In the recent James White — Jack Moorman debate on King James Onlyism, White brought up Rev. 16:5 as containing a phrase in the King James Version with no manuscipt support at all. It was added on the basis of conjectural emendation, he claimed. Several times in the debate he went back to that point, and Moorman kept saying he dealt with it already in one of his books.

Well, here’s the only section in Jack Moorman’s books that I know of which deals with Rev. 16:5. This is from When the KJV Departs from the So-Called “Majority’ Text: with Manuscipt Digest by Jack A. Moorman (published by The Bible for Today, Collingswood, NJ 1988). This is from pg. 102. I’ve tried to reproduce the format as shown in his book (my copy is the second edition).

Revelation 16:5
AV        which art, and wast, and shalt be
HF CR                                    … the Holy One

                                                                     Beza.

The KJV reading is in harmony with the four other places in Revelation where this phrase is found.
1:4 “him which is, and which was, and which is to come”
1:8 “the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty”
4:8 “Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come”
11:17 “Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come”
Indeed Christ is the Holy One, but in the Scriptures of the Apostle John the title is found only once (1 John 2:20), and there, a totally different Greek word is used. The Preface to the Authorised Version reads:

“with the former translations diligently compared and revised”

The translators must have felt there was good reason to insert these words though it ran counter to much external evidence. They obviously did not believe the charge made today that Beza inserted it on the basis of “conjectural emendation”. They knew that they were translating the Word of God, and so do we. The logic of faith should lead us to see God’s guiding providence in a passage such as this.

[AV = Authorized Version/King James Bible, HF = Hodges/Farstad Majority Text, CR = Critical Text (specifically the NA26/UBS3)]

When I first encountered this reasoning for maintaining the King James reading, I was troubled. He lists no witnesses except for Beza’s text. At the time, I was still of the KJV only persuasion, the TR Only variety. I wondered why Moorman disagreed with E.F. Hills a learned King James Version defender who admitted that Rev. 16:5 was a conjectural emendation. Later I learned that Beza actually tells us in his textual notes that this is a conjectural emendation inserted based on his presumption that John would be consistent with other similar phrases (which Moorman quotes above).

Well, since that time, I’ve come to see this as one of the clearest errors in the King James Bible and the Textus Receptus. Neither accepted version of the Textus Receptus contains this error. The 1550 Stephanus edition, prized in England as “the standard”, and the Elzevir’s text of 1633 preferred on the continent (of Europe), both do not contain this reading. Update: Actually the 1550 Stephanus, the standard in Europe, does not have Beza’s reading. The 1633 Elzevir’s text does, but the earlier 1624 Elzevir’s and all later Elzevir’s editions (1641-1678) go back to the Stephanus reading. I am unclear as to how much more preference was given to the 1633 text over the 1624, edition. H.C. Hoskier says the 1624 text is better, see Appendix C of his A Full Account and Collation of the Greek Cursive Codex Evangelium here). None of the previous English versions that the KJV translators referred to had this reading. The Latin didn’t have it either. In another post I have detailed the only possible, barest shred of evidence, a citation in one Latin commentary which may contain this reading. Beza is ignorant of that commentary however.

My point in bringing this up here is to show that I’m not so certain that Moorman has really dealt with this text. This is circular reasoning at its worst. This mentality belies the motivation behind many KJV Onlyists, which I believe White correctly pinpointed in the debate. It is the desire for a standard text. That’s a commendable desire, but it doesn’t excuse sloppy handling of evidence. By the way, this doesn’t mean that the TR isn’t a great text (most TRs don’t have this error). It also doesn’t impugn the Majority Text, as it obviously doesn’t have this reading.

Now I’m ready to stand corrected if in later copies of this book, Moorman actually added more evidence or took out his circular arguments. But at least in this version of the book, his arguments were quite poor indeed.

I was informed by Paul Anderson of the opening of a new website and study center for the Majority Text. Here’s some information from the organization’s website:

The Center for the Study and Preservation of the Majority Text has been formed with the following purpose and mission:

1. To give scholars and researchers a Christian non-profit organization where all extant Majority/Byzantine text manuscripts may be fully studied and compared for proper classification.
2. To increase awareness of the importance in readings and manuscripts within the Majority/Byzantine Text tradition.
3. To provide a one-stop website where all major printed editions of the Majority/Byzantine text may be found.
4. To include an online image gallery where important manuscripts may be seen.
5. To offer online collations and studies to increase understanding of the various groups within the Majority/Byzantine text.
6. To give individuals, churches and interested parties a tax-free organization in which to donate in order further the stated goals and mission above.
7. To provide an international Christian organization which views the Holy, Inspired Word of God as preserved within the Majority/Byzantine Text of the New Testament.

