Introduction

When I read Rev. R. L. Brandner’s article Lost in Translation, I found myself agreeing with much of its opening premise. Too many Christians have an overly simplistic understanding of translation, canon formation, and textual criticism. We often speak as though the Bible dropped from heaven in English, with every manuscript identical and every translation merely a word-for-word substitution. That simply is not how the history of Scripture unfolded. Languages are complex. Cultures matter. Manuscripts contain variations. Translation always involves careful judgment. Anyone who studies these subjects seriously soon discovers there are very few shortcuts.

For that reason, I appreciate articles that encourage Christians to think more deeply about how we received the biblical text. Faith has nothing to fear from honest investigation. In fact, one of the great strengths of Christianity is that it has a long tradition of engaging difficult questions rather than pretending they do not exist. Textual criticism, the discipline of comparing ancient manuscripts to recover the earliest attainable text, is not an enemy of Scripture. It is one of the reasons we can discuss the text with such transparency and confidence.

Where I believe Lost in Translation goes astray is not in recognizing the complexity of these subjects, but in allowing that complexity to create a level of skepticism that the evidence itself does not require. The article raises legitimate questions, but in several places it moves beyond what the evidence can reasonably support. In other places it contains factual mistakes or presents disputed scholarly conclusions as though they were settled history. The result is a picture of the New Testament that is considerably less stable than the evidence suggests.

To be fair, Christians are not immune from making the opposite mistake. Some apologists have overstated their case by repeating claims that sound persuasive but do not withstand careful scrutiny. One example is the familiar assertion that the writings of the early Church Fathers contain quotations sufficient to reconstruct all but twenty-seven lines of the New Testament. While early Christian writings are enormously valuable for textual criticism, that particular claim appears to have grown beyond what the original research actually demonstrated. If we are committed to truth, we should be just as willing to correct exaggerations from our own side as we are to challenge them elsewhere.

That commitment to careful scholarship is really the point of this article. Good research should make us more humble, not more cynical. It should encourage us to distinguish between what is well established, what remains genuinely uncertain, and what is merely speculative. When we allow the evidence to speak at its own volume, it leads neither to naïve certainty nor to sweeping skepticism. Instead, it leads to a thoughtful confidence in the remarkable preservation of the biblical text while acknowledging the genuine complexities that accompany its history.

Complexity Is Not the Enemy of Confidence

One of the unintended consequences of introducing people to textual criticism, translation, or canon formation is that they sometimes mistake complexity for uncertainty. The reasoning often goes something like this: if translation is difficult, if manuscripts contain variations, and if scholars debate certain passages, then perhaps we cannot really know what the Bible says. While understandable, that conclusion simply does not follow.

Translation is difficult because language itself is complex. Words do not exist in isolation. They draw meaning from grammar, context, culture, history, and the author’s intent. The same English word can represent several different Greek or Hebrew words, and a single Greek or Hebrew word may require different English renderings depending on the context. This is not a flaw in the translation process. It is simply the nature of language. Every translator, whether working with Scripture, Shakespeare, Homer, or modern literature, faces these same challenges.

Culture adds another layer of complexity. Biblical authors lived in societies very different from our own. Honor and shame, kinship, covenant, hospitality, patronage, purity laws, and countless other cultural assumptions shaped how they communicated. Modern readers often approach the text with Western assumptions that would have been foreign to its original audience. Good scholarship seeks to bridge that gap rather than ignore it.

The manuscript tradition also deserves careful attention. We do not possess the original handwritten copies of the biblical books. Instead, we have thousands of Greek manuscripts, ancient translations into other languages, and quotations preserved by early Christian writers. Those witnesses contain textual variants, most of which are minor spelling differences, word order changes, or copyist mistakes. A much smaller number involve passages that remain genuinely debated, such as the ending of Mark or the story of the woman caught in adultery. Textual criticism exists precisely because scholars can compare this wealth of evidence rather than relying upon a single manuscript.

All of this requires humility. No serious scholar should pretend that every question has an easy answer or that every passage is equally straightforward. There are places where uncertainty remains, and honest scholarship should acknowledge those places without embarrassment.

Yet complexity is not the same thing as uncertainty. Consider historians studying Abraham Lincoln. Imagine they discover several handwritten letters in which one sentence differs slightly between surviving copies. No responsible historian would conclude that Lincoln himself has become unknowable or that everything written about him must now be questioned. Instead, historians would compare the evidence, evaluate the sources, and determine which reading is most likely original while recognizing that the disputed sentence represents only a tiny portion of the available evidence. The existence of one disputed sentence would not erase thousands of other documents that consistently testify to Lincoln’s life, character, and presidency.

Biblical scholarship works in much the same way. The existence of textual variants does not mean the text is hopelessly uncertain. It means scholars have evidence to examine, compare, and evaluate. In fact, the reason we know where many of the variants exist is because the manuscript tradition is so abundant and transparent. Rather than undermining confidence, the evidence allows us to identify where genuine questions remain and, just as importantly, where they do not.

This distinction is foundational to everything that follows. Complexity should make us cautious. It should make us humble. But it should not make us cynical. Careful scholarship is not about magnifying uncertainty beyond what the evidence warrants. It is about allowing the evidence to define both the limits of our knowledge and the reasons for our confidence.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” –  Richard Feynman

Translation Is Interpretation, Not Arbitrary Reconstruction

One of the strengths of Lost in Translation is its reminder that translation is not a mechanical exercise. There is no machine that simply replaces one Greek word with one English word and produces a perfect translation. Every translator must make judgments about vocabulary, grammar, context, idioms, literary style, and the expectations of the intended audience. That is true whether one is translating the New Testament, Homer, Shakespeare, or a modern novel. Recognizing that translation requires judgment, however, should not lead us to conclude that translation is therefore arbitrary. Judgment is not the same as unrestricted freedom.

Learning textual criticism is a little like learning how sausages are made. At first the process can be unsettling because you discover just how much work happens behind the scenes. But the lesson is not that the sausage is untrustworthy. The lesson is that skilled craftsmen have spent centuries refining the process, checking one another’s work, and striving to produce the best result possible.

Modern Bible translations are typically produced by committees rather than by a single individual. That is not merely a matter of efficiency. It is a safeguard against personal bias. Scholars with different theological traditions, linguistic expertise, and academic specialties challenge one another’s assumptions and debate alternative renderings before arriving at a final translation. No committee is perfect, but the process itself makes it considerably more difficult for one person’s theological preferences to dominate the final text.

Even more importantly, the Greek and Hebrew languages impose real constraints on what a translation can honestly say. Grammar, vocabulary syntax and context have a say. A translator may have several legitimate options in a given passage, but those options are not limitless. The original language establishes boundaries that responsible translation cannot simply ignore.

This distinction becomes particularly important when discussing John 14:6. The familiar English rendering reads:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Rev. Brandner proposes what he describes as another “perfectly acceptable translation”:

“The only way to the Father is to conduct your lives in the manner which I have taught you.”

The difference is not merely stylistic. It is the difference between translation and interpretation.

The Greek text reads:

οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν πατέρα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ

(oudeis erchetai pros ton patera ei mē di’ emou)

The phrase δι’ ἐμοῦ (di’ emou) literally means “through me” or “by means of me.” The preposition διά (dia) followed by the genitive case consistently expresses the idea of agency or means. Standard Greek lexicons and grammars recognize this usage across the New Testament. Nothing in the grammar suggests “live according to my teachings.”

Now, one might reasonably argue as a matter of theology that coming to the Father through Christ necessarily includes obeying His teachings and following His example. I would not object to that conclusion. It is a legitimate theological reflection on the passage.

But reflection is not translation. A commentary is free to explain implications, connect ideas across Scripture, and draw theological conclusions. In fact, that is exactly what good commentaries are intended to do. A translation has a different task. Its responsibility is to represent as faithfully as possible what the original author actually wrote before readers begin asking what those words imply.

Once commentary is presented as though it were translation, the reader no longer has direct access to the text itself. The interpretation has already been inserted into the translation. Ironically, this is the very danger that Lost in Translation warns against. The article rightly cautions readers about allowing theological bias to shape translation, yet this example appears to replace the words of the text with an interpretation that reflects the author’s theological understanding rather than the Greek itself.

Translation always involves interpretation. Every translator must make difficult decisions. But interpretation is guided by the text, not liberated from it. The goal of faithful translation is not to eliminate interpretation altogether. That would be impossible. The goal is to ensure that our interpretations remain accountable to the words the biblical authors actually wrote.

Canon Formation Was Neither Instant nor Conspiratorial

One of the most persistent themes in skeptical literature is the claim that the Bible we possess today was largely the product of political maneuvering. According to this narrative, early Christianity was filled with competing ideas about Jesus until church leaders eventually selected the books that supported their preferred theology while suppressing equally authentic alternatives. Variations of this story appear frequently in popular books, documentaries, novels, and internet discussions because it offers an appealing explanation for anyone who believes the New Testament presents an uncomfortable picture of Jesus.

There is a grain of truth behind this narrative, which is perhaps why it has proven so enduring. The canon did not descend from heaven as a completed table of contents. Christians did not receive an inspired list of twenty-seven New Testament books alongside the books themselves. Questions were asked. Some books were discussed longer than others. Different regions occasionally recognized different collections before consensus emerged.

But acknowledging that history is very different from concluding that the canon was politically manufactured. The evidence points instead to a gradual process of recognition rather than invention. The earliest Christians valued writings connected to the apostles or their close associates because they represented those who had firsthand authority to proclaim Christ’s teaching. Those writings circulated widely among churches, were read publicly in worship, copied extensively, and gradually came to be recognized as carrying unique authority. Their acceptance was not arbitrary but rested on several consistent considerations, including apostolic origin, widespread use among the churches, theological consistency with the apostolic faith, and enduring acceptance across the Christian community.

This is the picture presented by careful historians such as F. F. Bruce and Bruce Metzger. Neither scholar denies that disagreements existed. Books such as Hebrews, James, Second Peter, Jude, Second and Third John, and Revelation were discussed in some parts of the church longer than others. Yet both Bruce and Metzger demonstrate that alongside these discussions stood a remarkably stable core. Long before formal canonical lists appeared, the four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, and several of the General Epistles were already functioning as authoritative Scripture in churches spread across the Roman Empire.

That historical reality is often overlooked. The existence of debate over a handful of books can create the impression that everything was uncertain. In reality, the opposite is true. The debates were relatively limited precisely because most of the New Testament had already achieved broad recognition.

History offers many examples of people reshaping Scripture to fit their own convictions rather than allowing Scripture to challenge them. Thomas Jefferson famously produced his own version of the Gospels by removing miracles, the resurrection, and other supernatural elements that conflicted with his Enlightenment worldview. Jefferson did not argue that these passages had been inserted by later church councils. He simply concluded that they did not belong because they conflicted with what he believed Jesus should have said and done.

That temptation has never disappeared. Whether from skeptics, believers, or anyone in between, there is always a desire to reconstruct Jesus into someone who is more compatible with our own assumptions. Sometimes the reconstruction is political. Sometimes it is philosophical. Sometimes it is theological. The question is not whether we are capable of producing such reconstructions. History shows that we are. The question is whether the historical evidence supports them.

Careful scholarship urges caution. It reminds us that recognizing a gradual process is not the same thing as alleging a conspiracy. The historical evidence suggests that the canon emerged through decades of use, discussion, discernment, and recognition within the early church. That process was neither instantaneous nor perfect, but neither was it the political fabrication that popular skeptical accounts often suggest.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde

This principle also helps explain why so-called “lost gospels” are far less mysterious than popular culture often suggests. Books such as the Gospel of Thomas are readily available today. They are not hidden away in Vatican vaults or suppressed by secret councils. Anyone can read them and evaluate their contents.

