How did a naturalist get interested in the text of the Greek New Testament?
Two forces are at work:
First, if you are interested in textual criticism involving ancient Greek, there are simply more manuscripts of the New Testament than are of, say, of Sophocles. If you are a doctor who is interested in trauma medicine, you study at a hospital in a big city where the cases come at you nonstop. You don’t go to a quiet town where car wrecks are rare and shootings are unknown.
The Greek New Testament is full of high-speed car wrecks and other disasters.
The ending of one verse, Colossians 2:2, has 15 variants. The manuscripts complete the phrase “to the knowledge of the mystery of …“ 15 ways. Greek is a declined language, and a person who reads only English can get only a vague idea of what a thorny problem this is.
Second, I have lived my life in a region where many people believe that the Bible is literally true, literally infallible.
When I’m asked whether I believe that, I crack open a book, point out that verse with the 15 variants and invite the questioner to help decide which is the right one, the infallible one. And of course if we get that one right, there are hundreds more. Our odds of getting them all right — getting a clean text — are about like our odds of winning the lottery 20 days in a row.
On the basis of beliefs about ancient texts, people have supported slavery, subjugated women and persecuted gay people.
To me, that certainty is bewildering.
• Source: Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament; Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 236-8. Professor Metzger did a masterful job of sorting out that troublesome verse.
No comments:
Post a Comment