A common assumption is that the nature of early Christianity was uniform, but it was, in fact, extremely diverse. This diversity was evident by the wide range of writings from the time, only some of which made it into the New Testament. Whether these writings were actual representations of the views of Jesus’ own apostles was hotly debated by early Christians for centuries.
5,400 Greek Copies of the New Testament
No original text of the New Testament is in existence today; all were lost or destroyed long ago. Nor are there second generation copies of the originals. The earliest known manuscripts of Paul’s letters, for instance, were copied nearly 150 years after Paul wrote them (around 200 C.E.). The same is true for the Gospels, although a tiny fragment of John was discovered in a trash heap in the sands of Egypt, dating from around 125-150 C.E.
Not until after the fourth century can complete manuscripts of the New Testament be found, and there are far more of them preserved than any other book from antiquity. There are currently some 5,400 Greek copies of all or part of the New Testament known to exist (outside the tens of thousands of copies in other languages), dating from the second century to the time of the Renaissance, most coming from the Middle Ages. The manuscripts range from small scraps containing a few verses to volumes containing all twenty-seven books.
What is most fascinating about these Greek copies is they show how the scribes (the copyists) changed the manuscripts they worked on. When comparing all 5,400 copies with one another, no two copies are alike. In fact, nobody can say with certainty how often they were changed, because no one has been able to count the actual differences between them. Some scholars estimate the number is around 300,000.
What is safe to say is that there are more differences amongst the manuscripts than there are actual words in the entire New Testament.
Scribal Changes in the New Testament
Long before the days of the printing press, books in the ancient world were copied by hand, one book and letter at a time. As a result, scribes often made mistakes, which were easy, as ancient scribes did not use spaces between words, paragraph divisions, or even punctuation. But they also intentionally altered manuscripts, adding or changing entire verses. The next scribe would come along, copying the same manuscript and repeat earlier mistakes while making a few changes of his own, and so the process was repeated down through history.
While some changes were small and unimportant, such as changing the word order or the accidental omission of a line (sometimes an entire page), others were significant and intentional. For example, the last twelve verses that are found today in Mark are nowhere to be found in any of the original copies of the Gospel.
The story of the woman taken in adultery in John, and the famous account of Jesus sweating blood, are not found in older copies, they only show up in texts from the Middle Ages.
The longer form of the Lord’s Prayer, which is still recited today, can only originally be found in Matthew 6, but scribes added petitions to Luke 11 and smoothed out the differences.
Sometimes scribes would change the meaning of an entire passage, so it said what it was ‘supposed to mean’ in the scribe’s opinion. 1 John 5: 7-8, is the only passage in the whole Bible that clearly asserts the Christian doctrine of the trinity (the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as three persons in one Godhead). Interestingly, this doctrine cannot be found in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament before the fourteenth century.
These types of changes could radically affect the interpretation of a book and tended to take place between the second and fourth centuries when doctrinal controversies were in full swing.
Early Christianity and the Formation of the New Testament
Christians living in the second, third, even fourth centuries did not share today’s Canon (collection of books that Christians accept as authoritative).
The New Testament did not simply drop out of the sky after Jesus’ death, the books contained in it were written by individual authors at different points of time, in different places, and all had different concerns. Whether these writings actually represented the views of Jesus’ own apostles, however, was in some instances, debated for centuries.
To grasp exactly how the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were chosen, requires an understanding that a basic feature of early Christianity was its diversity. Different Christian groups struggled with each other for hundreds of years after Jesus’ death to determine whose beliefs and practices were “correct,” the group that won is the group that decided which books (and there were many) should be included among Scriptures.
In some ways, differences amongst Christians today, pale in comparison with early Christians. In the second century, there were individuals claiming to be Christians who believed there were 2, 30, even 365 different Gods. There were Christians who did not believe God created the world, or had any involvement with it. One faction of Christianity held that the Old Testament was a wicked book inspired by an evil deity. All these early Christians claimed that their ideas were taught to them by Jesus himself and could appeal to written proof, for every group appeared to have documents supposedly written by Jesus’ own apostles.
What is clear is that early Christians did not agree on the fundamental points of their religion and the Christian Scriptures emerged out of the conflicts of these early groups. It would not be until 367 C.E. that the New Testament was recorded as the authoritative canon of scripture.
Want to read more? See Homosexuality and the Bible: Putting Same-Sex Sexual Activity in its Historical Context
Source:
- Bart D. Ehrman. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
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