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Putting the Conversation in Perspective

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

It may be difficult for many people to see the relevance of the textual discussion. This is often because it is rare that a positive case is made for the modern critical text.The majority of exposure people get to this conversation from a modern critical text position are simply polemics and a healthy dose of pejoratives. The problem with this is that these methods fail to offer a reason to believe that the modern critical text is the best. Simply saying the TR is awful and shouldn’t be used actually introduces far more problems than it solves. From a practical standpoint, if the Masoretic Hebrew text and the Received Greek text is not viable for use in the church, then not only was the Protestant religion sparked and built on a bad Bible, but there is an unfinished Bible for today’s church. It is important to clarify that I am not saying that people who adopt the modern critical perspective cannot be saved or cannot benefit from modern translations. I myself read through the Bible for the first time using an NIV. What I am saying is that a “mere Christianity” approach should not be adopted for the Bible we use. As Christians, we should be concerned with every jot and tittle, not the bare minimum it takes for somebody to be saved. That being said, I want to explain why somebody who found great comfort in the NIV in the early years of his Christian walk now reads a traditional Bible. If the last book you read on text-criticism was The Text of the New Testament in seminary, things have changed…a lot. Let’s take a step into the mindset of a modern critical text advocate for a moment here. The justification for adopting the modern critical text requires three main assumptions.

  1. The Received Greek Text does not represent the earliest manuscripts, and therefore represents a New Testament that was corrupted by well-meaning Christians over time
  2. The Masoretic Hebrew Text does not represent the original manuscripts as it has been corrupted by Jews seeking to diminish the deity of Christ
  3. The modern critical methods, and thus the modern critical text, are better than the previous text and should be used over and above the traditional text of the protestant church due to this orthodox and Jewish corruption of the Scriptures

An unfortunate side effect of advocating against the historical text of the Protestants is that the validity of the Bible is undermined as a whole. If the Masoretic Text has not been kept pure, which Hebrew text should be translated from? Typically the Septuagint is offered. There are two main problems with this. 1) There isn’t one “Septuagint” and 2) the confessions affirm against using translations as the ultimate rule of faith. Further, if the Received Text is not the New Testament, then the people of God have been woefully deceived. There are two ways to look at this deception. In the first place, if the Received Text was a strange, historical phenomenon where the people of God chose manuscripts that nobody had ever used in history, then the church was deceived for hundreds of years. This is in essence what is being claimed when somebody says, “This reads in a fashion unknown to the Christian tradition for a full 1,500 years.” If it is the case that the manuscripts used in the Reformation era printed texts represented the “most ancient copies”, as they claimed, then the church was deceived since the early church. In advocating for the modern critical text, there is a significant theological problem introduced that cannot be resolved without arguing for a total corruption of the text. 

More Questions Than Answers

If the theories of textual scholars are correct, the actual Bible is preserved partially in a small minority of manuscripts from the third and fourth centuries. The vast majority of manuscripts, according to modern scholarship, are the product of a well-meaning corruption by Christians to solidify doctrine, add beloved pericopes, and correct grammar mistakes. No matter how somebody spins it, God not only let his church and the Jews corrupt the Scriptures, but then allowed them to believe that those corruptions were inspired. In simple terms, there is no continuity in the preservation of God’s Word from a modern critical text perspective. The BIble was lost for a time, and now needs to be recovered. The text existed in the early church, became corrupted by the believing people of God and the Jews for a large chunk of church history, and resurfaced in the modern period for use by all in a small amount of neglected manuscripts and some versions of the Septuagint where doubt is cast on the Hebrew. 

The basic argument that is presented by the Confessional Text position is that the Bible was preserved going into the medieval and Reformation period, and that the text-critical work done in that period used those preserved manuscripts. If the assumption is that God preserved His Word, it would make sense that the general form of manuscripts used by the church would be most abundant, as they were used the most. Manuscripts that were later found in libraries, caves, and barrels sat collecting dust for a reason. Therefore the text-critical effort of the Reformation period was one of printing versions of the manuscripts which were considered best during that time. The problem that many have with this perspective is that the Reformation era text is often compared against the modern critical text with the assumption that the MCT is representative of the authorial, or original text. 

Yet a significant problem with this perspective is that it cannot be proven, or demonstrated with any level of confidence from an evidentiary standpoint. This is made evident in the fact that the theory of using text families to get back to the original text has been mostly abandoned. Instead, the effort of modern textual scholarship has shifted from finding the true authorial text to the hypothetical initial text. This is the major shift that occurred from the time of the Hort-Metzger era. Since the text that the people of God used during the Reformation period has been written off as a corruption, the only thing left to do is try and reconstruct the text that existed before that happened. This is more or less the current effort of the Editio critica maior. Instead of using text families, the current method is examining individual variant units and trying to determine which variant gave birth to the rest of the readings found in later manuscripts. No matter how thorough this analysis is, there will never be a way to determine if the earliest reading represents the original reading, or if that reading is even the earliest. This is the biggest limitation of the CBGM. There will never be a method that can span the historical gap between the authorial text and the initial text. In reality, this initial text will simply represent something similar to one version of the Bible from the third or fourth century that the people of God didn’t use universally. This is clearly shown in that the extant third and fourth century manuscripts do not represent the majority text or the Reformation era text. 

To put this in perspective, there are eight (P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, P75, Aleph, B, EDIT: Manuscript Clusters Tool is not linking properly. Type in Manuscript Name to use) significant manuscripts from before the fifth century that represent the text form which is called “earliest and best” in textbooks and modern bibles. Only two of these are complete bibles. The most complete of these manuscripts do not agree enough with each other to be related directly, which means that they did not descend from one uniform manuscript tradition. That means that the origin of these manuscripts will forever be a gray area to some extent. 

 Let me paint a picture that may help you understand what this means. Imagine you find a stack of nearly six thousand bibles. A handful of those bibles are extremely old, but not used very much so they are still able to be handled and examined. These older bibles have abrupt readings, omitted verses, more variants between the synoptic passages in the gospels, and have a great number of difficult grammatical constructions which take some effort to understand. They look different from the rest of the bibles, which have better grammar, less omitted passages, and more harmony in the readings. These handful of bibles are older, however, so you determine that they are the best. Since the majority of the bibles have a number of readings in the New and Old Testament that disagree with these older bibles, you determine that the majority of the bibles are wrong. You devise a theory that the original bible looked like the minority of older bibles. You make it your life’s mission to ensure that the majority of bibles are not used anymore, and 120 years later, the majority of churches are using the bible you’ve determined to be earliest and best. A small minority of churches still use the rejected bible, but are mocked and ridiculed for reading it. Those who read the newly declared oldest bibles ensure that these people are called “traditionalists” so that everybody knows they are wrong for not adopting the new bible. You devise pejorative terms like “New Bible Onlyists” to further scorn people for not adapting to the times. The majority of bibles are said to have been proven to be corrupt, so the division between the two camps becomes wider. There is only one problem – in the 120 years that the church adopted this new bible, nobody has been able to prove that the original claim was correct. In fact, there is an increasing amount of evidence which demonstrates that that claim was not correct at all. Instead of rejecting these old bibles, a new method is devised to prove the original theory. The church, mostly unaware of this, continues to read these newly adopted bibles and viciously attack those that have not adopted the new standard.

Conclusion

The period of time from the authorial event of the New Testament to the Reformation period is the most significant when it comes to the textual discussion. There are two narratives of the transmission history during this time. The first is that the Bible was kept pure in the manuscript tradition until the Reformation period, where the text-critical efforts of that time took those preserved manuscripts, edited them into printed editions, and made Bibles from them. The second is that by the third and fourth century, the manuscript tradition began to evolve as believing Christians smoothed out the grammar, added beloved pericopes, and expanded verses to make the Christology of the Bible more clear. In the second narrative, the Jews were also hard at work corrupting the Hebrew Scriptures so that by the time the modern period came around, there was not a single Hebrew text which represented the authorial text. 

This conversation is not about the TR or the modern critical text, it is about the narrative of preservation. If God preserved the Bible into the Reformation period, than the work done during that time was the final effort needed. The only reason to believe that an ongoing text-critical effort is required is if the first effort used a corrupted version of God’s Word in the Hebrew and Greek. Since the source material of the Reformation period needs to be considered corrupted to justify the modern effort, additional methods must be employed which extend beyond the capabilities of the extant data. These methods include constructing hypothetical archetypes of the earliest texts and correcting the Hebrew with Greek versional readings. Despite the best efforts of modern textual scholarship, the results of these methods cannot “prove” anything regarding the original text. The strongest testimony to the authorial text will always be the witness of the people who used those texts in time. Christians can indeed have confidence in their Bible, but I argue that the modern critical methodology cannot provide that confidence. If the Bible was preserved, it was preserved up to the time of the first text-critical effort. That effort produced the Bibles that sparked the Protestant Reformation and the largest Christian revival in the history of the World. The theological works which the modern church stands on were developed from this text, and Christians still stand on that theology, especially the confessionally Reformed. At the very foundation of this conversation is two different narratives, and two different methodologies. Neither of these narratives can be proved purely by extant manuscript data if the manuscript data is viewed agnostically. The real question that must be answered by Christians is, “Did God preserve His Word into the middle period and Reformation period, or not?” If manuscripts that represent the minority of the extant data are rejected, than the perspectives of the Reformed are clear as day. They believed the Bible had been preserved in both the Hebrew and the Greek, and I argue that the modern church should join them in that belief. If it is the case that an argument can be made for a preserved Bible from a modern critical perspective, I have yet to see it demonstrated. Unless that happens, I will continue to stand on, and advocate for, the Bible of the Protestant Reformation.  

More Resources:

Jeff Riddle Word Magazine

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

Dr. Joel Beeke on Retaining the KJV

Refutation of Dan Wallace on the Byzantine Text

All Scripture is Profitable, Except When It’s Not

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

It is easy to look at the textual discussion from afar and fail to see the relevance. If this is just about a few textual variants and the difference between “thee” and “you”, what is even the point? I want to zoom out for a second, away from all of the text-critical jargon, and make application to the heart of the issue. At its very foundation, the Protestant faith is founded upon the belief that God has spoken and acted in time. There are two realities that testify to this fact – that people believe that a man named Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again two thousand years after the fact, and the Holy Scriptures. While the reality of a Christian church is an important reality to note, without the Holy Scriptures, Christianity was just a cultural phenomenon that got way out of hand.The Scriptures provide the foundation, the purpose, and the reality that the Triune God has spoken and acted in the specific way He did. When the Scriptures are undermined, popular mythology and false narratives run wild, as we have seen in the modern period with Walter Bauer, Bart Erhman, and Robert Price, and Richard Carrier.  

Even more pertinent to this discussion than the opinions of apostate men and atheists is how the undermining of God’s Word has affected the believing church. It is important to recognize that a low view of the Scriptures has given permission for the unbeliever to stand over God’s Word in judgement, and it is even more important to recognize how this has impacted the people that the Bible was given to – God’s covenant people. The Bible expresses very clearly that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God” and is given to the people of God for the purpose of making men wise unto salvation and “that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:15-16). When the people of God do not trust that “all Scripture” is powerful to do this, the church deteriorates and adds its own standards into the traditions and practices of the Christian religion. Personal words of knowledge are given more credence than the Scriptures, new perspectives on Paul’s theology are taught in seminaries, and the critical theory of James Cone is paraded through the seminary and academy. While it is disheartening to see the antagonistic efforts of secular scholars as they tinker with the Bible, it should be even more disheartening that the majority of the Christian church simply does not trust every word of God. This kind of distrust in God’s Word is prolific, and is made apparent in the fact that even seminaries are training men not to build doctrinal statements upon contested passages or verses that contain unique vocabulary. 

The Inconsistency of the Modern Hermeneutic 

The modern interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:16 is that all Scripture is profitable, unless it contains a variant, or it contains unique vocabulary. This is fundamentally a skeptical perspective on the Word of God, and it has had great consequences in the church. Christians are commanded to approach the Bible with faith (John 10:27), not apprehension. Further, this kind of perspective is completely in opposition to historic orthodox protestant belief, who built entire doctrines on contested passages and unique vocabulary. They felt confident and even obligated to do so because they truly believed in God’s Word as sufficient and authoritative. To demonstrate this fact, the Reformed doctrine of Scripture, inspiration, is founded on a word that Paul probably made up, and only occurs once in the Bible – θεόπνευστος (Inspired, God breathed). A brief survey of the Reformed confessions reveals a multitude of verses that are actually removed from modern Bibles, or delegated to brackets and footnotes. This speaks to a more foundational problem within the Christian church today. 

The people of God believe, in opposition to the historic view of the Scriptures, that the authority of God’s Word rests in the subject, not the object. In other words, God’s Word is only authoritative in so far as a person declares it to be authoritative. When a Christian declares that doctrine should not be built upon a contested passage, they are implicitly accepting that they get to determine what is authoritative in Scripture. In adopting this hermeneutic principle, the Christian has lost all right to contest the various heterodox interpretations of Scripture that have inundated the church. The Christian has no contest with Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman, or Robert Price, because they are simply employing the same interpretive principle as the Christian who only wants to build doctrine on non-contested passages. The only difference is the scope and origin of passages which are considered contested. Underneath the differences is the same exact principle. Since the authority of the Bible has been shifted from the object to the subject, and the subject is not omniscient,  it is impossible to make a meaningful claim about the object that doesn’t amount to a personal opinion. 

The Bible explicitly condemns this kind of hermeneutic in 2 Peter 1:20-21, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” This passage vests the authority of the Scriptures in the movements of the Holy Ghost, in the Scriptures themselves. Those same Scriptures declare that “all Scripture” has been inspired by God, and should be used in all matters of faith and practice. If a Christian wishes to contest, let’s just say, the claim that David raped Bathsheba, they must first assume that there is indeed a correct interpretation, and the proper meaning of that passage is not dependent upon the subject. Any and all refutations of this strange understanding of David and Bathsheba are presupposing the objective authority of the Word of God. So while one can say that since that passage is lacking any meaningful variants and thus true interpretation can be done, the foundational hermeneutic principle assumes the authority of a different hermeneutic principle.

The Greatest Inconsistency of the Modern Church 


Herein lies the greatest inconsistency in the modern church, and the reason that heterodoxy has become orthodoxy in the modern period. The modern doctrine of Scripture does not recognize the self-authenticating, objective authority of the Word of God. Certain people may give lip service to an authoritative standard in the Scriptures, but the actual theology underneath it cannot provide the kind of authority that is being claimed. In the modern view of Scripture, the Word of God is only considered authoritative in so far as the subject can determine that it is authoritative. In doing this, the Christian church has actually given allowance to not only the unbeliever, but also the believer to impose their subjective authority upon the text. If you have ever heard somebody say, “Well I just interpret that differently”, you have experienced the fruit of this modern perspective. The Word of God is demonstrably not the final authority, the principia, of the people of God in the vast majority of churches today. 

Those that consider themselves Reformed might be nodding their heads and saying “amen!”, but the chances are extremely high that you, as a Reformed believer, are guilty of the same exact thing as the unbeliever and liberal mainstream evangelical. If this is your hermeneutic standard, it is more than likely that the only thing keeping you from heading the direction of the rest of the church is the tradition you hold to, which then becomes your ultimate standard. Praise God for the faithful men who came before us and established such traditions.

Before explaining this, I want to reemphasize the two opposite views on the Holy Scriptures. The first is that the Word of God is self-authenticating (αὐτόπιστος). The Word of God is authoritative in itself, because it is the product of God speaking in time (Deus dixit). God, in His singular care and providence, kept the Scriptures pure in all ages. The object which is Scripture, stands over the subject, the human, as a judge, because God has spoken. This is the foundation that one appeals to when they claim that the Scriptures are the principia for all truth claims and so on. The Scripture does not become Scripture based on the evaluation of an individual, the Scriptures are the Scriptures regardless of what the subject thinks. 

The second view is that the Word of God is authoritative insofar as the subject judges it to be authoritative. God has spoken, but the subject must determine what it is that God has spoken by way of higher and lower criticism. There is no consistent standard that can be applied to authenticate God’s Word, no ultimate standard, so the Bible only really exists subjectively. Not only are translations of God’s Word different, two people reading the same version of God’s Word experience differing levels of authority depending on how much authority the subject has vested in it. Even in the most conservative circles of protestant Christianity, believers only accept the Bible as authoritative in so far as the evidence and opinions of scholars declare it to be trustworthy. In this view it is perfectly acceptable to determine that Luke 23:34 is not God’s Word, or is God’s Word, as the authority of that passage is dependent upon the judgement of the individual. The object, the Scriptures, only have authority in so far as the subject, the human, has approved of its authority. Any one passage of Scripture is not authoritative in itself, it becomes authoritative based on subjective evaluation. There may be a great number of passages that are given authority without much contest based on some external standard, but there is nothing within this methodology that prevents even the least contested passages from being called into question (See Ehrman, Price, Carrier). A passage like John 3:16 is just as safe as any other contested passage, because John 3:16 is only given authority by virtue of the subject. 

