Arguments for the reliability of the New Testament are built as a chain of claims—the reliability of oral history, the short duration between events and documentation, the large number of Greek copies, and so on. We’ll look at one of these links, the time from original authorship to our best copies, to see how well it stands up.

Where the data came from

Making a spreadsheet of the time gap for every chapter in every book in the Bible was a tedious task, though not a difficult one. The oldest manuscript with a complete New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, written in about 350 CE. For 57 of the New Testament’s 260 chapters (22 percent) this was the oldest source, but the remainder have papyrus copies that are older. These papyri vary in size. For example, P46 contains more than eight epistles (letters), while P52 has just a few verses of John 18. (“P46” is papyrus number 46, and so on.)

That gave an oldest date for each chapter, and this list has the date of authorship for each book (from the 50s for Paul’s authentic epistles to 90 and beyond for John, Revelation, and some of the epistles). Subtract the two to get the time gap from authorship to oldest copy for each chapter.

Time gaps for gospel chapters

The chart above shows the gospel chapters in order for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The red bars indicate the first chapter in each book. The height of each bar is the time gap from the original to our best copy for that chapter.

Matthew and John each have 18 papyrus sources, Luke has 6, and Mark only 2. Though Mark is thought to be the oldest gospel, scholars have speculated that once churches had Matthew and Luke (which were basically second editions of Mark), Mark lost its value and wasn’t copied as much by the early church.

The time gaps for the chapters in John look pretty good compared to the others because it was the last gospel to be written and because papyrus P66, dated to 200 CE, is a complete copy. P52 (written as early as 125 CE though probably later) has bits of John 18, and P90 (late second century) has bits of John 19.

Two papyri dated to 200 CE cover most of Luke. Nevertheless, 22 of these 89 gospel chapters have no papyrus copies that improve on the Codex Sinaiticus (350 CE). This problem is particularly obvious in Matthew, where it must rely on Sinaiticus for 43 percent of its oldest chapters. The average chapter time gap for Matthew is 200 years, making it particularly unreliable. Mark is even worse, at 230 years.

The height of each bar is the length of the dark period during which no one knows for sure what happened to the content of these books. We have enough data to repair some errors, but we don’t know how many errors remain and how bad they are. How much confidence can we have in a copy written centuries later than the original?

You wouldn’t believe a supernatural story if it was claimed to have happened yesterday, but with the gospels we have supernatural stories about Jesus passed on as oral history for decades. They were then written, but we don’t have the originals but only copies from centuries later.

A note how the dates are chosen: if a chapter’s oldest copy holds just a fragment of one verse, that’s enough to assign that copy’s date as the oldest for that chapter. Since most of the earliest papyrus collections are made of pages that are each fragmentary, this is a generous concession in favor of the Bible.

Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians

(Remember that red columns are chapter 1.)

Acts and Romans both have a decent number of papyrus sources (8 and 7, respectively), but continuing down the list, it’s 4 sources, then 1, 1, and 3. Fortunately for these epistles, they are mostly in P46, which is dated to 200 CE.

Ephesians (the last six chapters on the right) looks unusually good, but that’s only because it’s a pseudo-Pauline epistle, one that falsely claims to have been written by Paul but was actually written about 30 years later than Paul’s actual epistles.

All the rest: Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude, and Revelation

The one-chapter books stand out here.

Hebrews (thirteen chapters, each 115 years tall, near the center) has 8 papyrus sources, including the excellent P46. Revelation has five sources, mostly poor. The remainder have three or fewer sources, and four books have zero sources and must be completely backstopped by Codex Sinaiticus.

Every link in the chain that builds to the conclusion, “And that’s why the New Testament is historically trustworthy!” must be reliable. When the average chapter-by-chapter time gap from original to oldest New Testament copy is 171 years, this link in the chain clearly isn’t.

See also:

• The Bible’s Dark Ages
• A Simple Thought Experiment Defeats Claim that Bible Is Accurate

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/22/16.)

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Let’s conclude our critique of Mike Licona’s “Top 10 Myths About Jesus’ Resurrection” (part 1 here).

(Blue text is the supposed myth, green is Licona’s rejection of the myth, and black is my response to Licona.)

Myth 9: Not enough evidence

There’s not enough evidence to support the conclusion that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Caesar Augustus was Rome’s greatest emperor . . . but how do we know? We have only six sources. One is a funerary inscription. The others are dated 90–200 years later. Contrast this with the gospels: they were written 20–65 years after the event.

Note that “Augustus was Rome’s greatest emperor” is a natural claim. That there would be one greatest emperor of Rome’s many emperors is not startling, and Augustus is a leading candidate. We have statues of him. The coin that Jesus used as an example in the “Render unto Caesar” story has a reference to Caesar Augustus as a god. Heck, we have a month named after Caesar Augustus. Yeah, I think we have evidence to back up that claim.

Knowing that we have only meager evidence (and that being written evidence) for the Greatest Story Ever Told, Licona wants to focus on just the written evidence for Augustus. All right—that’s not a fair comparison, but let’s go there. If the Augustus-was-the-greatest claim was overturned because of poor written evidence, no one would much care. The claim has no impact on the average person’s life. But the remarkable claim of Jesus as the son of God is, if true, far more consequential and needs much more than stories written down and poorly transmitted to us over 2000 years. (More on the relevance of the importance of a claim here.)

Licona also slips in conservative dating for the gospels. No, the consensus is that the earliest gospel was written forty years after the events. But this is a small matter. If the supernatural claims in the gospels were committed to papyrus even the day after the events they claim to document, they would still be unbelievable.

We also have Paul, who was an eyewitness of the risen Jesus.

The “risen Jesus” appeared to Paul as an apparition! And the word Paul used to indicate that Jesus “appeared” to him is the same that he uses to describe how Jesus appeared to the other disciples. Paul isn’t much of a friend to your side if he thought that no one, not even the disciples, met a physical Jesus.

“When we subject it to the typical criteria for the best explanation, the resurrection hypothesis is by far the best explanation for the historical data, and thus we should regard it as an event that happened in history.”

This is what passes for scholarship within the evangelical camp? Licona will have us believe that the supernatural explanation beats all the natural hypotheses, from the slightly farfetched (hallucinations) to the eminently reasonable (legend). Christians should feel insulted that he treats his audience as so stupid that they’ll buy this empty declaration.

Myth 10: Lost gospels

What about the noncanonical gospels like the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Philip, or Mary that aren’t in the Bible but see the resurrection in a different way? For example, the Gospel of Thomas says that it was immaterial or calls it “enlightenment.”

Let’s not give the Gospel of Thomas much weight. Dates for authorship vary, with some scholars dating it to a century later than the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

And some date it to be roughly concurrent with the canonical gospels! The key thing about the Gospel of Thomas is the lack of interest in the resurrection and that salvation comes through understanding the teachings of Jesus, not faith.

There are lots of noncanonical gospels, many dating to the second century. Some scholars date the canonical gospels to the second century as well (because the references to apocalyptic destruction seem to fit the third Jewish-Roman war of 132–136 CE better than the first war in 70 CE), but that’s a minority opinion so let’s set that aside. The authorship of the noncanonical gospels is significantly later than that for the four canonical gospels, though it’s not like their authorship in the late first century was especially close to the events they claim to document. Any complaint that noncanonical gospels are late must apply to a large extent to the canonical gospels as well.

The liberals in the Jesus Seminar don’t think the Gospel of Thomas contains the authentic words of Jesus.

Yeah, and they don’t think much of the canonical gospels, either. You can say that the Gospel of Thomas is legendary, but it’s just built on top of the prior legend in the canonical gospels.

“The New Testament literature provides us with the very best information on what the early Christians claimed and believed pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus.”

Which isn’t saying much. This does nothing to argue for the accuracy of the outlandish resurrection claim.

And let’s not assume that first-century Christians held only the beliefs that survived to be included in the New Testament. Early Christianity was much broader than you would think looking only at the New Testament, and other branches (Marcionites, Gnostics, Ebionites, and perhaps others) have been pruned away.

Let me admit that Licona’s videos were quite short, and I’m sure he could’ve added a lot to each one. Nevertheless, I felt comfortable attacking these arguments without restraint because I’ve never seen longer arguments that are any more convincing.

Parable of the lost keys

These weak arguments remind me of the guy in an empty parking lot at night looking for something under a streetlight. Someone comes over to ask him what he’s looking for.

“I lost my keys over there.” He gestures to a dark part of the parking lot.

“Then why aren’t you looking for them over there?”

“The light’s better here.”

This is what apologists do. It’s hard to attack actual atheist positions, so they spend lots of time focusing on hallucinations or the swoon theory or the disciples went to the wrong tomb or the body was stolen, because they think they can make progress knocking over those arguments.

They never consider whether their own explanation is ridiculous; they’d rather sneak up on their preferred explanation through a process of elimination. This kind of argument can be distilled to, “We have alternatives A vs. B, but option A is unlikely so therefore B wins!” without showing that option B is any more likely. Or, in this case, “We have Jesus as legend vs. Jesus as universe-creating god, but legend is unlikely, so therefore Jesus must be a god!”

But to say that, they must ignore the best response to the resurrection claim, that it is legendary. What does it say about the Christian position that they must focus on the feeble arguments instead?

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/30/16.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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Here are the final two Christian principles for interpreting the Bible. Part 1 of this series is here.

Principle #5: Begin with the assumption that the Bible is infallible and inerrant.

Here are two excerpts from the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a joint project of more than 200 evangelical leaders:

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant.

We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

There is no interest here in following evidence. You don’t need to make a reasoned argument if you’re simply going to declare this as a faith position. “The Bible is manmade” has been ruled out, not because the evidence points elsewhere but simply as fiat.

What’s the point of scholarship in this environment? This is intellectual in the same way that discussing comic book superheroes is intellectual. Sure, much mental energy can be spent on the project and interesting ideas can come from it, but in the end it’s just pretend. Neither is built on reality. Neither is guided by evidence. A Christian conclusion becomes just one stake in the field of Dogma. Without any empirical evidence to ground this view, other Christians will simply put their stakes where they please.

Principle 6: Avoid claims built on uncertain grounds

From HIB:

Don’t build a doctrine upon a single verse or an uncertain textual reading. We should not erect an entire teaching or system of doctrine upon a verse in isolation from its context, or which has dubious textual support. Christian doctrine should be built upon passages which exist in the original manuscripts and can be confirmed through the science of textual criticism.

I agree that the manuscript tradition should be reliable, but keep in mind how difficult it is to know what the originals said. Scholars do a good job deciding which of two variant traditions is the older one. What they don’t do well is deciding between two traditions when they only have copies of one (more). We have a centuries-long dark ages before the earliest codices of the fourth century—who knows how many hundreds or thousands of changes were made that we don’t know of?

The principle argues that we not build anything substantial on a verse that is an outlier. That sounds sensible until we consider that this conflict—the general consensus versus the outlier—means that there’s a contradiction in the Bible. Principle #4 declares that contradictions don’t exist, but of course that’s a declaration built on nothing.

The second problem is that one of the most important Christian doctrines, the Trinity, violates this principle. There are a few verses that speak of the three persons separately in one sentence (for example, “Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” from Matthew 28:19), but this is a long way from the elaborate Trinitarian handwaving in the Athanasian Creed of around 500 CE. This final principle is the only one that makes sense, and it tells us that there’s scant evidence for Paul or Jesus having a Trinitarian concept of God.

I wonder why Christians don’t apply these generous principles to other religions’ holy books.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/17/16.)

Image from Photo Editing Services Tucia, CC license

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Starting with the popular Christian principle, “Let the easy Bible passages interpret the hard ones,” we’ve been examining six principles for biblical interpretation (beginning with this post). Here are two more.

Principle #3: “Description is different than approval”

What do you do when you read in the Old Testament about God’s support for slavery, demand for genocide, or some other bad action? Source 10P (see part 1 for sources) says:

Sometimes critics of the Bible (or critics of Christianity in general) point to an evil or corrupt situation described in the Bible to argue God (or Christianity) approves of the situation (or is the source of the evil). Remember, just because a Biblical author writes about something, this does not mean God condones it or supports it.

This principle attempts to tap dance away from God’s approval of things we find horrifying today.

Here’s an exercise that will explore what God does and doesn’t approval of. Consider the following lists, each containing three items mentioned in the Bible. For each list, think about what connects the items in that list and how it is different from the other lists:

1. Murder, lying, and stealing
2. Slavery, genocide, and polygamy
3. Weights and measures for commerce, sheep herding, and eating meat

The items in List 1 (murder, lying, and stealing) are all prohibited in Exodus 20. They’re typically numbered 6, 8, and 9 in the Ten Commandments. (As an aside, it’s interesting that they’re not on the second version of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 34, the one that found its way into the Ark of the Covenant.)

The items in List 2 (slavery, genocide, and polygamy) are never prohibited. They can be restricted, however (for example, elders are to have just one wife according to 1 Timothy 3:2), and rules can apply (for example, slaves can be beaten, but not so much that they die according to Exodus 21:20).

The items in List 3 (weights and measures, herding, and meat) are also never prohibited. Rules can apply to them as well (“The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him”).

Lists 2 and 3 are distinguishable only in how we judge them—we prohibit List 2 but accept List 3—but that’s not in the Bible. This leaves us with the biblical view of prohibited things in List 1 versus acceptable things (though possibly regulated by God-given rules) in Lists 2 and 3.

Only modern sensibilities tell us that slavery, genocide, and polygamy are bad. Not only did God regulate slavery and polygamy just like he did accurate weights and measures, Jesus had nothing bad to say about them either.

This principle, “Description is different than approval,” is a transparent attempt to give God a pass when he goes off his meds. It fails.

Principle #4: Begin with the assumption that the Bible has no contradictions

I must admit that this one sounds much like principle #1. Perhaps this repetition is my excuse to shine more light on it. Here’s the principle stated in “How to Interpret the Bible” (HIB):

The “analogy of faith” is a reformed hermeneutical principle which states that, since all scriptures are harmoniously united with no essential contradictions, therefore, every proposed interpretation of any passage must be compared with what the other parts of the Bible teach. In other words, the body of doctrine, which the scriptures as a whole proclaim will not be contradicted in any way by any passage. Therefore, if two or three different interpretations of a verse are equally possible, any interpretation that contradicts the clear teaching of any other scriptures must be ruled out from the beginning.

So before you say, “Aha—there’s a contradiction here in the Bible,” go back and rethink that, because there are no contradictions. (The first rule of Look for Contradictions in the Bible Club is that there are no contradictions in the Bible.)

You can see the problem. “There are no contradictions” would be a conclusion, not a starting assumption, and there is a huge mountain to climb before this principle can be validated.

As an aside, this principle, where Christians simply declare that the Bible has no contradictions, has a parallel in Islam. The Principle of Abrogation states that if there’s a contradiction in the Quran, the later passage (that is, the one written at a later date) wins out over the earlier. Problem solved—no more contradiction.

As damning as the Muslim principle is (how could the Prophet have gotten it wrong the first time?), at least it’s a rule. Principle 4 simply makes a groundless assertion.

Let’s let the Bible itself speak on this.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).

You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh which I command you (Deuteronomy 4:2).

The verse from 2 Timothy tells us that any passage, even the ones that make Christians squirm, should be read and followed, and the one from Deuteronomy says that the Bible must be allowed to speak for itself and not be treated like a marionette. So don’t pick the more pleasing verse and pretend the “difficult” verse doesn’t exist because the Bible makes clear there are no difficult verses!

Christians, if you must step in to sanitize your holy book, think about what that means.

Concluded in part 3.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/15/16.)

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In Christians’ Damning Refuge in “Difficult Verses,” we looked at a Christian response to the well-known Dawkins Quote (“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction . . .”). This response tried to distinguish between “clear” and “hard” passages in the Bible. But is the problem that some verses are unclear or that they’re actually unpleasant, with clear/hard simply a misdirection to justify ignoring verses where God’s barbaric behavior is on display?

Christians will tell me to look without bias at what the Bible says and I’ll do my best, but I have no patience for when they don’t follow their own rules. Or when their own rules demand that they be biased.

Principle #1: The Bible is always right

(So principle #2 must be: if the Bible is ever wrong, see principle #1.)

This is from the New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (at least they admit that it takes an entire encyclopedia to document all the Bible difficulties).

Be fully persuaded in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it.

Nope. If you want respect for your holy book, you can earn it. I won’t just give it to you.

This one is too stupid to respond to, and “What is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” (Hitchens’ Razor).

I’ll critique five additional Christian recommendations for how to interpret the Bible that are arguably more reasonable. We’ll start with an elaboration of the one we’ve just seen, “take the clearer passages to interpret the harder passages.”

Two of my sources are “How to Interpret the Bible” and “Ten principles when considering alleged Bible contradictions.” From this point forward, I’ll abbreviate these as HIB and 10P. (I’ve responded to 10P in depth here.)

Principle #2: Let the Bible clarify the Bible

Or, as HIB puts it, “The Clear Must Interpret the Unclear”:

Murky passages can often be clarified by other scriptures which address the particular topic in a more straightforward way. For example, a very specific interpretation of the highly symbolic visions of John’s apocalypse [that is, the book of Revelation], may never “trump” the clear teachings of Paul’s epistles, which are more didactic and less symbolic, and hence clearer.

Here’s another way to see that clear/unclear simply means pleasing/displeasing. When someone says that verse A is clear and B unclear (so we should focus on verse A, ignore verse B, and pretend we didn’t notice any contradiction), ask why that’s the order. Why isn’t B the clear one? For example, Paul says, “[All I’ve been saying is] that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23). But this is contradicted by (1) the zombies that came out of their graves on the death of Jesus (Matthew 27:52), who were actually the first to rise from the dead, and (2) the gospels themselves, which say that Jesus had a long ministry before his resurrection, not after as Paul says it. Why do the gospels trump Paul?

Or take the duration of Jesus’s time on earth after the resurrection. Why is it popularly seen as forty days (Acts 1:3)? Why not one day (Luke 24:51)?

Here’s another example. Harold Camping famously made a fool of himself when he predicted the Rapture on May 21, 2011. The first lesson from the Camping fiasco is that testability is not the prophet’s friend. If you’re going to predict something, make it vague to give you plausible deniability after your inevitable failure. (John Hagee didn’t get the message when he said in 2013, “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.” Whoops—wrong again.)

But the second lesson is that the Bible is a sock puppet that can say almost anything you want. For example, Christian apologists, embarrassed by Camping’s date for the Last Days®, quoted Paul speaking about the end: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. . . . Destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman” (1 Thessalonians 5:2–3). That is, the end must be a surprise, and Camping couldn’t have correctly calculated the date of the Rapture.

Camping trumped that by quoting the very next verse: “But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.” That is, the chosen won’t be surprised by the end.

The lack of biblical clarity and the inadequacy of Principle #2 are made particularly clear by Christianity’s 45,000 denominations (and counting). If the Bible were the clear message from an omniscient Creator, there would be just one message. Christians should stop granting themselves license to harmonize conflicting passages and realize that the Bible is simply a collection of manmade books that, being written by different people at different times, align imperfectly.

Continue with part 2.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/15/16.)

Image from Forsaken Fotos, CC license
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Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction that takes off from Richard Dawkins’ famous quote:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.  — Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

In his book, Barker’s theological expertise shows that Dawkins’ eloquent summary is actually understated.

What’s curious, though, is that Christians seem to cite the Dawkins Quote more than atheists. On the Unbelievable radio show for 12/7/13, Christian Chris Sinkinson gives his critique:

[The Dawkins Quote] is clearly a very slanted view of how to read the text of the Old Testament. Most of us would take the clearer passages to interpret the harder passages. We would be talking about Leviticus 19 “Love your neighbor as yourself” before we look at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. We would have an approach to scripture that would weight things in such a way that that description of God just does not sound like the god who I believe in or the god who I worship. (@ 36:23)

For starters, “Love your neighbor as yourself” means, “Love your fellow Jewish neighbor as yourself,” so let’s not imagine a big worldwide hug from Yahweh.

But set that aside. I can see that Christians prefer “love your neighbor” to death and destruction, but they make a mistake when they call the former a “clearer” passage when it’s actually just a more pleasing passage.

You can see that in the last sentence: “We would have an approach to scripture that would weight things in such a way that that description of God just does not sound like the god who I believe in or the god who I worship.” It’s clumsily worded, as live radio often is, but he’s saying that he adjusts how he interprets the Bible to preserve his preconceived God belief. That is, he hammers the copper of the Bible on the anvil of his belief, not the other way around.

I see this approach frequently, though it’s unusual to see it so plainly stated.

Thought experiment

My study of the Bible has been haphazard, and I jump around based on whatever I’m researching at the moment. But suppose I wanted to improve my understanding by reading the Bible cover to cover. I might find an experienced Christian friend who will mentor me and give me their interpretation when I’m puzzled.

At any point, I might have a question about social customs at the time, or I might complain about the miracles. But things get interesting when we get to the morally questionable activities—God hardening Pharaoh’s heart to prevent him from giving Moses what he wants, demanding genocide, supporting slavery and polygamy, insisting on a human sacrifice to satisfy his divine wrath, and so on.

When we hit one of these, my mentor will probably say something like, “Okay, now let’s slow down and unpack this one.” But what’s to unpack? Seen from the standpoint of modern Western morality, God is obviously a savage Bronze Age monster. What’s confusing or difficult? It’s just that my mentor doesn’t like that.

He can respond by saying that God is unjudgeable or that God’s ways are not our ways so it shouldn’t be surprising that we don’t understand. He can say that that reading of the passage is displeasing. What he can’t say is that it’s unclear. He can say that acceptance of chattel slavery (Leviticus 25:44–6) is unpleasant or disturbing and “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16) is happy or satisfying, but only an agenda would cause him to say that those verses are unclear and clear, respectively.

Next up: Let’s critique six popular Christian guidelines for biblical interpretation that are variations on this biased approach to the Bible here.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/13/16.)

Image from Marcin Chady, CC license
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