Ancient scribes who copied the handwritten texts of the New Testament frequently changed the text intentionally. Although unintentional changes account for the vast majority of textual corruption, intentional alterations also account for thousands of corruptions. In some cases, to be sure, it does seem that the scribes were being malicious. But these instances are few and far between. The majority of the intentional changes to the text were done by scribes who either thought that the text they were copying had errors in it or by scribes who were clarifying the meaning, especially for liturgical reasons.

Some of the commonest intentional changes involve parallel passages. This is where the passage that the scribe is copying out has a parallel to it of which the scribe is aware. For example, about 90% of the pericopes (or stories) in Mark’s Gospel are found in Matthew. When a scribe was copying Mark, after he had just finished copying Matthew, he would frequently remember the parallel in Matthew and make adjustments to the wording of Mark so that it would conform to the wording of Matthew. This alteration is known as harmonization. Occasionally, the wording in Matthew would be conformed to that of Mark or Luke. Or when the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, especially when the quotation is from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament abbreviated LXX), scribes tended to conform the wording in the NT to the LXX. Parallels between letters of Paul also suffer from this kind of alteration. But when certain manuscripts disagree with such parallels, they are usually considered to reflect the wording of the original text better. A part of the reason for this is that virtually all manuscripts harmonize passages. This shows that there was a concern for the wording of the text and the historical reliability of the text. Consequently, when a manuscript does not harmonize while most others do, it is usually considered to reflect the original wording.

Scribes also were prone to clarify passages, especially for liturgical reasons. For example, 89 successive verses in Mark do not mention the name of Jesus once nor refer to him by any noun at all. But in the lectionary cycle, a portion of Mark’s Gospel would be read for the assigned day. It would be a bit confusing if the passage began with, “And he went out from Galilee.” Who is the ‘he’? The lectionaries would add the name of Jesus (and they did so in three well-placed locations in these 89 verses) to give a little context to the reader. The lectionaries exercised a great influence on the later manuscripts especially. What was part of the prescribed reading of scripture became so ingrained in the scribes’ minds that they naturally added the words that they knew from such recitations.

Scribes also were prone to clarify what they thought the text meant. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. There could be theological issues involved, or issues of mere orthopraxy (proper conduct in the church). An understanding of early church history helps us to get a better grasp on which reading is most likely to be authentic and which is not. But we can’t always be sure, and one of the great problems with this kind of approach is pinpointing when a reading arose and matching it to a theological agenda. Some have attempted this as a primary explanation for the apparent theological changes in the NT, but what they haven’t done is sufficiently anchor a particular reading to a particular time and place in which such a reading would probably arise. Thus, the theological argument must give way to the textual evidence, since the textual variants are capable of being explained by several different factors.

Two or three examples are in order to illustrate the above points. In Mark 3:21 most manuscripts (including early and important ones) read, “When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they were saying, ‘he is out of his mind.’” The ‘they’ here is ambiguous: it might refer back to ‘his family,’ in which case Jesus’ family was calling him nuts; or it might refer to a general ‘they.’ Manuscripts of the Western text-type changed ‘his family’ to ‘the scribes and the rest’ to remove the potential embarrassment. Yet this is precisely why ‘his family’ is probably authentic: what scribe would change the text to make it more ambiguous, and capable of embarrassment?

In John 4:17, Jesus quotes the Samaritan woman’s words back to her: “Correctly you have said, ‘I don’t have a husband.’” However, in the Greek text, he didn’t quote her exactly. The word order is reversed: “A husband I don’t have.” The emphasis seems to be that she had someone at home but he was not her husband, a point Jesus will make explicit in the next verse. However, a few manuscripts change the word order to make both statements conform to each other---however, they don’t change Jesus’ word order but the woman’s! It’s as if the scribes were thinking, “He quoted her correctly; she just didn’t say it right in the first place so we need to adjust her words”! Other manuscripts both changed the word order of what the woman had to say and turned Jesus’ statement into an indirect statement (“Correctly you have said that you don’t have a husband”), to safeguard the Lord’s speech. Here is an instance in which the parallel is in the same verse rather than between two Gospels.

In Mark 9:31 and 10:34, most manuscripts change the wording of Jesus’ prediction of his own death and resurrection to say that he would rise from the dead ‘on the third day’ instead of ‘after three days.’ However, several important and diverse witnesses read ‘after three days’ in these verses. Why the change? Because Matthew and Luke spoke of Jesus’ resurrection as occurring on the third day, not after three days. Mark consistently referred to Jesus’ resurrection as occurring after three days, while Matthew and Luke almost consistently speak of it as occurring on the third day. There is but one instance in Matthew in which ‘after three days’ is used, and that on the lips of would-be witnesses against Jesus (Matt 27:63). Without getting into the details of these parallels, suffice it to say that both Matthew and Luke seemed to want to clarify that ‘after three days’ meant ‘on the third day’; and most later scribes, not recognizing the Jewish idiom, also changed the wording in Mark to reflect the wording in Matthew and Luke.

