felt around the world.

Unique to religions of the day, Christianity regarded the writings of their prophet leaders as sacred and divinely authoritative. Few other faiths during Christ’s time, with the exception of Judaism, were in any way strictly governed by a written tradition. The scriptures are believed to be God’s word to man and as such provide the standard “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, KJB). Anyone who wishes to follow God must consult the scriptures to learn the correct way. In much of mainstream Christianity today, the Bible has been put up on a pedestal. Many denominations, mostly Protestant, assert that in order to even be a Christian one must believe the Bible to be the complete and inerrant word of God (Olsen, 2003). They hold the written tradition of Christianity in very high esteem and derive almost all their authority from it. But even though they all claim the New Testament as the source of their doctrine, there exist many differences and arguments among faiths.

The teachings of Christ were debated before the writings of the New Testament were even composed and compiled. The New Testament is not explicit or specific in many ways with regard to church organization, the nature of God, the performance of rites and ordinances, or the continued operation of the church to name a few points of contention. Disputes over doctrine and liturgy have raged from the very beginning of Christianity as a religion and have caused confusion and division throughout Christendom, evident by the thousands of creeds and denominations that exist in the present day. Scholars and skeptics have also challenged the historical credibility of the New Testament. Scientific research has revealed thousands of textual variances among the ancient manuscript copies from which the New Testament is derived, calling into question its legitimacy as an inerrant, divinely inspired book and subsequently the very foundation of certain doctrines. The controversy over doctrine and legitimacy has been a platform of debate for centuries and continues to be a point of division among many in modern society.

The reader should be aware that the purpose of this paper is not to undermine the divinity or credibility of the New Testament, but simply to point out some of the pertinent issues, and to induce inquiry into the important factors surrounding one’s belief in the New Testament as the word of God.

Transcription and Translation Throughout the Ages

Jesus, born a Jew near Jerusalem, began his ministry around the year 30 A.D. Our knowledge of him is limited almost entirely to the accounts preserved in the New Testament. His teachings were centered primarily on moral conduct and salvation in the fulfillment of ancient prophecies concerning his role as the promised Messiah who would come to redeem mankind. Jesus' followers regarded him as their Savior and Redeemer who could cleanse them from sin and reconcile them to God through the power of his Atonement – his great act of love in offering himself as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, which he accomplished through the shedding of his blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and his crucifixion on the cross. They looked to him as their greatest example and the only means by which they could return to God's presence. Thus, the importance of his teachings and the traditions he established were indispensable to believers.

Though his public ministry lasted only about three years, his influence was far reaching. During his life he organized many believers into a body led by his twelve most trusted followers, the Apostles, as well as other various ecclesiastical officers to govern the Church (Eph 4, KJB). After his death and resurrection, he commanded the Twelve to go “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15, KJB). The early missionary efforts carried Christ's gospel north and east all the way to Rome before the end of the first century. Consequently, the spread of Christianity in its early stages was accomplished primarily through oral transmission (Pelikan, 2005).

As part of their preaching, the Apostles often quoted the Jewish scriptures to prove Christ's mission, but Christianity originally had no unique scripture of its own. As the Church progressed, the Apostles wrote letters to the various congregations established throughout the Mediterranean to encourage and exhort members, resolve contention, and expound doctrine. It was the oral tradition and the subsequent letters to the Church which formed the basis of the authoritative writings that eventually became the canonized scripture of the New Testament. Although these writings were not organized into the Bible as we know it today until many centuries after their authorship, they nevertheless provided the basis of the Christian religion. They were read in the congregations to teach doctrine and were quoted by the early Church leaders to establish correct theology and denounce heresy (Ehrman, 2005).

In the first century of Christianity, however, copies of these writings were not exactly easy to come by; nor were they always 100 percent reliable. In the first place, many of the early converts to the church were of the poorer classes and generally illiterate. There were no professional scribes at this point in Church history, so the few members who were able and willing to copy texts did so at their own expense and without any supervision. A well known third century Christian author expressed his frustration:

The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please (Origen, Commentary on Matthew).

Each copy had to be made by hand, one quill stroke at a time, which was obviously an arduous task. As a result, many errors crept into the manuscripts, which are evidenced by the countless differences in the copies that have survived to the present day. Some of these were merely grammatical or punctuation mistakes; but others were of much greater significance, sometimes changing the doctrinal implications of the writing. For example, in I Corinthians 5:8, Paul warns the members not to eat the “old leaven, the leaven of wickedness and evil.” But due to similarities in the Greek spelling for the word meaning evil and the word meaning sexual immorality, some surviving texts quote Paul as warning specifically against sexual sin. Many such discrepancies exist throughout the texts. To put a perspective on the difficulty, there are more differences among the ancient manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. (Ehrman, 2005).

Adding to the changes resulting from difficulties in transcription were the intentional changes made by the copyists. Discovering the underlying reasons for these changes is largely speculative; however, historical writings of Church leaders attest that purposeful manipulation of New Testament manuscripts did occur, most prominently in the first and early second centuries. Even in the apostolic times, the apostles warned the members against corruption: “there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1, KJB). Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon at the end of the second century, accused the Valentinians of changing the scriptures “by transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another” (Irenaeus). Celsus, an opponent of Christianity, accused the copyists of changing their texts in order to counter their critics:

Certain of the Christian believers, like persons who in a fit of drunkenness lay violent hands upon themselves, have corrupted the Gospel from its original integrity, to a threefold, and fourfold, and many-fold degree, and have remodeled it, so that they might be able to answer objections (Origen, Contra Celsus).

Examples can be found throughout literature of the first two centuries where one group accuses another of changing texts to fit their own ideas. Indeed, examination has revealed that the texts regarded today as scriptural canon changed significantly from the first to the end of the second century (Reynolds, 2005).

Christianity remained one among many beliefs, with a modest number of followers, until the fourth century when Constantine, the emperor of Rome, sanctioned it as the state religion. Christianity suddenly had political and social prominence throughout the entire Roman Empire (Callister, 2006). Demand for copies of the sacred writings increased dramatically from that time on, bringing about the widespread circulation of apostolic writings throughout the Empire. Professional scribes, along with the emergence of institutionalized monasticism, supplied the growing need for scripture. These manuscripts, however, were copied from the previous generation of texts and subsequently inherited the errors and alterations which had crept in, while adding yet more mistakes in the process (Ehrman, 2005). As a result, these differences eventually became embedded in the scriptural tradition of the church. Hence, these altered traditions became the standard, and any variation from them was considered heresy.

The texts which became the official canon were translated into Latin, the emerging language of the western Empire, by Jerome at the end of the fourth century. Over time the Vulgate, as the Latin Bible is called, became the only available version of the Bible in the West. These Latin manuscripts also had to be copied by hand which resulted in even more errors. Even worse, the monks had a bad habit of throwing out the old copies once they had finished the new ones, leaving modern scholars even more empty handed with regard to discovering the original content of the texts (Pelikan, 2005). As learning and literacy declined, copies of the Latin New Testament, which were produced mainly in monasteries, were held by an isolated few and the Greek tradition was virtually lost to the Western world. The Western Church developed its own unique traditions, which were increasingly influenced by politics and pagan ritual rather than scriptural precepts (Talmage, 1909). During the Dark Ages the written tradition of the scriptures played a much smaller role since the majority of the lay people were illiterate and relied heavily on clergy and ritual to guide their religious worship. But surprisingly, the sacred and holy nature of the scriptures was preserved and they continued to be revered as inspired literature. In general though, the study of the scriptures was reserved for a privileged few while the majority was obliged to follow the direction of Church leaders.

With the Renaissance and the Reformation, however, a new interest arose in the study of scripture. As literacy and availability of the Bible increased among laity, people became aware of the discrepancies between the written word and the practices of the Church. Access to the writings in the New Testament facilitated a revolution in thought as people turned to them for guidance and gained new insights about the teachings of Christ and his Apostles. Scholars and reformers used the scriptures as the basis for their revolt, citing numerous inconsistencies between the written word and the common practices of the Church (Roberts, 1979).

Eventually scholars of the 1600-1700’s began to study the ancient texts more closely. With increased scrutiny and access to the ancient Greek manuscripts, they started to become aware of the many errors and discrepancies that had developed over time; not only among the Latin manuscripts, but between the Latin manuscripts and the older Greek ones as well. One of the first and most controversial publications of the Greek New Testament was John Mill’s version in which he cited over 30,000 instances where divergent readings can be found among copies of the text. His study was based on about a hundred different Greek manuscripts as well as scriptural quotations of the early Church fathers. Many Christians were outraged, especially Protestants, because it gave the Catholic Church more authority in preserving the original Christian tradition since the written one was apparently unreliable (Ehrman, 2005).  The schism between faiths has never been resolved and the argument persists to this day. Divisions continued even among Protestant Christians, resulting in the evolution of many new denominations.

Language Difficulties

Latin eventually lost its status as the primary language of learning and scriptural tradition and so the difficulty arose of translating an already inconsistent text into many new languages. Language, in of itself, has problems communicating exactly what is meant. For instance, John warns in his apocalypse, the last book found in the New Testament, that “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,” (Revelation 22:18-19, KJB). Is he referring to the entire Bible or just the book of Revelation? To further illustrate the problem of expression, one only needs to look at the many English translations of the Bible that are available. One particular passage, Romans 10:9-10, clearly displays the difficulty for one who wishes to believe in Christ and obtain salvation:

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10, KJB)

Say the welcoming word to God – “Jesus is my Master” – embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. (Romans 10:9-10, Peterson, 2003)

If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. (Romans 10:9-10, NIV)

Which translation is right? There are significant differences in meaning between each version. What did the author really mean? To the average reader, and even to the learned scholar, it may never be fully known.

When translating from one language to another, a whole new set of problems arises. For example, Christ says in the English Bible that He and the Father are “one” (John 17: 22). But what was the meaning of the Greek word that was translated into English as “one?” Did it mean one in the same person, one in unity, or some other concept of “oneness?” Another important factor of translation is the context in which the original text was written. For translators to accurately rewrite in another language what the author wanted to convey, it is sometimes essential to know the framework in which it was composed. For readers, taking passages of scripture out of context can also drastically affect their meaning. A good example of this can be found in one of Paul’s epistles: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galations 2:16, KJB). Many Christians use this, and similar passages, to assert that there is nothing required of man to obtain salvation except to believe in Christ; as opposed to the belief of others in a need for baptism, obedience to the commandments, etc. But one must ask: what did Paul mean by the “works of the law?” Was he explaining there is no longer a need to keep the Law of Moses for it had been fulfilled in Christ? Or was there another meaning? These are just a few of the many examples in the New Testament where meaning and translation can make a big difference in theology. Yet thousands of denominations claim to have the “correct” doctrine based on what the scriptures supposedly say. But how can it be known what the scriptures really say?

Since Mill’s time, experts have been attempting to reconstruct the New Testament using methods to discover the most accurate and original version of the texts. But perhaps the most challenging aspect of reconstructing the texts of the New Testament is the fact that the original manuscripts no longer exist. Nor are there any copies in close proximity to the originals; the oldest available texts are copies of copies of copies that were made, in most cases, centuries later. As has been shown, many changes were introduced into the manuscripts from one generation to another. From a scientific perspective, there is no way to know what the authors really said. This poses a major question to the faith: How can correct Christian doctrine be extracted from the New Testament if the original words of the authors have been lost (Ehrman, 2005)? Did God preserve the essential meaning despite the many man-made errors? Or has there been a perversion of scripture and doctrine that can never be recovered, no matter how much experts try? Additionally, what does this mean for Christians who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? Honest and scholarly examination of the New Testament raises many questions.

The Restoration and the New Testament

Now having presented a number of challenges, I have to post what I believe to be the solution. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes that there was indeed a falling away from the original teachings of Christ – although not necessarily with specific regard to the written tradition, but to the Christian tradition in general – and that it was restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. This restoration has repudiated many of the claims of the evolved Christian tradition such as original sin, infant baptism, and a number of other popular creeds, on the basis that certain aspects of Christ’s Church have been changed or lost. The official stance of the LDS Church states, with regard to ancient scripture, that “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly” (Smith, 1981). Thus, the Church acknowledges that there have been errors in its translation, but still esteems it as the word of God. Those things that were lost are believed to have been restored by Joseph Smith.

This stance, however, has brought much criticism upon the Church, especially by Protestants who claim that the Bible is the perfect, inerrant word of God. For one thing, it entirely undermines their ability to authoritatively preach from the Bible. But there are also doctrinal differences that the Latter-day Saints believe have resulted from mistranslation or misinterpretation. One of the most prevalent accusations against the LDS Church arising out of the interpretation of the New Testament concerns the doctrine of the Trinity – the idea that God is three persons – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – all in one person. Latter-day Saints believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate and distinct persons and that the doctrine of the Trinity is not scripturally founded. To the average Christian, this is heresy. Such a belief is a fundamental requirement to be a Christian in their eyes. The Saints have been accused of being a cult, idolaters, polytheists, and even worse things, because of this belief (Christian Research Institute). How is it that writings intended to bring peace and harmony to the world are the source of such belligerent allegations? Certainly Christ could not have meant for His teachings to be used as instruments of social schism.

In response to these attacks, the LDS people simply point to some of the examples in this paper where interpretation may be debatable, or in which it is entirely possible that important doctrinal passages in the scriptures were changed or lost. If this truly is the case, and evidence supports this idea, then the early Christians may very well have held a different view of God. Elder Jeffery R. Holland, an Apostle of the LDS Church, asks the question, “If one says we are not Christians because we do not hold a fourth- or fifth-century view of the Godhead, then what of those first Christian Saints, many of whom were eyewitnesses of the living Christ, who did not hold such a view either?” (Holland, 2007). Ultimately the LDS Church will counsel a person to seek God’s guidance on the issue, for if He is the author of the word, He certainly can guide believers in the right direction.

Conclusion

So what is to be made of all this controversy? The world of a Christian seems to be clouded with confusion and contention. Mankind may never devise a feasible solution. But a person of faith must at least know and understand the facts in order to make intelligent decisions about their belief. The New Testament of today is based on ancient manuscripts with thousands of variations in them. It has been shown that numerous changes have crept into the text over time and the originals are not available for comparison. The context and the meaning which the authors were trying to convey are not always clear either. Additionally, translation from one language to another poses significant difficulties, not to mention the interpretation of one’s own language. What do all these things ultimately mean? That is for each reader to decide. Perhaps only God has the solution. The fact of the matter is that there are challenges to be overcome and questions to be answered for all believers.