Greer-Heard: Wallace's Presentation

Wallace began by noting two things: how much he admired and respected Bart Ehrman, and how much they agreed on the New Testament and textual criticism already. He made five points concerning their agreement on the text of the New Testament:
1. The number of variants (both would place them around 300-400,000, with Wallace closer to 400k).
2. The significance of most of the variants: nothing.
3. The wording of the original text...almost all the time.
4. What the text is in controversial passages, point out the longer ending, the PA in John, 1 John 5.7 (Johannine Comma), and Mark 1.41.
5. That orthodox scribes occasionally changed the text to conform more to orthodoxy.

The difference between them, Wallace said, was not in the data or the evidence or even in many cases the conclusions they drew. Instead, their major difference was on the significance of the data, evidence, and conclusions.

As I said, Wallace began by noting how much he liked Ehrman, how long they had known each other, and how much they agree. I think he did this because he proceeded to take a very strong stance, both on the NT text, and on the manner in which Ehrman has written about the text over the past 20 years.

He started by stating two attitudes to avoid: absolute certainty and total despair. Neither, Wallace claimed, was supported by the evidence. He then proceeded to explore that evidence, with some overlap between what Ehrman said and what he said: more than 5500 Greek manuscripts, more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts, somewhere around 5000 manuscripts in other versions, and 1 million quotations from church fathers. All in all, Wallace pointed out that the New Testament has "an embarrassment of riches" when it comes to the manuscripts. Wallace provided some additional information, pointing out that in addition to the strong numbers, the date of the NT manuscripts was also significant, with around a dozen manuscripts hailing from the 2nd century, 64 from the 3rd, and 48 from the 4th, for a grand total of 124 manuscripts. The papyri from the 2nd century alone represent about 40% of the verses of the New Testament.*

Wallace then took on Ehrman's assertion about the nature of New Testament copying, namely how it was a process of copying a copy, which is a copy of a copy, which is a copy of a copy, etc. Wallace went so far as to point out six ways in which the New Testament transmission is NOT like the telephone game dynamic that Ehrman set up:
1. The copying/transmission was written, not oral.
2. There were multiple lines of transmission rather than just one.
3. Scribes and text critics today can 'interrogate' earlier witnesses.
4. There are patristic writers to fill in the gaps.
5. The originals were probably copied more than once.
6. There was at least one carefully produced stream of transmission (Alexandrian).

Wallace illustrated his last point with P75 and B, both early Alexandrian manuscripts. Though P75 is earlier than B, B's readings are often more primitive, demonstrating that B goes back to a source closer to the original than P75 was. This is one of the ways in which the evidence plays against the hypothesis that we have no idea what kind of changes the text when through in the first two centuries.

Wallace got back into the evidence summary at this point, breaking down variants into four categories (spelling differences, translationally insignificant variants, meaningful but not viable variants, and meaningful AND viable variants). He pointed out that the last category, the one that textual critics were most interested in, made up only 1% of the 300-400,000 variants in the New Testament.

Finally, Wallace closed by noting that even among that 1% of variants, their significance varies, and none of them affect what Wallace called "cardinal doctrines."

*The text originally read, "Wallace provided some additional information, pointing out that in addition to the strong numbers, the date of the NT manuscripts was also significant, with around a dozen manuscripts hailing from the 2nd century, 64 from the 3rd, and 48 from the 4th, for a grand total of 124 manuscripts, representing about 40% of the entire New Testament, all within a few centuries of the completion of the text," mistakenly giving the impression that Wallace meant all 124 mss represented around 40% of the text. It's been corrected above to reflect that he actually meant the 2nd century papyri represent 40% of the NT text.