It is remarkable, however, that the scribes seemed to be more concerned with harmonizations, both literary and historical, than in protecting Jesus’ divine status—even if they embraced his full deity. A classic example of this is the parallel between Matthew 19:17 and Mark 10:18. In Mark 10:17, the rich young ruler says to Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To this Jesus responds, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” The answer must have startled the young man—and certainly would have startled the readers of this gospel! Was Jesus here declaring that he was not divine? That certainly seems to be the implication—at least on the surface. Most likely, however, Jesus was attempting to get the young man to recognize that by calling Jesus good he was saying something about him that was ontological, intrinsic to his nature. Was he really prepared to call Jesus divine? If so, then he should definitely do whatever the Lord told him because this man from Nazareth was God in the flesh.

In characteristic fashion, Matthew softens this line of thought because his goal is not so much to get his readers to wrestle with who Jesus is as it is to instruct them who he is. While Mark is attempting to get his readers to come to their own conclusions about Jesus, Matthew is attempting to get them to come to his conclusions. (This, by the way, explains why Mark ends his gospel at 16:8 rather than at 16:20: the reader is invited to think through the death and resurrection and consider whether he should embrace Jesus as both the suffering servant and the resurrected Lord. Mark, however, does not give him the option of just accepting Jesus in his glory. This is what Peter and the disciples originally wanted, and for this reason Mark leaves off any resurrection appearance to Peter and the disciples.) Hence, in Matt 19:16, the young man says, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” To this Jesus responds, Why do you ask me about the good? There is only one who is good.” The full response here is almost a non sequitur. The man, in Matthew, did not call Jesus good, so ‘there is only one who is good’ does not seem to directly answer his question. However, it does reveal a seam, a vestige of Mark’s wording that has carried over into Matthew’s gospel. What is most remarkable about this parallel, however, is this: later, orthodox scribes changed the wording in Matthew rather than in Mark. In fact, the majority of scribes changed Matthew’s wording to conform to Mark. Well after orthodoxy was established, these scribes continued to fix the text of Matthew and leave Mark untouched. Now, to be sure, the wording in Mark is the same as the wording in Luke. But since Matthew was the most copied and read gospel in the ancient church, one would especially expect Mark’s gospel to be changed to conform to Matthew. Further, concerning Christology, where Mark asks a question, Matthew gives an answer. It may have been the near non sequitur in Matt 19:17 that tipped the scales, or the parallel in Luke, but regardless of the reason the fact that later scribes changed the text of Matthew to conform to Mark shows at least that they were more concerned about verbal harmonization than about any implications this might have for Christology. And this is something we see frequently in the synoptic gospels: harmonizations simply for the sake of smoothing out historical and literary parallels, regardless of the consequences for other theological issues.

Nevertheless, such harmonizations are easy to spot. And scribes were not entirely consistent. Thus, the ‘after three days’ in Mark 8:31 is virtually untouched. Even this strong motive to alter the text was never done systematically and was never done completely. For this reason, we can have a great deal of confidence that the essential message of the original text can be recovered, for there is always a witness to it.

In the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, by Norm Geisler (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998; p. 532), there is a comment about the number of textual variants among New Testament manuscripts:

Some have estimated there are about 200,000 of them. First of all, these are not “errors” but variant readings, the vast majority of which are strictly grammatical. Second, these readings are spread throughout more than 5300 manuscripts, so that a variant spelling of one letter of one word in one verse in 2000 manuscripts is counted as 2000 “errors.”

Geisler got his information (directly or indirectly) from Neil R. Lightfoot’s How We Got the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1963). Lightfoot says (53-54):

From one point of view it may be said that there are 200,000 scribal errors in the manuscripts, but it is wholly misleading and untrue to say that there are 200,000 errors in the text of the New Testament. This large number is gained by counting all the variations in all of the manuscripts (about 4,500). This means that if, for example, one word is misspelled in 4,000 different manuscripts, it amounts to 4,000 “errors.” Actually in a case of this kind only one slight error has been made and it has been copied 4,000 times. But this is the procedure which is followed in arriving at the large number of 200,000 “errors.”

In other words, Lightfoot was claiming that textual variants are counted by the number of manuscripts that support such variants, rather than by the wording of the variants. This book has been widely influential in evangelical circles. I believe over a million copies of it have been sold. And this particular definition of textual variants has found its way into countless apologetic works.

The problem is, the definition is wrong. Terribly wrong. A textual variant is simply any difference from a standard text (e.g., a printed text, a particular manuscript, etc.) that involves spelling, word order, omission, addition, substitution, or a total rewrite of the text. No textual critic defines a textual variant the way that Lightfoot and those who have followed him have done. Yet, the number of textual variants comes from textual critics. Shouldn’t they be the ones to define what this means since they’re the ones doing the counting?

Let me demonstrate how Lightfoot’s definition is way off. Among the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, we know of about 3000 Gospels manuscripts, 800 Pauline manuscripts, 700 manuscripts of Acts and the general letters, and just over 300 manuscripts of Revelation. These numbers do not include the lectionaries, over 2000 of them, that are mostly of the Gospels. At the same time, not all the manuscripts are complete copies. The earlier manuscripts are fragmentary, sometimes covering only a few verses. The later manuscripts, however, generally include at least all four Gospels or Acts and the general letters or Paul’s letters or Revelation. But an average estimate is that for any given textual problem (more in the Gospels, less elsewhere), there are a thousand Greek manuscripts (this assumes that less than 20% of all the Greek manuscripts “read” in any given passage; that’s probably a conservative estimate).

Now, textual variants are also counted among the non-Greek manuscripts—the Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopic and other early translations. There are somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 such versional manuscripts of the New Testament. We don’t really know the exact amount because the work in cataloging them has been a lower priority than that of the Greek manuscripts. But let’s assume that there are only 15,000 such manuscripts. And let’s assume that an average estimate is that for any given textual problem, there are 3000 manuscripts (again, assuming 20%). However, the vast majority of Greek textual problems can’t even be translated into other languages, so we need to restrict this even further. Only about 20% of the textual problems that we have in our manuscripts can be found in the versional witnesses. Thus 20% of 3000 manuscripts is 600. Thus, on average, there will be 600 versional witnesses for every textual problem (because 20% of the time there will be an average of 3000, but 80% of the time there will be none).

Putting all this together, we can assume an average of 1600 manuscripts being involved in any textual problem. We won’t even count the writings of the church fathers. They quote from the New Testament more than a million times, but the work in them has been painfully slow.

Now, assume that we start with the modern critical text of the Greek New Testament (the Nestle-Aland27). Most today would say that that text is based largely on a minority of manuscripts that constitute no more than 20% (a generous estimate) of all manuscripts. So, on average, if there are 1600 manuscripts that have a particular verse, the Nestle-Aland text is supported by 320 of them. This would mean that for every textual problem, the variant(s) is/are found in an average of 1280 manuscripts. But, in reality, the wording of the Nestle-Aland text is often found in the majority of manuscripts. So, we need a more precise way to define things. That has been provided for us in The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text by Hodges and Farstad. They listed in the footnotes all the places where the majority of manuscripts disagreed with the Nestle-Aland text. The total came to 6577.

OK, so now we have enough data to make some general estimates. Even if we assumed that these 6577 places were the only textual problems in the New Testament (a rather ridiculous assumption, by the way), the definition of Lightfoot could be shown to be palpably false. 6577 x 1280 = 8,418,560. That’s eight million, just in case you didn’t notice all the commas. Based on Lightfoot’s definition of textual variants, this is how many we would actually have, conservatively estimated. Obviously, that’s a far cry from 200,000!

Or, to put this another way: this errant definition requires that there be no more than about 150-60 textual problems in the whole New Testament (150 textual problems x 1280 manuscripts that disagree with the printed text = 192,000). If that is the case, how can the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament list over 1400 textual problems? And how can the Nestle-Aland text list over 10,000?

And again, this eight million is not even close to the actual number. I took a very conservative approach by only looking at the differences from the majority of manuscripts. But if one started as his base text Codex Bezae for the Gospels and Acts and Codex Claromontanus for Paul’s letters, the number of variants (counted the wrong way, of course) from these two would be astronomical. My guess is that it would be well over 20 million. Or if one started with Codex Sinaiticus, the only complete New Testament written with capital (or uncial) letters, the numbers would probably exceed 30 million—largely because Sinaiticus spells words in some strange ways that are not shared by very many other manuscripts. You can see that the definition of a textual variant as a combination of wording differences times manuscripts is rather faulty. Counting this way results in tens of millions of textual variants, when the actual number is miniscule by comparison. And that’s because we only count differences in wording, regardless of how many manuscripts attest to it.

All this is to say: a variant is simply the difference in wording found in a single manuscript or a group of manuscripts (either way, it’s still only one variant) that disagrees with a base text. Further, there aren’t only 200,000. That may have been an accurate estimate in 1963, when we knew of far fewer manuscripts. But with the work done on Luke’s Gospel by the International Greek New Testament Project, Tommy Wasserman’s work on Jude, and Muenster’s work on James and 1-2 Peter, the estimates today are closer to 400,000.

Although this may leave us feeling uneasy, we absolutely must be honest with the data. I would urge those of you who have used Lightfoot’s errant definition to abandon it. It’s demonstrably wrong, and citing it reveals an ignorance about textual criticism. I would hope that the publishers of numerous apologetics books would get the data right. The last thing that Christians need to do is to latch on to some spurious ‘fact’ in defense of the faith. Instead, we should pursue truth at all costs, even at the risk of making us feel uncomfortable.

The following is an excerpt from Reinventing Jesus: What The Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Kregel), co-authored by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace. Published in May, 2006, the book is widely available. You can find out more about this book at www.reinventingjesus.info.

When Constantine commissioned new versions of these documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit, and rewrite their material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were probably made and Jesus assumed the unique status he has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantine’s commission must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early manuscript versions of the New Testament, not one predates the fourth century. The New Testament as it exists today is essentially a product of fourth-century editors and writers—custodians of orthodoxy, “adherents of the message,” with vested interests to protect.
                                                                                          Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 368-69

Introduction

Pop culture has a way of promoting strange and bizarre myths about the Bible. The urban legends are then fueled by self-proclaimed authorities on the Internet or novels that make it onto New York’s Bestseller list. Meanwhile, biblical scholars tend to ignore these childish antics, since they know that there is no substance to them. Unfortunately, this leaves the layperson without a clue as to what’s really going on.

As an illustration of the sort of unfounded myth we’re talking about, Sir Leigh Teabing’s comments in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code readily come to mind. He pontificates, “The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”¹ There is of course a grain of truth in all this. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. And the Bible had human authors. But to say that it has evolved through translations, additions, and revisions, with the implication that the original is no longer detectable is just plain silly. We discussed these issues in our first chapter on textual criticism, noting that this kind of myth involves unwarranted assumptions that are easily disproved by the manuscripts themselves. It plays on the experiences of everyone who has passed on information without recourse to the earlier sources (such as in the telephone game). But in the case of the NT, this is not valid: as time goes on, we are getting closer and closer to the wording of the original text because of the vast amounts of manuscripts—many of which are quite early—scholars continue to uncover.

But what about Teabing’s claim that Jesus’ divinity was not to be found in the NT manuscripts—that Constantine essentially invented this doctrine? We will address that specific issue toward the end of this chapter with concrete evidence that again shows how this kind of language is patently false and misleading.

What is really at stake when it comes to the text of the NT—when it comes to how accurately the copies were made? We have already noted four kinds of textual problems related to this issue, but it would be helpful to briefly list them again here.

1. The largest amount of textual variants (well over half) involve spelling differences and nonsense readings that are easily detectable. These affect nothing of meaning in the text.
2. The next largest group are those that do not affect translation or, if they do, involve synonyms. Variants such as “Christ Jesus” vs. “Jesus Christ” may entail a slightly different emphasis, but nothing of great consequence is involved.
3. Then there are the meaningful variants that are not viable. That is, they simply have no plausibility of reflecting the wording of the original because the manuscripts in which they are found have a poor pedigree. This issue involves careful historical investigation and requires the scholar to take the transmission of the text seriously. We saw that Robert Price’s attempt to excise Luke 1:34 from the Bible belonged to the category of “meaningful but not viable.” In his case, there was absolutely no manuscript evidence on his side, only wishful thinking.
4. Finally, the smallest category, comprising about 1% of all textual problems, involves those variants that are both meaningful and viable. Most NT scholars would say that these textual problems constitute much less than 1% of the total. But even assuming the more generous amount (by expanding on the scope of both “meaningful” and “viable”), even then not much theologically is affected.

Our objective in this chapter is to discuss this fourth kind of variant in more detail, to see whether the deity of Christ (as well as other cardinal beliefs) is impacted by these variants. We will first look at the possibility of “conjectural emendation”—variants that have no manuscripts in support of them. How many are there and how do scholars deal with them? Then, we will discuss which doctrines are affected by the variants. Finally, we will examine some of the early manuscripts to see what they have to say about the deity of Jesus Christ.

Conjectural Emendation

We have noted several times throughout this section that NT textual criticism suffers from an embarrassment of riches unparalleled by another other piece of ancient literature. The manuscript copies are far, far more plentiful and earlier than any other Greek or Latin texts. In terms of manuscript data, any skepticism about the Jesus of the Gospels should be multiplied many times over for any other historical figure. Or, to put this positively, we have more and earlier manuscript evidence about the person of Jesus Christ than we do anyone in the ancient world—Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, anyone. But let’s quantify that more specifically. How many places are there in the NT where there are gaps that need to be filled in, places where the manuscripts don’t exist and scholars simply have to guess at what was originally written?

Before we look at the NT, it might be good to get a frame of reference. Is there a need for conjectural emendation for other ancient literature and, if so, how great is this need? For many important authors we only have partial works. Thus, of the ancient historian Livy’s 142-volume work on the history of Rome, only copies of 35 volumes survive today. Of Tacitus’ Histories, fewer than five of the original fourteen books can be found in any copies.² Hundreds of books from antiquity are known to us only by name; no manuscripts remain. And even of some of the better-preserved writings, there are gaps galore. For example, in his Patristic Textual Criticism, Miroslav Marcovich complains that the surviving copies of some of the early patristic writers are “lacunose [filled with gaps], corrupt, dislocated and interpolated…”³ He then proceeds to lay out principles of conjectural emendation that he must follow in order to reconstruct the original wording.⁴

The situation with NT textual criticism is entirely different: there is no place for conjectural emendation for the NT because of the great wealth, diversity, and age of the materials that we have to work with. The vast majority of NT scholars would say that there are absolutely no places where conjecture is necessary. Again, this is because the manuscripts are so plentiful and so early that in every instance the original NT can be reconstructed from the available evidence.

For example, Kurt and Barbara Aland, the first two directors of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany (Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung or INTF) co-authored one of the standard textbooks on NT textual criticism. At the INTF, over 90% of all Greek NT manuscripts are on microfilm. For the past forty-five years, the Institute has been more influential than any individual, school, or group of scholars anywhere else in the world for determining the exact wording of the original NT. In short, they know their stuff. Hear the Alands: “…every reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition is stubbornly preserved, even if the result is nonsense… any reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition, from the original reading onward, has been preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified.” ⁵

The Alands go so far as to say that if a reading is found in one manuscript it is almost surely not authentic: “The principle that the original reading may be found in any single manuscript or version when it stands alone or nearly alone is only a theoretical possibility.”⁶ Further, “Textual difficulties should not be solved by conjecture, or by positing glosses or interpolations, etc., where the textual tradition itself shows no break; such attempts amount to capitulation before the difficulties and are themselves violations of the text.”⁷ Their opinions in these matters should be considered as that of expert witnesses. Further, it is shared by most others in the discipline.⁸

What are the implications of the non-need to guess about the wording of the original? Only that in virtually every instance the original reading is to be found somewhere in the manuscripts. That ‘somewhere’ can be narrowed down by the methods we discussed in the last chapter. Further, since the original reading is not something to be merely guessed at, we have an actual database—the pool of variants found in the manuscripts—that can be tested for any theological deviations.

An illustration is in order here. Suppose conjectural emendation were needed for the Gettysburg Address. In the opening sentence, a comparison of the manuscripts might show something like this⁹:

Manuscript A: Four score and seven ______ ago our _________ brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in _____dom, and dedicated to the proposition that “all ______ are created equal.”

Manuscript B: Four score and _____ ______ ago our ________s brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, ________ in lib________, and dedicated to the proposition that “all ______ are created _____.”

Comparing these two manuscripts, we notice that there are gaps. Perhaps there is a worm hole in one manuscript, water damage in the other. Fortunately, some of the gaps are filled in by the other manuscript, but not all. Putting the data together from both manuscripts, we can get the following:

Four score and seven ______ ago our ________s brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in {lib______/_____dom?}, and dedicated to the proposition that “all ______ are created equal.”

In such an instance, would Lincoln scholars have the right to put anything in the gaps? Of course not. There is a finite number of options. For example, since we know the date of the Gettysburg Address, the “four score and seven” cannot refer to days or months. It must refer to years. Also, since one variant has “lib____” while the other has “____dom,” scholars may guess that something like either “liberty” or “freedom” belonged here. Perhaps they could not decide between these two, but they would not have the right to think that “libations” or “Christendom” was the appropriate word! Common sense has to prevail when doing conjectural emendation. As to who brought forth the new nation, scholars might suppose that something like “fathers,” “forefathers,” or “leaders” would be appropriate. Nothing of substance is at stake here, of course, except for the exact wording. But again, only a finite number of options are really possible. Finally, the last statement—that “all _____ are created equal”—might require something like “people” or “men.” But “people” would hardly do in 1863, since “men” was the generic term used at that time when all people were in view.

Finally, to make their argument, Lincoln scholars would have to find other speeches by the president as well as his writings to get a sense as to what he would have said. Manners and customs of the day would be examined. And the conjectures would have to make sense. All in all, even in a text such as this, there would be a finite number of options. And no reasonable person would consider all conceivable options as equally possible.

The situation for the NT is hardly as bleak as this! Of the one hundred thirty-eight thousand words of the original text, only one or two might have no manuscript support. There is virtually no need for conjecture, as we already have pointed out. And even if there were, this would not mean that we would have no idea what the original text said. Instead, precisely because almost all the possible variants are already to be found in the manuscripts, there is a rather limited number of options that scholars have to contend with. Now, suppose that textual critics simply pick readings at random, without any genuine scholarly method. Indeed, imagine that determining the wording of the NT was as randomly accomplished as a chimp taking a multiple-choice exam. But in this case, virtually all of the answers make sense, and most of them are very close to the wording of the others. Further, never is there the option, “None of the above.” Of course, as we saw in the previous chapter, NT textual criticism is a very exacting discipline, with several checks and balances. It is not a bunch of chimps randomly pecking at a list of options! Frankly, when skeptics try to make the claim that we simply have no clue what the original NT text said, one has to wonder what drives their dogmatic skepticism, because it certainly isn’t the evidence.¹⁰

¹ Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003) 231. Other equally irresponsible statements can be easily found. For example, Frank Zindler wrote in the American Atheists magazine in 1986 the following: “Concerning the preferred text of the Greek Bible, readers may wonder just who decides—and how—what the preferred readings should be? Space does not permit a discussion of the scientific (and sometimes very un-scientific) principles involved. We can only observe that it is both laughable and sad to see the more intelligent fundamentalists diligently learning Greek in order to ‘read God’s word in the original tongue.’ Little do they suspect, while staring at the nearly footnote-free pages of their Westcott-Hort Greek testaments, the thousands of scientific and not-so-scientific decisions underlying what they see—or don’t see—on each page” (“The Real Bible: Who’s Got It?”, accessed on-line at http://www.atheists.org/christianity/realbible.html in October 2005).

There is so much wrong-headedness in this statement that one barely knows where to begin. For one thing, it is by no means only fundamentalists who are studying the Greek New Testament. The Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster, Germany is anything but a fundamentalist institute! Yet it is the epicenter of NT textual criticism, and is responsible for the highly-touted Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (a Greek NT which has well over a century of scholarship behind it; it is now in its 27th edition). Of the four doctoral courses on NT textual criticism taught in the United States, not one of them is taught at a fundamentalist school. Now it is true that textual criticism is both a science and an art. There are times when scholars need to make decisions by creative thinking regarding what the internal evidence suggests. This is not in any sense, however, devoid of good historical research principles. But the appellation science is sometimes applied to historical studies only with disdain (especially by those who think of science as what takes place only in a pristine lab). Historians cannot verify their views in a test tube, with the same results coming out each time. With history, we are dealing with partial data and human activity. The determinations of good historical research may not be as certain as those of some of the hard sciences, but this does not mean that everything is up for grabs. Further, to suggest that the “footnote-free” Westcott-Hort text is still being used today is misleading. That text was printed in 1881 and has been out of print for decades. It is occasionally reprinted, but hard to find. We know of no school that uses the Westcott-Hort “footnote-free” text today. Rather, most seminaries use one of two Greek NTs, both of which contain thousands of textual problems in the apparatus. Whatever Zindler is critiquing, it is not part of the real world as we know it today. Finally, as we saw earlier, this kind of wholesale skepticism is a part of the postmodern mindset. But when one looks at the actual details of the textual problems, the vast majority are so trivial as to not even be translatable, while the meaningful and viable variants constitute only about 1% of the text. And even for this category, most scholars would say that 1% is being awfully generous as to our uncertainties! (The majority of NT scholars would say that what is uncertain is a small fraction of 1% of the text.) As we have said many times throughout this section, the dogma of absolute skepticism is unjustified in the field of textual criticism (just as the dogma of absolute certainty is), even though it is an oft-repeated mantra of postmodern skeptics.

² F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, 6th ed (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1981) 11.

³ Miroslav Marcovich, Patristic Textual Criticism, Part 1 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1994) ix.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) 296 (italics added).

⁶ Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) 281.

⁷ Ibid., 280.

⁸ See G. D. Kilpatrick, “Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament,” New Testament Textual Criticism, edited by E. J. Epp and G. D. Fee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) 349-60. For a specific treatment on conjecture, in which the author rejects it outright, see D. A. Black, “Conjectural Emendations in the Gospel of Matthew,” NovT 31 (1989) 1-15. On the other hand, on rare occasions a NT scholar will put forth a conjecture. But such are not only few and far between, they are also a self-consciously uphill battle. See, for example, J. Strugnell, “A Plea for Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament,” CBQ 36 (1974) 543-558.

⁹ There are five known early copies of the Gettysburg Address. The two main copies were from Lincoln’s private secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. They do not agree completely with each other. But there is no need for conjecture. This example is used for illustration purposes only.

¹⁰ See Earl Doherty, Challenging the Verdict (Ottawa: Age of Reason, 2001) 39. He argues:

During formative periods, changes in theology as well as traditions about events which lay at the inception of the movement may be very significant. We have nothing in the Gospels which casts a clear light on that early evolution or provides us with a guarantee that the surviving texts are a reliable picture of the beginnings of the faith.

In fact, the one indicator we do have points precisely in the opposite direction. The later Gospels dependent on the earlier Mark show many instances of change, alteration and evolution of ideas.

There are at least two fallacies with this reasoning: First, neither Matthew nor Luke intended to duplicate Mark exactly, so why should we expect them to be a model for what the scribes did? They felt free to shape the material as they saw fit. (This is not the same thing as saying that they invented stories about Jesus, but that they edited their sources for their own audiences. And yet, if anything, they would be charged with plagiarism (something that was not an ethical issue in the ancient world, since everyone did it) more than with significantly changing the text. Second, let’s assume for sake of argument that Luke and Matthew intended to radically depart from Mark. Again, this is not the assumption that anyone makes about the scribal habits. If so, then to argue that we can know nothing about what any of these Gospel writers originally wrote is also fallacious. Why? Because if the scribal tendency was to harmonize the Gospel accounts (which it was, as we can see especially from the later manuscripts), then why should there be so many differences between the Synoptic Gospels in the earliest manuscripts? In the least, this reflects that they copied them with relative accuracy.

11-3-01; Rev. 1-8-03

The Problem

On several occasions in the Gospels, we are told that Jesus knew something or heard something. Frequently, such an assertion is made by way of the aorist or perfect adverbial participle. However, many English translations give the distinct impression that Jesus’ knowledge, in such instances, is simply an application of his omniscience. For example, in Matt 12.25 the Greek text reads: εἰδὼς δὲ τὰς ἐνθυμήσεις αὐτῶν ειπεν αὐτοῖς. This expression is translated “And knowing their thoughts He said to them” (NASB), “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them” (NIV), “He knew what they were thinking and said to them” (NRSV), “Knowing what was in their minds, he said to them” (REB), “Jesus knew their thoughts and replied” (NLT), “Knowing their thoughts, he said to them” (RSV, ESV), “Jesus knew what they were thinking, and so he said to them” (TEV), “Knowing what was in their minds he said to them” (NJB). All of these translations, to one degree or another, seem to give the impression that Jesus already knew what these religious leaders were thinking, almost as if to say that he did not learn by observation. Such translations, therefore, make Jesus seem to be omniscient in this verse. One translation stands out as giving a different impression. The NET Bible here says, “Now when Jesus realized what they were thinking, he said to them.” This translation implies that Jesus learned, and that he learned by observation, perhaps intuition. Two questions are raised by the NET’s rendering here. First, is the NET more accurate than the other translations in this passage? And second, if so, what does this mean for Jesus’ omniscience?

The Grammatical Answer

It is best to answer the grammatical question first. However we construct our christology, it must be based on scripture. Our theology and our translations should be informed by a proper understanding of the Greek text. And the fact is that there are crystal clear passages which speak of Jesus’ ignorance on occasion. The locus classicus in this regard is Mark 13.32: “But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father” (NET). Other translations may vary the word order, and one or two prepositions, but all are essentially the same in content. And the essential point here is that “the Son” (namely, Jesus) did not know when the Tribulation would begin, nor when he would return (cf. vv 26-31). In other words, Jesus’ ignorance of at least something is found in everyone’s Bible.¹ Thus, we cannot make categorical claims that Jesus’ omniscience was always operating on the human conscious level. Mark 13.32 won’t let us do that.

There is also the well-known text in Luke that speaks of the child Jesus growing in wisdom (Luke 2.52). It will not do to say that the child Jesus may have grown in knowledge and wisdom but the adult Jesus did not, for if he is omniscient he is omniscient as a child and as an adult. An omniscient being never grows in knowledge because he always knows all things.

There are, of course, other passages that imply Jesus’ limited knowledge. In John 5.6, for example, the narrator says, “When Jesus… knew that he [the lame man] had already been lying there a long time…” (τοῦτον ἰδὼν ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς κατακείμενον καὶ γνοὺς ὅτι πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον ἔχει). Most translations render the participle γνούς temporally (“when he knew”). But even if that translation is not a given, the evangelist in the earlier verse tells us the exact amount of years (thirty-eight) that the man had been sick. But this information is not picked up in his description of Jesus’ understanding. Jesus only knew that he had been there “a long time.” Although this is an argument from silence, the silence in this instance is deafening. The narrator could have easily, and less cumbersomely, said something like “[When] Jesus knew this,” referring back to the amount of time the man had been sick.

Further, there are occasions in which Jesus is said to be “amazed” or “surprised.” Cf. Matt 8.10 (“when Jesus heard this, he was surprised”); Mark 6.6 (“he was amazed at their unbelief”); Luke 7.9 (“Jesus was surprised when he heard this”). The verb in each of these instances is θαυμάζω, a verb that is regularly used of others being surprised or amazed (cf. Matt 8.27; 9.33; 15.31; 21.20; 22.22; 27.14; Mark 5.20; 15.5, 44; Luke 1.21, 63; 2.18, 33; 4.22; 8.25; 9.43; 11.14, 38; 20.26; 24.12, 41; John 3.7; 4.27; 5.20, 28; 7.15, 21). In every instance, the connotation seems to be an emotional reaction that accompanies learning something new. But this means that if Jesus learned, then in some respect he was not omniscient.

I will address the issue of Jesus’ omniscience at the end of this paper. For now, we need to continue with the grammatical evidence. When it comes to aorist and perfect adverbial participles of perception, there are plenty of examples used in the Gospels (as well as the rest of the NT) of individuals besides Jesus. And in such cases, these participles regularly imply that the person in question grew in knowledge.² If this is the case with others, why should we translate the same participles when Jesus is the subject differently? If we do so, it certainly seems as though theological bias has interfered with integrity in translation. Here are some examples:

Mark 5.33—“when the woman realized what had happened to her” (εἰδυῖα)

Mark 15.45—“when he learned from the centurion that it was so” (γνούς)

Luke 3.16—“When [John] knew the thoughts of their hearts” (ἐπιγνοὺς³)

Luke 8.53—“because they knew that she was dead”⁴ (εἰδότες)

Acts 23.6—“Since Paul knew that some of them were Sadducees…”⁵ (γνούς)

Phil 2.19—“when I learn about your circumstances” (γνούς)

Thus, various verbs are used to indicate that someone grew in knowledge: οιδα, γινώσκω, ἐπιγινώσκω.

In addition to these texts, there are several that speak of someone acting when they hear news of some sort (the aorist participle ἀκούσας is used). The news is obviously the catalyst for their actions, implying that they didn’t know until they heard. In such passages, Jesus is viewed just like all other individuals (several of the following texts have Jesus as the subject). Cf. Matt 2:3, 22; 4:12; 8:10; 9:12; 11:2; 14:13; 19:22; Mark 2:17; 6:16; 10:47; Luke 7:3, 9, 29; 8:50; 14:15; 18:22, 23, 36; 23:6; John 4:47; 21:7; Acts 7:12; 22:26; 23:16; Eph 1:15.

The following passages are but a sample of the kinds of texts that should show that Jesus, too, grew in knowledge: Matt 12.15, 25; 16.8; 22.18; 26.10; Mark 8.17; 12.15; Luke 9.47; John 6.15, 61; 19.28.

If we treat these adverbial participles when Jesus is the subject in a manner that is different from how we treat them when others are the subject, then our translations are suspect of theological bias. Integrity in translation demands that we not be inconsistent in this matter, even if such consistency makes us theologically uncomfortable. In this respect, the NET Bible stands apart from most other translations.

The Theological Answer

There are two elements in the theological answer. First, some of these passages seem to speak of Jesus’ knowledge as greater than that of his contemporaries. He sometimes knew people’s thoughts via means that mere mortals are not accustomed to (cf. Matt 12.25), or knew things that could not be learned by mere observation (John 13.1, 3). Several other passages are often adduced for this point, but many of them can be questioned. For example, in Mark 8.17 Jesus knew that his disciples were talking about not having any bread. But simple observation and a keen understanding of human nature could account for his knowledge in this instance. The same is even true in Mark 2.8 where the evangelist tells us that Jesus knew what the religious leaders were thinking when they muttered to themselves that only God could forgive sins and therefore Jesus was blaspheming when he uttered such a pronouncement. Frankly, it would not take a genius to figure out that the religious leaders thought such things when Jesus said such things; the frowns on their faces would be enough for a theologically-informed individual. Nevertheless, there are some passages that speak clearly and eloquently of Jesus’ supernatural knowledge. Two such examples are Matt 17.27 (in which Jesus knew that the first fish Peter would catch would have a stater in its mouth, enough to pay the temple tax for both Peter and Jesus) and John 1.48 (where Jesus declared to Nathaneal that he saw him when he was under the fig tree and that because of this he knew him to be a man without guile). Thus, in some instances we can clearly see evidence of Jesus’ supernatural knowledge, knowledge that cannot be explained by any natural means.

