How reliable are the manuscripts
So much time has passed since the beginning of Jesus' preaching that doubt about the accuracy of His words as they have come down to us may seem entirely natural. The grounds for such a view, however, are far from objective, and the very question of distrust towards the Sacred text is not new at all. It began to be felt acutely as early as the end of the fifteenth century. Europe was then living through another cultural turn. Against the background of a revived interest in antiquity, forged texts were discovered — in places the ancient Greek manuscripts did not agree, and this, in fact, cast a shadow of doubt over all ancient texts, the Gospel books among them.
The wave of Protestantism that rose next made the position worse still. It seemed to many that so vast a body of works by the teachers and fathers of the Church only complicates the understanding of the divine Word. In the end, with the proclamation of the principle Sola Scriptura — "Scripture alone", trust was lost also in the centuries-old experience of the Church (Tradition), which, incidentally, was in great measure directed at keeping the Gospel "the words of eternal life" (John 6: 68) and not a figment of human imagination.
Astonishing, yet not unreasonable, is the assertion that those who lose sight of Tradition lose Scripture itself after it. In Europe this is in part exactly what happened. With the coming of the Enlightenment, attempts began here to cleanse Christianity of miracles, to set it upon a rationalistic footing and, at the same time, to erase from the Gospel everything that appears unusual and supernatural.
Yet however many new "gospel" tales appeared, they never managed to supplant, or even in some measure to correct, that Gospel text which the Church guards so carefully. The accuracy of this text is impressive. One may say with full confidence that it has not changed in the least since at least the middle of the fifth century. This is easy enough to verify. The point is that in the fifth century the Christian world was broken apart by the cracks of church schisms. A number of national Christian communities (Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Syrians) ceased all relations both with Orthodox Constantinople and with Rome, then still Orthodox. From that time each of these Churches went its own independent way, and therefore corrections to the Sacred text made by some, had there been any, would in no way have been reflected among the rest. Nevertheless we have one Gospel. There is no fragment that is missing among the Latins but present among the Copts, just as there is no text among the Syrians that is missing among the Slavs.
Thus one may be entirely certain that from at least the age of the Middle Ages the text of the Gospel has not changed in the least. Moreover, we find it exactly the same in the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus codices, which are dated already to the fourth century.
Beyond this period historical scholarship can say nothing about the complete body of the New Testament books. Manuscripts of separate books belonging to the third century have certainly been found, as well as fragments of texts dated to considerably earlier periods. This, however, is not the whole Gospel text, and so it is one more occasion for the sceptics.
But even if we imagine that all the manuscripts are faithful and correspond exactly to the original, one more insidious question remains: how reliably are the teachings of Jesus Christ reproduced in the Gospels? Will Bulgakov's Yeshua, who is trying to pass himself off as the Saviour, not turn out to be right in his complaint about Matthew: "he walks and walks about alone with a goatskin parchment and writes incessantly. But I once glanced into that parchment and was horrified. Decidedly nothing of what is written there did I ever say".
Of course, if Jesus were only a man, then the reliability of His words would be as doubtful as that of Socrates, who, incidentally, likewise left not a single line behind him. But here lies the whole difference — to hear God one need not look for Him somewhere in history: at any moment, wherever we may be, He is accessible through contemplation. The experience of the apostle Paul convinces us of this. Unlike the rest of the apostles he did not see Christ with his own eyes, did not behold Him or touch Him. And nevertheless his testimony — for instance the account of the Last Supper (1 Cor. 11:23–25) — coincides almost word for word with what we read about the Last Supper in the Gospel books. At the same time Paul insists tirelessly in his epistles that his preaching and testimony are independent of the testimony of the other apostles, and that he preaches not what he heard from them but what he learned himself — directly from the Lord (Acts 26:15–16).
Such is the beauty of Divine truth — neither the long passage of time nor human errors hold any terror for it.
The difficulties of translation
Translations of the masterpieces of world literature into another language sometimes take decades. And even then they are not always successful. The difficulty is increased by the fact that every language group has its own syntactic features, to say nothing of its melody. The translation of the Gospel manuscripts, however, is a far harder task. The sacred texts belong not only to another linguistic structure or another epoch; a substantial problem is that by no means every language can hold the wide palette of theological terminology. It is therefore quite natural that in a translation of the Gospel the human element appears at times, with its limitation, its inclination to errors and anachronisms. Saint Nicholas of Japan would be driven to anger, so exasperated was he by unhappy translations or simplifications of certain Gospel passages: "what a disappointment! And how angry I became! <…> Neither shame before men nor fear of God! The word of God is to them like a trifle for play: they toss phrases and words about, lengthen them, shorten them, embellish them, disfigure them — one simply does not know what to think of such people and such translations".
The Japanese hierarch knew the weight of the translator's labour at first hand. Recollections of that difficult period of daily sittings of the committee, "from half of the 8th until 12 and in the evening from 6 to 9", have remained on the pages of his diary. "The difficulty of the translation drives one to despair, — the bishop complained, — in a morning and an evening we have not corrected even the first ten verses, and we are correcting them a third time; every time you get it to come out excellently, clearly, but we set to again and, behold, we cannot ourselves understand what the apostle is teaching us. A fine translation, when the translators themselves cannot make out what is written! <.„> The first chapter is so insuperable that I have fallen into despair — all my energy is gone, my hand has dropped, and I have given up translating for today. God, grant understanding and patience!". And so a mere few verses turned into weeks of torment: gestation, pondering, pregnancy, birth… "Before us lay: 3 Greek texts, 2 Latin, the Slavonic, the Russian, the English, the French, the German, 3 Chinese, the Japanese, commentaries in Russian and in English; all the lexicons; and every day, almost every hour, we had to rummage through all of it — in a word, conscientiousness has not been violated, and for all that the translation is poor, though of course better than the Chinese and the Japanese ones". And after this the correction of the translation will take more than a year again, before the matter comes to print.
