Notes

None of this accurate.

1) *Textual accuracy =/= Historical Reliability* : Manuscripts are really great at showing us that the text has not changed overtime, it can not show us that what the text says is reliable or actually happened. But that is precisely the problem, merely showing that what we have now has not changed very much from what the author originally wrote does not show that what the author wrote is accurate. That's an association fallacy. A lot of Christian apologists make this error.

Christian apologist Norman Geisler (Christian Apologetics, chapter 18) claims, “We can be assured that the New Testament documents are historically reliable, for we have more, earlier, and better-copied manuscripts for it than any other book from antiquity.” This is absolute bullcrap.

Textual transmission only means that we have a fairly good idea of what the original authors wrote. If what the original authors wrote was non-historical, then accurately preserving their words still doesn’t make them true.

I can show you with more certainity than the new testament that what JK Rowling wrote in 1997 is the exact same as what we have now, does that make Harry Potter historically accurate? The same could be said of Gulliver's Travels and A tale of two cities and the quotations of the Chairman Mao. None of these records are historically accurate.

Moreover, you have to understand that the new testament was preserved because of a bottleneck effect. We do not have more manuscripts of the new testament because they are reliable works but because the main apparatus of textual transmission during the medeival ages were Christians scribes and Monks who had a vested interest in preserving Christian scripture over Pagan works. ( Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature by Reynolds and Wilson (pg. 48) )


2) *Poor Quality of evidence*

We have no manuscripts from the first century. We have only one manuscript from the second century which is P52. But according to recent research (http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/search-resources/special-collections/guide-to-special-collections/st-john-fragment/what-is-the-significance/), it is from 200 AD so it has been moved to the third century. Anyways, P52 is the size of a credit card and it only gives us around 7 cut-off words on each side. **The point is that most of the manuscripts you talk about in the video are late and fragmentary, it is very weak evidence**. Here is a graph from Matthew Ferguson, who is MA from UC Irvine and PhD from UC as well. (https://adversusapologetica.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/graph-of-nt-manuscripts.jpg) So right off the bat, most of your manuscripts are from the 9th century and onwards. Bart Ehrman makes a similar conclusion in saying that "94% of our surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament date from after the ninth Christian century." (https://ehrmanblog.org/the-text-of-the-new-testament-are-the-textual-traditions-of-other-ancient-works-relevant/) and even christian textual critic dan wallace says "“it should be pointed out that most of our manuscripts come from the second millennium AD, and most of our manuscripts do not include the whole New Testament." (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/an-interview-with-daniel-b-wallace-on-the-new-testament-manuscripts/)

We have only 277 fragments from the 2nd century to the 9th century and that is what they are fragments. Most of which are fragments of the same biblical passage and only include 7 cut-off words on both sides like P52. (http://www.csntm.org/Manuscript)

You can check the database for Dan Wallace's claims here (http://www.csntm.org/Manuscript) and The evidence for Bart Ehrman's claims can be found here (http://library.princeton.edu/byzantine/manuscript-title-list).

So all sides are unanimous: The manuscripts of the new testament are mostly from the second millenium AD and from the 9th century on so it is great to figure out what the Christians in the 800's were reading but it does not tell us what the original said.

3) **Textual Criticism is not a wholistic approach.

It makes no sense to talk about the preservation of the bible. Which bible exactly? The Protestant one with 66 books? THe catholic bible with 73 books and has different doctrines like intercessory prayer and purgatory? The Ethiopian orthodox bible with 81 books?

But beyond that, we have evidence that the new testament was corrupted like Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53- John 8:11.