Recently Sam the Steamroller argued the Bible was not reliable for the following reasons:

“The KJV of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England. There were no original texts to translate. There still aren't. The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last apostle died. There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts with no two alike. The King James translators used none of these manuscripts. None. Instead, they edited previous translations to create a version their king and Parliament would approve. 21st century Christians (you...), believe the "word of God" is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century translations from 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written in the 1st century..”

Surprisingly this statement against the reliability of textual transmission of the Bible is made up of a number of intertwined arguments and misrepresentations. To get at the heart of this we will need to untangle the intermixed arguments and assess them separately and determine if as a whole they make a compelling case against the reliability of the transmission of the Bible.

Argument 1

Overall this statement can be simplified in the following conditional syllogism:

• Major premise: “The King James Version is not reliable.”
• Minor premise: “The King James Version the Word of God (Bible).”
• Conclusion: “Therefore the Word of God (Bible) is not reliable.”

First the argument is logically invalid and is a strong defeater for the whole argument. Just because the KJV is not reliable does not mean that Word of God is not reliable. There are a multitude of translations of the word of God and it is a fallacy of composition to assume that because one translation is unreliable that they all are.

Separate from the invalid argument the major premise is falsifiable.

Yes there are known errors in the KJV translation of the Bible. We know there are minor errors because today we have over 5824 Greek manuscripts we can compare (New Testament alone). However, none of the errors effect any major Christian doctrine. Therefore the translation is reliable for Christian doctrine.

Argument 2 (implied and unstated)

• Major premise: “The King James Version is not reliable.”
• Minor premise: “New English translations are based on the King James Version.”
• Conclusion: “Therefore, new English translation are not reliable.”

While this syllogism is logically valid the premises are both false making the argument false.

I have shown in a previous statement why the major premise is false.

The minor premise is false because new translations are not based on the KJV they are based on the oldest most reliable manuscripts. For example the English Standard Version is based upon an entirely different Greek texts than the King James Version which is based primarily on the Textus Receptus.

Argument 3

“There were no original texts to translate.” In this statement there is the unstated presupposition that you have to have the original documents in order to have an accurate translation. We can turn this statement into the following conditional syllogism:

• Major premise: If you don’t have the original documents, you can’t make an accurate translation.
• Minor premise: We don’t have the original documents.
• Conclusion: Therefore, we don’t have an accurate translation.

It should be clear that just because we don’t have the original documents does not mean that we cannot have a reliable translation based on copies, provided that the copies are reliable.

Incorrect facts:

1.) “There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts with no two alike.”

At last count there are over 5824 Greek New Testament manuscripts. There are over 10,000 New Testament manuscripts in other languages such as Coptic, Syriac, Latin and Arabic and an additional 10,000 manuscripts quoting passages from the New Testament. Many of the earliest Church fathers (such as Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp) quoted portions of the New Testament and we have their writings. From those writing we can reconstruct the entire New Testament. In fact only 2 books Jude and 2 John were not quoted before 100 AD after 100AD they are all quoted. These manuscripts equate to millions of pages of text. It is because we have so many manuscripts and sources that we can determine the differences and reconstruct the originals with a high degree of accuracy. In fact, the more manuscripts we have the more we can compare and contrast these manuscripts and the higher degree of accuracy.

2.) “…they edited previous translations to create a version their king and Parliament would approve.”

This statement is a circumstantial ad hominem. Attacking the translators by claiming they had vested interests is fallacious unless it can be showed that they had the bias and that that bias resulted in material mistranslations.

3.) “21st century Christians (you...), believe the "word of God" is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century translations from 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written in the 1st century.”

A minority of Christians, those in the King James only camp, believe that the perfect “Word of God' is a book edited in the 17th century and that the KJV is innerrant (true and without error). Overwhelmingly, Christians believe the Word of God was faithfully written by the original authors and reliably transmitted to us.

4.) "8,000 contradictory copies"

The textual differences (variants) are often cited as being in the hundreds of thousands of differences. 99% of the textual differences can be spotted easily because we have so many manuscripts and most of them are differences are in word order, grammar and spelling. These are all minor textual variants don’t amount to material errors that would change the meaning of the text. In fact 200,000 variants, over half, are spelling errors. Of the estimated 396,000 variants we can still reconstruct the original with a high degree of accuracy and confidence.

5.) "4th century scrolls"

There are plenty of other manuscripts that date before the 4th century. Recently we have discovered the earliest manuscripts ever, it is a portion of Mark that dates from the 1st century, and previously the earliest was from the early second century and was from the book of John known as the John Rylands Papyri.

From the second century alone we have 18 manuscripts that include 40% of the New Testament. There are over 60 manuscripts from the 3rd century. In addition, as previously stated we have second generation Church leaders form the 1st century quoting from all but two books of the New Testament in over 10,000 separate manuscripts.

6.) The translators were "8 members of the Church of England"

In truth 54 scholars were approved for the translation but 47 actually undertook the task of translating. The translators were divided into 6 committees translating different portions of the Bible. The names of the translators are publicly accessible. See: Daniell, David (2003). The Bible in English: its history and influence. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.

Conclusion

One of the unstated claims is that copyists made so many errors that we cannot consider the text we have as being reliable. They point to thousands minor textual variants as proof that the Bible we have is unreliable. However, even the hyper-skeptical Bart Erhman agrees that most of these variants are minor.

“…Most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another.” - Bart Ehrman [1]

Greg Koukl sums it up this way:

“…Our New Testament is over 99% pure. In the entire text of 20,000 lines, only 40 lines are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine.” - Gerg Koukl [2]

Most of this information has about the New Testament. Well what about the Old Testament? According to Peter Flint PhD, excluding spelling, word order and grammar errors, we can determine that even over 2000 years of coping, the Old Testament is 99% accurate. This is due in large part to the discovery of the Dead Seas scrolls which had been lost for the last 2000 years. This is strong evidence that suggests we can determine a statistical error rate for the scribes that copied the Bible over the years. For the Old Testament we are talking about a material error rate of less than 1%. This is in line with our current estimates of 0.2% material error rate for the New Testament.

I think I have done a good job in untangle the intermixed arguments and assess them separately and determined as a whole they do not make a compelling case against the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. As you can see almost all of the assertions are wrong and the logic does not follow from those facts.

Much more could be said but it should be apparent that Sam failed to make the case the Bible is unreliable. In fact, a good case can be made that the transmission of the Biblical text is free from material errors.

Endnotes:

[1] Ehrman, Bart D. ‘’Misquoting Jesus.’’ Kindle Edition. HarperOne. 2009 Kindle Edition. (Kindle Locations 884-886).

[2] Koukl, Greg. Stand To Reason Solid Ground Newsletter “Misquoting” Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman September/October 2010 by Gerg Koukl

For further information see: ReasonWiki.org's List of Resources on the Reliability of the Bible

 

Lecture Notes Skeptics and Believers Part 1

Skeptics and Believers, The Great Courses

I am embarking on a study of the religious debate in the Western intellectual tradition. The course is called, ‘Skeptics and Believers,’ the professor is Tyler Roberts of Grinnell College and is produced by The Great Courses. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4670

As I go through this course, I plan to take notes, including questions and comments on the material. I will post them here to my blog.

Lecture 1 Religion and Modernity
Before I began listening to the lectures, I reviewed the professor’s notes and additional materials. I did notice a number of omissions. Notable Christian minds have been left from the debate, such as G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga.

Notes:
Professor Roberts explains that the scope of his lectures spans from the 1600’s to today. He plans to talk about those who defend religion and the skeptics who seek to attack religion. Roberts goes on to explain that starting in the 1600’s, there was a movement to view religion as a separate sphere of life from the public sphere. Over the last 400 years religion has move slowly into the private sphere and slowly out of the public sphere. This decline of religion in the west is called the Secularization Theory. Some believe it is an inevitable outcome of modernity and some people feel modernity has failed. According to Roberts most prominent intellectuals of the mid-20th century they would say that modernity was progressing the slow decline of religion. Fifty years later, most would say that religion is now at the center of the ‘culture wars’ today. Roberts gives two examples of the culture wars; separation of church and state and stem cell research. Roberts explains that Evangelicals feel that religion is not simply a personal matter but plays a role in public life. I think I may have misunderstood Roberts. It sounds as if he feels that Evangelicals are parting from the Christian tradition by saying faith plays a part in public life as if history has Christian faith as a personal matter. I think it is the other way around, since the rise of modernity some Christians have slipped more and more into the idea that faith is something personal.

One aspect that I wish Roberts would have spent more time on how people’s worldview dictates they way they think and act. Most people don’t understand that worldviews are at the core of people’s belief systems and that it dictates how they see and interpret the world. Everything in your public or private life in intimately tied to your worldview. It really can’t be separated. A separate personal and public life is a lie and an illusion.

Questions

• Is religion an anti-reason hold-over from the past? Some people maybe even the majority of the anti-intellectual Christians might be. That does not mean religion is anti-reason.
• What is modern religious thought?
• Is faith based on revelation rational? Revelation is a type of evidence and the more creditable the revelation the more rational the faith.
• Is religious faith fleeing from reality or is courageously embracing reality? Faith is not the issue; someone can have faith for emotional or rational reasons.

New Atheism
To sum up the New Atheism; religion is irrational and dangerous and fundamentalism is the most dangerous form of religion. Fundamentalist read scriptures literally and are intolerant. Moderates are misinformed by treating faith and reason equally.

• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)
• Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007)
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004)

Modernity

• Modernity starts in the west and traces its intellectual heritage form Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman intellectual thought.
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Dare to know. Use your reason.
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) often called the father of modern thought. His work Meditations (1641) sets the ground work. He thinks we should show God and souls exist from natural reason and not from faith.
• David Hume (1711-1776) sees reason as a means to criticize religious beliefs.
• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) writes satires of philosophers who try to defend religion by reason. Kierkegaard supports defending religion by faith and revelation.
• Marx, Nietzsche and Freud

Definitions

• The enlightenment hoped that, because reason was common to all men, traditions of the past could be thrown off and all humanity could unite under reason.
• Modernism is a worldview that originates in western cultures that emphasizes reason, progress and universality. Post Modern is the view that the claims of modernity are too limited for the real world.
• Religious thought is the broad topic of thinking about religion. It can be subdivided into two parts. Thought from within religion it is theology and from the outside it is philosophy.

I recently watched Bill Maher’s movie ‘Religulous’. I was intrigued at the concept of the movie. Given it was a comedy I expected it to be completely irreverent. He has honest questions but he does not seek honest answers. He picks extreme examples and not mainstream examples. What does this movie promote:

• Not having faith is a luxury according to Bill Maher.
• According to Bill Maher, religion is detrimental to human society. 
• Religion is made up to answer tough questions. 
• He says he made fun of religious in his standup days. 
• He grew up Catholic and his mother was Jewish.  
• He thinks his father stopped going to Church because of catholic prohibition with birth control.
• Brings up issues that are religion not relationship.
• He shows extreme example of religious people whom even I have issues with. 
• He did not interview any serious mainstream Christians.
• He thinks it is about faith without facts. 
• Would you expect that multiple eyewitness accounts would be different?
• Compares Christians with extremist Muslim terrorist.
• He admits Sodom and Gomorrah exist but that is it.
• Exchange Ministries was an example and the pastor says no one is born s homosexual. I think everyone is born a sinner and thus has the potential to be gay.
• He interviews people who think religion is about themselves.
• Bill thinks anyone who thinks a miracle happen actually had something that was a coincidence.
• He picks 3 founding fathers who were not Christians and showcases them as a reason why this nation is not founded Christian.
• Picks on 10 commandments.
• He thinks humanism would come to the same conclusion. See my other posts, I don’t think so.
• He shows that Christians don’t agree on creation and evolution.
• He interviews an amusement park actor about Christianity. (Is this a qualified opinion?)
• Religion is a neurological disorder.
• Religion diverts man to a destructive course.
• Religion must die for humans to survive.
• Religion keeps man in bondage.
• Atheist should not be timid.

I would rate this movie 1 comedian out of 5.