Misquoting Jesus (8 page)

Now, if Paul dictated the letter, did he dictate it word for word? Or did he spell out the basic points and allow the scribe to fill in the rest? Both methods were commonly used by letter writers in antiquity.
¹⁶
If the scribe filled in the rest, can we be assured that he filled it in exactly as Paul wanted? If not, do we actually have Paul's words, or are they the words of some unknown scribe? But let's suppose that Paul dictated the letter word for word. Is it possible that in some places the scribe wrote down the
wrong
words? Stranger things have happened. If so, then the autograph of the letter (i.e., the original) would already have a “mistake” in it, so that all subsequent copies would not be of Paul's words (in the places where his scribe got them wrong).

Suppose, though, that the scribe got all the words 100 percent correct. If multiple copies of the letter went out, can we be sure that all the copies were also 100 percent correct? It is possible, at least, that even if they were all copied in Paul's presence, a word or two here or there got changed in one or the other of the copies. If so, what if only
one
of the copies served as the copy from which all subsequent copies were made—then in the first century, into the second century and the third century, and so on? In that case, the oldest copy that provided the basis for all subsequent copies of the letter was not exactly what Paul wrote, or wanted to write.

Once the copy is in circulation—that is, once it arrives at its destination in one of the towns of Galatia—it, of course, gets copied, and mistakes get made. Sometimes scribes might intentionally change the text; sometimes accidents happen. These mistake-ridden copies get copied; and the mistake-ridden copies of the copies get copied; and so on, down the line. Somewhere in the midst of all this, the original copy (or
each
of the original copies) ends up getting lost, or worn out, or destroyed. At some point, it is no longer possible to compare a copy with the original to make sure it is “correct,” even if someone has the bright idea of doing so.

What survives today, then, is not the original copy of the letter, nor one of the first copies that Paul himself had made, nor any of the copies that were produced in any of the towns of Galatia to which the letter was sent, nor any of the copies of those copies. The first reasonably complete copy we have of Galatians (this manuscript is fragmentary; i.e., it has a number of missing parts) is a papyrus called P
⁴⁶
(since it was the forty-sixth New Testament papyrus to be catalogued), which dates to about 200
C
.
E
.
¹⁷
That's approximately 150
years
after Paul wrote the letter. It had been in circulation, being copied sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly, for fifteen decades before
any
copy was made that has survived down to the present day. We cannot reconstruct the copy from which P
⁴⁶
was made. Was it an accurate copy? If so, how accurate? It surely had mistakes of some kind, as did the copy from which it was copied, and the copy from which that copy was copied, and so on.

In short, it is a very complicated business talking about the “original” text of Galatians. We don't have it. The best we can do is get back to an early stage of its transmission, and simply hope that what we reconstruct about the copies made at that stage—based on the copies that happen to survive (in increasing numbers as we move into the Middle Ages)—reasonably reflects what Paul himself actually wrote, or at least what he intended to write when he dictated the letter.

As a second example of the problems, let's take the Gospel of John. This Gospel is quite different from the other three Gospels of the New Testament, telling a range of stories that differ from theirs and employing a very different style of writing. Here, in John, the sayings of Jesus are long discourses rather than pithy, direct sayings; Jesus never tells a parable, for example, in John, unlike in the other three Gospels. Moreover, the events narrated in John are often found only in this Gospel: for example, Jesus's conversations with Nicodemus (in chapter 3) and with the Samaritan woman (chapter 4) or his miracles of turning water into wine (chapter 2) and raising Lazarus from the dead (chapter 10). The author's portrayal of Jesus is quite different too; unlike in the other three Gospels, Jesus spends much of his time
explaining who he is (the one sent from heaven) and doing “signs” in order to prove that what he says about himself is true.

John no doubt had sources for his account—possibly a source that narrated Jesus's signs, for example, and sources that described his discourses.
¹⁸
He put these sources together into his own flowing narrative of Jesus's life, ministry, death, and resurrection. It is possible, though, that John actually produced several different versions of his Gospel. Readers have long noted, for example, that chapter 21 appears to be a later add-on. The Gospel certainly seems to come to an end in 20:30–31; and the events of chapter 21 seem to be a kind of afterthought, possibly added to fill out the stories of Jesus's resurrection appearances and to explain that when the “beloved disciple” responsible for narrating the traditions in the Gospel had died, this was not unforeseen (cf. 21:22–23).

Other passages of the Gospel also do not cohere completely with the rest. Even the opening verses 1:1–18, which form a kind of prologue to the Gospel, appear to be different from the rest. This highly celebrated poem speaks of the “Word” of God, who existed with God from the beginning and was himself God, and who “became flesh” in Jesus Christ. The passage is written in a highly poetic style not found in the rest of the Gospel; moreover, while its central themes are repeated in the rest of the narrative, some of its most important vocabulary is not. Thus, Jesus is portrayed throughout the narrative as the one who came from above, but never is he called the Word elsewhere in the Gospel. Is it possible that this opening passage came from a different source than the rest of the account, and that it was added as an appropriate beginning by the author after an earlier edition of the book had already been published?

