Textual Criticism and its implications for inerrancy

As a Christian I’ve spent a lot of time dwelling on and pondering the case for inerrancy. The reasons for this are numerous. First, it was probably the doctrine that could have potentially led to the loss of my faith had I chosen to hold to the “inerrancy-or-bust” mentality that plagues fundamentalists. Second, it was after rejecting this doctrine that I truly felt my faith strengthened—I could put my faith solely in God instead of setting up the bible as my spiritual focal point. Third, it seems to me that this doctrine is more of a spiritual crutch to many to be held at all costs instead of a position deduced by pure logical inference.

 With such reasons thus stated, I find myself occasionally running through my mind the reasons why this doctrine is simply unwarranted and untenable. And let me say that the reasons I, personally, have for rejecting this doctrine seem to be miles wide in scope and miles deep in substance. Yet there are a few arguments I have come across (or have come up with myself) that I feel have really put the final nail in the coffin for the doctrine of inerrancy and it is in this post that I would like to expound one of those very arguments.

 This argument begins with the recognition regarding the findings of Textual Criticism. In case the reader is unaware, Textual Criticism is the endeavor of attempting to ascertain the original form of a text. Now, usually appealing to any kind of secular scholarly consensus regarding the bible is something that fundamentalists and inerrantists will not react favorably towards—since in order to affirm the doctrine of inerrancy one would have to reject almost all consenses reached by the academic community. Yet, there is one area where even fundamentalists will (usually) yield to academia and that is in the science of textual criticism. In New Testament textual criticism scholars have reached conclusions that cannot be denied, since these conclusions have concrete evidence to ground them. For instance, it is unanimously agreed that all the (thousands of) New Testament manuscripts we possess have scribal errors. Some of these errors are simple copying mistakes while others are blatant textual additions. These variants reach a mark as high as, and most likely higher than, 400,000.

It’s important to understand that most of these errors are completely insignificant (e.g. spelling mistakes). However, there are many that are quite significant indeed. 1 John 5:7-8 is one of the only places where the doctrine of the trinity is explicitly taught, and yet these verses are not found in a majority of NT manuscripts; the story of the adulterous woman (John 7:53-8:11) is completely absent from many early manuscripts of John; and the resurrection ending of Mark (Mark 16: 9-20) was not added until two centuries after the Gospel of Mark began to circulate. Let me articulate once more that these conclusions are based on concrete physical evidence of the manuscripts we possess.

 So, what is the significance of the above conclusions, and how do they affect the doctrine of inerrancy? Well, first let me begin by correctly articulating the inerrantist position. The doctrine of inerrancy only states that the original texts of the bible are inerrant, and not that God would keep the editors and scribes, who transmitted the texts, from error. Fair enough. But there is double standard employed here; and I believe presuppositionalist  Greg Bahnsen demonstrated it in his own writings:
 

There is no scriptural warrant for holding that God will perform the perpetual miracle of preserving His written Word from all errors in its being transcribed from one copy to another.

 Notice the problem? Did God ever claim that he would keep the scribes and editors from corrupting his word as it was transmitted textually? No. But, similarly, did God ever claim that he would keep the human writers of scripture from corrupting his word as they wrote scripture? No, he did not. (Let it be known that an appeal to the inspiration of scripture does not save this claim unless one already assumes that inspiration necessitates an inerrant text--which would need to be demonstrated.) So, how can one claim that the original text should be inerrant but not the text after transmission, since both of these assertions rest on the same lack of promulgation of the divine will?
 
Moreover, what makes the bible different after the original text is formed? Is it not still the “Word of God”? Of course it is. So, why would God not allow error to corrupt his Word during the writing of the original text but he would allow error to corrupt his Word during its textual transmission? Surely any answer given in vindication of the former would not also apply to the latter? So, I maintain that we can form a valid dilemma regarding the nature of scripture: Either (1) God desired that no human error intermix with his Word or revelation, or (2) God did not desire such a thing. But we know for a fact, again due to textual criticism, that human error did corrupt God’s Word as it was textually transmitted. So, we have warrant for rejecting (1) and are therefore completely warranted in accepting the conclusion that God allowed human error to intermix with his message—whether it pertains to the original text or not. Thus, we have logical airtight reasons for denying the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Harry McCall responds (sort of), and profundity does not ensue

Harry McCall and I have been engaging in a back and forth regarding his thesis that the OT—yes, the entire OT--is a forged document from the late second temple period. I wrote a blog post demonstrating logically, historically, and textually why McCall’s thesis is unreasonable. McCall has claimed that he will properly deal with my arguments. In the comment section of this recent post at DC, McCall claimed the following: I'm going to post a full article here at DC tonight (It's just about finished) that takes you [sic] blog's post apart piece by piece. However, McCall never posted this article that was supposedly “about finished”, or if he did I have yet to see it materialize.

What he did do, however, was post a short rebuttal comment to an argument I promulgated over at DC in the comment section. Is this the material he claimed was going to take up a full article? I can’t say. And why McCall did not post this “response” on his own blog instead of the comment section of my blog is strange. Usually McCall parades his idiosyncratic theses around the DC pages. But, when claiming to take my arguments apart “piece by piece” he seems to not want many to see his responses. And after reading his so-called rebuttals, I can clearly see why.

So, the purpose of this post is to demonstrate why McCall’s recent answer to my arguments fall short of the mark, are predicated on more non-sequiturs, and only deal with a small fraction of my original arguments.

Let me set the stage and begin with McCall’s argument, as articulated at DC, on how to “deprogram a Christian”:

1.  Demand textual proof that any verse of the Old Testament was written before 200 BCE. (There's 23,145 verses to prove them right or wrong.)
2. Demand historical proof (apart from using the New Testament to prove the New Testament) that Jesus Christ existed. (Let's see absolute truth prove itself.)

As you can see, 1) is predicated on McCall’s biblical forgery thesis, and 2) is predicated on Jesus Mythicism. My response was as follows:

 

How to Deconvert/Deprogram a believer in the writings of Tacitus
(1) Demand textual proof that any volume of Tacitus' Annals was written before the ninth century.

 

How to Deconvert/Deprogram a believer in the existence in Caesar Augustus
(2) Demand historical proof (apart from using the writers that already assume Augustus existed) that Augustus existed.

This response was put forward in order to demonstrate the double standards that McCall employs in making his historical arguments against the Bible and Jesus’ existence. And it is to this response that McCall has offered his so-called rebuttal. McCall’s response begins as follows:

 

We know Rome existed! We don’t need either the writings of Tacitus nor Caesar Augustus to prove this. There ARE tons of archeological evidence from the time they discuss that one can see in Rome and Italy today. However, there is totally NO evidence Biblical Israel existed as described in the extensive and detailed text of the Bible.

McCall’s assertions here greatly confuse me. I never argued that Rome did not exist. McCall’s and mine discussion has no bearing on the topic of the existence of Rome. Second, neither did I ever claim that the writings of Tacitus or Augustus were necessary in order to demonstrate such a thing. So, McCall’s comments here have only caused more confusion, and have not even begun to scratch the surface of my arguments against his thesis. McCall continues with his next objection:

Neither Tacitus nor Caesar Augustus give detail word for word statements from hundreds of people over thousands of years. While Steven wants to play down the myths of Adam, Eve and the talking Snake, Steven then depends heavily on the internal Biblical chronology itself to link it to some history, but sadly for him, there is none[.]

There are many responses here. First, McCall’s objection here seems to, once again, not even pertain to the discussion. Remember that the discussion, based off of McCall’s own thesis, regards whether or not we have any reason to believe that the Hebrew Bible was forged in the second temple period. McCall’s (attempted) point in the above comment is that the Bible claims to give history over many centuries while Tacitus’ writings—I never mentioned the writings of Augustus, so I fail to see why he uses Augustus here—only claim to give historical details over a period of decades. So, what exactly does this latter point have to do with McCall’s original thesis? I profess that I have no idea. Whether the Bible was a forged document has nothing whatsoever to do with how long its purported historical recollections are. This seems to be another non-sequitur, the mark of McCall.

Second, even if McCall’s above objection was efficacious, it fails to take into account the nature of the biblical data, and draws a false parallel between the OT and the writings of historians of antiquity. For remember that the OT is an anthology, and was therefore written by dozens of authors. So, of course it makes sense that the timeline of dozens of authors stretches across centuries, while the timeline of one historian only stretches across decades. What else would we expect?

Notice that nothing McCall has objected here has even touched upon my original objections to his thesis. McCall is attempting (though not succeeding) to pick off the fleas while ignoring the dog that the fleas rest on. McCall continues:

Sadly for Steve, he’ll find totally nothing like this for the works of Tacitus or Caesar Augustus nor the total lack of evidence for a Classical archeologist digging in Rome or the Roman Empire because the Roman Empire existed (unlike the myth of the Biblical Israel).

McCall once again seems to have blatantly missed the point. The discussion is not over the existence of Rome. Rather, the discussion is regarding whether or not we are warranted in extending the existence of a writing beyond its earliest existing manuscript, and how this ties into the biblical textual evidence. Apparently McCall has amnesia and has forgotten exactly what we are discussing.

McCall articulates his third and final objection:

A major error Steve is making in his analogy is early evidence for a book (the Bible) that records 4,000 years of history before Christianity. Steve come up totally empty hand for any early Biblical text apart from the late post 200 (250?) BCE Qumran Scrolls.

Um, ok. McCall is oblivious to the fact that I have already conceded this. I agree that we have no copy of a biblical text that dates to before 250 BCE. Did you catch that? I agree. But, McCall has missed the point yet again. The debate is not regarding the date of these texts, but, rather, whether we can date the originals of these writings to before our earliest copies. The answer is  of course we can! Again, to reiterate what I already said in my last post on this subject, nearly all writings from antiquity survive on copies that date to centuries after they were written. So, to claim that we can project an earlier date for the originals of these copies from antiquity, but not for the Bible, is to enact a double standard! McCall has heard all this before, but instead of reformulating his thesis so as to avoid special pleading, he simply ignores the damaging objections to it and continues to promulgate such weak hypotheses. McCall continues:

Neither Tacitus (born 100 BCE) or Tacitus (born 56 CE) claim to record in detail direct speeches from both men, angels, demons and god, but are late down to earth documents we would expect of ancient historians of the time[.]

McCall is, again, missing the point completely. First, the topic of the writings that we’re discussing is irrelevant. What is relevant is when we can date these texts. Just because the Bible claims to report speeches from angles, demons, and God says nothing at all about when we can date the writings of said texts. McCall has formed another non-sequitur.

Second, and more importantly, there are many writings from reliable historians in antiquity that can be put in a similar genre as some of the writings of the Hebrew Bible. Let us take Tacitus, since we have already been using him as our prime example. Tacitus recorded that Roman emperor Vespasian miraculously healed a blind man and a lame man. That is, Tacitus recorded a miracle! A miracle, you know, like the kind found in the…the Bible.

Let us look at another example from the great historian Herodotus. Herodotus records that a horse gave birth to a rabbit. He also records a supposed fulfilled prophecy from the God Apollo. He also records that a Persian magi cast a spell to stop the Persian War on the fourth day. Herodotus even records that the Temple of Delphi miraculously defended itself with lightning bolts and rock avalanches! After reading these accounts one might label Herodotus as a dubious historian. On the contrary, he has been dubbed the “Father of History” and is regarded as, arguably, the greatest historian in antiquity.

All this is to demonstrate that there are indeed miraculous accounts in other writings from antiquity that can be paralleled with biblical accounts. So, McCall cannot claim that the miraculous nature of the Hebrew Bible allows us to discount an early date for its composition—a blatant non-sequitur—unless he is willing to do the same for other writings from antiquity. But, so far, we have seen that he is not, for then his illogic would be explicitly manifest.

McCall then ends his comment by listing a number of textual documents that demonstrate that other ancient nations existed in antiquity. However, seeing as how I have not called into question the existence of these nations, I fail to see McCall’s logical punch-line. To reiterate ad nauseum, the discussion is about the warrant one has for dating a writing earlier than its oldest manuscript; and a list of other nation’s textual writings adds nothing to my objections to McCall’s thesis.

In short, McCall’s thesis remains predicated on illogic, double standards, and a blatant ignorance of the actual textual evidence. I have demonstrated this before, and McCall’s most recent answer is drowned in more of the same—double standards and non-sequiturs. But, as I said, this seems to be the mark of McCall.

Harry McCall's thesis on biblical forgery

Harry McCall is a former fundamentalist Christian turned atheist. He (surprisingly) is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and received his B.A. in biblical literature. I first came across McCall over at John Loftus’ blog Debunking Christianity, and subsequently read his essay in the anthology Leaving the Fold.

In October 2012 McCall expounded a thesis of his, in a post at Debunking Christianity that he built up with much suspense, basically claiming that such a thesis would destroy the very historical foundation of Christianity. This thesis is not a scholarly consensus and has not been promulgated by any  major academic community. It is to McCall’s explanation of his thesis that we will first survey (I will quote McCall piecemeal):

[F]acts prove that the Old Testament is little more than a canonized group of forge [sic] books written at a time when Palestine was awash in religious turmoil and where long dead Biblical figures all seem to have written something ancient.

