Latest / Rooted & Real With Keenan / Can We Trust Ancient Manuscripts? Faith, Doubt, and the Courage to Follow Truth
Transcript
- Keenan: So, what if I told you that we did not have the original copy of the Gospel of John? Truth is, we don't. We don't have the piece of papyrus that John originally wrote on. We don't have Paul's original handwritten letter to the Romans. We don't have Moses' original copy of Isaiah. Moses write Isaiah, but you get what I'm saying. And if you've spent enough time on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, pretty much anywhere. People argue about Christianity online, and you've probably heard somebody say, see that right there? That's the problem. The Bible has been copied and copied and copied for thousands of years. It's basically an ancient game of telephone. How could anybody possibly know the original authors, what the original authors actually wrote? And maybe you've heard that argument and thought, wait a minute. That's actually pretty good. And those are good questions. So today we're gonna talk about it. Not by pretending there aren't difficult questions. Those are real. Not by pretending every Bible manuscript is identical. And definitely not by giving you one of those Christians' answers basically amounts to don't think too about it too hard. Just have faith. No. gonna about it. We're gonna talk about manuscripts. And we're gonna talk about textual variants. We're gonna talk about the Testament. And then we're gonna talk about something you may surprise you. What ancient manuscripts to do with anxiety? Because this is episode really just about old pieces of papyrus. It's about a beggar question: how do you decide? What is true when you don't have absolute certainty? And that question affects almost everything. Your faith, your relationships, your mental health, your decisions, fears, your your entire life. So can trust ancient manuscripts? Let's get rooted and let's get real. Welcome back to Rude and Real with Keenan, where we talk honestly about faith, mental health, relationships, emotional health, and what it looks like to build a life that is spiritually grounded and mentally strong. And we're continuing the foundation of truth. The big idea behind the entire series is simple. You cannot build a stable life on an unstable foundation. Earlier in this project, we've talked about how everyone has an authority. Something gets the final word. Maybe it's scripture, maybe it's culture, maybe it's your parents, maybe it's your political tribe, and maybe it's your trauma. Maybe it's success. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's anxiety. Because anxiety absolutely loves pretending to be an authority. Anxiety doesn't normally say, hey Keenan, I have a hypothesis I would like you to consider. No, it doesn't happen. Anxiety says, this is going to happen. They're upset with you. You're going to fail. Something is wrong. You're not safe. And we've talked about this before. A feeling can be completely real without the conclusion attached to that feeling being completely true. That's one of the major connections between cognitive behavioral therapy and what we're talking about in this series. Your mind interprets reality. And sometimes it interprets reality accurately, sometimes it doesn't. today we're going to apply that same principle. Faith. So here's the question. do we know that the Bible we have today resembles what ancient biblical authors actually wrote? That's a legitimate question. But want to say something especially to the Christians listening to me. Questions are the enemy of faith. Avoiding questions usually makes doubt stronger. I said this earlier in this project, and I still mean it. If somebody gives you a 20 second video, don't let TikTok level arguments destroy adult level faith. somebody gives you a 20 second video ⁓ they just disproved 2,000 years of Christianity, you are allowed to investigate further. And cuts both ways. If a apologist makes ⁓ some gigantic like there's absolutely no textual differences anywhere in the Bible, investigate that too. Because that isn't true. are textual variants, ⁓ of them. And I'm going to tell you that's something that might sound initially strange. I actually find that reassuring. And why. Let's put cards on the table. The original handwritten documents that scholars call ⁓ the autographs the New Testament have not survived. Paul's original letter to the Romans. We don't possess it. Luke's original gospel, don't possess it. John's original manuscript, we don't possess it. But we do possess copies of it and copies of copies of copies and fragments and collections and quotations by early Christians and translations into ancient languages and thousands of pieces of evidence can compare against one another. That's important because sometimes people hear we don't have the original and immediately jump to then we have no idea what it said. But those are two completely different statements. Suppose you lost your original text message to your wife that she sent you, or that she sent you. the message has been screenshotted by five hundred people. Some screenshots were made five minutes later, some 20 minutes later, some the next