by Lee Strobel
“Now, I don’t want to give the impression that the scribes didn’t ever change the text for theological reasons. They did, and almost always such changes were in the direction of making the New Testament look more orthodox. Probably the most common group of such changes are harmonizations between the Gospels. The further we get from the original text, the more the copyists harmonized so as to rid the text of any apparent discrepancies. But such harmonizations are fairly easy to detect.”
I interrupted. “Ehrman says: ‘It would be wrong…to say—as people sometimes do—that the changes in our text have no real bearing on what the texts mean or on the theological conclusion that one draws from them…. Just the opposite is the case.’26 Exactly how many Christian doctrines are jeopardized by textual variants in the New Testament?”
“Ehrman is making the best case he can in Misquoting Jesus,” Wallace said. “The remarkable thing is you go through his whole book and you say, Where did he actually prove anything? Ehrman didn’t prove that any doctrine is jeopardized. Let me repeat the basic thesis that has been argued since 1707: No cardinal or essential doctrine is altered by any textual variant that has plausibility of going back to the original. The evidence for that has not changed to this day.”
“What comes the closest?”
“Mark 9:29 could impact orthopraxy, which is right practice, but not orthodoxy, which is right belief. Here Jesus says you can’t cast out a certain kind of demon except by prayer—and some manuscripts add, ‘and fasting.’ So if ‘and fasting’ is part of what Jesus said, then here’s a textual variant that affects orthopraxy—is it necessary to fast to do certain kinds of exorcisms? But seriously, does my salvation depend on that? Most Christians have never even heard of that verse or will ever perform an exorcism.
“Another orthopraxy issue is 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, where it says let women keep silent in the churches. Ehrman and another scholar I mentioned earlier, Gordon Fee, have argued that those verses are not authentic because the manuscripts either put this after verse 33 or verse 40. And that has caused some scholars to say maybe this wasn’t in the original text at all.
“Most New Testament scholars would say, yes, this was in the original text, but it was probably a marginal note that Paul added before that manuscript ever went out the door, and the scribes weren’t sure where exactly it should go. I should emphasize that all the manuscripts have the wording in one place or the other. But still, let’s say it isn’t authentic. The role of women in the church has never been a doctrinal point that’s necessary for salvation. Of course, I’m not trying to trivialize the role of women in the church. My point is simply that this passage does not alter any essential doctrine.
“Another one would be 1 Corinthians 9:20, where Paul says, ‘To those under the law I became like one under the law.’ Then there’s the line: ‘Though I myself am not under the law,’ which is omitted in some later manuscripts. So is Paul actually claiming that he’s not under the law, or is he not claiming that?
“When you think about it, it doesn’t really matter. If he’s claiming that he’s not under the law—well, we have clear evidence that Christians are no longer under the Old Testament law anyway. But if he’s not claiming that here, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are under the law. Even then, it’s a stretch to say that this affects a doctrine.”
“What’s the most interesting example you can give?” I asked.
Wallace’s eyes lit up. “Here’s a fascinating one,” he said. “Everyone knows the number of the beast, right?” he said, motioning for me to answer.
I hesitated, figuring I was being set up. “666,” I ventured.
“Well, that’s what Revelation 13:18 says. A manuscript from the fifth century, however, has the number as 616. Okay, no big deal, since it was only one manuscript. But five years ago at Oxford they found the earliest manuscript of Revelation chapter 13. It’s from the third century—and it also says 616.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I was in Oxford and personally examined the manuscript under a microscope to confirm it for myself. No doubt, it says 616. Now, there’s no doctrinal statement of the church or any Bible college that says the number of the beast must be 666, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?”
Interesting, indeed. “Back to your original point then…”
“My original point is this: no cardinal doctrines are affected by any viable variants.”
BELOVED, BUT INAUTHENTIC
It’s one of the most beloved stories in the Bible: a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought before Jesus. It’s really a trap—the Pharisees knew that she should be stoned to death under the law of Moses, and they wanted to test Jesus.
Jesus bent down and began using his finger to write something in the dirt. Those words aren’t recorded, promoting all sorts of speculation through the centuries. Finally, Jesus uttered those often-quoted words, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Chastened, the Pharisees walked away one at a time, the oldest ones first. Once they were gone, Jesus said to the adulteress: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said: “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”27
The only problem with this story is that scholars have known for more than a century that it’s not authentic. This was disturbing news, though, to readers of Ehrman’s book. Many people seemed to take the loss personally—and they began to ask what else in their Bible can’t be trusted.
“This is one of those sad stories, frankly,” Wallace said when I asked him about the adultery account. “When you read this passage, you say, ‘Oh my gosh, that takes my breath away! I’m just amazed at the love and the grace and the mercy of Jesus and how he could stand up to these Pharisees.’ We say, ‘I want this to be in the Bible.’ And that’s exactly what the copyists said. They read this as an independent story and ended up putting it in at least half a dozen different locations in John and Luke. It’s as if the scribes said, ‘I want this to go into my Bible, so I’m going to insert it here or here or here.’”
“So this was a story that came down through time?” I asked.
“Apparently, there were two different stories circulating about a woman who had been caught in some sin and Jesus was merciful to her. More than likely, that much of the story was historically true, but it didn’t end up in the scriptures.”
“Was it a woman caught in adultery?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did these Pharisees peel off from the oldest to the youngest?”
“Almost surely that was added later to spice up the story.”
“Did Jesus write something on the ground?”
“Almost surely he did, for a variety of reasons,” he replied. “My hypothesis is this: These twelve verses look more like Luke’s style and vocabulary than John’s. Actually, a group of manuscripts put it in Luke instead of John. What did the story look like when Luke had access to it, and why didn’t he put it into his Gospel? I don’t have the answers yet.”
“But it’s clear that the story in the Bible is not authentic,” I said.
“There’s a distinction we need to make,” he said. “Is it literarily authentic—in other words, did John actually write this story? My answer is an unquestionable no. Is it historically authentic? Did it really happen? My answer is a highly qualified yes—something may have happened with Jesus being merciful to a sinner, but the story was originally in a truncated form.”
“Why have Bibles continued to include it?” I asked. “Doesn’t that simply confuse readers?”
“Evangelicals have followed a tradition of timidity by continuing to include this story because they think Bible readers would freak if it were missing,” he said. “Read any Bible translation and you’ll find a marginal note that says this is not found in the oldest manuscripts. But often people don’t read those. When Ehrman reports in the popular sphere that the story isn’t au
thentic, people think they’ve been hoodwinked.”
I picked up my New International Version of the Bible and flipped to John. Sure enough, there are rules at the top and bottom of the story in order to delineate it, as well as a note in the center of the page that says: “The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53–8:11.” But how many people, I wondered, really understand the implications of that note?
“Are Bible publishers misleading people by putting it in?” I asked.
“I would be cautious about saying that,” Wallace replied, “but they certainly could do a better job of saying, ‘This is not found in the oldest manuscripts, and furthermore the editors of this translation do not believe these words are authentic.’ Otherwise you’re setting people up for disillusionment if they get this information elsewhere. It’s a Chicken Little mentality that says, ‘Oh my gosh, I never knew that these precious twelve verses aren’t authentic—and what else are you not telling me?’ But the fact is publishers have told them about it, and it’s an exceptional circumstance. There’s only one other passage that’s even close to that length.”
That’s the topic I wanted to address next.
SNAKES AND TONGUES
In November 2006, a forty-eight-year-old woman died four hours after she was bitten by a timber rattlesnake during Sunday services in a Kentucky church. She was the seventh such fatality in Kentucky since 1980. In fact, the state felt compelled to pass a law making it a misdemeanor to handle reptiles as part of religious services.28
The journalists reporting the woman’s death all said that according to the Gospel of Mark, believers in Jesus will be able to handle snakes without harm. None of them, however, noted that this verse—and, in fact, the whole last twelve verses of Mark—were not part of the original Gospel but were added at a later date and are not considered authentic.
This means Mark ends with three women discovering the empty tomb of Jesus and being told by “a young man dressed in a white robe” that Jesus had risen from the dead. “They said nothing to anyone,” concludes the Gospel, “because they were afraid.” The final twelve verses describe three post-Easter appearances by Jesus and say Christians will be able to pick up snakes without injury, as well as cast out demons, speak in new tongues, and heal the sick.
“How long have scholars known that this longer ending of Mark wasn’t part of the original?” I asked.
“Well, Codex Vaticanus didn’t have it—and we’ve known about that manuscript since the fifteenth century. And then in 1859 the textual critic Constantin von Tischendorf went to Mount Sinai and brought back Codex Sinaiticus. These are our oldest manuscripts for this passage and neither of them has the twelve verses,” he said. “They both have so many disagreements with each other that they must go back to a common ancestor that goes very far back—into the second century.”
“Where do you think this ending came from?” I asked.
“There are two basic views, but each agrees that the verses aren’t authentic. One group says Mark wrote an ending to his Gospel but it was lost.”
I could tell by his voice that he was skeptical. “You don’t buy that?” I asked.
“This presupposes that Mark was written on a codex rather than a scroll. A page could be lost fairly easily from a codex, because the binding is like a book, but the ending of the Gospel would have been secure on a scroll. The codex, however, wasn’t invented until forty or so years after Mark was written.
“I think a far better view is that Mark was writing about the most unique individual who has ever lived, and he wanted to format the ending of his Gospel in a unique way, in which he leaves it open ended. He’s essentially saying to readers, ‘So what are you going to do with Jesus?’”
“Eliminating those twelve verses, then, really has no impact on the doctrine of the resurrection?”
“Not in the slightest. There’s still a resurrection in Mark. It’s prophesied, the angel attests to it, and the tomb is empty. But you can see why an early scribe would say, ‘Oh my gosh, we don’t have a resurrection appearance, and this ends with the women being afraid.’ I think a scribe in the second century drew essentially on Acts—where Paul gets bitten by a snake and people are speaking in tongues—and he wanted to round out Mark’s Gospel so he put on that new ending.”
“Why does the Bible still have it?”
“Once it’s in the Bible, it’s really hard to dislodge it. All Bibles have a note indicating this longer ending isn’t in the oldest manuscripts. Some put these verses in smaller type or otherwise bracket it. Of the disputed verses in the Bible, this and the woman caught in adultery are by far the longest passages—and again, they’re old news.”
There is a third significant passage, however. Ehrman said that “the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity” is found in 1 John 5:7–8 in the King James Version, which says: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”
“Wouldn’t you agree that this is inauthentic?” I asked Wallace.
“Absolutely.”
“Where did it come from?”
“That actually came from a homily in the eighth century. It was added to a Latin text and wasn’t even translated into Greek until 1520. To date we have found a grand total of four manuscripts that have it, all from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, plus four others that have it as a marginal note in a later hand. It’s obviously inauthentic.”
I said, “I got a note from a woman recently who wrote, ‘I’ve got a great verse for you to support the Trinity. And, by the way, you only find it in the King James Version. Take a look; it’s there!’ So some people still think it’s authentic.”
Wallace sighed. “We need to do a better job of training the church. The fact that we’ve been dumbing down the church for so long is just a crime, and now people are panicking when they hear about this sort of thing. You don’t even find this in other translations, except perhaps in a footnote.”
“Atheist Frank Zindler says that deleting this inauthentic reference ‘leaves Christians without biblical proof of the Trinity,’” I observed.29
Wallace reacted firmly. “I’m going to be uncharitable here: that’s just such a stupid comment, I can hardly believe it,” he said. “The Council of Constantinople in AD 381 and Chalcedon in AD 451 emerged with explicit statements affirming the Trinity—obviously, they didn’t need this later, inauthentic passage to see it.
“The Bible clearly contains these four truths: the Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and there’s only one God,” Wallace declared. “And that’s the Trinity.”
AN ANGRY JESUS?
Are there any ways in which our understanding of Jesus is significantly altered by textual variants? In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman presents a few examples, which I decided to test with Wallace. For instance, Ehrman contends that in Mark 1:41, the Gospel incorrectly says Jesus was “filled with compassion” when he healed a leper; actually, said Ehrman, the original text said that Jesus became angry. I asked Wallace about this issue—and I was taken aback by his response.
“I think Ehrman is probably correct about the text,” Wallace said.
“Really?” I asked. “That surprises me.”
“Well, I’ve been wrestling with this over the last couple of years, and I think the original text probably did say that Jesus was angry.”
I said, “Although he doesn’t come out and say it, Ehrman seems to make an implicit argument that if Jesus was angry, he can’t be God, because God is love.”
That triggered a strong response from Wallace. “Wait a minute—there were only two groups in the ancient world—the Stoics and the one branch of the Pharisees—who felt that anger was always wrong. Everybody else felt that righteous indignation had a place in life—and Jesus was one of them.”
“Do you think this change in Mark 1:41 alters our picture of Jesus?”
“Why not?”
“Later in the same Gospel, Mark 3:5 says Jesus responded in anger because he was distressed at the stubborn hearts of the religious leaders who were looking for an excuse to accuse him. In Mark 10:13–16, he gets indignant toward his disciples because they were blocking people from bringing their little children to be blessed by him. Did Jesus express anger and indignation at times? Yes, we’ve already known that, but this was certainly appropriate on his part.”
“But why,” I asked, “would he have been angry when he healed the leper?”
“We can hypothesize several reasons. Ehrman summarily dismisses some possibilities out of hand—for instance, that Jesus was angry at the state of the world that’s full of disease or that he loves the sick but hates the sickness. But the text is ambiguous, so we don’t really know. What we do know is that Ehrman fails to back up his claim that Jesus gets angry when anyone questions his authority, ability, or desire to heal. That’s simply unsupported unless you twist the text.”
I moved on to another claim by Ehrman. Hebrews 2:9 is translated as saying that “by the grace of God [Jesus] might taste death for everyone.” But Ehrman maintains that the phrase should read, “apart from God” instead of “by the grace of God.”
“According to Ehrman, this affects the interpretation of the entire book,” I said. “Do you agree?”
“Again, I think he’s overstating his case significantly,” replied Wallace. “For one thing, I think ‘by the grace of God’ is probably correct, although I’ll grant that Ehrman may be right that ‘apart from God’ is the original reading.
“But here’s his real agenda: he links that text to Hebrews 5:7, which says that Jesus prayed ‘with loud cries and tears.’ So Ehrman says Jesus died on the cross ‘apart from God’ in a screaming, terrified, frightened way, and therefore the underlying implication is he can’t be God in the flesh, because God wouldn’t be terrified that way.”