Monday, December 4th | New Testament Textual Criticism

Hello, everyone. Today is Monday, December the 4th. I'm Ryan Hill.

John Galantis. And you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abaddon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

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Absolutely nothing less than five stars. And listen, we're going to leave a couple of links in the description to make that easier for you guys. And today's verse of the day is coming to us for Psalm 69, 30. It says, I will praise the name of God with a song and I will magnify him with thanksgiving. Sometimes people have this tendency, and we've seen this, you probably more so than me, to regard the musical portion of a worship service as the prelude to the actual service.

Yeah, that's our warmup. Like, that's the precursor, that's the front matter, and then we're going to get to the actual service. The music in service is to give people that 15-minute window to get to their seat so they don't miss real church.

Wrap up their conversation, catch up with this person, grab a cup of coffee, go to the bathroom, then make your way sitting down almost as the third song is in it. Because you don't want to miss real church. You don't want to miss the preaching. And of course we're being kind of tongue-in-cheek, but this is God's worship. You know, when you walk into a service and the music is going and you feel that little, oh, thank goodness I'm not late, understand what it is that you're sacrificing. This is the moment where you get to stand before God Almighty and worship Him and give Him thanks for what He's done for us. This is where you get to respond to God.

And we're kind of, in a way, we're thankful that we're missing part of that. Because, well, I don't like singing. I don't feel comfortable standing in a room full of people and singing. It's like, get used to that. You're going to be doing it for all of eternity. So you better get over that. That's a good point.

You've got a short 80 years to get over that little hump, because you've got the rest of eternity to be doing it if you want to spend that with God. Yeah. And the command here is, I will praise the name of God with a song. It is musical in nature. That's not an error.

That's not a twist of phrase. It is musical in nature, because there's something profound that happens when we sing together, when we worship together. There are barriers that are brought down, and I get that that makes some people uncomfortable. But hey, I mean, it's worth it to be a little uncomfortable in order to grow closer to God and grow closer with your church family. So, prayer and size worship.

You know, I've seen a lot here at Clearview. There are people who maybe feel uncomfortable doing worship, but it's crazy, because some of the same people who feel uncomfortable like singing worship will get up on stage and act in the plays. That is true, yeah.

It's not that it's like an adjustable scale. It's more that I feel, because I would feel super uncomfortable. Like our plays, our spring plays and our winter plays, like we're doing this winter, they're an act of worship. Even though they're not centered around God or the Bible, like the story-wise, they're still an act of worship. And so, it's kind of funny to me, like some of the people that I see acting in the plays, I look at that and I go like, that's crazy.

I would do it, but I would feel super uncomfortable and awkward and shy, and they're just like taking it and running it. You have done it. I mean, you've been up there. Yeah, yeah. But it was a hump that I had to overcome.

It wasn't something that came natural that I drew energy from, like this is really cool. It was like, I'll do this, and I'll do it excellently. How's the play coming, by the way? Oh man, it's going so well. Close to release day, right? Yeah, I mean, this coming weekend. Yeah, we're on Monday.

It's coming up this Saturday, Sunday. So for those of you who don't know, our theater ministry here at Clearview, it's a way that we impact community. Dr. Shah's heart is for theater. He was in plays. He was in shows, which makes me happy, because that was me growing up. I wasn't a sports kid.

I was a theater kid. And you also don't have to convince your pastor that it's a good idea. Right, exactly.

I mean, it was his idea. So to have this ministry where people who maybe aren't athletically minded can use the talents and gifts that God has given them to tell a story. And what we tell our actors all the time in every rehearsal is that we get the chance to participate in this act of worship where we're reflecting part of God's character, because God is a storytelling God. God is a God who communicates through story, because most of the Bible is told through story. There are Psalms, there's poetry, there's, you know, there's history, but most of it is narrative.

And so we get the chance to participate in that aspect of the image of God within us by communicating through story. And what is this play that we're doing this year? We're putting on Little Women. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Little Women? Little Women.

What was the one we did last time? Anne of Green Gables. None of those have anything to do with the Bible, though. None of those have anything to do with, those are not Christian plays.

Well, I'm glad that you brought that up. Of course they're not Christian plays. Because this is a church. Right. It is a church.

