Let's Get (Text) Critical
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16,17
Our Parish Retreat is around the corner and filling up! In case you haven’t yet registered, please do so here. Check out this video from our speaker, David Bailey, of Arrabon. We’re excited about spending the day playing (there’s a return of the ferocious trivia contest), hanging out, worshipping, and learning together. David will also be joining us for worship and preaching on Sunday, October 29th.
This Sunday, our series in John continues as we move into John chapter 8. Many of you will know that in most Bible translations, the beginning of John 8 begins curiously. For example, the ESV begins chapter 8 with the note “The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53-8:11” and a footnote about other possible placements for this section of the Gospel. These short notations are a brief glimpse into the world of textual criticism.
Textual criticism is the work of determining the make up a of a given text, in our case the Bible. In my studies, it was likened to the work of nuclear fusion. I’m not really sure why, except to say that it is working with the Bible at the almost atomic level, determining the basic material that constitutes a text, which we then receive as the word of God. The great New Testament scholar Gordon Fee has connected textual criticism to his love of detective mystery novels. It’s the work of figuring out the evidence for a particularly meaningful whodunit.
Perhaps most helpfully, the process of textual criticism was explained to me in relation to the game of “telephone.” Just as how that childhood game involves unpacking how a message has been relayed as it transitions from one person to the next, textual criticism involves paying attention to how the text has been handed down to us, through generations of copying and recopying biblical passages. That process inevitably involves detective work, as scholars make judgments among textual variants (hat tip to the the Marvel multiverse).
As an increasing number of early manuscripts have been discovered, scholars realized that the beginning of John 8 was not included with them. Those early writings move from John 7:52 straight to John 8:12. The earliest appearance of John 7:53-8:11 was in a manuscript found in the 9th century. Hence the questions about its presence in the Gospel. However, interestingly enough, the story does seem to have existed and was well known among early Christian thinkers. This has led to the somewhat complex situation indicated by the notes in our Bible translations. The story seems likely to not have been a part of John’s Gospel, but seems a historically authentic story of the radical grace on offer with Jesus. This Sunday we’ll pick up John’s story in 8:12, even as we worship and gather because of the grace of Jesus on display in verses 1 to 11.
While this all gets really technical, it does have importance for us as a people who are seeking to hear and heed the word of God. We can be grateful for the good and faithful work scholars now and in ages past have done to provide us with the texts of Scripture. Perhaps we can be even more grateful for the work of the Spirit who we can trust has been a guide throughout the ages (the variants we have do not call into question the deposit of teaching that we have received) and reminds the church now of what Jesus taught and commanded.
In Christ,
Peter+