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