Right. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because the theater ministry is also part of what we regard here as our cultural mandate, which is to go into the culture, go into the world and use every available Christ-honoring means to win the lost. So you might not have people flocking in your doors to see, like, sweet little Christmas and tada.

Not that there's anything wrong with those, if that's your wheelhouse. But you will have people lining up to see a show that they know, like Little Women or Charlotte's Web or Anne of Green Gables or It's a Wonderful Life. We've done all of those shows, and through those shows, through the message that Dr. Shaw communicates ahead of time and how he wraps things up, we take those principles, those values, those traditional values and the principles that are communicated in the show, and at the bedrock of those is the gospel. At the bedrock of those is Christianity. Because, for example, in Little Women, the show centers obviously on women.

It centers obviously on the March family, specifically the March women, their mother, Marmee, and the four daughters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. And it elevates women in that sense. And, you know, that relates to the Bible and how the Bible elevates women. Everywhere that Christianity has gone, women have been elevated.

Their status has been elevated. So it's just cool to see how all that kind of twists together. No, it is not an inherently Christian play, but there are Christian values communicated in that show. Yeah, Christianity is notorious for capturing the culture of the time that it's in. And it's really crazy how limited Christians will think. And Christians, especially creative Christians, want to be creative, but they will put themselves into a box and say, we can only discuss. We have people write into the radio show and be like, why are y'all talking about fighting Darth Vader and a Christian?

What does that have to do with the Bible? Like I'm searching for the thread and it's not connecting. And I'm like, it's not going to connect.

It's not going to connect. How am I going to relate some of the stuff we talk about here in this intro to the Bible or to God? The point is that you're capturing the attention in the hearts of all people. Like, you know who listens to exclusively Christian content? Christians. You know who loves Star Wars and talking about their kids and all this stuff?

Everybody loves that. So the same thing with our plays. And if you're at a church and you've always wanted to do a theater ministry and you feel like you're stuck into writing explicitly five-minute Christian skits, I would encourage you to follow Ryan's example.

Start doing plays that are classic plays and you will see... I was not expecting the amount of people who flooded into the doors. We have to do it twice. We have to do two nights. Two nights.

Saturday and Sunday. So that means if you're local, if you're here in town, we'd love to see you at the show. There are still tickets available and it's totally free.

We don't make people pay for tickets. It's just so we can have a head count and so people have a little bit of compulsion to come. But as a part of the show, there's a mission that we're doing in partnership with Acts because one of the things that the Martz family does through the show of Little Women is they take care of others who are less fortunate than them.

Even when they're falling on hard times, they're still looking for ways to take care of other people. So we want to do that in our community by working with Acts area Christians together in service. We're going to be doing a canned food drive. As people come in, you can pick up your concessions in the lobby, you can drive your ticket off, get your program, but also bring those canned goods that we can, just like Marmee and her girls, seek to be a blessing to our community.

Love it. Coming up this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, doors open at six and the show starts at seven. If you'd like tickets, write in and let us know, 252-582-5028. We're going to grab Dr. Shaw for the rest of our show and we'll be back after this. Hey. Hey, you. Me? No, not you.

You. Listening to the Clearview Today show. You're here right now because you love Christian talk radio and I'm a hundred percent down for that. But what if I told you that Clearview Church also produces original music?

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You can worship God in any situation. In the car, at home, in the gym, while cleaning your house, wherever you are, we'll be right there with you. If you want to get out on Apple Music or on Spotify, anywhere digital music is consumed, we've got a few singles out right now. We have an EP out as well. And right now, at this moment actually, we are working on our first ever full length original album.

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Amen. Let's hop back into the show. Welcome back to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028.

That's right. We're glad you're here. You're starting the week off right here at the Clearview Today studio.

We're here with Dr. Abbadon Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism. Dr. Shah, very good to see you this lovely Monday afternoon. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Do you have a case of the Garfields or are you pretty good with Mondays?

I'm good with Mondays because Monday is our day off anyways. So Nicole and I spend some time together and we kind of go away, do some shopping or just go out to eat or just watch a movie or something. So we have a good time. It's good to spend that time. We spent a lot of time last week, pretty much the entire week we spent diving into your paper that you presented at ETS the week prior to that, which was centered around Ephesians 5-10. I'm sorry, 5-30 is what I meant to say.

