God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts by Brent Nongbri
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The Biblical Butterfly Effect

The traditional definition of correct belief, orthodoxy, in the Christian Church has been ‘that which has always been believed by everyone, everywhere.’ The ‘everyone’, of course, designates those who have been judged to be orthodox in the past. The ‘everywhere’ really means the major centres of Christianity in Greece, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Western Roman Empire. One might reasonably consider this principle of ‘everyone and everywhere’ to be stacked in favour of the winners in prior doctrinal conflicts. Nonetheless, there is a certain credible logic in the principle that appeals to many.

It is the ‘always’ that is the fly in the dogmatic ointment. Clearly if it be shown that what is considered correct belief has changed historically, then the edifice of orthodoxy could be infected with any number of bugs eating away at its foundations. For a religion which bases itself on the integrity of the Word, that is the written records in which its doctrines are based, the biggest threat it faces is the discovery of any documentation which suggests the possibility of reversal of orthodox opinion in the dim and distant past. As with the ultimate state of the physical universe which depends on tiny variations in its initial conditions at the Big Bang, so even otherwise insignificant variations in foundational biblical texts can change the direction of doctrine dramatically.

This is of course of particular concern to those so-called fundamentalists among us who consider the biblical text as something more or less dictated by God. The problem that these folk have, quite apart from translation which introduces enormous literal difficulties, is that there are a number of versions of ancient biblical texts. And these do not agree with one another. Sometimes the variations are minor, involving verb tenses and other grammatical issues; others are more substantial, such as missing or added verses or whole sections.* So the uncovering of ancient manuscripts which are different from those that are currently accepted as definitive, or (quelle horreur!) the discovery of material with the pedigree of antiquity but with entirely unexpected content is profoundly disconcerting to the evangelical mind.

Textual variations, copyist errors, and alternative versions have been known about by biblical scholars for centuries. (See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...) But during the 20th century, ‘new’ old documents began to appear with alarmingly increased frequency. This is largely due to the expansion of the antiquities market itself, which makes it profitable to seek and trade in ancient texts. However, the more that are found, the greater number of variations, and the more the entire biblical project, as it were, looks like a human artefact rather than a divine missive. This is particularly so with the Christian Bible since more ancient ‘originals’ are available. Whereas evidence for the revision, editing, and emendation of the Hebrew Bible, although compelling, is almost solely internal or related to more recent commentaries.

Nongbri‘s analysis of the available biblical texts is not focussed on the textual variations but on the textual composition of collections - the material that is included together in one ‘codex’ (primitive book), or found in collections of such books. His unit of analysis is, therefore, not words, or sentences or even whole manuscripts, but groups of such manuscripts. He treats these as straightforward archaeological artefacts, mere objects, which, as it were, were found in a heap. The fact that such material is found together (or for example with entombed corpses, or in certain locations, such as monasteries) suggests what was considered as approved, as orthodox, before the canon of the bible had been established functionally by the mid-third century, and officially by the end of the fourth century.

The most well known collection of texts is that of Nag Hamadi, twelve papyrus books and a loose tractate, which became public in 1946 (there may have been more but the finder’s mother is reported to have used them as kindling). They are written in Coptic and include a complete copy of the famous Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Christian text. The Nag Hamadi collection is typical in that almost everything about it is uncertain - its provenance, the location and circumstances of its discovery, the material, like containers, that might have been found with it, and the dates of its texts or their consolidation. All other group finds suffer from these same difficulties to some degree.

Nongbri quotes a noted biblical scholar about one of the most important groups of early manuscripts in order to suggest their collective importance:

“The evidence of Beatty Codex I was, in Kenyon’s view, clear: ‘It points, perhaps decisively, to the conclusion that the Vatican MS.** does not represent a text of original purity dominant in Egypt throughout the second and third centuries; that other texts, with many minor variations, existed during that period in Egypt as well as elsewhere; and that the Vatican text represents the result, not of continuous unaltered tradition, but of skilled scholarship working on the best available authorities.’ The Beatty codex was thought to show that the texts of the New Testament were more fluid during the second and third centuries than had previously been imagined.”

I am not a biblical scholar, nor am I familiar with any of the techniques for evaluating ancient textual material. But the above citation makes what I think is the most important practical implication of Nongbri’s thesis, namely that even the tentative conclusions held by scholars of what constitutes the oldest or most reliable or most complete biblical texts are much too confident. Even with modern advances in palaeography, carbon 14 dating and chemical analysis, it is simply not possible to accurately date these very early manuscripts, their sequence, or their prevalence.

For me there is an important implication of this fundamental uncertainty: If modern analysis cannot establish these things, neither could the third and fourth century experts who were responsible for the construction of the canon and the approval of competing texts. They simply did not have the competence required. It is impossible to know with any accuracy how their decisions evolved and what criteria of choice were employed, but evolve they certainly did. And since even the most ardent fundamentalist Christian believes that divine revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle, the choices didn’t involve messages from heaven. What has come down to us, therefore, is a more or less random set of texts. We call them the New Testament.

*But even esoteric grammatical disagreements can have profound doctrinal consequences. The so-called ‘filioque’ controversy, for example, between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches hinges on the meaning of a preposition translated from Greek into Latin.

**There are only seven surviving Christian codices of any sort dating from before 200 CE. All are fragmentary. The four oldest comprehensive (but still very incomplete) codices date from the fourth century and includes the Vatican Codex referred to.

Postscript: For more on the analysis of primitive Christian documents, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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