Does this mean that we have contradictory evidence in the Gospels? Is Jesus omniscient or not? Is he the theanthropic person—God in the flesh—or just a mere mortal? This tension leads us to our second element in the theological answer. The fact is that in the Gospels there is plenty of evidence of Jesus’ humanity—aspects of his life and nature that simply do not seem to fit with deity. Besides his ignorance of some things, and his stages of learning (sometimes accompanied by surprise), we read of his fatigue (John 4.6), hunger (Matt 4.2), etc. Furthermore, he felt pain and died. Can any of this be true of deity? Can God be ignorant, get tired, grow hungry, feel pain, die?

Theologians have wrestled with such statements about Jesus of Nazareth. I won’t belabor the point because, as important as it is for us to consider, this issue cannot simply be answered as an appendix to an essay on Greek grammar! Further, we can never—in this life or the next—exhaust the unfathomable riches of the one we call Lord and Savior. We will learn for all of eternity about the Son of God. But though we cannot fully comprehend him, we can grasp the basic truths about this man from Nazareth, even in this lifetime. The scriptures are adequate for that.

Briefly, here’s my take on things.⁶ We need to think of the divine attributes in two categories: moral attributes and amoral attributes. The moral attributes are those attributes that speak of God’s morality—justice, mercy, love, goodness, kindness, etc. The amoral attributes are those that speak of God’s sovereignty—omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, infinity, eternity, immutability, etc. What is interesting to observe in the Gospels is that a clear line of demarcation can be seen with reference to Jesus: he never fails to function on the level of the moral attributes, but frequently does not display the amoral attributes. In other words, the moral attributes seem to be “hard-wired” to his human consciousness, while the amoral attributes seem to be subject to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and come to the human conscious level at the Spirit’s choosing. At the same time, since he does occasionally demonstrate the amoral attributes, there is no denying his deity. Although Jesus Christ has both a human and divine nature, he is not two persons. He has one consciousness. It is not enough to say that his divine nature does not always operate at the level of his human consciousness. Why? Because it is only the amoral attributes that fit this description. It is partially because of this distinction that I hold to the impeccability of Christ—that is, that he was not able to sin (which is saying more than that he was able not to sin). Further, it is partially because of my christology that I view God’s attributes as amoral and moral instead of as communicable and incommunicable.⁷ In any event, if we recognize that Jesus functioned as a mere man in the amoral realm much if not most of the time, we can begin to understand why the scriptures can speak of him as able to relate to us. As man, he represents us to God; as God, he represents the Father to us. He is the perfect mediator, the perfect high priest, and the perfect sacrifice.

¹Codex X omits the filial ignorance clause here (οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός), as do most MSS in the parallel passage in Matt 24.36. In the parallel I am inclined to agree that the shorter reading is the correct reading, largely because of Matthew’s christology. Although he omits the explicit statement of Jesus’ ignorance, such is implied in his addition of μόνος with reference to the Father. See NET Bible tc note on Matt 24.36 for a discussion. Recently, Powell has argued against the NET’s reading here and for the longer reading (cf. Charles Powell, “The Textual Problem of οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός in Matthew 24:36,” an essay posted on the Biblical Studies Foundation website [www.bible.org]). Two major difficulties with the longer reading in Matt 24.36 are (1) although the Byzantine MSS omit the phrase here, thus making the shorter reading appear to be a scribally motivated reading, the fact that they en bloc retain it in Mark 13.32 is strong evidence that the shorter reading was not the product of Byzantine scribes; (2) since Matthew’s christology is regularly elevated above Mark’s (not in the sense that both evangelists are describing a different Jesus, but in the sense that Matthew gives answers where Mark raises questions; thus, Matthew is more pedagogical and Mark is more dialogical), the very addition of μόνος with reference to the Father in Matt 24.36 would mean that Matthew’s christology is actually lower than Mark’s in this one instance if the longer reading is retained. For these reasons I am inclined to disagree with Powell in his assessment of the textual problem of Matt 24.36.

²On occasion, especially with the perfect adverbial participle, the force is more causal than temporal. That is, the translation would be “because he knew” rather than “when he knew.” However, even in those instances, the individual who knew had learned at some point and thus was not omniscient. Cf. Mark 6.20 (Herod knew that John was a good man by experience, not by omniscience).

³The reading επιγνους τα διανοηματα αυτων ειπεν is found only in codex D; other witnesses here read απεκρινατο λεγων πασιν ο ιωαννης. The wording here comes quite close to some of the texts that are often used to argue for Jesus’ omniscience.

⁴In this instance, the people came to know that the little girl was dead by observation. See note 2.

⁵In this instance, Paul knew because of his past experience with the Sanhedrin.

⁶I have dealt with this issue more fully elsewhere.

⁷It is probably fair to say that most theologians today view God’s attributes as communicable and incommunicable. But much can be said for the moral/amoral categorization. Besides christology, this can be seen in the kinds of commands that God gives to mankind: we are commanded to be like God, yet the sin of the first man was that he sought to be like God. The key difference, I believe, is that we are to be like God in his moral attributes, but we are not urged to be like God in his amoral attributes. For what it is worth, this distinction is one that some Christian groups have not made; the result is a perversion of the Gospel and a confusion of our duty as Christians.