I was looking at my calendar. But it's funny because that one verse has sparked five and now going on six episodes of deep theological conversation. Right. And we're not just talking about that verse. We're talking about the discipline of New Testament textual criticism, which then leads to the discussion about textual variants, manuscripts, discussions about versions, translations, and even the doctrine of inerrancy. It leads into apologetics with learning how to defend our faith against some like, say, Bart Ehrman and his orthodox corruption of scripture. So it's not like we're just sitting here just drilling down on this one particular variant. We're also dealing with so many other subtopics, but they are very interesting. And the feedback we're getting from people is that they're learning from this. I'm really excited because as I discuss these variants, and I did in the last message that I had preached a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the 70 that Jesus sent out.

Remember that? Luke chapter 10, verse one. But some translations have 72. So now I had people asking me, I've had several people ask me, like three very pointedly, why is my Bible saying 72 and your Bible says 70? And then somebody sent me an email and then somebody in our prayer morning, our morning prayer time with the men asked me the same question. Hey, I've got a big question here.

And I said, 70 versus 72? Yes. How did you know? I said, because it's been the talk of the town.

Everybody's asking me that question. So I crafted out the answer. I think Ryan's read the answer. David's read the answer.

I forwarded it to whoever wanted to know. But what I'm excited about is that this is where a lot of discussion is happening. This is where people like Bart Ehrman others sort of assail the faith.

Look at all these variants. And he loves to say there are more variants in the New Testament manuscript tradition than there are actual words in the Greek New Testament. And now our church and people who are listening to the radio show are actually talking about variant reading. So they're learning. I think it's really interesting as well that what we're doing here, what we've been doing this past week, because typically what text critics will say is that, yes, that's true, but 96% of them are all more or less negligible.

They're just like a comma in the wrong place. 94, I would say 94. That's right, 94%. But it's only 6%. But we're actually diving into that 6%. Right. Like your paper because it would be easy to say, oh, 94% is negligible. Cool.

I'll hang out there. Now here's the thing. Why are they negligible?

When you listen to this radio show, you're learning or you will learn why they are negligible. I know we say that all the time. What does that mean? What does that mean? It means that based on text critical principles, based on external evidence of which manuscript is more trustworthy over others, based on text types, based on scribal habits, based on internal evidence of how a particular scribe would transcribe a manuscript or how an author like Paul would write or how Peter wrote or how John or Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, there are differences. There are certain stylistic differences. How do you take all that into account when you are making a judgment on a variant? Okay. So we are learning all these things and not just saying this is a variant and it should not be there or 94% are negligible.

Why are they negligible? We're hoping that as we discuss this, you begin to understand. Oh, so that's why there's a word order situation. Okay, so that does not affect the meaning, but word orders do get switched and that's okay.

We can compare enough and understand the discipline enough to know, okay, the word order got switched in these manuscripts versus these over here. Let's stick with this one. I love that you do that. Not just from the pulpit, but on this radio show as well because so many people are benefiting from that. So many people are writing in with questions maybe they never thought to ask before. You're teaching us to ask questions that we didn't know we should be asking and I think that that is, you know, that's what people have been desperately craving.

They want that depth and it's not just a matter of, like you said, not just a matter of like, oh, here's a variant. It shouldn't be there, but teaching us all the underlying issues with a variant, like how does this affect theology? How does this impact your doctrine of inerrancy? How does this affect your view of the Bible as a whole? Or as John said, these are negligible. How?

How do you know they're negligible? Because what someone like Ehrman and others would say, and he says it all the time, there are more variants than there are words in the New Testament or the Greek New Testament. Why does he say that? Because he's not just saying, he's not talking about just the 6% at that point, right? Right. He's talking about the entire corpus of variants and he wants you to, he's talking about the 100%. Right. And the every single, the subtext of his statement is every variant is significant.

Yes. He won't say that. Right. He clarifies that. He will say that 94% are inconsequential. He will say that.

Right. But he will say it in such a way that you hear more the number of variants than you hear the significance of those variants. So see what I mean? He's just a very, very, should I say, good writer or deceptive writer who will say it, but it's like you go, oh yeah, there it is. He's clarifying. So he is sticking to what we as text critics normally agree upon. But when I read that chapter, I'm walking away going, nobody really knows what the text of the New Testament is all about. Why am I getting that as the conclusion when I should also be getting this proviso over here or this qualification or this or this little exceptional clause here. But when I read it, it's like those things disappear in my mind.

