April 16, 2008 | By Gary D. Myers
   

NEW ORLEANS – Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman, both top scholars in New Testament studies, agreed on many points during the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary April 4. In the end, though, the two expressed sharp differences on one main issue: the reliability of the New Testament.

Wallace, professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, argued that the text is reliable. 
   
Ehrman, best-selling author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and chair of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, denied the reliability of the New Testament. He said no one can know with any degree of certainty whether or not the text accurately represents the original manuscripts.
  

At the crux of the reliability issue is the presence of “variants” or differences found in the 5,500 handwritten, ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Scholars on both sides of the debate agree that between 300,000 and 400,000 variants exist. Over 90 percent of the variants involve spelling, word order, omissions or insertions.
    

Wallace identified the challenge of debating New Testament reliability. He confessed that the issue can get muddled at times because on the raw facts. On this point, Wallace and Ehrman agree.
    

Both men agreed on the number of manuscripts and variants. They even agreed on which variants in the text are most problematic: 1 John 5:8 in the King James Version; Mark 1:41; Mark 16:14-20; and John 7:53-8:11.
    

Wallace even conceded that in some manuscripts there is evidence that scribes may have altered the text to bring it in line with their theological position. However, it is in their interpretation of the facts that the two men come to dramatically different conclusions.
    

“When we are reading the Bible, we are not actually reading the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John or Paul,” Ehrman said. “We are reading translations of those words from the Greek. And something is always lost in translation.”
    

Much of Ehrman’s presentation focused on the copying of copies and the absences of the original documents. The translations, he argues, are really translations of copies dating centuries after the originals.
    

“These thousands of copies that we have all differ from one another in lots or little ways and sometimes in big ways,” Ehrman said. “There are places where we do not know what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote.”
    

“The problem of not having the originals of the New Testament is a problem for everyone, not just those who believe that the Bible is inspired by God,” he added. “For all of us, the Bible is the most important book in the history of Western Civilization.”
    

Ehrman mentioned that the biblical text is cited in public debates over homosexuality, abortion, war and societal structure. These issues, Ehrman said, make interpretation of the scriptures an important issue. Determining what the New Testament means is difficult if the original words are lost, he said.
    

Today when a book is written, produced and distributed all the copies of that printing will be the same regardless of where the book is purchased. Not so in the ancient world. Each page was painstakingly copied by hand. Ehrman said that as people began making copies, mistakes were made. Later, he said, copies of the copies carried on the mistakes.
    

“When you make a copy of the copy you don’t know that the guy who copies it ahead of you made mistakes. You assume that he got it right,” Ehrman said. “When you copy his copy, you reproduce his mistakes and you introduce your own mistakes. Then a third person comes along and copies the copy … and he makes his own mistakes. And so it goes.”
    

Each time, Ehrman insisted, new mistakes were made and old mistakes were reproduced. Even attempts to correct the copies can introduce additional mistakes if the original is not consulted.
    

All of these issues could be cleared up if original copies of the gospels existed, Ehrman said. Neither the originals nor the first copies exist.
     

“We don’t have copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies,” Ehrman said. “We have copies that were made, in fact, many years later.”
    

Ehrman said that when these ancient copies are compared, no two are exactly alike. He conceded that most of the variants are insignificant. Many, he said, are impossible to reproduce in an English translation.
    

“Most of the mistakes are accidental, fairly easy to figure out what happened, not a big problem,” Ehrman said. “There are some changes that look like they had to be done on purpose.”
    

Ehrman cited the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not include the story, he said. Ehrman argued that the story was added well after the original writing.
    

Another example comes from the story of Jesus healing a leaper in Mark 1:41. Ehrman said that the oldest and best manuscripts record that Jesus was angry when he healed the man. Later copies and current translations of the Bible read that Jesus felt compassion rather than anger during the encounter.
    

“Is the text of the New Testament reliable? The reality is there is no way to know,” Ehrman concluded. “If we had the originals we could tell you. If we had the first copies we could tell you. If we had copies of the copies we could tell you. There are places where scholars continue to debate what the original text said. And there are places where we will probably never know.”
   

Wallace began his presentation by agreeing that the examples Ehrman gave raise valid concerns. But the existence of variants is not Wallace’s area of disagreement with Ehrman. According to Wallace, the disagreement is over interpretation of the text, how the variants arose and the significance of the variants.
     

According to Wallace, Ehrman’s statements in his popular books and in public forums seem much more skeptical than his statements to colleagues in Biblical studies.
     

Ehrman’s writings, he said, leave the impression that the transmission of the New Testament text resembles the “telephone game.” In the telephone game, an initial message is given to one child who whispers it with another.  Eventually the message is passed one-by-one around the room. Wallace insists that the point of the telephone game is to see just how garbled the original message can get as it is passed along.
     

“The copying of the New Testament manuscripts is hardly like this parlor game,” Wallace said. “The message is passed on in writing, not orally. Rather than having one line of transmission, there are multiple lines or streams of transmission.”
    

In the telephone game, once a person has passed along the message, that person is out of the game. That is not the case in copying manuscripts. Not only did the scribe want to preserve the message, Wallace believes that earlier copies of the text may also have been consulted during the copying of the manuscripts. He also mentioned that certain “lines” of manuscripts, such as the one from Alexandria, Egypt, appear to have been carefully prepared.
    

Wallace noted that in Greek, unlike English, word order is used for emphasis rather than meaning. Subjects are identified by word ending rather than location in the sentence. Wallace displayed 16 different ways to write the phrase “Jesus loves John” in Greek by using different word orders and the presence or absence of definite articles. In English, all of these would simply be translated “Jesus loves John.”

“The smallest category of textual variants involves those that are both meaningful and viable,” Wallace said. “Less than 1 percent of all variants belong to this category and even saying that may be misleading.”

Although such variants require attention for scholars, Wallace pointed out that none of these variants impact any doctrine of the church.
     

In his closing comments, Ehrman argued that changing even one word could have serious implications. He questioned Wallace’s conclusion that the variants are not a problem because they do not change essential doctrines. Whether or not a doctrine is changed should not be a criterion for determining significance of textual variants, Ehrman said.
     

“Ultimately, I think the question we are asking is, ‘Can we get back to the original?’” Wallace said in his concluding comments. “I think we have a pretty good sense that we can get back to it in all its essentials. I don’t think that we can get back to it in all its particulars. As far as the essential teachings of the Christian faith are concerned, they are not disturbed by these textual variants. ”
    

Wallace said that he mentioned doctrine changes a criterion because in Misquoting Jesus Ehrman “seems to imply” that the variants do affect doctrines.
   

“I’ve received dozens of emails from people who’ve said ‘I’m giving up being a Christian because I’ve read this book,’” Wallace said to Ehrman. “Now if they had understood that what you meant in there is that no essential beliefs of Christians is affected by these viable variants, then I suspect that they would not have given up their faith.”

    
The event marked the fourth Greer-Heard Forum at NOBTS. Past years have featured discussions on the Resurrection of Christ, intelligent design, and atheism.
     

This year’s forum differed from past years by focusing an issue from biblical studies rather than philosophy or theology. According Robert Stewart, director of the Greer-Heard Forum and philosophy professor at NOBTS, the issue of textual reliability was chosen due the to proliferation of skepticism in the public square due to writings of Ehrman and Dan Brown.
   

“I feel like Daniel Wallace did pretty well in what he intended to do – defend the textual reliability of the New Testament,” Stewart said. “I think if people listened with their heads as well as their hearts, they would have been strengthened in their belief.”
    

Next year’s topic for the Greer-Heard Forum, set for March 27-28, 2009, will be on pluralism. Harold A. Netland of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., will dialogue with Paul F. Knitter of Union Theological Seminary in New York, N.Y.
 

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