On the CARM Youtube page, there is a video by an Evangelical apologist, Ryan Turner, who tries to argue in favour of a near-perfect preservation of the biblical texts:
A few years ago, Daniel McClellan offered the following comments on this video on an online forum which shows how weak and deceptive the arguments are (hardly a surprise considering Ryan Turner works for Matt Slick):
@Laura: Going through, Ryan makes a number of dubious and outright incorrect claims. For instance, he fudges on what the Dead Sea Scrolls teach us. He talks about how they demonstrate a remarkable degree of precision and then states "we have over 10,000 Old Testament manuscripts," leading one to believe the Dead Sea Scrolls provide that many manuscripts. They do not, though. They provide a few hundred. The other thousands of manuscripts come largely from the middle ages, and they only witness to the reliability of the transmission of the text centuries after they were originally written. Those middle age manuscripts don't really tell us anything.
The scrolls, in reality, witness to thousands and thousands of variants from the Masoretic Text (the version of the Old Testament accepted as authoritative among Christians and Jews which dates to around 1000 CE). The Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the other manuscripts traditions to which we have access from antiquity show quite a bit of variability until we get to around the second century CE, at which point the tradition that would become the Masoretic tradition moved into a place of prominence and the other versions slowly died off. From those traditions we know, for instance, that the book of Jeremiah was 1/8 shorter before the first century CE. Over 10% of the book was added in the Common Era. See here for some interesting tidbits we learn related to the Samaritans:
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/on-the-samaritan-pentateuch/
Ryan states that there are only "approximately thirteen variations" between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the Masoretic Text, but this is simply false. There are hundreds of variations. Virtually every single verse has some difference or another. Granted, the vast majority are orthographic or grammatical, but there are many more than thirteen differences in actual content. This website covers many of the variations, although you'll need a decent understanding of Hebrew to make adequate sense of it:
http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qumdir.htm
The book of Isaiah is also the most pristinely preserved book of the Hebrew Bible. The other books have far more significant differences, many, many of which do quite seriously impact "major" doctrines.
Ryan is also fudging a bit when he says "the earliest New Testament manuscripts come from within thirty years after the last book was written." This is untrue, though. Only one manuscript has ever been dated that early, and it is actually now dated a couple decades later by most scholars. There are a handful of other manuscripts that date to around 75-100 years after the last book was written, but that's a far cry from the sense you get from Ryan's statement. Quite a bit can happen in 75-100 years.
Ryan also doesn't seem to understand the difference between quoting and citing, unless he does actually mean "cite," but wants people to think he means "quote." He suggests we can reconstruct all but "about eleven verses" from the early Church fathers, but this is simply untrue. We could probably arrive at that if we include all the post-Nicene fathers (all the way down to the middle ages), but Ryan is leading us to believe he means the pre-Nicene fathers. Their witness is really the only one that has any textual significance.
Next Ryan suggests that the copying "errors" (he says nothing about intentional manipulation) don't affect any serious doctrines, such as the existence of "one true God," but this is also false. I've already pointed out that Deut 32:8 explains quite explicitly that God divided up the nations to the gods, with Yhwh getting Israel. That's a variant that was suggested by the Septuagint (which we've had for centuries), and only recently proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ryan does not seem aware of this variant. The biblical text is also demonstrably corrupt in the autographs in several areas. This has nothing to do with copying, but with the original composition. Acts 15:16-17 is an example. It quotes Amos 9:11-12, but it quotes a Greek mistranslation, and the mistranslation itself is what the author uses to make his point about the spreading of the gospel to the Gentiles. I discuss it further here, along with some other examples:
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/when-the-new-testament-misreads-the-hebrew-bible/
I'm going to stop there. Hopefully you can see Ryan's presentation is not based on a very informed look at the question. Rather it appeals to standard misinformation that has been passed around the internet for years and pretty common fundamentalist hermeneutic fallacies and factual errors. Anybody with a copy of Strong's and an internet connection could come up with the same basic concerns in a matter of a couple days, of course, they will be equally mistaken in the vast majority of their points, and will not get anyone an inch closer to actually understanding the truth behind the history of the biblical text or its interpretation. All they will get is a ra-ra session for fundamentalists.
The scrolls, in reality, witness to thousands and thousands of variants from the Masoretic Text (the version of the Old Testament accepted as authoritative among Christians and Jews which dates to around 1000 CE). The Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the other manuscripts traditions to which we have access from antiquity show quite a bit of variability until we get to around the second century CE, at which point the tradition that would become the Masoretic tradition moved into a place of prominence and the other versions slowly died off. From those traditions we know, for instance, that the book of Jeremiah was 1/8 shorter before the first century CE. Over 10% of the book was added in the Common Era. See here for some interesting tidbits we learn related to the Samaritans:
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/on-the-samaritan-pentateuch/
Ryan states that there are only "approximately thirteen variations" between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the Masoretic Text, but this is simply false. There are hundreds of variations. Virtually every single verse has some difference or another. Granted, the vast majority are orthographic or grammatical, but there are many more than thirteen differences in actual content. This website covers many of the variations, although you'll need a decent understanding of Hebrew to make adequate sense of it:
http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qumdir.htm
The book of Isaiah is also the most pristinely preserved book of the Hebrew Bible. The other books have far more significant differences, many, many of which do quite seriously impact "major" doctrines.
Ryan is also fudging a bit when he says "the earliest New Testament manuscripts come from within thirty years after the last book was written." This is untrue, though. Only one manuscript has ever been dated that early, and it is actually now dated a couple decades later by most scholars. There are a handful of other manuscripts that date to around 75-100 years after the last book was written, but that's a far cry from the sense you get from Ryan's statement. Quite a bit can happen in 75-100 years.
Ryan also doesn't seem to understand the difference between quoting and citing, unless he does actually mean "cite," but wants people to think he means "quote." He suggests we can reconstruct all but "about eleven verses" from the early Church fathers, but this is simply untrue. We could probably arrive at that if we include all the post-Nicene fathers (all the way down to the middle ages), but Ryan is leading us to believe he means the pre-Nicene fathers. Their witness is really the only one that has any textual significance.
Next Ryan suggests that the copying "errors" (he says nothing about intentional manipulation) don't affect any serious doctrines, such as the existence of "one true God," but this is also false. I've already pointed out that Deut 32:8 explains quite explicitly that God divided up the nations to the gods, with Yhwh getting Israel. That's a variant that was suggested by the Septuagint (which we've had for centuries), and only recently proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ryan does not seem aware of this variant. The biblical text is also demonstrably corrupt in the autographs in several areas. This has nothing to do with copying, but with the original composition. Acts 15:16-17 is an example. It quotes Amos 9:11-12, but it quotes a Greek mistranslation, and the mistranslation itself is what the author uses to make his point about the spreading of the gospel to the Gentiles. I discuss it further here, along with some other examples:
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/when-the-new-testament-misreads-the-hebrew-bible/
I'm going to stop there. Hopefully you can see Ryan's presentation is not based on a very informed look at the question. Rather it appeals to standard misinformation that has been passed around the internet for years and pretty common fundamentalist hermeneutic fallacies and factual errors. Anybody with a copy of Strong's and an internet connection could come up with the same basic concerns in a matter of a couple days, of course, they will be equally mistaken in the vast majority of their points, and will not get anyone an inch closer to actually understanding the truth behind the history of the biblical text or its interpretation. All they will get is a ra-ra session for fundamentalists.
