If you’re
looking for a high-quality video presentation of some of the most important
early Greek manuscripts known to exist, Fragments of Truth is
worth watching. Fred
Sprinkle, the graphics-designer responsible for the excellent visuals which
appear throughout the 75-minute movie, has done superb
work. Directed by Reuben
Evans of Faithlife, Fragments
of Truth introduces viewers to Papyrus
45, Papyrus 66, Papyrus 19, Papyrus
64 and 67 (the
Magdalen Papyri), Codex
Vaticanus, Papyrus 75, Codex Bezae,
and Papyrus
52.
Minuscule
Greek manuscripts never appear onscreen, so viewers are not given a glimpse at
what most Greek New Testament manuscripts look like. Instead, the
focus is upon fragmentary papyri which were found in Egypt ,
beginning with excavations at a site at Oxyrhynchus by Grenfell
and Hunt in 1897 (which is briefly re-enacted). In the course of
brief interviews with librarians, professors, and curators, viewers may learn
how papyrus was transformed from plant-fiber into paper-like writing-material,
and how specialists undertake the task of discerning the production-dates of
manuscripts. Within the first 15 minutes, viewers will have met
scholars such as Dan
Wallace, Larry Hurtado, J.
K. Elliott, and David
Trobisch.
Unfortunately,
throughout this tour of early Christian documents and the institutions where
they are kept, Dr. Craig Evans of Houston
Baptist University provides rosy comments designed to support his pet
theories. (More about that later.) The narration
(provided by John
Rhys-Davis, who also narrated KJB: The Book That Changed
the World) is far more objective. Also, a flatly wrong
description of the relationship between Constantine and the early canon of the
New Testament is provided by Dr. Michael
Heiser. If there were a way to turn the tinted comments of Evans
and Heiser into more focused assessments of the evidence, Fragments of
Truth would be a highly commendable resource.
Documentaries
should get things right. Here are some things which this movie
either got wrong, or else presented in a very unfair way, leaving out details
which would very likely have had a strong impact on viewers’ impressions if
they had been mentioned.
● Is Papyrus 19 Related to
the Medieval Shem-Tob? Dr. Evans pointed out that in Papyrus
19, there is an omission in Matthew 10:37-38 that is shared by a medieval
Hebrew text known as Shem-Tob. Evans
used this as support for the idea that some books of the New Testament were
written in Hebrew or Aramaic as well as in Greek. However, all that
we have here is an example of two unrelated copyists making the same mistake at
the same point in the text. The Greek words ἔστιν μου ἄξιος (“is
worthy of Me”) appear in verses 37-38 three times. What has happened
is that somewhere in the transmission-lines of both these witnesses, a copyist
lost his line of sight and skipped from the first appearance of the phrase to
the third one.
● Are Mark 16:9-20 and
John 7:53-8:11 “Ringers”? Dr. Evans stated that these two
passages “don’t appear in the earliest manuscripts.” This is
technically true, but the entire chapter of Mark 16 does not appear in any of
the papyri that are featured in Fragments of Truth. Codex
Bezae, which is featured, includes Mark
16:9-15; the rest of the passage is lacking due to damage (although a
repairer has provided his Greek and Latin text of the whole
passage). Codex Bezae
contains John 7:53-8:11, too – in Greek, and in Latin, which is
particularly significant if one believes Evans’ claim that the Latin text in
Codex D comes from the 200s. Only one featured manuscript (Codex
Vaticanus) contains Mark 16 and ends the text at the end of verse 8, but it
also proceeds to leave a special blank space that is large enough to include
the absent passage – a blank space that includes the only fully blank column in
the entire New Testament in Codex Vaticanus. (Only two ancient Greek
manuscripts – the other one being Codex
Sinaiticus – end Mark’s text at 16:8 followed by the closing-title of
the book; only one
medieval Greek manuscript (out of over 1,600) similarly ends the text
at 16:8.)
But
the most problematic aspect of Evans’ treatment of these two passages is what
he does not say: he fails to mention the evidence
from patristic authors such as Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus that
supports the genuineness of Mark 16:9-20. Irenaeus, around the year
180 (over 150 years before Codex Vaticanus was made), specifically quoted Mark
16:19 in Book Three of his composition Against Heresies. Yet
Evans mentioned none of this evidence.
Why not? He certainly knows about
Irenaeus’ quotation of Mark 16:19, because the quotation is mentioned in
Nicholas Lunn’s 2014 book, The
Original Ending of Mark: A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark
16:9-20. Evans wrote a stunning comment which appears on the
back cover of Lunn’s book; the first part of Evans’ comment runs as
follows: “Nicholas Lunn has thoroughly shaken my views concerning
the ending of the Gospel of Mark. As in the case of most gospel
scholars, I have for my whole career held that Mark 16:9-20, the so-called
‘Long Ending,’ was not original. But in his well-researched and
carefully argued book, Lunn succeeds in showing just how flimsy that position
really is. The evidence for the early existence of this ending, if
not for its originality, is extensive and quite credible.”
