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Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology
How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation
A recognized expert in New Testament Greek offers a historical understanding of the writing, transmission, and translation of the New Testament and provides cutting-edge insights into how we got the New Testament in its ancient Greek and modern English forms. In part responding to those who question the New Testament's reliability, Stanley Porter rigorously defends the traditional goals of textual criticism: to establish the original text. He reveals fascinating details about the earliest New Testament manuscripts and shows that the textual evidence supports an early date for the New Testament's formation. He also explores the vital role translation plays in biblical understanding and evaluates various translation theories. The book offers a student-level summary of a vast amount of historical and textual information.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
17 people are currently reading
386 people want to read
About the author
Stanley E. Porter
192 books34 followersStanley E. Porter (PhD, University of Sheffield) is president, dean, and professor of New Testament, and Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Wolrdview at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. He has authored or edited dozens of books, including How We Got the New Testament and Fundamentals of New Testament Greek.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 15, 2013
See the full review at http://ntexegesis.com/blog/2013/12/14...
Overall, I found this book extremely helpful. Porter has a knack for presenting difficult and often times confusing topics in a straight forward manner. I especially found his discussion on translation to be even handed. Often times in debates it is “literal” versus “dynamic” and Porter rightly diffuses this by saying that each are closer than they appear. He is open to different translation methods and says that this is an area where scholars can make much ground in the areas of discourse analysis for translation help. Overall, I highly recommend this book.
Overall, I found this book extremely helpful. Porter has a knack for presenting difficult and often times confusing topics in a straight forward manner. I especially found his discussion on translation to be even handed. Often times in debates it is “literal” versus “dynamic” and Porter rightly diffuses this by saying that each are closer than they appear. He is open to different translation methods and says that this is an area where scholars can make much ground in the areas of discourse analysis for translation help. Overall, I highly recommend this book.
November 27, 2013
Review to come later
June 29, 2014
An in-depth exercise in textual criticism. Insightful and compelling.
October 25, 2023
This is a helpful book in thinking about how we ended up with the New Testament. True to the subtitle, the book contains three sections: a chapter on the text, a chapter on transmission of the text, and a chapter on translation of the text. Missing is any real, substantive discussion of canon, and a times this absence felt awkward. Overall, the book contains incredible information about the history of the New Testament. At times, it's a bit technical (details about individual manuscripts, theories about translations, etc).
October 9, 2014
Stanley E. Porter, How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). Paperback / Kindle
How We Got the New Testament by Stanley E. Porter deals with three important issues: (1) the text of the New Testament, specifically, whether it can be reconstructed reliably from the thousands of later manuscripts which are our only record of it; (2) the transmission of the New Testament in its early years; and (3) the translation of the New Testament into languages other than Greek in its early years, as well as into English in the last five centuries.
Porter concludes that the New Testament text can be reconstructed reliably, with 80 to 90 percent being “established…regardless of the textual variants present in the manuscript. Moreover, the variants tend—with a handful of notable exceptions—to be minor, neither changing the meaning nor the orthodoxy of the text. With this in mind, Porter takes Bart Ehrman of Misquoting Jesus fame to task for the “unwarranted sensationalism” of that books’ argument.
Regarding the transmission of the New Testament, Porter argues that it is possible “to trace the development of the four Gospel and Pauline letter corpora back to the second century.” He argues that there is some evidence that “the remaining parts of the New Testament [e.g., the catholic epistles] were also being gathered during this time.” This has implications for discussions about the canonicity of the New Testament, though Porter doesn’t explicitly discuss issues of canon. The fact that post-Apostolic Age Christians routinely collected the four Gospels and Paul’s letters (and perhaps the other New Testament writings) indicates, in my opinion, that they held these works in particular regard.
The final chapter, after briefly surveying the early history of translating the New Testament from Greek into other languages and the more recent history of English translations, surveys various issues in the debate over translation theory. Porter demonstrates that the debate is more complex than formal equivalence vs. functional (or dynamic) equivalence. Evangelicals who are accustomed to the polemics between ESV and NIV proponents will discover how difficult translation really is.
In the Introduction, Porter writes, “I conceive of my audience for this book as…an inquisitive and generally well-educated and thinking Christian audience, ideally though not necessarily with some formal theological education.” As an ordained minister with a graduate degree in theology, I think Porter has misestimated his readership. This book will profit theological students and seminarians primarily, though it also makes several proposals scholars might find helpful. Students especially will benefit from the studies Porter so helpfully documents in the footnotes. However, a general Christian audience will likely find themselves unfamiliar with the background knowledge Porter assumes his readers know and some of the terminology he uses, as well as confused by the ins and outs of the academic debates Porter occasionally weighs in on. (Though, as an American, I must concede that general Christian readers in Canada may be better informed than counterparts in the States.)
Even with that qualification about readership, however, How We Got the New Testament is a fascinating, erudite study that I enjoyed and recommend.
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
How We Got the New Testament by Stanley E. Porter deals with three important issues: (1) the text of the New Testament, specifically, whether it can be reconstructed reliably from the thousands of later manuscripts which are our only record of it; (2) the transmission of the New Testament in its early years; and (3) the translation of the New Testament into languages other than Greek in its early years, as well as into English in the last five centuries.
Porter concludes that the New Testament text can be reconstructed reliably, with 80 to 90 percent being “established…regardless of the textual variants present in the manuscript. Moreover, the variants tend—with a handful of notable exceptions—to be minor, neither changing the meaning nor the orthodoxy of the text. With this in mind, Porter takes Bart Ehrman of Misquoting Jesus fame to task for the “unwarranted sensationalism” of that books’ argument.
Regarding the transmission of the New Testament, Porter argues that it is possible “to trace the development of the four Gospel and Pauline letter corpora back to the second century.” He argues that there is some evidence that “the remaining parts of the New Testament [e.g., the catholic epistles] were also being gathered during this time.” This has implications for discussions about the canonicity of the New Testament, though Porter doesn’t explicitly discuss issues of canon. The fact that post-Apostolic Age Christians routinely collected the four Gospels and Paul’s letters (and perhaps the other New Testament writings) indicates, in my opinion, that they held these works in particular regard.
The final chapter, after briefly surveying the early history of translating the New Testament from Greek into other languages and the more recent history of English translations, surveys various issues in the debate over translation theory. Porter demonstrates that the debate is more complex than formal equivalence vs. functional (or dynamic) equivalence. Evangelicals who are accustomed to the polemics between ESV and NIV proponents will discover how difficult translation really is.
In the Introduction, Porter writes, “I conceive of my audience for this book as…an inquisitive and generally well-educated and thinking Christian audience, ideally though not necessarily with some formal theological education.” As an ordained minister with a graduate degree in theology, I think Porter has misestimated his readership. This book will profit theological students and seminarians primarily, though it also makes several proposals scholars might find helpful. Students especially will benefit from the studies Porter so helpfully documents in the footnotes. However, a general Christian audience will likely find themselves unfamiliar with the background knowledge Porter assumes his readers know and some of the terminology he uses, as well as confused by the ins and outs of the academic debates Porter occasionally weighs in on. (Though, as an American, I must concede that general Christian readers in Canada may be better informed than counterparts in the States.)
Even with that qualification about readership, however, How We Got the New Testament is a fascinating, erudite study that I enjoyed and recommend.
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
March 8, 2016
A useful overview of textual criticism with a response to Bart Erhman's Misquoting Jesus. The last chapter covers translation methodologies and proposes some new ways of translation i.e. discourse analysis, rather than just the debate between formal vs. dynamic equivalency, although Porter doesn't take a specific side other than arguing that we should broaden the scope of possible translation methodlogies. Overall a useful overview of textual criticism and the importance of linguistics for translation methodlogy.
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March 27, 2014A great book with interesting suggestions, I personally like the suggestion of moving away from an eclectic text and using one manuscript with cited variants though it will have trouble being accepted by scholars since the eclectic text is well established
May 4, 2015
Very good intro to the issues of the NT: origins, TC, transmission, and translation. While it is more advanced than Greenlee's intro; it is certainly a digestible replacement for similar attempts (e.g. Metzger who is heavy on TC; or Geisler-Nix who are heavy on inerrancy).
February 18, 2019
Reads like a text book, which I suppose is its intended purpose. Anyone serious about studying the Bible in English should read this book, or one like it, to find out where the scripture came from and how it arrived in their hands.
November 13, 2013
A scholarly rendition aimed at Biblical experts, using minutia to convolute an already overly-complicated theology.
June 30, 2020
Helpful introduction to current issues related to textual criticism. Chapters may be super long (originally Porter's manuscript in a talk he presented), but it's accessible for non-specialists. Perhaps the most helpful for me are the resources he cited--lots of them!
Topics he covered: recent proposals for the purpose or goal of textual criticism (other than discovering the most likely reading of the text); a history of the printed Greek texts, including Erasmus and the Textus Receptus and the switch in 1881; Bart Ehrman and "Misquoting Jesus"; a reconstructed history of the transmission of the Greek NT (this was fascinating IMO!); a history of English translations; and assessment on translation models.
Topics he covered: recent proposals for the purpose or goal of textual criticism (other than discovering the most likely reading of the text); a history of the printed Greek texts, including Erasmus and the Textus Receptus and the switch in 1881; Bart Ehrman and "Misquoting Jesus"; a reconstructed history of the transmission of the Greek NT (this was fascinating IMO!); a history of English translations; and assessment on translation models.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews