Historical Process
Letâs start by agreeing with what is right about this challenge. It is true: we donât have any of the original documents penned by the New Testament authors. And itâs true: all copies of the originals were made by hand, and the scribes did make mistakes, some intentionally and some unintentionally. And it is also true: there are approximately 400,000 differences among all our Greek manuscripts. And we have no manuscripts from the first and very few from the second century, and what we do have is fragmentaryâa verse here and a paragraph there. So these are all true statements.
But the real question is, How are these facts significant? At first glance, they seem to create an impenetrable barrier to accepting the claims of Christianity and lead to the inevitable conclusion that the original words written by the New Testament authors have been lost forever. But with a little investigation, we can see that this barrier is not as high as we thought at first glance. Iâll begin by laying out several historical realities so the answers to the challenges will make sense.
First, letâs define a few terms. We use the term autograph to refer to the original document written by the author. In most cases, it would have been dictated and written down by an âamanuensisââthat is, a secretary. Paul used Tertius to write Romans (Rom 16:22), and Peter may have used Silas (also named Silvanus) to write 1 Peter (1 Pet 5:12). Iâm convinced that Paul used Luke to write 1 Timothy and perhaps 2 Timothy and Titus.1
As a general rule, the amanuensis would have been given some freedom as to what he wroteâword choice, grammar, style. This would explain the unusual frequency of medical imagery in 1 and 2 Timothy, since Luke was a physician. The author would have proofread the written document and, if necessary, made corrections. We also believe that in many cases a copy would have been made by the amanuensis.2 One of these manuscripts would then be sent to the recipient, and the second kept as a backup.
You can imagine the church in Rome receiving Paulâs letter and then instantly desiring copies, or what we call âmanuscriptsâ (often abbreviated âmsâ or in the plural âmssâ in the footnotes in your Bibles). Wealthy Christians may have wanted their own copies, or perhaps a church in another city had heard about the letter and wanted a copy (Col 4:16). In the pre-Gutenberg era (prior to 1516), all of these copies would have been made by hand. We know that some of the scribes copied one or two letters at a time; we know that other scribes copied one or two words at a time, or more. Both methods reflected the desire for accuracy on the part of the scribe. While most of the people in the first century were illiterate, unable to read or write, there were enough literate people to produce the copies needed. Most were not professional scribes who were trying to create a work of art; rather, they were trying to make accurate copies of the manuscript.
Despite their best efforts, they made mistakes. Sometimes they made an unintentional mistake, such as skipping a word or transposing letters. Other times they made intentional changes, usually for good reasons, such as correcting misspellings or poor grammar. We also know that scribes added notes to the margins, perhaps explaining a word or adding background information they were aware of. We know this happened because we can look directly at these manuscripts and see marginal notes.
The differences between the texts are called âvariants.â Sometimes we talk about a manuscript having a certain âreading.â A variant is any variation among the manuscripts. This includes differences in wording (additions, omissions, changes), word order, and spelling. It doesnât matter if a variant occurs in one manuscript or a thousand, or if a variant occurs in the second century or the tenthâitâs still counted as one variant. There are about 400,000 variants in the approximately 5,600 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. To state it another way, we have so many variants because we have so many manuscripts.
