Maneno Sahihi: Jinsi Maandishi YalivyonakiliwaThe Right Words: How the Text Was Copied

Shahidi wa kwanza alitupa vitabu sahihi. Lakini kitabu kinaweza kuwa na ukurasa sahihi wa kichwa na bado, kwa karne nyingi za kunakiliwa kwa mkono, kikaondoka neno kwa neno kutoka kwa kile mwandishi wake aliandika. Kwa hiyo sasa shahidi wa pili lazima atoe ushahidi: je, tuna maneno sahihi? Hali halisi ni hii. Hatuna hata nakala moja ya asili — hata ukurasa mmoja ulioandikwa kwa mkono wa Musa au wa Paulo. Maandishi ya asili (autographs) yametoweka. Tulicho nacho badala yake ni nakala: nakala za nakala, zilizotengenezwa kwa mkono, kwa miaka elfu moja na mia nne kabla ya mashine ya uchapishaji. Na hilo linazua swali la haki na zito. Je, maandishi yaliyonakiliwa kwa mkono mara nyingi hivyo bado yanaweza kuaminiwa? Je, Neno lilinusurika mikononi mwa waandishi? Tutajibu kwa uaminifu, tukishika nidhamu ile ile tuliyojifunza mwanzoni. Tutakubali kilicho halisi — kwamba kunakili kwa mkono kulizaa makosa, nasi hatutayaficha. Tutakataa kile kinachotisha tu — dai kwamba makosa hayo yamelimeza Neno. Nasi tutasimama pale ushahidi unaposimama: kwamba Mungu alilihifadhi Neno lake, kupitia wingi wa ajabu wa mashahidi, hivi kwamba kile ulichoshika mkononi bado ni Neno lake. Mamlaka yanabaki, kama siku zote, juu ya Biblia iliyo mikononi mwako.The first witness gave us the right books. But a book can have the right title page and still, over centuries of hand-copying, drift word by word from what its author wrote. So the second witness must now testify: do we have the right words? Here is the honest situation. We do not possess a single original manuscript — not one page in the hand of Moses or Paul. The autographs are gone. What we have instead are copies: copies of copies, made by hand, for fourteen hundred years before the printing press. And that raises a fair and serious question. Can a text copied by hand so many times still be trusted? Did the Word survive the scribes? We will answer honestly, holding the same discipline we learned at the start. We will concede what is real — that copying by hand did produce mistakes, and we will not hide them. We will refuse what is merely alarming — the claim that these mistakes have swallowed the Word. And we will stand where the evidence stands: that God so preserved His Word, through an astonishing abundance of witnesses, that what you hold is His Word still. The authority rests, as always, on the Bible in your hands.

Ili kupima unakili huo lazima kwanza tuuwazie. Kabla ya uchapishaji, kila nakala ya Maandiko ilitengenezwa kwa mkono, herufi moja baada ya nyingine. Mwandishi (mnakili) angeweza kufanya kazi kutoka kwa nakala-mama iliyofunguliwa mbele yake, akinakili mstari kwa mstari; au msomaji angeweza kusoma kwa sauti mbele ya chumba cha wanakili, kila mmoja akiandika kama alivyosikia. Vifaa vya mwanzo vilikuwa mafunjo (papyrus), yaliyotengenezwa kutokana na unyasi, ya bei nafuu lakini dhaifu, na baadaye ngozi iliyotayarishwa (parchment au vellum), iliyotengenezwa kwa ngozi ya mnyama iliyotengenezwa maalum, iliyodumu zaidi sana. Umbo nalo lilibadilika: Maandiko ya Kiyahudi yalitunzwa katika magombo, lakini Wakristo walikumbatia mapema sana kodeksi — umbo la kitabu, chenye kurasa zilizofungwa pamoja upande wa mgongo — jambo lililofanya Injili na nyaraka ziwe rahisi kubeba na kurejea. Hii ilikuwa kazi ya polepole, ya gharama kubwa, na yenye kudai mengi; nakala moja kubwa ingeweza kumchukua mnakili sehemu kubwa ya mwaka na ngozi za kundi zima la wanyama. Haikufanywa kwa uzembe. Kunakili maandishi matakatifu kulikuwa tendo la ibada, na ufundi huo ulichukuliwa kwa uzito ambao Neno linastahili. Kuwawazia watawa waliochoka wakibadilisha Biblia ovyo ni kutoelewa kabisa heshima ambayo kwayo ilitengenezwa.To weigh the copying we must first picture it. Before printing, every copy of Scripture was made by hand, one letter at a time. A scribe might work from an exemplar open before him, copying line by line; or a reader might read aloud to a room of scribes, each writing as they heard. The early materials were papyrus, made from a reed and inexpensive but fragile, and later parchment or vellum, made from treated animal skin, far more durable. The form changed too: the Jewish Scriptures were kept on scrolls, but Christians embraced the codex — the book form, with leaves bound at the spine — very early, which made the Gospels and letters easier to carry and consult. This was slow, costly, demanding work; a single large manuscript could take a scribe the better part of a year and the skins of an entire flock. It was not done carelessly. Copying the sacred text was an act of devotion, and the craft was taken with the seriousness the Word deserved. To imagine bored monks idly altering the Bible is to misunderstand entirely the reverence with which it was made.

Uangalifu huo ulikwenda mbali zaidi ya nia njema. Kwa Agano la Kale, waandishi wa Kiyahudi — na zaidi ya wote Wamasoreti, waliofanya kazi kuanzia takriban karne ya sita hadi ya kumi — walijenga kinga za ajabu kuyazunguka maandishi. Walihesabu herufi na maneno ya kila kitabu. Waliijua herufi ya katikati ya Torati na waliikagua. Waliandika pembezoni, katika mkusanyiko wa maelezo ulioitwa Masora, ni mara ngapi neno lilitokea na wapi. Walikuwa na kanuni kali za kunakili jina la Mungu na za kusahihisha au kuharibu ukurasa wenye kasoro. Nakala iliyoshindwa ukaguzi haikutumika. Kwa Agano Jipya, vyumba vya kunakilia vya Kikristo — na baadaye nyumba za watawa — vilinakili na kulinganisha kwa nidhamu yao wenyewe. Hili ni muhimu kwa sababu hofu iliyoenea ni kinyume kabisa: kwamba mikono ya uzembe au ya hila ilibadilisha Biblia polepole kwa karne nyingi. Ukweli ni kwamba watu walioinakili, kwa ujumla, ndio waliokuwa walinzi wake makini zaidi, waliohesabu kila herufi hasa kwa sababu waliamini kila herufi ni ya Mungu.The care went far beyond good intentions. For the Old Testament, the Jewish scribes — and above all the Masoretes, who worked from about the sixth to the tenth century — built extraordinary safeguards around the text. They counted the letters and the words of each book. They knew the middle letter of the Torah and would check it. They recorded in the margins, in a body of notes called the Masorah, how many times a word appeared and where. They had strict rules for the copying of the divine name and for correcting or destroying a flawed sheet. A copy that failed the checks was not used. For the New Testament, Christian scriptoria — later the monasteries — copied and compared with their own discipline. This matters because the popular fear is exactly the opposite: that careless or scheming hands slowly changed the Bible over the centuries. The truth is that the men who copied it were, by and large, its most careful guardians, who counted every letter precisely because they believed every letter was God's.

Hata hivyo, walikuwa wanadamu, na wanadamu wanaonakili kwa mkono kwa karne nyingi hufanya makosa. Uaminifu unatudai tuseme hivyo waziwazi. Makosa mengi hayakukusudiwa. Kulikuwa na makosa ya jicho: kudhani herufi moja inayofanana ni nyingine, au kuandika neno mara mbili, au — kosa la kawaida — kuruka mstari kwa sababu mistari miwili iliishia kwa neno lile lile. Kulikuwa na makosa ya sikio, mnakili alipoandika kwa kusomewa na maneno mawili yakasikika sawa, kama "kaa" (kuketi) na "kaa" (mnyama wa baharini) yanavyosikika kwetu. Kulikuwa na makosa ya kumbukumbu, kushika kifungu akilini na kukibadilisha kidogo, na makosa ya uamuzi. Idadi ndogo zaidi ya mabadiliko yalikusudiwa, lakini kwa kawaida yalikuwa na nia njema: mnakili akilainisha usomaji mgumu, akioanisha Injili moja ilingane na nyingine, au akiongeza neno la kufafanua. Mabadiliko ya makusudi ya kufundisha mafundisho ya uongo ni nadra na, pale yalipo, yanaweza kugunduliwa. Huyu ndiye mbu ambaye hatummezi mzima wala hatujifanyi kwamba hayupo: kunakili kwa mkono kulifanya baadhi ya makosa yasiepukike. Swali si kama tofauti za usomaji (variants) zipo — zipo — bali kama zimelishinda Neno. Sasa tunageukia swali hilo.Still, they were men, and men copying by hand for centuries make mistakes. Honesty requires that we say so plainly. Most errors were unintentional. There were errors of the eye: mistaking one similar letter for another, or writing a word twice, or — a common slip — skipping a line because two lines ended with the same word. There were errors of the ear, when a scribe wrote from dictation and two words sounded alike, as "their" and "there" do to us. There were errors of memory, holding a phrase in mind and altering it slightly, and errors of judgment. A smaller number of changes were intentional, but these were usually well-meant: a scribe smoothing a hard reading, harmonizing one Gospel to match another, or adding a clarifying word. Deliberate changes to teach false doctrine are rare and, where they exist, detectable. This is the gnat we do not swallow whole and do not pretend away: hand-copying made some mistakes inevitable. The question is not whether variants exist — they do — but whether they have overwhelmed the Word. To that we now turn.