There is no Biblical manuscript (I repeat), not one single section of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) older than 250 BCE at the earliest!

My goal is to prove that there was no Biblical record until the middle of the Second Temple Period!

McCall is arguing that the Hebrew Bible, as it stands, had its genesis in the Second Temple Judaic period (515 BCE to 70 CE), because none of our manuscripts are earlier than this time, and therefore the whole Old testament is the result of countless forgeries which took place no earlier than 250 BCE (though I believe McCall has revised this thesis and has moved the date even later, to the second century).

This thesis is, to say the least, far-fetched and extreme. No consensus of scholars of antiquity, classics, aNE, nor OT/NT biblical studies holds to such a hypothesis. It is a fringe thesis, and should be treated with skepticism, seeing that the majority of scholars in the relevant fields have seen no warrant to promulgate such a hypothesis. I maintain that this thesis is the epitome of absurd and is predicated, simply, on sloppy scholarship, shoddy reasoning, double standards, special pleading and wishful thinking. In order to substantiate my above claim, we will examine three aspects of McCall’s thesis: 1) the fact that it is a non-sequitur; 2) the double standards and special pleading he employs; 3) the absolute ignorance McCall demonstrates regarding the biblical textual evidence. It is to these objections that we now turn.

First, it should be obvious to any objective reader that McCall’s thesis, even if predicated on valid facts (which I believe it is), is a non-sequitur—that is, even if his facts are correct, the conclusion does not logically follow. It is certainly not reasonable to conclude that because the oldest manuscripts we have of a specific writing date to such and such a time, they could not have been written any earlier than said time. Notice that at this point we’re dealing with pure logical possibility. It is perfectly reasonable to infer—and in fact we’ll see below that this is done with most writings from antiquity—that the original manuscript of a writing can date to many years before the oldest surviving copy of said writing. The oldest surviving manuscript of a writing does not logically necessitate that said manuscript is the earliest copy of the writing. To claim otherwise is pure ignorance embedded in dogmatism.

Now if my above objection is true, then this means that McCall’s conclusion does not at all follow from the facts he has highlighted; and if McCall’s conclusion does not follow, then his thesis is unwarranted and fallacious. The only way for McCall to revive his thesis is to claim that it is plausible for an oldest existing manuscript to have its genesis in an earlier copy that is not currently possessed; but if McCall does this then his thesis loses all efficacy. McCall is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Second, I maintain that McCall commits a major double standard with his thesis. To reiterate, McCall is claiming that since the oldest manuscripts we have of the Hebrew Bible are no older than 250 BCE, they could not—remember that if he admits they could then his thesis loses all plausibility—have been written any earlier. Yet, McCall only applies this standard to the Bible, and not to other writings of antiquity. But, most writings of antiquity run into the same problem that McCall is posing for the Bible, namely, late manuscripts.

Let us demonstrate with examples. Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56-120) was a Roman historian and senator. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians of antiquity. So, one would think that Tacitus’ writings live off of an abundance of manuscripts that date back to his period, right? Wrong. Tacitus’ Annals originally contained at least sixteen volumes. Yet, only volumes 1-4 and 12-15 survive, and therefore we only have half of Tacitus’ original work. Not only that, but the oldest surviving manuscript of the Annals that exists dates to the ninth century! Therefore, by McCall’s own reasoning, it could not have been written any earlier, and was forged in Tacitus’ name.

These types of examples abound in the ancient world.  Suetonius (A.D. 69-140) was another Roman historian, and the earliest manuscripts we contain of his The Twelve Caesars date to the ninth century as well. Thucydides (460-400 B.C.E) was a Greek historian and his earliest fragments date to the 1^st Century A.D. Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 B.C.E) was labeled “The father of history” and is seen as, arguably, the greatest historian in antiquity. His masterpiece The Histories survives with the earliest fragments dating to the 2^nd Century A.D. This is only the tip of the iceberg. And all these great and well-known historians of antiquity are hundreds of years removed from the earliest existing manuscripts of their writings.

But remember that by McCall’s own reasoning, all these documents were forged! Here is a quote from McCall: To argue that the Bible was an ancient historical document that existed prior to this period, one MUST have textual support. Now let us take McCall’s same line of reasoning and apply it to the other historians of antiquity surveyed above:

To argue that [the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, Thucydides and Herodotus were] ancient historical documents that existed prior to [their oldest existing manuscripts], one MUST have textual support.

