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Biblical Preservation

The question you raise of changes made to the Bible in the first centuries is one that has been studied for 1400 years. Today we have good indications that the biblical texts of the 1st century have come down to us virtually unchanged, thanks to Mss found in the Dead Sea scrolls. As for the New Testament, it is fair to say that no ancient text has as many attestations. For instance, Caesar's Gallic Wars (which I had to study as a boy) comes to us with a 10th-century MS: no earlier text. The NT on the other hand comes to us in about 25,000 full and partial texts of the Imperial period. The critical Greek edition we use today is certainly the best-attested ancient text of the Roman era.

There are variations, of course. Jesus' "bloody sweat" in Gethsemane and the woman caught in adultery appear in a minority of texts. But overall there is a very high degree of concordance among the MSs we possess to date.

Depending upon carbon dating variations, the fragment of John's Gospel kept in the Rylands Library in Manchester, England, dates from the late 1st century to very early 2nd.

Yours ever,

Bishop Pierre Whalon
Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe
Paris, FRANCE
bishop@tec-europe.org
25 October 2016

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Thank you for your work on Anglicans Online, my favorite ecclesiastical website.

Kevin J. Gardner
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Waco
Waco, Texas, USA
Kevin_Gardner@baylor.edu
26 October 2016

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.