The Bible simply wasn’t error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.
“Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament,” Ehrman summarizes.
As Lubomyr points out, this is a very questionable conclusion. The mistakes did not “grow exponentially.”
In this case, Professor Ehrman is using statistics as a drunk man uses a lamp-post - for support, rather than illumination.
Those 200,000 textual differences are almost all inconsequential.
In addition to the 5,700 hand-written Greek copies of the NT, we have 10,000 Latin copies; 10,000 to 15,000 in other languages (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, etc,) – so we actually have about 25,000 to 30,000 copies of the NT. That means we have multiple streams of transmissions (so the “Telephone Game” is not in play) textual, and copies can be cross-checked to make sure an addition or change in a copy was not passed down incorrectly.
Plus, we have quotations from the NT in other texts. The early fathers of the Church quoted so often from the NT we could almost recreate the NT just from their quotes, with about 1 million (!) quotations from the NT from the 1st cent to 13th cent in their manuscripts.
Of the 200,000 to 400,000 “variants” Bart Ehrman claims in the NT (there are only 138,162 words in the Greek NT), he is counting in
all the handwritten manuscripts, including those as late as the 13th or 14th century. We have so many variants because we have
so many manuscripts to compare, and very early copies. We have fragments of the Gospel of John on papyrus (in the John Rylands Library at Manchester University) that are dated from 100 A.D. to no later than 150 A.D. and papyrologist Adolph Deissman dated it in the 90s.
Ehrman is also including textual variations in lectionaries, which combined biblical accounts for reading during Mass but which weren’t actual “Bibles.”
Obviously, small errors in transcription will occur when you have that many texts being hand-copied over the centuries. Since we have earlier copies, we are able to identify them.
The vast majority of those textual variants consist of:
The most common variant is the “moveable nu” – The Greek letter “N” (Nu) is used at the end of a word when the next word starts with a vowel (as in English – a car, an apple). It has no effect on the meaning of the word, but each is counted as a textual variant.
Different words used (e,g., “Lord” in John 4:1, but “Jesus” used in all the other texts).
A single misspelling counts as a variant (the most common variant)
Another common misspelling is “Johnn” for John – it has no difference in English.
Nonsense errors, when an inattentive scribe makes an obvious error – a manuscript in the Smithsonian has the word “and” instead of “Lord” – (kind of similar in Greek – “kai” vs. “kurios”. In context, and with other manuscripts, it’s obvious what was meant.
Synonym variants as an artifact of the translation process
Use of a definite article with a proper name in Greek – “the Mary” or “the Jesus” (shades of The Big Lebowski) which was common in Greek but not always transcribed.
Variant word orders in Greek, as sentence structure isn’t as formal in Greek (Russian is similar).
Only about 1% of variants are both meaningful (affecting the meaning to some extent) and viable (they may go back to the original text). Of these, none affect foundational beliefs. Two of the most famous are Romans 5:1 “We have peace” or “Let us have peace”. Neither variant affects doctrinal issues. 1 John 1:4 “Thus we are writing these things that our joy may be complete” or “so that your joy may be complete.”
No cardinal or essential doctrine is affected. Some may affect orthopraxy (right practice) but not orthodoxy (right belief), as in Mark 9:29, where Jesus says you can’t cast out a certain kind of demon except by prayer – some add “and fasting.”
Most interesting: The earliest manuscript of Revelation Chapter 13 at Oxford (from the 3rd Century) says # of Beast is 616, not 666 (as does a 5th century manuscript).
There are some meaningful textual differences that are the subject of debate, such as the presence of 1 John 5:7-8 in King James, Mark’s post-Resurrection appearance (Christians picking up snakes, speaking in tongues, etc.) which doesn’t appear in out two earliest texts (Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus) and may have been added in the 2nd Century, or Jesus preventing the stoning of the adultress, which isn’t in the earliest manuscripts (as noted in most study Bibles) but could still well be historical.
I’ve adapted the above from one of Professor Ehrman’s critics, Daniel B. Wallace, Ph.D, Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Professor Ehrman has an axe to grind, and that makes the conclusions he draws from his scholarship questionable.
