Category: The Modern Critical Text Position

The Consequences of Rejecting Material Preservation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed11 Comments

Introduction

Since the late 20th century, the doctrine of Scripture has been reformulated to say several things, most explicitly in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement articulates several things about the doctrine and nature of Scripture : 

  1. The original manuscripts (autographs) of the New Testament were without error
  2. The Scriptures as we have them now can be discerned to be original with great accuracy, but not without error
  3. The Scriptures as we have them now are without error in what they teach (sense), but not without error in the words (matter)

Within this modern formulation, there are also rules which anticipate certain critiques: 

  1. The Bible is not a witness to divine revelation
  2. The Bible does not derive its authority from church, tradition, or human source
  3. Inerrancy is not affected by lack of autographic texts

While this statement affirms many important things, it has a major flaw, which has resulted in many modern errors today. This is due to the fact that the Chicago Statement denies that the material of the New Testament has been preserved in the copies (apographs). This is a new development from the historical Protestant doctrine of Scripture, which affirms that God had providentially kept the material “pure in all ages.” The original texts in the possession of our great fathers in the faith were considered as the autographs.

“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, 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”

(Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. I, 106). 

This modern update is an attempt to resolve the issues of higher criticism and neo-orthodoxy which were introduced after the time of the Reformers and High Orthodox. While the statement itself affirms against these errors, it does not explain how a text can retain its infallibility and inerrancy while the material has not been preserved. Perhaps at the time, the assumption that the material was preserved to the degree of “great accuracy” was enough to give the people of God great confidence in the Word of God. The error of this formulation is that the mechanism which determines such accuracy is completely authoritative in determining which of the extant material is “accurate” to the original. This seemingly contradicts the doctrinal formulation within the Chicago Statement itself, though I imagine that the reach of textual scholars into the church was not then what it is now.

Infallibility, Inerrancy, and Greatly Accurate Texts

The contradiction of the Chicago Statement is that it affirms against human mechanisms of bestowing the Scripture authority, while itself being founded entirely upon these human mechanisms. In the modern formulation of the doctrine of Scripture, it assumes that the extant material is “greatly accurate” as it relates to the lost original. This level of accuracy, according to this formulation, is enough to know that the material is without error in what it teaches. The problem with this is in how we determine that level of accuracy. Since “great accuracy” is a vague metric, it allows for the amount of material that is considered “accurate” to fluctuate with the methods that determine that level of accuracy. It assumes that any change made by this mechanism cannot possibly change what that material teaches. That means that no matter the material shape of the text, it should be considered inerrant, because changes to the material shape “do not effect doctrine.”

Yet the very mechanism entrusted with this task has no ability to determine that the material it has produced represents what the original said, so the evaluation of “great accuracy” is not only vague, it is arbitrary. There is no meaningful standard to measure the material against to even determine how accurate it is, so any descriptions produced of that level of accuracy is based purely on the assumption that the texts produced by the chosen mechanism are as accurate as advertised. That is to say that the mechanism itself has the sole power of determining accuracy and yes, the authority of such a text. When this mechanism deems a passage, or verse, as not being accurate to the original, pastors simply do not preach that text any longer, and laypeople no longer read it. There are countless examples of the people of God appealing to this mechanism as the mechanism which gives the Scriptures authority. 

This is evident whenever a textual dispute arises in the text. All it takes is one manuscript to introduce such a dispute. What happens when such a dispute occurs? Christians appeal to the authority of the mechanism. In its very axioms, the Chicago Statement forces the people of God to submit to an external authority to validate the canonicity of a passage. Since it rejects magisterial, historical critical, and neo-orthodox models (rightly so), the only model acceptable to “authorize” a text by the modern doctrine of Scripture is lower criticism (not rightly so). Now, if lower criticism is defined simply as a process of comparing manuscripts to determine the original, this is not necessarily a problem. Many manuscripts were created by comparing multiple sources. So in that sense, lower-criticism has been practiced by the Christian church since the first time a copy of the Scriptures was made using multiple exemplar manuscripts. 

The problem occurs when that lower-critical function extends beyond the simple definition. The lower-critical mechanism elected by the modern doctrine of Scripture has reached far beyond such a definition. Rather than being a function which receives the original by comparison, it is a function which assumes that it is responsible for reconstructing a lost text. Further, that same mechanism not only assumes it is responsible for reconstructing, it is responsible for determining how the material was corrupted by reconstructing the history of the text. In other words, asserting its authority over the transmission of the text itself.

According to this mechanism, the Scripture did not come down to us safely, it actually developed away from its original form. The narrative of preservation from the Reformed and High Orthodox needed to be deconstructed so that another narrative could be developed. The sources of this material needed to be re-examined because there is no way that Mark, or John, or Paul wrote what the church thought they did. The text did not come down pure, it came down both textually and from tradition, and some of those pericopes made it into the Biblical text.  Textual variants, most commonly arose from scribal errors, but sometimes speak to the story of the religious communities who were trying to defend the orthodox structure of the Christian faith as it had developed in the traditions of the church. All of these are functions of the text-critical system that determines the “great accuracy” set forth by modern doctrinal statements. It is hard to responsibly say that this is a “lower” critical function. 

Practical Implications to Doctrine

The obvious issue here is that the foundation mechanism of the modern doctrinal statements are not restrained by the doctrinal statement itself. The most clear example of this is that the methods used to determine the “great accuracy” of the extant material as it relates to the original, do not even need to assume that an original ever existed in any meaningful way. This is plainly evidenced by the textual scholar DC Parker, who is the team lead for the Gospel of John in the ECM.   

“The New Testament is a collection of books which has come into being as a result of technological developments and the new ideas which both prompted and were inspired by them”

(Parker, Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament, 3) 

 “We can all applaud when Bowers says that ‘we have no means of knowing what ideal form of a play took in Shakespeare’s mind before he wrote it down’, simply substituting gospel or epistle for play and St John or St Paul for Shakespeare”

(Ibid. 8)

 “The New Testament is – and always has been – the result of a fusion of technology of whatever kind is in vogue and its accompanying theory. The theological concept of a canon of authoritative texts comes after”

(Ibid. 12)

Even if evangelical scholars, pastors, and professors do not agree with DC Parker here in his words, they submit to his theology in practice. The texts which modern Bibles are built on are created according to various critical principles, and then the church theologizes them and calls them authoritative after the fact. Christians work with what they have, and what they have is susceptible to change based on models that do not recognize inspiration, preservation, or the Holy Spirit. Many scholars, pastors, professors, apologists, and even lay people then take that product and make individual determinations on that produced text as to its accuracy to the original. That means that the process of determining the text that is “greatly accurate” has gone through a three-form authentication before even being read. First, it is authenticated by the textual scholars and then printed using their preferred methods. Then it is authenticated by a translation committee, who makes determinations upon those determinations based on their preferred methods which may differ from the determinations of the previous committee. Then it is authenticated by the user of that text, who makes determinations based on their preferred methods, which may be different from the both of the previous two committees! 

This of course is necessary in a model which rejects material preservation and exposure of that material in its axioms. Some other mechanism must be introduced to give the text authority. This being the case, it is rather interesting that the modern articulation of the doctrine of Scripture rejects other mechanisms that bestow the text authority. What is wrong with a magisterium – that it is a function of the church? What is wrong with neo-orthodoxy? A similar process is taking place in the “lower-criticism” of the textual scholars, the simple difference is that it is approved by the people of God who use the product of that mechanism!  

Conclusion

The necessary practical conclusion of the modern articulation of the doctrine of Scripture is that Christians must place their trust in some other mechanism to give the Scriptures authority. These doctrinal statements rely upon the “great accuracy” of the text, so they necessarily rely upon the mechanisms that deem various texts “greatly accurate.” Since this modern doctrine says that God has not materially preserved His Word, a void is created that needs to be filled. There needs to be some mechanism that can determine the level of accuracy of the text that we do have left. The modern church has largely chosen “lower-criticism” as it is employed by those that create Greek texts and translations. Some have chosen neo-orthodoxy. Others have flocked to the Roman or Eastern magisterium.

The fruit of this doctrinal articulation is evident. Verses that were once considered “greatly accurate” to the original are now being called into question daily by Christians everywhere. Passages that have always enjoyed a comfy place in the English canon are ejected by whatever textual theory is in vogue. What is considered “greatly accurate” today may just as easily be considered a scribal interpolation tomorrow. Passages in John that have never been called into question may be discovered to contain “non-Johannine” vocabulary tomorrow based on the opinion of an up and coming scholar. A manuscript may be discovered that alters the form of the text in a number of places. All it takes is one early manuscript to unsettle the whole of Scripture, as we have seen with Codex B. 

Think of it this way. If you read a passage as authoritative five years ago, and no longer consider that passage as “greatly accurate” to the original, what changed? Can you point to a newly discovered manuscript that changed your mind? Was it your doctrine? Was it the opinion of a scholar or pastor or apologist you listen to? These are important questions to answer. When I went through my own textual crisis, I realized that I was the final judge over the text of Scripture. If an early manuscript emerged without John 3:16 in it, I would have thrown it out, especially if that was the opinion of my favorite scholar. I was pricked in my conscience that I had adopted such a frivolous approach to the Holy Scriptures, and it did not take long for me to seek out other doctrinal positions on the text. 

The mechanism that is most consistent, and approved by the Scriptures themselves, is God Himself. I asked myself, “what did God actually do in time to preserve His Word?” If the text did not fall away, certainly I could look around and see that to be the case. I found that there was indeed a textual position which affirmed this reality, and a text that had been vindicated in time. A text that the people of God used during the greatest Christian revival in history. The same text that was used to develop all of the doctrines I hold to. The same text which survived successfully against the Papist arguments that are not much different to the ones used today. So why would I abandon that text, and the theology of the men who used it? Adopting the critical text is not a matter of adherence to a “greatly accurate” text, it is a matter of departure from the historical text. The question of “which text should I use?” is quite simple, actually. The answer is: The text that God used in history and vindicated by His providence in time. The text that united the church, not divided it. The text that the majority of Bible readers still use today. I praise God for the Received Text, and the all of the faithful translations made from it. 

Before you ask, “What makes those readings vindicated?” Think to yourself which methods you are going to use to evaluate those readings. Do they involve deconstructing the narrative that God kept His Word pure in all ages? Do they include the belief that faith communities corrupted the text over time and introduced beloved pericopes from tradition? Do they rest upon the theory that Codex B represents the “earliest and best” text? If so, I would appeal to the Chicago Statement, which says, “We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship”

Providential Preservation and the Modern Critical Texts

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

There are many cases that I have seen where somebody who advocates for the modern critical text uses the theological language, “Providential Preservation.” This is typically due to the person not understanding the current state of modern textual criticism. There have been many developments that have been adopted in the mainstream of textual scholarship that disallow this language from being used responsibly. This problem demonstrates a major fork in the road for those in the confessionally Reformed camp because the confession teaches that the Word of God has been “kept pure in all ages” by God’s “singular care and providence.” This is problematic because the axioms of modern textual criticism do not recognize providence, inspiration, or the Holy Spirit. In fact, the axioms of modern textual criticism assume that the manuscript evidence is no different than any other work of antiquity. Evangelical textual scholars may personally believe that the text has been preserved, but there is nothing in the axioms of their method that even come close to incorporating these truths about Scripture. That means that the modern critical texts have readings that stand against the theological reality that God has preserved His Word providentially. In other words, the modern critical texts have readings that are unique to a smattering of manuscripts, often times just one or two manuscripts, that were rejected by the church through the ages. These readings were rejected by way of fixing them as the manuscripts were copied en masse, excluded from printed editions after the printing press, or directly condemned as corruptions in theological commentary on these readings. 

This is due to the modern critical texts being derived from various textual theories that do not assume a supernatural preservation process, or consider the Holy Spirit speaking to His church in time. The readings used for hundreds of years by the people of God can be wrong, because the axioms of modern textual criticism do not consider the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, or inspiration, or infallibility, or even inerrancy for that matter. These readings are now adopted, not because of providence, but because of textual theories and mythology that overvalue certain manuscripts of suspect origin and low quality. What Christians need to understand, is that these textual theories in some cases have been utterly refuted (like Hort’s theory on Vaticanus), and others (like genealogical models and the initial text), are unproven at best and a fool’s errand at worst. The reality is, if a textual methodology is based on the assumption that the extant manuscripts formerly called the “Alexandrian Family” are standing in any sort of mainstream textual tradition of the church, that textual methodology is flawed and not based on providence. Further, any textual methodology that assumes a reconstruction of the text needs to be done is not based on providence. 

Controversy Surrounding the Continued Use of the Term “Providence”

The Reformed church cannot escape the doctrine of Scripture as set forth in the Puritan era confessions. The language used was written carefully and precisely. This makes reinterpretations of the confessions difficult, though in the case of the modern doctrine of Scripture, this has been done. Fortunately, the authors of the 17th century Puritan confessions were so precise, that this sort of reinterpretation is near impossible without adding new terms and definitions, like inerrancy. What the church needs to know is that the text-critical context of Warfield is much different than the text critical context of today. What Warfield said about Scripture in the 19th and 20th century is out of its scope now, and can no longer be responsibly applied to the current state of affairs in modern textual criticism. The conversation has clearly evolved, and in Warfield’s day, terms like “the original” meant something completely different than they do today. Even doctrinal statements like the Chicago Statement on Biblical inerrancy is outdated due to the introduction of new terms and evolution of old terms. That means that theologians, scholars, and pastors can employ terms like providence, inerrancy, and infallibility while operating on stale definitions and be none the wiser. The problem with this is that somebody can make the same statement regarding Scripture as Warfield or even R.C. Sproul, and that statement will mean something entirely different than it did in their context.

During Warfield’s time, the term “original” was clear. It meant the autographic text. This definition continued to be employed in this way until very recently within the bounds of textual scholarship. The effort of modern textual criticism was geared towards reconstructing this original, and so while the same problems still existed within modern critical methods, it was still based on clear, definite terms. Due to the introduction of the “Initial Text,” the doctrinal formulations of the 20th century are plainly outdated. The reason for this is due to the fact that the Initial Text is not the same, by definition, as the original text or autographs. If we define this conservatively, it is the earliest text within the extant manuscript tradition. If we define this less conservatively, it is a hypothetical text that represents no extant manuscripts from which all manuscripts are derived. The latter definition of the Initial Text is often equated with the “original” text by optimistic scholars, but this is clearly on overreach. The axioms which are producing the Initial Text simply cannot speak to whether it is equitous with the original or autographic text. In short, the effort to find the original text as it has been defined historically has been abandoned. The modern critical methods simply cannot reach back farther than the evidence allows. 

This article is not about the efficacy of genealogical text-critical methods, however, it is about providence. The very use of the term “Initial Text” demonstrates that the modern critical methodologies are not compatible with providence. The need for scholars to shift the goal post from “original” to “initial” demonstrates the vacuous nature of modern text-critical methods. They have not produced the original with text-critical methods because they cannot produce the original with text-critical methods. Since the only way to say that modern textual criticism can produce an original is to first introduce new terms which redefine what “original” means, it should abundantly clear that we are standing on different theological grounds than Warfield and even R.C. Sproul. If they were alive today, they may have agreed with the introduction of such terms, but the fact is, they are not around to reevaluate their doctrinal statements according to these developments. What this practically means is that the doctrinal statements developed in the 20th century are inadequate to speak to the texts that are being produced by modern critical methods as they have developed in the last 10 years. They are stale. This being the case, it is irresponsible to continue using historical protestant language which were formulated upon different definitions. In the light of new developments, these doctrinal statements simply do not mean the same thing any longer. There is a need for those in the modern critical text camp to draft new doctrinal statements, because the old simply do not apply to the developments of their discipline. Interestingly enough, the doctrinal statements that have been produced in the recent literature simply articulate that “God didn’t desire us to have the whole thing.”  

The Modern Critical Text is Not a Providential Text and is Not Justified for Use by the Church

The WCF and LBCF both appeal to God’s providence and apply it to the original texts of Holy Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, stating that they have been “kept pure in all ages.” If a text has been kept pure, it has been kept in such a state that it does not need to be reconstructed. This was the belief of the majority of the Protestant church until the end of the 19th century and even into the 20th century by many. So in order to appeal to providence while talking about the Holy Scriptures, one has to believe that the text has been “kept pure” by providence. That does not mean that one manuscript came down pure through the line of textual transmission. It means that the original text of Holy Scripture came down and was used in faithful churches “in all ages.” In order to recognize providence in this process, one must recognize that this preservation took place in time, by people who used these manuscripts.  

In order to recognize providence as a function of preservation, one has to first believe that despite corruptions entering into manuscripts early on in transmission, the original text maintained its purity through the whole of the textual transmission process. That means that no local corruption could contaminate the transmission process as a whole “in all ages.” We should not be so ignorant to believe that there were no corrupt manuscripts created during this process. The quotations of Augustine and Jerome and other theologians of the church prove as much. If God truly preserved His Word, then all transmission narratives must be within the walls of God’s providential hand guiding the process, and the corruptions of “unfaithful men” should be recognized as corruptions, not adopted into the history of textual transmission.

Secondly, in order to recognize God’s providence in transmission, one has to believe that historical events are a function of that providence. Just like God did not use evolution to create man, he did not use an evolutionary process to create His Word. The text did not develop, it was “kept.” Just like mutations arise in creatures over time, mutations arose in the Biblical manuscripts. Just because mutations occur in humans, that does not mean that those mutations arise in all humans. That means that by the time the printing press was introduced into Europe, the textual tradition was still being “kept pure” by God’s providence, and by God’s providence, that technological innovation allowed the church to collect, compare, and print texts which by God’s providence, had been “kept pure.” A survey of commentary on this Reformation effort reveals a lively discussion about the various printed texts during this time, and the readings they did and did not contain. It was not an effort of one man in a closet, despite what some would have you believe. 

That does not mean that the first editions printed represented that text which had been “kept pure.” It was a process, and by God’s providence, it was a process that occurred in a place where the height of language learning was taking also happening. The humanist renaissance sparked a revival of language learning and a return to studying the original Biblical texts and ancient fathers of the church. Many of the Reformers were humanists, such as Luther, Melanchton, Zwingli, and Calvin. Erasmus, “the smartest man alive,” though not theologically in line with the Reformers, was one of the chief satirists and polemicists against the papacy and one of the most brilliant language scholars alive. There has never been, even to this day, a time where so many scholars, with such an in depth knowledge of Biblical  languages, were in the same place at the same time. Never was there a time in history where the church was so united in pursuing the same cause. Never was there a time in history where the effort of creating an edited Greek text was so pure and theologically united. Never will there be another time in history where the church had the perspective on the manuscripts available, because those manuscripts were still being used in churches. If that is not providential, I dare say that nothing is providential. 

Conclusion

The point is this – if one wants to argue that a text is providential, they must argue for the text that was produced providentially, and completed and used in time. The modern critical text is produced with axioms that scorn God’s providence. These axioms say that the only thing God has providentially done in time is let the Scriptures evolve from their original form, and then let the people of God believe that those evolved Scriptures were the true Biblical text. These axioms are the same that say with confidence that the Reformation text is wrong, but also cannot produce the original text, even with all of the “new and better” data. In fact, these axioms are so ineffective that a new term had to be derived, the “Initial Text,” because these axioms say that the original is so far from being providentially preserved that we simply will never have it. According to the axioms of modern textual criticism, “we simply do not have now what the prophets and apostles wrote, and even if we did, we would not know it.” The question for those that still wish to maintain the doctrine of providential preservation is this: Why are we trusting scholars when they say the Reformation text is not original, when they can’t even determine if their own text is original? Would you trust a mechanic who had never fixed a car? Would you trust a surgeon who had never successfully done surgery? Why are we trusting scholars who say that we cannot know what the New Testament originally said to produce Bibles for the church? 

It is time that Christians stop giving lip service to providential preservation, and actually consider what those words mean together. Providential preservation does not mean that “the Bible has been preserved, it’s just been lost.” The text of the church was not preserved in a barrel or a questionable monastery or the Vatican or the sand – it was preserved by churches that actually used that text “in all ages.” It does not mean that God has ordained a wild goose chase for the last 150 years to recover a lost text. The continued effort of reconstructing the Bible is simply not warranted, if we want to continue using the words “providential” and “preservation” together. Those two words, when put together, mean that God actually preserved the text in time. It is attainable, and we have it. Modern critical textual methods do not consider what God has done in time, because they reject the text that was actually used by the people of God in time. In fact, the axioms of modern textual criticism say the opposite, that the text used in time by the people of God is in error. In other words, they reject providence altogether because they say that all providence has produced is an evolved text. We have to go back and find the original Bible because it has been providentially corrupted. The modern critical text is not justified for use among the people of God for this reason. It is a text foreign to the church in time, and it is produced by axioms that say that “we do not have, and never will have, the text.” 

The Modern Critical Text(s) and Inerrancy

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

In the new year, I have written a handful of articles demonstrating why the modern critical text should not be used. 

  1. It was conceived in 1881 by rule-breaking (Link)
  2. The reconstruction effort is not  justified (Link)
  3. It is a new text that does not stand in the “classic mainstream” of Tyndale, and therefore the burden of proof is on its advocates to justify its continued use (Link)
  4. The Bible teaches preservation, and the modern critical text shows itself to be a corrupt text (Link)

In this article, I want to comment on how the “new and better” data actually condemns the continued use of the modern critical text(s) by showing how it does not comport with the modern, downgraded doctrine of inerrancy. Again, I’ll remind the reader that the modern critical text is not “a” text, but a collection of texts. It is also important to note that what is “new” to us is not new to the church throughout history. At one point, a manuscript that we are calling “new” had some amount of exposure to people. So when we hear the claim that we have “new data,” we need to remember that it is properly “new to us.” At one point, that data was available to some degree or another, and for whatever reason, it ended up buried, thrown out, or destroyed. 

“New and Better”

A common refrain among those that advocate for the modern critical text is that, “if the Reformed had the data we do now, they would adopt the modern critical text.” The claim itself is something that needs to be examined, because I’ve never actually seen somebody explain what about the new data would convince the historically Reformed to adopt the modern critical text. I want to take a critical look at this argument and attempt first define what is being said when this claim is made. Let’s start by stating that it is true, that if by “new data” we mean “new manuscript discoveries,” we certainly do have new data that the Reformed did not have. That being said, new manuscripts do not necessarily mean new readings. In the case that a manuscript discovery yields new readings, then that is truly “new” data. In the case that a manuscript discovery yields the same readings as other New Testament witnesses, then it is less significant as it serves as a supporting data point. In other words, the manuscript may be new to us, but that doesn’t mean that the new manuscript has provided any new readings. So if somebody truly wants to make this argument, it is more important to discuss whether our “new data” introduces a new reading that the Reformed did not have, and then to make a case for the quality of that reading. I have yet to see any sort of analysis of this kind. 

The real question to ask, is what is so compelling about these “new” data points that would cause the Reformed to adopt a different text platform? Do the standards set forth by the modern critical methods measure up to the standards of the Reformed? 

There are certain quality control measures that are unfortunately set aside when a “new” witness is found and catalogued. Due to the axioms of modern textual criticism, all new pieces of evidence are considered as valuable as the next, because it is not a method that considers orthodox doctrine, faith, providence, or the church. So it does not matter to the modern critical text machine if a witness was found in a trash heap or non-orthodox monastery, contains readings that present heterodox doctrines or remove orthodox doctrines, or contain a multitude of idiosyncratic readings and grammar errors. If a manuscript is found that can be dated in the first 1,000 years of the New Testament church, it is considered more valuable than the manuscripts used after 1,000 AD, regardless of the quality. It is actually built into the axioms of modern textual criticism to prefer readings that are short, abrupt, grammatically difficult or less harmonious. 

Herein lies the greatest problem with evangelicals claiming that this “new” data is better than the vast majority of manuscripts and that the Reformed would adopt this “new” data as authentic if they had access to it. Those making these claims never consider the theology and methods of the Reformed against the theology and methods that produce the modern critical text. Further, those making these claims do not usually consider the theology of modern conservative evangelicalism against the theology and methods that produce the modern critical text. The standard which would make that data “better” is completely ignored, especially if one holds to the doctrine that God has preserved the meaning of the Bible, but not the words. Though the doctrine of inerrancy says nothing in terms of the material text of New Testament witnesses, it still assumes that doctrine hasn’t changed over time. This is necessary if one wants to say the Bible is without error in all that it teaches. If something is without error, then it must not change. Change indicates that something has gotten better or worse, and therefore a changing Bible is one that is either becoming inerrant or was inerrant and no longer is. The nature of preservation from an innerancy perspective is that the change of words hasn’t introduced any doctrinal changes. If this is the case, why is that not factored into the evaluation of “new” data? Yet modern textual scholars openly admit that the “new data” produced by the CBGM could change doctrine, theology, preaching, and so forth. The evaluation of the new data produced by the CBGM actually discredits the doctrine of inerrancy because it admits that the Bible is moving towards an improved form. In fact, any text critical method that has at its foundation a changing, uncertain text necessarily denies an inerrant text. 

What this means is that evangelicals should not be excited about “new” data, even by our low theological standards. If innerancy says that the Bible is without error in all that it teaches, what is the doctrinal support for adopting “new” readings without considering the doctrinal impact? If the doctrines are not without error, and doctrines will likely change, that means that the doctrine of inerrancy must be qualified further than it is now or redefined. It needs to be redefined as “The Bible is without error in much of what it teaches.”  Does inerrancy only apply to certain verses and not others? Further, the doctrine of inerrancy is not properly a doctrine that is identified with the material text itself, just the sense or doctrines. In other words, inerrancy is really just a doctrine of Biblical interpretation. The doctrine of inerrancy is not touched by a changing text because innerancy doesn’t have anything to do with the text – it has to do with how we interpret the text. If the text changes, but our interpretation of the text does not, then a passage can be considered inerrant. 


