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What is the next horizon for evangelical scholarship? Martin Hengel, one of the foremost experts on early Judaism and Christianity, explores one idea in this essay. He is professor emeritus of New Testament and early Judaism at the University of Tubingen, Germany. The most recent of his many books is The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Trinity, 2000).

In a time of breathtaking progress in the fields of biophysics and biochemistry, astrophysics, nanotechnology and information technology, the acceleration of our knowledge is a hyperbola striving after infinity. Our ethical consciousness and human responsibility cannot keep abreast of it.

In contrast to this scorching speed of progress, the Bible remains always the same: the canon of the Hebrew Bible has not changed since the Pharisaic rabbis of Jamnia established it in about A.D. 100. Nor has the New Testament canon changed since the 39th Easter letter of Bishop Athanasius from Alexandria, written in A.D. 367. But, one may object, our understanding of the Bible has changed. The answer to that is yes and no.

The Bible's basic spiritual importance for our faith and the Christian church remains unchanged. We have at this time no better answer to the Lord's question ("You do not want to leave too, do you?") than did Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:67-68). Yet it seems that now, more so than in former centuries, we must fight an intellectual battle to ensure with Paul "that the truth of the gospel might continue to be preserved" (Gal. 2:5).

In this battle, we've had many victories. Biblical scholars can be proud of breakthroughs that resulted in an explosion of our New Testament knowledge in the last 100 to 200 years. For example, 150 years ago few scholars had access to a Greek text that incorporated the readings of only a few old reliable manuscripts. This is no longer the case. Constantin von Tischendorf's great edition based largely on the famous fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus (found in St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai) appeared in 1869 and 1872. In 1881, B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort edited their New Testament in the Original Greek founded upon the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus. Upon this foundation Eberhard Nestle created his Novum Testamentum Graece 103 years ago, which is still in use as the Nestle/Aland Greek text most students and scholars use today. Thanks to diligent scholarship, the current edition appears in a totally changed form based upon an extremely broad selection of Greek manuscripts and ancient translations that include Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Ethiopian versions, as well as quotations from the church fathers.

Most fascinating is our knowledge of the papyri, the earliest witnesses to the Greek text. Tischendorf knew only one of them, while we today know about 112 papyri, the majority of which contain passages from the Gospels and many come from pre-Constantinian times (before A.D. 310). A few even date from the second century. Consequently, the New Testament is the best-transmitted text collection from antiquity. We are able to reconstruct the different text forms from about the end of the second century. The earliest witnesses to the text of Gospels of John and Matthew date from only about two or three generations after the originals.

In the field of the Hebrew Bible, the progress is even more astounding: Thanks to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we possess biblical manuscripts that are 1,200 years older than the hitherto existing text of the Old Testament. The Old and New Testaments have grown more closely together thanks to these greatest of textual finds, which began in 1947. In the field of New Testament text research in America, Princeton Theological Seminary's Bruce M. Metzger has distinguished himself with his books about the text, the early versions, and the canon of the New Testament.

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October 22 2001, Vol. 45, No. 13