In search of more exact answers
In the time of Jesus Christ two kindred languages coexisted in Palestine — Hebrew and Aramaic, the latter having several dialects, including the Galilean and the Samaritan. In addition, Greek was in wide use as the international language of the Roman Empire. To what degree Jesus knew these languages we can only guess; but undoubtedly, in order to convey more exactly the "technical fabric" of the original Gospel text, a deeper knowledge is needed of the features of all these languages, and in particular of those turns of speech whose meaning differs from the literal one (idioms).
Let us give only a few examples of how a knowledge of such features can bring greater precision to the understanding of the Sacred text.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness (Matt. 6:22–23; here and below Scripture is quoted in the King James Version)
It is hard to guess what is being spoken of unless one knows that in Judaism "to have a good eye" means "to be generous, magnanimous", while "to have an evil eye", on the contrary, means to be stingy. Moreover, the word "body" in Hebrew has, besides the literal sense, the meaning of a person and of the whole sphere of his life.
See how great generosity is in itself — it adorns the whole man, and conversely stinginess darkens all his best qualities. The correctness of such a reading is confirmed by the context: greed and anxiety about money are discussed in the preceding and in the following verses. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth" (Matt. 6: 19) and "Ye cannot serve God and mammon [riches] (Matt. 6:24).
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell (Matt. 5:29–30)
That greed is spoken of here too would be guessed by anyone living in the Arab region. Incidentally, these idioms are still in use here: by "the offence of the right hand" theft is understood, by "the offence of the right eye" — envy, while "to cut off and cast from oneself" means to stop. So it is worth thinking hard before stealing or envying: is it not better to remain without what one desires than to gain eternal suffering?
Among the instructions of Jesus, however, there is, strange as it may seem, an indication of something which it is not so much forbidden as, on the contrary, encouraged to steal. And so
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force (Matt. 11:12)
In this case "take by force" is not a wholly happy rendering of the word αρπαζω, which means "seizing, plundering". It is in precisely this sense that we meet the word in the Gospel of John "But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth (αρπαζω) them, and scattereth the sheep". (John 10:12). It turns out, then, that without the application of particular effort the Kingdom of God cannot be carried off. Saint John Chrysostom is more expressive in his interpretation of this passage: "Why do you plunder the poor man, who complains? Plunder Christ, who praises you. Do you see the madness and the frenzy? You plunder the poor man, who has little? Christ says: 'plunder from Me, and I will thank you for the plundering; plunder My kingdom and take it by force'. Had you wished to plunder an earthly kingdom, or — better — had you wished even to think of it, you would be punished; but if you do not plunder the Kingdom of Heaven, you will be punished".
In a word, those who thirst for earthly enrichment are not to be envied. Not only do they doom themselves to suffering after death; already in this life they are called dead men.
And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead (Matt. 8:21–22)
These words should not be understood to mean that the father of the man who asked had already died. Otherwise, by Jewish tradition, the son would have had to keep "shiva", that is, to sit for seven days mourning the dead parent. The phrase "to go and bury my father" therefore means to return home, to live out his father's days quietly beside him and so to secure the inheritance for himself, and only then to become a disciple of Jesus. Such is the logic of a spiritually dead man. To those who have chosen the path of following Jesus something more mysterious is opened — the moving of mountains.
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you (Matt. 17:20)
Here too, perhaps, the literal translation somewhat simplifies the meaning of the Gospel words. For the word ορος, appearing here as "mountain", also has the meaning of a boundary, a limit, a frame. Nor is this surprising, since in antiquity mountains often marked the boundaries of settlements. It is in this very sense that we meet the word a little earlier in the same evangelist Matthew, when the Gadarenes came out to meet Jesus and "besought him that he would depart out of their coasts (ορος)" (Matt. 8:34). And to push back boundaries — to broaden the horizons of knowledge, for instance — is an expression already familiar to us. So what is spoken of here is rather the victory over human limitation, the going beyond the bounds of nature, deification, when we become the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27) and are thereby filled with His life, His holiness, His love.
Finally, let us consider one more Gospel episode, in which the difference between merely human love and divine love can be seen. For this, however, we must again turn to the Greek original.
So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep (John 21:15–17)
The word love, familiar to us, has several shades in Greek, two of which — αγαπη and φιλη — we meet in the original of this passage. Αγαπη is perfect love, sacrificial love, like the love of God for His creatures. Φιλη is the love of friendship, love between friends or brothers. Twice Jesus asks Peter about perfect love towards Himself (αγαπη), and twice the apostle answers meaning the love of friendship: "yea, Lord! thou knowest that I am Thy friend". But the third time Jesus asks not about perfect but about human love (φιλεῖς με?), thereby calling into question the friendly devotion shown Him as well, and by this, in fact, casting the apostle into sorrow.
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God has not fallen silent. Rather, we have forgotten how to hear Him. Partly from unwillingness, partly because we do not always feel keenly the difference between the Gospel and a mere masterpiece of world literature. And that difference is substantial. Here it is fitting to recall the words of Archpriest Alexei Uminsky, that "what man has made — a book, a painting or a piece of music — cannot be the author himself, the creator himself. The Gospel, however, has been left to us by the Lord as the wonder of God's abiding in the Word". And how important it is to preserve this living shade of the Gospel, so as on the one hand to avoid the temptation of turning Scripture into one more idol by which one is forever justifying oneself, and on the other, on its foundation and in at least some measure, like the apostle Paul, to seek the disclosure of one's own divine call, the call that sounds specifically for us
Hierodeacon Longin (Zadorozhniy)
