My Case Against The Simplicity Of The New Testament - ABS EP 23

A single sentence can hide a thousand assumptions, and “the Bible clearly says” might be the clearest example. When I zoom out from modern certainty and look at early Christianity, the New Testament starts to feel less like a simple answer key and more like a long, human historical process: authors writing to real communities, scribes copying by hand for centuries, and later readers arguing about what counts as Scripture and what the text means.

I lay out my case against New Testament simplicity by working from the ground up. We talk about manuscript transmission and why we have copies of copies rather than original autographs, what textual variants are (and why most are small but some are not), and how famous passages can be missing from earlier manuscripts. From there we move into canon formation: how different churches circulated different writings, why some books outside the New Testament were treated seriously, and why books now inside the canon were disputed for generations, including Hebrews and Revelation.

Then we hit the part people often skip: interpretation and translation. Christians disagree on major doctrines while insisting the text is clear, and every harmonization, cross-reference, and theological system is an interpretive move. Add in Bible translation choices from Koine Greek, footnotes, and editorial decisions, and the “simple” story gets even harder to defend. If you like thoughtful conversations about church history, biblical scholarship, and early Christian origins, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more curious readers can find the show.

Transcript

A Math Analogy For Scripture

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Imagine walking into a classroom and seeing an incredibly complicated equation stretched across the board, symbols everywhere, notes in the margins, missing pieces, corrections, arrows pointing in different directions. But this equation was not even written by one person. It was written by multiple people across multiple decades to different audiences from different perspectives. And now there are even debates about who actually wrote certain parts of the equation in the first place. Now, imagine nobody has the original equation anymore. Instead, everyone in the room has hand copied versions of it. Copies of copies of copies passed down over the centuries. Most are extremely similar, but some have differences, missing lines, added notes, slight wording changes, and some of them have big differences, entire sections that appear in some copies, but not in others. And now imagine there are other pieces of that equation sitting on nearby desks. Some groups once thought those sections belonged as part of the official equation, too. Some people still think they should. Others say they never belonged there at all. And now groups of people are all arguing over what parts mean. One person says the answer is obvious. Another says parts of the equations were copied wrong. Another says a section was added later. Another says you can only understand it if you already understand the teacher's method. Another says the older copies matter more than the later ones. Another says the equation can't be understood properly unless you understand the historical context surrounding it. Now imagine this equation is so complicated, people are splitting into groups over that equation for hundreds of years. Imagine councils being called over it, entire communities arguing over interpretation. Some saying others completely misunderstand the original meaning. Some saying the equation should be read literally, others saying symbolically, some arguing over which copies of the equation are closest to the original. Now, obviously, you're probably seeing the connections I'm drawing to Christianity here. Obviously, it's not a perfect analogy because Christianity is not literally a math equation with one clean provable answer. The entire issue is that interpretation is involved. When we're thinking about this equation, at some point, after all the decades, copies, interpretations, counsels, and disagreements, you would stop calling that equation simple. And honestly, that's how I feel when people talk about the New Testament like it's this completely obvious thing where anyone who disagrees with it is either stupid, evil, or rejecting clear truth. Because once I started studying early Christianity, canon formation, church history, textual variants, doctrinal developments, and competing interpretations, the whole thing stopped feeling simple to me very quickly. So today, I want to share my case against New Testament simplicity. So today, I want to share my case against New Testament simplicity. I am hit with this idea on the internet constantly. It's all clear. The Bible says so. All these different things that try to take all this complexity and make it so simple like it's the only way we can see it. Let's get into it.

What The Show Is About

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What's going on and welcome to another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. I'm your host, Joe Teal, and today I want to tackle something that has been on my mind more and more deeper as I study early Christianity. Let me slow down first and give my normal briefing about what the show is. I'm not trying to convert anybody. I'm not trying to deconvert anybody. We're trying to slow down, open up the text, and ask honest questions, trying to approach the Bible from a neutral, curious perspective. So whether you believe, you don't believe, or you don't know what to believe, you are welcome here at the Agnostic Bible study. So today's argument is not whether Christianity is true or false, not whether God exists or doesn't exist, but whether the New Testament and the world surrounding early Christianity is actually as simple as many people claim it is. Because growing up, I constantly heard phrases like, the Bible clearly says, just believe. It's simple, or God is not an author of confusion. But the more time I spend studying the things that I listed above, the harder it becomes for me to describe any of this as simple. And while I think my equation analogy did a lot of the heavy lifting for what I'm going to do today, it's time to get in the weeds and break it down. I think a lot of Christians only experience Christianity as simple because they inherited a completed framework already: a finalized canon, settled Trinity doctrine, a settled doctrine of salvation, a settled interpretation of Paul and Jesus. But the people living through the first centuries of Christianity did not experience it that way at all. So today, we are going to slow down and think through those complexities. And I'll share my case against New Testament simplicity.

No Originals And Human Copying

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So let's start with something very basic that already complicates the picture for me. Today, Christians inherit a New Testament made up of 27 books, Matthew through Revelation. Most believers grow up with those books already bound together inside one Bible, so it feels completely natural and fixed, almost like the New Testament has always existed in that exact form. But the moment I stopped and asked, why these 27 books? The simplicity starts fading away from me very quickly. But before we can even get into the canon debates, there's another major historical reality. We do not have the original copies of the New Testament book. Not one. We have copies of copies of copies that were handwritten and circulated over long periods of time. For example, if the writer of Mark originally wrote his gospel down sometime in the first century, we no longer have that original document. They call that the autograph. What we have are later handwritten copies, then copies of those copies, then more copies made from those copies while Christianity was spreading and texts were circulating between churches and regions. Now, to be fair, this is not unique to the New Testament. This is extremely common in the ancient world. We do not have the original copies of most ancient writings. History is often reconstructed through surviving manuscript traditions and later copies. So I'm not saying this automatically destroys the reliability of the New Testament. So we don't have any of the original autographs. And another thing that makes that picture a little bit more complicated for me is the earliest evidence of any of those copies is fragmentary. Sometimes we only have small fragments from the second or third century containing a few verses or portions of text. Then later, we begin getting more complete manuscripts and eventually nearly complete New Testaments centuries after the originals would have been written. So when people hold a modern Bible in their hand, they are holding the result of a very long historical process of writing, copying, preserving, comparing manuscripts, and reconstructing text. And as I think about this stuff, more historical questions start popping in my head. What do we actually know about the scribes and copyists who were the ones making these manuscripts? In many cases, not much at all. Were they highly trained professionals? Were some of them exhausted, rushed, or inexperienced? Did they ever accidentally skip lines or harmonize passages from memory? Did theological biases ever influence a certain copying decision? And we also have to remember the sheer complexity of copying in the ancient world itself. There was no printing presses, no copy and paste, no digital backup. Everything had to be copied by hand, letter by letter, onto expensive writing material while texts were moving across regions and communities over long periods of time. Now, again, I want to be fair, many scribes were clearly trying to preserve these texts carefully. But once you realize the New Testament came through centuries of human copying and transmission before the printing press ever existed, it becomes harder to pretend that there was never any room for mistakes, changes, additions, harmonizations, or theological influences along the way. And interestingly enough, some of those previous questions seem to partially reveal themselves once we start comparing manuscripts and copies with one another. In our surviving copies of copies, we do find textual variants. In simple terms, those are places where manuscripts differ from one another. I want to be fair again, because people sometimes overstate this point. The vast majority of these variants are minor. Spelling differences, word order changes, small copying mistakes, but not all of them are minor. Some involve major passages like the long ending of Mark or the woman caught in adultery. Stories many Christians know by heart that are missing from some of the earliest manuscripts, leading some critical scholars to doubt if they were ever originally written by the authors. So the reality of transmission is still there. The New Testament comes to us through a long historical process of copying and circulation, not by us possessing the original documents themselves. Just those two things alone already start complicating the it's all simple and obvious narrative for me. And all that complexity exists before we even get to another major question.

How A Canon Slowly Forms

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At what point did these circulating writings actually become the New Testament? Because early Christianity did not begin with a finalized 27-book canon sitting on the table somewhere. Different churches and communities were reading different texts in different regions over long periods of time. And there were stages to this process. If Paul's earliest letters predate the Gospels, which many scholars think they do, then some of the earliest churches would have had Paul's writings before they ever even had a written gospel. And if Mark was written before Matthew, like I think, then there was a period of early Christianity where the Gospel of Matthew did not even exist yet. So Christianity itself existed before all 27 books were even written. And even when they are all finished, they are still not immediately accepted. Some writings became widely accepted very early. Others were debated for centuries. How fast were these writings actually circulated between churches and regions? Which churches had access to which writings and when? We really don't know nearly as much about the earliest stages of circulation as many Christians probably assume. And then there were books outside of the New Testament that some early Christians treated very seriously. Books like The Shepherd of Hermos, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Apocalypse of Peter. Some Christians thought these writings were inspired. Some churches read them publicly. Some believers wanted them included alongside the other Christian writings. We even find some of these texts included alongside New Testament writings in early Christian codices, which were early manuscript books, somewhat similar to modern books, instead of scrolls. But eventually these books would be decided against and left outside the final canon, likely for a variety of reasons, like questions about the authorship, theology, epistolic connection, or whether they were viewed as widely accepted enough across the broader church. And at the same time, some of these books that are now firmly inside the New Testament were heavily disputed. And this is not just some modern skeptical argument. Even early church father and historian Eusebius talks about categories of writing that were accepted, disputed, and rejected among Christians. Books like James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, and Revelation all face different levels of dispute in parts of the early church. These are not random forgotten books sitting outside the canon. These are books now treated by many Christians as unquestionably scripture, directly inspired by God. Yet some early Christians were uncertain about their authorship, authority, theology, or widespread acceptance. Hebrews is one of the most fascinating examples to me. One major reason it gained acceptance in parts of the church was because many Christians believed it was connected to Paul. But today, most biblical scholars do not think Paul actually wrote Hebrews. So now I start wondering how much authorship assumptions may have influenced canon decisions in the first place? Did Hebrews get a free pass into the canon, even though it more than likely wasn't connected to Paul? And this is where my questions start multiplying. Who ultimately decided what books counted as scripture? What standards were being used? Was a pistolic connection the main criteria? Was widespread use important? Was theology important? And who exactly had the authority to make those decisions for all Christians and all Christians to come? Because once you realize there was no universally agreed upon New Testament at the beginning, the whole picture starts feeling far more historically complicated than the simplified version many of us inherited growing up. And for me, the complexity still does not stop

Disputed Books And Who Decides

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there. Because let's say someone studies all the manuscript history, all the canon debates, all the disputed books, all the copying and transmission issues, and still comes away convinced the New Testament is reliable and it belongs in the Bible. Okay, even then, the entire thing still requires interpretation. And I think this is where another major illusion of simplicity starts breaking down because Christians constantly say things like the Bible clearly says. But in reality, Christians disagree on what the Bible clearly says about all kinds of major issues: the Trinity, hell, salvation, baptism, faith in works, predestination, communion, church authority, end times, women in ministry, eternal security, spiritual gifts. And that is just scratching the surface. I could do that for a long time. I could keep listing things Christians do not agree about. And I think sometimes people don't fully realize how interpretation is happening almost constantly when we approach the New Testament, because we're not dealing with one modern book written by one author at one time to one audience. We're dealing with 27 different books written across different decades by different authors with different perspectives, writing to different audiences in different historical situations. If the Bible was just the Gospel of Mark and someone quoted a verse saying, the Bible clearly says this, even that would still involve some interpretation to some degree, but it would be far less complex. Now, take that complexity and multiply it across 27 different books interacting with one another. So the moment someone starts connecting those writings together into one unified theological system, interpretation is already happening. For example, if you read something in John and then connect it to something in Mark, your explanation of how those passages relate to one another is an interpretation. If Paul says one thing and James says another, how you reconcile them is an interpretation. If revelation uses symbolic imagery, deciding what is symbolic versus literal is an interpretation. If one gospel words a story differently than another gospel, explaining why is interpretation. Even the phrase the Bible teaches is usually followed by some kind of interpretation. Because the Bible itself is a collection of writings. People are constantly organizing, harmonizing, prioritizing, reconciling, and building theological systems from those writings. Once again, I'm not talking about random internet skeptics disagreeing with Christians. I am talking about Christians disagreeing with other Christians while all claiming the Bible is clear and inspired. If the New Testament is truly simple and self-explanatory, why did Christians spend centuries, centuries arguing over major doctrines? Why were their counsels needed? Why were there schisms? Why are there thousands of denominations today all reading the same New Testament but arriving at different conclusions? And imagine all the Christians throughout history who became convinced that their theology was the true and correct theology. It happened to me. I felt like that. Then think about the massive number of denominations that now exist and how many people within those groups are thinking the exact same thing right now. People are thinking, I am right. They cannot all simultaneously be right about every theological claim. And that might lead me to ask another uncomfortable question to you. What are the odds that your specific interpretation is the correct one? And if someone has never seriously left or questioned the tradition they inherited, what are the odds their denomination or their way of thought that their parents taught them or their home church taught them just happen to get everything right? Wow. What luck? What luck to be born into the correct version of this thing that has thousands of versions? To me, all this feels incredibly complicated. And that's before we even get into translation decisions, cultural context, Greek word meanings, contradictions, symbolic language, or whether later theological systems are sometimes being read back into earlier text.

Translation Is Interpretation Too

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Which leads us to another layer of complexity: translation. Because most Christians are not reading the New Testament in Koine Greek. They are reading translations. And every translation requires decisions to be made. How should a word be translated here? Does this phrase carry the same meaning in English? Should this wording be more literal or readable? Does this sentence sound theological because the author intended it that way, or because later theology influenced how translators understood it? Many people don't stop and think about how major Bible translations are actually made. Most people know very little about the process itself. Usually you have teams of scholars debating individual words, phrases, grammar choices, manuscript differences, and translation philosophy. And sometimes they don't even fully agree. Compromises get made, committees make decisions. Who is organizing and funding these translations to be made in the first place? And how might their theological traditions influence certain translation choices? And again, I am not saying translation is bad. Translation is absolutely necessary, but translation itself involves interpretation. There's no way around that. For example, compare something like the New King James Version to the New International Version, or compare the NLT to the NRSVU. They can sound dramatically different at times, even while translating the same underlying Greek text. Some translations lean more literal, others prioritize readability. Some preserve older theological wording, while others try to reflect modern scholarship and updated manuscript evidence. Every single choice in translation is ultimately an interpretation. And then on top of that, individual words themselves can become complicated. Sometimes one translation says slave, while another one says servant. Some translations may say repent, while other phrases may be more like change your mind. Some translate the Greek word for faith with faithfulness. Even small wording choices can shape how people understand theology. And then there are places where the translators themselves are uncertain. That's why many Bibles contain footnotes saying things like other ancient manuscripts say, or the meaning of this phrase is uncertain. Even in my own NRS VU Bible, there are hundreds and hundreds of footnotes throughout the New Testament, pointing readers toward the manuscript differences, alternate renderings, and textual uncertainty. These notes are a constant reminder that scholars are actively making interpretive and textual decisions behind the scenes. Your Bible is full of interpretations, headings that weren't in the original document, verse numbers that weren't in the original document, punctuation that wasn't in the original document. All those are still interpretation. So now let's think about the layers again. We already talked about manuscript transmission, textual variants, disputed books, canon formation, and interpretation. But before the average Christian even begins interpreting theology for themselves, they are usually already reading a translated version of ancient texts that required thousands of interpretive decisions. Before it ever reached them. And to me, all of that makes the idea of New Testament simplicity feel harder and harder to maintain. And then we arrive at another layer of complexity that for many people becomes one of the biggest issues of all.

Tensions And Contradictions Debated

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Apparent contradictions and tensions within the New Testament itself. And to me, the issue actually connects naturally to everything we've already discussed. Because if you have multiple authors writing across different decades from different perspectives to different audiences, it should not shock us that sometimes the details don't line up perfectly. Now, of course, Christians have offered harmonizations for all of these issues. Trust me, they have. I feel like I've read them all. Now, some people find these explanations really convincing, others do not. But even there, interpretation immediately enters the picture again because the moment two passages appear to disagree, people begin building explanations for how they fit together. Take the resurrection accounts, for example. Who arrived at the tomb and when? Was the stone already rolled away when the women arrived? Or did it happen in front of them? Were there guards at the tomb or not? What exactly did they see? Were there one or two angels? Where did Jesus first appear to the disciples? Galilee or Jerusalem? Christians have proposed many ways to harmonize these accounts, but those harmonizations are themselves interpretations attempting to reconstruct how the stories fit together. I actually released an episode on this channel recently where my buddy and I read through all the resurrection morning accounts side by side, and then I wrote down the differences. If you want to go look at those more and see them come right from our Bible, go watch that video. Or take Judas' death. Did Judas hang himself or did he fall and burst open? Who bought the field? Did Judas buy it himself or did the priest buy it? Why does Matthew connect the field to blood money while Acts focuses on or take Judas' death? Did Judas hang himself or did he fall and burst open? Who bought the field? Did Judas buy it himself or did the priest buy it? Why does Matthew connect the field to blood money while Acts focuses on Judas' gruesome death? Are these two completely separate traditions being preserved side by side? Or are they meant to be combined into one larger sequence of events? Once again, Christians have proposed many harmonizations, but every harmonization is still an interpretation, trying to explain how these accounts fit together. And on that one, particularly for sure, I am not convinced by any of the harmonies. Just my personal opinion, just my interpretation. Next, let's think about the infamous census. In Luke, it's connected to Corinius, while Matthew places Jesus' birth during the reign of King Herod, where there seems to be around a 10-year gap between those events. Now, I have personally spent a ridiculous amount of time studying this particular issue alone. And I still have not found a way to make this work without throwing out the broader historical reconstruction many historians feel way more confident about from sources like Josephus and Roman Records. Some people do harmonize it, they try it. Others think there is real historical tension there. Once again, my interpretation, your interpretations are just interpretations. I am actually working on a full episode specifically about the census issue right now that should be out soon if you want my full breakdown on that topic. And it will be detailed because I have, man, that's one that I've really, really debated. And also, you can find me talking about it in a debate with Pastor Cole that I have on my other episode called Is There Contradictions in the Birth Narrative. But back to those three examples. Those are just a handful of them. There are many more possible contradictions and tensions people debate throughout the New Testament. Everything from the birth narratives to the timing of events in Jesus' ministry to Peter's calling to Paul's conversions account in Acts to resurrection appearances themselves. Entire books and careers have been built around trying to harmonize, explain, and debate these issues, which again reinforces the main point of the whole episode. The main thing I keep coming back to. None of this feels simple. And my point is not that Christians are incapable of offering explanations. They put forth explanations all the time. My point is that every single explanation becomes another interpretive layer added onto an already deeply complicated historical process.

Slower Certainty And Part Two

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So when I hear someone say Christianity is simple or the Bible clearly says, I just can't personally flatten out all this complexity back down into something that simple anymore. The deeper I study the history, the manuscripts, the canon, the translations, the theology, and even the tensions inside the text themselves, the more complicated the entire picture becomes. So at the end of all this, my point is not that nobody should believe in Christianity or that Christians are irrational. My point is much smaller and honestly much more personal than that. The deeper I have studied the New Testament historically, the harder it becomes for me to describe the entire process surrounding it as simple. We talked about 27 different books written across different times and situations. We talked about originals that no longer exist, handwritten copies of copies of copies circulating through the ancient world, textual variants, disputed books, canon formation, interpretation, translation decisions, theological disagreements, and possible contradictions that Christians have debated for centuries. And really, this episode barely scratches the surface. For me personally, all of that complexity changed the way I approach the Bible. It made me slower to speak with certainty, slower to say the Bible clearly says, slower to assume my interpretation or anyone else's interpretation is automatically the correct one. And as always, don't just blindly trust me. Go read the sources for yourself. Compare arguments. Listen to scholars you agree with. Listen to scholars you disagree with. Read apologetics. Read critical scholarship. Open the text yourself. Wrestle with it. Wrestle with this stuff. That is a huge part of what the show is all about. Imagine if we took all the things we pointed out today and condensed them down into a word like simple. It seems like a disservice to the actual history itself. If you enjoyed this episode and want to support the show, you can follow the agnostic Bible study on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, Facebook, TikTok, Patreon, all the stuff. And if you know someone who enjoys deep conversations about history, theology, biblical scholarship, or the origins of Christianity, feel free to share this episode with them. And this is definitely not the end of this conversation. In part two, because there will be more parts of my case against the simplicity of the New Testament, I want to dive into things like authorship debates, source criticism, or tradition, the synoptic problem, early Christian diversity, church councils, and Christological developments, because those topics add even more layers to this discussion. But for now, thank you for hanging out with me on another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. Thanks for thinking through these ideas with me, and thank you for being willing to wrestle with the difficult questions alongside me. And remember, whether you believe or you don't believe, or you don't know what to believe, you are welcome here. And most importantly, never stop learning. We'll see y'all next time.