#STRask - How Do You Know You Have the Right Bible?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Questions about the Catholic Bible versus the Protestant Bible, whether or not the original New Testament manuscripts exist somewhere and how we would know if we found one, and the implications of not having the original manuscripts of the Bible.   How do you know you have the right version of Christianity? The Catholic Bible was assembled closer to the time of Jesus, and your church just took books out of that Bible. If an all-powerful God can’t maintain the truth over time, he probably isn’t real. Do you think the original New Testament manuscripts still exist somewhere, and if we ever found one, how would we know it was the original? What do we mean when we say we don’t have an original copy of the Bible? Which parts aren’t right, and how would we ever know?

Welcome, dear listeners. We're so glad you're here for the hashtag SDRask podcast. I'm Amy Hall and Greg Kockel is here with me. Hi, dear Amy. Just trying to mix it up for you, Greg. That's great. I love it. All right.

Let's start with a question from Johnny Stein. How do I respond to this? How do you know you have the right version of Christianity? The Catholic Bible was assembled much closer to the time of Jesus, and yet your church just took books out of the Bible that it liked. If an all-powerful God can't maintain the truth over time, he probably isn't real." So, a few questions in there.

Well this kind of question really annoys me. At first it sounded like it was coming from a Roman Catholic, but now it sounds like it's coming from a skeptic who is saying, look at you guys can't even agree about your own books. And therefore, what kind of God is that? All right. Well, when you study the history of the canon, you find something entirely different than what was just described there. In fact, I know this in recent memory because I wrote an article about it last year on solid ground that's available on our website. The title is New Testament Canon, Which Books and Why? And they specifically deal with, after I lay out the criterion that the New Testament, that the early Christians implicitly used, or explicitly used actually, to determine which books were God's books.

The wording is important here because the canon is not an authoritative list of books. Like some authority said, here's the right books, but it's a list of authoritative books. In other words, the early church recognized which books had the inherent authority in them. And that wasn't hard, because before books were written, they understood that the guide and rule canon for the early church were the apostles that Jesus had personally trained and sent out to represent him. They were the canon.

They were in charge. Once they died, anything that they had written was in the category, was at least in the running, for the authority. So in a certain sense, the apostles, Jesus and the apostles have always been the authority. The question was, which things do we have now that have survived early church, first century, that were written by apostles and carried that same authority with them. And so that was the main criterion. And another criteria was a sense of what they called Catholicity. Now this is Catholic small c.

In other words, it was commonly accepted by all of the players that particular books had vested in them certain authority. So if a book was, or an epistle or whatever, was clearly Pauline, Paul, or Johnine, John, or Petrine, Peter, well, it was canon. And that's why by the end of the first century, more than 20 of the books, at least 20, were already acknowledged by everybody to be authoritative canon. And the ones that were left, 1 and 2, 3 John, Revelation, Book of Hebrews, a couple of others for 2 Peter, is because they weren't entirely sure about the authorship. But once they hammered this

out, they came to a conclusion based on common consensus. That's Catholicity. That's the third requirement for canon. And I detail this all in the article. And then they had a clear list of everything that they all acknowledged. But what about these extra books by the Roman Catholics? Those books were not affirmed by the entire church. This is called the Apocrypha. First of all, they're Jewish documents written between the time of Malachi and John the Baptist, the intertestamental period. And the Jews did not acknowledge these books as canon. These were not God-inspired in their mind.

Okay? First step. Secondly, when these books were discussed, you have Augustine in favor of them and Jerome against them. Now these are two major leaders in the church. And you could, I mean, those are the ones that come immediately to mind, but there were, the breakdown was 50-50, different people on either side. In other words, there was not a consistent affirmation from the early church that the

so-called Apocrypha was God-inspired. In other words, it did not satisfy the test of Catholicity, which is one of the vital tests of canon. What's really curious, though, is when you get all the way to the 16th century and the Council of Trent, when the Roman Catholic Church officially canonized the Apocrypha, one-third of all the priests who voted, voted against it. One-third of all the priests who voted, voted against it. One-third of all the priests voted against it. So it was a two-thirds majority, but it ought to be significant that even in the Roman Catholic Church, there wasn't a unified voice.

And that long amount later. Yeah, 1500 years later. And so when I hear things like the Protestant took these books out of the Bible, this is just, this reflects a complete ignorance about how the process took place. And there was also the intimation that the Roman Catholic Church was the one who put the original list together. There was no Roman Catholic Church the first 400 years. There just wasn't. There was no supremacy of Rome. At the Council of Nicaea, Rome had two, that was 325, Rome had two representatives, just like every other region had two.

And there were like 300 and some total representatives. They had no special say. That bishop of Rome had no role at all in the most important early council of the Church, the Council of Nicaea. Actually, if you go back to the first council, which is the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, Peter's there, he gives his say so, but so does Paul, and so does Barnabas. And then the final conclusion regarding that was all done by James, the brother of Jesus. So James presided over that, not Peter. So you don't have any real history like is intimated here in this passage. And a lot of Roman Catholics actually state this,

but that isn't the way it worked out. It just isn't. And I chronicle all of that in the piece Solid Ground that I wrote last year, New Testament Canon, which books and why. So what would you say to this last line here? if an all-powerful God can't maintain the truth over time, he probably isn't real. Well, he did. He did maintain the truth over time. It doesn't mean you don't have naysayers and people say false things. The truth of God is evident.

Here you've got a skeptic that intimates there is no God. Okay, you're going to have human beings that go south. It doesn't mean God is incapable, because God doesn't, he doesn't cause everything to happen in a machine-like way. Oh, God's really powerful, so nobody's allowed to dissent, nobody, fallen human being can have a different view, there can't be any debates about this. No, there are debates about it. have a different view. There can't be any debates about this. No, there are debates about it. The end result though, I think, is the canon that God secured. But there's a process that goes on. Why is that a flaw of God's? Let's go to a question from MJ. Do you think the original New Testament manuscripts still

exist somewhere? If more manuscripts are found someday, how would we know if they are the originals? That's a fair question, and it reminds me of the Da Vinci Code. If you saw the movie, you know that towards the end of the movie, there were all these manuscripts that were discovered in some place called, in some place like Scotland or in Ireland or some Abbey down in the place like Scotland or in Ireland or some abbey down in the basement, you know, water is dripping everywhere, you know, oh, we found these manuscripts. Manuscripts do not survive in water.

The manuscripts we have come principally from Egypt because it's dry and that's what preserves the manuscripts. But manuscripts are fragile. They're made out of papyri. They were made out of vellum, which is skin. There's another type of skin that was used, parchment, and papyri, parchment, and vellum, I guess. and papyri, partridge and vellum, I guess, but still they're fragile. And if you have a library that's got books in it that are just 40 or 50 years old in your own house, you can see where the paper is starting to deteriorate. The worms eat it or whatever. I get books like that. And that's just in my lifetime, in my recent lifetime. So because these things are made out of material that disintegrate, then I have no expectation that any of the autographs, the originals, are still existing.

photographs, the originals, are still existing. The oldest one we have is a piece of the Gospel of John called P52, I think that's it, and that was found in Egypt. It is a small scrap and that's the oldest one. They date it by paleographical methods, writing style, as maybe early second century, 125 or thereabouts. So that's pretty amazing that you can have a piece that has survived 2,000 years, but it's only in that unique environment, a very dry environment, that it was able to do that. What's amazing is that could have, the original could have still existed

when that one was created. Oh yeah, that's true. That is true. And you think of the, if that one lasted almost 2,000 years, the originals could have lasted hundreds of years easily. And so when people are copying, they're copying from the autograph, you know? That certainly is possible. It could have even lasted longer than that because people almost deified some of these

objects, unfortunately. So that's certainly possible. The originals aren't around, and there's no need for the originals because the question is would we know it was an original? And I don't know how we would know that. I'm not sure. Now there were some that Paul himself signed. That's the only way we could know is if at the end when it says,

this is my handwriting, the handwriting changes. Yeah, it's distinctive, right, right. So that would be like suggestive, but there's a danger too. What's better is to have copies of the original and then copies of copies, then copies of copies of copies of copies, because that is a protective element. You lose the original, you lose the whole thing. When you have all of these copies, even when there are variations and you made a superb point about this, Amy, at the reality conferences of this season,