He's skilled at his own style of rhetoric, which is not always beneficial to the church at large or to the population. Definitely not. It feels very much deceptive. Right. Yeah.

And those who know will, will pick up on this strategy or this, this tactic or this device of deceiving. Yeah. When you first launched into the field of textual criticism, was that back in the nineties? Yeah.

I began reading Metzger's, Bruce Metzger's text of the New Testament in 1997. Did you know then, or was it something that you had to kind of discover that it's like, I want to have a conversation about this. We talked about this a little bit at the start of today's episode. I want to talk about this and it's like, okay, we can, but we have to talk about all this other stuff first.

Like it's like this never ending sort of, not a rabbit hole, but it's just like, there's so much underneath that we have to understand before we talk about this. Was that a shock to you or did you know going in? No, it was a shock to me. Really?

Yeah. Because as I began to learn this, I began to learn it in my elementary Greek class with Dr. Maurice Robinson, my mentor under whom I did my PhD work. And so he would talk about it. And there were students in the class who knew textual criticism before I did, although I know more about it now than they did.

But at the time they knew more about it. And I was like, what are they talking about? Textual variants and Scrabble habits and P46 and P45 and Olaf and B and D and A and 33 and 1739 and all these manuscripts. What are they referring to? What are the lectionaries? What are the versions?

Why are they talking about the Armenian versus Syriac or Coptic or Latin? What are they referring to? Who sat there and put this together? Where is this information?

For a long time, I was like, who keeps this data? Where is it at? It's kind of like that now where we talk about all these manuscripts, it's like, where are the manuscripts? Are they at Duke or something?

Are they in London? Where do I find the manuscripts? Because when we say Dr. Shaw studies manuscripts, it's like so he goes in a library and unrolls them and flattens them out and studies them.

It's like, how does that work? So there are listings of manuscripts out there. There are listings done by different scholars.

Like one that has been done is by Gregory. Gregory, not the Pope, but Gregory, Casper René Gregory. He was a text critic and a very good one. He was an American scholar, but with a German background. And he studied in Germany and he studied textual criticism.

This is back in the thirties or somewhere there, twenty thirties. But he is the one who came up with this entire numbering system that we have today. I mean, have you wondered where this numbering system come from? So there are Hebrew letters. Then there are Roman numerals. I'm sorry, there are our regular English alphabets.

Then there are just regular numbers, English numbers. So who came up with this? Well, at different times in the history of textual criticism, people began using certain symbols to designate manuscripts. But as more manuscripts were discovered, they realized they were running out of alphabets.

They're running out of the Hebrew alphabet. So they had to go back and say, okay, well, let's go with numbers now. Let's start with zero and their number. Then we can accommodate for more if more are discovered.

But through times they got all over the place. So you would need a guide just to know what this scholar is talking about when he uses that number. Oh, so that zero one is the aleph here, which is Codex Sinaiticus. Okay, we're talking about the same thing. Zero two is B, which is Codex Vaticanus.

Okay, I'm getting it now. So different scholars had done that. And then some tried to sort of get them all standardized. And folks, for those who are listening and viewing, we're talking about how do we know which manuscript is which or what is the number of a manuscript or what is the name or designation? So there was a scholar by the name of Von Soten who came along and he said, let me start all over again.

I'm going to make them like this, this and this. And many people didn't follow him. It was like, yeah, you can do that, but we're going to keep the confusion going. Are all of the manuscripts, these are all New Testament manuscripts, are they complete New Testaments or are some of them like fragmented? Some are fragmented. Some of them also have the Old Testament.

So it's not like, okay. Like Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, they also have the Old Testament. They have the Septuagint.

And we have them here. We have the facsimile of at least two Septuagint. But if you're looking at like a listing of the manuscripts. And just to clarify for those who are listening, they're not complete in some places, they are incomplete.

But go ahead. I was just saying, if you're looking at a list of the manuscripts, it's pretty much a given that like some of these could be complete New Testaments. Some of these are heavily fragmented. Oh, yeah, yeah. The papyrus definitely are.

Wow. But even the codices. Is there a way to keep track of that or did you just kind of know?

Let me back up. So Gregory put together his list. And in that list, he gives the name of the manuscript, the number of the manuscript, if there's a number. Definitely a number is there.

