EQUITABLE ECLECTICISM

The Future of New Testament Textual Criticism

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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

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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.

Readers of this debate blog will be aware of the position by some influential KJV Onlyists that the Septuagint is a post-Christian creation.  Some say it didn’t exist before Origen.  Others are more nuanced and say that we can’t know if the Septuagint as an entity existed before that time.

The rationale for this tactic is to avoid the implications of the New Testament’s prolific use of the Septuagint.  John Owen and Jerome and others are put forth as defendants for a position which claims that the New Testament shaped the creation of the Septuagint, and scribes amended the LXX to conform to the NT.

While I would agree that an entire monolithic Septuagint was not to be found, I would nevertheless say that there is plenty of evidence for multiple translations of the Old Testament into Greek.  The variations between the Greek editions themselves, and between them and the New Testament quotations, point toward an inescapable conclusion.  Some harmonization by the New Testament’s influence may have happened, but by and large, the New Testament unmistakably leans heavily on the Septuagint.

All this is agreed on, I believe, by most scholars today.  In fact we recently had a reader leave an insightful comment as he was baffled by our defense of a pre-Origen LXX.  Since the comment may have been missed by our readers, and since it is worthy of repetition, I thought I’d share it here.

I tend not to use the KJV as I prefer to use a Hebrew OT and a Greek NT. For English translations my favourite is the KJV for its beauty – so please don’t react to what I have to say with any assumption that I must be some sort of KJV hater – I’m not.

May I suggest that many of the blog posters spend less time arguing, less time quoting whatever popular apologetic works they have read as “proof” that they are right when the popular apologetic works are usually badly researched – and spend serious time actually reading and researching the topics – I’ve spent the last 25+ years researching early biblical manuscripts, and work as a theological librarian in an academic institution. I’m also an evangelical Protestant Christian – I might even be described as a fundamentalist!

I have just read the blog posts about the Septuagint – it contains some incredibly stupid comments about no early Septuagint manuscripts, and none among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Please feel free to share the following with your blog posters.

Early Septuagint – pre-dating the third century A.D.

1. MS 89 of P.Foud 266 – remains of 24 chapters from Genesis and Deuteronomy, mid 1st century BC.
2. P Yale I 1 – remains of 1 chapter from Genesis, 1st or 2nd century AD
3. P.Oxy.656 – remains of 6 chapters from Genesis, 2nd or perhaps early 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a borderline case
4. P. Deissman – remains of 1 chapter from Exodus, 2nd or 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
5. P.Baden 56, remains of 4 chapters of Exodus and Deuteronomy, 2nd century AD
6. Schoyen Collection MS 2649 – remains of 6 chapters of Leviticus, late 2nd or early 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
7. P.Beatty IV + P.Mich.5554 – remains of 38 chapters of Numbers and Deuteronomy, late 2nd or early 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
8. P.Ryl.458 – remains of 6 chapters of Deuteronomy, 2nd century BC
9. Schoyen Collection MS 2648 – remains of 3 chapters of Joshua, late 2nd or early 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
10. P.Montserrat Inv.3 – remains of 2 chpaters of 2 Chronicles, late 2nd century AD
11. P.Chester Beatty IX+X + John H. Scheide 3 + P.Colon theo.3-40 + P.Montserrat 42+43 + P.Matr.bibl.1 (the manuscript was broken up and ended up in 5 collections!) – remains of 58 chapters of Esther, Ezekiel and Daniel, 2nd century AD
12. P.Oxy.4443 – remains of 2 chapters of Esther, 1st or 2nd century AD
13. P.Oxy.3522 – remains of 1 chapter of Job, 1st century AD
14. P.Taur.27 – remains of 1 chapter of Psalms, 2nd century AD
15. PSI inv.1989 – remains of 1 chapter of Psalms, late 2nd century AD
16. P.Montserrat Inv.2 – remains of 1 chapter of Psalms, 2nd century AD
17. P.Bodmer XXIV – remains of almost all of Psalms, 2nd or 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
18. Bodleian MS.Gr.Bib.g.5 (P) – remains of 2 chapters of Psalms, 2nd century AD
19. PSI.inv.921 – remains of 1 chapter of Psalms, 2nd century AD
20. P.Antin.7 – remains of 2 chapters of Psalms, 2nd century AD
21. Leipzig Uni.Bib.Pap.170 – remains of 1 chapter of Psalms, 2nd or 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
22. Garrett Deposit 1924, H.I. Bell II G: small flat box 5 – remains of 1 chapter of Isaiah, 2nd or 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
23. P.Beatty VIII – remains of 2 chapters of Jerimiah, 2nd or 3rd century AD – imprecise dating of this manuscript makes it a boarderline case
24. 4Q119 – remains of 1 chapter of Leviticus, pre First Jewish Revolt (pre destruction of the Temple)
25. 4Q120 – remains of 6 chapters of Leviticus, pre First Jewish Revolt
26. 4Q121 – remains of 2 chapters of Numbers, pre First Jewish Revolt
27. 4Q122 – remains of 1 chapter of Deuteronomy, pre First Jewish Revolt
28. 7Q1 – remains of 1 chapter of Exodus, pre First Jewish Revolt
29. 8Hev 1 – remaains of 24 chapters of the Minor Prophets, 1st century BC or 1st century AD

So we have 29 manuscripts of which 20 are unquestionably 2nd century or earlier.

I won’t give the all bibliographical details from all of the mansucripts listed above, but here is a start of just 3 books for the Septuagint manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls:

• Qumran Cave 4: IV. Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts, by P.W. Skehan, E. Ulrich and J.E. Sanderson; with a contribution by P.J. Parsons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), Discoveries in the Judaean Desert volume IX
• Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumrân: Exploration de la falaise, Les grottes 2Q, 3Q, 5Q, 6Q, 7Q, à 10Q, Le rouleau de cuivre, by M. Baillet, J.T. Milik and R. de Vaux; with a contribution by H.W. Baker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), Discoveries in the Judaean Desert volume III
• The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever (8HevXIIgr), (The Seiyâl Collection I), by E. Tov; with the collaboration of R.A. Kraft; and a contribution of P.J. Parsons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), Discoveries in the Judaean Desert volume VIII

Matthew Hamilton
Sydney, Australia

Based upon a twisted view of Scripture, a NC church intends to burn Bibles and other literature on Halloween.  (See story here and here.)

It seems that Amazing Grace Baptist Church (Where is the grace in the sort of activity that they are carrying on?) is a King James Only church and considers all other English translations of God’s Word to be satanic.  They also consider Southern Gospel Music, Contemporary Christian Music, and the books of Billy Graham to be satanic, it seems.

The list of authors whose books will be burned is as follows:

“Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.”

Let it be known that this is not right.  It is not gracious.  It is not charitable.  It does not show the Spirit of Christ.  It is not Biblical.  It is not the behavior of a Biblical Fundamentalist.  Historically, Biblical Fundamentalists have respected God’s Word wherever it was found.  This burning of Bibles is simply a new form of modernism that sets up man as the authority over God’s Word so that he can judge right and wrong by his own standards.  It seems that Scripture is not sufficient for this sort of “fundamentalist”.  He must go beyond Scripture, but in so doing, he condemns Scripture, thus making himself the final judge and arbiter of what is right.

It is my prayer that Bible believers all over our nation will lift up their voices and cry out against the graceless wickedness of Pastor Marc Grizzard and Amazing Grace Baptist Church.

(Originally published on Fundamentally Changed.)

The Sword of The Lord on The 2011 NIV Update

The October 2, 2009 edition of The Sword of The Lord has an article entitled “NIV Revision Coming in 2011”. In this article written by the editor (Dr. Shelton Smith) one finds the typical resistance to any English translation of the Bible other than the King James Version. A few things in particular bothered me about the article, and they are as follows:

1. “…it is a bad ‘Bible’. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that it is a bad version. I honestly hate to use the word Bible in connection with a product that does not deserve the title.”

What can one say about such a statement? It is so obviously incorrect that it is shameful. One would think that the NIV had changed the text of God’s Word to such an extent that there would be nothing holy found in it. After all, so long as it is God’s Word, it is God’s Word; is it not? For it to not be classified “Bible” it would have to have been so changed as to no longer contain the truth concerning God, salvation, and holiness. While many of us may prefer to use a translation other than the NIV, we cannot find support for such a baseless charge as the Bible no longer being classified as the Bible.

1. “Am I so naive as to assume all the updates will be language? Look at their track record!”

What is the track record of the NIV translators? Smith does not say. My experience leads me to believe that this is an argument that goes back to those handy-dandy little Bible comparison charts. Said argument is fundamentally flawed.

1. “Keith Danby said, ‘And we’ll make sure we get it right this time.’ Is that an admission that the thirty-one-year-old NIV has been right any of the time that they’ve hawked it and sold it like hotcakes?”

Honestly, I have not seen such a quote from Danby and Dr. Smith does not cite his reference. At the same time, it is indeed possible that he made that statement. If he did, allow me to give an imaginative context. Danby was involved in the TNIV. That was a flop. It was divisive and seemed to do little good for most evangelicals. In my imagination I see Danby making such a statement regarding the TNIV. Why? Because of the following:

“’In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made,’ Danby said. ‘We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that affection.’

Danby said it was also a mistake to stop revisions on the NIV. ‘We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world,’ he said.

‘Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community,” said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. “So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV.’

Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as products are replaced. ‘It will be several years before you won’t be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf,’ she said.

‘We are correcting the mistakes in the past,’ Girkins said. ‘Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days.’ She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV ‘in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism.’

‘The first mistake was the NIVi,’ Danby said. ‘The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV.’” (Christianity Today)

Let us not forget that the NIV of 1978 is different from the NIVi and TNIV. If we do not recall the difference we may find ourselves making a mistake similar to that of Dr. Smith’s and lose credibility in so doing.

It is sad that we have to contend with Christian brothers over an issue such as this. Though I honestly have found nothing that endears the NIV to me above other modern translations, I cannot deny its being God’s Word, the Bible. It is truly a lack of careful thinking that leads one to so lightly dismiss God’s Word when the KJV translators stated, “we answer, that we do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the Word of God, nay, is the Word of God. ” (See Jesus Is Lord) (See also PastoralMusings’ “The KJVO Translators’ Preface to The Reader”) The worst translation, the KJVO translators declared, still contains and is the Word of God. We must not forget that truth.

It is also sad that one who is a Christian newspaper editor would seemingly take a quote of context and apply it to something other than that of which the person quoted was speaking. Even if it were an honest mistake, we would expect Dr. Smith to have done better than he did.

While I am not KJVO, I am KJV preferred. I use it exclusively in preaching and primarily in studying. I cannot, however, sit idly by when others abuse and twist the truth. If one wishes to be KJVO, in charity we allow them that privilege. We shall not seek to impose our views upon their consciences, but shall only present the truth concerning the issue. We expect the same honest discourse from them. Denying the presence of the Word of God in the NIV and quoting someone out of context will do nothing to further the cause of Christ.

While the Scriptures do not demand our using a certain English translation, they do demand that we be honest and charitable. Let us seek to do so, especially since we have a common enemy: sin. God is glorified when we disagree amiably. May the glory of God be our goal.

First posted on Fundamentally Changed.

In Testing the Textus Receptus posts, I test the claims of Textus Receptus (TR) Onlyism. This is a moderate form of King James Onlyism focusing on the Greek (& Hebrew) basis for the King James Version.

As I mentioned earlier, Rev. 16:5 is one of three passages that James White (author of The King James Only Controversy) recently asked TR Only proponents to “explain why [someone] should use the TR’s [reading]“.

The TR Only Claim

For this verse, the TR Only claim is not unanimous.  There are a few brave TR only groups that side with other TR editions against the TR edition underlying the King James Version (e.g., The Received Bible Society).  Most however, defend the King James Version’s readings.  I guess this verse then shows that even for TR Only folks, the King James really is the standard.  Rarely will a TR onlyist admit a single error in the KJV.  They will more readily admit that we have no perfect edition of the TR than that there is an error in the KJV.

Okay, moving back to the point here. Let’s look at the verse itself and the reading which we are concerned about for this post.

KJV And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. (…? ?? ??? ? ?? ??? ? ???????? …)

NASB And I heard the angel of the waters saying, “Righteous are You, who are and who were, O Holy One, because You judged these things; (…? ?? ??? ? ?? ? ó???? …)

There’s a variant regarding “Lord” earlier in the verse, but the one we will focus on is “Holy One” versus “and shalt be”.  Beza’s 1598 edition of the TR supports the KJV here, but several other key printed TR Greek texts have “Holy One”.

Testing that Claim: History of the TR

The other major editions (Erasmus’, Stephanus’ and Elzevirs’) of the TR, besides Beza’s, do not contain the “and shalt be” reading.  Scrivener’s 1894 TR does have the reading, but like its Oxford 1825 ed. forebear, Scrivener’s text was created based off of the English readings of the KJV and any available printed Greek texts that the KJV 1611 translators would have had.  So really we’re down to Beza’s as the only TR text which includes this reading, with one exception.  The 1633 Elzevir’s text, which earned the title “textus receptus“, actually sided with Beza, but the 1624 edition of Elzevir’s text and the 1641 and all following editions of Elzevir’s text go back to Stephanus/Erasmus reading of ó????.  That reading is nearly equal to the reading of the Westcott-Hort, Nestle-Aland, and Robinson-Pierpont (majority) texts.  The TR reading keeps the “and (???)”, however.

With this particular reading, English churchgoers of the 1600s would have been shocked to find their Bibles altered with the new Authorized Version’s reading here.  The Wycliffe Tyndale, Coverdale, Great, Geneva, and Bishop’s Bibles all had “Holy One”.  The Puritan branch of the Geneva Bible Only group would have been a tad bit concerned over this passage I think.  Because this is so important to really grasp, I am going to include the text of all the above Bibles at this verse (from studylight.org):

Wycliffe (1395) [And the thridde aungel... seide,] Just art thou, Lord, that art, and that were hooli, that demest these thingis;

Tyndale (1526) And I herde an angell saye: lorde which arte and wast thou arte ryghteous and holy because thou hast geve soche iudgmentes

Coverdale (1535) And I herde an angel saye: LORDE which art and wast, thou art righteous and holy, because thou hast geue soche iudgmentes,

Geneva (1557) And I heard the Angel of the waters say, Lord, thou art iust, Which art, and Which wast: and Holy, because thou hast iudged these things.

Bishop’s (1568) And I hearde the angell of the waters say: Lorde, which art, and wast, thou art ryghteous & holy, because thou hast geuen such iudgementes:

Testing that Claim: Manuscript Evidence

Now why did Beza remove “Holy One”.  Certainly if there is strong manuscript evidence, we should gladly embrace the change to a 200+ year tradition of the English Bibles.  Yet at this point, we find not one Greek manuscript to support Beza’s reading.  “Well”, one might counter, “perhaps Beza had access to manuscripts that we don’t have today.”  That would be all fine and dandy, except Beza himself tells us why he inserted the reading.  Listen to Beza in his own words:

“And shall be”: The usual publication is “holy one,” which shows a division, contrary to the whole phrase which is foolish, distorting what is put forth in scripture. The Vulgate, however, whether it is articulately correct or not, is not proper in making the change to “holy,” since a section (of the text) has worn away the part after “and,” which would be absolutely necessary in connecting “righteous” and “holy one.” But with John there remains a completeness where the name of Jehovah (the Lord) is used, just as we have said before, 1:4; he always uses the three closely together, therefore it is certainly “and shall be,” for why would he pass over it in this place? And so without doubting the genuine writing in this ancient manuscript, I faithfully restored in the good book what was certainly there, “shall be.” So why not truthfully, with good reason, write “which is to come” as before in four other places, namely 1:4 and 8; likewise in 4:3 and 11:17, because the point is the just Christ shall come away from there and bring them into being: in this way he will in fact appear setting in judgment and exercising his just and eternal decrees.

This is clearly a guess by Beza.  He is looking  at some Vulgate copy which is worn in the text at hand, and so based on his understanding of John’s other uses of the phrase, he concludes “shall be” is the proper reading.  Now, after fixing the Vulgate reading, he then concludes he should fix the Greek reading to “which is to come”, to match the other four places in Revelation where “which are and which were” is found.

The problem is, of the more than 5700 Greek manuscripts we have, and of the more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts we have, we have not a single copy supporting this reading.  What’s more we have no other old language translations supporting it either.  The only possible evidence for it is detailed by Thomas Holland here (that link is broken, try this one or this one and scroll down).  It is a Latin commentary on Revelation compiled in 786 AD, but the commentary in question was from 380 AD.  The Latin phrase “qui fuisti et futures es” is used for this passage.  Beza, however, is ignorant of this support as he does not cite it as a reason for his changes to the text.

Before I go on to dealing with the evidence, let me offer a scan of Philip Comfort’s New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (Tyndale House: 2008) at this point.  Read more »

In Testing the Textus Receptus posts, I test the claims of Textus Receptus (TR) Onlyism. This is a moderate form of King James Onlyism focusing on the Greek (& Hebrew) basis for the King James Version.

As I mentioned earlier, Luke 2:22 is one of three passages that James White (author of The King James Only Controversy) recently asked TR Only proponents to “explain why [someone] should use the TR’s [reading]“.

To help explain the context, let me quote Luke 2:22 and 23 here.

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) — Luke 2:22-23 (ESV)

Jesus is a baby, and Joseph and Mary in this passage are going to Jerusalem to perform all the sacrificial rituals the Law required. The textual variant here concerns “their”. The King James Version reads “her”.

The TR Only Claim

This textual difference is claimed as an error in the modern Critical Text. “Their purification” would either implicate Jesus as possibly requiring purification for sin, or it would disagree with the OT Law which required only a woman to go through ceremonial purification after a child birth, not the man (if Joseph is in view). Again, this reading, according to TR Onlyists, must be an error due to theological reasons. Since two possible options for interpreting the text are clearly errors, and since the KJV offers a different reading, the conclusion is reached that the modern text must have it wrong on this point.

This verse then becomes one of a number of texts claimed to be doctrinal errors in the modern critical text. If we accept the critical text, we are accepting this theological error. We should side, say they, with the Textus Receptus which has been given the approval of God’s people for hundreds of years. The churches received this text with the reading: “her purification”. Case dismissed.

But when we start to test this claim, and dig a little deeper into this textual decision, the picture gets blurry fast.

Testing that Claim: History of the TR

Which reading did the churches receive? Well, the Textus Receptus did not always contain this reading. Early Bible Versions before the KJV, such as William Tyndale’s New Testament (1525) and the Coverdale Bible (1535) read “their purification”. The churches accepted those Bibles, it would seem. Stephen’s (or Stephanus) 1550 text which was accepted in England as the preferred form of the Textus Receptus, also reads “their purification”. Beza’s text (the 1598 edition which was most preferred by the KJV) and the later Elzevir’s text of 1633 both have “her purification”.

So did the churches cry foul, and eventually influence the textual editors to change the reading to suit their tastes? Maybe. It’s also possible that Beza fixed what he thought was a defect in the text, to bring it more in line with the Latin Vulgate.

Before we move on, we should note that nothing in Scripture would make us think that only churches of one nationality and one language should make this grave a decision. When we look at other Reformation era Protestant Bibles, produced for other languages, we again find a split in opinion. The Italian Diodati (1603) supports the “their” reading, according to some textual critical notes I found online (at this site). Luther’s German Bible uses a pronoun that in German can be either “her” or “their” so it doesn’t help us. The Dutch Staten translation of 1637 uses “her”. The Portuguese translation of 1681 (by Ferreira de Almeida) says just “days of purification”. We could go on in this search, but the prevailing theory would be all the Bibles produced by Christians before the 1800s should all read the same since they were received text Christians before the modern versions, right? It’d be interesting to see some more research done in this area, I am limited in what I can do here.

Testing that Claim: Manuscript Evidence

Looking more closely at the question, we come to manuscript evidence. Here we get an ever clearer picture of the situation. The Greek manuscripts overwhelmingly support “their”. Read more »

A few months back, James White debated Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical textual scholar turned agnostic on the reliability of the New Testament. I am not necessarily a White fan, and I am not going to speculate as to who really won the debate. What interests me has to do with White’s fielding some criticism from proponents of the Textus Receptus at his blog. (The Textus Receptus (Received Text), is the Greek basis for the King James Version.)

White raised four questions regarding what actually constitutes the Textus Receptus (TR). I think those questions are spot on, and I’d like to hone in on the last one, for a few posts. As an aside, I should mention I had someone provide some KJV Only answers to White’s questions over at my King James Only Debate Research Center‘s forums. (Feel free to go over there and interact if you’d like.)

Here are White’s questions:

1) When did “the church” “received” this text?
2) What council engaged in a study of the respective texts and determined that this is the “one” text that most closely represents the original?
3) Which text IS the “TR”? Can you identify a single text as THE TR? If not, why not?
4) Please explain why I should use the TR’s readings of Luke 2:22, Revelation 16:5, and the final six verses of Revelation.

What White is doing here is testing the premise of Textus Receptus Onlyism. How is it that the Textus Receptus was received by the Church? What does that reception entail? Which text was received? How can we know which readings are correct based on this textual position?

He and others (like myself) are not splitting straws when they bring up difficult passages and possible errors in the Textus Receptus. We are testing the claims of TR Onlyism. If the Textus Receptus is truly the only Scripturally warranted text, then questions like these should not be stumpers. In fact, there should be a systematic approach to textual questions which is controlled, consistent, and guided by Scripture or in some way authoritative. Should we really expect the TR to be inerrant? If so, how do we deal with these kinds of questions.

For those who haven’t heard the term Textus Receptus Only, I should give a brief sketch of what that position entails. I used to claim the title as my own, so I am not going to try to misrepresent that view. This view holds that the Textus Receptus (TR) is the best Greek text today. It is not corrupted and full of errors as are the most commonly used text (Nestl- Aland 27 / UBS 4th edition) and even the new Majority text (ca. 1980). These other texts are critical texts, but the TR was handed down from the Reformation era. It was not pieced together by textual critics but by men who cherished Scripture. They simply collated the existing manuscripts they were aware of, and rejected incorrect readings and provided us a printed text.

After several years of editing, correcting printer’s errors, and the like, the text became stabilized with the printing of the King James Version. The text of the King James Version can be considered as a variety of the Textus Receptus, because the translators did not follow one specific text. Sometimes they sided with Stephanus’ 1550 edition, other times with Beza’s 1598. The text behind the King James translator’s choices was eventually compiled by Frederick Scrivener in the late 1800s and is available today from the Trinitarian Bible Society.

This view distances itself from a KJV Only view which claims the English corrects the Greek, or that there was some kind of second inspiration for the KJV, where its every translation choice was inerrant. The TR Only view holds that the inspired Word of God was preserved perfectly in the Textus Receptus (for the New Testament, Hebrew Masoretic Text for the Old). You will notice however, that almost every proponent of this view will claim that the Trinitarian Bible Society edition of the TR is actually inerrant (or some other edition is), and that there are no textual errors (or even serious translational mistakes) in the King James Version.

In at least 3 future posts (1 for each of the passages White mentions), I will put this position to test. In the future I may explore other problem areas for the Textus Receptus. I should make clear that I understand there are problems with my text of choice (the NA 27) too. But I am not claiming inerrancy for my text. I believe that essentially I have the Word of God in my English Standard Version, and that although in some few places there is some uncertainty as to which reading is the correct one, this does not shake my faith. That uncertainty does not mean the Bible was not verbally inspired, and it does not mean I cannot be reasonably certain as to which reading is correct, nor does it bring any major Bible doctrine into question. It does mean I’m being honest with the evidence, and should cause me to wrestle with the text in prayer as I seek to understand its meaning for my life.

Originally posted at Fundamentally Reformed.

Philip Comfort’s New Testament Text and Translation Commentary is a valuable resource for studying the textual variants in any given NT passage.  The book lays all the evidence out in a helpful format for which Greek manuscripts or early translations support which reading in almost every place where the text of today’s English Bibles differ with one another.

He not only shows which Greek manuscripts and text use which reading, he also shows which major English Bible versions use which reading (whether in the margin, footnote or text of the Bible).

After listing the evidence, Comfort will then walk you through it helpfully.  He explains what factors such as a particular scribe’s tendencies or the nature of a specific manuscript influence him to favor the reading he supports.  Having Comfort as a guide is valuable, especially since he is intimately familiar with the all the NT papyrii and many other points of textual criticism.

Comfort is no disbelieving scholar, either.  He is very evangelical and at times shows evidence of being conservative.  Above all, Comfort has provided an invaluable reference tool for use by those intrigued by the differences between English Bibles, and especially for those who aim to think through the KJV Only issue in depth.  What’s great is that he does all this with the average English speaker in view, he always translates the Greek he cites and the entire tool is usable by those with no Greek knowledge at all.

The book includes an overview of both textual criticism and its history, as well as the current state of the manuscript witnesses we have for each section of the New Testament.  Even the most well-versed student of these matters has much to learn from this work.  For instance, Comfort offers all the evidence surrounding the story of the woman caught in adultery that is missing from many key Greek manuscripts (John 7:53-8:11).  He shows why it is likely the reading was first introduced into the Greek manuscript witness in the 5th or 6th century.   Yet he offers proof for the reading’s antiquity as well, theorizing that it may have been a legitimate story of Christ handed down that eventually was added to a collection of the Gospels by a well-meaning scribe.

There is much more that could be said of this work, in fact I did say more about it when I reviewed it on my main blog.  I wish it highlighted the readings of the printed Majority texts of Robinson-Pierpont or Hodges-Farstad when examining the evidence, but it doesn’t.  Still, a more helpful resource for researching out the King James Only issue could hardly be found.  When one comes face to face with the reality of the textual facts, the story of the King James Only position is seen for the wishful thinking it really is.