Former Atheist, Craig Keener, Defends Miracles

I've been long anticipating the release of Craig Keener's new ground breaking book on Miracles. I just found out that it is now available and as a two volume set at that. Any work Keener does is scholarly and extremely well documented (his commentary on John includes tens of thousands of footnotes), Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts is no exception. The book reviews read as a whose who among Christian scholars. Professor Richard Bauckham notes,

"Craig Keener's discussion of New Testament miracles adduces a uniquely--indeed staggeringly--extensive collection of comparative material. That eyewitnesses frequently testify to miraculous healings and other 'extranormal' events is demonstrated beyond doubt. Keener mounts a very strong challenge to the methodological skepticism about the miraculous..."

Keener has written a blog, Are Miracles Real?, a very short summary of his book at the Huffington Post (reminiscent of Daniel in the Lion's Den). I have also found a number of interviews with him, all available as mp3 downloads or streaming audio. Dr. Mike Licona has conducted several over the years on 4TRUTH.NET, his most recent one can be found here. Brian Auten, founder of Apologetics 315, has recently interviewed him. He was also on the Line of Fire, hosted by Dr. Michael Brown. Ratio Christi-Ohio State University also has some interesting commentary. J.P. Holding of Tektonics has offered some of his own thoughts here as well as a guest blog. You can check out the contents at Baker Academics.


Winner of The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship's 2012 Award of Excellence

2011 Book of the Year, Christianbook.com

400,000 Changes and the Bible: Textual Variations

Has the Bible been "lost in translation?" Bible critics are quick to make the challenge that the Bible is a copy of a copy of a copy and therefore unreliable.¹ Critic, Bart Ehrman goes onto discredit the Bible by alleging that there are numerous discrepancies within the New Testament manuscripts, 400,000 to be precise. It has been said that these are very important differences that are so drastic that they change the entire meaning, including altering fundamental Christian doctrines. Dan Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts points out that such criticism is completely unwarranted and he explains why.²

In my last blog, I pointed out that of the New Testament manuscripts, there are over 5,700 in Greek, 10,000 Latin and counting, not to mention all of the citations from the early church fathers. This being the case, according to Wallace, we should not be surprised to discover manuscript errors. He claims 400,00 is actually low, considering the 'embarrassing amount of riches' in manuscripts. Furthermore, Wallace and others have argued that these changes are fairly insignificant. A few cases in point: There are 16 different Greek variations to say that Jesus loves John, without changing the meaning. One particular manuscript shows signs of the monk growing tired as he copied, misspelling words and the like.

1. Of the New Testament manuscript variants, 75 to 80% are simple spelling errors.
2. The next largest category contain changes that can’t be translated; synonyms.
3. The third category include variations that impact the meaning, but are not viable.
4. The final category represents less than one percent of the variants and include changes that are both meaningful and viable. For example, the last 12 verses in Mark's Gospel is not found in the N.T. Manuscripts, prior to the fifth century. One of the most beloved passages (John 7:53-8:11), where the woman is caught in adultery is also omitted from the earliest manuscripts.³

The bottom line is that no viable changes that are meaningful, change or effect any major Christian doctrine or contradict any early creed. Of course, there is the exception of snake handling churches who want to take Mark 16:18 literally; however, I do not know of any Christian scholar who takes this sect seriously. There are, however, those who reject the earlier manuscripts in favor of the majority texts, as defended particularly by some King James only proponents.

Footnotes:

1 While this remains a subject of interest among many skeptics as well as believers, it has been examined at great length over the years by many Bible scholars and historians. In the MP3 link below, Craig Keener discuses his book, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, in which he summarizes a few basic important points on the matter. http://namb.edgeboss.net/download/namb/4truth/audio/keener_historical_jesus.mp3

2 Reinventing Jesus, Daniel B. Wallace, J. Ed Komoszewski and M. James Sawyer. Justin Taylor conducted an interview with Wallace which is available here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2008/02/17/interview-with-daniel-b-wallace-part-4/?comments#comments

Also see: http://www.brianauten.com/Apologetics/dan-wallace-textofscripture.mp3

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery

Manuscript Authority and the New Testament

Is the New Testament really that reliable? Scholars such as Dan Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts,1 Darrell Bock, Ben Witherington III and Craig Keener have been answering the recent attacks by New Testament critics.

A manuscript is a handwritten copy of an ancient document. There are over 5,700 Greek New Testament Manuscripts. Some are fragments or individual books. There are 60 complete copies of the entire N.T. in Greek. They have also found over 10,000 Latin manuscripts of the N.T.

An autograph copy is the original document that was written by the author. There are no known autographs of any ancient writing, including the Bible. Nevertheless, as manuscripts continue to roll in, the earliest New Testament fragment spans less then 50 years from the original. Furthermore, ten to fifteen more manuscripts' dates fall into the second century. The earliest complete manuscript is dated at 350 A.D.2

Other ancient literature doesn't even compare with the N.T. in manuscript authority. Homer's Iliad ranks second to the Bible with a 500 year gap between the original autograph and the earliest manuscript copy, dating at 400 B.C., with 643 manuscripts. At the approximate time when the books in the N.T. were being written, Pliny wrote his History with a 750 year gap, dating at 850 A.D., of which there are only 7 manuscripts.3

There are also a number of early quotations from the early church. Between the first and thirteenth century, one million such quotations exist. “...there are 32,000 quotations from the New Testament found in writings from before the council of Nicea in 325 A.D. (Josh Mcdowell Evidence, 1972:52). J. Harold Greenlee points out that the quotations of the scripture in the works of the early church writers are so extensive that the New Testament could virtually be reconstructed from them without the use of New Testament manuscripts.”4



1 http://www.csntm.org/
2 http://www.cpcfc.org/audio/071111_Dan_Wallace.mp3
Reinventing Jesus by Daniel Wallace, J. Ed Komoszewski and M. James Sawyer
3 http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence
4 http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm