The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Randy Carson]

There are parts that are accurate to the original, and parts that aren't.

Speculation, Simon, since we have no "originals."

Right, we don't.

Which is why textual criticism becomes so useful...not just with regard to the gospels but also for EVERY ancient work. If you reject the validity of TC for the New Testament, you'll have to be equally harsh on just about every written work of man prior to...what? 1900?

Oh, one other point...did you know that scholars have concluded that every single verse of the NT (save eleven verses) can be found quoted in the writings of the Early Church Fathers? You know, guys like Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, etc? Yep, it's true.

So, two things from this:

1. If every copy of the NT were to disappear from the face of the earth, we could still re-create it from the ancient writings of the ECF's.
2. If someone HAD ever attempted to alter the text of scripture by deleting or adding to the text, not only would he have had to track down the thousands of copies of the autographs which were distributed all over the known world, but he would have had to chase down every quote in every epistle penned by an ECF in order to modify those quoted passages, too.

And how plausible is that? 

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There are some variants such as the one you have highlighted, and I appreciate your illustration of the work that can be done by scholars in comparing manuscripts.

There are two OLDER (fourth century) manuscripts that do not contain Mark 16:9-20, but there are MORE manuscripts which do.

As for whether the gospels are fiction, that will be covered in future posts.

So, should we consider the oldest manuscripts to be more accurate? Or go by the later ones, for which we have more?

I'm sorry, but any text that has talking animals, men living in fish for 3 days, the sun going black for 3 hours (and no one else on the planet noticing), zombies climbing out of their graves and walking around Jerusalem (without any historian of the time taking notice), dragons living in Babylon, curing leprosy with the blood of some birds, breeding stripped goats by using stripped posts, etc., should be taken as fictional by default. 


You wouldn't accept the same types of stories in any other religious text, why do you make special case for yours? Never mind, Rhetorical question, no need to answer.

You can't draw a conclusion from that, can you?

Go back to the diagram in my OP. If two early copies (and they were fourth century, so not like second generation copies), said one thing, but there are 20 "daughter" copies from parent copies that no longer exist, the more numerous ones might suggest that they were copied from numerous parents that also had the longer ending.

It's plausible that the shorter ending manuscripts are more correct...it might even be probable. But based on the evidence put forward in this thread, there really isn't enough information to definitively decide the matter.

(And for the record, the Council of Trent formally established the longer version as the "correct" version, so clearly, SOMEBODY thought there was a good basis for doing so.)