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A couple weeks ago, I finished Bart Ehrman's bestselling Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. I'm not going to do a full review of the book at this point, but I wanted to record some thoughts on what I see as Ehrman's master argument.
The bulk of the book is just standard textual criticism. Ehrman tends to be more radical on a few points than the average textual critics, but most of the book simply presents consensus views on the history of the discipline and gives examples that mainly do illustrate the points he wants to make. He's often criticized for the suggestion that the examples he picks are only the most extreme and thus give the impression that the textual changes are more common and more extreme than they really are. He responds that he does say that most changes are extremely minor and that the cases he's presenting are unusual. But what his response ignores is that his own master argument makes an explicit case for the point that his critics are only accusing him of suggesting, and he takes offense even at that accusation. His master argument is presented in the introductory chapter and then again in his conclusion. The argument is basically as follows: 1. We know that there are textual changes in manuscript transmission. 2. Some of these are ideologically-motivated. 3. The earlier manuscripts have more diversity due to less-careful copying practices. 4. It's possible that there were changes in ideology from the original manuscripts that we no longer thus have any evidence of. 5. Therefore, we can't have much confidence about what the original New Testament manuscripts said. All we can do is give arguments for which of several existing readings were the earliest. I think he overstates the ideological changes, although there indisputably are some. I didn't find myself agreeing with all his cases, several of which were extremely controversial among scholars (e.g. I Cor 14:34-35, which a few but only very few notable scholars think is an addition to the original text). I think the fact that there are more readings in earlier manuscripts makes it more likely that the original reading is among the surviving manuscripts in any given case, even if it also raises the possibility that we can't know if the original survives. So that same fact provides some support for opposite views. But the main issue is really epistemological. Ehrman holds to a skeptical standard when it comes to being sure of original manuscript readings that would lead to hopeless conclusions about ordinary knowledge. Hardly anyone in epistemology accepts this kind of standard anymore, even if it has had firm support in the history of philosophy (perhaps most famously with Rene Descartes). The chance that any particular well-attested reading among the NT manuscripts is really the product of an ideological change from the original manuscript is extremely low. Ehrman is right that you can't rule it out absolutely. He bristles at the suggestion from his evangelical critics that he misleads people by minimizing the overwhelming support that we have of the New Testament as a whole given the entire manuscript evidence that we have. But then he gives exactly the suggestion that they assert when he gives his master argument, because there's no way you can derive 5 above from the premises unless you have a ridiculous standard of evidence for trusting something. If we took the same view of knowledge based on our senses, we similarly couldn't rule out the possibility of being in the Matrix, dreaming vividly, or some such thing. We couldn't trust our memories, because memories do fail people, and it's always possible that it might be one of those moments. We couldn't ever trust people, because we know people lie, and often we can't tell that they're doing so. Even if this particular case involves someone who seems always to have been honest to us, we can never be sure. This high-standard approach to knowledge is a recipe for radical skepticism if you apply it consistently. As far as I can tell, Ehrman doesn't do that and just applies it in this particular argument against the possibility of any confidence that we still have manuscript readings for the basic New Testament documents. Hardly anyone working in epistemology today maintains the kind of standard Ehrman is requiring the biblical documents to be able to meet if he's going to be confident of what the text originally said. What I think bothers me the most is Ehrman's claim that the manuscript data show the impossibility of inerrancy. This claim is a complete non sequitur. Ehrman seems to think that inerrancy can't be maintained if you can't be sure which reading is the original one that was inspired inerrantly. But why should that be? Inerrancy claims that God inspired the original manuscripts. It doesn't say anything about how those were copied. For inerrancy to have any practical value for Christians today, God would have had to preserve enough of the originals, and enough evidence to figure out what the likely original reading was, that we can usually state with some confidence in any particular case what the original reading is likely to have been. He seems to think inerrancy has no value unless you have 100% confidence that a certain reading is exactly the original. Why? If we have 90% confidence that a certain reading is original, then we should have 90% confidence that such a reading is from God. I don't know anyone holding to inerrancy who thinks our interpretation of the Bible is inerrant, just that the original manuscript was. Similarly, it doesn't matter if we have to work to get likely readings at best, because it doesn't undermine the original claim or its value for the Christian. It takes careful study to figure out the social background to the Bible, to understand what certain terms in the original languages meant, and how someone in that culture would have taken a certain idiom. It also takes careful study sometimes to figure out which reading is likely to have been the original one. Inerrancy just claims that such likelihoods are aims to figure out which reading is most likely to have been the original, and then you can place as much confidence in debated readings as you can that the one you think is most likely is the original. This is where the kind of manuscript evidence we have is significant. In most cases, it's obvious which reading is original, and it doesn't have any effect on biblical doctrine, either because it has no effect on meaning at all, it has a very minor effect on something of little practical significance, or the doctrines in question are taught in other, undisputed texts, often several times. We have a vast diversity of manuscript traditions, but that just makes it more likely that the original reading is somewhere in there in any given case. If inerrancy is true, it's extremely likely that God did preserve the original readings among the manuscript tradition along with clues as to which readings are correct. This isn't a claim that anyone can infallibly figure these things out, just that God's word can be infallibly preserved, even if our fallible methods of reconstruction can arrive at the correct readings only with some degree of likelihood rather than absolute certainty. All told, it's hard for me to resist the conclusion that Ehrman illegitimately applies a rightly-disfavored epistemological thesis in an ad hoc way to favor his thesis without recognizing that the same standard, if applied fairly to all issues, would undermine the very knowledge that he relies on to make his argument. He also seems to be arguing against an inerrancy thesis that no one holds, and when he tries to respond to that claim all he says is that it's a view he once held. Well, no wonder he had to reject evangelical Christianity if he found arguments that decisively refute the straw version of it. It doesn't make it legitimate to consider his arguments to count against actual evangelical views. It doesn't mean he's actually said a thing to undermine the kinds of inerrancy doctrines that evangelical scholars have ever actually held. So it seems to me that there's of much value in this book, but some of it way overstates the case, and it's all sandwiched between two instances of a master argument intended to undermine evangelical Christianity via highly fallacious argumentation. I'd heard enough good things about this book that I was hoping there would be more to it. I don't think there is.
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A lot of people think it's irrational to vote if your vote isn't going to have an effect on the outcome. I live in an extremely blue district of a slightly red county in a very blue state. In local and statewide elections, my vote has so little an effect that it's not worth voting if the only point of voting is for my one vote to have an effect on the outcome. New York is overwhelmingly going to continue to support Senators Schumer and Clinton, and they tend to vote Democratic in governor elections except when there's a very moderate Republican like George Pataki on the ballot. County-wide races are closer, and so is the U.S. House district, which was almost a toss-up in 2006. Things were even more one-sided when I lived in Rhode Island.
But it simply isn't true that voting is only worth doing if you're going to be the deciding vote. There are other reasons people give for voting, some better than others. One that often occurs to me when it seems hopeless for my candidate is that if everyone voting for the other side thought it wasn't worth voting because the outcome is assured then my candidate might have a chance. Other reasons include that it helps you psychologically to feel like you're contributing and that it's simply your obligation to do what you can to influence things for the better even if what you can isn't by itself going to make the difference in who wins the election. Any of those responses would be sufficient by itself, except perhaps the psychological benefit one (at least if that involves self-deception, and if it doesn't then it's not a distinct reason but depends on one of the others). I think there's an even better reason to vote, and I think it might actually be what motivates me most, but I hadn't actually thought about it in these terms until today. It takes a page from Calvinist responses to the objection that if the future is already determined then there's no point in praying. Calvinists come in several varieties, but the most common sort of Calvinist (which isn't the same as being the most noticed kind on the internet) is compatibilist about human freedom and divine predetermination. If God has a plan that includes everything I'm going to do, everything every other person is going to do, and an outcome for every prayer I ever pray, then is it worth praying? My prayer isn't going to change anything, after all. Of course, my prayer would also be in this plan, and if I didn't pray then a different outcome may well have been in the works. Compatibilists about divine predetermination and human action are going to insist that God works through our choices and doesn't just force things outside our control. Our prayers are part of how God's plan works itself out as history unfolds. One thing Calvinists sometimes say is that praying is not so much for the outcome but for us. God wants us to pray because of what God will do in us because we pray. I don't want to deny that, but it's certainly not the emphasis in scripture on reasons to pray. The emphasis seems to be on two things. One is that prayer does affect things. It doesn't change them, because the future can't be changed anymore than the past or present can. If the future is a certain way then it can't be changed. Even open theists don't think the future can be changed. Why should someone who thinks there's a definite future think it can be changed? But for the reasons in the previous paragraph, the future can be influenced. It can be caused by things in the present, and I can be part of that process of bringing it about. A compatibilist should have no trouble saying that sort of thing. But there's another reason in scripture for why we should pray, even though God has worked out the end from the beginning, and this one (unlike the previous one) does have some relevance for voting. God wants us to communicate our dependence on him and to express our desires to him. He wants us to see him as the Father who cares for us and meets our needs and our wishes, provided that our wishes are righteous and as long as there isn't some other reason beyond our ken for why God wouldn't grant a particular wish (as there may well be). As Jesus points out, what father when presented with a request from a child for bread or fish will give a snake? God wants to bestow good things on his children and delights when we come to him with requests, for the same reasons a giving parent delights in such things. Given that, it's a privilege to call him Father, which is why it's a big deal that Jesus starts out the Lord's prayer with "our Father". Those who don't avail themselves of that title in addressing him are missing out on something great. Those who don't address him at all are missing out on even more. The same dynamic plays out in a smaller way with voting. I'm privilege to live in a country that seeks my opinion on who should occupy certain offices. Even if my vote doesn't have an effect in putting someone in office, it's a privilege to be able to contribute my thoughts in the process of the communal decision that an election involves. I don't believe voting is a moral right. But I think I'd be wasting an opportunity to express my opinion if I didn't vote, and wasting a privilege is at least unfortunate (and I would even argue that it's immoral). This seems to me to be a much better reason to vote than any of the more common ones that I hear, even if most of them are good enough reasons. |
AuthorJeremy Pierce is a philosophy professor, Uber/Lyft driver, and father of five. Archives
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