Monthly Archives: April 2014

What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say? (Part 2)

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Part 1 of our journey from today’s New Testament back in time to Jesus looked at the problems of translations, canonicity, and finding the best copies. The next problem to crossing this gulf is textual variants. There are 400,000 differences between the thousands of New Testament copies—more differences than there are words in the New Testament. Almost all are insignificant, but thousands of meaningful differences remain.

Historians use several tools to resolve these differences:

  • Criterion of Embarrassment. Of two passages, which one is more embarrassing? We can easily imagine scribes toning down a passage, but it doesn’t make sense for them to make it more embarrassing. The passage that is more embarrassing is likelier to be more authentic. For example, different copies of Mark 1:40–41 has Jesus either “moved with compassion” or “moved with anger” (for more, see the NET Bible comment on this phrase). A copyist changing compassion to anger is hard to imagine, but the opposite is quite plausible. The Criterion of Embarrassment would conclude that “moved with anger” is the likelier original reading.
  • Criterion of Multiple Attestation. A claim made by multiple independent sources is preferred over one in a single source.

In addition, a contested passage in an older manuscript is preferred, the one contained in more manuscripts is preferred, and so on.

The weak link

Notice that these tools need multiple manuscripts to work. They ask: given two manuscripts with different versions of a particular passage, which is the more authentic one?

Consider the long ending of Mark, for example. Given a manuscript of Mark ending with verse 16:20 (version A) and a manuscript ending with 16:8 (version B), the historians’ tools can be applied to determine which is the likely older and more authentic version. But what if you don’t have multiple versions? Suppose we only had Mark version A, with no copies of B and no references to it. Scholars wouldn’t even know to ask the question!

Consider the three most famous of these embarrassing scribal additions: the long ending of Mark, the Comma Johanneum (the only explicit reference to the Trinity in the Bible), and the story of the woman taken in adultery. Apologists will argue that these are neither embarrassing nor problems because they’ve been resolved. We know that they weren’t original. But this is true only because historians happen to be lucky enough to have competing manuscripts without these additions. What about added biblical passages where do we not have correct manuscripts to make us aware of the problem? Are there dozens of instances of these untraceable additions? Thousands? We don’t know.

There are consequences. Pentecostal snake handlers trust in the long ending tacked onto Mark (“In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; they will pick up snakes with their hands, and whatever poison they drink will not harm them”). What additional nutty demands in our New Testament do we not know are inauthentic?

Of several manuscript categories, our oldest complete copies are Alexandrian manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus mentioned in the last post. That’s not because they’re necessarily better copies but because they were preserved better. The dry conditions of Alexandria, Egypt preserved manuscripts better than many other places where New Testament documents were kept—Asia Minor, Greece, or Italy, for example. We accept these manuscripts simply because anything that might refute them has crumbled to dust, which is not a particularly reliable foundation on which to build a portrait of the truth.

Read the first post in the series here: What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say? or continue on to “The Bible’s Dark Ages”

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe,
but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
— H.L. Mencken

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/19/12.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Daniel’s End Times Prediction: a Skeptical Approach

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Daniel Prophecy 70 Weeks skepticalI’ll wrap up this series on Daniel with one final interpretation of the 70-weeks prophecy, a secular one. If this interpretation is accurate, the 7 years of tribulation, the Rapture™, and all the rest are built on nothing.

(For the first Christian interpretation of Daniel 9 go here, and for the first post in this series, go here.)

Remember the timeframe of the composition of the book. It’s the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt, when things were looking pretty bleak. Jeremiah had said that 70 years in Babylon would erase the sins of the Jews, and God would bring them home and prosper them. But now it’s the 160s BCE, and Antiochus Epiphanes has massacred tens of thousands and polluted the Temple. What’s the deal? Wasn’t the suffering supposed to end?

That’s why Gabriel visits Daniel (in chapter 9) to say that it wasn’t 70 years, as Jeremiah thought, but 70 weeks of years. And—whaddya know?—from the standpoint of the audience, that long period was just about to end.

Below is the interpretation of Chris Sandoval (“The Failure of Daniel’s Prophecies”), which was taken largely from André LaCocque. I’ll step through Daniel 9:25–7 and give that skeptical interpretation.

From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the leader, comes, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.

The 7 weeks and 62 weeks aren’t back to back. Let’s return to the 7 weeks and focus just on the 62 weeks. It starts when Jeremiah’s 70 years starts, in 605 BCE. That prophecy is the “word” that explains the exile and promises the rebuilding of Jerusalem. It ends 62 weeks later in 171 BCE (605 – 62×7 = 171) with the death of the Anointed One, high priest Onias III.

Jerusalem shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.

The 7 weeks extend from 587 BCE when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar until 538 when Babylon itself was conquered and exiles returned to Judah (587 – 7×7 = 538). This isn’t part of the big timeline, nor does it need to be. Since we’ve gone from Jeremiah’s 70 years to Daniel’s 70 sevens of years, the number 7 (the number of completion) is obviously important. Chopping out a block of 7 sevens serves several purposes. It leaves a remaining timespan of 62 weeks that plausibly fits between important dates, that 49-year time period was roughly the time during which Jerusalem lay in ruins, and it’s numerically pleasing (with all those sevens).

After the sixty-two weeks, the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.

The 62 weeks is pulled out as a separate unit and makes sense as our primary block of time. Onias, the Anointed One, was put to death in 171.

The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

Antiochus Epiphanes is “the ruler.” He was the Seleucid king who corrupted (the word for “destroy” can also mean “corrupt” or “pervert”) the city and Temple. He had tens of thousands of Jews massacred. This was the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt.

He will confirm a covenant with many for one week.

This was also a period of civil war between traditional and Hellenized Jews. Antiochus killed high priest Onias, well-loved by the traditionalists, and made alliances with the Hellenized Jews. From the standpoint of the traditional Jews, the ones behind the rebellion and the writing of Daniel, those Hellenized Jews were collaborators or even traitors.

This begins the final week, 171–164 BCE.

In the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.

Halfway through this “week,” Antiochus prevented Jewish sacrifices and created the “abomination that causes desolation,” the sacrifice of pigs to Zeus in the Jewish temple. (That’s discussed in detail in the first post in this series.)

Of course, this whole thing would’ve been a lot easier if the author had dropped the pretense and given names to things, but where would the fun be in that?

Like it or not, this interpretation is both more plausible and is far more honest to the text than the Christian interpretations.

Since the Bible and the church
are obviously mistaken in telling us where we came from,
how can we trust them to tell us where we are going?
— Anonymous

Appendix: Here’s the timeline that shows the important dates (all BCE) and the blocks of time.

Daniel Prophecy 70 Weeks skeptical

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