PCOM – Pathfinders – October 10, 2010
The Bible
I. Transmission and Text
Adel Malek
I.
Introduction:
A. Ancient Books: The history of writing leads back to the remote past. Writing was being practiced
widely hundreds of years before the time of Moses [or even Job].
B. The Bible: Our Bible is a collection of extraordinary 66 books written over a period of 1,400 or
1,500 years. The Bible gradually grew until its completion near the close of the 1st century A.D. As a
collection of books, the Bible has been arranged in various ways through the years.
II.
Manuscripts of the New Testament:
The NT books were written in the first century on papyrus which, with constant use, might not last as
long as a decade. These copies of the NT in Greek are known simply as “manuscripts.”
A. Dating the Manuscripts: One of the most important issues when we look at a manuscript is know
its age. Several hundred of manuscripts have dates on them that indicate the exact date. But how are the
undated manuscripts dated? A trained specialist will observe many things and with technical knowledge
and experience can come to a reliable determination of the date of almost any manuscript.
B. Types of Manuscripts: NT manuscripts are of 2 major types. The earliest, and certainly the most
important, are written in capital letters and are known as “uncials.” The handwriting found in a larger group
is smaller and more cursive-like in appearance; these manuscripts are known as “cursives” or “minuscules.”
The minuscules did not make their first appearance until the 9th century and thus are of less value.
Example: The way Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1:1-3) appeared in uncial characters may be
illustrated as follows:
PAULASERVANTOFJESUSCHRISTCALLEDTOBEANAPOSTLESETAPARTFOR
THEGOSPELOFGODWHICHHEPROMISEDBEFOREHANDTHROUGHHISPROP
HETSINTHEHOLYSCRIPTURESTHEGOSPELCONCERNINGHISSONWHOWAS
DESCENDEDFROMDAVIDACCORDINGTOTHEFLESH…
C. Number of Manuscripts: The number of our NT manuscripts is vast, more than 5,300 in all. Not all
of these, however, contain the complete text of the NT. Yet, the NT is without doubt the best-attested book
from the ancient world. Most of the manuscripts do not contain the entire NT for the simple reason that a
hand-produced copy of the whole was too bulky for practical use.
III.
The Most Important New Testament Manuscripts:
A. The Vatican Manuscript (B) (c. 325-350): This manuscript is acknowledged widely as being the
most important witness on the text of the NT. As its name implies it is located in the Vatican Library in
Rome. It contains in Greek almost all of the Old and New Testaments.
B. The Alexandrian Manuscript (a [Aleph]) (c. 340): It is known to have been in Alexandria, Egypt
for several centuries. It was probably brought from Alexandria to Constantinople by Cyril Lucar who in
1621 became the Patriarch of Constantinople. In 1757, with the donation of the Royal Library by George II,
it became the property of British Museum. It contains both the Old and New Testaments.
C. The Sinaitic Manuscript (A) (c. 450): It is the earliest complete copy of the NT known to survive
and continues to hold great interest. The initial discovery of the manuscript, a portion of the Greek OT,
goes back to 1844, when Tischendorf as a young NT scholar first visited the Greek Monastery of St.
Catherine at Mount Sinai. After its eventual publication in 1933, the manuscript was purchased by the
British Museum. It is now displayed in London at the British Library. Other sheets of the great manuscript,
recovered in 1975, await publication.
IV.
The New Testament Text:
A. Textual Criticism: Higher criticism devotes itself to such things as the study of authorship, date of
composition, and historical value of a given Biblical document. Textual (or lower) criticism is concerned
only with the form of words – the text.
B. Variations of the Copyists:
Manuscript variations (or errors) come about in 2 ways: either the errors made by the scribe are
unintentional or they are made deliberately.
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1. Unintentional errors. Mistakes of the hands, eye, and ear are of frequent occurrences in manuscripts
but usually pose no problem because they are so easy to pick out. Words sometimes are omitted by a
copyist for no apparent reason, simply an unintentional omission.
2. Intentional errors. Almost always the intention of the scribes is good and they want only to
“correct” what appears to be an error in the text. So, if a word seems improperly spelled, or a Greek verb
does not have the proper ending, or a form does not correspond with the classical idioms, then the scribe
feels it is his duty to improve the text he is copying.
C. Summary: Textual criticism seeks to a) counteract inevitable scribal errors, and b) recover the true
form of the text.
V.
The Old Testament Manuscripts & Text:
A. The Most Important Hebrew Manuscripts:
1. Aleppo Codex (c. 930): First in rank among the Hebrew manuscripts. It derives its name from the
city in Syria where it had long been located in the Mustaribah Synagogue. It is now being used as
the base of a new critical edition of the Hebrew Bible to be published by the Hebrew University.1
2. The Leningrad Codex (c. 1010): This is of equal rank with the Aleppo codex. This is the oldest
complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible and was written in Cairo about the year 1010. Today it is
in the National Library of St. Petersburg, Russia.
3. The Cairo Codex (c. 895): (Former and Latter Prophets) It came to the possession of a Jewish sect
in Jerusalem known as Karaites. After been carried off by the Crusaders and later returned, it made
its way to Karaite community in Cairo, where it remains today.
4. The Leningrad Codex of the Prophets (c. 916): It includes Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor
Prophets.
5. British Library Codex of the Pentateuch (c. 900s): Containing most of the Pentateuch, this codex is
an important witness to the text.
B. How about Older Manuscripts? What happened to the older manuscripts? The Jewish scribes gave
ceremonial burial to any of their texts that were damaged or defective.
C. Scribal Activity: From earliest times, the Jewish scribes devoted themselves to the accurate
transmission of the Biblical text.
D. Present Status of the Text:. The scribes had very strict set of regulations to help guarantee the
accurate transmission of the OT text.
VI.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS):
The most remarkable OT manuscripts are those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from the third
century B.C. to the first century A.D. They include one complete OT book (Isaiah) and thousands of
fragments, which together represent every OT book except Esther. W.F. Albright, the great archeologist,
describes the DSS as “the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.”
VII.
Conclusion:
Paul says in Rom. 8:16, “it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of
God.”
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Bibliography
Barton, John, How the Bible Came to Be, Westminster John Knox, 1997
Brunner, Emil, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, Westminster, 1946
Dyck, Elmer, Edit., The Act of Bible Reading, IVP, 1996
Exum, J. Cheryl and David J.A. Clines, The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, Trinity Press,
1993
Geisler, Norman L., and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Moody Press, 1968, 1986
Hodge, Charles, Extract from Chapter 1, The Way of Life, (1869). The book has been reprinted by Banner of
Truth (1991).
Lightfoot, Neil R., How We Got the Bible, MJF Books, 1963, 2003
McKnight, Edgar V., and Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Edt., The New Literary Criticism and the New
Testament, Trinity Press, 1994
Pinnock, Clark H., with Barry L. Callen, The Scripture Principle: Reclaiming the Full Authority of the Bible,
Baker Academic, 1984, 2006
Warfield, Benjamin B., The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948
See Harry Minkoff, The Aleppo Codex: Ancient Bible from the Ashes,” Bible Review 7 (Aug. 1991): 22-27, 38-40.
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