EQUITABLE ECLECTICISM

The Future of New Testament Textual Criticism

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Part three of a five part series. See the entire series here.

Competing Greek New Testaments

In the late 1800’s, Westcott & Hort’s Greek text of the New Testament faced several obstacles. First was the popularity of the Textus Receptus, which, as the base-text of the King James Version, had the status of an ancient landmark in English-speaking countries, regardless of how carefully attempts were made to demonstrate that its Reformation-era compilers, or some stealthy editors in ancient times, were the real landmark-movers. This obstacle was cleverly surmounted by Eberhard Nestle. In 1898, the Würrtemburg Bible Society published the first edition of Novum Testamentum Graece, an inexpensive Greek New Testament which was designed to compete with the edition of the Textus Receptus which was being widely disseminated by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The leaders of BFBS apparently had not been fully convinced by Hort’s 1881 Introduction. The Greek text of Novum Testamentum Graece was based on the revised Greek New Testaments which had been compiled by Westcott & Hort, by Constantine von Tischendorf, and by Richard Weymouth.

Nestle wrote an enthusiastic recommendation of this handy Greek New Testament; his brief review appeared in the Expository Times in June of 1898. He pointed out how “disgraceful” it would be to continue to circulate Erasmus’ errors in Rev. 17:8 and Rev. 22:19-21. He invited the British and Foreign Bible Society to begin to circulate Novum Testamentum Graece instead of the Textus Receptus. In 1904 the British and Foreign Bible Society began circulating the fourth edition of Novum Testamentum Graece. By that time, it became known that the editor of the 1898 edition had been none other than Eberhard Nestle.

As that was happening, a scholar named Hermann von Soden was in the process of compiling a grand edition of the Greek New Testament which textual scholars expected to become definitive, superseding all previous editions. But when von Soden’s Greek New Testament was released in 1902-1911, it was found to be extremely cumbersome, and it was flawed in various ways. Nestle’s Novum Testamentum Graece was on hand to fill the vacuum, so to speak, and it has done so ever since.

But should it? According to Kurt and Barbara Aland, the 27^th edition of NTG differs from the early text compiled by Eberhard Nestle “in merely 700 passages.”¹¹ Considering the high number of variant-units involved, this implies that the text of the Gospels in NA-27 and UBS-4 is essentially the same text that was published by Eberhard Nestle in the early 1900’s. It is as if the papyri and the implications of their contents (not to mention the research into early versions, the revisions of patristic writings, and other significant discoveries and research undertaken in the 1900’s) have been treated as if they did little but confirm the revised text, whereas in reality they shook the foundational premises that had been used by Westcott and Hort.

The marketplace for Greek New Testaments in the early 1900’s rapidly became crowded: Bernard Weiss, Alexander Souter, and J. M. S. Baljon made compilations which rivaled Nestle’s.¹² F. H. A. Scrivener’s editions of the Textus Receptus remained in circulation. Thomas Newberry’s 1870 Englishman’s Greek New Testament – a fine interlinear edition of the Textus Receptus which featured a presentation of variants adopted by textual critics prior to Westcott & Hort (Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Alford, and Wordsworth) – also remained in print. The public generally had to choose between either a Greek text similar to the 1881 revision of Westcott & Hort, or the Textus Receptus. Greek New Testaments which were used as the base-texts for English translations tended to have the highest and longest-lasting popularity in English-speaking countries.

In 1982, Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad published a compilation called The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text. As its name implies, this text was intended to consist of the readings shared by the majority of Greek MSS. Hodges and Farstad proposed that the Alexandrian Text is a heavily edited, pruned form of the text, while the Majority Text is much better, inasmuch as “In any tradition where there are not major disruptions in the transmissional history, the individual reading which has the earliest beginning is the one most likely to survive in a majority of documents.”¹³ The work of Hodges and Farstad was the basis for many text-critical footnotes in the New Testament in the New King James Version, which was published around the same time under Dr. Farstad’s supervision.

A similar work was released in 1991 by Maurice Robinson and William Pierpont, called The New Testament in the Original Greek According to the Byzantine/Majority Textform. A second edition was published in 2005. Rejecting any notion of defending the Textus Receptus (which differs from the Byzantine Text at over 1,800 points, about 1,000 of which are translatable), Robinson and Pierpont regarded the Byzantine Text as virtually congruent to the original text. A disadvantage of the Byzantine Text is that its component readings are whatever the majority of Byzantine MSS support; almost no analytical attempts to reconstruct the relationships of variants within the Byzantine tradition are undertaken since the question is usually settled by a numerical count.

In some respects, Hodges & Farstad and Robinson & Pierpont have paved a trail that was blazed in the 1800’s by John Burgon, who opposed the text of Westcott & Hort. Burgon’s aggressive writing-style sometimes overshadowed his argumentation; nevertheless some of his views were vindicated by subsequent research. For example, Hort asserted that “even among the numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New Testament there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,”¹⁴ but Burgon insisted that the opposite was true. Burgon’s posthumously published Causes of Corruption (1896) even included a sub-chapter titled “Corruption by the Orthodox.” Almost a century later in 1993, a variation on Burgon’s theme was upheld by Bart Ehrman in the similarly titled book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. As a result, though Ehrman exaggerated his case in many respects, no textual critics now consider Hort’s assertion to be correct.

Many scholars and interested bystanders, noticing that the weaknesses of several of Hort’s key premises and assertions have been exposed, have been willing to consider the model of transmission-history proposed by the supporters of the Byzantine Textform – but not many have decided to embrace it. Some have irresponsibly associated it with the novel American fundamentalist doctrine of King James Onlyism. Others have rejected it because, despite detailed lists of principles of internal and external evidence in Dr. Robinson’s essay The Case for Byzantine Priority,¹⁵ the quality which usually determines the adoption of a variant in the approach advocated by Robinson is its attestation in over 80% of the Greek MSS. Patristic evidence and the testimony of early versions are not included in the equation of what constitutes the majority reading. Distinctive Alexandrian variants, Western variants, Caesarean variants, and even minority readings attested by the oldest Byzantine witnesses (such as parts of Codices A and W) have no chance of being adopted; generally, whenever a variant is supported by over 80% of the Greek MSS, it is adopted.

The validity of such an approach depends upon the validity of the premise that the transmission of the text of the Gospels was free from “major disruptions.” However, major disruptions have had enormous impacts upon the transmission of the text. Roman persecutions and Roman sponsorship, wartime and peacetime, dark ages and golden ages – all these things, plus innovations and inventions related to the copying of MSS, drastically changed the circumstances in which the text was transmitted, and while all text-types were affected by them, they were not all affected to

the same extent, as a review of history will show.¹⁶ Greek fell into relative disuse in Western Europe; Constantinople became the center of eastern Greek-speaking Christendom; Islamic conquests squelched the vitality of the transmission-streams in regions where Islamic rule was imposed; copyists in or near Constantinople invented more efficient ways to copy the text. Such historical events completely invalidate results that are based on a transmission-model that assumes the non-existence of such disruptions.

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Footnotes:
11 – p. 20, The Text of the New Testament: “In its 657 printed pages the early Nestle differs from the new text in merely seven hundred passages.” This is comparable to the difference between the 25^th and 27^th editions of NTG, which differ in the Gospels at over 400 places.

12 – After the publication of Weiss’ Greek text, Nestle used it instead of Weymouth’s to arbitrate between the texts of Westcott & Hort and Tischendorf.

13 – p. xi-xii, Hodges & Farstad’s Introduction, 2^nd ed.

14 – p. 282, § 369, Hort’s Introduction.

15 – Robinson’s essay serves as an appendix in the second edition of the Robinson-Pierpont text.

16 – As Kirsopp Lake wrote in his little book The Text of the New Testament, the ideal textual critic must possess “a complete knowledge of all the bypaths of Church history.”

Author:
James Snapp, Jr. preaches and ministers at Curtisville Christian Church in central Indiana. The church’s website includes an introduction to textual criticism and links to other resources, including a detailed defense of Mark 16:9-20. A graduate of Cincinnati Christian University (B.A., 1990), where his professors included Lewis Foster, Tom Friskney, and Reuben Bullard, James has studied New Testament textual criticism for over 20 years.

EQUITABLE ECLECTICISM

The Future of New Testament Textual Criticism

___________________________________________________________________

Part two of a five part series. See the entire series here.

Competing Models of Transmission-History (continued)

In addition, discoveries about the texts in the papyri, in early versions, and in early parchment codices have contributed to the erosion of one of the most empirical aspects of Hort’s approach:  the proposal that conflations in the Byzantine Text demonstrate that it is later than the Alexandrian Text and the Western Text.  In 1897, Edward Miller objected that eight conflations cannot justify the rejection of the entire Byzantine Text.⁶ They may be comparable to recently minted coins dropped in an ancient well.

Dr. Walter Pickering, in Appendix D of his book The Identity of the New Testament Text, showed that an apparent conflation exists in ? at Jn. 13:24 (where the Alexandrian Text has ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ?????, the Byzantine Text has ???????? ??? ?? ???, and ? has ???????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?? ??????, ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ?????).  A conflation appears to occur in B at Eph. 2:5 and at Col. 1:12 (where the Western Text has ?????????, the Byzantine Text has ??????????, and B has ????????? ??? ??????????).  In D, a conflation appears to occur at Acts 10:48 and John 5:37 (where the Alexandrian Text – supported by P75 – has ??????? ????????????, the Byzantine Text – supported by P66 – has ????? ????????????, and D has ??????? ????? ????????????), among other places.

The papyri have supplied direct evidence against Hort’s belief that apparent conflations imply that the text in which they are found must be late.  In P53, the text of Mt. 26:36 seems to read ?? ??, where the Byzantine text has ?? and the Alexandrian Text and Western Text have ??.  Papyrus 66 reads ?????? ??? ????? at Jn. 10:19 (agreeing with the Byzantine Text), where the Alexandrian Text has ?????? ????? and

the Western Text has ?????? ???.  Similarly, P66 reads ????????? ??? ????? at Jn. 10:31 (again agreeing with the Byzantine Text), where the Alexandrian Text has ????????? ????? and the Western Text has ????????? ???.  The appearance of such readings in very early MSS forces the concession that they do not imply that the text in which they appear is late; instead, they prove that an early text can appear to include conflations.  Nevertheless some modern-day textual critics still appeal to Hort’s list of eight Byzantine conflations as if it demonstrated that the entire Byzantine Text was secondary.⁷

Ironically, as the papyri-discoveries destroyed Hort’s transmission-model, they also tended to exonerate Hort’s favored text of the Gospels, the Alexandrian Text, by demonstrating the high antiquity of the Alexandrian text of Luke and John.  Papyrus 75, in particular, possesses a remarkably high rate of agreement with B, showing that the Alexandrian Text of Luke and John was carefully preserved in the 200’s, and thus alleviating the suspicions of some earlier scholars that the Alexandrian Text was the result of editorial activity in the 200’s.

The correspondence between Papyrus 75 and Codex B was interpreted by some textual critics as a demonstration of the antiquity and superiority of the entire Alexandrian Text.  Kurt Aland compared the situation to sampling a jar of jelly or jam:  a mere spoonful is enough to show what is in the rest of the jar.⁸

However, although the agreement between P75 and B proves that the Alexandrian Text of Luke and John is not the result of scribal editing conducted in the 200’s, it did not prove that Alexandrian readings are not results of earlier scribal editing.  Theoretically, if the Western Text could develop in the period prior to the production of P75, so could the Alexandrian Text.  Papyrus 75 proved that the Alexandrian Text of Luke and John is very early; it did not prove that Alexandrian readings are not the result of very early editorial activity.⁹

Nor did P75 prove that the Byzantine Text is less ancient than the Alexandrian Text.  As a surviving example of a text used in Egypt in the early 200’s, P75 does not constitute evidence about text-forms used elsewhere.  The most significant evidence for the absence of the Byzantine Text prior to the 300’s is the lack of patristic testimony for its use, but this is largely an argument from silence.  The natural destructive effects of humid climates upon papyrus-material, allied with Roman persecutors who sought to destroy Christian literature, silenced a large proportion of the Christian communities of the first three centuries of Christendom.  According to Hort’s theories, when these communities adopted the Byzantine Text in the 300’s and 400’s, they embraced a new, imported text of the Gospels, setting aside whatever they had used previously.  A plausible alternative is that they simply continued to use their own local texts which consisted primarily of Byzantine readings.

The discovery of the papyri led some textual critics to advocate an undue emphasis upon the ages of witnesses, resulting in a lack of equity toward non-Egyptian variants.  Because the Egyptian climate allowed the preservation of papyrus, the oldest copies will almost always be copies from Egypt.  To favor the variant with the oldest attestation is, in many cases, to favor the variant in the manuscript that was stored in the gentlest climate.  But this is no more reasonable than favoring the variants of a manuscript because it was found closer to the equator than other manuscripts.  Certainly when two rival variants are evaluated, and the first is uniformly attested in early witnesses, while the second is only found in late witnesses, the case for the first one is enhanced.  But to assign values to witnesses according to their ages without considering factors such as climate is to introduce a lack of equity into one’s analysis.

The papyri-discoveries elicited another interesting development.  Pioneering scholars such as Griesbach had organized witnesses into three main groups – Western, Byzantine, and Alexandrian.  Each group, characterized by consistent patterns of readings, was considered a text-type, and MSS sharing those special patterns of readings were viewed as relatives of one another.  (Hort had divided the Alexandrian group into two text-types, calling its earlier stratum the “Neutral” text, supported by ? B.)  Following analysis by Kirsopp Lake, the Caesarean text of the Gospels was added.  But the evidence from the papyri indicates that even in a single locale (Egypt), the text existed in forms other than those four.

One example is Papyrus 45, a fragmentary copy of the Gospels and Acts from the early 200’s (or slightly earlier).  In Mark 7:25-37, when P45 disagrees with either B or the Byzantine Text or both, P45 agrees with B 22% of the time, it agrees with the Byzantine Text 30% of the time, and 48% of the time it disagrees with them both.  Such departures from the usual profiles of text-types has led some textual critics to reconsider the existence of early text-types, arguing instead that the text in the 100’s and 200’s was in a state of fluctuation.¹⁰ A plausible alternative is that some of the papyri attest to the existence of some text-types which became extinct, without implying that the Western, Byzantine, and Caesarean text-types did not exist prior to the 300’s.

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Footnotes:
6 – See Miller’s comments about conflation in The Oxford Debate and the general assent given to them by his fellow debaters, including William Sanday.

7 – For example, Dr. Dan Wallace, in his 2010 online essay The Conspiracy Behind the New Bible Translations.

8 – See p. 58 of Aland & Aland’s The Text of the New Testament, English translation by Errol Rhodes.

9 – Bruce Metzger granted that most scholars “are still inclined to regard the Alexandrian text as on the whole the best ancient recension,” on p. 216, The Text of the New Testament, 3^rd ed. (1992), emphasis added.

10 – The most famous textual critics to do so are Kurt and Barbara Aland, who proposed a new classification-system of MSS into Categories, listed by numbers, rather than by text-type names.

Author:
James Snapp, Jr. preaches and ministers at Curtisville Christian Church in central Indiana. The church’s website includes an introduction to textual criticism and links to other resources, including a detailed defense of Mark 16:9-20. A graduate of Cincinnati Christian University (B.A., 1990), where his professors included Lewis Foster, Tom Friskney, and Reuben Bullard, James has studied New Testament textual criticism for over 20 years.

EQUITABLE ECLECTICISM

The Future of New Testament Textual Criticism

___________________________________________________________________

Part one of a five part series. See the entire series here.

The Danger of Circular Analysis

The textual criticism of the Gospels is a scientific task which has two goals.  The primary goal is the reconstruction of the text of each Gospel in its original form, that is, the form in which it was initially received by the church.  The secondary goal is the reconstruction of the transmission-history of the text.  In order to apply Hort’s axiom, “Knowledge of documents should precede final judgment upon readings,” these two goals should be pursued simultaneously.  The consideration of individual variant-units should never be completely detached from the question of the relative values, or weights, of the witnesses, or from the question of how groups of variants became characteristic readings of text-types.  Accurate text-critical judgments will assist in the estimation of the relative values of witnesses, and in the reconstruction of the text’s transmission-history.  Likewise, accurate assignments of relative value to the witnesses, combined with accurate reconstructions of the text’s transmission-history, will assist specific text-critical decisions.

However, the textual critic who proceeds on such grounds must vigilantly avoid circularity.  After observing, on analytical grounds, that certain witnesses seem to consistently contain the best readings, a textual critic might be tempted, from that point onward, to abandon the initial approach which led to that premise, and proceed to use the premise itself to justify a tendency to adopt the readings of those witnesses.  Similarly, a textual critic who notices that a group of witnesses tends to contain the worst readings might be tempted to reject the remainder of the testimony of that group of witnesses.  If a textual critic proceeds to build on both such premises, the premises will virtually determine the results of the rest of the analysis.

Competing Models of Transmission-History

The model of transmission-history adopted by a textual critic has a strong effect upon the values which a textual critic assigns to the testimony of groups, and therefore also upon the final evaluation of variants.  In this respect, the approach which I advocate – Equitable Eclecticism – resembles the approach used by Hort.  However, Equitable Eclecticism yields an archetype which is significantly different from the Revised Text produced by Westcott & Hort, and from the modern descendants of the Revised Text, chiefly the text of the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  This is because research and discoveries subsequent to Westcott & Hort have required the adoption of a transmission-model significantly different from the one used by Hort.

Hort, building on foundational premises developed by previous investigators, reasoned that the Byzantine Text was essentially the result of a recension consisting of variants drawn from MSS with Alexandrian or Western readings; Byzantine variants were derived from the Alexandrian Text, or the Western Text, or both, or, in some cases, came into being during the recension.  Hort therefore rejected all distinctive Byzantine variants.  After the dismissal of the Western Text as the result of scribal creativity, embellishment, and a general lack of discipline (with the exception of a smattering of readings), the Alexandrian Text remained as the only text-type which could possibly be regarded as the depository of the original text of the Gospels.

Hort’s endorsement of the Alexandrian Text was not absolute, but it was so strong that he openly stated that variants shared by the Alexandrian Text’s two flagship codices (B and ?) “should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary,” and “No readings of ?B can safely be rejected absolutely,”¹ while “All distinctively Syrian” – that is, Byzantine – “readings must be at once rejected.”²

Such exceptional favor given to the Alexandrian Text, and such categorical rejection of Byzantine readings, were natural implications of Hort’s model of transmission-history in which the Western Text was derived from the Alexandrian Text, and the Byzantine Text was derived from both the Alexandrian Text and the Western Text.

However, Hort acknowledged that such a clear-cut genealogical model would be out of place if a transmission-model persistently involved readings which all had some clearly ancient attestation.³ This very thing was subsequently proposed by textual critics in the 1900’s.  Eminent scholars such as E. C. Colwell, G. D. Kilpatrick, and Kurt and Barbara Aland maintained, respectively, that “The overwhelming majority of readings,” “almost all variants,” and “practically all the substantive variants in the text of the New Testament” existed before the year 200.⁴ Nevertheless the Hortian text has not been overthrown.  Only slightly changed, it has become entrenched in NA-27 and UBS-4 as the primary, and nearly exclusive, Greek New Testament used in seminaries.

With the discovery and publication of Egyptian New Testament papyri in the 1900’s – beginning with Grenfell and Hunt’s work at Oxyrhynchus, and continuing to the present day – Hort’s  claim that the Alexandrian readings have a demonstrably greater antiquity than their rivals has eroded.  Harry A. Sturz collected and categorized dozens of distinctive Byzantine variants which were supported by at least one early papyri.⁵ Sturz’s data does not vindicate the entire Byzantine Text (and we should not necessarily expect papyri found in one locale to attest to readings in a text from other locales), but he persuasively demonstrated that Hort’s main reason for rejecting distinctive Byzantine readings was unsound.  According to Hort’s transmission-model, none of the early distinctive Byzantine readings listed by Sturz should exist.  The fact that they obviously did exist, even in papyri found in Egypt, demonstrated that the Byzantine Text may, at any given point, attest to an ancient distinctive reading.

~continued in part 2
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Footnotes:
1 – Introduction, p. 225, § 303. Although Hort used the terms “Neutral” and “Syrian” I have adopted the normal, less tinted nomenclature.
2 – Introduction, p. 119, § 169.
3 – Introduction, p. 286, § 373.
4 – As cited by James Ronald Royse in Scribal Habits in Early Papyri, p. 20, from Colwell’s Method in Establishing the Nature of Text-Types, p. 55, and Kilpatrick’s The Bodmer and Mississippi Collection, p. 42, and Aland & Aland’s The Text of the New Testament, p. 295.
5 – See the lists in Sturz’s 1984 book The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism.

Author:
James Snapp, Jr. preaches and ministers at Curtisville Christian Church in central Indiana. The church’s website includes an introduction to textual criticism and links to other resources, including a detailed defense of Mark 16:9-20. A graduate of Cincinnati Christian University (B.A., 1990), where his professors included Lewis Foster, Tom Friskney, and Reuben Bullard, James has studied New Testament textual criticism for over 20 years.

I submitted a paper to Sharper Iron’s writing contest a few months back.  They posted it today as one of the three winning entries.  I’ll provide a brief excerpt here and encourage you to go over to SI to read the whole thing.

Let the minutiae speak: The place of genealogies, numbers, and parallel passages in the King James only debate

“Things that are different are not the same.” So says the title of Mickey Carter’s book advocating the exclusive use of the King James Bible. This sentiment is a fair summary of the mindset of most King James only (KJO) advocates. The differences between Bible versions demand a judgment. Which Bible is right?

Troubled by differing Bible versions, many sincere Christians seek for answers. One side affirms that no doctrine is affected by the relatively minor differences between Bible versions. The message is the same, but finer points and particular details may be slightly different. A typical KJO position jumps in and says this can’t be right. Verbal inspiration is useless without the preservation of those very words of God. In fact, we need to know each and every word, in order to live (Matt. 4:4). All differences, even word order and spelling differences, matter (Matt. 5:18). Differing versions cannot both claim to be translations of the perfect, inspired Word of God.

On the face of it, the KJO argument makes sense. When we’re speaking about the Bible, shouldn’t every little difference matter? Some respond with manuscript evidence that calls into question the choice of the King James Bible as a perfect standard. Others have shown that the various proof texts for word perfect preservation don’t actually promise a single, identifiable, word-perfect copy of the Bible. And prior to 1611, where was such a copy to be found, anyway?

In this paper, I want to take us down a road less traveled. Rather than looking for a proof text which directly deals with this controversy, I aim to scour the King James Bible itself for examples of the very differences which are said to matter so much. The minor points of Scripture itself, the minutia, should be allowed to speak to this issue. Genealogies, lists, numbers, and parallel passages all have an important bearing on how we should think about “things that are different.” [read the rest of the entry at Sharper Iron]

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?

This is a repost of Dr. Paul Henebury’s recent post on his blog. Dr. Henebury is the President of Veritas School of Theology.

Introduction

The greatest British theologian of the 17th Century was, in the opinion of many, John Owen.  Owen made distinctive contributions in a number of theological loci.  His book on the mutual relationship within the Trinity and our communion with each of the Divine Persons is still the best work on the subject.[1] Likewise, his manifesto for congregational-independency[2] offers some of the best arguments for Pastor-led congregational form of church government, and his The Death of Death in the Death of Christ[3] is considered the book on the Reformed view of particular redemption.  Owen’s teaching on the subject of the inspiration of the Bible is also most instructive, especially in view of what has been and is being taught in some evangelical seminaries and books.

The Importance of Divine Inspiration

Owen’s views on the crucial matter of the relationship of the Bible as we have it and the autographs are worth pondering.  He, like all solid evangelicals, rests the authority of the Bibles we have, not upon some inner impression of its validity, but upon its original theopneustic character.  In his, The Divine Original of the Scripture he asserted, “That the whole authority of the scripture in itself depends solely on its divine original, is confessed by all who acknowledge its authority.”^[4] Thus the autographs were from God and delivered to men.  We possess “the words of truth from God Himself.”[5]

Inspiration he defined as “an indwelling and organizing power in the chosen penmen.” ^[6] Thus, “they invented not words themselves…but only expressed the words they received.”[7] Indeed, “the word that came unto them was a book which they took in and gave out without any alteration of one tittle or syllable (Ezek. ii 8-10, iii 3; Rev. x 9-11).”^[8] As Owen writes in his great work on the Holy Spirit:

He did not speak in them or by them, and leave it unto their natural faculties, their minds, or memories, to understand and remember the things spoken by him, and so declare them to others; but he himself acted their faculties, making use of them to express his words, not their own conceptions.^[9]

It is because of its divine provenance that the Scripture gains “the power and to require obedience, in the name of God.”[10] The Scriptures “being what they are, they declare whose they are.”[11] Even so, being as the Bible is the Word of God, every man is bound to believe it.[12]

All this notwithstanding, Owen refuses to ground his doctrine of Scripture solely on the internal testimony of the Spirit.  As he says in his The Reason of Faith, “If anyone…shall now ask us wherefore we believe the Scripture to be the word of God; we do not answer, ‘It is because the Holy Spirit hath enlightened our minds, wrought faith in us, and enabled us to believe it.’”[13] Such a declaration may at first seem to be a deviation from the tradition inherited from the Reformation.  But Owen demonstrates that there has to be an external reason for the credibility of our faith in Scripture as the Word of God.[14] Divine revelation must have the character of truth through and through, and it is this character which the Spirit causes us recognize through faith.[15]

The Role of Apographa

Where John Owen, together with many of his contemporaries, differed from modern expressions of inspiration was in the close connection he saw between the Scriptures as originally given and the Scriptures as we now have them.  For example, he wrote:

Sacred Scripture claims this name for itself.  It has its origin from God…[s]o that what God once said to the Church through the medium of Prophets, Apostles, and other inspired writers was still spoken directly by God, and that not only in the primary sense to those whom He delegated this task of reducing His revealed will to written form, but also, no less so in a secondary sense, He speaks to us now in His written word…, as in days past He spoke through the mouths of His holy prophets.^[16]

In contrast to the way inspiration and (if at all) preservation is taught nowadays, men like Owen saw a real continuity between the autographs and what were often termed the “apographs,” or copies of the originals.  “It is true”, Owen said, “we have not the Autographa …but the apographa or “copies” which we have contain every iota that was in them.^[17]

As we have already inferred, in saying this Owen was not alone.  Francis Turretin of the Genevan Academy also held this view:

By original texts, we do not mean the autographs…, which certainly do not now exist.  We mean their “apographs” which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”[18]

Did this show a pre-Enlightenment naiveté?  Not at all.  Owen was well aware that the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts available in his day contained variant readings, transpositions, corrections, and other glosses.  But he saw the supervening hand of God in transmission of the texts.  For example, he wrote, “For the first transcribers of the original copies, and those who… have done the like work from them…[i]t is known, it is granted, that failings have been amongst them, and that various lections are from thence risen.”^[19]

It is of interest to note that Owen’s recent translator contrasts the view of the Puritan with that of BB Warfield, especially in the areas of the extent of the understanding of inerrancy and the identity of the Text.  Stephen Westcott says that,

Owen saw inerrant as not meaning just that all “between the boards of the Bible” was inspired and without error…, but rather that inerrant necessarily meant plenary inspiration, and plenary inspiration that the Bible lacks nothing, and is thus a full and perfect rule and guide for all of life –not just for “religion”, and he saw inspiration as involving three essential factors: content inspiration, verbal inspiration, and divine preservation.^[20]

Summarizing Owen’s View

From the above quotations the following three points can be drawn:

1. The Divine authority of the Bible rests in itself.  It is self-attesting:

“That God, who is prima Veritas, ‘the first and sovereign Truth,’…should write a book, or at least immediately indite it, commanding us to receive it as his under the penalty of his eternal displeasure, and yet that book not make a sufficient discovery of itself to be his, to be from him, is past all belief.”^[21]

1. This authority rested in the first instance in Scripture’s inherent status as God-given, and not in the inner testimony of the Spirit to His Word.

1. Although He allowed the human authors to remain individual personalities, the Holy Spirit nevertheless “acted their faculties” in order to produce His words in written form.  Owen taught that the nature of the Spirit presupposed this kind of inspiration,^[22] even if, strictly speaking, “It is the graphe that is theopneustos.”^[23]

1. Although we no longer possess the original manuscripts of the Bible, the apographa or copies do communicate to us what the Holy Spirit said in the autographs.^[24] Owen, unlike some Evangelicals today, held to a strong doctrine of Preservation.^[25]

This assertion gives the lie to the thesis of people like Sandeen and Rogers and McKim^[26] who have claimed that the belief that Scripture’s authority extends to all aspects of life is due to the influence of the Enlightenment. ^[27] But it also reminds us that God has not just set His Word in the world and then left it up to frail men to preserve it unsupervised.  In a very real sense the Bible through which God actively communicates today is foremost His Word, not our attempt to reproduce it.

^[2] Owen, The True Nature of a Gospel Church, Works XVI, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968).

^[3] The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Works X, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968).

^[4] The Divine Original of the Scripture, Works XVI, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968), 297.

^[5] Ibid., 305

^[6] A Defense of Sacred Scripture.  Appended to his Biblical Theology, (Pittsburgh, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994), 789.

^[7] Divine Original, 305

^[8] Divine Original, 299.

^[9] A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit.  Works III, (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 132-133.

^[10] Divine Original, 308

^[11] Ibid., 311

^[12] Ibid., 335

^[13] The Reason of Faith, Works IV, (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 60

^[14] Ibid., 61-69

^[15] Ibid., 68

^[16] Defense, 788. (cf. also Works XVI, 357).

^[17] Divine Original, 300-301.

^[18] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), 1.106.

^[19] John Owen, Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scripture. Works XVI, 355.

^[20] Stephen Westcott, “Editors Introduction,” – John Owen, Defense, 772-773.

^[21] Cf. also, Works XVI, 317-318, and, 335.  Calvin said, “We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate.” – John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.7.5. (1.72).

^[22] Owen, A Discourse Concerning The Holy Spirit, Works III, 131.

^[23] Divine Original, 300.

^[24] Likewise, see the opinion of William Whitaker recorded by John Woodbridge in his rebuttal of Rogers and McKim in Douglas Moo (ed.), Biblical Authority and Conservative Perspectives, (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1997), 46.

^[25] See Owen, Divine Original of the Scripture, 354-355.

^[26] See also the attacks on men like Carl F.H. Henry by the likes of Donald Bloesch.

^[27] We are aware of the fact that men like Owen, Voetius, Turretin, and Thomas Boston believed that the Masoretic punctuation marks were divinely inspired.  They were mistaken.  But this does not mean that they were wrong in the matter before us. Furthermore, it may not be out of place to add that in the debate about the Majority Text versus the minority Critical Text.  For what it is worth, Stephen Westcott believes that Owen, were he alive, would side with the MT.  “For Owen, the Reformation, and the Puritans [to even put it in those terms] …would be to settle the dispute!” – “Editor’s Introduction,” to John Owen, A Defense of Sacred Scripture, 773.

The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog pointed my attention to a lengthy article by Adam at the Old Testament Studies blog which refutes  the “Ecclesiastical Text theory”.  The article covers quite a bit of ground as it attempts to refute a recent article by Kent Brandenburg on the LXX argument.  Adam interacts with the Scriptural evidence for preservation, and shows how a proper exegesis does of them does not demand the preservation of a word-perfect, accessible text.  Adam then discusses targumming, the LXX, and gets into some OT textual criticism.

I recommend the article as a good reference for discussion.  The question remains, did he really refute the Ecclesiastical Text theory?  For additional discussion here, perhaps we should switch from calling a reasoned, Greek studying, KJV-onlyism, TR-onlyism and instead call it the “Ecclesiastical Text theroy”.  I think that might be preferred by people of that persuasion, what do you think?

Thanks go out too, to the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog for linking to our little blogging establishment again in their post about Adam’s article.

1. Trivial Omissions

One of the most common accusations leveled against the newer versions are the omissions of titles to Jesus being Lord or Christ in many verses. David Sorenson in his book “Touch not the Unclean Thing” says that the NASB deletes 178 references to Jesus by name or by title being Lord or Christ. He admits that the NASB doesn’t destroy the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ, but that this translation greatly dilutes it and weakens it. One of these examples is absolutely biased and laughable when you see the difference:

Romans 14:6KJV He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

Romans 14:6 NASB He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, ¹does so for the Lord, for he ^agives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.

The KJV says Lord 4X and the NASB says it 3X…do we smell a conspiracy? If the NASB was trying to rid the Bible of The Lordship of Christ, they forgot the other three references! Anyway, there are other verses that are more obvious where there are omissions of these titles for example:

2 Corinthians 4:10 KJV Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

2 Corinthians 4:10 NASB always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

Both versions are word for word formal equivalent translations, so they both are accurately reflecting the underlying text. The NASB follows the NA27 and the KJV follows Beza’s TR. So, among the translational differences between these formal equivalent translations, the main issue is the Greek text. So, is there a reason why the NA27 has fewer title references that can be easily explained? I believe so.

Why would the newer Bibles not include these passages or titles that are not found in the majority or TR? There is a theory that makes sense, although it may not be totally provable since none of us were there. In some cases, it’s obvious that a verse has been either repeated or imported from another place in the text.  In Mark 9:44 and 46 the phrase “where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” has possibly been inserted into later manuscripts in both places, repeating the very same phrase found later in verse 48.  It is impossible to say that someone was purposefully trying to hide or change anything. Most of the time these differences are found in the footnotes, which a conspirator would hardly try to include. This borrowing language from one part of scripture added to another place is usually for the harmonization of a passage when a scribe would copy a page. So prevalent is the occurrence of parallel influence that it is unnecessary to examine each and every example. Instead, we can look at a few that are often cited as examples of corrupting the text and you’ll see that they are not a corruption, but rather that the TR may have had some scribal insertions from other parts of scripture.

KJV                                           Other Version                             Borrowed Verse

The fact is, each of these  (and there are many others) where the newer version is lacking a phrase, the text that is found in the KJV, the same material can be found elsewhere in the gospels in the newer versions. Sometimes these kinds of omissions also occur on verses where there is a doctrinal difference made. For example:

Colossians 1:14 KJV ¹⁴ In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

Colossians 1:14 NASB ^{14 a}in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

There are a number of parallels between Colossians and Ephesians so there is also a harmonization between the two that may have been done with texts like this by scribes that wrote some of the foundational texts of the majority Byzantine MSS.  As you can see, the blood is not left out of the NASB in Ephesians: Ephesians 2:13 But now in ^aChrist Jesus you who ^bformerly were ^cfar off ¹have ^cbeen brought near ^2dby the blood of Christ.

Again, the charge of conspiracy doesn’t hold up. Could it be said that the NASB is weaker? It could, but if you are a Bible student who diligently studies, you will not miss this doctrine in the NASB or any other good formal equivalent translation.

Then there are differences that are not due to parallel influence. They are due to a difference in the MSS due to the scribal errors, or copying a MSS that they had with a different word:

Matthew 16:20 KJV Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

Matthew 16:20 NASB Then He ¹warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was ^2bthe Christ.

How can these possibly be explained? At times the “expansion of piety” led scribes to insert a name in such a way as to create a problem.  This verse provides us with such an instance.  After the great confession of faith by Peter, the Lord tells him to keep his identity a secret for a while. It would be very well known that the Christ is Jesus. Those being spoken to would not have had a problem understanding, and neither should we. The pronoun “he” directly refers to the one speaking – obviously, Jesus.

Again, these omissions are in the original text that is being translated from and the reason for their omissions are really not known for sure by anyone. Could it have been a conspiracy to take away from the Word of God?  Possibly, but unlikely since there are so many other references to Christ’s Lordship, deity, and so forth.

If someone wants to insist that the modern versions are corrupted for leaving out these titles and references to Jesus, then that same standard must be used against the KJV. For example:

John 6:47 KJV Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

John 6:47 NIV I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.

The KJVO Advocate will be quick to point out that the NIV has omitted the words “on me” which do not appear in the older MSS and it could be argued that believing in general isn’t sufficient for salvation… right?  Believe on who? Santa Clause, the easter bunny, the tooth fairy? DA Waite says: “This is one of the clearest theological errors in these new versions. To make salvation only a matter of believing rather than solely, as Christ said in this verse “believing on me” is truly another gospel. If you were trying to lead someone to the Lord with an NIV or NASB, you could lead them to any of the world religions. This is a serious theological perversion! This is certainly a matter of doctrine and theology.”[1]

This kind of outrageous statements are made to strike fear into your heart about another version, but it shows his incredible bias because just a few verses earlier, the NIV reads:

John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 6:40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

If the NIV was purposely trying to pervert the gospel, they forgot to delete “in me and in him” in these verses. I think people like DA Waite are so blatantly biased, that they will purposefully ignore these verses to push the KJVO hype and scare undiscerning Christians who read their books full of conspiracy theory and vitriolic anger.

If you really want to say that the other texts and versions are perversions because of these kinds of differences, then that same standard that Waite puts on the NIV will also condemn the KJV. Here’s what I mean:

Mark 9:23 KJV Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

Romans 1:16 KJV For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

Believeth in what or who? It doesn’t tell us specifically, but the context answers the question for you in the KJV just like it does in the other problem verses concerning the other versions.   In fact, there are some places, where the NIV, NASB, ESV and others might look stronger in doctrine than the KJV if this argument is to be taken to its full logical conclusions:

KJV                                                                             Other Versions

2. Weightier Omissions and differences

Are there any omissions that would cause a real theological problem? I have found a few that I think could possibly be a real dilemma:

Matthew 5:21-22 KJV Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: ²² But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Matthew 5:22 ESV, NASB, But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother¹ will be liable to judgment; whoever insults² his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell³ of fire.

In the newer versions, “without a cause” is missing in the older MSS and so the teaching, if isolated, becomes a blanket prohibition against anger and that there is no cause or reason for anger that is justifiable. As we know, the Bible is full of places where the anger of the Lord was kindled. So, we know that no all anger is sinful – such as the Lord’s righteous indignation. So, this passage makes it unclear about that and could possibly cause confusion if a person is not knowledgeable about how to study the scriptures deeper to find out more about the subject. “Without a cause” is really a disclaimer or a “qualifying” clause that makes the teaching more clear. Some may argue that the words were not in the originals, but they really don’t know that either. So, to be safe I would go with the KJV and NKJV reading. The same kind of argument can be said about passages concerning baptism: if Acts 2:38 Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

If this verse was the only one in the Bible dealing with salvation, I would have to say that baptism is essential for justification, but based on other teaching, we should realize that it is not saying that. The same goes for the anger verse. If you read the rest of scripture, you’d come to understand the difference between sinful anger and righteous anger.

Here’s another problem verse that gets a lot of attention by those advocating a KJVO position:

John 7:8 KJV Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.

John 7:8 NASB Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because ^aMy time has not yet fully come.”

The difference here is one word that apparently makes Jesus look like a liar in the NASB. He says he’s not going to the feast yet in the KJV, but in the NASB, he just says that he’s not going, which appears that he’s not going at all. Then in verse 10, John 7:10 NASB ¹⁰ But when His ^abrothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as if, in secret.

There is a perfectly understandable explanation of this without involving Jesus in dishonesty: By not going up to the feast, Jesus is referring to the public procession to Jerusalem that would have involved thousands of people. The “not going” could be interpreted “not going openly, or not going yet” because he states that his time has not yet come. Even though this may be a good explanation for the omission of the word, it still makes more sense that the word be there and is a safer reading in the KJV if Jesus is referring to not going to the feast at all. But what if Jesus is saying I’m not going at all in the way his half brothers are telling him to go: openly, as Messiah, which is what they meant? Then you have the context fixing the problem of the word “yet” not being there, if in fact it is supposed to be missing in the originals.  Here’s what I mean:

In some early manuscripts, the word yet does not appear in John 7:8, so some translations read, “I am not going up to this feast.” Some people will say that a copyist probably added the word yet to verse 8 to bring it in harmony with verse 10 and prevent the appearance that Jesus lied and that the original text would not have included the word yet.

In verse 8, Jesus says, “I’m not going” in response to his brothers’ invitation to accompany them and to make a big production of Himself at the feast. It was a little premature to come on the clouds in glory.  In His second coming, Jesus will re-institute the feast of tabernacles according to the book of Revelation. So by saying that I’m not going to this feast, He could have meant I’m not going like you all are telling me – openly, in glory – to this feast.

In verse 9, It says that Jesus in fact did not go. He did not accompany them, and He did not go as a public figure, as they wanted. In verse 10, it says “However, after his brothers had left for the feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.”

So it seems to me that even if the word yet is a well-intended scribal emendation, it is what Jesus meant and what John intended to represent Jesus as meaning. The brothers say, “Jesus, you ought to go and make a public spectacle of yourself, to show everyone who you really are.” John adds, in an aside to the reader, that they were really trying to call Jesus’ bluff, they didn’t really believe in Him. Jesus says, “No, it isn’t time for me to do that, so under those conditions, I’m not going.” Since Jesus wanted to go incognito, He couldn’t go with people who intended to make a big deal out of Him. And so in fact He didn’t go with them. But after they left, it was possible for Him to go secretly, so He did.

Imagine if someone drove up in a dilapidated old car and said, “Are you going to church? Why don’t you ride with me?” You look at the jalopy and you remember that the driver is a speedster with a bad driving record, so you say, “No way! I’m not going.” They drive off, and then you take the bus. You didn’t lie when you said “I’m not going.” It was an elliptical statement that included the context of the situation. It could be that a scribe inserted the word “yet” as a way to clarify what Jesus meant (scribal revisionism) much like translators do today when they think they know how the reading should go. Could it be that someone added to God’s word in this case? Maybe, but either way, the Bible vindicates itself.

Another one that is commonly pointed out as an error in the newer versions is concerning the deity of Christ in regard to who His father is:

Luke 2:33 KJV And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.

Luke 2:33 ESV And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.

This is the case of a textual variant in the original MSS, and the older ones say “father” while the Byzantine primarily says “Joseph”. This shouldn’t be a problem because the in all translations they make it clear that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost – Matthew 1:20 NASB But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “^aJoseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for ¹the Child who has been ²conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

If that doesn’t satisfy you, then you need to again, use this argument against your own KJV and level the same heretical charge against it in Luke 2:48 And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.

So, as we have seen from a number of passages from various other versions, the differences that seem to be of enormous consequence are really rather trivial in relation to theology. They don’t change anything. Of course, like I said last week, there are other versions that do have a political agenda in their choice of words in the translation and I am not interested in defending or vindicating them. We can see from these popular versions: the NIV, ESV, NKJV and NASB that concerning the doctrine of God, they are certainly not guilty of being perverted.

3. The KJV and NKJV

Before we finish, I wan to address the New King James Version which is also rejected by the KJVO advocates for various spurious reasons. I often read and study from a NKJV and recommend the MacArthur Study Bible which is also available in the NKJV. One of the most staunch KJVO advocates, Dr. David Sorenson wrote a book a few years ago called “Touch Not the Unclean Thing” where he refers to the other versions and MSS as unclean and apostate. We have already seen that although some apostates may have had their hands involved in the textual criticism and translation of the newer texts and newer versions, they still hold together as the inspired Word of God – howbeit in some cases – perhaps incomplete.

David Sorenson critiques the NKJV and tries to discredit for various reasons. Some of the reasons would be these:

1. The more precise KJV language uses pronouns such as the “thee’s, thou’s and  ye’s,” are all substituted for the more general word “you”.  This, he claims, makes it weaker. Well, the truth is – nobody talks that way anymore, and the increasing number of people who are in our country speaking English as a second language have a hard time understanding these kinds of words as well as other archaic.
2. The footnotes refer back to the Older Alexandrian MSS when there is a textual variant. According to Sorenson, these MSS are “apostate” and he thinks that the NKJV undermines the true readings of the originals. However, if you are aware of the text issues and you have learned the history of how we got our Bible, these footnotes should not alarm you.
3. Inconsistency in capitalizing the prounouns referring to God. This feature is not found in any other version that I can find, but because they may have missed a few, Sorenson uses this to discredit the NKJV’s reliability. EG Psalm 89:27 Also I will make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth.
4. The changing of the word “miracle” to “sign” which only appears four times in the book of John only. He tries to accuse the NKJV of downplaying the supernatural, but the truth is, Jesus’ miracles in John are considered signs as John himself calls them in 20:30. They were just trying to be consistent in translation with John’s use of miracles.
5. Weakness in translation concerning Christ as Creator.

John 1:3 NKJV All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

1 Corinthians 8:6 NKJV yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

This again, is a spurious argument. The Greek word “dia” is literally means “through, by or by means of”. This does nothing to undercut Christ’s deity or His being the Creator.   If this is all that he can come up with to discredit the NKJV as a weak or faulty translation, then you should be encouraged to use one, because these arguments show either his ignorance or blatant bias.

In closing, let me read from the preface to the reader from the translators of the KJV written in 1611 which is probably not in most of your Bibles anymore, but is very important that we understand what they had in mind when they translated it:

“Many men’s mouths have been opened a good while (and are yet to be stopped) with speeches about the translation so long in hand, or rather persuals of translations made before: and ask what may be the reason, what the necessity, of the employment?  Hath the church been deceived, say they, all this while? Hath her sweet bread been mingled with leaven, etc…We hoped that we had been in the right way, that we had had the oracles of God delivered unto us, and that though all the world had cause to be offended, and to complain, yet that we had none….Was their translation good before? My do they now mend it? Was it not good?  Why then was it obtruded to the people?…Do we condemn the ancient? In no case: but after the endeavors of them that were before us, we take the best pains we can in the house of God….We are so far off from condemning any of their labors that travelled before us in this kind…we acknowledge them to have been raised up of God for the building and furnishing of his church, and that they deserve to be had of us and of posterity in everlasting remembrance.

-An Answer to the imputations of our adversaries-

Now to the latter we answer, that we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest (poorest) translation of the bible in English set forth by men of our profession containeth the word of God, nay is the word of God as the kings speech which he uttered in parlament, being translated in French, Dutch, and Latin is still the king’s speech….Truly dear Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principle good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavor, that our mark.

Some, perhaps would have no variety of senses to be set in the margin, lest the authority of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that show of uncertainty should somewhat be shaken.  But we hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point….it hath pleased God in his Divine Providence here and there to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubtfulness, not in doctrinal points that concern salvation (for in such it hath been vouched that the Scriptures are plain) but in matters of less moment (less theological weight) that fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence and if we will resolve to resolve upon modesty with St. Augstine: ‘it is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain.’ There are many words in the scriptures which be never found there but once, so that we cannot be uphlpen by conference places…Now in such a case doth not a margin do well to admonish the reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily (absolutely or positively)? For as it is a fault to doubt those things that are evident, so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left questionable, can be no less than presumption. Therefore as St. Augustine saith, that variety of translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures. So diversity of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is not so clear, must needs be good, yea is necessary as we are persuaded.

Another thing to admonish thee of, gentle reader, that we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing (what Sorenson gripes about concerning the NKJV), or to the identifying of words…

We commend thee to God and to the Spirit of grace….he removeth the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts, opening the wits that we may understand His word.”

May we learn and take the good advice of the KJV translators. Amen.

[1] Defending the KJV, DA Waite, p.158

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.)