Wipf & Stock (Eugene, OR, 2020). 208 pages. Pbk. £20.
Having a general interest in New Testament Textual Criticism (NTTC) I bought this book for two reasons. One was to bring me up to date with developments in a continually changing and complex field of studies that includes such new approaches as the Coherence Based Genealogical Method – a computer-based programme for evaluating readings of the NT text with a view to producing a definitive genealogical structure of all manuscripts and their variant readings: stemmatology by algorithm! It represents an intervention of technology into biblical studies reminiscent of the invention of the printing press, which enabled the production of a text that would serve as an authoritative basis for faith (e.g. the King James Bible) – or so the reformers of the sixteenth century hoped!
In his wide ranging work – based on his doctoral thesis – Shah seeks to evaluate trends that have taken place in NTTC over the last couple of decades with particular reference to the works of Bart Ehrman, David Parker, Eldon Epp and L. Keith Elliot. His concern is that during this time scholarship has moved from seeking to retrieve an ‘original text’ to retrieving ‘any text’ that merely gives insight into various ‘trajectories of faith’. An important corollary of this is the recognition that there may never have been an original text or ‘autograph’, nor for that matter a single Christianity, and to think otherwise is simply pursuing a ‘retreating mirage’. Shah views this development not only as ‘changing the goalpost’ of NTTC, but also that it undermines any sense of Christian conviction. His fear is that, ‘An unsettled original text will result in an unsettled biblical theology…Consequently, it will lead to an unsettled Christian faith and practice.’ (p.8)
This leads me to the second reason I bought this book. I was interested to see how a committed Baptist like Shah, who represents the evangelical wing of the church, would resolve this problem. From the outset he declares his intention: ‘It is imperative this new shift in NTTC be examined, evaluated, and refuted.’ (p.2) This indicates the real purpose of the book and Shah’s belief that in recent years NTTC has changed ‘from friends to foes’ (p.163): instead of helping to clarify an original text so as to provide us with the certainty of a definitive text, it undermines confidence in any text and ‘dismantles inerrancy’. What also irks Shah is that ‘It appears the change in goalpost is not based on new information but new ideology.’ (p.27, original emphasis).
But this is certainly not a new view. In fact it is rather ironical that exactly the same concern was being expressed in the early eighteenth century! Though Shah does not mention it, in 1707 one of the truly great works of New Testament textual scholarship was published by the Oxford scholar John Mill, who had spent thirty years amassing all the variant textual readings with a view to establishing an original authoritative text. To the shock and dismay of many, he found some 30,000 variations! Such a degree of textual corruption seemed to undermine the very foundations of the Reformation belief in the truth of the bible that recorded the clear revelation of God. So much so that a conservative Protestant theologian, Daniel Whitby, in words echoed almost verbatim by Shah, wrote: ‘I grieve therefore and am vexed that I have found so much in Mill’s Prolegomena which seems quite plainly to render the standard of faith insecure, or at best to give others too good a handle for doubting.’
Thus began the quest for a clear original text that in time prompted numerous monumental works of scholarship by some of the greatest scholars of the next three centuries. Notable amongst them was the renowned master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Richard Bentley, who confidently opined, in words that again anticipate Shah, ‘If Religion therefore was true before, though such Various Readings were in being: it will be as true and consequently as true and safe still – no Truth, no matter of Fact fairly laid open, can ever subvert true Religion.’ Unfortunately, he was never able to achieve this ambition nor were the innumerable scholars who succeeded him.
The moral of this long history and also this book is that this is an issue to which there is no resolution, an ever retreating mirage or fanciful Holy Grail. The inescapable flaw in this quest is that, as for Shah, NTTC is seen as ‘a problem’ that must be refuted. Though he assails the proponents of NTTC for arriving at different conclusions ironically his own conclusions seem merely to reflect a premise that there was a divinely authenticated original text. For me at least, this is unpersuasive.
Dominic Kirkham’s books include From Monk to Modernity (SOF 2015) and Our Shadowed World (Wipf and Stock, Eugene OR, 2019).