Hapa picha inabadilika kabisa, na kwa faida yetu. Agano Jipya limetufikia katika wingi wa nakala za mkono usiolingana na maandishi mengine yoyote ya ulimwengu wa kale. Zimesalia zaidi ya nakala elfu tano za Kigiriki za Agano Jipya, kamili au sehemu, pamoja na maelfu mengi zaidi katika Kilatini na tafsiri nyingine za mwanzo, na manukuu mengi mno katika maandishi ya mababa wa kanisa la kwanza hivi kwamba Agano Jipya lingeweza karibu kujengwa upya kutoka kwayo peke yake. Weka hilo kando ya kazi kuu za zamani za Kigiriki na Kirumi. Nyingi zimesalia katika nakala chache tu hadi mia kadhaa, na mara nyingi nakala ya mwanzo kabisa tuliyo nayo ilitengenezwa miaka elfu moja baada ya mwandishi kufa. Kwa Agano Jipya, vipande vya mwanzo kabisa vinakuja ndani ya kizazi kimoja au viwili baada ya kuandikwa, na nakala zinahesabika kwa maelfu. Wasomi wameita hali hii "wingi wa utajiri unaoaibisha" (embarrassment of riches). Ni kinyume cha maandishi yanayoning'inia kwenye uzi mmoja. Hakuna kitabu cha kale kilichothibitishwa kwa wingi hivi, mapema hivi, mara nyingi hivi — na wingi huo si tatizo letu. Ni usalama wetu.Here the picture changes completely, and in our favor. The New Testament has come down to us in a wealth of manuscripts unmatched by any other writing of the ancient world. There survive more than five thousand Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, in whole or in part, together with many thousands more in Latin and other early translations, and so many quotations in the writings of the early church fathers that the New Testament could nearly be rebuilt from them alone. Set that beside the great works of classical antiquity. Most survive in a mere handful to a few hundred copies, and often the earliest copy we have was made a thousand years after the author died. For the New Testament the earliest fragments come within a generation or two of the writing, and the copies number in the thousands. Scholars have called this an "embarrassment of riches." It is the opposite of a text hanging by a thread. No ancient book is so richly, so early, so many times attested — and that abundance is not our problem. It is our security.

Lakini mtu atapinga: je, maelfu hayo ya nakala hayatofautiani katika mahali laki kadhaa? Yanatofautiana — na kuelewa kwa nini ndilo jambo lenyewe. Idadi ya tofauti ni kubwa hasa kwa sababu idadi ya nakala ni kubwa. Ukiwa na nakala elfu tano na kila moja ina makosa machache ya kalamu, utahesabu tofauti nyingi sana; kitabu kilichosalia katika nakala tatu kingeonyesha tofauti chache zaidi sana. Idadi ya tofauti inakua pamoja na mashahidi, si pamoja na uharibifu. Na unapotazama tofauti hizo ni nini hasa, hofu inatoweka. Sehemu kubwa mno ni tofauti za tahajia, au za mpangilio wa maneno — na mpangilio wa maneno wa Kigiriki unanyumbulika sana hivi kwamba "Kristo Yesu" badala ya "Yesu Kristo" haubadilishi chochote katika tafsiri — au makosa dhahiri, au usomaji uliovurugika kiasi kwamba hakuna mtu angeukubali kamwe. Ni sehemu ndogo tu zenye maana na zenye shaka ya kweli, na hakuna hata moja kati yake inayoweka kipengele kimoja cha imani ya Kikristo mashakani. Kwa hiyo tunakubali idadi hiyo kwa uaminifu — ni kweli, nasi hatutaificha — huku tukikataa hitimisho ambalo idadi hiyo inakusudiwa kupendekeza. Tofauti nyingi za usomaji ni nyayo za mashahidi wengi, na mashahidi wengi ndio jinsi maandishi yanavyotunzwa.But someone will object: do not those thousands of manuscripts disagree in hundreds of thousands of places? They do — and understanding why is everything. The number of variants is large precisely because the number of manuscripts is large. If you have five thousand copies and each contains a few slips of the pen, you will count a great many differences; a book that survived in three copies would show far fewer. The variant count grows with the witnesses, not with the corruption. And when you look at what the variants actually are, the fear drains away. The overwhelming majority are differences of spelling, or of word order — and Greek word order is so flexible that "Christ Jesus" for "Jesus Christ" changes nothing in translation — or obvious slips, or readings so garbled no one would ever adopt them. Only a small fraction are both meaningful and genuinely in doubt, and not one of them places a single article of the Christian faith in question. So we concede the number honestly — it is true, and we will not hide it — while refusing the conclusion the number is meant to suggest. The many variants are the footprints of many witnesses, and many witnesses are how a text is kept.

Sasa ona mantiki yake ya ndani. Pamoja na maelfu ya mashahidi wanaojitegemea, hakuna kosa la mnakili mmoja linaloweza kuliharibu Neno, kwa sababu kosa lake linafichuliwa na nakala zote zisizokuwa nalo. Maandishi yaliyotunzwa katika mstari mmoja dhaifu yangeweza kupotea kwa mkono mmoja wa uzembe; maandishi yaliyotunzwa katika maelfu ya mistari hujisahihisha yenyewe.See now the deep logic of it. With thousands of independent witnesses, no single scribe's mistake can corrupt the Word, because his error stands exposed by all the copies that do not share it. A text kept in one fragile line could be lost by one careless hand; a text kept in thousands of lines corrects itself.

Lakini, hasa, maandishi hujisahihishaje yenyewe? Hapa ndipo ulipo ustadi tulivu wa jambo hili. Kati ya nakala hizo zaidi ya elfu tano za Kigiriki, hakuna mbili zinazofanana kabisa — kila mkono ulionakili uliacha alama zake ndogo za vidole. Hata hivyo hazitawanyiki ovyo; zinaangukia katika familia, makundi ya nakala zote zilizotokana na babu mmoja wa pamoja. Na huu ndio ufunguo. Mnakili mmoja alipofanya kosa — neno lililoandikwa vibaya, tuseme — kosa hilo lilipitishwa kwa kila nakala iliyotengenezwa kutoka kwa yake, na hivyo kwa familia yake yote; lakini halitokei kabisa katika familia zinazotokana na mstari mwingine. Kosa, badala ya kujificha, linajitambulisha lenyewe: linaonyesha hasa familia linayohusika nayo, na kukosekana kwake katika kila familia nyingine kunaonyesha waziwazi kwamba halikuwamo kamwe katika maandishi ya asili. Kwa hiyo kwa kuziweka familia kando kwa kando na kuzilinganisha, wasomi wa sayansi hii ya subira — uhakiki wa maandishi (textual criticism) — wanaweza kuona hasa ni wapi na lini usomaji fulani uliingia kwanza katika mkondo, na wanaweza kuuondoa tena, wakirejesha maneno ya awali kutoka kwa mashahidi wengi ambao kamwe hawakubeba kosa hilo. Wingi ule ule unaozaa tofauti za usomaji ndio unaozifanya ziweze kusahihishwa.But how, exactly, does a text correct itself? Here lies the quiet genius of the thing. Among those more than five thousand Greek manuscripts, no two are exactly alike — every copying hand left its own small fingerprints. Yet they do not scatter at random; they fall into families, groups of copies all descended from a common ancestor. And here is the key. When one scribe made a slip — a misspelled word, say — that slip was passed down to every copy made from his, and so to his whole family; but it never appears at all in the families that descend from a different line. The mistake, instead of hiding, betrays itself: it marks out exactly the family it belongs to, and its absence from every other family shows plainly that it was never in the original. So by setting the families side by side and comparing them, the scholars of this patient science — textual criticism — can see just where and when a reading first entered the stream, and can lift it back out again, recovering the earlier wording from the many witnesses that never carried the error. The very abundance that produces the variants is the thing that makes them correctable.