Surely we can now see how ridiculous McCall’s thesis is. If McCall’s standard was employed with regards to all writings in antiquity, then we would have to conclude that all writings in antiquity were forged! That means Tacitus didn’t write the Annals and Herodotus didn’t write The Histories. Again, this is what we must infer if we are to follow McCall’s reasoning. Now, McCall has had this objection brought to his attention. This was his response:

Apples and oranges…Tacitus was not writing a divine history…he did not claim to have the one true history for over 4,000 years. He did not copy other works, then deny they existed and claim them exclusively as from his god/gods.

 McCall is claiming that the Hebrew Bible cannot be evaluated with the same standards as Tacitus, Herodotus et al. because the Hebrew Bible claims divine inspiration, whereas the former does not. Yet McCall is simply employing a red herring. Whether a text claims divine inspiration for itself does not necessitate how we should critically evaluate it. What’s amusing is that this is the very thing Christian apologists do with regards to biblical criticism—they engage in special pleading by asserting that the Bible should not be subject to the same standards of criticism as other writings, because the Bible is divinely inspired. McCall is, also, doing nothing more than engaging in special pleading. Just because the Bible claims inspiration for itself does not mean we treat it any different than any other historical document from antiquity. If the Bible claims to be giving us history, which it does claim throughout, then we need to subject it to the same criticism that we subject Tacitus’ Annals to, for example.  

McCall is simply attempting to get away with being overly critical with the biblical text. But, it wont work. Either his standard—that a writing cannot be older than its oldest manuscript—is employed across the board, and therefore most writings from antiquity are forged; or McCall must continue to revert to special pleading, and therefore his thesis is founded on a fallacy; or McCall will have to give up his ridiculous thesis, and therefore his thesis is discarded as invalid.

Third, let us look at a biblical example that seems to run counter to McCall’s hypothesis. Let’s begin with the nature of the Book of Isaiah. The Book of Isaiah is considered by the consensus of scholars to have been written by three authors: “First Isaiah” who wrote chapters 1-39, “Deutero-Isaiah” who wrote chapters 40-55, and “Third Isaiah” who wrote 56-66. Now, scholars believe that these chapters were written, for the most part, centuries apart from one another. Yet, on McCall’s thesis we have to believe that all these chapters were written sometime around the Second Temple Period. You see, the earliest copy of Isaiah we possess, known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, dates to around 100 BCE, and therefore it couldn’t have been written any earlier, according to McCall anyway. But, this presents a problem. Isaiah 52, written by Deutero-Isaiah, makes a peculiar statement that makes sense only if promulgated around the end of the exile. Here’s Isaiah 52:1 (emphasis added): Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall be no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. In this chapter the Israelites have just returned from exile, and Deutero-Isaiah is trying to prophesy to the people that they have paid their dues, that Jerusalem has returned into their hands, and that things will stay that way. Now, this is to be expected from a group of Jews who believe that they were sent into exile because of their sinfulness and that they have since paid the price and can now enjoy their beloved promise land.

But why, you might ask, does this prophecy only make sense if professed around the time the Israelites escaped exile? It’s simple: the prophecy failed. In case one didn’t know, Jerusalem has had many the uncircumcised and the unclean set up shop there. Antiochus Epiphanes pillaged Jerusalem in 167 BCE (which helped lead to the Maccabean revolt), and many such destructions and foreign invasions took place soon after. So, obviously, the verse in Isaiah was written before all of this happened, otherwise we’re meant to believe that Deutero-Isaiah deliberately wrote a false prophecy—which goes against common sense, and the nature of Second Temple Jewish literature.

Yet, if we accept McCall’s thesis then examples (and there are many more) like these become inexplicable. If Deutero-Isaiah wrote in Second Temple Judaism, then why would he construct a prophecy he knew was false and was being falsified at that very time? Let it be known that Second Temple Judaic forgeries were constructed to attach validity to their writings and, many times, promulgated prophecies after the fact—that is, after they had already happened so that they would be seen as valid. So, why would Deutero-Isaiah do the complete opposite and attach obvious invalidity to his writings? Such questions seem to have no reasonable answer on McCall’s thesis.

Conclusion

I maintain that we have seen absolutely no reason to (and every reason against) adopt McCall’s outrageous hypothesis. He claims that we need textual proof to overturn his thesis, yet we only need show that his thesis is fallacious, employs double standards and special pleading, and goes against the evidence we do possess. And this has been done. Is the Hebrew Bible a forged document of the Second Temple period? We have seen no cogent reason to think so.