Yet barely four years after writing
that, Dr. Evans looked into the camera and told viewers of Fragments of Truth,
“There are only two passages of any length where there is any doubt. But there is no doubt, because the manuscript
evidence is so substantial and so early, we can identify them as ringers; they
don’t really belong in the text.”
Dr.
Evans and Dr. Evans should get together some time and sort this
out. (I commend to them my defense of Mark 16:9-20 – Authentic: The
Case for Mark 16:9-20 – and my defense of the story about the
adulteress – A
Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11.)
● Are There Only Four or
Five Important Textual Variants? Dr. Evans is not doing his
audience a favor when he gives them the impression that aside from those two
12-verse passages, there are only two or three other passages where there are
significant differences in the manuscripts. A mere glance at Bruce
Terry’s online A
Student’s Guide to New Testament Textual Variants should mercifully
kill any such notion.
 |
| Dr. Craig Evans repeatedly suggested that the original New Testament documents survived for centuries outside Egypt. |
● Did Bruce Metzger Claim
That There Are Only 40 Lines of Text in the New Testament About Which There Is
Any Doubt At All? About halfway through Fragments of
Truth, Dr. Evans makes another inexplicable claim: “Text-critic
great Bruce Metzger remarked that there were only 40 lines out of 20,000, where
there was any doubt at all about how it should originally read.” Preposterous.
If Dr. Evans can demonstrate that
Bruce Metzger ever wrote those words, I will eat asparagus. Anyone
with the late Dr. Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New
Testament can verify that the compilers of the UBS Greek New Testament
expressed doubt regarding hundreds of textual variants. (This is
stated in the Introduction to the UBS Greek New Testament, second
edition, page xi.: “B” indicates some degree of doubt, “C” indicates
a considerable degree of doubt, and “D” indicates a very high degree of doubt.)
● Did Constantine
“He
[i.e., Constantine] wanted the church to make a decision. And he
sort of forced their hand. What he asked for at Nicea was 50
copies of the New Testament. He wanted them produced by a certain
time, so they could be distributed throughout the empire.”
In real
life, Constantine made
no such request at the Council of
Nicea. In an entirely different context, Constantine wrote a
letter to Eusebius of Caesarea (who attended the Council of Nicea along
with Constantine, precluding the need for a letter if that had been the
occasion for the request) instructing him to make 50 Bibles. In the
letter, which Eusebius preserved in his composition Life of Constantine, Book Four, chapter 36, Constantine
told Eusebius that these Bibles were for the congregations in the city of
Constantinople (not “throughout the empire”).
Contrary
to Heiser’s claims in Fragments of Truth, Constantine did not “force this issue on
the leadership of the church.” Nor did Eusebius establish a
“minimalist canon,” for in his composition Ecclesiastical History, Book Three, chapter 25, Eusebius
listed the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline Epistles, First John, First Peter,
and then – “if it really seems proper” – Revelation as the books with a high
level of acceptance. Eusebius listed “among the disputed writings”
the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, Second Peter, and Second and Third
John. And, when listing rejected books, such as the Shepherd
of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, Eusebius mentioned
that some people rejected Revelation, although others accept
it. Clearly Eusebius did not
consider his production of 50 Bibles for
the congregations of Constantinople as
a definitive resolution of the question about which books were
canonical.
● Is There Evidence That the
Autographs of the New Testament Books Lasted for Centuries? Besides featuring the problematic statements
just described, Fragments of Truth is thoroughly peppered with
Evans’ theory about the longevity of the autographs (i.e., the original
documents) of the books of the New Testament. This aspect of the
movie is, it seems, the “groundbreaking new evidence” that theater-goers were
led to expect. Basically, Evans noticed evidence from the
excavations at Oxyrhynchus that implied that some documents that were produced
in the 100s and 200s were not discarded until the 300s and 400s, implying that
some of those documents may have lasted two or three centuries before being
discarded. If the original documents of the books of the New
Testament lasted just as long, that would mean that the autographs were still
in existence when copies such as P45, P66, P64/67, and P75 were produced.
However,
it’s just not that simple, and here’s why: Egypt ’s dry
conditions, as Evans pointed out near the beginning of the movie, “made it the
perfect place for manuscripts to be preserved in the sand for hundreds of
years.” Egypt’s dry, low-humidity climate did not exist in the
locations where the autographs of the New Testament books were produced;
nor did it exist in the locations where the Epistles were
sent.
It
is as if someone were to say, “If the dry Egyptian climate existed
in the locations where the autographs were, then the
autographs would last 200 years.” The conclusion is a conclusion
about a make-believe world, since Egypt ’s dry climate did not exist
where the autographs were. Yet this does not stop Evans from
repeatedly using this line of reasoning as the basis for an apologetic defense
of the accuracy of the text of the New Testament
Scriptures.