CSPMT officially opened October 1st and promises to be a one stop shop for the study of the Majority Text. The site is amassing links and resources on the various families of the Majority Text, as well as the study of the Textus Receptus and the Greek lectionary tradition. Paul Anderson, one of the founders of this initiative, informed me that Dr. Wilbur Pickering, author of The Identity of the New Testament Text, and Dr. Kirk DiVietro of the Dean Burgon Society (and father of Erik, one of our contributors here) will be two of the board members for this organization. We interviewed Dr. DiVietro on our site, here.

The group’s website should prove to be a valuable resource for students interested in learning more about the Greek Majority Text. You’ll want to bookmark it and see how the site develops. It may prove a blessing to all who are interested in the thousands of Greek manuscripts which have been providentially bequeathed to the Church.

In related news, Dr. Maurice Robinson, who we have also interviewed concerning his own Byzantine priority position, is recovering from a heart attack and scheduled for related surgery in the next month. Please keep him in your prayers.

In all the discussion of the TR-Only position, I think there have been a lot of straw men erected (on both sides of the discussion) and a lot of complimentary schismogenesis. I am going to ask all of you to forget all the anxilliary arguments for a moment. I think the core discussion is being lost in the fog of all the stuff being thrown around.

At the core of the Textus Receptus argument is this simple statement:

God entrusted the Bible to the Church; and the part of the Church that spoke Greek preserved the Greek New Testament.

As a corollary to this primary thesis:

Textual readings that are newly discovered and vary from the living, received text are not to be preferred over the readings that remained in daily, regular use.

This is why the Elzevir brothers termed this manuscript tradition textus receptus and why it was later dubbed majority text.

Now, without getting into any anxillary points, can we look at this thesis and its corollary and find any reason it should not stand.

I am legitimately asking the commenters and contributors to suspend any discussion of the ‘weight’ of variants and those things. I am asking you to focus only on the thesis and its corollary.

This discussion is open to anyone (including even you, Steve), but I warn you that any discussion off-topic will be removed. I want to see if it is even possible for everyone to deal with this premise and this premise alone. If you can’t stay on topic, however, it is probably best not to comment.

OFF THE SUBJECT:
There might also be a secondary corollary to this:

The archaic, koine, form of Greek is older than the Attic and Byzantine forms of Greek where the two might diverge in living, received manuscripts.

But that is a topic for another time.

Corrupt

–adjective

1. guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked: a corrupt judge.

2. debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society.

3. made inferior by errors or alterations, as a text.

4. infected; tainted.

5. decayed; putrid. *

What do the above definitions have to do with the King James Only issue? Much, I think. You see, there is a difference between the definition that is in use by those who are KJVO and those who are not. (This is a blanket statement that is not representative of everyone involved.) The definition is applied to NT manuscripts.

Those who are not KJVO tend to use the definition of corrupt that is seen in number 3. Their view is that many texts have been tainted (thus a little of number 4 enters in) and made inferior. That means that there are some NT manuscripts which are better than others.

Those who are KJVO will tend to use the definition of corrupt that is seen in numbers 1,2,4, and 5. Their idea is that there are manuscripts that are dishonest, depraved, wicked, evil, tainted, and putrid. This means that there are some NT manuscripts that are hopelessly tainted and are to be totally rejected.

The problem with the KJVO stance on this issue is that it is a subtle move from defining corruption as something being made inferior by changes or alterations to defining corruption as something that is absolutely corrupt. It is a move from relative corruption to absolute corruption. It is a move from partial corruption to total corruption. Whether this subtle move is intentional or not, it clouds the issue at hand and makes the debate more difficult.

The other problem with this is that the KJVO believer tends to present the text which is not the Textus Receptus as being totally and hopelessly corrupt. This is a logical fallacy. It’s throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Finally, the KJVO believer must demonstrate, then, that those texts outside of the TR are totally and hopelessly corrupt in the sense that they are theologically deviant and depraved to the point that the Word of God is not there in any recognizable form. If not, then we must return to using the word corrupt in the sense of definition number three.

*It might be useful to note as well that when someone writing in Latin (like say Erasmus) would have used the word corruptus as meaning ‘broken into pieces’ rather than the Anglicized definition we now use. So there is a 6th definition as well – broken into pieces. (Erik D.)

Much of the reason for various positions in the textual debates centers on the differences between the manuscripts.  If all the manuscripts were virtually identical, we’d not be blogging about the problem of textual variation.

King James Only proponents like to stress how much the differences matter.  Additionally, they like to highlight the many differences between Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (א), two of the chief witnesses for the Alexandrian text-type. Thee manuscripts differ thousands of times in the Gospels alone, it is pointed out. So they must be faulty witnesses, and bad manuscripts. In short, this proves they aren’t worth much when it comes to their textual quality.

In sharp contrast with those manuscripts, the Byzantine manuscripts largely agree and have little variation. The conclusion is raised that these must be carefully copied and more accurate and worthy manuscripts.

What do the differences really tell us? Dan Wallace has a helpful, brief article which addresses just this question. I’m going to excerpt a portion of it, but recommend you go read the whole thing.

There are a few thousand differences between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. This is a point that MT advocates think helps their cause. Actually, it hurts them. Here’s why: (a) Westcott and Hort noticed those differences, too, and argued that precisely because of so many differences the common ancestor between B and Aleph must be at least ten generations back. They felt, with good reason, that the common ancestor came from deep within the second century. Consequently, when the two MSS agree, their combined testimony should normally be regarded as quite ancient.

Majority Text advocates like to tout how much Byzantine MSS agree with each other. Yet, they also want to claim that each Byzantine MS is an independent witness to the text. They can’t have it both ways. The high level of agreement shows that there has been extensive editing of the Byzantine MSS. Indeed, we have fairly firm evidence of such activity in the 9th and 11th century, for after both eras the Byzantine MSS grew in their conformity to one another. This is unheard of except when conscious editing takes place. Further, some MT advocates want to claim that Aleph and B were copied in the same scriptorium and that they have a common ancestor that is not much earlier than either one of them. How can they claim this while simultaneously noting the many disagreements between these two MSS?…

Wallace’s remarks helped me immensely when I first read them. They still ring true today. What do you think? Is he right?

Daniel Wallace on  has an interesting post on Bible.org entitled Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism.  In this post the author states:

not only do they put preservation on exactly the same level as inspiration, but they also can be more certain about the text, since they advocate a printed edition. But their argumentation is so palpably weak on other fronts that we will only make two observations here: (a) since the TR itself went through several different editions by Erasmus and others, TR advocates need to clarify which edition is the inspired one; (b) one simply cannot argue for the theological necessity of public accessibility throughout church history and for the TR in the same breath—for the TR did not exist during the first 1500 years of the Christian era. (Rather inconsistent, for example, is the logic of Theo Letis when he, on the one hand, argues that God must have preserved the pure text in an open, public, and accessible manner for Christians in every generation and, on the other hand, he argues that “the Latin and non-majority readings [of the TR] were indeed restorations of ancient readings that fell out of the medieval Greek tradition”!

He goes further and says:

As we have argued concerning the faulty assumption that preservation must be through “majority rule,” the scriptures nowhere tell us how God would preserve the NT text. What is ironic is that as much ink as MT/TR advocates spill on pressing the point that theirs is the only biblical view, when it comes to the preserved text being found in the majority of witnesses, they never quote one verse. Although they accuse other textual critics of rationalism, their argument for preservation via the majority has only a rational basis, not a biblical one. “God must have done this”—not because the Bible says so, but because logic dictates that this must be the case.

A statement that I found extremely interesting was the following:

the doctrine of preservation was not a doctrine of the ancient church. In fact, it was not stated in any creed until the seventeenth century (in the Westminster Confession of 1646). The recent arrival of such a doctrine, of course, does not necessarily argue against it—but neither does its youthfulness argue for it. Perhaps what needs to be explored more fully is precisely what the framers of the Westminster Confession and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (in 1675) really meant by providential preservation.

I must add this comment here:  At this point I have no idea as to the veracity of this claim.  It is interesting, however, because we have seen the argument over and over by one particular person who visits this blog that the TR/KJVO view is based upon a historical view of preservation.  I would certainly like to see more detail on this from both sides of the issue.

The following struck a chord with me, though I’m not exactly sure at this time how much I agree:

if the doctrine of the preservation of scripture has neither ancient historical roots, nor any direct biblical basis, what can we legitimately say about the text of the New Testament? My own preference is to speak of God’s providential care of the text as can be seen throughout church history, without elevating such to the level of doctrine. If this makes us theologically uncomfortable, it should at the same time make us at ease historically, for the NT is the most remarkably preserved text of the ancient world—both in terms of the quantity of manuscripts and in their temporal proximity to the originals. Not only this, but the fact that no major doctrine is affected by any viable textual variant surely speaks of God’s providential care of the text. Just because there is no verse to prove this does not make it any less true.

