Judaism and Christianity in Regard to Authentic Narration – Textual Criticism, Bart D. Ehrman, and His Critics
The historical fact that neither the Old nor the New Testament exists today in an authentically narrated form is something that no serious historian would dispute.
Bart D. Ehrman, who is unquestionably regarded as one of the most prominent experts on biblical manuscripts in academic circles worldwide7, illustrated this issue in his book “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.”
The aforementioned book focuses solely on this subject, and its core message becomes particularly clear in the following quote from the author (pp. 10):
“Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals.
What we have are copies made later – much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”
Anyone with even a very basic understanding of Islamic narration sciences is astonished by this and many other similar statements made by the most renowned scholars regarding the ancient scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. They all clearly affirm that the issue concerning the authenticity of Jewish and Christian sources is an undeniable fact.
What is particularly interesting in this context is that Christian theologians themselves treat this fact as a completely normal and accepted reality, without raising any objections against it.
In personal discussions, distinguished and well-known Austrian theologians from both the Catholic and Protestant churches told me that it is an undisputed doctrinal position among them that the Bible can certainly not be regarded as the unaltered and directly conveyed word of God! Moreover, they explicitly assessed it as a fact that the Bible was undoubtedly compiled afterward and over a long period by many different authors.
For example, in the book Bibelkunde8 throughout the entire work, when discussing the individual parts of the Bible, there is constant mention of numerous different authors of the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament.
Regarding the Old Testament, the book further states, in a general sense, on page 35:
“The oldest Old Testament manuscripts date back to the 2nd century BCE (leather scrolls found in Qumran).”
In the chronology of the Luther Bible9, it is stated that biblical scholarship dates the life of Moses and the actual revelation of the Torah to approximately 1200 to 1300 BCE.
In discussions with Christians, the Qumran scrolls are often cited as evidence for the supposed authenticity of the (Christian) Bible. However, these scrolls have nothing to do with the Christian Gospel. Furthermore, according to the aforementioned quote, these copies were produced approximately one thousand years (!) after the actual time of revelation to Moses – at least according to the general findings of biblical scholarship.
In contrast, in Islamic narration science, a narration is already classified as weak and therefore fundamentally not authentic if even a single narrator is missing in the chain of narration or if the narrator was not sufficiently known to the early biographers!
One should therefore be aware of the immense difference – although, as already mentioned, a detailed explanation of this subject requires a separate discussion.
Christian critics, such as James White and others who argue against Ehrman, naturally attempt to justify why Christians, by and large, could still trust the main message of the Bible. In doing so, White and his counterparts, for example, cite Ehrman's concession that the approximately 400,000 textual variations – i.e., differences in the text (!) – are 99 percent non-substantive and that the preservation of the text over the centuries still represents a remarkable achievement by many scribes.
The partially fundamental alteration of essential contents of the Torah and the Gospel is, from the perspective of Islamic theology, a fact that is also explicitly mentioned in the Qur'an.10
Even if one were to grant a certain validity to these two claims made by Christians, this does not change the fact that a profound alteration of the text over a period of hundreds or even a thousand years before its final recording could never be ruled out.
This is entirely aside from the fact that the biblical text itself clearly shows in countless places that its many individual parts were written by numerous, in some cases completely unknown, authors – as has been demonstrated in the preceding discussion.
As already noted, a comprehensive examination of the science of narration cannot be undertaken within this framework. However, based on what has been said – and even more so for anyone who delves deeper into such matters – there is no slightest doubt that no other historical narration can even remotely compare to the Islamic narration sciences.
In the next chapter, this realization will become even clearer, including through the statement of a leading British Orientalist of the past century.
Notes
- Ehrman's reputation and decades of experience in this field are, in themselves, indisputable. However, his statements regarding the lack of authenticity of the Bible are indeed vehemently contested by many Christians. Given such a fundamental critique, this is not unexpected. Nevertheless, these criticisms from some Christians cannot be regarded as substantial or, above all, decisive in refuting Ehrman's principal assertion. In the next chapter, a brief additional explanation of this matter will be provided. However, the present book does not aim to delve into this discussion in detail. Rather, a separate treatise would be required to thoroughly examine the foundations of narration sciences in general and their application to religious narrations in particular. It must be clearly understood, however, that the lack of authenticity of the Bible is not a novel thesis proposed by Ehrman, but rather a long-established historical fact. This will soon be further demonstrated through another quote. ↩
- Bibelkunde (translated: Bible Studies), Christa Zerbst and Christoph Weist, Evangelischer Presseverband in Austria, “With approval of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council A. and H. B. dated October 1, 1985”, 1987 edition. This book is used as a school textbook by the Evangelical Church in Austria and is therefore to be regarded as official doctrine. ↩
- Zeittafel (translated: Timetable), Page 349. Lutherbibel - Standardausgabe mit Apokryphen, Durchgesehene Ausgabe in neuer Rechtschreibung, 2006, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. ↩
- As explained at the end of the present book in the notes on transcription and formatting, Arabic technical terms in this book are written in lowercase and italicized to enhance readability for the English-speaking reader. For very well-known, Anglicized terms such as “Muslim, Islam, Zakat, Ramadan, …”, the English usage and common spelling are preferred. Further details on this can be found in the aforementioned notes. ↩