NTO 3

Before I get into the NT as a text, I would like to reflect on the ideas of revelation and inspiration.  The church fathers were not simply trying to put together a giant hymnal or history book.  They were trying to assemble the texts that they believed to be divinely revealed, and divinely inspired to add to their bible, the OT, which they believe to be God’s Word.  When we say that the bible is the Word of God we are saying that we believe that it is revealed by God and inspired by him.  Let’s look at this further; that is, the question of how the content—the words and message—of NT originated.

 We believe, like the Apostles and the early church, that the content of the bible is both a human book and a divine book: human beings literally wrote it, but what they wrote originated with God, and not with them.  This is the concept of divine revelation: that the words of scripture are revealed by God to the human authors, and we would not have these words any other way.  While the process of divine revelation is mysterious, there are many verses that give us a glimpse into God revealing his words to the human authors.  Clearly, the OT prophets were quite conscious of speaking words that originated with God and not themselves, e.g., Jeremiah (Jer 19:8b-9; 23:16-22a) and Amos (Amos 3:7-8; cf. 1 Sam 3:19-21).  One passage with particular relevance for the NT is 1 Cor 2:6-16.  Here, Paul speaks of his message as being revealed by the God’s Holy Spirit, right down to the very words he speaks: his words are “words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” (v. 13; cf. John 16:12-15).  Paul was thus aware that that God had revealed his message, his words, to him and through him.

 But sometimes things get lost in the translation, right?  OK, let’s say that the message originates from God; how we do know that the human author spoke/recorded it correctly?  This is the issue of divine inspiration. We believe, like the Apostles and the early church, that God by his Spirit moved upon—inspired—the human authors in such a way as to ensure that they wrote the very words of God; hence, “All scripture is inspired” (lit. “God-breathed” [2 Tim 3:16a]).  Like the process of divine revelation, the process of divine inspiration is mysterious and difficult to understand.  Yet there are verses that give us a glimpse into how God moved upon the human authors: Peter speaks of how, when the authors wrote the scripture, they did so only as the Holy Spirit moved them (2 Pet 1:20-21).  The Greek word translated “moved” (NASB) means to “pick up” or to “carry.”  Now it’s hard to delineate exactly what that looked like, but perhaps the least that can be said is that the word suggests that they were quite aware that as they were writing the Spirit was directing them; and now to the NT as a text . . .

 First, let’s begin with a few preliminary remarks.  The NT was originally written in Greek, Koine Greek—as opposed to earlier Attic Greek or later Byzantine, or still later, modern Greek.  All languages change over time (e.g., compare Elizabethan English to modern English [not the 80s band!], so Koine Greek has its differences with earlier and later stages of Greek.  Koine was common Greek; that is to say, it was the equivalent of street Greek not elitist, aristocratic Greek (The choice of Koine, then, kind of says something about God, doesn’t it?).  While the dates scholars offer for individual NT texts vary, in round figures, the entire NT was written over a 60-year period, with the earliest likely being 1 Thessalonians (c. AD 45) and the latest being perhaps Revelation, c. AD 100, although the view that Revelation is the latest text is disputed.

 Originally, there were no chapter or verse divisions—these came later in the 1500s with the printing press (to make the bible more user-friendly).  That is why, if you’ve ever noticed, some of the chapter and verses are totally absurd: they are sometimes done in mid-thought or even mid-sentence!  Not only are chapter and verses not in the original, but Greek back then was written in one run-on sentence without punctuation or even separating the words, let alone paragraphs.  It’s just the way it was done (back in the day).  Punctuation was added to the Greek text much later—to make it easier to read.  And texts were originally written on scrolls made of vellum or parchment, which meant that over time and frequent use, scrolls would disintegrate: so they would have to be copied in order to be preserved.  Also, they would have had to be copied if some guy from a church 100 miles away wanted a copy of the scroll in the Corinthian church library for his own church.  So copying played a major role in the preservation of the NT.  Think about that for a minute.

 What if you had no access to the net or Xerox machines, and you wanted to copy a touching short story by a local writer, so that you had your own personal copy of his work?  What are the chances that you would make mistakes when you copy it—especially if the story is somewhat lengthy?  Chances would be pretty good that you’d make at least some scribal errors.  Now what if someone you met on the way home was touched by this same story, and she wanted to make a copy of it.  She uses your copy—the one that has some errors.  What are the chances that: 1) Your errors would find their way into her copy, thus perpetuating these errors 2) She also makes her own errors in addition to copying yours?  I think you can probably see where I’m going with this.  How do we know that the NT as we now have it is identical to what was originally written by the authors of these texts 1900-plus years ago?  The science of text criticism provides the answer to this question.  We’ll look at this next.