Do We Have The Original New Testament?

[@closetevangelism]

Great vid, something to note is that a lot of the manuscripts we have are not first century, mostly because the papyrus, Uncials, and Minuscules could not have survived that long. It’s honestly a miracle that we have any documents from the second century. The number of 5,700 spans across centuries, but is still a fantastic example of scribal consistency Edit: A) I guess I should have kept watching 😂. B) I would also just make the quick case for consistency through Gospel authorship which can be backed up by Papius, Polycarp, and my main man Justin Martyr

[@TheTheologizingSubject]

Good stuff. Also if the Christianity communicated in scripture isn't true, we can't make sense out of anything.

[@nobodyimportant8778]

So you have been to the csntm site, I was going to link it. When you say a line like "thousands of documents and within 25 years" it gives the impression that we have lots of evidence for all the books in the new testament within the first century of them being written, which isn't true. There's 13 fragments from the 2nd century, and the dating of those fragments is hazy, just like the dating of the writing of the new testament is hazy, so pinning a number on when our earliest evidence of the new testament is pretty much impossible. What we can say is there are a few fragments of texts from the new testament within a century of them being written, and it's not until the 4th century that we have any complete collection of the texts. If we look at the 2nd to 4th century there are only 129 remaining documents, most of which are fragmentary pieces. It's an incredible amount to be sure given how old those are, but the way you present it greatly overstates your case. The "thousands of manuscripts" don't come until the medieval period. It's also worth noting that the new testament itself was written decades after the events themselves. Also I hope that you're just repeating someone else's quote mine and didn't actually read the book yourself, but I'll add the rest of Bart Ehrman's quote to complete his thought, "What he means by that (I think) is that even if one or two passages that are used to argue for a belief have a different textual reading, there are still other passages that could be used to argue for the same belief...My question is not about traditional Christina beliefs, but about how to interpret passages of the Bible. And my point is that if you change what the words say, then you change what the passage means. Most textual variants (Prof Metzger and I agree on this) have no bearing at all on what a passage means. But there are other textual variants (we agree on this as well) that are crucial to the meaning of a passage. And the theology of entire books of the New Testament are sometimes affected by the meaning of individual passages." He brings up several passages in the book that were intentionally changed, and which do have an effect on the theology of those passages. Are the differences enough to invalidate every point of the Christian faith? Certainly not, but there are some significant spots where intentional changes lingered for a long time, or where it's impossible even today to be sure which variant is original. This should be concerning. How concerning is up to the reader.

[@calledtodefend]

Hi there! We appreciate your commenting and sharing your thoughts. In regard to fragments, I recognize I may have misspoken and missed it in editing to make it clearer. The goal of these videos for this series is to do a response in less than 10 minutes so some things don't really get fleshed out in the video. I thank you for looking into this and fact-checking based upon what the site shows, and I'm sorry for any lack of clarity on the issue at hand. I/We will do better to catch those ahead of time. Regarding Erhman, I am aware of the full quote. Again, this was to be a brief response. Like him and Metzger, we affirm that there are somethings that would be and could impact some theological topics and issues, but like Erhman says in the book and in the original interview, the essentials specifically are still intact. Some of his concerns regarding possible theological issues are shown to be A.) Not actually a problem and B.) If it is, not essential to the faith based upon what we do have and our understanding of Koine Greek. The purpose of the quote was to focus on the essentials such as Christ came, died, and rose again, which would be very essential for the Christian faith (one example). We also recognize there are variants and recognize that the majority of variants are really grammatical issues. We do own a copy of the book at CTD. It was not quote mining. Thank you again for checking out our video and commenting. We appreciate hearing from people on all sides. If there is any way we can be praying for you, feel free to connect with us and let us know here or on any of our other platforms!!!

[@aussierob7177]

Maybe, but at least we have the original Church (Body of Christ. est. 33 AD) which was responsible for composing the Sacred Books.

[@calledtodefend]

Okay?

[@hughb5092]

The NT itself is a translation. Jesus and his "Apostles" spoke Aramaic, not Greek. Therefore whoever wrote the gospels (No it wasn't Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John) would HAD to have translated their Aramaic words into Greek. Translations are merely commentaries, not the word of a god.

[@Maru_812]

What are you even saying, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, which was a widely spoken and written language in the Eastern Roman Empire. Greek was a common medium for literature, including religious texts, because it was accessible to both Jews and Gentiles in the Roman world.

[@hughb5092]

@@Maru_812 I’m forever amazed at how “Christians” constantly miss the point, I cannot possibly be any clearer (sigh) Yes the NT was WRITTEN in Greek, but that WAS NOT the language of Jesus and the Apostles (Paul is an exception) it was ARAMAIC, which OBVIOUSLY means the actual spoken words of these men were TRANSLATED into written Greek. If you can’t understand this I can’t help you.

[@hughb5092]

@@Maru_812 Just an addendum: Critical scholarship (consensus) is that Jesus and his Apostles did not speak Greek, they most likely understood some Greek but they spoke in their native Aramaic.

[@closetevangelism]

All well and good until you realize that Luke was born in Antioch which is a Greek city and was a trained physician so he definitely knew Greek. Mark was a scribe by trade and thus would have known the common tongue of the day which was Koine Greek. Matthew was a tax collector who had to report to the local authorities who would have spoken Greek. And John is the only one who you could argue did not speak Greek, but given that we know he wrote through scribes and John’s students wrote in Greek, we can be fairly certain that he knew Greek. Speaking of John’s disciples, Polycarp alone is enough to confirm most New Testament authorship including that of John, and Papias pretty much confirms the other Gospel authors. We also have Irenaeus and Justin Martyr as backup in case you don’t like the writing styles of the others. Thirdly, Jesus most definitely spoke Greek because in John 12, Jesus speaks to some Greeks who have come to worship in Jerusalem. Given that they were Greek and Koine Greek was the common tongue of the day, it’s likely that they conversed in Greek. But perhaps the strongest evidence comes from the Septuagint. This is the Greek translation of the Old Testament written 200 years before the birth of Christ, showing that the Greek language was very prevalent in Judea. My friend, you could not be more wrong if you tried

[@closetevangelism]

@@hughb5092 I find it concerning that you say scholarly consensus is that the disciples did not speak Greek when this is not the case at all. University of Austin Texas for example put out a linguistics study on first century Judea which found that Greek would have been highly prevalent in the region due to the wide berth of the Septuagint’s usage and the surrounding climate. Many Jews would have as such been bilingual. You’ll find skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman who will say they don’t believe Jesus spoke Greek, but that’s not scholarly consensus