Hivi ndivyo Mungu alivyolihifadhi Neno lake — si kwa mnyororo mmoja wa nakala usio na dosari, ambao hakuuahidi na sisi hatuhitaji kuudai, bali kwa wingi mkubwa kiasi kwamba usomaji wa asili unaweza kurejeshwa na uko salama. Hata vifungu vikubwa zaidi vinavyobishaniwa ni vichache na vinajulikana sana. Mwisho mrefu wa Marko na habari ya mwanamke aliyefumaniwa katika uzinzi ndivyo viwili vinavyojadiliwa zaidi katika Agano Jipya lote; vimo katika Maandishi Yaliyopokelewa (Received Text) yaliyo chini ya King James na Reina-Valera na vimechapishwa humo kikamilifu, ilhali baadhi ya nakala za Kigiriki za mwanzo kabisa hazinavyo, ndiyo sababu Biblia nyingine huviwekea alama na maelezo. Jinsi ya kupima ushahidi huo ndilo swali lenyewe la Maandishi Yaliyopokelewa na Maandishi ya Kihakiki (Critical Text), ambalo tutalishughulikia katika Sehemu ya 6. Jambo la hapa ni ukubwa tu: mjadala wote unahusu mahali machache tu, kamwe si kiini cha imani.This is how God preserved His Word — not by a single flawless chain of copies, which He did not promise and we need not claim, but by an abundance so great that the original readings are recoverable and secure. Even the largest disputed passages are few and famous. The longer ending of Mark and the account of the woman caught in adultery are the two most discussed in the whole New Testament; they stand in the Received Text that underlies the King James and the Reina-Valera and are printed there in full, while some of the earliest Greek copies lack them, which is why other Bibles mark them with a note. How to weigh that evidence is the very question of the Received and Critical Texts, which we take up in Unit 6. The point here is only the scale: the entire discussion turns on a handful of places, never on the heart of the faith.

Kwa hiyo shahidi wa pili anatoa ushahidi wake wa kwanza. Maneno unayosoma ni, kwa kiini chake na kwa sehemu kubwa mno katika undani wake, maneno ambayo manabii na mitume waliandika. Hatudai mnyororo wa nakala ulio kamili usiokatika — kudai hivyo kungekuwa kuchuja mbu, na kumtegea mwamini kujikwaa siku atakapojifunza juu ya tofauti ya usomaji. Tunadai jambo bora zaidi na la kweli zaidi: kwamba Mungu alilihifadhi Neno lake kupitia wingi ambao hakuna ajali ingeweza kuufuta, hivi kwamba kile kilichofika mikononi mwako ni Neno lake lenye mamlaka. Unaposoma Biblia yako, hushiki uvumi uliochakaa kwa kusimuliwa tena na tena; unashika Neno la Mungu linaloweza kurejeshwa, lililothibitishwa vyema. Vitabu sahihi, na ndani yake maneno sahihi. Lakini tumewakuta mashahidi kwa wingi tu, kama idadi. Katika sehemu inayofuata tutawakuta mmoja mmoja — nakala zenyewe, mafunjo, na kodeksi kuu, na magombo yaliyofichwa katika pango la jangwani — na kumwacha kila mmoja wao aseme.So the second witness gives its first testimony. The words you read are, in their substance and overwhelmingly in their detail, the words the prophets and apostles wrote. We do not claim a perfect, unbroken chain of copies — to claim it would be to strain a gnat, and to set a believer up to stumble the day he learns of a variant. We claim something better and truer: that God preserved His Word through an abundance no accident could erase, so that what reached your hands is His authoritative Word. When you read your Bible, you are not holding a rumor worn thin by retelling; you are holding the recoverable, well-attested Word of God. The right books, and within them the right words. But we have met the witnesses only in the mass, as a number. In the next unit we will meet them one by one — the actual manuscripts, the papyri and the great codices and the scrolls hidden in a desert cave — and let each of them speak.