Transmission refers to the process of copying and distributing the words of Scripture. After the original authors penned the words of God in Scripture, others made copies of these autographs as they were transmitted, or passed on, from generation to generation or from church to church. In this process, God has worked providentially to preserve his word for mankind. Thus, preservation refers to God’s providential protection and maintenance of his word for mankind. On the one hand, he has fixed his word eternally in heaven as the Psalmist says, “Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens” (Ps 119:89). Again, he says, “Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever” (Ps 119:152). Thus, God’s word is firmly established.
However, on the other hand, it is also important to remember that “God makes no direct promise in Scripture that he will preserve his Word here on earth in a flawless copy or an inspired edition beyond the original autographs themselves.”[1] He also does not promise that every generation will have access to every part of his word. Sometimes this comes as a judgment upon the people. For example, God “allowed the temple priests to misplace the book of the Law for more than fifty years (2 Kings 22:8–10; 2 Chron. 34:14–16).”[2] This being the case, God providentially employs human means to preserve his word. “He has placed the burden of responsibility to recognize, preserve, and transmit his Word on his faithful people.”[3] God ultimately preserves his word, but he uses people as his instrument unto that end.
Old Testament
We can get a glimpse of the mechanism of the preservation of the OT by observing a few passages. First, we may see that Moses made copies of the Law and gave them to “the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel” (Dt 31:9). The original seems to have been deposited beside the Ark of the Covenant (Dt 31:26), of which the Levites had charge. Deuteronomy 17:18 commands that when the king “sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests.” This seems to imply that, from the earliest times of written Scripture, there was an authoritative standard by which other copies would be judged. Though other copies may have been circulated to greater or lesser faithfulness, there was still the standard that was held by the Levitical priests.
As the OT canon grew with progressive revelation, it was meticulously copied and preserved. Waltke points out, “The very fact that the Hebrew Scriptures persistently survived the most deleterious conditions throughout its long history demonstrates that indefatigable scribes insisted on its preservation.”[4] He proceeds to describe what these “deleterious conditions” were and what the preservation of the text in the midst of them demonstrates:
The OT books were copied by hand for generations on highly perishable papyrus and animal skins in the relatively damp, hostile climate of Palestine in contrast to the dry climate of Egypt, so favorable to the preservation of these materials. Moreover, the prospects for their survival were uncertain in a land that served as a bridge for armies in unceasing contention between the continents of Africa and Asia—a land whose people were the object of plunderers in their early history and of captors in their later history. That no other writings, such as the Book of Yashar or the Diaries of the Kings, survive from this period shows the determination of the scribes to preserve the OT books. But the worst foes of Hebrew Scripture were the very heirs of its treasures, because they sought to kill many of its authors (cf. Matt 23:35) and destroy their works (cf. Jer 36). One must assume, however, that from the first the OT Scriptures captured the hearts, minds, and loyalties of some in Israel who at risk to themselves kept them safe. Such people must have insisted on the accurate transmission of the text even as those of similar persuasion insist on it today.[5]
Thus, God providentially has preserved his word through the efforts of his faithful saints.
Furthermore, we should recognize that the scribes of that day were especially careful in their copying. Once again Waltke says, “Scribal practices throughout the ancient Near East reflect a conservative attitude,”[6] as has been noted by Kenneth Kitchen who states,
In the Ancient Near East, moreover, there were definite ideals of accurate scribal copying of manuscripts (a point often overlooked). One example from Egypt must here suffice. A funerary papyrus of about 1400 BC bears the colophon: “[The book] is completed from its beginning to its end, having been copied, revised, compared and verified sign by sign.” There is no reason to assume that the Hebrews would be less careful with their literary products.[7]
This last statement is demonstrated through our previous observation that the priests had a standard text by which to judge copies of the text (Dt 17:18). In all, then, while the canon was being revealed by God, the faithful were meticulous in its transmission and preservation.
After the OT canon came to a close, four significant groups of scribes arose to copy and preserve the text of Scripture. First, “from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 100 an influential group of teachers and interpreters of the Law called sopherim, ‘scribes,’ arose to preserve Israel’s sacred traditions, the foundation of the nation.”[8] Josephus (ad 37–100) wrote about the preservation of the text from the time of its writing up until his own time, saying,
But that our forefathers took no less, not to say even greater, care than the nations I have mentioned in the keeping of their records—a task which they assumed to their chief priests and prophets—and that down to our own time these records have been, and if I may venture to say so, will continue to be, preserved with scrupulous accuracy…We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them. (Josephus Contra Apion 1.29, 37-42)[9]
In other words, the preservation of the text of Scripture was a responsibility that they bore with the utmost reverence and care.