day. And those screenshots had been sent to different group chats over the all over the country. You wouldn't poss you wouldn't possess the original data file, but you would have an enormous amount of evidence for reconstructing what the message actually said. And if one screenshot said, meet me at target at five, the other said, meet me at target at five. And the other said, Meet me at Target at five. you'd have a variation. So way the word five is written in those is different. But you'd hardly say, well, I guess we have absolutely no idea what the message was. That's the basic logic behind textual criticism. Not blind faith. Comparison. Evidence. Patterns history. Reassuring. There's important qualification here because Christians sometimes throw manuscript numbers around like ⁓ apologetic cards. You hear 5,800 manuscripts, 5,700, 5,600, 6,000 manuscripts. And that number changes depending on what exactly is being counted. The Institute for the New Testament Textual Research in Munster, Germany, maintains that the official catalog used by scholars. In the detailed 2023 accounting, researchers described approximately 5,700 catalog Greek New Testament witnesses, while noting That some entries are fragments. Some have been joined together, some are manuscripts, some are missing or destroyed. And the catalog changes as researchers learn more. The refined total after excluding manuscripts known to be destroyed or presumed missing. That was 55, 55, 41, 5,541 at the time. don't memorize one number and turn it into dogma. The important point is this there is a massive body of surviving New Greek Textament manuscript evidence available for comparison. And remember, more manuscripts don't mean fewer differences. Actually, the opposite can happen. More manuscripts can produce more recorded variants because you have more things to compare. That's incredibly important. people sometimes hear that there may be hundreds of thousands of textual variants and think, whoa, the Bible must be hopelessly corrupted. No. A large number of variants partially exists because there's a large amount of surviving evidence. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts notes that estimates can reach roughly five hundred thousand textual variants among Greek New Testament manuscripts. That sounds terrifying until you understand what you're counting. Some differences matter more than others. Some are spelling, some involve word order, some involve accidental duplication, some involve omission, some are more substantial. And Christians shouldn't hide that. Because here's what I find really fascinating. Your Bible probably tells you about some of Open a modern Bible. Like open the bottom, open the modern Bible to the end of Mark. Great gospel. Or go to the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7 and John 8. on your translation, you'll probably see brackets or footnotes explaining that some early did not contain that passage. That's not evidence ⁓ of some giant conspiracy. That's almost the opposite of a conspiracy. They're telling you. Scholars have spent generations openly documenting differences between manuscripts. For another example. In important early manuscripts of John's gospel, known as Papyrus 66, does not contain the story of the woman caught in adultery. That's not hidden in some locked Vatican basement. Scholars talk about it. Seminary students learn about it and discuss it. Bible translations footnote it. The manuscripts themselves can increasingly be viewed digitally. And this is where I think we need to change how we think about the evidence. Sometimes Christians believe the Bible is trustworthy, there shouldn't be any textual questions. That's what we call in CBT ⁓ or nothing thinking. That's a cognitive distortion. And if there's one variant, everything is corrupted. That's how historical investigation works. Imagine saying, If eyewitnesses describe a car accident slightly differently, then obviously the accident never happened. That would be absurd, right? Differences require investigation. They don't automatically erase history. Let's talk about something tangible here, though. There are tiny fragments. There's a tiny fragment of John's Gospel held by the University of Manchester. It's commonly called P-52 or John Ryland's fragment. It's tiny. Seriously. You're not looking at some giant leather-bound King James Bible. We're talking about a small piece of papyrus containing text from John 18, appearing before Pilate. The original editor dated it to approximately 100 to 150 AD. Most recent scholarships argued it may be closer to like 200 AD, but I actually love that the University of Manchester itself acknowledges the uncertainty. Because good scholarship doesn't have to pretend we know more than we know. We don't need P52 to come from 110 AD for Christianity to survive. The evidence can be allowed to speak for itself. Then move forward a little. Around 200 AD, we have substantial early collections like P forty six containing the Pauline letters. And by the fourth century, we have something extraordinary. Syntatics, a handwritten Greek Bible from more than 1600 years ago, containing the oldest surviving complete copy of the New Testament. And today we can look at it online. Not a drawing, not somebody's interpretation, the manuscript itself. And that matters. Christianity is making historical claims. And historical claims should be open to historical invest investigation. Now, let's go even further back. Because the old testament has its own fascinating manuscript story. In nineteen forty-six, began ⁓ discovered. In the caves near the Dead Sea. we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls includes some of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts in existence. One the most famous is the Great Isaiah Scroll. ⁓ It all 66 chapters of Isaiah. The ⁓ Israel dates it back to around 125 BC. Think about that. More than a century before Jesus. ⁓ So why is that discovery important? Because before the Dead Sea scrolls, of the Hebrew manuscripts available for comparison were much later. Suddenly, scholars had biblical material ⁓ a thousand years older than some of the major medieval Hebrew witnesses. And here's where the nuance ⁓ again. Was every letter identical? No. There were differences. Sure. But the Israel Israeli Museum notes that the Great Isaiah Scroll generally confirms that the traditional Hebrew text while also containing textual variations. And I want you to notice something. We did not say zero differences. can say ⁓ are differences, and the overall textual continuity is still remarkable. Those not contradictory statements, that's intellectual maturity. Jordan Peterson has a line that I've always thought was powerful, regardless of whether someone agrees with everything Peterson says or not. His rule is tell the truth. Or at least don't lie. That's a powerful principle. If we're Christians and we believe Christianity is true, we shouldn't need bad arguments to defend it. We don't need inflated statistics. We don't need to hide manuscript variants. We don't need to tell somebody P fifty two was definitely written 180 when scholars aren't certain. We don't need to pretend Christians agree about every disputed reading. Tell the truth. where we don't know? Say it. I don't know. something psychologically healthy about that sentence. ⁓ don't know. Anxiety hates it. Anxiety wants certainty. And immediately. 100%. No ambiguity, no unresolved questions. But mature thinking can say, I don't know everything, but I know enough to take the next reasonable step. That's true faith. ⁓ true in therapy. That's true in marriage. That's true in parenting. That's true in business. And that's true in almost every meaningful area of life. this actually connects with something close to home for me. Pastor at my at Grace Church ⁓ recently a message called A Steady ⁓ Soul, through Philippians 4. The official of that message talks about learning how to replace the lies you tell yourself with truth. And that's deeply And it's deeply psychological because you are telling yourself stories all day long. Something happens, your mind interprets it, your body reacts. Then your interpretation feels even more convincing because your body is reacting. And suddenly, I wonder if they're upset with me, turns into they're definitely upset with me. Then they're upset with me, becomes I ruined this relationship. Then I ruin this relationship, becomes I'm Always ruining relationships. Look at that escalation. ⁓ event becomes an identity statement. That's what cognitive distortions do. And they happen ⁓ the theological questions too. Let's say you're scrolling online. You hear this. There are 500,000 variants in New Testament manuscripts. You didn't know that. Your stomach drops. Your thoughts start moving. If there's many variants, maybe the Bible was changed. If the Bible was changed, maybe Christianity isn't true. If Christianity isn't true, what have I been built? What have I built my entire life on? What happens when I die? What happens about everything I've taught my children? What happens? What about all those prayers I did? What else am I wrong about? And within seven minutes or less, you've gone from there are textual variants to entire life might be meaningless. That. Is catastrophizing. Notice what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you're anxious. Therefore, ignore the manuscript question. No, not saying that. Research the manuscript question. Look it up. Don't let the emotional reaction answer the question before the evidence does. That's emotional reasoning. I feel scared. Therefore, the claim must be devastating. Your tells you that this matters to you. It does not tell us whether the claim is historically accurate. I had Matt Rye on this podcast a couple weeks ago and we got in this conversation about noise, political noise, media noise, cultural noise, all those voices competing for your attention. And I asked him, do you block all the noise without basically becoming a hermit? And Matt said something I keep coming back to. It's not the noise ⁓ that is the issue. It's your reaction to the noise. That exactly what we're talking about here. The existence of difficult questions is not necessarily what destabilizes us. Sometimes it's our immediate reaction to the question. A question appears and the brain goes, threat. it immediately. Google