The Practical Difference Between the Two Views

The obvious practical difference between the two views is that one is truly consistent in saying that the Scriptures are the principia, and the other is not. Many Christians insert a false dilemma into the conversation by asserting that any and all text-critical work invalidates the self-authenticating nature of the Scriptures, or that no text-critical efforts invalidate the self-authenticating nature of the Scriptures. This is due to a poor evaluation of different text-critical standards. All throughout time Christians have been used by God as a means of ensuring that the authoritative Word of God is preserved through copying of manuscripts, collating and editing those manuscripts into printed editions, and translating those editions into every common language. The important question to ask then, is “How did God manage to accomplish the preservation of the Scriptures without allowing for the subjective opinions of man to soil its authority?” It is not the correct understanding to say that all text-critical efforts are equal and to then reject the self-authenticating nature of the Scriptures because “text-criticism” has been done. It is in this dilemma that many are swayed to unfaithful understandings of the text of Holy Scripture. They say that since text-criticism has been done, the Bible needs to be given authority by text-critical efforts, therefore the Bible must be authoritative by virtue of those text-critical efforts. 

Yet all text-critical efforts are not equal, and any text-critical methodology that assumes that the Bible is given authority by virtue of a text-critical effort is an unfaithful effort at the start. In the modern period, these efforts have been driven by the theology that God’s Word is not authoritative in itself, it becomes authoritative by virtue of some external process. As a result, the doctrine of Scripture has evolved and adapted to the theology of modern textual scholarship. The neo-orthodox say that the Word of God becomes Scripture when the believer experiences it by the power of the Holy Spirit, and those that advocate for the modern critical text say that the Word of God becomes Scripture when a scholar or individual evaluates it highly enough. That is the bedrock for the canon-within-a-canon model,introduced first by Kurt Aland, which says that the books of the Bible may be set in stone, but the readings within those books are not. 

In order for Christians to be consistent in claiming that the Word of God is truly authoritative, they must reject all methods that require constant, ongoing, everchanging standards to evaluate the authenticity of various Biblical texts. It is inconsistent to say that a text could be authoritative today, but not tomorrow. This is exactly the argument that is made when one denies Luke 23:38 or Mark 16:9-20. The authenticity of a passage is liable to change based on the popular opinions of those judging the text. In order to continue supporting such a view, a serious effort to conflate the methods of text-criticism throughout time with the modern methods is required. In doing so, one must first deny the reality that historical text-critical efforts stand at odds with the modern methods, and secondly deny that God’s Word has ever been authoritative in itself. That is to say, that the Word of God has always been authoritative by virtue of something else. There is no problem in this view with rejecting the Reformation era text, as that text platform was authoritative for a time, but is no longer authoritative in the modern period. All meaningful apologetics are completely forfeited by adopting this view. All fundamental truth claims based on the Word of God are given up. In an attempt to justify the modern effort, the whole authority of the Scriptures has been surrendered.   

Conclusion

The textual discussion is far more important than discussing which variants are correct or whether or it is allowable for a Reformed Christian to adopt the modern critical text or the TR. At the core of this conversation is a battle for the authority of God’s Word. Is the Word of God self-authenticating, as the Reformed believed, or is it only authoritative by virtue of some other process, as the modern eclectic view posits? If it is the case that the Scriptures are only authoritative by virtue of some external method, which method is best? Which standard does the church trust to give authority to the Scriptures? The popular opinion today is split between Münster, Cambridge, and various scholars and apologists. The modern view of Scripture does not allow for any one person to have a Bible. Everybody has a different Bible depending on the authority they trust. The number of bibles is infinite, and the massive amount of confusion in the Christian church today is evidence of that. In using the modern standard of subjective authentication of God’s Word, Christians are essentially guaranteeing that the Church will continue to evolve and conform to the world as time passes.

Textual Methodologies & Transmission Narratives

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

In this article, I describe the three distinct categories that exist within the context of the textual discussion. These categories are Textual Methodology, Text Platform, and Translation. A failure to properly recognize these categories as distinct will inevitably result in a worthless conversation wherein one person boldly enters a thread and declares everybody but himself a KJV Onlyist. It is high time that this sort of behavior is escorted out of the confines of Christian dialogue. It is important to recognize that every single Christian has a Textual Methodology, whether they know it or not. A person who utilizes the terminology “KJV Onlyist” for everybody who doesn’t read a modern Bible reveals a lot about the insecurity of their own position. Not a single person approaches the text with a blank slate, and when one fails to acknowledge his tradition, it is extremely likely that that person is blind to his tradition. Never before has blindness been so routinely praised than it has in the modern period. 

The first category that exists within the textual conversation is what I call Textual Methodology. Within the umbrella of this category is the doctrine of Scripture, which includes inspiration, preservation, and transmission history of the text of the New Testament. Every single person who reads, believes in, or comments on the Bible has a doctrine of Scripture. There are two common views of Textual Methodology and transmission narratives that exist today within Reformed Orthodoxy that I will discuss in this article. 

Contending Textual Methodologies and Transmission Histories

Within the context of conservative protestant orthodoxy, there are two major textual methodologies and transmission narratives worth commenting on. These are not the only positions, but the positions that represent Modern Reasoned Eclecticism (NA/UBS) and the Confessional Text (TR).  The first transmission narrative is not built upon a doctrine of inspiration and preservation, but starts from an empirical standpoint. Christians who adopt this narrative then must craft their doctrine of inspiration and preservation around the narrative of modern scholarship retroactively. The Christian articulation of inspiration and preservation within modern textual scholarship says that the original autographs of the New Testament were immediately inspired, but that as time passed, and scribes foolishly copied those autographs, the Scriptures became so corrupt that the people of God no longer had an authentic Bible in their possession. All of the important doctrines were still contained within the Bible, but the actual Bible itself had become hopelessly mutilated. All of the original readings should technically be somewhere within the manuscript tradition, but the people of God have not known what those original readings were for most of the history of the church, and still do not know. Since the goal of the Scriptures is to make men wise unto salvation, the only real doctrines that must be preserved are the “important” ones. 

This corruption most likely occurred sometime around the fourth century, and from the fifth century on, the people of God utilized a text that was heavily edited and smoothed out by scribes. The Orthodox corruption of the Scriptures resulted in the intentional embellishment of Christ’s divinity (expansion of piety), addition of a multitude of passages (Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11, John 5:4, Rom. 16:24, etc.), and corrections to the original grammar which was initially choppy and harsh (less harmonious readings). Since the church was chiefly culpable in corrupting the Scriptures, their commentary and opinions on the manuscripts should not be trusted, as they were prone to side with readings that corresponded with the orthodox dogmas which developed since the Christian church came onto the scene. As a result of this understanding of the transmission history of the New Testament manuscripts, the only manuscripts with any real value are the ones that existed prior to this orthodox corruption. Due to this great effort of orthodox tampering, the only manuscripts with any value are the ones that predate this global contamination.

Manuscripts which meet the criteria for this story of transmission are the ones that contain short, choppy, and grammatically harsh readings and do not share a pregeneaological coherence (% similarity in the variants) with the majority of manuscripts.The goal of textual scholarship then is to reconstruct the hypothetical archetype of the manuscripts which predates the orthodox corruption. Since the earliest complete manuscripts date back to the 4th century, that is the farthest back this reconstruction effort can go without too much speculation. So at best, this view will result in a bible that represents the manuscripts which reflect the above criteria and transmission history. The goal is not to find the original text, but rather find the original testimonies of the historical event of the incarnation.There are some within this camp that believe a reconstruction of the Initial Text might as well be as good as original, but the brunt of the highly influential scholars agree that this conclusion is unwarranted with the available data.  

