Lesson 8 – New Testament Textual Criticism

Hello, everyone!

After listening to Bart Ehrman's speech at Harvard University on the manuscript evidence for the New Testament, we spent two of the last three lessons walking through virtually every variant in the book of Matthew. As I expected, it was obvious a number of you became extremely bored with the content; not because the subject is necessarily boring, but because the textual variants for the book of Matthew do not, as Ehrman stated, affect anything of consequence.

As we discussed last week, in order to save you the pain of such detail in the future, I will continue to study the variants for the remaining Gospels, taking special note of those which can/do affect meaning and interpretation. I will continue using Bruce Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, the notes section included in the NET Bible, and A Student's Guide to New Testament Textual Variants as the primary sources for my research. You can view my progress by downloading a copy of the Manuscript Variants Excel spreadsheet included on the left side of the blog.

In the meantime, we will begin an argument by argument analysis of the debate between Daniel Wallace (William Wallace!) And Bart Ehrman. It will take us a few weeks to get through it, but it reveals a lot of insight into the reasons for Ehrman's irrational skepticism. Please attend if at all possible. I think you will be blessed. This debate should also put the capstone on our study of Lower Textual Criticism, allowing us to finally begin our target study of the historical person, Jesus Christ.

See you all Thursday night!

Blessings!
Ricky
worldviewstudy@Gmail.com

Lesson 7 - Textual Criticism (PPT)

Hello, everyone!

Thursday night we did two things.

1. We did a recap of the video's we watched over the previous two weeks.  (Here are the links to the video's on YouTube. Daniel Wallace 1, Daniel Wallace 2, Daniel Wallace and Darrel Bock on John Ankerberg Show
2. I explained my direction for the next part of our study in New Testament Textual variants.

So you are aware, I have added a link to my Excel spreadsheet containing a list of all the significant textual variants from the Gospels.  It is contained under the "Key Documents" section on the left side of the blog page.  We reviewed that spreadsheet Thursday night.  Please keep in mind I will be populating the spreadsheet as I complete this part of the study.  I encourage you to download a copy of it for your own use.

Suggested Study Instructions:

1. Download a copy of the spreadsheet.
2. Open the NET Study Bible environment. (NET Study Environment)
3. Open a copy of your favorite translation for comparison purposes. Since the NET translation is relatively new, I encourage you to compare it to the translation you normally use and trust.  There are many resources online if you choose to do so.  Here's one good site. There are many others. Bible Gateway
4. Open the Variants sheet in the Excel workbook.
5. Starting with the first variant, Matthew 1:7, find the verse in the NET.  Look for any superscript numbers or letters within the verse.  If you find one, double-click it.  The pane on the right should scroll to the reference.
6. Make sure you've selected the NOTES tab at the top of the right-side pain.  In the right-side pane, look for any entries beginning with "tc".  These are text-critical notes.  They contain an explanation of the textual variant and the reasoning used by the translation committee for the selected reading.
7. You can record your notes in the spreadsheet.
8. Ultimately, you want to make a determination of whether or not any of the variants undermine any core Christian doctrines.

Please Note: Don't expect there to be a 1 to 1 comparison between my spreadsheet and the NET environment.  If you don't find a corresponding entry, simply move on to the next one.  We are in discovery mode together.  Everything is not always cut-and-dry.  This is going to take a lot of work and time.

Have fun with this!  I expect the results to be EXTREMELY encouraging.

Blessings!

Ricky

worldviewstudy@gmail.com