That is to say, that “new and better” data actually doesn’t even matter in terms of inerrancy or the Bible. It is of no concern that the modern critical text is changing because according to this doctrine of Scripture, the text itself is not the material foundation of doctrine. The continued effort of textual criticism is a complete waste of time, if the Bible is inerrant. If it is inerrant now, give it a rest, we’re done here. This actually must be the case, if we are to say that the material text can change but the doctrines cannot. Since the doctrines can exist in a stable form apart from a changing text, then the appeal is either to innate theological truth from nature, some other form of revelation, or historical theology (tradition). In order to prove that doctrine hasn’t changed as the material has changed, a regression test would need to be done for every iterative change to the text. It is clear that inerrancy is not a function of the text itself, it is a function of interpretation. So either the material text is changing and the Bible is not inerrant, or the material text is not the primary source of doctrine. The only case in which inerrant doctrine is founded upon a changing material text is if those material changes were matters of words meaning the same things – synonyms, word order, spelling, etc. Since the changes in the modern critical text extend beyond this category, then the plain reality is that the material text is not the thing that is inerrant. According to this view of the text, the Bible is inerrant by virtue of our interpretation, not by virtue of the text itself. 

Conclusion

In order for somebody to hold to both inerrancy and a changing material text, they have to admit that Scripture itself is not the material foundation for doctrine. So when somebody appeals to “new and better” data, they are really making a doctrinal statement about the inerrancy of the Scripture. If it is the case that a previous iteration of Scripture was not inerrant, and that the “new and better” data corrects these errors, then they are saying that the Bible can move from being errant and inerrant, or it is becoming inerrant.  If it is the case that the Bible is inerrant no matter which iteration of Scripture you look at, then it does not matter which Bible one uses, as inerrancy is a function of interpretation, not the text itself. 

The argument that the “Reformers would adopt the modern critical text if they had our new and better data” sounds good on paper. It is easy to imagine, because most of the prominent names in conservative evangelicalism have adopted the modern doctrines of Scripture and the text that goes with it. In fact, that is often the next step in the flow of the argument. “If this text is wrong, why do all the top scholars advocate for it?” Set aside the argument from authority for a second and consider the merits of the text itself. Consider the doctrine of inerrancy, if you hold to it, and try to understand how that works with a changing text. What surprises me the most, is that people who hold to both inerrancy and a changing text have any issues with people who advocate for the traditional text. Since inerrancy doesn’t speak to the material text, just the doctrines, what does it matter that their text is different? It doesn’t appear that they actually have any right to be upset, because inerrancy allegedly affirms that the Bible has not changed in doctrine across all iterations.

Yet, they do have a problem with the traditional text, because it is a materially different text than the modern critical text(s). Not only that, it has doctrinal differences. There is no escaping the reality that the modern critical text and its axioms have not been justified. The greatest defense for this text is the fact that a lot of popular preachers use it. I would bet, however, that a lot of these popular preachers are completely unaware of what is going on in the world of textual scholarship. It is easy to say that the “Reformers would adopt the modern critical text” without actually proving it. It is simple to appeal to a favorite authority in textual scholarship and say, “well if they believe this then I’m sure it’s justified.” It is easier yet to simply defame and mischaracterise your opponents to invalidate their position to those that do not with to think critically. It is much more difficult to make an argument for the critical text(s) that actually works with what the Bible says about itself. It is for this reason that the use of modern critical text(s) is not justified. Not only does it violate the principles set forth in Scripture, it doesn’t even work with the downgraded doctrine of inerrancy. 

Are Christians Justified in Adopting the Modern Critical Text?

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

In my latest series of articles, I have questioned the validity of the “revision” effort of the 1800’s, which has evolved into a full blown reconstruction effort. Since then, scholars have produced Greek text after Greek text, applied methodology after methodology, all to no avail. Those that align with the axioms of modern textual criticism are unfortunately swimming in a sea of texts, and the scholars heading up the effort have voiced their increasing levels of doubt in the text of Holy Scripture. It is no longer accurate to say that the modern critical text is “a” Bible, because it’s not. It is a dataset of variant readings, a timeline of all of the significant extant corruptions produced by scribes in the first millennia of the church. The modern critical text is the anthology of the scribes as they copied manuscripts. 

An intriguing phenomenon is how men will defend this anthology of variants as though it were “a” text, applying historical protestant language to it as if it were one defineable thing. According to the modern doctrine of preservation, the Scriptures may be preserved within the whole manuscript tradition. The thing that is preserved is somewhere in the stack of datapoints, and many scholars agree that some of those data points have been lost to time. Even more concerning is that there are many data points which we know exist, but do not have in our possession for analysis. According to some scholars, there may be as many as 525 manuscripts left to discover (Gurry & Hixson, Myths and Mistakes, 62). That means that the textual criticism being done is not only operating on a data set that has destroyed data points, it is operating on a data set that has missing data points. This is the “text” that people defend when they fight for “the” modern critical text. 

Is Using This Text Justified? 

Take a moment and put aside all that you know about how slapdash Erasmus was, and all of the driftwood that popular apologists toss into the discussion. Forget for a moment all of the scary words like “Traditionalist” and “Fundamentalist” and take a look at what the modern critical text actually is on its own merits. It is a text that was never used until 1881, and didn’t gain real popularity amongst conservatives until the end of the 20th century. It is a text that is hard to define, and the definable printed editions of it are constantly changing. The methodology being used to develop the most popular printed edition of the modern critical text will not be done until at least 2030, and that’s if they can scrounge up all of the materials needed for the job. The Bibles translated from such texts, or adapted from previous translations and amended by this text, are in flux until this is done.Any Bible that claims to use the Nestle-Aland/UBS platform as a base text is as gooey as the modern critical text itself.  

Now inspect that against what you, as a Christian, know about God’s Word. Do you believe God’s Word as enigmatic as the modern critical text? Will you stake your doctrine on a text that can be described like this? 

 “Clearly, these changes will affect not only modern Bible translations and commentaries but possibly even theology and preaching”    

(Wasserman & Gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism, 6)

It is well documented that the initial “revision” team of 1881 stepped beyond their function as revisors into the role of creators. The story of the modern text is full of massive changes to the text of Holy Scripture. That might be forgivable if the process ever stopped going in that direction, but it has only gotten worse. Even the scholars have growing uncertainty about their own text,

“There has also been a slight increase in the ECM editors uncertainty about the text, an uncertainty that has been de facto adopted by the editors of the NA/UBS”

(Ibid., 6). 

The evaluation of the levels of uncertainty is slight, however, because a brief survey of the scholars working on the ECM shows that “slight” uncertainty is actually full blown skepticism held together by historical protestant sentiment. Due to this phenomenon, it is important to evaluate the text-critical conclusions made by these scholars in a separate category as the theological statements by these scholars. As text critics, the men and women producing texts have great skepticism, but that skepticism is balanced out by the theological foundations set in the previous generations. Putting aside all arguments against the Traditional Text of Holy Scripture, can you, as a Christian, justify a text that can be described in this way:

“The text is changing. Every time that I make an edition of the Greek New Testament, or anybody does, we change the wording. We are maybe trying to get back to the oldest possible form but, paradoxically, we are creating a new one. Every translation is different, every reading is different, and although there’s been a tradition in parts of Protestant Christianity to say there is a definitive single form of the text, the fact is you can never find it. There is never ever a final form of the text.”

DC Parker

Conclusion

Due to the polemic nature of this discussion, it is easy to get swaddled in arguments against a position without evaluating the merits of your own position. This is overwhelmingly the case when it comes to those who vehemently advocate for the modern critical text. As long as we can shout about how Erasmus was a humanist (so was Calvin, by the way), and how Beza was just like Bruce Metzger, and how those that retain the Traditional Text are just “snowflakes” and “traditionalists,” then everything is fine! That may work on Facebook, but when it comes down to it, those that defend the modern critical text will exchange their Bible for a new one every five years until they die, and with every exchange their Bible will look a little bit different. 

So, is it justified to adopt the modern critical text? You be the judge. Take some time and investigate the axioms of modern textual criticism and the text that those axioms produce. Were the Scriptures originally choppy, abrupt, grammatically difficult, and lacking harmony? Did the Orthodox church corrupt the Scriptures to develop the Christology, add pericopes to retain beloved stories of Christ, and amend the text to contend against heretics? Did God lose the ending of Mark? Or did the text start out harmonious, robust, and theologically complete? Did God keep His Word pure in all ages? Did the men of the Reformation have this preserved text? If they did, why continue arguing for readings they rejected? Why strip out the passages they stood on against Rome? And if they didn’t have the preserved text, what is it we have now? We certainly do not have “a” text, we have an anthology of the scribes.

Is the Reconstructionist Effort Justified?

The Young, Textless, and Reformed6 Comments

Introduction 

It has been about 140 years since the reconstruction efforts began on the text of the New Testament, if we use 1881, the year Westcott and Hort’s new Greek text was published as a starting point. The Traditional Text of Scripture had been well under attack before that point, but this was the first successful effort to unseat it. Since then, scholars have tried their hand testing many theories, all of which have proved completely unproductive. At some point, Christians need to seriously stop and question if this effort is justified now, or was ever justified. See, going into the 19the century, the church had a text. It was the text that sparked the Reformation. It was the text that was used during the high orthodox period. It was the text of the Great Awakening. All of the Reformed confessional standards from the 17th century appeal to this text as the pure and preserved text. 

For just a minute, let’s step into the world of business and apply a lower standard to the text of Holy Scripture than what the church gives lip service to. If you were a financier, and were in charge of funding a construction project, what sort of progress would you expect? At what point would you pull funding? How many years would you give the effort? How many failed attempts would you allow? What level of accountability would you hold the construction manager to? If every five years the construction manager came to you and said, “We made a mistake laying the foundation, we have to start again,” would that make you question the construction team’s methods? This is the case for the textual reconstruction effort, except Christians, instead of holding the scholars to basic standards, they have adopted the incomplete work of the reconstructionist scholars, and have even become apologists for it. They have even convinced themselves that this building is the only way buildings should be built, and that anybody living in a completed structure that hasn’t wavered for 400 years is actually foolish. Let’s stop pretending  for a minute, that Christians hold textual scholars to any sort of meaningful standard. If these scholars were held to a basic secular standard, they’d be out of jobs. 

Further, how would you feel if the people responsible for the construction project did not believe they had all of the materials to erect the structure, did not believe they could even erect the structure, and had not yet succeeded in erecting the structure? Who in their right might would continue hoping, defending, and financing this construction team? Even from a secular standard, that is absurd. Why is it the case that after 140 years, with all of this alleged “new and better” data, scholars still cannot seem to give the church a final product?

Assessing the Materials 

The earliest and best manuscripts are often appealed to in text-criticism discussions. Yet this tagline really deserves a second look. First, these manuscripts are not the earliest, just the earliest that we have today. The earliest complete New Testament manuscript is from the fourth century. The Bible was written in the first century. Therefore, the statement “Earliest and best” is already misleading. Second, these manuscripts are not the best by any reasonable standard. They disagree more than they agree, some are even paraphrastic like Codex D and P45, and they frequently disagree with the vast majority of our extant Greek manuscripts. The manuscripts labeled “earliest and best” are more appropriately titled “earliest extant.” Further, these manuscripts have no pedigree. We do not know who penned them in most cases, and the places where they do depart from the mainstream textual tradition are often conveniently in places which directly target major Christological doctrines. If we are going to call something “best,” we should at least be willing to develop and apply a consistent qualitative standard to them. Scholars like Dr. John Burgon did this extensively in the 19th century. Even when the genealogical method, which is preferred by modern scholars, is applied to these manuscripts, they differ to such a degree that they are not considered a textual family. They stand in no continuous text tradition handed down by the church. These manuscripts should have never even been considered as an option as a textual foundation, and yet almost every modern Bible uses them as such. It would be like laying the foundation of a building with different types and sizes of wood and expecting that building to withstand a storm. These manuscripts should have never been more than the muse of the secular academy, and yet the church has wholeheartedly bought into them. 

So what do we say to these manuscripts, that are of no particular quality worth mentioning, which we do not know where they came from or who used them, and which disagree with the mainstream text in a multitude of places? We reject them. When Codex B is collated against the Traditional Text, at least 2,877 words have been removed from just the Gospels alone. 3,455 words removed from Sinaiticus, and 3,704 from what we have of Codex D (The Revision Revised, 75). It is high time that the church sets aside the well intentioned words of scholars which say that, “They are essentially the same text.” How can two texts be “essentially the same” when they differ in thousands of places? How exactly is the word “essentially” being defined here?  With Burgon we must say, “Will the English church suffer herself to be in this way defrauded of her priceless inheritance, – through the irreverent bungling of well-intentioned, but misguided men?” Will we stand around as, “these eminent Divines undertake to decide which shall be deemed the genuine utterances of the Holy Ghost? – which not?”

Let us conclude with Burgon, “Now, in the present instance, the ‘five old uncials’ cannot be the depositories of a tradition, whether Western or Eastern, – because they render inconsistent testimony in every verse. It must be further admitted (for this is not really a question of opinion, but a plain matter of fact,) that it is unreasonable to place confidence in such documents. What would be thought of in a court of law of five witnesses, called up 47 times for examination, who should be observed to bear contradictory testimony every time?” (31). If we wouldn’t trust building materials of such quality, and we wouldn’t trust the testimony of such witnesses in court, why do we continue to trust such manuscripts as the basis for the Holy Scriptures? No amount of extant Papyri can resolve the inconsistencies within these uncial manuscripts the church has placed her trust in. 

Returning to a Reasonable Position 

It is not traditionalism, or fundamentalism, to reject manuscripts of such low quality. It is not “sacrificing truth for comfort” to look at the last 140 years of Reconstructionist text-criticism and reject it. At this point in history, it is actually illogical to continue hoping in an effort that has not succeeded. If we are to consider God’s providence at all, a plain story can be told about the fruit of each text. One text, the Traditional Text, was defended against the Papists and other heretical movements, and led to the largest Christian revival in the whole of human history. The other text, the Critical Text, based on mostly just two manuscripts of low quality, is adopted and even created by the Papists and cults, and has led to conservative scholars rejecting preservation and adopting and applying the evolutionary theories of the academy. It has led to hundreds of translations, none of which are considered complete or correct. It is anti-Berean to look at the fruit of such an effort, the text of such an effort, and the Theological statements of the men conducting the work, and to say, “Everything is fine.”

I exhort you, Christian, to stop defending a building that cannot stand, that has proven itself unstable. If you’re looking for evidence, look at the fact that the modern text is changing, and will continue to change. That alone is enough to cast doubt on the reconstructionist model. If the manuscripts are of such quality that they should unseat the Traditional Text, why can they not be used to create a stable text? Why don’t the scholars themselves have confidence in them? I encourage you to investigate the theories and theological standards which have produced the modern Greek texts. Are you comfortable aligning with the theological position that says we do not have now, and probably never will have, the text of the Apostles? Investigate the claims of “fundamentalism” and “traditionalism” and see that they are simply smokescreens to distract from the reality that the modern methodology has not produced a text. 

Look at the character attacks and storytelling on Erasmus and see them for what they are, a distraction. Look at the pedantic presentations of critical text apologists that are aimed almost exclusively at the character, credentials, and even age of those who defend the Traditional Text. Study the polemics of the Papists against Beza and see that their arguments are often the same exact arguments employed against the Traditional Text by Reconstructionist text-criticism apologists. If you are hoping that the direction of the modern text is going to slow down, it is not. There will never be a final product, and your modern Bible will continue changing. Compare that with your theology of Scripture and “prove all things.” The reconstruction of the New Testament was never justified, and never necessary, because the Word of God was never lost. It never needed reconstructing, and the fruit of such a reconstruction has shown the folly of ever thinking that that was the case.  

If you want proof of the low quality of the earliest extant texts, look at the doctrinal statements made by those who know them best. Start with the Chicago Statement and see that the only thing that modern theology will defend is the inerrancy of the non-existent autographs. If the earliest manuscripts are our only shot at having a New Testament, then by their own words, we will never know exactly what the New Testament said. By their own testimony, the Bible doesn’t teach that the Scripture would be preserved perfectly. By their own admission, God never desired to preserve His Word perfectly. Is that the stand that the 21st century church wants to take? That the Bible has not been kept pure in all ages? At least they are being consistent. These doctrinal positions are the logical conclusion, if the quality of the earliest texts are considered “best.” 

Conclusion

The reconstructionist effort began with deception. The Revisionists in the 19th century created a new text when they were only authorized to make a small amount of revisions to the AV. They made changes they were not authorized to make, created a Greek text that they were not authorized to create, and justified it by a theory that has been so thoroughly debunked the whole effort should be questioned. If the earliest extant manuscripts aren’t the best, then the reconstruction effort should have never been considered. The only reason it took place initially was due to breaking the rules set for the revision. Further, the foundational theological premise of the continued use of such a “revised” text is that God has not kept His Word pure in all ages. It requires the belief that certain parts of God’s Word have fallen away. It requires the use of theoretical genealogical models which are demonstrably arbitrary to produce a text. It requires that the church adjust their view of Inspiration and Preservation to changing theories that are constantly falling in and out of vogue. If the modern critical text doesn’t affect doctrine, why does doctrine change as the modern text changes? 

The reconstructionist effort should be rejected. Not because the scholars are mean, or malicious, or have poor intentions, but because the effort itself is not justified. The materials being used are not of proper quality or quantity. The methods used are theoretical and devoid of spiritual quality. The product of the effort speaks for itself. The fruit has grown and fallen off the tree. Christians must rally around a stable text if it wants a stable church. Dear Christian, receive your inheritance that the great fathers of our faith fought for. Doubt not that God has preserved His Word, and stop defending theological frameworks that insist that He hasn’t. Have confidence in the Word of God, and God Himself in His ability to prevent His Word from falling away. 

 “The words of the Lord are pure words: As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them O LORD, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” (Ps. 12:6-7)

Going Back to the Start

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

There are approximately 450 Bible translations in English, each one unique. The most popular of these include the NIV, KJV, NLT, ESV, NKJV, NASB, and CSB. All of these utilize different translation methodologies, and all of these are either revisions from earlier translations, or follow the translational choices of previous translations. Among conservatives, the KJV and ESV reign supreme, though the ESV has largely won the hearts of the modern Calvinist camp. Prior to the late 19th century, there was really only one Bible used by all English speaking churches, the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV). We’ve come a long way in just over 100 years. It is easy to get bogged down in discussions over which version is the best, and that certainly does happen, often. It is often said that the English speaking world has an “embarrassment of riches” as it pertains to Bible versions, and I suppose that is true if we’re counting noses. Unfortunately, the quality of this multitude of versions should cause the sound minded Christian to see the hundreds of versions for what they are – simply an embarrassment. So how did we get here? How did we get from a church with one text to a church with more texts than there are genders recognized by the state of New York? 

A Short History of English Translations 

Prior to taking a trip through time, it is important to evaluate the state of affairs of Bible versions, and the fruit of such Bible versions. In the first place, it should be apparent to all that the number of Bible translations are not a blessing, but a blight to the English speaking church. Not only is it common, but inevitable, that you will encounter a multitude of translations wherever you go to fellowship. I could write several blog posts chronicling the various occasions on which an NASB devotee and an ESV reader went at it, ultimately resulting in the Bible study devolving into a shoddy attempt to do word studies using some online lexicon. Rather than going back to the Greek, let’s go back in history and see how this all started. 

In 1881, a revision of the Authorized Version was completed, and the product was called the Revised Version. The committee responsible for this effort were authorized with the simple task of removing the “plain and clear errors” in the AV. Some of the rules for such a revision included: 

  1. To introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of the AV
  2. To indicate such alteration in the margin
  3. Only necessary changes were to be made

Not only did the “revision” team not follow these rules, they broke them in excess. They didn’t just “revise” the AV, they created an entirely new underlying Greek text, an entirely new translation, and the notes which they left in the margin to detail such additions and subtractions were so inadequate that even the most learned reader could be misled by them. The vague statements such as “some ancient authorities” in the margins have been carried over in spirit into the beloved modern versions, most notably the ESV, NIV, and NASB. These kinds of footnotes are not only bewildering, they introduce doubt where doubt need not be introduced. That is not to say that the intentions of the revision team were malicious, but if they were graded on how well they could follow directions, they would have failed. This is relevant because almost all of the modern versions stand in this textual tradition. 

In the preface of the ESV, it reads that it “stands in the classic mainstream of English Bible translations over the past half-millennium. The fountainhead of that stream was William Tyndale’s New Testament of 1526; marking its course were the King James Version of 1611 (KJV), the English Revised Version of 1885 (RV), the American Standard Version of 1901 (ASV), and the Revised Standard Version of 1952 and 1971 (RSV).” 

If you’ve read both the ESV and KJV, you’re probably thinking what I thought when I read that: What loose definition of “classic mainstream” is being used? 

If by “classic mainstream” it is meant that it has 66 books in it, then it certainly does stand in the same stream. Yet, anybody who has read these two versions knows that this is a plain abuse of the term which only serves to obfuscate the reality to the reader. The reality is that the ESV, and almost every modern version stands in the stream of either the RSV or the ASV, and only the KJV can properly claim to stand in the tradition of Tyndale. One cannot say responsibly that a text is in the same tradition as another when they are different in hundreds of places, and those Bibles which stand in the RV stream omit over forty verses from the KJV stream. See, the English Bibles leading up to the KJV in 1611 all had the Longer Ending of Mark, the Pericope Adulterae, the Comma Johanneum, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, Romans 16:24, and so on. They all translated the same reading at John 1:18 and 1 Timothy 3:16. They all stood in the same textual tradition. So it is rather disingenuous when the revision team first introduced their text, advertising it as a “revision,” and again disingenuous when Crossway published their preface saying that the ESV was in the “Classic Mainstream” going back to Tyndale. This same strategy is still employed today by many top scholars who consistently prop up this idea that the two streams are essentially the same. 

It is important to note that not only is the text vastly different between the RV tradition and the KJV tradition, the textual methodologies are completely different as well. If the two streams are different, every Christian should be asking three questions: 

  1. Why is there such a concentrated effort to mitigate the differences between the two streams? 
  2. Why is it so important that the two streams stand in the same tradition? 
  3. If the “revision” effort resulted in an entirely new Greek text, should we adopt that text? 

Answering the Difficult Questions

The reason there is an effort to mitigate the differences between the two streams is due to the fact that if the streams are truly significantly different, the classic Protestant doctrine of inspiration and preservation is incorrect. If the Scriptures have been kept pure in all ages, there wouldn’t be, and cannot be, two textual traditions that are both valid. And if the modern textual tradition is valid, then the sum of classic Protestant doctrine was built on an incorrect text. That is why it is so important that the two texts stand in the same tradition. If we were talking about a handful of insignificant readings which were simply ignored for a hundred years or so, that is easily written off by the fallibility of the textual criticism done in the 16th century. That is not the case, however. The reality is, that we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of differences. So many differences, in fact, that the two text platforms are entirely different Bibles. That should cause every single Christian who cares about Inspiration and Preservation to give serious thought to the reality of two different textual platforms. If the ESV, for example, does not stand in the “classic mainstream” of Scripture, what should we think of it? 

Rather than viewing the discussion over translation as a matter of preference, we need to revisit the history of translations and see if that first “revision” was even warranted, and what exactly was done as a part of the effort. The reality is, if the revision team had followed instructions, it is likely that I wouldn’t be writing this blog post. We’d all be reading a faithful update to the Authorized Version. That of course, did not happen. Instead, we have hundreds of Bible versions, endless debates over which translation is best, the enemies of the faith constantly attacking our embarrassing situation, and utter chaos in our churches as a result of our multitude of Bible versions. Yet these are not the only products of that fateful “revision” effort. As a result of the modern textual methodology, pastors and layman alike are taught to read their Bibles critically and subjectively, picking and choosing verses to believe and not to believe. The common opinion is that “no translation can adequately bring forth the original,” resulting in people utilizing Greek lexicons to warp the text into what they want it to say. The plain fruit of this is that people simply do not trust their Bible translation. Even worse, the latest textual methodology that has evolved from the 19th century has brought the levels of skepticism to dire extremes. Not only is it the conservative position to approach the text skeptically and subjectively, it is perfectly normal to reject the preservation of Scripture altogether. In fact, it is naive, and even considered fundamentalism to affirm that God has preserved the matter of Scripture perfectly into the 21st century. 

The reality is that the “revision” done in 1881 has led to an embarrassment of problems for the modern church. It has given license for people to not only doubt their translation, but to doubt the text it was translated from. It has introduced division by forcing the church to take a stand on the traditional text against the modern text. It has created controversies, debates, strife, confusion, chaos, and has opened the door for not only the enemies of the faith to discredit the Scriptures, but given full license for Christians to do the same. Look around, Christian. There is not a Bible anymore, just bibles. Rather than squabbling for hours on Facebook over textual variants, perhaps it is a good idea to back up for a second and look around. Which text is the real problem? Which text really needs to be justified? Who is the burden of proof really on? It is abundantly clear which text has caused more problems. The question to ask, and an important one at that, is: Was it justified for the church to adopt a text that was conceived in scandal, and should we adopt the children of that text today?

In the following blog posts, I will be exploring these questions. Happy New Year!


Common Sense Arguments Against the Modern Critical Text

The Young, Textless, and Reformed5 Comments

Introduction

It is easy to get bogged down in conversations about textual variants, manuscripts, and elusive terminology when it comes to any talk about Textual Criticism. These types of conversations prevent the average Christian from entering into the discussion, and so it is common to just side with a favorite pastor or scholar. Fortunately, the conversation is not as complicated as many make it seem. It is true that in order to analyze a variant or read a manuscript, an understanding of the Greek language and a general knowledge of textual scholarship is required. This should cause the average Christian to pause and consider that reality. Should every Christian need to learn Greek and study textual criticism in order to read their Bible? Does that sound like something that God would require for His people to read His Word? Does God require papal or scholarly authority for His people to know which verses are authentic? 

Those who advocate for this have made a serious error in their understanding of the availability of the Scriptures. They have imposed a burdensome standard upon the Holy Scriptures which puts a barrier between the average Christian and New Testament scholarship. This cumbersome gatekeeping tool has informed Christians everywhere that unless they have a PhD in Text-Critical studies and know Greek, they are simply unequipped to determine which Bible they should read, or which variants within those Bibles can be trusted. This common idea has introduced a neo-papacy within the Protestant church, which tells Christians that they must wait for scholars or pastors or apologists to speak Ex cathadra before trusting any verse in their Bible. 

Is it Really That Complicated? 

Not really, no. The direction of modern textual criticism has refuted itself in the fact that it readily admits it cannot find the original text of the New Testament. In other words, their methods have failed. In order to obfuscate this reality, scholars have shifted the effort to finding the Initial Text, which is really just a presuppositional effort to produce a hypothetical (non-existent) archetype from the smattering of Alexandrian manuscripts. This is the first common sense argument against the Modern Critical Text – it doesn’t claim to be the original text, and the methodologies being employed cannot and do not make any certain claims on producing the original text. So for any Christian who wants to “know what Paul wrote,” the modern methods aren’t claiming to provide that kind of certainty. That kind of certainty is only provided, given a scholar or somebody else speaks authoritatively over a text for the people of God. This being the case, Christians need to pick a pope to decide for them if Luke 23:34 really is original, because the popes disagree. If the protestant religion is truly a religion of Sola Scriptura, this simply does not work. It is the same argument the Papists make, only the pope is exchanged for a scholar. If a Christian is okay with maybe knowing what Paul wrote, I present a second common sense argument against the Modern Critical Text. 

If you are fond of the argument that claims that the New Testament is the best attested piece of literature in antiquity, boasting thousands of manuscripts compared to other works such as the Iliad, than the Modern Critical Text fails that criteria. The only text platforms that can use this argument are texts that represent the vast majority of manuscripts, such as a Byzantine priority or Traditional Text based Bible. The Modern Critical Text is based primarily on two manuscripts, which means that the apologetic which says that we have thousands of manuscripts isn’t true for the Modern Critical Text. One would have to say that the New Testament is only supported by less than fifty manuscripts, which makes it one of the least attested to books in antiquity. The narrative of transmission presented by the modern critical scholars says that the rest of the thousands of manuscripts were byproducts of scribal smoothing and orthodox revision. In supporting these modern texts, one has to accept that fact that the vast majority of the 6,000 manuscripts we have were the product of scribal revision and orthodox tampering, and do not testify to a preserved Bible. In fact, this is the common opinion of the men and women engaged in actual textual scholarship. This reality transitions quite nicely to the third common sense argument against the Modern Critical Text. 

Christians should be confident that the thousands of manuscripts testify to the authentic New Testament when compared and edited together. The fact that these manuscripts were copied so much and were used to heavily throughout time should tell a story that is often brushed over by modern scholarship. The story is that these manuscripts, or a comparison of these manuscripts, were always treated as authentic throughout time. In fact, the manuscripts used by Erasmus represent the majority of manuscripts far more closely than the Modern Critical Text. While I don’t believe that simply counting manuscript readings produces an original text without any further consideration, it is a good place to start to reject the few spurious texts that the Modern Critical Text is based on. 

A common sense methodology would also admit that we do not have every manuscript surviving today, and that the testimony of the people of God throughout time should also be considered so that not one word is lost from the Holy Scriptures. In terms of data analysis, the amount of data points that the Modern Critical Text represents should be considered an outlier. So is it the case that a few manuscripts which did not survive in the manuscript tradition are original? Or is it more likely that the vast majority of manuscripts represent the original when compared? In order to responsibly represent the case for the Modern Critical Text, one has to tell a tale that the New Testament evolved over time, and became so corrupt that nobody alive today really knows what the original said. Thus the modern effort is focused on producing a hypothetical archetype for these outlier texts. The modern method assumes that the thousands of manuscripts are corrupt evolutions of the original text. That leads us to a fourth common sense argument against the Modern Critical Text. 

It technically could be true that the handful of early surviving manuscripts represent the original text of the New Testament. Simply counting readings does not necessarily prove originality. There are a handful of readings that the people of God have considered original throughout time that are no longer available in the majority of manuscripts. That is not proof, however, that these now minority readings were not the majority at one point in time, or considered authentic despite not being the majority. God never promised to preserve the majority text in every case, He simply promised that He would preserve His Word until the Last Day. The majority text simply testifies to a different text than the “earliest and best”, and the opinions of the people of God throughout time should serve as a way to understand which readings were considered authentic throughout time. The first time this was ever done on a large scale was during the 16th century, when the printing press was made available to 16th century theologians and scholars. 

So the work during the 16th century was taking place while manuscripts were still being used and copied in churches. The common sense argument is that those people had better access to the manuscripts that were circulating and considered authentic then we do today. After the Bible shifted from existing in hand-copied codices to printed editions, the hand-copied manuscripts were used less, and began being submitted to museums and libraries rather than being used in churches. The texts that the people of God used were no longer in manuscript form, but printed editions of those collated manuscripts. The simple reality is that in the modern period, the manuscripts are artifacts of a time before the printing press. Almost nobody has used a manuscript in a church for centuries, so the evaluation of those manuscripts is difficult without the testimony of the people who actually used them. Thus, the final common sense argument recognizes that the earliest surviving manuscripts are not a standard that anybody would use from the perspective of God preserving His Word. 

The final common sense argument is that the manuscripts used in the first effort of textual criticism do represent the best form of the New Testament as it was preserved in the manuscript tradition. Compare this to the opinion that a smattering of heavily corrected, barely copied past the fourth century manuscripts are “earliest and best”. That is because until the printing press, these handwritten codices were actually used in churches by the people of God. So at the time of the first printed editions, the textual scholars of the time had the best insight into the manuscripts that were actually being used, regardless of being majority or minority texts. In order to reject the text-critical efforts of the 16th century, one has to believe that texts were chosen which nobody was using or had never used. This stands in opposition to history however, as Erasmus was heavily influenced by readings that would received by all. Popular opinion often influenced Erasmus in his text-critical decisions. That is the real story behind his inclusion of 1 John 5:7 in his third edition of the Novum Testamentum. He did not lose a bet, he feared that people wouldn’t use his Greek New Testament if he didn’t include it. 

Conclusion

Based on common sense arguments, what makes more sense? Did the textual scholars who were doing text-critical work when manuscripts were actually being used have better insights into what the best manuscripts are?  Or do modern textual scholars who only have access to manuscripts in museums and libraries know which texts are the best? Is it more likely that God hid away His Word for a thousand years in a handful of manuscripts? Or did He preserve His Word in the manuscripts that were actually being used by the people of God? These are all questions that any layperson should be able to answer. It does not take a PhD in textual studies to determine that the Modern Critical Text starts in the wrong place, with the wrong manuscripts. 

The common sense conclusion is that texts used in the first production of printed texts represents the best form of the manuscript tradition that has ever existed. After this point in time, manuscripts were sent to libraries and museums and the printed form of the Greek New Testament was the form that the people of God used. These printed forms were translated into various common languages and used with little to no contest for the next 300 years, until modern theories of scribal tampering caused people to throw out the work of the 16th century. The claim that “we have more data” really does not mean a whole lot, considering we have less perspective on the value of said data. At the end of the conversation, one has to ask, “How valuable is the data that was hidden in caves and barrels?” Is the data that was not being used more important, or is the data that was being used more important? Modern scholars consent to the former, and the scholars of the 16th century consented to the latter. 

In order to conclude that modern scholars have a better perspective on the data, one must write off the perspective of Augustine, who said, “Certain persons of little faith or rather enemies of the true faith fearing I suppose less their wives should be given impunity in sinning removed from their manuscripts the lord’s act of forgiveness to the adulteress. As if he who had said, “sin no more” had granted permission to sin.” One must claim that Calvin and Beza were either liars, or confused and mistaken. One must declare that Turretin would have upheld the readings he rejected if “he simply had access to the data we have today”. It takes an effort of revisionist history to believe that the believing people of God would adopt the Modern Critical Text. The simple common sense conclusion is to read these theologians and scholars as though they weren’t fools, and determine that they simply disagreed with modern conclusions. Erasmus, Beza, Stephanus, Calvin, Turretin, Gill, and Dabney did not think anything of the Vatican Codex and manuscripts like it. In fact, they considered them a grotesque corruption of God’s Word. Based on the testimony of the people of God in time, which side is spinning tales and mythology? Is it the people who say that the Word of God evolved and became corrupted beyond repair? I heartily disagree, and affirm with the theological giants of the past that God has preserved His Word in the Received Text.  

Evaluating the Modern Claim of Better Data

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

It is often said that modern textual scholars know more than any other scholar in history because of new data and fresh methodologies. This is somewhat perplexing, because one would expect that the New Testament manuscript data available today would actually be less abundant due to the fact that hand copying ceased somewhere around the 1600’s. In fact, a number of manuscripts have been destroyed since they were first catalogued at the turn of the 20th century due to fires, poor storage, and other negligent causes. Additionally, this assumption of “new” data often fails to recognize that there is nothing new about these manuscripts. These manuscripts are certainly new to modern scholarship, but at one point in history, they were available to the people of God for consumption and use. 

Which raises the question, “Why did these manuscripts fall out of use?” Why do the manuscript discoveries of the 19th and 20th century vary so heavily from the massive amount of manuscripts that were being copied all throughout history? One theory is that the abandonment of these manuscripts allowed for the proper preservation of these texts. That God, knowing the foolishness and general illiteracy of scribes, providentially tucked away His Word in the sands of Egypt to protect His Word from corruption. This aligns well with the 20th century theory that scribes smoothed out the readings of the New Testament, developed the Christology, added in beloved pericopes, and generally altered the text to better defend the orthodoxy that developed after the Ancient period. If these texts, hidden away in caves and monasteries, represent the original, then scholars should be able to explain how each of the massive amount of variations developed over time. 

The Alleged Kaleidoscopic Nature of the Text

Theologically speaking, this is an atrocious theory. This idea essentially says that the original text was available only to the Egyptian Christians for a couple hundred years, and that the rest of the copying done was simply in error. Even within this time period, the copying of these manuscripts was so varied that these manuscripts have trouble agreeing with each other in a wealth of places. The majority of the extant data available lives on in less-ancient manuscripts. Due to the high evaluation of these Egyptian texts, the rest of the manuscript tradition is typically evaluated to be in error in one way or another. 

Sure, the later copyists may have retained the general idea of every verse, but if the Egyptian texts are truly original, then the majority of the 5000+ extant manuscripts are the product of revision gone wild. It is to say that scribes had no respect for accurate copying, or that they knew they were even supposed to be copying at all. Copying the exact text had to have been more of a suggestion than a rule. What about those Egyptian texts were so special, that essentially nobody copied them going into the early middle period? Well, one theory is that these manuscripts were so exquisite, that God decided to hide them from His church, so that when a chosen generation of scholars arose in the 1800’s, they could find them, and restore His Word to His people once and for all. 

Obviously this theory is problematic. Why would the closest form of the text to the original be found in a region where there were no apostolic missions, where the people did not speak Greek? Does it stand to reason that scribes, who did not know Greek, would do the best copying of the Greek language? Some have actually made the assertion that not knowing the language helped them copy accurately! If you’ve ever copied something in a language you don’t know, you know this is patently absurd. It actually makes sense that the most corrupt manuscripts might arise in an area that was constantly battling for orthodoxy, far from the center of apostolic Christianity. It may truly be that the Alexandrian scribes were the most careful, but the data seems to point in the opposite direction. In fact, if one were to take the majority of manuscripts, which continued to be copied outside of Egypt, and compare the Egyptian manuscripts against those, it seems reasonable to assume that something was awry in Alexandria at the time of the production of the beloved early manuscripts. 

I can speculate for days as to what might have influenced the unique text form of the Egyptian manuscripts, but that is not the point of this article. What most people forget to consider in data analysis, are events that might skew the data in one direction or another. In the case of early, extant New Testament manuscripts, many scholars and non-scholars alike fall into the trap of thinking that because something is extant, it must be more valuable, or the only representative data point from that time period. In this case, hyper-empiricism has influenced modern textual scholarship for the worst. If we don’t have the manuscript, we cannot verify that it ever existed. 

The Impossibility of Original Egyptian Texts

Yet it is impossible that manuscripts earlier than the Egyptian papyri and uncials simply did not exist at one point or another. And since the only New Testament author to make it to Egypt was Mark at the end of his life, it stands to reason that the Egyptian manuscripts were copied from imported texts. Which means that the Alexandrian text was more likely shortened than the majority text expanded. The importation of texts explains why there were two versions of the Gospel of Mark circulating in Egypt early on – one with the ending, and one without. Yet while all this is going on, the rest of the people of God continued copying the New Testament, outside of the petri dish that is Alexandria. Much of that data has been lost to persecution, fires, and other natural causes, but the fact stands, that the data existed at one point in time. What did those manuscripts look like, I wonder? Were they short, choppy, abrupt, and filled with large empty interruptions? I suspect not. 

Since the original text of the New Testament was inspired by the Holy Spirit, these other manuscripts were probably of remarkable quality, despite scribal errors and mishaps. In terms of the actual content, a consistent doctrine of inspiration would point to the reality that the original texts were not a crude human invention. The point is this, that the Egyptian manuscripts are not the oldest manuscripts. They are simply the oldest surviving manuscripts. They do not, and cannot, speak for the larger textual tradition which existed outside of Alexandria. The majority of the extant New Testament manuscripts had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was certainly not Alexandria. So how do we explain this textual anomaly? Well you have probably heard the common theory which is filled with stories about scribal revision and smoothing, but that does not work with a conservative doctrine of preservation. If the majority of extant manuscripts are a lofty revision of the original, they must be rejected in total. The amount of revision that can be done in a thousand years would prevent the original from ever being found. And if these manuscripts are rejected, the only other option is a smattering of Alexandrian manuscripts that stopped being copied sometime after the fourth or fifth century for the most part, hidden away by God until the time came when the chosen scholars of the 19th century would rescue the blunder-filled efforts of scribes throughout church history. 

An unfortunate reality exists, if this is the case. The first being that God decided to preserve His Word by way of hide-and-seek. The second being that the corpus of early manuscripts is not deep enough to provide a meaningful text. And when I say meaningful text, I mean a printed text that scholars can point to and say, “this is the one!” And before somebody says “that is unreasonable!” Remember, that the scholars are allegedly attempting to reconstruct the original text of the New Testament. Either they will arrive at a product, or they won’t, but the fact stands that they should be trying. To balk at the idea of one text is to admit that the original cannot be found. The fact remains that there is not a single, agreed upon text in the majority of modern scholarship. 

The reason for that is because the Alexandrian manuscripts do not agree with each other enough to even demonstrate that they are directly related to each other. At best they are cousins. Which is why, when the Egyptian manuscripts are taken as a base text, a wealth of verses are left to speculation and uncertainty. There is simply not enough data in the Egyptian manuscript corpus to come to a conclusion on what text is the earliest and best in every case. One might consider himself to have found the text with “great accuracy”, but not without many places of uncertainty. The most complete copies of the New Testament from this locality and time period disagree with each other so greatly that they cannot even be properly called a manuscript family. If it were possible to arrive at a text that is original to Alexandria, it would have been completed a long time ago. 

That brings us back to the discussion of data, and how in the modern period, it is highly unlikely that our data is more valuable than the data that has been historically available. This is due to the fact that most of the ancient data has been destroyed. It is possible that it is equally valuable, but certainly not better. Considering the unfortunate reality that people tend to treat manuscripts in such a way that tends to their loss and destruction, it is a common fact of history that the number of manuscripts available today is a drop in a bucket of manuscripts that have been lost or destroyed. If one takes the number of manuscripts that have been lost or destroyed in the modern period, and applies that same logic to every generation in history, it is safe to say that a great number of manuscripts were lost and destroyed. It is possible that not a single manuscript has been erased from history, but that is highly unlikely, and even demonstrably false.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is to call into question the assumption that modern scholars have better data than those of the past. Regardless of how one views the Egyptian manuscripts against the majority of manuscripts, the fact stands that the high evaluation of the minority of manuscripts is highly suspect. This conclusion can be arrived at without looking at all of the scholars of the Reformation period, who consistently reference “ancient approved copies” that support readings tossed out by modern scholars. As a result of this hyper-empiricist epistemology, the constant conversation of textual criticism is centered around, “How did this reading get added?” or “How did that reading develop?” 

This seems to be a confused effort from a theological perspective that says that God has preserved His Word. The word preservation itself means to be kept safe from evolution, change, and development. Yet the assumption of modern methods is that the general testimony of the thousands of manuscripts is one that has developed from some unknown original text. This is why these modern methods need a fresh understanding of what it means for something to be preserved in order to justify the effort.  And in the case that preservation simply means all the ideas are there, there really is no need for protest from the modern camp when a Christian wants to adhere to the traditional text of the Bible. It has all the right ideas and doctrines, and is therefore preserved. Such is the conundrum of the effort of modern textual criticism on the text of the New Testament.