Assume, for a second, just for the sake of the argument, that chapter 21 and 1:1–18 were not original components of the Gospel. What does that do for the textual critic who wants to reconstruct the “original” text? Which original is being constructed? All our Greek manuscripts contain the passages in question. So does the textual critic reconstruct as the original text the form of the Gospel that originally
contained them? But shouldn't we consider the “original” form to be the
earlier
version, which lacked them? And if one wants to reconstruct that earlier form, is it fair to stop there, with reconstructing, say, the first edition of John's Gospel? Why not go even further and try to reconstruct the
sources
that lie behind the Gospel, such as the signs sources and the discourse sources, or even the oral traditions that lie behind them?

These are questions that plague textual critics, and that have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest for the original text—since we can't even agree on what it might
mean
to talk about the “original” of, say, Galatians or John. For my part, however, I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we can attain to, we can at least be certain that all the surviving manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and that it is at least possible to get back to the
oldest
and
earliest
stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of the New Testament. All our manuscripts of Galatians, for example, evidently go back to
some
text that was copied; all our manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version of John that included the prologue and chapter 21. And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the “original” text. This oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (
very
closely) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching.

R
ECONSTRUCTING THE
T
EXTS OF THE
N
EW
T
ESTAMENT

Similar problems, of course, apply to all our early Christian writings, both those in the New Testament and those outside it, whether gospels, acts, epistles, apocalypses, or any of the other kinds of early Christian writing. The task of the textual critic is to determine what the earliest
form of the text is for all these writings. As we will see, there are established principles for making this determination, ways of deciding which differences in our manuscripts are mistakes, which are intentional changes, and which appear to go back to the original author. But it's not an easy task.

The results, on the other hand, can be extremely enlightening, interesting, and even exciting. Textual critics have been able to determine with relative certainty a number of places in which manuscripts that survive do not represent the original text of the New Testament. For those who are not at all familiar with the field, but who know the New Testament well (say, in English translation), some of the results can be surprising. To conclude this chapter, I will discuss two such passages—passages from the Gospels, in this case, that we are now fairly certain did not originally belong in the New Testament, even though they became popular parts of the Bible for Christians down through the centuries and remain so today.

The Woman Taken in Adultery

The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is arguably the best-known story about Jesus in the Bible; it certainly has always been a favorite in Hollywood versions of his life. It even makes it into Mel Gibson's
The Passion of the Christ,
although that movie focuses only on Jesus's last hours (the story is treated in one of the rare flashbacks). Despite its popularity, the account is found in only one passage of the New Testament, in John 7:53–8:12, and it appears not to have been original even there.

The story line is familiar. Jesus is teaching in the temple, and a group of scribes and Pharisees, his sworn enemies, approach him, bringing with them a woman “who had been caught in the very act of adultery.” They bring her before Jesus because they want to put him to the test. The Law of Moses, as they tell him, demands that such a one be stoned to death; but they want to know what he has to say about the matter. Should they stone her or show her mercy? It is a trap, of course. If Jesus tells them to let the woman go, he will be
accused of violating the Law of God; if he tells them to stone her, he will be accused of dismissing his own teachings of love, mercy, and forgiveness.

Jesus does not immediately reply; instead he stoops to write on the ground. When they continue to question him, he says to them, “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” He then returns to his writing on the ground, while those who have brought the woman start to leave the scene—evidently feeling convicted of their own wrongdoing—until no one is left but the woman. Looking up, Jesus says, “Woman, where are they? Is there no one who condemns you?” To which she replies, “No one, Lord.” He then responds, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

It is a brilliant story, filled with pathos and a clever twist in which Jesus uses his wits to get himself—not to mention the poor woman—off the hook. Of course, to a careful reader, the story raises numerous questions. If this woman was caught in the act of adultery, for example, where is the man she was caught with? Both of them are to be stoned, according to the Law of Moses (see Lev. 20:10). Moreover, when Jesus wrote on the ground, what exactly was he writing? (According to one ancient tradition, he was writing the sins of the accusers, who seeing that their own transgressions were known, left in embarrassment!) And even if Jesus did teach a message of love, did he really think that the Law of God given by Moses was no longer in force and should not be obeyed? Did he think sins should not be punished at all?

Despite the brilliance of the story, its captivating quality, and its inherent intrigue, there is one other enormous problem that it poses. As it turns out, it was not originally in the Gospel of John. In fact, it was not originally part of any of the Gospels. It was added by later scribes.

How do we know this? In fact, scholars who work on the manuscript tradition have no doubts about this particular case. Later in this book we will be examining in greater depth the kinds of evidence that scholars adduce for making judgments of this sort. Here I can simply
point out a few basic facts that have proved convincing to nearly all scholars of every persuasion: the story is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John;
¹⁸
its writing style is very different from what we find in the rest of John (including the stories immediately before and after); and it includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel.

How then did it come to be added? There are numerous theories about that. Most scholars think that it was probably a well-known story circulating in the oral tradition about Jesus, which at some point was added in the margin of a manuscript. From there some scribe or other thought that the marginal note was meant to be part of the text and so inserted it immediately after the account that ends in John 7:52. It is noteworthy that other scribes inserted the account in different locations in the New Testament—some of them after John 21:25, for example, and others, interestingly enough, after Luke 21:38. In any event, whoever wrote the account, it was not John.

That naturally leaves readers with a dilemma: if this story was not originally part of John, should it be considered part of the Bible? Not everyone will respond to this question in the same way, but for most textual critics, the answer is no.