Only Slight of Hand Can Defend New Testament Integrity
Apologists use distortion comparison techniques
Occasionally updated and edited. Copyright © 2010

The question "Is a molehill large or small?" cannot be answered apart from a secondary anecdotal question, "Relative to what?"

Relative to a mountain, a molehill is tiny. Relative to an atom, it is incredibly immense. Those who wish to portray molehills as insignificant will present them relative to mountains. Those who wish to make mountains of molehills will relate them to atoms.

Retailers use the technique of relative comparison to effectively market their merchandise. Placing cans of store-brand peas next to name-brand peas is no accident. Shoppers compare prices and opt for the store brand. cheaper off-brand peas are consigned to the bottom shelf.

Christian apologists use the same technique to sell their brand of textual criticism. By comparing extant manuscripts of the New Testament to those of the Iliad and Shakespeare they project a mountain of evidence that seems to argue strongly in their favor. That's not to say their comparisons are intrinsically at fault. It is to say one needs to take a look at the bottom shelf.

What are the odds?

Scanning an essay by apologist J.P. Holding, we find the technique of relative comparison used to sell the accuracy of the New Testament. Holding wonders about the molehill's size by posing the question, ". . . how much of the NT can we recover and designate as authentic?"

His answer? ". . . textual criticism has been able to recover the NT text with 99% accuracy."

Relative to what?

Would you board a plane
that had 400,000 technical
and mechanical variants with
a 1 percent chance of crashing?

Besides the fact that a 1 percent failure rate would convince any thinking person to decline a ride in an airplane, Holding's contestable conclusion can be framed in an objective context by viewing the bottom shelf.

English theologian John Mill invested 30 years of his stellar career comparing extant New Testament manuscripts. He uncovered about 30,000 discrepancies. That was 300 years ago. Today we have access to an estimated 25,000 complete or fragmented manuscripts including 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and another 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages. The number of variants is so immense that no one is willing to count them. Eberhard Nestle (d. 1913) estimated the number of known variants to be 150,000 to 200,000. Bart Ehrman currently estimates the number of variants to be about 400,000.

Out of sight . . .

I've never heard a Christian apologist mention the work of John Mill. It's consigned to the bottom shelf where few bother to look.

Also out of view are other extant texts. One has to wonder why defenders of biblical integrity never compare the texts to that of the Domesday Book (or Domesday Books; there were actually two volumes.)

A national tax survey was commissioned by William the Conqueror that effectively recorded all the property in his kingdom. The project was completed in 1086, more half a millennium before Shakespeare.

Unlike the mountain of manuscripts that precedes our modern Bible translations, there is only one Domesday manuscript. And unlike the hundreds of thousands of variances that exists with the body of extant Bible manuscripts, there is not one single variation in the Domesday Book manuscripts. The reason? We have the original copy.

One wonders why God didn't take care to preserve original biblical texts for posterity. Had he done so, there would be no question regarding biblical integrity; as there is no argument concerning the integrity of the Domesday Book.

Like comparing a Cessna 400 to a 1929 Koolhoven, apologists delight in comparing New Testament texts to Iliad and Shakespeare, but not to the Domesday Book. Comparing a Cessna to a Boeing 787 is not in their best interests. Any thinking person would prefer the comfort of a Boeing rather than a cramped Cessna; particularly if the Cessna had 400,000 technical and mechanical variants.

Maintaining objectivity

Is a passenger on bus sitting still? Is he moving along the highway at 60 mile per hour? Is he spinning on the globe at 1,038 miles per hour? Is he revolving around the sun at 18.5 miles per second? The correct answer is: All the above.

When considering textual criticism it is important to maintain an honest perspective by eliminating confirmation bias and its pre-drawn conclusions by weighing all evidence. That evidence points to unreliability.

February 27, 2010

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