Similarly,
Evans recruited the longevity of Codex Bezae and Codex Vaticanus (which,
despite being damaged, have mostly survived to the present day) into his
argument, but this is like saying, “If parchment and papyrus are
equally durable, then we have evidence that the autographs
lasted a long time.” This is, again, a make-believe scenario.
Evans
offered, as evidence for the position that “the Bible we have now is the same
as the Bible when it was originally produced long ago,” the possibility that
the original documents of New Testament books were in existence when P45, P66,
P75, and other fragments were produced – and that there was “continuity”
between those fragments and the production of codices such as Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus.
It
would have been helpful – to viewers, not to Evans’ theory – if Fragments
of Truth had taken a minute or two to examine the differences in the
papyri at points where they share the same parts of the New Testament text. Larry
Hurtado, had he been asked, could have helpfully explained that Papyrus
45’s text of Mark is quite unlike the text of Mark in Codex Vaticanus
– which implies that the kind of continuity that Evans encourages viewers to
believe in does not exist – at least, not between P45 and Codex
Vaticanus.
Rather
than suggesting a simple line of descent from the autographs to these specific
papyri to these specific parchment codices, the textual evidence
implies that copyists in different locales undertook in different ways to
render the meaning of the original text, without uniformly and
invariably prioritizing the form of the text, which one would
think would be prioritized if the autographs were readily
available. In other words, the degree of variation in the
manuscripts (including most of the manuscripts presented in Fragments
of Truth) weighs in against Evans’ picture of copyists
using the autographs in the late 100s and early 200s.
At
the risk of diverging from the movie, I will provide an example of textual
variations that weigh in against the idea that any copyists of the extant
manuscripts of the seventh chapter of the Gospel of John possessed the
autograph. In John 7:31-44, P66 and P75 disagree 21
times. In the same passage, P66 and Codex Vaticanus disagree 27
times, and P75 and Codex Vaticanus disagree 14 times. I invite Dr.
Evans to explain how this is possible in a world where the copyist of P66 or
P75 used the autograph, and the copyist of Codex Vaticanus used P66 or
P75. Close continuity can be imagined, but it is
not exhibited in these manuscripts. The closest
relationship among them is between P75 and Vaticanus, and even there we observe
not only small differences (such as πέμψοντά versus πέμψαντά in v.
33 and ζητήσατέ versus ζητήσετέ in v. 34) but also the appearance in Codex
Vaticanus of εκει at the end of v. 34, and the appearance in Codex
Vaticanus of δεδεμένον in v. 39.
More could be said about this, but let’s get back to the
movie. There are a few more statements made in Fragments of
Truth that need qualification, such as when Dr. Evans describes Codex Vaticanus as
if it contains the entire New Testament. A larger problem, though,
may be that this movie’s focus on papyri does not give viewers a clear look at
how the Greek base-texts of their New Testaments were made. Papyrus
fragments are fascinating, but viewers should consider what Dr. Dan Wallace
affirmed in 2012: “In the last 130 years, there’s not been a
single manuscript discovered that has a new reading, that scholars have said,
‘Ah, that’s the original, and no other manuscript has it.’”
The
Greek base-texts of English versions of the New Testament such as the NIV, ESB,
CSB, NLT, and NRSV are descended from a compilation that was published by two
British scholars, Westcott and Hort,
in 1881. The Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition)
diverges from their 1881 compilation at only 661 places – not counting places
where the editors of one compilation or the other placed the text in brackets,
basically making a non-decision. Before Grenfell and Hunt ever
touched a New Testament papyrus, over 85% of the decisions to depart from
readings found in the majority of manuscripts, in favor of readings found in a
relatively small number of early manuscripts (especially Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus), had already been made. We should not lose sight of
this.
In
conclusion, although Fragments of Truth features an impressive
tour of early manuscripts (including, toward the end, Papyrus 52, which many
scholars consider the earliest New Testament manuscript in existence), the
tour-guide’s frequent promotion of a flawed theory tends to weaken rather than
strengthen its usefulness for apologetics. While it is commendable
to teach our fellow Christians that their accurately translated New Testaments
teach what the original text of the New Testament taught, this should not be
done by misrepresenting the evidence. This movie is likely to induce
the spread of a lot of misinformation if its shortcomings go uncorrected before
it is released for wider distribution on DVD.
(Note: the theatrical
presentation had a long epilogue, in which miscellaneous subjects were
addressed. I have not covered that in this review.)
Other reviews of Fragments
of Truth – mostly favorable – are online:
Peter Gurry’s review at Evangelical Textual Criticism
Peter Gurry’s review at Evangelical Textual Criticism
I have left some things
unmentioned, such as a couple of scholars’ comments on the late dating of
Papyrus 66 proposed by Dr.
Brent Nongbri (who, being in Australia ,
was not in the movie, which visited manuscripts in Europe ). I
may reserve a future post for smaller concerns.
1 comment:
Thanks, James. I didn't say much about Mark 16 and John 8 in my review because I didn’t want to steal your thunder. ;)
It seems there is a consensus developing: great visuals less great info on TC and manuscripts.
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