A very interesting argument in the inspiration=preservation discussion is given:

there is a tacit assumption on the part of Pickering that everything a biblical author writes is inspired. But this is almost certainly not true, as can be seen by the lost epistles of Paul and the agrapha of Jesus. The argument is this: there seem to be a few, fairly well-attested (in patristic literature), authentic sayings of Jesus which are not found in the Gospels or the rest of the New Testament. Of course, evangelicals would claim that they are inerrant. But they would not be inspired because inspiration refers strictly to what is inscripturated within the canon. Further, Paul seems to have written three or four letters to the Corinthians, perhaps a now-lost letter to the Laodiceans, and apparently more than a few letters before 2 Thessalonians. If some NT epistles could be lost, and even some authentic sayings of Jesus could show up outside the NT, then either they were not inspired or else they were inspired but not preserved. Assuming the former to be true, then the question facing us in Mark’s Gospel is whether an inspired writer can author non-inspired material within the same document—material which is now lost. Such a possibility admittedly opens up a Pandora’s box for evangelicals, and certainly deserves critical thought and dialogue. Nevertheless, the analogies with the lost epistles of Paul and the authentic, non-canonical agrapha of Jesus seem to damage Pickering’s contention that if the last portion of Mark’s Gospel is lost, then inspiration is defeated.

The author concludes by saying:

In sum, there is no valid doctrinal argument for either the Textus Receptus or the majority text. A theological a priori has no place in textual criticism. That is not to say that the majority text is to be rejected outright. There may, in fact, be good arguments for the majority text which are not theologically motivated. But until TR/MT advocates make converts of those who do not share with them their peculiar views of preservation and inspiration, their theory must remain highly suspect.

It will probably take reading and re-reading for me to digest all that is said here.  I must say, however, that there is much to commend this article, though I may not embrace all that is said.  I believe it provides a relatively balanced approach to the debate in that it takes the arguments of the MT/TR/KJVO seriously and seeks to answer them Biblically, doctrinally, textually, and historically.

It has been fashionable among textual scholars for nearly three hundred years to refer to “text-family” as a distinguishing characteristic of manuscripts. There are two primary text-families that get the most print:

• Alexandrian: best known by the three codices Westcott and Hort used in preparing their 1881 New Testament – Codices Vaticanus (The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209 or B), Alexandrinus* (London, British Library, MS Royal 1. D. V-VIII or A), and Sinaiticus (London, Brit. Libr., Additional Manuscripts 43725, or ?)
• Byzantine: easily the most attested manuscript text-family. Of the 500+ manuscripts that contain a complete General Epistles, more than 350 of them are Byzantine in character.

*Technically, A is both Alexandrian and Byzantine because most of the codex is Alexandrian but the Gospels are distinctly Byzantine.

In addition to these two text-families, Westcott and Hort pioneered the usage of two other text-family names:

Read more »

1611: The Year Everything in Bible Translation Changed

Many King James Onlyists will refute the above line, stating that we’re confusing their theories with those of Peter Ruckman. But I fully believe that everyone who is convinced that the Christian should be exclusively aligned to the King James Version and no other is saying this very thing. Some believe God re-inspired His Book in 1611. Others believe pre-1611 KJVs existed, but since 1611, there’s only one acceptable Bible. Still others believe in the same underlying premise of preservation, but don’t see all the words coming together in one volume until 1611. No matter what “camp” of King James Onlyism one may find himself in, the fact is he believes in “The 1611 Moment.”

The 1611 Moment is the pivotal time in church history that serves as the basis for revising the rest. It also divides the history of the transmission of the text into two eras. The two eras differ, depending on the particular position held within the KJV category:

Read more »

Much is often made of the text families from which Greek texts such as the Textus Receptus and NA/UBS come.  Alexandria is said to be home to heretics, while Antioch is held to be home to the lovers of truth.

This post is purposefully short, and is intended to be built upon later as time permits.  I simply want to notice two things here:

1.  If the above statements about Alexandria (from which the Alexandrian family comes) and Antioch (home of the Byzantine text family) are true does that make the claims of Byzantine superiority correct?  The answer is “no”, it does not make the claim of the superiority of the Byzantine text to be true.  Why?  Because the argument is fallacious.  The fallacy is called the “genetic fallacy”.

“Genetic Fallacy: Where someone condemns an argument because of where it began, how it began, or who began it.”

2.  The above statements about Antioch and Alexandria are not totally true.  For example, one of the great debates of early Christendom was the debate about Arianism.  Arius essentially was anti-Trinitarian.  Arius was taught by a Lucian of Antioch.  He was opposed by a Trinitarian believer named Athanasius, who was from Alexandria.

When we look at this we find that Antioch’s teaching was not as pure as the Byzantine purists would have us to believe.  Neither was Alexandria quite so heterodox as they claim.  In fact, the School of Antioch was not totally orthodox in their views, holding to adoptionism, and Nestorius (father of the Nestorian heresy) received some training there.

These brief thoughts should remind us that the answer to the textual issue simply will not be decided by the geographical origins of the Greek texts.

(Note: wiki articles accessed 01/23/2010 and are subject to change.)

Today it is common to speak of four hundred thousand variants to the Greek New Testament. Agnostic scholars like Bart Ehrman, like to stoke the fires of public mistrust in the Bible by pointing out the “textual corruption” of the New Testament. Closer to home, “King James Version-Only” advocates like to emphasize the differences between the Greek text behind the King James and that behind modern versions.

What are we to say to this? How shall we respond to the valid claim that there are thousands of textual variants? Indeed there are hundreds of thousands!

A.T. Robertson, a Greek scholar extraordinaire and author of a classic 1450 page advanced Greek grammar, can help us in this regard. In the introduction to his book An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman, 1925), he clearly explains what textual criticism is and why it is needed. He then goes on to discuss the condition of the New Testament with regard to its textual purity. I offer an extended quote below, that I trust will prove useful. He is writing in 1925, so many more variants are known today, but the general principles he explains and the viability of all such variants hold true. You can read his entire book online at archive.org.

…the current New Testament text must be adjudged, in comparison with a well printed modern book, extremely corrupt.

On the other hand, if we compare the present state of the New Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we must render the opposite verdict, and declare it to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care with which the New Testament has been copied,–a care which has doubtless grown out of a true reverence for its holy words,– such has been the providence of God in preserving for His Church in each and every age a competently exact text of the Scriptures, that not only is the New Testament unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of its text as actually transmitted and kept in use, but also in the abundance of testimony which has come down to us for castigating its comparatively infrequent blemishes. The divergence of its current text from the autograph may shock a modern printer of modern books; its wonderful approximation to its autograph is the undisguised envy of every modern reader of ancient books.

When we attempt to state the amount of corruption which the New Testament has suffered in its transmission through two millenniums, absolutely instead of thus relatively, we reach scarcely more intelligible results. Roughly speaking, there have been counted in it some hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand “various readings”–that is, actual variations of reading in existing documents. These are, of course, the result of corruption, and hence the measure of corruption. But we must guard against being misled by this very misleading statement. It is not meant that there are nearly two hundred thousand places in the New Testament where various readings occur; but only that there are nearly two hundred thousand various readings all told; and in many cases the documents so differ among themselves that many are counted on a single word. For each document is compared in turn with the one standard, and the number of its divergences ascertained; then these sums are themselves added together, and the result given as the number of actually observed variations. It is obvious that each place where a variation occurs is counted as many times over, not only as distinct variations occur upon it, but also as the same variation occurs in different manuscripts. This sum includes, moreover, all variations of all kinds and in all sources, even those that are singular to a single document of infinitesimal weight as a witness, and even those that affect such very minor matters as the spelling of a word. Dr. Ezra Abbot was accustomed to say that about nineteen-twentieths of them have so little support that, although they are various readings, no one would think of them as rival readings; and nineteen-twentieths of the remainder are of so little importance that their adoption or rejection would cause no appreciable difference in the sense of the passages where they occur. Dr. Hort’s way of stating it is that upon about one word in every eight various readings exist supported by sufficient evidence to bid us pause and look at it; that about one word in sixty has various readings upon it supported by such evidence as to render our decision nice and difficult; but that so many of these variations are trivial that only about one word in every thousand has upon it substantial variation supported by such evidence as to call out the efforts of the critic in deciding between the readings.

The great mass of the New Testament, in other words, has been transmitted to us with no, or next to no, variation; and even in the most corrupt form in which it has ever appeared, to use the oft-quoted words of Richard Bentley, “the real text of the sacred writers is competently exact; … nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost… choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, cut of the whole lump of readings.” If, then, we undertake the textual criticism of the New Testament under a sense of duty, we may bring it to a conclusion under the inspiration of hope. The autographic text of the New Testament is distinctly within the reach of criticism in so immensely the greater part of the volume, that we cannot despair of restoring to ourselves and the Church of God, His Book, word for word, as He gave it by inspiration to men. [pg. 12-15, An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament] (emphasis mine)