Why didn’t Jesus pen his own scriptures? This episode delves into the profound reasons behind this question, examining the importance of witnesses and the role they played in the creation of the New Testament. As we navigate Jesus’s diverse teachings, we explore how biblical laws place significant emphasis on testimony, highlighting reasons that transcend mere practicality. Join us to understand how the works, as opposed to words, of Jesus bear witness to his teachings and what implications this holds for both historical and contemporary faith.
00:00:02 Introduction and Question on Jesus Writing His Story
00:03:37 Testimony and the Importance of Witnesses
00:26:37 Copying Practices and Early Christian Text Discipline
SPEAKER 02 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
When you think about it, it’s a logical question. Why didn’t Jesus write his own book? For that matter, why didn’t an angel hand the prophets a golden plate with prophecies written by the hand of God himself? Well, the Ten Commandments, after all, were written with the finger of God on tables of stone. We know God can write. There’s no reason why Jesus could not have written his story. But he didn’t. So we’re left to ponder why. Why didn’t he do it himself? Now, there is a reason, and it turns out to be a profound importance in dealing with that collection of books we call the New Testament. In the first place, biblical law places great importance on witnesses. Just as in our Constitution, no man could be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And that due process included witnesses to the cause of action against a man. No man could be deprived of his life for murder without at least two witnesses to the crime. Then there’s a very practical reason why Jesus did not write his own book, and he stated it in his own words. There was an occasion, you’ll find it in the fifth chapter of John. The Jews had been conspiring to kill Jesus because, they said, he had healed a man on the Sabbath. Shouldn’t do that. And also because he said that God was his father, which made himself equal with God. Now, their real reasons had to do with envy and power politics, and Jesus saw right through that. He gave a rather long speech at this time. It’s recorded in the fifth chapter of John, but the crux of the speech comes beginning with verse 30. “‘I can of my own self do nothing,’ Jesus said.” Now, this is not to say that Jesus would not have spoken the truth, but that his testimony could not be admitted into court. Any statement he made for the record could be self-serving. So he couldn’t bear witness of himself. Somebody else had to bear witness. But he went on. He said, there is another who bears witness of me, and I know that the witness he witnesses of me is true. Who would that be? He says, you have sent to John. He bore witness to the truth. Yet I do not receive testimony from man. I say these things that you may be saved. John was the burning and shining lamp, and you were happy for a while to rejoice in his light. But I have a greater witness than John’s, for the works which the Father has given me to finish, the very works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. Okay, now Jesus gets down to the question of testimony. He says, I can’t write my own book. It’s my works that are going to actually bear witness that you’ve got to deal with. You’ve got to see what I’ve done. You’ve got to hear what I’m teaching and you’ve got to decide. He said, the father himself who has sent me has testified of me. You have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his form. But you do not have his word abiding in you, because whom he sent you don’t believe. In other words, Jesus is saying again and again in his ministry that the crux of this whole matter is, if you would have listened to Moses, if you would have just listened to the prophets, you would know me. You would recognize me. You would know who I am. He went on to say, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And those very scriptures are they which testify of me. But you’re not willing to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men. But I know you. I know you do not have the love of God in you. Now he continues to say, I have come in my father’s name and you won’t receive me. If another would come in his own name, oh, you’re happy to receive him. How in the world can you believe who receive honor from one another? And it’s so true. They just kept right on congratulating one another and their scholarship and their greatness, and they couldn’t seek the honor that comes only from God. Now, do not think, Jesus said, I’m going to accuse you to the Father. There is another one that accuses you. Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. Well, now here we are. We’re stuck. We have Jesus saying, my testimony doesn’t work. The testimony of John is not sufficient. What testimony is there? The works. But then how do we know about them? If Jesus can’t testify, who can? Well, his works and Moses. That was all they had in front of them in the days that Jesus walked on the earth. But what about us? What do we believe? You and me, 2,000 years later, trying to sort all this stuff out. Well, what we have is two testaments, old and new. But what exactly are they? More to the point that I’m on about, what exactly is the New Testament? Chances are you have one right there in your house. Look at it. Better yet, look at the table of contents. Because it will turn out that this New Testament of ours is a collection of works that testify to the work and ministry of Jesus. They testify to his death and his resurrection. They testify as to the works of the church and the apostles after Christ’s ascension all the way up to about 70 AD. What we have, for example, is the testimony of four witnesses to the work and ministry of Jesus. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The challenge for you as a member of the jury is, is to decide if you believe their testimony or not. I mean, they’re there. They’re easy to read. Maybe you need a more modern translation to make it easier, but which translation doesn’t matter? The truth or lack thereof comes right through from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John if you will just take the time to read their testimony. And you can’t dismiss the truth of what they say on technicalities. Yes, there are little variations between one man’s story and another man’s story. But the variations in their stories serve only to establish their independence. And that is extremely important. If indeed the Holy Spirit had dictated the story, they would all have been the same and the testimony would have been invalidated. Well, just think about it. You’re on a jury, you’re listening to the testimony of witnesses, and they run four of them by you, and every single one of them tells precisely the same story, using the same words, and all the rest of the information absolutely the same. Wouldn’t you start suspecting that the district attorney had run them through the woodshed to get their story straight before they got up there? Their testimony would be corrupted, and chances are pretty good that the defense attorney could invalidate it. So what really happened with the New Testament? I believe the Holy Spirit moved these men to write their testimony down, motivated them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then took hands off. God knows, as well as anyone, you can’t manipulate your witnesses. You have to let them tell their story. And so the Gospel of John is written in his words, with his vocabulary, in his style, and this is important, from his perspective. Now, this is apparent even in reading the book in English. It’s even more apparent in Greek. When I studied New Testament Greek, the final exam I had was to translate 1 John. And I was so struck in translating my way through that book that the language, the approach, the style, this was obviously the same man who wrote John. and obviously not the same man who wrote Matthew. You can see it even reading the book in English. So here’s what we have in the New Testament. We have four independent witnesses who have written their depositions of what happened. They testify to the message and to the authority demonstrated by Jesus. They testify to His work, His miracles, and to His identity. More important, they testify as to his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his ascension. And although it is not generally recognized, the authority of the entire Bible, old and new, stands on that testimony. Why? Well, because it establishes who Jesus was, and by his authority, establishes the authority of the Old Testament. But wait, one may say, well, I can easily believe the original documents were as you say they were, but how can I be sure they have not been corrupted by someone in the transmission process? That’s a good question. Grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you some information, and I’ll be right back, and we’ll answer it.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
Now, it is a fact that in the process of copying the original documents, the one, let’s say, made by Matthew, who sat down and wrote his gospel account in Greek, somebody copied it, probably the same day. And within a week or two, there were probably a dozen copies of it made and began to be transmitted around the Roman Empire. Now, how do we know that these documents weren’t corrupted by someone? Well, there is a point of view that God not only dictated the words of the Bible in the original language, but that the Holy Spirit saw to the transmission all the way to the King James Version of the Bible. Yeah, that’s right. There are people who believe the King James Version alone is inspired of God. And as one person said, when the Revised Standard Version appeared, well, it’s like having a snake in your house. Or another wag said, if the King James Bible was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me. Now, if that’s what you believe, that’s okay. But you can’t just assume that that is true. that the Holy Spirit saw the transmission all the way to the King James Bible. You have to be able to demonstrate the truth of the text of the Bible to a person who doesn’t know that, to a person who does not have your faith. Otherwise, how can he ever come to believe it if you can’t show him some evidence that this is the way it was? You have to show him that God preserved the text. Not merely ask him to take it on faith. Not only that, you have to show him how it was done. Otherwise, you leave your friend vulnerable to books like the Da Vinci Code. So let’s think about this question of the copying of the text. I want us to take Luke 24, verse 53, as an illustration. If you’re looking at it in your Bible, Luke 24, 53. Two scribes, let’s say, are copying this text. They’re either listening to a reader and writing it down, or they’re copying it off while reading another manuscript at the same time. It is the last line, last verse in Luke. It says, “…and they worshipped him,” that’s Jesus, “…and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.” That’s the King James Version. When you get to the NIV, this is how it reads. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God. Did you catch the variation? Listen to them again. And they were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God, King James. And they stayed continually in the temple, praising God. What happened to the word blessing? As it happens, there were two very old manuscript traditions. One said they were blessing God. The other said they were praising God. We got a little conflict there. Now, it’s not exactly what you and I would say was a meaningful distinction. So a later version conflated, that’s it, merged the two into what we read in the King James. They were there praising and blessing God. If I don’t know which one it is, I’ll put them both in there. Some copy has said a long time ago. Now, mind you, it’s the truth you and I are looking for when we read the Bible. Do we see truth damaged in any way by this variance? Well, hardly. Rather, a large number of textual variations in the New Testament are just like this. They do not really change the thrust. It’s only a matter of a word or two. And this illustrates the problem textual scholars have labored over for generations. They have done a very good job. Mind you, they were not under church control. Many tenured professors who could jolly well say whatever they wanted to about the text worked on the text. And as soon as they made their statements, they’d be challenged by yet another scholar. And so there were scholars across a great discipline challenging one another back and forth on the issues of the New Testament text, and they’ve been doing it for generations. And this leads us to a wonderful principle in the way God preserved the New Testament for us. He didn’t put it into the hands of one man. He put it in the hands of thousands of them. He did it by multiple redundancy and by keeping it out of the control of any one institution. No matter what you have heard, No one, neither person nor institution, nor church for that matter, ever had the New Testament completely under their control. This is vitally important. Those manuscripts were scattered like seed all over the Middle East. And it’s only been in later years that men finally begin to try to pull them together, catalog them, study them, look at the variances, and try to sort out, work their way back to what the original text was. Just as the variations in the gospel accounts establish their independence as witnesses, four witnesses of a single truth. So the multiple manuscripts of the New Testament established the independence of the manuscript tradition. Nobody got hold of it, and even though people may have attempted to corrupt it, there was another text somewhere else that could set the matter straight. And as it happens, the scholars have, in spite of themselves, given us a very good text for the translators to work with. You can have a lot of confidence in it when you sit down to read the New Testament. And in all the doubtful areas, they have preserved all the information about the whys and wherefores of the New Testament text. You can see it in the margin. It will say some ancient manuscripts read. If you have, of course, an annotated Bible, perhaps a study Bible, You can trust that book you have in your hand, and it’s well within your grasp to track down any significant questions regarding the New Testament text. You don’t have to know Greek. You don’t have to be a scholar. You just need the relevant study Bibles, if you even care to chase that down. Everett Harrison cites A.J. Hort, who had this to say about the text now in common use by translators. He said the proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less on a rough computation of seven-eighths of the whole. Now, you would hope for better than that, one-eighth of the words not being above doubt. Well, he went on to say that the remaining eighth is composed of trivialities, like changes of order, grammatical differences, and the like. Or, as an example, I just read you a few moments ago a conflation where they bring two versions together, and they both wind up in a single text later on. But that’s not really anything that undermines the authority of the New Testament. As another example, Greek adjectives must agree with the word they are modifying, not only in gender, but in case. You can tell by the ending of it where it goes. So one text will have a grammatical error in the spelling of the Greek word for, say, he or his. Let’s say it’s in the wrong case. Another manuscript will have it exactly grammatically correct. Which one is the more original reading? Now, an amateur would probably say, well, the one that’s grammatically correct must be the original. Oddly, though, scholars think a scribe is more likely to try to correct a grammatical error in the text than he is to make a mistake and insert a grammatical error. You also have to realize that many of these manuscripts were copied listening to someone read the text while you wrote it down. And you can easily see how someone who might read a grammatical error in the text would unconsciously read the grammar correctly. And so this is how, this is the kind of stuff that makes up most of the work of textual criticism in the New Testament. You can see how important it is. Hort goes on to conclude that substantial variation makes up no more than one thousandth of the entire text of the New Testament. Now, what is important is that none of these variations keep us from finding the truth that the witnesses have brought to us about the miracles, the work, the testimony of Jesus Christ, about his death, his burial, his resurrection. None of them are important from understanding the work of the New Testament church. The information is all there. It’s trivia. The main reason or the main area of interest of this is the scholars who have to publish something or go get a job. Stay with me.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ll be right back after this important message. For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write our call this week only and request the program titled Introduction to the New Testament No. 4. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s another interesting example of the way these variations happen in Acts the 18th chapter. Paul has come to Ephesus, and he left some disciples there, and he went into a synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. This is Acts 18, verse 20. Now, when they asked him to stay longer with him, he did not consent, but took leave of them, saying, I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem, but I will return again to you, God willing. And he sailed from Ephesus. That’s the New King James Version. You get the idea of what he’s doing. He says, I’ve got to get to Jerusalem by the feast, and I’m on my way. Now listen to how the NIV handles it. When they asked him to spend more time with them, he declined. But as he left, he promised, I will come back if it’s God’s will. And he set sail from Ephesus. What’s missing in the NIV from what is in the New King James Version? The words, I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem. Which is right. Well, there are a lot of arcane issues in making decisions like this. Some of them have to do with which manuscript has which reading in it. For me, it’s easier to imagine how a line could be left out in copying a manuscript than a line put in. But scholarship says the NIV is correct based upon a broad variety of research. But you know how it is. If you’re sitting down looking at one document and writing it over by hand, and this is all handwritten stuff, into another document, how hard is it to miss a line if a word falls just the right way as you’re copying? Well, you know, it’s very easily done. If you’ve ever had any reason to do much hand copying of things, you’ve probably done it. Even so, I conclude that someone, even if I accept the NIV, someone very early thought it was necessary to insert that line, perhaps because it was part of a known tradition. In the end, not very much hangs on it, and probably, if this latter is what happened, it probably was a note in the margin which they picked up and put it in. It’s not much hangs on it, and if you have almost any kind of study Bible, they will include a note in the margin to let you know what other manuscripts say. What’s interesting to me, and I look at this, is there are so many manuscripts and fragments scattered all over the Middle East. The material that’s used by scholars in trying to work the text out into a new solid combined text, they fall out into three areas. One, manuscripts. The second is versions. Now, what versions are are translations. Some were very early. For example, the Syriac versions actually precede many of the manuscripts that we have that are in Greek, but they were translations of a very, very early Greek text. And so by comparing the version with manuscripts, you get a better idea of the earlier text. And finally, there are citations from very early church fathers who, in writing a letter from them to some other church, cite a scripture. And that particular scripture, cited in Greek in their letters, is used to help us sort out certain manuscripts. Now, Greek manuscripts, whether they are a portion or the whole of the New Testament total, well over 5,000 of them, Think of it. Scattered all over the Middle East like confetti, you have got 5,000 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament in whole or in part. 267 of those manuscripts are written in all capital letters, which is a style of doing Greek writing. Over, let’s say, 2,700 of them nearly are written in script handwriting, and 2,140-some are what are called Greek lectionaries. Now, a lectionary is a segment of the Bible arranged for church worship, but because they were done so early, they are very useful in determining what text they were copied from. And then there are 81 papyrus manuscripts, not done on vellum like some of the others. And I think all of these are found in Egypt because papyrus just didn’t survive in Palestinian weather. Now, manuscripts, not surprisingly, tend to fall into families. For example, if a first century copyist dropped a word from one manuscript, but as he copied another one, he didn’t drop that word, there will be generations of manuscripts copied from these that will tend to preserve the same error or accurate reading, and they will branch off. You can actually sometimes tell what family tree this manuscript, what early manuscript it was copied from, by a particular mistake that is preserved in this text. But by comparing it to others, you can determine what the correct text should have been. Harrison notes that the vast majority of textual variations can be traced back at least to the second century. It’s not in the least surprising. I imagine a very large number actually originated in the first generation of copies made. It’s hard to grasp, but there is no reason to think that the first generation of Christians thought Paul’s letters were scripture. Even Matthew’s gospel would not in their eyes have been put on a par with Moses. And I doubt seriously that the systematic approach to making copies that existed in the third century had any parallel in the first. There was probably in the earliest days of copying these texts very little discipline. Now, you might be interested in knowing what might have caused some of the variant readings. Scholars have organized them for us. One is the division of words. If you’ve ever seen an old Greek manuscript, you will have noted that the lines are just rows of letters with no divisions between the words. Sometimes the meaning can be changed depending upon where you make that division. And it’s that simple. There’s more, but it’ll have to wait until next time.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
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