Commentary:
This Hadith has been mentioned in this chapter for the
reason that it furnishes positive proof of the fact that the Companions of the
Prophet (PBUH) used to weep out of fear of Allah when they heard sermons and
preachings. It induces us to follow them.
54/447 - Riyad Us-Saliheen (Gardens of the
Righteous)
Christianity: The New
Testament
Both
read the
Bible day and night,
But thou read’st
black where I read white.
Of course, Blake’s sentiment in the quote above is nothing
new. The New Testament contains enough inconsistencies to have spawned a
dizzying variety of interpretations, beliefs and religions, all allegedly
Bible-based. And so, we find one author offering the amusing
observation:
You can and you can’t,
You shall and you shan’t,
You will and you won’t,
And you will be damned if you do,
And you will be damned if you don’t.[1]
Why such variance in viewpoints? To begin with, different
theological camps disagree on which books should be included in the Bible.
One camp’s apocrypha is another’s scripture. Secondly, even among those
books that have been canonized, the many variant source texts lack
uniformity. This lack of uniformity is so ubiquitous that The
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible states, “It is safe to say that there
is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS [manuscript] tradition is wholly
uniform.”[2]
Not one sentence? We can’t trust a single sentence of
the Bible? Hard to believe.
Maybe
The fact is that there are over 5700 Greek manuscripts of all or
part of the New Testament.[3] Furthermore, “no two of these manuscripts
are exactly alike in all their particulars…. And some of these differences
are significant.”[4] Factor in roughly ten thousand manuscripts
of the Latin Vulgate, add the many other ancient variants (i.e., Syriac, Coptic,
Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Nubian, Gothic, Slavonic), and what do we
have?
A lot of manuscripts
A lot of manuscripts that fail to correspond in places and not
infrequently contradict one another. Scholars estimate the number of
manuscript variants in the hundreds of thousands, some estimating as high as
400,000.[5] In Bart D. Ehrman’s now famous
words, “Possibly it is easiest to put the matter in comparative terms: there are
more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New
Testament.”[6]
How did this happen?
Poor record keeping. Dishonesty. Incompetence.
Doctrinal prejudice. Take your pick.
None of the original manuscripts have survived from the early
Christian period.[7]/[8] The most ancient complete manuscripts
(Vatican MS. No. 1209 and the Sinaitic Syriac Codex) date from the fourth
century, three hundred years after Jesus’ ministry. But the originals?
Lost. And the copies of the originals? Also lost. Our
most ancient manuscripts, in other words, are copies of the copies of the copies
of nobody-knows-just-how-many copies of the originals.
No wonder they differ
In the best of hands, copying errors would be no surprise.
However, New Testament manuscripts were not in the best of hands.
During the period of Christian origins, scribes were untrained, unreliable,
incompetent, and in some cases illiterate.[9] Those who were visually impaired could
have made errors with look-alike letters and words, while those who were
hearing-impaired may have erred in recording scripture as it was read
aloud. Frequently scribes were overworked, and hence inclined to the
errors that accompany fatigue.
In the words of Metzger and Ehrman, “Since most, if not all, of
them [the scribes] would have been amateurs in the art of copying, a relatively
large number of mistakes no doubt crept into their texts as they reproduced
them.”[10] Worse yet, some scribes allowed doctrinal
prejudice to influence their transmission of scripture.[11] As Ehrman states, “The scribes who copied
the texts changed them.”[12] More specifically, “The number of
deliberate alterations made in the interest of doctrine is difficult to
assess.”[13] And even more specifically, “In the
technical parlance of textual criticism—which I retain for its significant
ironies—these scribes ‘corrupted’ their texts for theological reasons.”[14]
Errors were introduced in the form of additions, deletions,
substitutions and modifications, most commonly of words or lines, but
occasionally of entire verses.[15] [16] In fact, “numerous changes and accretions
came into the text,”[17] with the result that “all known witnesses of the
New Testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixed texts, and even several of
the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregious errors.”[18]
In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman presents persuasive evidence
that the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:12) and the last
twelve verses of Mark were not in the original gospels, but added by later
scribes.[19] Furthermore, these examples “represent
just two out of thousands of places in which the manuscripts of the New
Testament came to be changed by scribes.”[20]
In fact, entire books of the Bible were forged.[21] This doesn’t mean their content is necessarily wrong, but it
certainly doesn’t mean it’s right. So which books were forged?
Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 and 2
Peter, and Jude—a whopping nine of the twenty-seven New Testament books and
epistles—are to one degree or another suspect.[22]
Forged books? In the Bible?
Why are we not surprised? After all, even the gospel authors
are unknown. In fact, they’re anonymous.[23] Biblical scholars rarely, if ever, ascribe
gospel authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. As Ehrman tells us,
“Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that
the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated
Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first
century.”[24] Graham Stanton affirms, “The gospels,
unlike most Graeco-Roman writings, are anonymous. The familiar headings
which give the name of an author (‘The Gospel according to …’) were not part of
the original manuscripts, for they were added only early in the second
century.”[25]
So what, if anything, did Jesus’ disciples have to do with
authoring the gospels? Little or nothing, so far as we know. But we
have no reason to believe they authored any of the books of the Bible. To
begin with, let us remember Mark was a secretary to Peter, and Luke a companion
to Paul. The verses of Luke 6:14-16 and Matthew 10:2-4 catalogue the
twelve disciples, and although these lists differ over two names, Mark and Luke
don’t make either list. So only Matthew and John were true
disciples. But all the same, modern scholars pretty much disqualify them
as authors anyway.
Why?
Good question. John being the more famous of the two, why
should we disqualify him from having authored the Gospel of
“John”?
Umm … because he was dead?
Multiple sources acknowledge there is no evidence, other than
questionable testimonies of second century authors, to suggest that the disciple
John was the author of the Gospel of “John.”[26] [27] Perhaps the most convincing refutation is
that the disciple John is believed to have died in or around 98 CE.[28] However, the Gospel of John was written
circa 110 CE.[29] So whoever Luke (Paul’s companion), Mark
(Peter’s secretary), and John (the unknown, but certainly not the long-dead one)
were, we have no reason to believe any of the gospels were authored by Jesus’
disciples. . . .
Copyright © 2007 Laurence B. Brown
Permission granted for free and unrestricted reproduction if
reproduced in entirety without omissions, additions or alterations.
A graduate of Cornell University, Brown University Medical School
and George Washington University Hospital residency program, Laurence B. Brown is an ophthalmic surgeon, a
retired Air Force officer, and the medical director and chief ophthalmologist of
a major eye center. He is also an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate
in divinity and a PhD in religion, and the author of a number of books of
comparative religion and reality-based fiction. His works can be found on his
website, www.LevelTruth.com.
Footnotes:
[2] Buttrick, George Arthur (Ed.). 1962 (1996
Print). The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Volume 4. Nashville:
Abingdon Press. pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).
[6] Ehrman,
Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian
Writings. 2004. Oxford University Press. P. 12.
[8] Metzger,
Bruce M. 2005. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, D—Stuttgart. Introduction, p.
1.
[10] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The
Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P.
275.
[13] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The
Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P.
265. See also Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture.
[18] Metzger, Bruce M. and Ehrman, Bart D. The
Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. P.
343.
[23] Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. P. 3, 235.
Also, see Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the
Early Christian Writings. P. 49.
[26] Kee, Howard Clark (Notes and References by).
1993. The Cambridge Annotated Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version.
Cambridge University Press. Introduction to gospel of
‘John.’
[27] Butler, Trent C. (General Editor). Holman
Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers. Under ‘John, the
Gospel of’
[28] Easton, M. G., M.A., D.D. Easton’s Bible
Dictionary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Under ‘John the
Apostle.’
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