FHBC Sermon Notes

The woman caught in adultery. Not found in the earliest manuscripts. So says our footnotes. What does that mean to us?
Our Questions
1) What the earliest manuscripts that do not include it?

2) How did we get the New Testament?

3) What does the editorial note mean?

4) How does this affect our understanding of the passage and the bible as a whole?

First Observations:

The bible is divine/man book? It has a dual nature. First we call it the Word of God. Its ultimate origination is God. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 God breathed, that is what the bible is first. Second, the bible is the product of human authors. 2 Peter 1:19-21 Men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So it is not surprising that it retains a human personality. God spoke not in some unknown language, but in the language that we speak. This makes me think of how the importance of the gift of tongues were to the first days of the church. The Word of God was spoken and God chose to do it in languages that we understand.

The Bible is inspired, infallible, inerrant. Remember that the bible is first in origin from God.

When we refer to inerrancy we are referring to the original copies, that autograph of the text. In other words, inerrancy does not apply to the process of transmission and translations as we come to our own age. Of course this does not imply that God has not been in care or in protection of the word we have now.

So what are the kinds of errors we are referring too? Ever tried to copy by hand the text of a paper? Mistakes by scribes happen. The xerox before the xerox was to have one person read the text while say ten people write copies. So something might be misheard and copy incorrectly. Sometimes one single letter looks like another. Sometimes the written text becomes unclear. Paper in bad condition, spilt drinks, kids with crayons. Sometimes you lose your place, and pick up on the wrong line. You skip a line. Sometimes in harmonization you remember a familiar passage from an order of worship or another gospel when you are writing and unintentionally write that instead. Sometimes scribes writes in the margins. Was that part of the passage.

So how do we know what we have in reliable? We have 5500 Greek manuscripts and large number of early translations, plus many early commentaries that included the text as well. As far as ancient documents go, or even contemporary for that matter, we have a greatest volume of collaborating texts that any other writing in the world. So what is the process to bring these all together? Biblical scholars for centuries now have been comparing, categorizing all these manuscripts to obtain the original text.

All this said, in the areas where there is still uncertainty about a massage, Jim believes that there are no significant theological difference in each of these differences. In short, we cannot use this as an excuse to say that God's revelation to us is unclear, corrupted or incomplete.

Personally, I will add this one thought: All of this process and evidence is one of the greatest pictures as to how this truly is the Living Word of God!