When one does, the differences become apparent rather quickly. The Gospel of Thomas is not written like a firsthand historical account. It contains no narrative of Jesus’ ministry, death, or resurrection. Instead, it presents a collection of sayings that reflects theological ideas quite different from those found in the canonical Gospels. Many scholars associate it with Gnostic thought or at least with communities moving in that direction. It also appears significantly later than the New Testament Gospels. While a few scholars have suggested that some individual sayings may preserve early traditions, there is no convincing evidence that the work itself was written by the apostle Thomas or that it functioned as authoritative Scripture within the mainstream church. If modern readers carefully read the entire work, including some of its statements concerning women and salvation, many would likely find it far less appealing than popular treatments suggest.

The Book of Enoch provides another instructive example. Unlike the Gospel of Thomas, First Enoch is an ancient Jewish work composed before the time of Christ and is recognized as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It was respected by many early Jewish and Christian writers and even quoted in the Epistle of Jude. Yet quoting a work is not the same as declaring it Scripture. Paul quoted Greek philosophers and poets when speaking in Athens and elsewhere, but no one argues that Aratus or Epimenides should therefore be added to the biblical canon. A quotation simply recognizes that a particular statement is useful for the author’s purpose.

First Enoch also raises other questions. It is not a single book written by one author but a collection of writings composed over an extended period of time. Although influential in some Jewish communities, it was never widely received as Scripture by either Judaism or the majority of the early Christian church. That broad reception is important because canon formation was never simply about whether a book was ancient or interesting. It was about whether the people of God consistently recognized it as carrying divine authority.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this is to imagine someone writing a history of Christianity one thousand years from now. Suppose that historian argued there must have been a conspiracy to suppress the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, issues of the The Watchtower, or the Book of Abraham because they were excluded from the Christian canon. Most of us would immediately recognize the flaw in the argument. Those writings represent later religious movements with beliefs that diverge substantially from historic Christianity. Their exclusion does not require a conspiracy. It reflects the fact that they were never recognized as apostolic or as faithfully representing the Christian faith handed down by the earliest believers.

The same principle applies when evaluating ancient writings. The burden of proof is not to explain why every ancient religious text was excluded. The burden is to ask whether the historical evidence shows that a particular writing was received by the earliest Christian communities as apostolic Scripture. In most cases, the answer is remarkably clear.

Textual Criticism Actually Increases Confidence

Perhaps no area of biblical scholarship is more misunderstood than textual criticism. To many readers, the phrase sounds threatening, as though scholars are criticizing the Bible itself. In reality, textual criticism is not criticism of Scripture but criticism of the text, meaning the careful comparison of ancient manuscripts to determine, as accurately as possible, the earliest recoverable wording of the biblical text.

The discipline exists because we possess an extraordinary amount of evidence. The New Testament is preserved in thousands of Greek manuscripts, along with thousands more ancient translations into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, and other languages. Added to these are countless quotations found in the writings of the early Church Fathers. Each of these witnesses provides another piece of evidence that can be compared with the others.

Ironically, if we possessed only a single manuscript, textual criticism would hardly exist. There would be nothing to compare. The very reason textual criticism is possible is because the manuscript tradition is so rich. Variants become visible precisely because scholars have enough evidence to identify and evaluate them.

This is an important distinction. Textual criticism does not invent variants. It discovers them. Nor does it create uncertainty where none existed. Rather, it identifies where genuine questions remain while simultaneously confirming the remarkable consistency found throughout the overwhelming majority of the manuscript tradition.

Most textual variants are surprisingly ordinary. They involve spelling differences, changes in word order, repeated phrases, omitted words caused by a scribe’s eye skipping from one line to another, or other common copying mistakes. Greek word order is considerably more flexible than English, so many of these differences do not even affect the meaning of the sentence. A much smaller number involve longer passages such as the ending of Mark or the account of the woman caught in adultery. Those passages deserve careful study, and modern translations are refreshingly transparent about them by including textual notes that explain the manuscript evidence.

The debate between Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman is often presented as though one scholar believes we possess the original New Testament while the other believes the text has been hopelessly corrupted. That caricature does justice to neither scholar. Both Wallace and Ehrman acknowledge that the vast majority of the New Testament can be reconstructed with a high degree of confidence. Their disagreement concerns the degree of certainty we should have in particular places, especially during the earliest stages of textual transmission where no original manuscripts survive.

Wallace argues that the sheer quantity, geographical distribution, and quality of the manuscript evidence allow scholars to recover the original wording in the overwhelming majority of places. Ehrman agrees that scholars can often come very close to the original text, but he remains more cautious because it is theoretically possible that some changes occurred before our earliest surviving manuscripts and left no competing readings behind. His concern is less about what we know happened than about what cannot be completely ruled out.

That is an important distinction because it reframes the discussion. The debate is not whether the New Testament is largely recoverable. It is about how confident historians should be regarding the small number of places where uncertainty remains. And good scholarship welcomes that discussion. It does not pretend certainty where the evidence is incomplete, nor does it magnify legitimate uncertainty into sweeping skepticism. Instead, it follows the evidence wherever it leads.

The more I have learned about textual criticism, the less it has resembled a threat to my confidence in Scripture. Quite the opposite. I have come to appreciate the remarkable transparency of the discipline. Scholars openly identify disputed readings, explain the evidence supporting each possibility, and invite others to examine the data for themselves. That is not the behavior of a field trying to hide problems. It is the hallmark of careful historical research committed to following the evidence wherever it leads.

The text is inspired. Our interpretations are not.

There is another lesson textual criticism teaches, and I think it is one Christians of every theological tradition need to hear. Many conservative Christians, often without realizing it, speak as though their preferred English translation descended directly from heaven (King James Only proponents fit into this category). They expect something like a divine photocopy, where every English word corresponds perfectly to a single Greek or Hebrew word and every interpretive question has already been settled. That has never been how translation has worked. Languages simply do not function that way.

But there is a second mistake that is even more common, and it is hardly limited to conservatives. We often confuse the biblical text with our interpretation of the biblical text. Once we become convinced that our interpretation is correct, we begin treating it as though it carries the same authority as Scripture itself. Before long, questioning our interpretation feels like questioning the authority of God’s Word.

Those are not the same thing. The text of Scripture is inspired. Our interpretations are not. That distinction is one of the reasons textual criticism, biblical languages, history, archaeology, and careful exegesis remain so important. They remind us that we are students of the text, not masters of it. They force us to ask whether our conclusions actually arise from Scripture or whether we have quietly read our theological assumptions back into the text.

The age of the earth provides a good illustration. Some Christians hold that Genesis requires a recent creation because they interpret the days of Genesis as six consecutive twenty four hour periods and calculate a chronology from the biblical genealogies. Other equally committed Christians, who affirm the authority and inspiration of Scripture just as strongly, understand those passages differently. They see the days as a literary framework, analogical days, a temple inauguration, or some other literary or theological structure that does not require a young earth. Their conclusions differ not because they reject the Bible, but because they interpret the same text differently.

This is precisely why it is unhelpful to frame the discussion as “the Bible versus science.” More often the real question is “this interpretation of the Bible versus this interpretation of the scientific evidence.” Those are two very different conversations.

Recognizing that distinction is not a retreat from biblical authority. Quite the opposite. It is an act of humility. It acknowledges that while God’s Word is perfect, our understanding of God’s Word is always capable of correction. That realization should not weaken our confidence in Scripture. It should deepen our commitment to studying it carefully, listening to those who disagree with us, and allowing the text itself to challenge our assumptions rather than merely confirming them.

Details Matter

At this point, someone might object that these are merely small factual errors. After all, everyone makes mistakes. That is certainly true, and I have no interest in nitpicking isolated inaccuracies. What concerns me is something different. When an article argues for a fundamentally skeptical conclusion, the historical details matter because those details are the evidence upon which the larger conclusion rests.

Consider the ending of Mark’s Gospel. Lost in Translation states that Mark 16:14 through 20 appears in no text before approximately AD 300 and suggests that earlier manuscripts end much later than they actually do. The manuscript evidence tells a more nuanced story.

Our two earliest complete Greek manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, end Mark at 16:8, not verse 9 or verse 13. That fact is significant and is one reason many textual scholars conclude that verses 9 through 20 were probably not part of the earliest recoverable form of Mark. At the same time, the longer ending was already known by the late second century. Irenaeus quotes Mark 16:19 in Against Heresies, demonstrating that the passage was circulating well over a century before AD 300. That does not settle the question, but it does show that the evidence is considerably more complex than the article suggests.

Another example involves the use of the term Q. In New Testament studies, Q is shorthand for the hypothetical sayings source, from the German word Quelle, meaning “source,” that many scholars believe Matthew and Luke may have used alongside Mark. It is not the technical term for an original manuscript. The proper term for the original manuscript written by a biblical author is an autograph. That may seem like a minor point, but using technical terms accurately is part of responsible scholarship.

The article also states that Gutenberg printed the Bible in the King James Version. That is simply incorrect. Gutenberg’s famous Bible, completed around 1455, was a Latin Vulgate. The King James Version would not appear until 1611, more than a century and a half later. This is not a matter of interpretation or theological perspective. It is a straightforward historical fact.

Likewise, the article refers to the Nestle-Aland twenty-ninth edition as though it were already the standard critical text. In fact, the twenty-eighth edition remains the current published edition. The twenty-ninth edition has been announced (I think for January-February of 2027) and is in production but has not yet been released. This is not a theological disagreement; it is simply a matter of accurately describing the current state of New Testament textual scholarship.

Individually, none of these examples proves that the article’s broader conclusions are false. Scholars can make mistakes, and no one should expect perfection from any writer. However, taken together they illustrate why careful scholarship requires precision. Historical arguments are only as strong as the evidence upon which they rest. When terminology is misused, manuscript evidence is overstated, or historical facts are presented inaccurately, confidence in the larger argument naturally begins to erode.

That is not because the conclusions are unpopular. It is because good scholarship depends upon getting the details right. The more significant the conclusion, the greater our responsibility to ensure that the evidence supporting it has been represented fairly and accurately.

Christians Apologists Should Avoid Exaggeration Too

As I have worked through the research for this article, I found myself confronting an uncomfortable realization. It was not about Rev. Brandner’s article. It was about my own.

For years I repeated the familiar claim that the writings of the early Church Fathers contained enough quotations to reconstruct all but twenty-seven lines of the New Testament. I heard it from respected Christian teachers, read it in apologetic works, and never thought much about verifying its origin. It is an impressive statistic, and like many Christians I repeated it because I believed it was true. Then I began digging deeper.

What I discovered surprised me. The claim appears to have grown far beyond what the original research actually demonstrated. Daniel Wallace himself has cautioned against repeating it in that form, explaining that the statement has been expanded over the years into something the evidence simply does not support. That does not mean the Church Fathers are unimportant. Quite the opposite. Their quotations remain one of the most valuable witnesses to the antiquity and transmission of the New Testament text. But there is an important difference between saying they provide substantial corroboration for the text and claiming they can reconstruct virtually the entire New Testament by themselves.

Some might worry that admitting this somehow weakens the Christian case. I think it does exactly the opposite. If an argument is stronger than the evidence allows, then it is not serving the truth. It may persuade someone for a time, but eventually it becomes a liability when a careful reader discovers the exaggeration. Far better to make a modest claim that the evidence genuinely supports than an impressive claim that requires qualification once the research is examined more closely.

This principle extends well beyond textual criticism. Christians sometimes defend the Bible with arguments that sound compelling because they are simple, memorable, and easy to repeat. Skeptics sometimes criticize the Bible using arguments that are equally simple, memorable, and incomplete. Both approaches sacrifice precision for persuasion.

As followers of Christ, we should resist that temptation. Our responsibility is not to win every argument. Our responsibility is to tell the truth as accurately as we can. That means acknowledging genuine uncertainties where they exist. It means resisting the urge to exaggerate the evidence in support of our own position. It also means refusing to magnify uncertainty beyond what the evidence warrants simply because doing so makes for a more dramatic story.

Truth deserves better than that. One of the lessons I continue learning is that confidence built upon careful scholarship is far more durable than confidence built upon clever arguments. If I discover that I have repeated something inaccurate, I do not see correcting it as a defeat. I see it as an opportunity to become a more careful student of Scripture and a more faithful representative of Christ.

Christians should never feel obligated to defend the Bible with arguments that are stronger than the evidence. The Scriptures have withstood centuries of scrutiny. They do not need our exaggerations. They need our honesty.

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation.” –  Mahatma Gandhi

What Careful Scholarship Actually Produces

So where does all of this leave us? Careful scholarship does not produce the kind of certainty that pretends every textual question has been settled, every translation is obvious, or every canonical discussion was simple. It recognizes that translation is difficult, that language is contextual, that manuscripts contain variants, that the canon developed over time, and that some passages remain genuinely debated. Those are not concessions to skepticism. They are simply acknowledgments of how historical study works.

At the same time, careful scholarship also recognizes how much confidence the evidence actually supports. The New Testament textual tradition is remarkably stable. The overwhelming majority of textual variants are minor. The places where uncertainty remains are identifiable and openly discussed. The core of the New Testament canon emerged early, and the books that generated longer discussion represent a relatively small portion of the whole. Translation requires judgment, but grammar, syntax, vocabulary, historical context, and manuscript evidence place real limits on what can responsibly be claimed.

That last point is especially important. Evidence constrains interpretation. We are not free to make a passage mean whatever we would prefer it to mean. We may disagree about the best interpretation of a difficult text, but those disagreements still occur within boundaries established by the language, literary context, historical setting, and the broader body of evidence. Good interpretation is not the elimination of judgment. It is judgment disciplined by evidence.

This is where I think both extremes fail us. One extreme wants absolute certainty. It becomes uncomfortable when manuscripts differ, when translators disagree, or when scholars debate the meaning of a passage. The other extreme sees those same complexities and concludes that confidence itself is naïve. One side minimizes uncertainty. The other magnifies it.

Neither approach reflects the evidence particularly well. The more responsible position is somewhere in between. We can acknowledge uncertainty without surrendering confidence. We can recognize that our knowledge is incomplete without pretending that it is therefore unreliable. We can admit that our interpretations may need correction while still believing that the underlying text is substantially recoverable and historically accessible.

Confidence and humility are not opposites. In fact, I would argue that mature confidence requires humility. If my confidence depends upon pretending that no problems exist, then it is fragile confidence. The moment a difficult manuscript variant, historical question, or competing interpretation appears, the whole structure begins to shake. But confidence built upon careful examination of the evidence is different. It already knows where the uncertainties are. It has looked at them directly and learned to distinguish between what we know, what we probably know, and what remains genuinely uncertain.

That kind of confidence is harder to unsettle because it does not depend upon pretending the evidence is simpler than it really is. This is ultimately what careful scholarship should produce. Not cynicism. Not naïveté. Not fear of difficult questions. Rather, a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, to revise our conclusions when necessary, and to hold our beliefs with a confidence proportionate to the evidence supporting them.

That may be less dramatic than either absolute certainty or sweeping skepticism. But I believe it is far closer to the truth. And ultimately, I want to be closer to Christ. Did you see what I did there? If not, take another look at John 14:6.

Conclusion

The danger is not in asking difficult questions. Christians should ask them. Scholars should ask them. Anyone who claims to care about truth should be willing to examine the hard places rather than avoiding them. The danger comes when we assume that difficult questions must lead to skeptical answers.

The more I study textual criticism, manuscript evidence, Greek, church history, and canon formation, the less interested I become in simplistic certainty. But I also become less persuaded by sweeping skepticism. Careful research has not pushed me toward either extreme. It has taught me to be more humble about what I do not know while becoming more confident about what the evidence actually supports.

That, I think, is one of the most important lessons here. Intellectual honesty is not measured by how skeptical we become. Skepticism can be just as dogmatic as certainty when it outruns the evidence. Intellectual honesty is measured by our willingness to let the evidence speak at its own volume.

Sometimes the evidence whispers. Sometimes it speaks clearly. Sometimes it tells us that several interpretations remain possible. Sometimes it tells us that a particular claim simply cannot bear the weight being placed upon it. Wisdom consists in refusing to make the evidence say more than it does, while also refusing to pretend it says less.

That principle applies equally to Christian apologetics and to skeptical criticism. If an argument defending Scripture is stronger than the evidence, we should correct it. If an argument attacking Scripture exaggerates uncertainty, we should correct that too. Truth does not become more true because it helps our side.

That is ultimately why I wanted to respond to Lost in Translation. Not because Rev. Brandner asks questions that should not be asked. Many of the questions are important and deserve serious consideration. My concern is that careful academic research leads to conclusions that are generally more nuanced, and considerably less skeptical, than the article sometimes suggests.

The history of the biblical text is complicated. Translation is complicated. Canon formation is complicated. Human interpretation is certainly complicated. None of that should surprise us. Human beings have been involved in preserving, copying, translating, interpreting, and teaching Scripture for thousands of years. Yet complexity does not erase confidence.

We can recognize textual variants without concluding that the New Testament is hopelessly corrupted. We can acknowledge disputes over a handful of books without imagining that the canon was politically manufactured. We can recognize that translation involves interpretation without pretending that translators are free to make the Greek or Hebrew say whatever they prefer. And we can admit that our own interpretations may be wrong without surrendering confidence in the text itself.

Perhaps that is where intellectual humility and Christian faith meet most naturally. We follow the evidence as carefully as we can. We remain willing to correct ourselves. We resist sensationalism, whether it comes from an apologist or a skeptic. We refuse to confuse confidence with certainty or uncertainty with ignorance. And we keep searching for the truth. After all, for the Christian, that search is ultimately not merely about getting an argument right. It is about drawing closer to the One who said He is the Truth.

Resources

• Bokedal, T. (2013). The formation and significance of the Christian biblical canon: A study in text, ritual and interpretation. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
• Brandner, R. L. (2026, July 28). Lost in translation. New Ecclesiastes Ministries. Substack. https://substack.com/home/post/p-208900622
• Bruce, F. F. (1988). The canon of Scripture. InterVarsity Press.
• Ehrman, B. D., & Metzger, B. M. (2005). The text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Gallagher, E. L., & Meade, J. D. (2017). The biblical canon lists from early Christianity: Texts and analysis. Oxford University Press.
• Gurry, P. J., & Hixson, E. E. (Eds.). (2019). Myths and mistakes in New Testament textual criticism. IVP Academic.
• Irenaeus. (1885). Against heresies (A. Roberts & W. Rambaut, Trans.). In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. 1). Christian Literature Publishing. (Original work composed ca. 180 CE)
• Kruger, M. J. (2012). Canon revisited: Establishing the origins and authority of the New Testament books. Crossway.
• Kruger, M. J. (2013). The question of canon: Challenging the status quo in the New Testament debate. IVP Academic.
• Lim, T. H. (2013). The formation of the Jewish canon. Yale University Press.
• McDonald, L. M. (2017a). The formation of the biblical canon: Volume 1: The Old Testament—Its authority and canonicity. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
• McDonald, L. M. (2017b). The formation of the biblical canon: Volume 2: The New Testament—Its authority and canonicity. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
• Metzger, B. M. (1987). The canon of the New Testament: Its origin, development, and significance. Clarendon Press.
• Paget, J. C., & Schaper, J. (Eds.). (2013). The New Cambridge history of the Bible: Volume 1: From the beginnings to 600. Cambridge University Press.
• Wallace, D. B. (Ed.). (2011). Revisiting the corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, patristic, and apocryphal evidence. Kregel Academic.

Excerpt

Translation, textual criticism, and canon formation are complex, but complexity is not the same as uncertainty. Careful scholarship should make us more humble without making us cynical, helping us distinguish genuine questions from exaggerated skepticism while building confidence proportionate to the evidence.

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