24, 25, about the value of having the vast number of manuscripts because even though there's thousands upon thousands of variations, because there's so many thousands and thousands and thousands of manuscripts, the comparison allows us to reconstruct the original quite reliably. Okay, and so that's why there's an advantage. If we only had the original, no copies, then how do we know that that original is the original? You know, when you have all these copies,

you can reconstruct the original reliably. And secondly, if there's only one copy, it can be easily changed. Whereas if you've got all of these widely copied manuscripts that have all these different lines of copying, you can see if somebody changes. It's very easy to tell that. But if we only had one copy, it's much easier to change it. And you mentioned this, I think this is also a big reason why God didn't do it that way. You said people would deify things. Well, you see this in the Old Testament all the time. I mean, even Gideon's ephod or something,

they had, they were worshipping that. Moses made that bronze snake that people would look at and then hundreds of years later, they're worshipping that. We don't want people worshipping things. So, God preserved His Word, not in a physical object, but as information in many physical objects. That's right. Excellent. All right, Greg, here is a question from Shelly. What do we mean when we say we don't have an original copy of the Bible?

It would have been the true Word of God. Which parts aren't right and how would we ever know? So we have the Constitution of the United States and Washington under glass protected. If I copy every single word precisely as the original was, and by the way, many people have that, because there aren't variants of that. We have the original. Is the copy that matches letter for letter the Constitution in the archive in Washington, D.C., is that any less the Constitution? No, it's not. They are both equally the Constitution. Now, the difference in the first one is it's the original artifact, if you will, but both are types. If I say, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever

believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life, my words are an accurate characterization, at least of the English translation, New American Standard, of that verse. But the verse in my Bible is written there. I just spoke that. You have your Bible. It's written there too. That same verse shows up everywhere. That is the token, okay, the representation of it. But in a certain sense, how can you have the same thing showing up in a bunch of places? That's called a universal. There is a type behind that that is reflected in the tokens, in the letters or the spoken, verbal, audible sounds that are different tokens, or you can do it in a different language. You could say theos or you could say God. It means the same thing, it's just a different language. Different

tokens for the same thing. So what we don't want to, that understanding that relationship between a token and a type is helpful to answer this question. The original was the first token, but what it tokened was a type that could be repeated in other places. It could be repeated verbally, it could be repeated in writing in the Greek language, or it could be repeated in a translation. That was an accurate translation. And so that's the advantage. All of these things are equally the word of God, just like an accurate copy of the Constitution is equally the Constitution. And there's tremendous advantage, as we were just discussing, of being able to convey the same essential meanings in many different forms.

It protects, when you have many tokens, it protects the type. If you only have one token representing the type and that token is changed, well then you don't have any other access to the original type. So can you say a little more about this last part of the question, which parts aren't right and how would we ever know? Can you say a little more about this last part of the question, which parts aren't right and how would we ever know? Can you say a little more about how textual criticism works? Sure. And here's where you might have something to say too in light of your contribution to

the realities this year, this season. We have thousands and thousands of manuscripts of Greek, say the New Testament, or portions of sections of the Greek manuscripts. You can take all these Greek manuscripts and pile them together, it's going to be a mile high. A lot of ways to characterize. That's a lot. Okay. But they're not always the same. There are variants, variations. So how do you know? Well, you compare. I can't go into a lot of detail about how the comparison is done. J. Warner Wallace does a great thing on the screen, you know, with texting, you know,

and how you can recapture the original, even though there's a lot of different variations. You can make judgments that are very easy to do. One illustration that I give is, if you take a whole classroom of, say, second graders, and you give them, you write on the board some text, maybe say 200 words. And you tell the second graders to copy all of these words down on paper, word for word, exactly. And your grade depends on how accurately you copy it. Then

they do the task. Once they've copied it all, say 40 students, you erase the board. Now the autograph is gone. All you have is copies. And then you have the students hand the copies to their friends and have them do the same exercise copying from the copy. And so now you've got 40 second generation, or maybe first, you have the autograph first generation, now you've got 40 second generation. Okay, you can do this again, if you want, pass it around. I guarantee you, when you're done, you're going to have all of these

copies, 40 plus 40 plus 40. And now the question is, let's reconstruct what was on the board, but it's not there anymore. Can we do it? And you know what? There's gonna be some knuckleheads that's gonna get it wrong. But when you compare all of these things together, you're going to be able to see in a common sense kind of fashion where the mistakes are

and what the original actually said. And you're able to reconstruct the original. And that's the task of textual criticism. And no, are there sometimes kind of tough judgment calls? Occasionally, but almost never. And the texts that are in question, whether not sure, and they matter, the differences matter, are minuscule and affect no doctrine of the church. And Bibles note that. They note it when people aren't sure exactly which reading is original. It's very few places.

Yeah, that's right. Very few places. And when you say significant, you mean meaningful, and that doesn't mean that there's a doctrine that depends on that particular thing either. Well, there's two aspects of meaningful or significant. One could be meaningful with regards to the meaning. So here's a variant. Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus. Sometimes in a verse it says Jesus Christ.

You look at another manuscript, it says Christ Jesus. Well, they just changed the order. Is that a variant? Yes. Is it meaningful? No. It doesn't change the meaning in Is that a variant? Yes. Is it meaningful? No. It doesn't change the meaning in any way, shape, or form. So there's a whole lot of variants that have absolutely no bearing on the meaning of the text like that. You also have, or you'll have the Jesus. You have an article there, or maybe no article. That's a variant, but it's inconsequential.

or maybe no article. That's a variant, but it's inconsequential. Other times you'll have what's called singular readings. In other words, you only have one or two examples of this variant, and all the other manuscripts don't have this. Well, this is obvious, the mistake, that's the mistake. It isn't like thousands of manuscripts are wrong and this one's right. Okay? So that's another way they can make the decision. And there are other, another meaning, aspect of meaningful is one is whether you can recover the original sense of it, like Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. That's not a meaningful variant. And other ones where they are, it's not possible to figure out. And it is meaningful in terms of the textual reconstruction. That doesn't mean it's meaningful in any theological sense. It doesn't affect anything. It could be,

there are five people there and this one says there were 15 people there. Well, that's a meaningful distinction. It can't be both. It doesn't mean the same in both cases, but it doesn't matter. In most cases, whether they were five or 15, to anything significant about the event. So once you weed out those kinds of variations and you're able to correct a lot of other things that are obvious, you're going to come up, they have come up with a text that, for all intents and purposes, in every significant fashion, reflects the original with a high degree of confidence. And it can get complicated, all of the things that they do.

What's the name of that book? In Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism? It might just be, I remember the Myths and Mistakes for sure. Oh yeah, I have that book, right. But they go into more detail about how all of this works. But there are different things you can compare. So for example, in the example that you gave of the kids in the classroom, you could see if there's four generations or how many generations.

If it comes in in the third generation and it's not there before, well then it's not likely that that's original. Sure. And so the earlier manuscript seems to supersede the later manuscript. Or let's say there was one line and then they had five people each time. You could see it go down in a certain area, but not in the other areas. Right. So that's another way that you can rule out certain… You see the mistake in one generation that's repeated in multiple generations.

Those are called families of manuscripts when you have these characteristics that fit the whole family and you know they're in a sense genealogically related when you think of the development of the manuscript over time. And they know down to who was the scribe, what was the scribe's tendencies, what kind of mistakes did he make? And how does that, it gets so detailed. So what I want to make sure everybody understands is this isn't some random process where people are- Frivolous, we'll take a guess at it. This is a really, it's a complicated and it's a complicated form of figuring out how these things, how these mistakes came

into the text and figuring out what is original. There's a lot of work that goes into this. It's a sophisticated process. And by the way, the Bible isn't the only ancient writings that are subjected to this. All ancient writings are subjected to this that come down to us in manuscript form. And they just have to figure out, well, even Shakespeare, you know, which one's the original? We have Shakespeare, this one, you know, we've got these two different variations trying to figure out which was the one that Shakespeare wrote. Now that's much more recent in time, but there's not that many manuscripts to compare. With the ancient, with the scriptures, even though they're ancient, we still have so many

more manuscripts that it makes the job a lot easier. Well, thank you all for your questions. We enjoy hearing from you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STRask or go to our website at str.org and look for our hashtag STRask podcast page. Thank you for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason.