History of the English Bible
Lesson 10 - Raider of the Lost Manuscript
Where have we gained the most knowledge since 1611?
Good question - it sure isn't child rearing - that's obvious!
Oh - you mean in what area of Biblical knowledge have we learned the most since the King James version?
I know people who know the Old Testament and all the things that we've learned in that general area will probably disagree - but I vote for New Testament studies, especially the Greek language and Greek texts. Since I'm writing these notes, that's what we'll go with!
We've progressed in two general areas -
- What "kind" of Greek did the New Testament writers use.
- What exactly did the writers write.
Wait a minute, isn't Greek Greek?
Well, Yes and No!
Is the language of rural Georgia the same as northern Maine? Does a film director speak the same language as a nuclear physicist?
See what I mean? Accents, local dialects, vocabulary - they all play a role in differentiating types of English. Sometimes these local varieties even have their own syntax.
If you're good you can sometimes tell what part of the country someone comes from by the way they speak.
So, is English English? It depends how close you look - ummm - listen!
Now let's put the separation another way - cultures!
Today our almost universal education has blurred class distinctions in the US - but this is not true in other parts of the world. Usually the "Upper Class" is dramatically separated from the "Lower Class." Sometimes they are vitually two separate cultures within the same country. Sometimes they speak radically different versions of the same language.
And that's what we find in the New Testament! The formally educated "upper class" imitated the classical Greek style in their writings. The formally "uneducated" lower class wrote in "common" Greek, using different styles, vocabularly, and syntax.
The Greek word for "common" is "koinè," hence the Greek of the New Testament is known as "Koinè Greek."
How Did People Find out About Koine Greek?
Well, not the classically trained translators of the King James Version. And not the early archeologists. They tossed aside many old documents and pieces of pottery with writing. Their thinking was that this "non-literary" Greek was of little or no value. After all, what good was a bunch of stuff like love letters, contracts, shopping lists, and such.
In the mid to late 1800's people started looking at the thousands of such documents more seriously. Finally scholars realized that these "non literary" documents illuminated the New Testament like a searchlight! Words that only showed up once in the New Testament were common in these writings. The figures of speech, the syntax, all of it showed that the New Testament was written by and to common, ordinary people!
The readers of the New Testament ate at McDonalds and shopped at Wal-Mart, not Sax of Fifth Avenue and The Ritz.
What about the text of the New Testament?
Ah, yes - the manuscripts! Here things got real interesting in the mid 1800's. Back in 1516 Erasmus published the Greek New Testament that Tyndale, Luther, and others used in their translations. Erasmus compiled this from several partial copies that were in the University of Basel's library. In some places he actually translated the Vulgate into Greek to fill in missing places!
As other copies of the New Testament came to light, virtually all of them incomplete, others did the same. Frequently the editors had to choose between different words, for the copies were not the same in every place.
The King James translators worked from the best "critical" copies of the Greek that they could obtain, but they were based on relatively few copies.
In the mid-1800's hundreds, indeed, thousands of partial copies of the Greek New Testament were discovered. Some of them came from excavations, others were found in private libraries like the Vatican Library, and some were discovered by adventurous explorers.
Sounds like "Raiders of the Lost Ark"!
Actually, that's just what it was in one case!
What?
Constantin von Tischendorf was the "raider" in this case. In the mid-1800's he had become an expert on Greek manuscripts. King Frederick Augustus II, king of Saxony, sponsored him on a visit to Egypt where he searched the libraries of old monastaries for ancient texts.
In 1844 he visited St. Catherine's, an orthodox convent, at the foot of Mt. Sinai where he made an amazing disovery. In the "Great Hall" was a large basket full of old parchments. The librarian said that these manuscripts, like the two basketfulls before, were to be burned, for they were old and moldy.
Tischendorf recognized that these were pages from an ancient copy of the Septuagint, possibly the oldest he'd ever seen! Unfortunately the librarian saw his excitement and refused to allow him to remove the pages. He did promise not to burn any more pages.
He left and returned again in 1859, determined to obtain the rest of the document. He could, however, find nothing. Several days before he planned to leave he "took refreshments" with a steward who unwrapped a bulky manuscript. He handed Tischendorf one of the world's greatest manuscript treasures! He held a copy of most of the Septuagint, virtually the entire New Testament, and two other early Christian books. Later scholars would date this manuscript around 350!
Through a fortuitous set of circumstances Tischendorf persuaded the leaders of St. Catherine's to give the text to the Russian Tsar for safe keeping. It's now in the British Museum
You can click here to read Tischendorf's own account of his discovery.
Were Are We Today in Terms of the Greek New Testament?
Today we have more copies and older copies of the Greek New Testament than the King James translators had. By comparing these thousands of copies experts try to figure out what the original text was. For example, if two manuscripts differ, the experts are likely to pick the one with the more difficult text. They figure that any change in the text would probably be made to remove a problem, rather than introduce one.
I know this sounds like taking a scientific stab in the dark, but it really is more than that. Let's say the first person in a group were given a hand-written copy of, say, Romans, and told to make an exact copy and hand her copy to the second person. The second person, in turn, would copy the first person's work and hand it to the third, etc. You can make some pretty good guesses as to what kind of errors will get into the text this way.
If all the copies were placed in a pile, which one would you think would be the most accurate? Probably one of the first, that is, one of the oldest copies. You'd probably be right - but there's no guarantee!
This is a crude illustration of the science of "Textual Criticism," and it fails to capture all the feaures of the work.
Bottom line - today scholars are in agreement over 99% of the text of the New Testament. None of the passages where the wording is questioned affect any doctrine of the Christian faith! Sometimes in current translations, such as the New International Version, you will find footnotes that point out places where scholars do not agree on the Greek text. None of those texts has any bearing on any major doctrine.
What has happened, though, is that the majority opinion among textual scholars is that the Greek text which the King James translators used was not as accurate as the current "majority" text. This alone merits a new translation.
So where does this lead?
It leads us to the Upper House of the Convocation of Bishops of the Church of England in 1870. On February10th Bishop Wilberforce moved that work commence on a revision of the Authorized Version. By the end of the year the organizational work had begun to produce what we call today the "Revised Version," the first of many new English translations.
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