it. Watch 12 videos. Ask three pastors. Go on Reddit. Check another commentary. Find a resource. Still anxious? Google again. That's reassurance seeking. And reassurance seeking can actually strengthen anxiety because every time you compulsively check, you're teaching your brain. The question is dangerous. I cannot tolerate uncertainty. Sometimes what I need is more information. Absolutely. But sometimes what you need is to develop the capacity to say, this is an important question. I can investigate without panicking. That's different. Let me give you five distortions that can show up when people wrestle with questions about scripture. Number one, or nothing thinking. If one manuscript differs from another, the entire Bible ⁓ unreliable. That's too simplistic. History almost never works that way. Number two, catastroph catastrophizing. If I can't answer the question of the night, my faith is collapsing. That's just not true. Your you encountered a question. That's all that's happened so far. Number three, emotional reasoning. I feel uncertain. Therefore, Christianity must be uncertain. Again, your emotional state isn't a historical method. Number four, mental filter. This one happens to believers and skeptics. Believers only read. Christian apologetics that confirm what they already believe. skeptic only reads material designed to dismantle Christianity. Both people can create an information bubble. If you're actually pursuing truth, read serious people. Read who disagree with you. Ask what strongest argument on the other side actually is. Number five, fortune telling. If I start asking these questions, eventually I'll lose my faith. Maybe asking difficult questions produces a stronger faith. Maybe it changes something you believe. Maybe you discover you were taught something inaccurately. Maybe you become more humble. You don't know yet. You don't even know. That's why it's called fortune telling, because you just don't know the future. So where I want to pull in somebody from a completely different rear world. A completely different worldview. Can't talk. Jon Stewart. During an interview, you know, Jon Stewart, talk show host, comedian, well-known Democrat, well-known non-Christian, during a political interview, made a very simple distinction distinction. You have facts and you have fiction. Now, I'm not bringing Jon Stewart into a Bible podcast because he secretly endorsed New Testament textual criticism. He didn't. That's not the point. The point is that people across wildly different political and religious philosophical backgrounds recognize something fundamental. Reality exists independently whether we like it or not. Jordan Peterson can say the truth. Jon Stewart can distinguish fact from fiction. Pastor Mike can talk about replacing lies with truth. A cognitive therapist can ask this What evidence supports this thought? Different conversations, different word views, but underneath all of them is the recognition that your perception and reality are not automatically the same thing. That is enormously important. So how do scholars examine manuscripts? This discipline is called textual criticism. And despite the word criticism, ⁓ doesn't mean criticizing the Bible. It means critically analyzing surviving textual evidence to determine the earliest recoverable form of a text. Scholars compare manuscripts. ⁓ look at how old they are, they look at where they came from, they examine families and relationships between manuscripts, they examine common ⁓ mistakes, they ask which reading best explains how the others developed. They compare quotations by ancient Christian writers, they compare ancient translations, they scholars argue, they talk about it a lot. Welcome to academia. And that's good. You don't want everyone simply agreeing ⁓ they're afraid to challenge one another. The standard scholarly Greek New Testament used widely today is the Nestle Aland, and currently in its 28th edition, ⁓ called. The NA28. Institute for New Testament Textual Research maintains the official manuscript catalog and participates directly in the work behind critical editions. And notice what Christianity allows here. Investigation, comparison, disagreement, publication, digitization, inspection. And that's important. Now I need to draw an important line here because sometimes apologetics can get sloppy. Manuscript real real reliability does not prove that Christianity is real. You could pervert you could perfectly preserve a false statement. Imagine I write. Keenan owned 17 giraffes. And you make one million absolute perfect copies of that statement. Guess what? still don't own 17 giraffes. Perservation, perservation, preservation, and truth are two separate questions. So manuscript evidence ⁓ answer. Do we have a substantial reason to believe we know what these ancient documents said? It does not by itself. Answer. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Does God exist? Is Jesus divine? Those require additional arguments and evidence. And I think Christians should be very clear about that. Because good apologetics about winning, it's about truth. Now let's bring this back to scripture. Isaiah 40, verse 8 gives us an incredible contrast. withers, flowers fade, but God's word endures. I you to sit with that image. Human beings temporary. Empires are temporary. Governments are temporary. Technologies are temporary. Your favorite social media platform is temporary. The Roman Empire looked Permanent at once. It wasn't. But scripture makes the claim that God's word endures beyond the generations that receive it. later echoes Isaiah in 1 Peter 1. Jesus ⁓ in Matthew 5 that not even the smallest part of God's law will simply disappear before its purpose is accomplished. In 24, ⁓ Jesus the law Prophets and Psalms as a coherent witness pointing towards God's redemptive purpose. That's the theological claim. God speaks, God's revelation matters, and God's word is not disposable. But notice this: scripture doesn't say script Christians will never have to study manuscripts. It doesn't say scribes will never make mistakes. It doesn't say your favorite English translation descended from heaven. Bound and genuine letter, leather. God's providence and human history aren't enemies. Christianity has always claimed that God works through actual human beings and actual historical circumstances. a sentence I really want you to remember. Faith is not the absence of evidence, and faith is not exhaustive certainty. That this clinically matters because one of the biggest drivers of chronic anxiety. Is intolerance of uncertainty. I need to know. I need to know what happens. I need to know she's not upset. I need to know my kids will be okay. I need to know the test is negative. I need to know the business will succeed. need to know I'm right. But you don't get that kind of uncertainty. None of us do. You have evidence, you can have wisdom, you can have probability, you can have trust, ⁓ you have conviction, but human beings don't get. Omniscience. sometimes anxiety disguises the desire ⁓ omnis omniscience. Omni omnis omnipus un as being responsible. Omniscence. isn't. are responsible for examining evidence carefully. You are not responsible for knowing everything. ⁓ That's God's So let me give you thirty seconds. about one thing you're uncertain about right now. Maybe it has nothing to do with the manuscripts. it's your marriage, your career, your children, your health, your your future. Now finish sentence. Because I feel blank, I'm assuming blank. Because I feel anxious, I'm assuming something is coming. Because I feel rejected, I'm assuming I'm on. Because I feel confused, I'm assuming there's no good answer. Because I feel doubt, I'm assuming I don't have faith. I can't answer the question, I'm assuming nobody can. Now ask this. Is that a fact? Or that an interpretation? That's your Feeling versus truth. Don't suppress the Don't shame yourself for the feeling. Don't hand the feeling. to the judge's gavel either. So here's your exercise for this week. I'm not going to do the everyday thing like I did for Ted Lassen. ⁓ just for this week. I want you to use something I'm calling the manuscript truth audit. You can use this with almost any difficult question. Step one define the actual claim. The Bible is corrupted. That's huge. It's kind of a big deal, think big thing to claim. But what exactly are you claiming? Maybe some ancient manuscripts contain different readings. Okay. That's much more specific. And yes, that's true. So step two. Separate the fact from the interpretation. Here's the fact. There are manuscript variants, Therefore, we cannot know anything the New Testament originally said. Those are very different statements. The statement needs evidence too. So step three. Ask what emotion entered the conversation. Fear. Is it anger? Is it betrayal? it embarrassment? Confusion? Your emotions matter. But identify it. ⁓ unnamed emotions has a way of disguising itself as logic. Step four examine good evidence. Not TikTok. Not some TikTok YouTube pastor. Not even just one pastor. Not one atheist, not one apologest apologetics person. Look at serious sources. Look at actual manuscript databases. Consider the source. at scholars who understand Greek textual criticism. ⁓ at the manuscripts themselves when they're available digitally. Step five. Ask, would change your mind? This one is huge. If the answer is nothing, you're not investigating. You're defending a conclusion. and skeptics can do that. ⁓ Step six, bring the question before Scripture and God You don't have to pretend. If you're confused, say you're confused. If you're angry, say angry. If you're afraid, say you're God is not fragile. God can handle your honesty, and you need to be honest. Step seven, decide what the evidence actually justifies, not what anxiety demands. Not what your tribe demands. does the evidence justify? Maybe answer is I don't know. Maybe the claim was exaggerated. Maybe there really is a difficult textual issue here. Maybe the is stronger than I thought. And that's okay. Truth doesn't need to manipulate the conclusion. I want to challenge Christians specifically. If Christianity is true, should be among the least afraid people in the world when it comes to investigation. We should not panic because somebody asks a question. We should not shame somebody for doubting. We should not call intellectual curiosity a