The name may not be there. And then he also listed what do those manuscripts contain. So the references are there. Also, they give information on where do you find them, the provenance of those manuscripts. And then if somebody has done a study on that manuscript, some bibliography or bibliographical information on that manuscript is also there.

So this was done. And where did he get his information? He got it from looking at other people who talked about it, like Lockman or Scrivener or Tischendorf or Westcott and Hord. He's getting all his information from them and he's compiling them. And the key is to keep everything compact. So you're not walking around with this humongous, like an Oxford English Dictionary volume after volume. No, you want it to be quick so you can turn just a quick few pages and you get to, you know, 475. Quick pages and turn to L422.

So you want to be able to turn to them quickly. And the compiling of all these manuscripts, certain patterns start to emerge based on like where they were discovered or what they contained. Is that where we get text types from? No, no, no.

Text types that were already a thing? Already a thing. Okay.

It was put together by a scholar by the name of Bengal. Okay. But that's way back.

He went a couple hundred years prior to that. Completely different conversation. Completely different conversation. Gotcha. We can talk about that.

Sure, sure. And then another scholar by the name of Kurt Ahland, this is back in the early 90s, came up with his list. And I have a PDF copy of it. I wanted to buy it, but it's sort of out of print. Really? But the PDF copy is available.

I have it. And I can go there and the manuscript listings are updated. Because you're talking about Gregory's numbers. I mean, you're going back 20s, 30s, 1920s, 30s. So Ahland is 1990s. So lots happened in those 60 years. A lot of manuscripts, like the Chester Beatty and all that have been discovered, Bodmer, Papyri have been discovered.

So you got to upgrade, update those listings. That's why you call them the Gregory Ahland numbers. That's where they're getting it from. Here I heard the Gregory Ahland number. So they're going with Gregory the scholar and Kurt Ahland the scholar from Munster. So if today new manuscripts were discovered, they would go through that exact same process and be added to those lists? Yes.

But great question. But it's no longer the Gregory's book, because that's already done book. I already have that as a PDF as well.

Kurt Ahland is dead and gone. So I mean, you can, I guess, have another edition of his book, but nobody's doing that. Now it's a website run by Munster, Germany, the university there. It's called the NTVMR website. On that website, all these manuscripts are listed. Many times their pictures are there as well.

Sometimes the pictures are inaccessible because the libraries don't want to give you permission. But if you ask in an email, you can get an image of that manuscript. But you have to go through them to get it.

Right. So that kind of information is there. So you can go, everything that Ahland has and everything that, most everything that Ahland has, most everything that Gregory had now is on the NTVMR website. Bibliographical information, like has anybody written on them? Has anybody written on these manuscripts? Well, J. Keith Elliott, who I write about in one of my chapters, who doesn't believe in the original text anymore, but he's done an incredible job. Several editions. His book has gone through several editions. It's the bibliography of the Greek New Testament manuscripts. What he's done is he's listed every one of those manuscripts and anybody has anything ever written, even if it's a tiny paragraph, you can find it in his book. And I have the latest one.

But even since he did that, which is in the, I want to say in the mid 2000s, I believe, or 2050, I can't remember. I need to have that information from me. Many more studies have come out.

So even that has to be upgraded or updated, not upgraded, updated. Wow. That was going to be my question. Is the classification and the cataloging system, is it pretty settled and standardized now?

Is it still something that's kind of in flux? I think pretty much everybody's like, we're going to keep this system. Because it works.

It works. And we know how to fix it. If somebody creates a new system, now you'll have to take that new system and then take an old book.

Because we're getting a lot of information that has been collated by other scholars or decisions have been made through the past 300 years. Then you have to take your new system of numbering and then go and have a little key that will help you know, okay, so I have here, I'm just making it up. Manuscript A21.

Let's see, who is A21? Oh, that's this manuscript here. Okay.

I mean, imagine how everything will lag. I love listening to you talk about textual criticism because I can hear and see not only your passion for the field, but your passion for how it relates to the word of God. Thank you.

And how it impacts us and how we should understand that as well. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, if you learned something about textual criticism, maybe it sparked an interest in you in this field, we'd love to hear from you. Write in and let us know at 252-582-5028. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. And don't forget you can partner with us financially on that same website. We're going to continue the conversation on tomorrow's episode. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.