Later, another group took up the mantle to preserve the text. Wegner explains, “From about a.d. 100 to 300 a second group of scribes arose, called the Tannaim (tānnāîm), or ‘repeaters’ (i.e., teachers), who began copying their traditions shortly after the beginning of the Christian era.”[10] In this era, the Jewish religious leaders and scribes codified extensive and painstaking rules and regulations for the proper copying and preserving of the texts of Scripture.[11] After the Tannaim, another group arose from AD 200–500 who “were called Amoraim (amôrāîm), or ‘expositors.’” These were the minds behind the production of the Talmud.[12]
Finally, from AD 500–1000, a group called the Masoretes “inherited the scribal traditions and carried on the work of preserving the text.”[13] Wegner explains,
Their diligent labors from about A.D. 500 to 1000 helped to preserve the Hebrew text that we have today, the Masoretic Text. These scribes were extremely careful and treated the text with great reverence. Their meticulous notes regarding the text of the Old Testament helped maintain a remarkably accurate text for about a thousand years.[14]
These are the four main groups of scribes which God has providentially used to preserve the Hebrew text of the OT from the time of its completion to the time in which we have full extant copies. There are other sources which we will get into when we cover textual criticism, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), the Syriac Peshitta, the Septuagint (LXX), and others. However, from the preceding discussion, we can see how God has providentially worked to transmit and preserve the OT down through the years.
New Testament
The transmission and preservation of the NT has taken a rather different route than that of the OT. For the most part, the copying and transmission of the OT was highly regulated and fairly centralized, leading to a remarkably stable text. The propagation of NT, however, was highly decentralized, without a governing body ensuring the accuracy of each copied text. This was compounded with the church’s early history of persecution.[15] This is not to say that the scribes who copied the NT were careless, far from it. Rather, the lack of centralized oversight allowed for more copyist errors than those found in the OT texts. However, the transmission and preservation of the NT texts has a remarkable strength in its favor: the sheer number of manuscripts that were propagated and distributed far and wide. This reality allows for significant comparison and weighing of manuscripts, something we will cover when we get to textual criticism.
As for the process of the transmission of the NT text, it begins with the original manuscripts, written by the apostles and their associates. Wegner explains,
The autographs were either written by their authors or dictated to scribes (or amanuenses; see Rom 16:22; 2 Thess 3:17). Once the letters were written, they were delivered to their respective churches by friends or travelers going to that destination. For example, Tychicus, one of Paul’s friends and faithful brother, delivered Paul’s letters to the Ephesians (Eph 6:21-22), to the Colossians (Col 4:7-9) and possibly to Titus (Tit 3:12).[16]
After this, the copying process began:
Paul sometimes encourages the recipients of his letters to circulate them among the other churches (Col 4:16), and thus the autographs would at times have been copied almost immediately and sent off to other churches. It is unlikely that a professional scribe would be hired to copy these letters since the cost generally would have been prohibitive. Most likely someone from the various recipient churches would copy the autographs and send them on to the next church.[17]
After, the NT canon was completed, the copying and transmission continued. Along the way, several translations of the works would be made as well. Eventually, the individual works started being collected together into codices (i.e., books as opposed to scrolls) and even placed together with the OT. Scribes continued to copy, preserve, and translate the text until the invention of the printing press around ad 1440, at which point the texts became essentially fixed. In terms of history, our modern English Bibles are not far removed from this point in time. But before we get there, we need to briefly address the textual criticism.
[1] MacArthur and Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine, 115.
[2] Ibid., 117.
[3] Ibid., 118.
[4] Bruce K. Waltke, “The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament,” in Biblical Criticism: Historical, Literary and Textual, Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978), 48.
[5] Ibid., 48–49. Emphasis added.
[6] Ibid., 50
[7] K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Chicago, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1966), 140. Emphasis added.
[8] Paul D. Wegner, Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible Its History, Methods and Results (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 63.
[9] As cited in ibid., 71–72.
[10] Ibid., 73.
[11] Ibid., 73–74.
[12] Ibid., 74.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 78.
[16] Ibid., 79.
A Boy and His Bible 