Bait and Switch Evidence
Few challenges to fundamentalism have cut as deeply as the attack on the validity of New Testament scriptures. Strangely, few areas of Christian defense have been more feeble than its defense of its scriptural integrity. This is probably due to the fact that the bulk of the Christian faithful are largely unaware of this assault. It is generally a battle fought among academicians and only seeps into the public conscious when a book such as Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why" makes it to the New York Times Best Seller's List.
A second and probably more significant reason the defense of New Testament integrity has been weak is that Catholicism has lent its expertise more to the prosecution than the defense. Catholicism has never adhered to a literal reading of scriptures and has generally supported efforts to improve what it has acknowledged as a flawed history of copying. Fundamentalism, bound to a literal interpretation of scriptures, finds itself in opposition both to the Catholic Church and critics. The debates that occur in the academic world are largely ignored by the general Christian public.
| Robert M. Price emphasized the amateurishness of the defenses when critiquing McDowell’s New Evidence: “One can only say again that McDowell is the worst enemy of his own faith: with defenders like this, who needs attackers? The more seriously one takes him as a representative of his faith, the more seriously one will be tempted to thrust Christianity aside as a tissue of grotesque absurdities capable of commending itself only to fools and bigots.” (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/preposterous.htm) |
As a consequence, the modern defense of Bible inerrancy has been entrusted to people who write almost entirely for an already evangelical Christian audience. Books such as Josh McDowell's, "New Evidence That Demands A Verdict," or Paul Baba's "All the Evidence You Will Ever Need: A Scientist Believes in the Gospel of Jesus Christ" are not aimed at Bible critics. Rather; they are designed for existing believers who have heard that objections might exist for the validity of the Bible. Their arguments are exceedingly amateurish and persuasive to only those who do not need any persuading.
Bible literalist defenders of New Testament accuracy essentially use bait and switch evidence to support their case. Evidence derived from a conclusion separate from New Testament study is simply appropriated and applied to support conclusions about the Christian scriptures that do not exist. The crux of the apologist arguments can be summarized in two statements that permeate their literature. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm the accuracy of Bible transmission throughout the centuries and the best tests for New Testament reliability are determined by the large number of manuscripts available for comparison coupled with a relatively short period of time between the originals and standardization.
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