In her book,
Misguided by Mormonism, Christina
Darlington frequently repeats (without any substantiation) the claim that the manuscript
and papyri discoveries support a 99.5% preservation figure for the Bible. As
one example of this bald assertion, under the header of “Evidence of Biblical
Preservation,” we read:
. . .5,000+
original Greek manuscripts, some dated within 100 years of the original
writings, all agree with 99.5% accuracy. (Christina R. Darlington, Misguided by Mormonism But Redeemed by God’s
Grace: Leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Biblical
Christianity [2d ed.; 2019], 132)
Darlington
is simply repeating a claim that has been repeated since the 1960s by Norman
Geisler and “pop apologists” like Josh McDowell.
With respect
to the Old Testament, let us kill two birds with the one stone; Darlington's
misguided claim and another related one that one encounters frequently--the
claim that the text of Isa 53 in the Masoretic Text, when compared to the
Isaiah text one finds at Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls) have no textual
differences, being one example of the purported near-perfect (whether 99.5% or
99.9%--both figures are bandied about). However, such claims are without any
basis in reality.
Michael S.
Heiser, an Evangelical scholar, presents these differences in a paper entitled:
One should
read it and even save it for future reference, as this claim, while popular, is
false, and those who repeat it are either mistaken or simply lying.
There are
many theologically-driven changes in the Old Testament that are contained in the
KJV and other translations. Take Deut 32:7-9. The following is the NRSV translation of the text:
Remember the days of old, consider the years
long past; ask your father and he will inform you, Your elders will tell you.
When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, he
fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel's numbers. For the Lord's
portion is his people, Jacob his own allotment.
One will
note that this differs from the KJV; the Masoretic Text (MT) underlying the KJV
OT reads "sons of Adam/Man," while the DSS has the reading "sons
of god" or, as ANE scholars understand the term, "gods."
In The Jewish Study Bible, we read the following note to this pericope:
Most High, or “Elyon,” is a formal title
of El, the senior god who presided over the divine council in the Ugaritic
literature of ancient Canaan. The reference thus invokes, as do other biblical
texts, the Near Eastern convention of a pantheon of gods ruled by the chief
deity (Pss. 82:1; 89:6-8). Israelite authors regularly applied El’s title to
Israel’s God (Gen. 14:18-22; Num. 24:16; Pss. 46:5; 47:3). [with reference to
the variant in the DSS “number of the gods”] makes more sense. Here, the idea
is that the chief god allocates the nations to lesser deities in the pantheon.
(A post-biblical notion that seventy angels are in charge of the world’s
seventy nations echoes this idea.) Almost certainly, the unintelligible reading
of the MT represents a “correction” of the original text (whereby God presides
over other gods) to make it conform to the later standard of pure monotheism:
There are no other gods! The polytheistic imagery of the divine council is also
deleted in the Heb at 32:42; 33:2-3, 7. (Bernard M. Levinson, "Deuteronomy" in The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler [2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 419, comment in square brackets added for clarification)
For other
instances of theologically-motivated corruptions to the Old Testament texts,
see Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3d ed.: Fortress Press,
2011).
With respect
to the New Testament, the earlier one goes back, the wider the textual
divergences between biblical texts. For instance, Philip W. Comfort and David
P. Barrett, commenting on the Gospel of John portrayed in two manuscripts
(Codex Vaticanus and p75) reveal 85% agreement, leaving 15% disagreement. This
is a far cry from the 99.5% figure from Darlington! Further, Comfort and Barrett also reveal
that the text of the Epistle to the Hebrews in p13 and p46 displays 80%
agreement and 20% disagreement (see The
Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts, eds. Philip W. Comfort and
David P. Barrett [2d ed.: Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishing, 2002], 504, 83).
On the topic of theologically-driven corruptions to the New Testament, see, for
e.g., Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption
of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of
the New Testament (2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Again, we see that Darlington is not a scholar, but instead, is a disingenuous individual who falsely presents herself as informed on topics she is utterly clueless about.
For a listing of previous articles refuting Darlington’s book, Misguided by Mormonism, see: