One of the most common objections Christians hear to the viability of the Christian worldview focuses on the New Testament. Specifically, many skeptics will seek to compare the transmission of the New Testament manuscripts and the game “telephone.” Often it is phrased in something similar to, “You’ve got copies of copies of copies, how can you trust these documents? Have you ever played the game telephone? How often is the message in that game passed down correctly? What makes you think that happened 2,000 years ago?” Is the game “telephone” a good analogy for the transmission of the New Testament?
First, the goal of the “telephone” game is completely different than the goal of transmitting the New Testament. “Telephone” is designed to mess up the message and see how badly people can butcher the initial statement(s). However, the goal of the New Testament scribes, for the most part, was to accurately document what was passed down to them.
Second, in the game “telephone” you only get one chance to hear, remember and pass down what the person before you stated. In transmitting the New Testament scribes were not limited to how many times they could check and reference back to the manuscript they had in their possession. It is this key, that allows for multiple errors in “telephone” whereas scholars have seen time and time again virtually no difference in the manuscripts of the New Testament documents.
Third, while playing “telephone” you can’t even check the statement of the person who is whispering in your ear with others who have spoken. The only message to focus on is the one of the person before you in the chain. In copying down the New Testament documents scribes could often refer to multiple documents and cross-reference those documents with their work to make sure their message was as accurate as possible.
Fourth, many people who play “telephone” don’t care if they win or lose because they understand it is merely a game. The copyists of the New Testament documents had a deep sense of responsibility when it came to their tasks. Therefore, they were more likely care about the message they were copying, whereas most people playing “telephone” aren’t overly concerned.
With these differences in mind, it becomes clear that the “telephone” = New Testament transmission is a flawed analogy. Thus, it should be rejected by Christians as a viable argument against the reliability of the New Testament.
But here’s the problem, understanding a text to be a realible witness is far worse than oral transmission. With even a brief study of ANY historical situation one realizes the only “truth” is representated by variously warped perspectives. The one MYTH of history is when it is boiled down to “essential facts”. The only “empirical” history is one that sees documents as crafted lenses of a perspective, not “Truth”. Take Mormonism. 2 dudes made up a Bible and now MILLIONS follow it. The reason? They saw a text as somehow authoritative. As another example, eye witness accounts (no telephone!) are completely unreliable! So a text based tradition has built in epistemology problems, arguably worse than oral! Orthodox and Catholics attempt to address this by claiming “unbroken” tradition of interpretation (the telephone problem). Protestants have…. Nothing?
Saying there are virtually no differences among manuscripts is rather naive. There are thousands, suggesting to me that scribes were not careful about double-checking types. There are also some very significant differences, sometimes affecting sizable passages, which is why manuscripts are classified into major groups according to variant readings. If these differences were unimportant, we wouldn’t have people arguing about AV/NKJ versus NRV/NIV/etc. Finally, it’s certainly true that scribes had a sense of responsibility, but we have proof that that meant they saw it as their responsibility to correct perceived errors in the text, smoothing out awkward readings, and even deleting or inserting where deemed necessary. The Johannine Comma is a classic example. Perhaps this all sounds very discouraging, but it serves as a reminder of why textual criticism had to develop. Textual differences are not something to be brushed aside so easily.
Jennifer,
Thank you for your comment. It was not my intention for the blog to come across as brushing aside the textual variants. If it did, I’m sorry. I’ll have to go back and rework the blog so that it doesn’t portray that narrative. With that said, I think there are two distinctions which need to be made regarding your critique. First, I think you and I would agree that there is a different between textual transmission and translation of the text. So while the questions of translation (NIV, AV/NRV) are conversations people can entertain, it seems to me (and correct me if I’m wrong) irrelevant to the question of transmission. Second, sure some scribes corrected perceived error and even added or took away, but by in large this was a minimal group and even those additions or subtractions don’t undermine core Christian doctrine.
Thanks for your input and I look forward to the discussion!
Dean