Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] If textual variants don't change any key doctrines, then who cares? By Bart D. Ehrman read by John Paul Middlesworth I've been posting a thread on the issue of why it's so hard to know if we have an original text of any of the writings of the New Testament, both because some of the books are cut and pasted versions of earlier texts and because we don't have any of the originals of the texts, but only later copies with lots of differences among them. I'll end the thread with three posts asking why it might matter to anyone if we don't know the exact words of the New Testament. Here's a succinct question I received on the matter a good while ago.
[00:00:39] How significant are these variants? I know they vary, but is there anything fundamental to Christendom that would be fundamentally flawed, like the virgin birth or the resurrection, that does not take place in these variants that are of material value?
[00:00:54] Response it's a really good question. I don't know if this reader is a conservative Christian or has read what my conservative evangelical critics have said about this as they make it one of their main points, but let me respond at some length to them rather than to him. The first thing to say is that the first thing I almost always say, even though my conservative evangelical critics among the scholars refuse to notice that I have said it repeatedly and pretend that I have never said it, is.
[00:01:23] The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of differences in our manuscripts, 400,000 500,000, are immaterial, insignificant, and trivial. Many of them cannot even be represented by different translations of the different greek texts into English. Probably the majority matter only for scribes in a spelling bee contest. So it is true that a large majority of variations don't matter. But do any of them matter? Well, the answer to that question depends entirely on what you think matters for a lot of people, including, I'm assuming, but cannot be certain, the reader who asked the question if none of the variants would require a radical change of any fundamental christian doctrine, then, well, none of them ultimately matters. So unless there are variations that indicate that Jesus mother was not a virgin, or that say he was not the son of God, or that claim that he never was raised from the dead, well, unless there are variants like that, then the variants don't matter. That's not at all my own view of the matter, as I'll explain. But just to be clear, and just to answer the question directly, none of the variants we have ultimately would make any Christian in the history of the universe come to think something opposite of what they already think about whatever doctrines are usually considered major.
[00:02:44] Some of the variants may indeed support a theological view that christians largely reject. But that would not affect anyones doctrines, because doctrines are almost never based on a single verse, but on lots of passages interpreted in particular ways that usually are not affected that much by the specific wording of one passage or another.
[00:03:03] But here is the main point of this. To question whether variance would alter any fundamental doctrine is in, in my view, a rather odd way of deciding whether the variants matter or not. Let me give you an analogous situation. Suppose tomorrow morning we were all to wake up only to find that the books of Joshua, judges, Ruth, proverbs, song of Solomon, Mark, Philemon, two Peter and three John were no longer in the Bible overnight. They had simply disappeared, leaving no trace.
[00:03:33] Would that matter? Would that be important?
[00:03:36] Of course it would be important. It would be huge. But would it affect any fundamental doctrine of the christian religion? Not in the least. Not a bit. Not at all. It would have zero effect.
[00:03:50] So does something matter? Only if it affects a fundamental doctrine of Christianity? Not in my books. Why then do some of my conservative evangelical critics, I could name names, but, well, simply name for yourself. Any conservative evangelical critic you've heard of who attacks my book misquoting Jesus, if you've heard of any, if you haven't heard of any, trust me, they are out there.
[00:04:13] Why do they constantly harp on the fact that none of the variants in the manuscripts of the New Testament have any effect on any fundamental christian doctrine? My guess is that because for them, what really ultimately, and in some sense only matters, is christian doctrine.
[00:04:29] They think that true religion is believing the right things. And at the end of the day, so long as you know the right things to believe, nothing else really matters. For much that seems to me to be a highly impoverished understanding of Christianity. Christianity is far more than a handful of fundamental doctrines, such as the existence of one God, the creator, Christ his son, who is both human and divine, who was born of a virgin, who died for sins, and who was raised from the dead, bringing about the possibility for a person to have eternal life. Of course these fundamental doctrines are highly important for Christianity. But are they the only things that are important? Really?
[00:05:08] Aren't the stories told by Christians important stories found in the Gospels, for example, that have no bearing on fundamental doctrines? Isn't the life of Jesus important, what he really said, did and experienced? Aren't christian practices and rituals and liturgy important? Isn't christian worship important?
[00:05:27] And aren't the books of the Bible themselves important, doesn't what each author has to say, even if it is not about a fundamental doctrine important?
[00:05:37] Isn't it important to know what each of the gospels has to say about Jesus life, character, teachings, deeds, conflicts and so on? Isn't it important to know whether the authors of the New Testament agreed on everything or were at odds, for example, in their understandings of who Jesus really was, the reason for his death, the relationship of faith in Christ to the jewish religion and people, the understanding of how a person is put into a right relationship with God, the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus, the precise importance of his resurrection and and and there is a lot more to Christianity than its fundamental doctrines, a lot more that really matters. In my next post, I'll say a couple of things about how some textual variants really do matter, even if they do not affect the fundamental doctrines that Christians have traditionally believed.
