Manuscripts

I am going to begin writing about Bible manuscripts, but before I can begin that I must write how that manuscripts came to be and they came to be by oral tradition. Now among Christians who have no value for tradition, those who adhere to the idea of sola scriptura, that is the scriptures alone, hold this view because they believe because they are elevating the Bible, saying they reject tradition because the only thing that should matter is the Bible, even though in light of this they have their own traditions, the fact being that every religious group has them, if they are left alone long enough and they create cohesion as a group, even the most informal group they create traditions, unfortunately the traditions that they create can be far worse, then what they condemn Catholics and Orthodox for. They have traditions such as the sinners prayer, I knew this one well as an Evangelical, the one you must pray to be saved, “Lord I believe in you come into my life.” And for there your saved, our you say by faith alone, or the altar call, “if you want to except Jesus into your life come down here.” You unfortunately find none of that in the Bible, these are traditions created by man. As catholics have the traditions of Augustine and some by the alterations of the many Popes. And Orthodox have apostolic traditions, so those who say that the Bible has any authority at all in church, are misguided due to the fact that they have their own traditions, but they don’t recognize them as such. So while protestants don’t recognize they have their own traditions saying that only the Bible has authority, because they think this shows more respect for the Bible but in fact that undermines the Bible, when you refuse to recognize the authority of Apostolic tradition, the authority of the Church, as it has existed continuously and faithfully, since being established, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the only authority you recognize is the Bible then it forces you to take extreme positions on inerrancy to defend the Bible, in which it has to be perfect in every respect, literally dictated by the Holy Spirit, incapable of expressing anything which is not absolutely true even according to scientific accuracy, people insist on this view otherwise then there is no other authority, when faced with the reality of the history of the Bible, the manuscript tradition, the way the Bible was written then you have to insist on that view even if it is irrational and it conflicts with all the evidence, or you end up discarding the Bible as fiction which is exactly what Bart Irmine did because he had no other concept of inerrancy and inspiration because only the Bible was authority as if it feel from the sky whole and complete, perfect. So even though such folks think they are lifting up the Bible in fact that Brings the Bible down to human level, because what you are saying is that the Bible is inspired and inerrant as long as I can make it fit our human notions of science, of accuracy, of history, ect. Now I’m not trying to slam anyone, I understand were there coming from, I know they are trying to uphold the Bible, but it has the opposite effect, since its not realistic, its not accurate, nor is it historic. Because much of what the Bible says is culturally conditioned because the Bible expresses truths about God in human language, by people living in a particular time and place in human history, it expresses the ideas which were part of the culture at the time, to make God relevant to the people at that time, it does not eternal truths about science, government, sociology, history, or anything else. The truths it reveals are the truths about God, and those truths are inerrant, eternal, perfect, and unchanging, that is the part that is inspired, and inerrant, but everything else is expressed in human language and reflects the culture of the time. So discernment is needed to determine, which language and concepts in the Bible are culturally conditioned, and the language and concepts in the Bible, which are eternal truths.
Now some books in the Old Testament and New Testament are the result of the process of development and compilation, now to the fundamentalist mind this is disturbing and they would reject it this idea because to a great extent a book of the Bible is recognized as inspired because it was authored by a Holy person, such as an Apostle or Moses, But for the Catholic and Orthodox, this is not a problem because a book is inspired by the Holy Spirit and recognized as scripture because the Church excepts it as scripture, the Church is the higher authority, the church determines the content of the scriptures, so whether a book is written by whom the person is attributed to or not, whether or not something was added a bit latter it doesn’t really matter because the church is the higher authority, which determines the content of the scriptures, and accepts the content as inspired, so if you have a situation, such as the one I described in which an entire passage or story was added to the gospel of John the story of the adulterous women or chapter 21 of the Gospel of John which was added by the disciples of John after Johns death, it obvious, cause at the end of chapter 21, “These things were done by the beloved disciple and we know that his testimony is true,” that kind of language shows that this was added on latter, it unusual that an entire story or chapter would be added but there are a few instances like this in the Bible. Its not a problem if you accept oral tradition, since they were oral traditions, which circulated for a long time they weren’t invented by the person who added them into the gospel of John they were oral traditions that circulated for a long time before the scribe or the copier decided in insert those stories into the gospel. Chapter 21 is much older and added very shortly after the apostle John, the story of the adulterous women was added much latter but it was a story, that was known as part of the oral tradition of Christ because even after the Gospels were written the early Christians continued to tell the story of Christ orally and pass along oral sayings of the Lord, because everything that Christ said and did, was not put into the Gospels, but by doing this, by inserting the story into the Gospels. Like the story of the adulterous women the copyist was not corrupting the text, which is what Bart Irman says now, that this text was corrupted, since the copyist wanted to preserve this story for the rest of us, by inserting it, otherwise it would have been lost to us.1st Corinthians 15, Paul gives the oral tradition of Christ’s resurrection telling who Christ appeared to Cepas, then to the 12, he listed at least 4 resurrection appearances of Christ that we do not know anything about but they were famous everyone in antiquity knew those stories, so Paul was just reminding them of what everyone already knew, and those stories of Christ appearing to Peter by himself to James, to 500 brethren at one time an appearance to all the apostles, that’s different from the 12 though, those stories were not written down and if they were those writings have not survived, and the knowledge of what happened when the Lord appeared to those people has been lost. Since these stories were told orally at first and some information about Christ was written down the rest which was not written down was lost because we no longer pass along an oral tradition of the words and the deeds of the Lord so this shows that oral tradition preceded the written Bible, the Gospels were not written right away, it took time before the gospels were written down and many, many of the stories and saying of Christ were lost but we know that and it does not bother us so if something happens to be added latter by a scribe I think its great that the scribe added the story of the adulterous women, I think its wonderful that the disciples of John added chapter 21 of John, as long as what it says is true and the Church accepts it as true, guess what its scripture, it makes no difference whether John himself wrote it or someone added it latter, its still inerrant because it is true, it is scripture because the Church accepts it as such, it is not the scripture which is the depository of the Apostolic tradition and the guardian of the Christian faith but the Church which has preserved uncorrupted and inerrant the fullness of the Apostolic tradition, and I will repeat that cause I think its so important; it is not Scripture which is the depository of the Apostolic tradition and the guardian of the Christian faith but the Church which has preserved uncorrupted and inerrant the fullness of the Apostolic tradition. Bible is not the complete depository of Apostolic tradition because it doesn’t contain everything, that Christ said and did or anyone else having to do with the Bible. So the Apostolic tradition was oral first and the church has preserved that, some of it was written down the Bible is nothing more than the surviving written record of Apostolic tradition I don’t exactly like it when people say that the Orthodox excepts scripture and tradition, as though they were two different things because the scripture is tradition regardless of whether their may be flaws in the Bible, in manuscript copies, or our standards today it makes no difference, because it still reflects the truth about God, which the church has preserved and continually bares witness to. So the scripture is just the written account of an oral tradition.
So if we wish to talk about how the Bible came down to us we must begin with oral tradition. So first there was an oral tradition behind many books of the Bible, there are exceptions to this of course the Epistles of Paul, they weren’t passed along orally, since Paul wrote them down, the revelation of St. John the apocalypse how long the oral tradition lasted for certain stories, it depends upon the stories this includes the Old Testament. In the case of the Old Testament there were sometimes hundreds of years of oral transmission before something was committed to writing take the Psalms for example, the Psalms were psalms they weren’t written down immediately someone didn’t run into the synagogue with a copy of a psalm they just composed, they were sung and then written down slowly, David wrote some of the Psalms, but not all of them and sometimes they knew then as psalms of David and they sang them before they were written down so oral transmission of the Bible is a fact many parts of it existed as tradition and it shouldn’t bother you. People I know feel uncomfortable about oral tradition because they assume that it is not reliable, but that’s not the case and its nothing to be concerned about, it is only in our modern times that we think of the written word as more reliable than oral tradition, today we are more likely to believe something if we see it in writing but in antiquity the written word was considered less reliable because books were hand copied, and when a book was hand copied anyone could write something and sign the name of someone else to it, anyone could take an existing work that was known by everyone copy it remove sections add sections that weren’t part of the original work, in antiquity you could never have confidence in a writing because you could not be absolutely certain of who wrote it or after it was written whether it had been copied faithfully and accurately, but on the other hand in the case of oral tradition that was far more respected and reliable because you knew who your teacher was and you knew who his teacher or her teacher was ect. And this was how people learned they sat on the floor and the teacher taught and you learned things orally no textbooks, so they were accustomed to learning and retaining information in their mind and were tested on things that they had memorized and they had phenomenal abilities in memorizing, Romans had slaves who’s job was to memorize everyone’s name political status, and family life. They trusted their teacher because you knew them personally you trusted them you knew the source you knew their judgment you trusted the information that he or she gave you, I say she since the early church also had female teachers, like Persilla. Human societies in various parts of the world for thousands of years had a rich oral tradition, many societies only recently were given alphabets and the Orthodox are responsible for creating the alphabet of many cultures when the Orthodox missions went to the Slavs, and Russians in Keiv they created the Cyrillic alphabet; they created an alphebet for the Aluetts so for many people all they ever knew about their culture their stories were passed along orally they were used to this and the idea that writing was more reliable is a very modern notion people were accustom to memorizing large amounts of information and very accurately, its still a tradition in many cultures unfortunately its being lost in favor of technology but even among Serbs, Greeks, and Arabs there is still a lot of emphasis on memorization like on Greek independence day all little children are expected to recite a poem, some members of Islam they are able to memorize the entire Quran. In elementary school I had to memorize the declaration of independence, the preamble to the constitution. The art of memorization is being lost, but for all of human culture people used to memorize that’s how the stories of their ancestors and their traditions were passed along. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer didn’t write them Homer composed them, he was blind he composed it memorized it and then he taught it to others and it was memorized by others and passed along orally for hundreds of years before it was ever written down two entire books, don’t tell me oral tradition isn’t reliable. The stories were memorized due to the fact that they were important, how important was Christ? How well do you think the people who meet him who encountered him who knew him how well do you think they passed along the stories, how much do you think they talked about him, I think they talked about him constantly I think they remembered vividly what he said and did because he was so important. Their experiences with him were so unique so monumental, so unimaginable, the things that he said and did people talked about him and they remembered and passed along the stories and the sayings of Christ. Important stories such as that people didn’t tire of hearing, just like stories that go on in you family, or not tiring of a favorite song. Christ also promised in the Gospel of John that the Holy Spirit would come so they would remember all that was taught, so even in the recollection of the oral tradition the Holy Spirit is active and assisting so what dose that mean? That means that the oral tradition is also inspired by the Holy Spirit.