rebellion. Come on. And we definitely shouldn't manufacture evidence because we're afraid the real evidence isn't strong enough. ⁓ doesn't need that. There's a difference between I don't know the answer there is no answer. Those aren't the same sentence. ⁓ the most spiritual, mature thing you can say is, that's really good question. Let's look into it. Let's investigate it. Let's take a look. And if you're listening and you're skeptical of Christianity, I want to challenge you too. Use the ⁓ standard. Don't accept bad arguments simply because they attack something you already dislike. If someone says the Bible has been translated so many times that nobody knows what it originally said, ask this is that actually how the Bible translation works? Because modern translations aren't usually translating the NIV into another version, into another version, into another version, like a telephone game or something. Scholars work from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscript traditions. If somebody tells you there are hundreds of thousands of variants, ask this. What kinds of variants? How are they counted? Which one affects ⁓ What evidence allows scholars to identify them in the first place? Skepticism be skeptical of skeptical arguments too. Otherwise, ⁓ it's skepticism. It's confirmation bias. So here's something practical I want you to do. Actually look at one of these manuscripts. for Codec's ⁓ ⁓ I'll it in the description so you can look it up. That's kind of hard to say. But look at it. Search for the Israel Museum's digital great Isaiah scroll. Take a look at it. Look at P52 from the University of Manchester. You don't to read ancient Greek. The point is psychological as much as historical. stop being imaginary objects somebody told you about in church. They're real artifacts. They exist. ⁓ study them, they photograph them, they disagree about them. They preserve them. They compare them. Christianity entered history. ⁓ And because it entered history, we should expect historical evidence to be messy. history is messy, ⁓ messy ⁓ not mean unknowable. So, can we trust ⁓ manuscripts? Here's I would answer it. We have historical reasons to believe the Bible biblical manuscripts allow us to recover text within a high degree of confidence ⁓ while still genuine ⁓ textual ⁓ Variance in some passages where uncertainty remains. Less flashy than that, Bible has never changed one But it's more accurate. Now I would rather give you an accurate answer ⁓ than viral one. ⁓ Because series is about truth. And truth doesn't need exaggeration. The manuscript isn't impressive because every copy is identical. It's impressive because we possess enough evidence to identify where our copies differ. Think about that. The variations aren't hidden. They're detectable precisely because we have manuscripts to compare them to. And that means the ancient Christian text isn't some black box where somebody asks, trust us. You can study it. So I've done a lot of talking. So let me end here. Maybe you clicked on this episode because ancient manuscripts fascinate you. Great. Fantastic. Maybe you clicked because somebody challenged your faith. And maybe you've been deconstructing. Maybe you're rebuilding. you're not a Christian at all. Wherever you are in your walk, don't be afraid of good questions. Don't be afraid to ask good questions. But also don't confuse the existence of a question with the absence of an answer. And don't confuse uncertainty with danger. That's something I say a lot in different ways all the time. Your mind wants resolution. Your nervous system wants safety. But sometimes maturity means staying present long enough to investigate instead of reacting. Matt Rye said, it's not the noise necessarily that's the issue. It's your reaction to the noise. Jordan Peterson says, tell the truth, or at least don't lie. Pastor Mike says And has been talking about replacing the lies we tell ourselves with truth. And scripture says grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. ⁓ doesn't mean you'll never have questions. It means your questions ⁓ frighten God. And a faith rooted in truth should be strong enough to investigate them. So here's your challenge this week. Pick one question about scripture you've avoided. Not twenty, not ten, not a hundred, just one. Write it down. Define the actual claim. Identify what you feel about it. Separate the evidence from your interpretation. Then investigate it carefully. pray something as simple as this. God, I is true ⁓ more than I want is comfortable. Help me have the courage to follow truth wherever it leads. And that's a dangerous prayer, but I think it's a healthy one. Because being rooted doesn't mean experiencing uncertainty. Being means uncertainty doesn't get to decide what is true. This has been rooted in Ruith Keenan. ⁓ I'm And if episode helped you, ⁓ send somebody wrestling with faith, doubt, anxiety, or questions about the Bible. And if you're that person, keep asking questions, keep learning, keep examining. Don't settle. for shallow answers from Christians or critics. Stay rooted, stay real, keep building your life on what is true. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next time.