The second major understanding of the transmission history of the New Testament is less popular, but is represented by the views set forth within the 17th century Confessional standards. Many people anachronistically say that the Reformation and Post-Reformation Divines adopted, or would have adopted, the first narrative (Such as TurretinFan and those like him), but I have yet to see that demonstrated in any way whatsoever. The doctrine of the framers of the confessions say that the original autographs of the New Testament were immediately inspired, and that the inspired readings were passed along within the manuscript tradition and kept pure in all ages. Due to the covenantal purpose of the Scriptures, namely that they are the means God has ordained to make men wise unto salvation, the preservation of God’s Word is intimately tied to God’s purpose of having a people unto Himself. The Scriptures are self-authenticating (αυτοπιστος), which means that within the Scriptures themselves there are markers which allow men to receive the readings which are authentic in every single age. Not only are all of the important doctrines preserved, but the very words themselves are preserved and recognizable by the internal criteria set forth in Scripture. There was never a point at any time in history where the Scriptures were so hopelessly corrupted that the global church did not know which copies were authentic, or of high quality. There certainly were manuscripts which were created by unfaithful men and heretics, but those manuscripts were never copied or used much by the vast majority of churches in the Christian world. 

That is not to say that one manuscript came down through the manuscript tradition perfect. There were thousands of scribal errors which affected every manuscript in one way or another. Yet, due to the covenantal nature of the Scriptures and God’s singular care and providence in keeping them pure, there was never a time where these scribal errors and corruptions were so prevalent that the people of God did not know which reading was true or false. Any major or minor corruption could be easily identified by comparing one manuscript to a manuscript of great quality, as defined by the theologians and reception of the manuscript by the people of God. In every generation, there were manuscripts, codices, and translations of these original texts which were esteemed highly by the people of God and used for all matters of faith and practice. That does not mean that literally every believer in history had access to these authentic copies personally, but that these authentic copies were transmitted through faithful churches and were generally available to the people of God that attended these faithful churches. It is important not to impose modern standards of availability of literature onto a culture that was limited by hand copying written texts. 

In the 16th century, new technology (printing press) was implemented in this transmission process which allowed for a wider distribution of Biblical texts. This changed everything. For the first time, Bibles were made available to a wider audience, and the people of God had a greater amount of access to the Biblical texts than ever before in history. The people of God utilized this technology to create printed editions of the approved copies that had been passed down through the manuscript tradition in every age. With the advent of this new technology, hand written copies of the New Testament were retired to libraries and museums, and the printed text of the Word of God became the new standard for the church. This, alongside of the protestant Reformation, allowed translations to be made from these printed editions and distributed to the people of God in their mother tongue without harassment or persecution from the Roman Catholic church. In the Post-Reformation period, all commentaries, theological works, and translations were made from these printed texts.  

Conclusion

The two narratives detailed above represent the different narratives presented by Modern Reasoned Eclecticism and the Confessional Text position, respectively. In adopting the Modern Critical Methodology, one must also adopt the transmission narrative that goes with it. This conversation is far more complex than a debate over whether the ESV is better than the KJV. Everybody that has formed an opinion on the text of the New Testament has a doctrine of inspiration and preservation, and a transmission narrative to go with it. The unfortunate reality is that Christians have been instructed to unthinkingly avoid these foundational conversations. What is worse, is that there is a great effort to convince people that the modern critical axioms are historically Reformed. 

It should be apparent, that the pressing conversation in the textual discussion is not whether or not the KJV is bad, it is whether or not one can defend a Scriptural doctrine of inspiration and preservation with various articulations of the modern transmission narrative. The chief concern should be whether or not one’s doctrine of inspiration and preservation comports with Scripture. The secondary concern should be whether or not one’s transmission narrative comports with the reality that God has preserved His Word. The rest of the conversation flows from these realities. To the Christian who insists on continuing to make this conversation about the KJV and KJV Onlyism, I challenge you to inspect your Textual Methodology first before deciding to berate other Christians for reading a Bible you don’t like. It may be possible that many Christians have not counted the cost of adopting the modern theories, methodologies, and texts prior to throwing their weight around in the conversation. 

Textual Methodology, Text Platforms, and Translation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

The conversation of textual criticism, which is properly called textual scholarship, has made its way to popular forums, Facebook threads, and even churches. Perhaps this has been the case for some time, but it seems that there has been a major uptick in people who have expressed interest in the topic. Oftentimes terminology muddles the conversation, so the goal of this article is to provide proper category distinctions that will hopefully bring more clarity at a popular level. Due to popular level podcasts, articles, and books, the average onlooker of the conversation has been taught to conflate the various categories within the conversation. A great example of this is the constant confusion between translation methodology and text-critical methodology. Despite common thought, the focus of this conversation is not primarily concerned with which Bible translation one uses. That is simply the practical implementation of one’s viewpoint on the topic. At a basic level, this conversation can be simplified into the three categories which are 1) textual methodology, 2) text platform, and 3) translation. 

Textual Methodology, Text Platforms, and Translations

The methodology one chooses is directly related to the doctrine of Scripture, namely inspiration and preservation. At its foundational level, a person’s understanding of the nature of Scripture drives all other opinions regarding the matter. The two competing thoughts right now are whether Scripture has been generally or partially preserved, or particularly preserved. This methodology flows into which underlying texts one believes to be the “best” or “original”. It can be helpful to discuss the differences between text platforms, but ultimately the conversation comes down to how one answers the question, “Has the Bible been preserved or not?” The final category is simply the practical implementation of the first two categories, and results in which Bible one reads. The major methodologies are modern reasoned eclecticism, equitable eclecticism, majority text or Byzantine priority, and the Confessional Text position (Traditional Text, Ecclesiastical Text, etc.). Each of these methodologies have their own canons and systems which are distinct from each other. The final category, translation, is not technically a text-critical category, but at a popular level, it inevitably comes up.

Translation methodology in itself is partially related to the first two categories, because all translations must make employ of a base text, sometimes called a “text platform”. That base text is chosen based on theological and methodological reasons. At its foundations, however, translation is simply taking a text from one language to another. That means that a translation can use an extremely accurate original text, and still be of poor quality, depending on the translation committee’s methodology and knowledge of both the original text and target language. That is why many who believe that the Modern Critical Text is the best can still reject the NLT or NIV as a sound translation in place for the ESV or NASB. 

Many popular level discussions simplify the conversation to “KJV Onlyists” vs. the rest of the world, but that simply does not work if one wants to engage charitably in the conversation. There is a depth of nuance that contributes to the discussion, and many people read the KJV for reasons completely independent of their understanding of textual scholarship. The same can be said for people who read the ESV, NASB, NIV, or any other translation for that matter. If I were to ask somebody which translation they read, and they responded, “I only read the ESV. It’s the translation that scholars trust, and it’s easy for me to understand”, would it be fair for me to call them an “ESV Onlyist”? Even if somebody had an informed opinion on textual methodology and decided to only read the ESV as a result of that, would it be fair for me to call that person an “ESV Onlyist”? No, it wouldn’t. Is it fair for somebody in one of the other methodological camps to call somebody who defends the modern critical text a “Modern Critical Text Onlyist”? Again, no it wouldn’t. Titles like these only serve to add unnecessary hostility, division, and confusion into the conversation.

It is especially important to understand these category distinctions, considering a great effort has been made to intentionally conflate them for one reason or another. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that due to popular level presentations on the topic, the vast majority of Christians have actually been instructed to make these conflations. This is evidenced in the fact that most people, including some scholars, do not know the difference between a majority text position and a confessional text position, or that the KJV and ESV are translated from different text platforms. Popular level literature has actually instructed Christians to define anybody who doesn’t read a modern Bible as a “KJV Onlyist”, even those who don’t read the KJV. At a popular level, Christians do not understand the difference between textual methodology and translation methodology, or even understand the methodologies being employed to produce the Nestle-Aland/UBS printed texts that modern Bibles are translated from. For most Christians, the conversation has been framed as “KJV Onlyism” vs. the “correct view”. 

Conclusion

The kind of argumentation employed to defend the texts produced by modern reasoned eclecticism often introduces a terrible amount of confusion into the conversation that disallows for any sort of meaningful discussion. My goal in writing this article is to provide clarity by offering some important category distinctions. The first category is textual methodology, which is based upon an individual’s doctrines of inspiration and preservation. The second category is text platform, which is selected based on an individual’s textual methodology. The final category is translation methodology, which is the practical implementation of the first two categories. By allowing for these category distinctions, a productive conversation should be possible.    

Count the Cost, Christian

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

A Sea of Doubt

A component of critical thinking that has unfortunately been lost in the modern period is the ability to analyze the cost of making an argument. Few stop to consider what else must be true if the claim they are making is true. An argument does not exist in a vacuum, it is the product of a system. Claims regarding the Holy Scriptures are often made in this fashion, as though one can adopt a postmodern view of the Scriptures without any impact to the historical doctrines of inspiration and preservation. When one wades into the shallows of an ocean at low tide, he might find that all is right – the water is cool, the current easy, and he feels safe with his feet  planted in the soft sand. But every tide has an ebb and flow, and no ocean at low tide ever stays shallow for long. Lying beyond the safety of the shore is an undertow and the deep murky depths, and while one can see his feet in the shallows, with each ebb and flow the water darkens until he feels his feet leave that soft sand. 

Making an argument without counting the cost and considering the ends  is the same as venturing into the ocean at low tide and believing that it will stay safe and traversable. Underneath every shallow argument is a tide of consequences that will eventually rip the feet out from under those who make them. Such is the case when it comes to the textual discussion. Many arguments seem to work until the tide shifts and carries with it the children playing in the shallows. Nobody truly knows how deep the ocean is until they are separated from the shore. Under every argument is an ocean, and ignoring the tide for the sake of winning an argument only puts those carelessly playing in the sand in danger. And when the tide rises, it should surprise no one when yellow boats inscribed with the names “SS Barth” and “SS Bultmann” come to rescue the floundering children. 

Counting the Cost of Playing in the Low Tide

There are some important, practical realities to consider before saying “I want to know what Paul wrote!” The first question that one must ask is, “What method am I using to determine what Paul wrote?” One must take careful inventory of the state of the ground underfoot. Countless Christians have firmly planted their feet on the ground of modern textual scholarship without performing this analysis. They have not counted the cost. So when somebody standing on such ground rejects, let’s say, Mark 16:9-20, they do so without understanding why they are doing it, or where that rejection leads. 

So let’s examine the ground upon which this argument stands. The argument begins with manuscript evidence. Particularly, three manuscripts. Two of these manuscripts are said to have been created in the fourth century, and the other in the middle period. It then goes on to explain why these manuscripts are more valuable than the more than 1,000 manuscripts available that have the ending in it. It argues that these manuscripts are the best because they are the oldest surviving manuscripts. In the shallows of the low tide, this argument seems good enough, but what lies beneath the surface? 

First, like every argument for the modern critical text, it starts from an evidentiary standpoint. Even if the person making the argument has faith, the substance of the argument itself is one that is agnostic to the belief system of the one making it. That of course is the appeal. Yet, underneath this argument lies a deeper, more foundational starting point. In order to make this kind of argument, one first has to start with the assumption that an element outside of the Bible has the authority to authenticate this reading or that. The authority of the Bible rests on external validation. That is to say that the Bible has no authority in and of itself. It only becomes authoritative when an external element determines it to be so. Further down, this argument makes another assumption, that an empirical standard has the ability to make such a determination. This is not the case, however. Even the earliest manuscripts are still hundreds of years after the authorial event of the New Testament. And since the originals are lost, there is no way to actually prove that Mark 16:9-20 was or wasn’t there in the original manuscript according the modern critical standard. There is nothing to test the hypothesis against. 

So the standard that is being used is not capable of determining originality one way or another. At the deepest level of this argument lies the most fundamental starting point. If the longer ending of Mark is not original, then the people of God had the wrong Bible for over a thousand years, as almost every single manuscript containing Mark 16 has the passage, and the commentaries and quotations of the passage span from the Ancient fathers through the post Reformation period. That is to say, that the Bible was not preserved, and the people of God picked the wrong Bible, copied the wrong Bible, and used the wrong Bible. Thus, from this perspective, God may have inspired the original manuscripts, but the people of God never knew what exactly He inspired. One can assert originality from this perspective, but the argument from evidence is completely agnostic to religious views of inspiration and preservation. 

At its very core, modern textual criticism is completely agnostic, even hostile to opinions of faith. So when one makes a completely evidential claim to the authority of a given passage of Scripture, he is doing so from an agnostic starting point. The modern critical method does not care about religious feelings. When somebody adopts this starting point, they hand over the ability to make any sort of claim of divine authorship, because the Author has no authority within this system. This is what lies beyond the shallow tidewaters in the murky depths. All modern text-critical arguments begin with assuming that the Bible requires external validation and then adopts a method that cannot validate that argument in any meaningful way. Don’t believe me? Find a modern critical scholar who has “found the original”. As to whether or not the shifting modern text is speaking divinely to somebody, that remains in the mind of the subject, the person reading that text. The Bible is not divine because it is the Word of God, it becomes the Word of God by way of external examination or internal subjective experience. In and of itself, the Bible is simply a man made product that might be close to the original. 

The Shallows at High Tide

Isn’t there another option? Is it possible that God chose to preserve His Word imperfectly? Isn’t it possible that God never desired to give His Word to His people completely, or with absolute certainty? This is the argument made by people who are standing on the shore, watching the scholars play in the water. They are only comfortable making the arguments from evidence because they haven’t felt the crushing weight of the ocean bend them in half. They haven’t seen the tops of their feet disappear as the tide rolled in, or felt the darkness of the water reach up to them from the ocean floor. They haven’t considered the breadth of the deep. Or maybe they have, and haven’t realized they are drowning yet. They only know the shape of the ocean from afar, and that is why they are comfortable trusting the opinions of those in the water who say, “The ocean is deep, but not that deep. I wouldn’t go in if I were you. Just take my word for it.” The Christians on the warm sand see the crowd of heads nodding in agreement, and carry on as usual. Yet everybody bobbing in that water knows that there is a 300 foot gap between their science and the ocean floor, and the honest ones will say that they haven’t seen the bottom and never will. They look over to the yellow life boats called “SS Barth” and “SS Bultmann”  and “SS Vatican” and are grateful that those boats will save any Christian who decides to wander in as deep as they have. 

Count the Cost, Christian

The modern critical methodology cannot offer certainty, and it does not claim to offer certainty. It ends where it starts and starts where it ends. It can only do as much as its principles allow, and its principles cannot be applied to manuscripts it does not have. So does the modern critical text proponent have any right to claim whether or not the longer ending of Mark is original or an orthodox corruption? No, they don’t. That would require stretching the data farther than it is able to go on its own, which many do, betraying the ground they stand on. 

Count the cost, Christian. Does the Bible need to be authenticated externally, or is the Bible self-authenticating? If the Bible is not authentic in and of itself, are you willing to pay the price that comes with it? There is a reason the Reformers rallied around Sola Scriptura. They had paid the price of for too long. They had seen the logical end of a Bible imbued with papal authority. If you’re so committed to a Bible that requires external authentication, tell me, who would you have authenticate it? Are you willing to go down the road to Rome in the name of “Reformation”?

There is another path that avoids the water altogether. Ignore those who say that believing in God’s perfectly preserved Word is “Pious and sanctimonious”. That is not the voice of your shepherd. There is a better path, one that is well traveled, far away from the ocean of uncertainty. It does not start with evidence, but the fact that God has spoken. It does not rely on popular opinion and the machinations of scholars. The Word of God is an authority in itself. Hurry to the shore, out of the water, and onto the beaten path. The Word of God has not been lost. It does not need to be reconstructed. We know what Paul said because God preserved it. Receive the text that the fathers of your faith received and declare, “Thy word is truth”. 

Further Reading

Two Different Texts

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

In my articles, I frequently comment that the Modern Critical Text and the Traditional Text represent two different forms of the text of the New Testament. Some disagree, and use this website to demonstrate that they are not that different. The site is helpful as a comparative tool between the ESV and KJV, though it is not technically a comparison of the Critical Text and Traditional Text. First, it is a comparison of translations, which means it is not comparing Greek texts, but translations of those texts. So while it gives the reader a general idea of the differences, translational choices may obscure the actual differences between the two underlying texts. Second, it does not fully compare the Critical Text and the Traditional Text as it includes comparisons of passages in a way that downplays the differences. An example would be that the comparative tool includes the Pericope Adulterae in the Critical Text, as well as excludes the Longer Ending of Mark in both texts. This gives the average reader the impression that there are really no differences. A full comparison would include the verses in the TR up to verse 20 in Mark, and exclude John 7:53-8:11 from the Critical Text. I would expect that the tool would include these differences, as well as clarify that it is a comparison between two translations and not between the TR and CT. 

Are We Discussing Two Different Text Forms?

The exclusion of certain verses for comparison highlights an important fact: in order to say that the Modern Critical Text and Traditional Text are essentially the same, one must ignore or downplay the fact that they are not the same in certain important places. It is because of these important places that there is disagreement at all. If the differences were that minor, we would be having a conversation over translation methodology and that’s about as deep as it would go. That is not to say that somebody cannot be saved by reading a Bible translated from the Modern Critical Text, but a careful examination of the two underlying texts reveals that they are different. One can argue how significant these differences are, but the fact remains, there are differences which distinguish the two texts. 

That being said, from a certain perspective, modern Bibles and traditional Bibles are both Bibles. They both contain the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, and they mostly contain the same content. Thus the important conversation should be centered around two topics – the difference between underlying texts and translation methodology. In creating a comparison tool that is supposed to compare the TR and the CT, and then using translations of these texts as a point of comparison, the two categories of text and translation are blended. It is interesting to say that the two texts are essentially the same, because if that were the case I’m not sure anybody would be seriously having this discussion at all. It is because  these two texts are so different that there is even a conversation. The existence of these two opposing positions on the text of the New Testament refutes the idea that the texts are the same. 

I am not saying that sound doctrine cannot be taught from a modern Bible such as the ESV or NASB, just that the underlying texts of modern Bibles are different than that of traditional Bibles such as the KJV. Many sound Biblical teachers employ modern Bibles in their ministry and are not heretics. The problem is that the standard for judging a Bible has been set at “can sound doctrine be taught from it?” If this was the standard, we would have to throw out every Bible, because false doctrine is readily taught from all translations. This standard is somewhat arbitrary and obfuscates the point of the discussion entirely. An orthodox understanding of the Trinity can be brought out of the New World Translation (in fact this is a great apologetic tool), but that doesn’t mean that Protestants should read the New World Bible. Thus, the standard of, “Can all the doctrines be proved from this translation?” is not a meaningful standard for determining the quality of a text or translation. Thus the conversation is rightfully seated in discussing the authenticity of the underlying texts used for translation.      

Two Different Text Forms

If the Modern Critical Text and Traditional Text were really as similar as is claimed, then there would be no discussion at all. It would be as simple as answering the question, “which Bible is the best translation of the Greek?” It would simply be a conversation over vocabulary choices and whether or not formal (KJV, NASB, ESV) or dynamic (NIV) equivalence is better. In admitting that there is indeed a difference, the conversation of determining how significant those differences are can take place in a productive manner. That being said, what about these two texts makes them “two different text forms?”

The primary difference has to do with the actual Greek manuscripts, not a difference between the translational choices of the KJV and ESV. The Modern Critical Text in its popular printed form (NA/UBS) is based largely on Codex Vaticanus, a fourth century Uncial Manuscript which is stored at the Vatican. All of the major differences can generally be found within this manuscript or Codex Sinaiticus. These are the two manuscripts referred to in modern Bibles as “earliest and best”. The Vatican Codex was first made use of in text critical efforts when Desidarius Erasmus consulted it in his production of his Greek and Latin New Testaments. Erasmus rejected the readings, however, claiming that they seemed to be back translations of corrupted Latin versional readings rather than being copied from a Greek manuscript. Frederick Nolan, a 19th century theologian and linguist, writes this regarding Erasmus and the Vatican Codex.

“With respect to Manuscripts, it is indisputable that he [Erasmus] was acquainted with every variety which is known to us; having distributed them into two principal classes, one of which corresponds with the Complutensian edition, the other with the Vatican manuscript. And he has specified the positive grounds on which he received the one and rejected the other” (Nolan, Frederick.  An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, or Received Text of the New Testament. 413, 414). 

Nolan also says regarding the Vatican Codex, ““The affinity existing between the Vatican manuscript and the Vulgate is so striking, as to have induced Dr. Bentley and M. Westein to class them together” (Ibid. 61).  

The first major use of this manuscript in the modern period was by Westcott and Hort, who primarily employed Vaticanus and Sinaiticus as a base text to produce their Greek New Testament in 1881. This is the text that the American Standard Version was translated from, which eventually gave birth to the Revised Standard Version and finally the English Standard Version. These manuscripts would eventually be classified as Alexandrian, based on the region in Egypt where they are thought to have originated (though recent scholarship has revisited this idea). Out of the close to 6,000 manuscripts available today, these Alexandrian manuscripts represent less than fifty. The vast majority of manuscripts represent a different text form, traditionally called the Byzantine Text Platform. The Textus Receptus follows the Byzantine text more closely than the Alexandrian text. So while one might make a case that the Alexandrian and Byzantine Texts are similar enough to both be considered a form of the Bible, these texts are distinct enough to be identified as separate classes of manuscripts, and thus different forms of Bibles. 

Even if one were to make a case that the Alexandrian Texts and Byzantine Texts were “close enough”, two major points of comparison stands between them that sets them apart entirely – the Longer Ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) and The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11). That is a total of 23 verses that are simply missing from the Alexandrian texts in two places that are present in the Byzantine texts. Even if one believes the modern claim that the Alexandrian texts are “earliest and best”, it does not follow to say that these are the same text form. These texts also exclude John 5:4, Romans 16:24, and others. Total, there are enough texts different to exceed the number of verses in the entire book of Jude. If these are so similar, I do not see a reason that the Alexandrian texts have been classed in a different category than the majority of manuscripts. 

Conclusion

The goal of this article is to support the claim that the Modern Critical Text and the Traditional Text are indeed two forms of the New Testament. They may both be considered a New Testament, but they certainly are not the same New Testament. The Modern Critical Text does not include an appearance account in all four Gospels, and is missing a number of verses when compared to the majority of manuscripts. Additionally, the Modern Critical Text represents a handful of manuscripts which were produced around the third and fourth centuries, and do not appear to be copied after that point in time. 

There are two major schools of thought as to what these Alexandrian Texts are to the greater manuscript tradition. In the Modern Critical school of thought, they are the earliest texts that the rest of the manuscripts evolved from. In the Confessional Text school of thought, they are an aberrant text stream that was not copied past the fourth century. These two forms may have spawned at the beginning of the same river, but by the third and fourth century they split and headed in different directions. The Alexandrian split seems to have met its end shortly after that split, if the thousands of manuscripts available today are any indication. That is why focusing on translational differences between the KJV and ESV is not the primary concern for those who reject modern Bibles. If the Alexandrian form of the text is truly an aberrant stream, then the Modern Critical Text is not truly the “earliest and best”, it is a strange blip which disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Hopefully this sheds light on why those in the Confessional Text camp do not read modern Bibles. Translation methodology certainly has a role in the discussion, but a primary reason for siding with traditional Bibles has to do with the rejection of the texts modern Bibles use in translation. 

A Response to Brother Mark Ward

The Young, Textless, and Reformed10 Comments

Introduction

First I want to acknowledge and commend the irenic spirit of Dr. Mark Ward as he presented a refutation of the position which he calls “Confessional Bibliology” in his lecture posted on September 27, 2019. For those that are readers of my blog, I have referred to this position as “The Confessional Text Position”, and I believe that Confessional Bibliology is an appropriate and charitable label, over and above “Textual Traditionalism” or “KJV Onlyism”.[EDIT: Ward has decided to call this position “KJV Only” anyway. We can’t all be winners.] It is important to remember that this is an intrafaith dialogue. I hope that my handling of his lecture will rise to the same level of integrity as brother Ward. Dr. Ward’s presentation is thorough, scholarly, and is befitting of a Christian, unlike many similar presentations. This is evident in that he freely discusses Pastor Jeff Riddle and Pastor Truelove without character defamation, misrepresentation, or name calling. I do acknowledge that some have treated Dr. Ward uncharitably in various groups, and I want to point out that I have had nothing but positive interactions with him (though brief). It is clear that he is a dear brother in the Lord, despite our disagreement in this one area. 

That being said, I do see some potential problems with his presentation that I would like to address. My goal is to emphasize, like Dr. Ward seems to do, that this conversation primarily finds its application pastorally, and not text-critically. This is not about being right and defeating each other, it is about giving confidence to Christians that they have God’s Word. As a pastor, my pure intention is to provide a position that can accomplish that goal. All of the text-critical work in the world is without use if our hearts are not in the first place focused on instilling men and women with confidence in their Bible, reassuring them that every word they read is “Thus saith the Lord”. The main focus of my critique is that the presentation proceeds backwards. It begins at a surface level and then stays there, brushing over the fundamental issue which divides the two camps so definitively.

Do the Minor differences between the CT and TR Give Cause for Abandoning the TR?  

In Dr. Ward’s presentation, there was a major effort to highlight the differences within the printed editions of the Received Text, rather than discussing the major differences between the Received Text and Critical Text. These major differences result in the form of the two texts being entirely different. I will argue that downplaying the difference within the Received Text and the Critical Text does not frame the discussion in its proper place, and that makes it difficult to interact with the nuances of the presentation in a meaningful way. That is because the problem is not initially about the minor differences within printed texts, it is about the fact that these two texts represent entirely different Bibles and two different methodologies.

Dr. Ward’s approach neglects to highlight the implications to the doctrine of preservation by focusing on the “jot and tittle” component of the Confessional Text position, which certainly deserves to be fleshed out further down the line. He rightfully comments that the missing sections at the end of Mark and in John 8 are a “serious threat” to the critical text. This seems like an appropriate problem to tackle prior to getting into the minutiae, which Dr. Ward carefully does in his presentation. Given that we both believe God has preserved His Word, it seems imperative to answer how one can uphold a meaningful doctrine of preservation while affirming two text platforms which disagree in major ways. If both sides can cross the bridge and agree that this poses difficulties to even the most loose definitions of preservation, there may be a great opportunity for a fruitful discussion about minor variations at some point from a believing perspective. 

Which is to say, that it is problematic to Dr. Ward’s critique to insist that God preserved two forms of the Bible. I argue frequently that the only reason there is so much tension in this discussion is the fact that modern critical text advocates continue to present the smattering of Alexandrian manuscripts as “earliest and best”, despite no evidence for such a claim other than they are the oldest surviving manuscripts. Even modern textual scholarship has demonstrated that original readings can indeed present themselves in later manuscripts.

If the handful of these idiosyncratic texts are viewed as tertiary within the manuscript tradition (or not properly seated within the tradition at all), this conversation becomes much more simple. The rise of modern textual scholarship has introduced this problem to the church by allowing for manuscript types which have been rejected historically to be valued so highly. It is important to acknowledge that the Received Text did not introduce this problem, modern scholarship did when they declared that the Reformation era text needed to be thrown out. A consistent application of Dr. Ward’s presentation should conclude in the Received Text and the KJV being dismissed wholesale, as it represents an entirely different text form. 

Since Dr. Ward did not suggest that, it is important to understand that textual decision making is done from a completely different perspective between the Confessional Bibliology group and modern textual scholarship. It is easily demonstrated that the base manuscripts from which the modern eclectic text and the Received Text are built on represent a different form altogether. So the difference is not in the amount of data necessarily, but in the methodology itself which accepts this data into the manuscript tradition. Much time is spent discussing whether or not the Post-Reformation Divines would have accepted this new data, and here is where Dr. Ward and I disagree fundamentally. I do not believe that the Post-Reformation Divines would have adopted the modern critical perspective, even if presented with the new data.

Francis Turretin comments on what Dr. Ward presents as a chief problem for the Confessional Text position – the problem of variants as it pertains to “every jot and tittle”. 

“A corruption differs from a variant reading. We acknowledge that many variant readings occur both in the Old and New Testaments arising from a comparison of different manuscripts, but we deny corruption (at least corruption that is universal)” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.I, 111). 

So it is not chiefly a problem with variants, but the actual text form and the modern perspective that certain passages have been totally corrupted. Turretin continues. 

“There is no truth in the assertion that the Hebrew edition of the Old Testament and the Greek edition of the New Testament are said to be mutilated; nor can the arguments used by our opponents prove it. Not the history of adulteress (Jn. 8:1-11), for although it is lacking in the Syriac version, it is found in all the Greek manuscripts. Not 1 Jn. 5:7, for although some formerly called it into question and heretics now do, yet all the Greek copies have it, as Sixtus Senensis acknowledges: “they have been the words of never-doubted truth, and contained in all the Greek copies from the very times of the apostles” (Bibliotheca sancta [1575], 2:298). Not Mk. 16 which may have been wanting in several copies in the time of Jerome (as he asserts); but now it occurs in all, even in the Syriac version, and is clearly necessary to complete the history of the resurrection of Christ” (Ibid. 115). 

Turretin explicitly mentions “several copies in the time of Jerome”, which happens to be the time that Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are said to have been produced. Whether he is explicitly referring to these two manuscripts or not, the unavoidable reality is that these two copies represent the form of text he is talking about – namely those missing those three variants. The minor variants discussed in Dr. Ward’s presentation are not that of a mutilating nature, but the two variants he lists as problematic certainly are.  So to accept manuscripts and readings from manuscripts bearing this form is to depart methodologically in a major way. The conversation of which jots and tittles may be profitable if this can be admitted, as the amount of jots and tittles to be discussed would shrink massively. 

Does Confessional Bibliology Reject Decision Making? 

In short, no. Those who advocate for this position do not balk at the “Which TR?” question, because it fundamentally misses the point of the argument itself. I will acknowledge, however, the validity of the question from his perspective. While Dr. Ward provides a thorough presentation of the 11 types of variations between the printed editions of the Received Text, the conclusions of his argument do not demonstrate that the effort of modern textual scholarship is in the same category as Reformation era textual scholarship.

He is absolutely correct in saying that variations exist between printed editions of the TR, and points out that there are just as many editions of the Nestle-Aland text (with many more to come!). The most important point to interact with however, is his critique that the KJV is not its own form of the TR. Dr. Ward wrongly assumes that ultimately, when the conversation is stripped down to its bare components, the Confessional Bibliology argument is the same as the KJV Only argument (Excluding Ruckman). I will note that I do not consider this to be any sort of serious error, just a matter of nuance that I believe was overlooked. Confessional Bibliology advocates read other translations than the KJV, so it is a bit of a misrepresentation to call them KVJO. It would be the same as calling somebody who prefers the ESV and reads the ESV an ESV Onlyist, despite viewing the NASB as a fine translation of the critical text.

While there are some within the Confessional Bibliology group that believe that some form of textual criticism is still necessary, most, as Dr. Ward points out, agree that the Scrivener edition of the Received Text, which represents the textual decisions of the KJV translators, is “the” Received Text. This is due to the nature of the argument from God’s providence, as well as exposure of the text to the people of God as it happened in history. This argument does not seem as far-fetched given that it is not hedged within the context of modern critical scholarship, though I am fully aware of the critiques of this position. It’s not as though the KJV translators were moved along by the Holy Spirit, or reinspired, but that their textual decisions represented a century’s work of scholarship, dialogue, and corporate reception of certain texts within the Received Text corpus. This is made plain and evident in the vast number of commentaries and theological works which use the Received Text of the Reformation.

In short, the Scrivener text is not the best representation of the Received Text by virtue of the King James Translation team, but rather by virtue of the reception of those readings by the people of God. Were it the case that those readings were rejected, like readings Erasmus examined from the Vatican codex, we might be right in following the argumentation of Dr. Ward. The fact stands, that not only did Erasmus reject those readings, but all of the Reformed textual scholars and theologians who came after him did so as well, even commenting on manuscripts missing the ending of Mark. Jan Krans notes the fundamental difference between modern textual scholarship and the method of Beza in his work, Beyond What is Written.

“In Beza’s view of the text, the Holy Spirit speaks through the biblical authors. He even regards the same Spirit’s speaking through the mouth of the prophets and the evangelist as a guarantee of the agreement between both…If the Spirit speaks in and through the Bible, the translator and critic works within the Church. Beza clearly places all his text critical and translational work in an ecclesiastical setting. When he proposes the conjecture ”  (‘wild pears’) for (‘locusts’) in Matt 3:4, he invokes “the kind permission of the Church” (328,329).

The point is this – it is not that the Confessional Bibliology group rejects textual decision making, they reject textual decision making in the context of modern textual scholarship. Within the Confessional Bibliology camp, there are vibrant and healthy discussions on this matter which has resulted in the mass adoption of the Scrivener text. The problem occurs when this is conflated with Reconstructionist Textual Scholarship, which, when applied to a text, results in its complete deconstruction and devaluation. The conversation simply cannot happen in a healthy way in a context that takes 15 miles when given an inch.

This is chiefly exemplified in the fact that a decision made on a variant that does not affect meaning is compared to removing 11 verses from Scripture. Categorically, those are not the same thing. I appreciate Dr. Ward’s care in presenting the minor variations, but those are not the problem at a fundamental level (Unless one chooses to make it a problem unnecessarily). That is also assuming that a decision cannot be made, or has not been made on the handful of significant variations that exist within the editions of the Received Text. Had the KJV translators made a printed edition of the textual decisions they chose, this conversation likely would not be happening. The claim that the text as it is represented by the 1881 Scrivener text is an “English Greek New Testament” would not be taken seriously. This was the conclusion of Dr. Hills as well, that the textual decisions of the KJV can be rightfully considered its own “TR”, which Dr. Ward acknowledges, but seems to disagree with. 

Conclusion

I appreciate that Dr. Ward has seated the conversation within the context of the believing church. This is a huge upgrade from the vast majority of the discussion which exists in the world of secular scholarship. The goal of this article is not to slam Dr. Ward or say that I have refuted him necessarily, but rather to point out that there is a major stumbling block standing in the way of bridge-crossing. I will argue that a simple critique of Dr. Ward’s argument is that it fails to recognize the two distinct text forms held by each respective position. If we were dealing with one text form, with minor variations, we might be able to readily understand Turretin and Owen’s commentary on the text better, and Dr. Ward’s presentation might be more applicable to those who subscribe to Confessional Bibliology. But since during that era, the church rejected manuscripts like Vaticanus, and in the modern era the Bibles are all built on top of Vaticanus, the effort of bridge-crossing may be more tedious. Until the people of God seriously consider the direction of modern textual scholarship and its wholesale abandonment of the Original Text for the Initial Text, it may be difficult to find the kind of agreement Dr. Ward desires in his presentation.

At the end of this analysis, I hope that all can see that while there is a fundamental disagreement that may stand in the way of bridge-crossing, it is not so great that we cannot treat each other with brotherly kindness and respect which is fitting for those who claim Christ. The fact stands that not all Bibles are created equal, and despite modern Bibles generically looking like Bibles made from the Received Text, they depart in major places which do indeed effect doctrine, like John 1:18 and Mark 16:9-20. It would also be a different conversation if both forms of the text were stable, but the modern text is not. The direction of the modern text-critical effort is only speeding up in the direction of uncertainty as the ECM is implemented (see 2 Peter 3:10 and the number of diamonds in the Catholic Epistles of the NA28). I’ll end with this quote by textual scholar DC Parker, which I find to accurately assess the nature of the modern critical text.  

 “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.”

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The Divine Original and the Initial Text

The Young, Textless, and Reformed5 Comments

“At the most demanding level, I believe that we still await a truly critical edition of the New Testament…Each new discovery made the old critical apparatuses ever more out of date, and, even more worryingly, cast doubt on the quality of existing critical texts…The Nestle-Aland edition is a fine tool, and one could not imagine being without it. But it is a stopgap, awaiting the completion of the Editio critica maior… We begin to see that, great as the achievements of previous editors were, they were working with partial and arbitrarily selected materials which led to theories of the text and its history which were themselves partial, and thus almost bound to be mistaken. ” – David C. Parker, Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament, 105-114

Introduction

The current and most advanced effort of New Testament textual scholarship is in progress as I write this article. By New Testament textual scholarship I mean what is commonly referred to as “Textual Criticism”, though the latter name may be inadequate to describe the breadth of the ongoing effort. In order to understand what the “modern critical text” is, it is important to understand that the various printed editions (NA28, UBS5, THGNT, etc.) of the Greek New Testament are just one facet of the work. There is no one “modern critical text”. The effort of textual scholars creating editions of the Greek New Testament is just the practical implementation of that work. So when I speak of “Modern Textual Criticism” on this blog, I am not exclusively referring to the work of creating printed editions of the Greek New Testament, but rather the larger effort as a whole. Within the umbrella of New Testament Scholarship, there is a wide array of projects being pursued and the creation of printed Greek texts just a part of that work. Simply reducing the conversation to printed editions when discussing modern textual scholarship neglects those researching New Testament texts in art, history, commentaries, and of course, the major effort of Modern Textual Scholarship – the Editio critica maior. 

The reason I say that the effort of those producing editions of the Greek New Testament is just a part of the work is not to be dismissive. Rather, it is an attempt to 1) accurately describe the scope of the work and 2) highlight the importance of the work that will impact all future printed editions of the Greek New Testament. Recently, I have noticed that there is a discussion over what it means for textual scholars to searching for the original. In this article, I will briefly address what is called the Editio critica maior as well as comment on the various uses of the word “original” as it pertains to the New Testament text.

The ECM and the Initial Text

The Editio critica maior (ECM) is as DC Parker describes it, “The narrative of the history of the [New Testament] text” (Parker, 128). In a more tangible sense, it is the largest collection of New Testament data ever compiled (and is still being created). It contains a critical text, a critical apparatus, and provides the editor’s justification for the methodology and conclusions (Parker, 112). It is being used in its incomplete form now in printed editions of the Greek New Testament, and will most likely be the standard by the time it is completed around 2032. Despite the tremendous advance in New Testament data the ECM will provide, it is still not a definitive text, it is a data set that represents the available data which does not go back to the time of the Apostles. Parker makes it clear that, “A critical edition is not a reconstruction of an authorial text. It is a reconstruction of the oldest recoverable text, the Initial Text” (122). Parker is not alone in his conclusions regarding the current effort of textual scholarship, though some do stand in opposition to him. One of the most controversial claims that I have made is that “No scholar is trying to find the original”, and Dr. Peter Gurry has taken me to task to clarify what I mean by that. In all fairness, it is probably not fair to make such a sweeping statement without clarification. Dr. Gurry has been quite charitable and pointed me to many valuable resources, which I hope to use accurately. There are in fact many scholars who believe that the initial text might as well be the authorial text, though they do seem to be in the minority depending on how “initial text” is defined.

Dr. Gurry argues that this convolution is due to widespread disagreement on the use of the term “initial text”, or even its misuse. Many mean by “initial text” the earliest text available in the extant manuscript tradition, which is how Parker employs the term. Yet its original definition by Gerd Mink goes beyond how it is commonly employed. Mink defined the term to refer to the hypothetical archetype of the earliest extant manuscript tradition. This effectively puts the initial text earlier in the transmission history than the oldest surviving manuscripts. With this definition, it is more reasonable to believe that the initial text and the authorial text are much closer to each other than the authorial text is to let’s say, Vaticanus. In this regard, Mink and Parker stand in opposition to one another. 

Based on the limitations of such methods employed by CBGM, I agree with Parker’s conclusions on the practical understanding of the initial text over the idealistic definition offered originally by Mink. While Mink’s assumption is that the initial text is a hypothesis for the authorial text, there does not seem to be a good reason for believing this with a high degree of certainty. That is the point of contention between myself and Dr. Gurry – I believe the Scriptures set forth the standard of certainty (Mat. 5:28;24:35), and that anything less than certain leads to having no text at all. And since the ECM itself declares that, “Apart from the fact that a reconstruction cannot achieve the same degree of certainty at each variant passage, this does not mean that a reconstruction of the authorial text is possible in each case. Moreover, it does mean that any reconstructed text can claim to be absolutely identical with the authorial text” (30), there will always be somewhat of a gray area between the authorial text and the initial text – even if that gray area is believed to be inconsequential by some. 

In any case, it is in fact a matter of nuance as to whether or not textual scholars are trying to find the authorial or original text. If by “original” it is meant the hypothetical initial text, than I am defining “original” differently and some textual scholars are indeed trying to find the “original” as they define it. If by initial text it is meant the “earliest form of the extant text” than the original is not being discussed at all. In both definitions of the initial text, the way “original” is being defined is different than is being discussed on this forum. By original I mean “the text that the Holy Spirit inspired”, down to the word, as defined by the Reformation and Post Reformation divines. The Puritan John Owen says this, “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament [which] were immediately and entirely given out by God himself … [are] by his good and merciful providential dispensation … preserved unto us entire in the original languages.” (Works, 16, pp.351,352)

So it seems that it is a matter of disagreement in how “original” is being defined. In the sense that the theological definition of the word “original” is employed, there are no scholars trying to find the original. When it is framed in this light, the discussion becomes a theological and exegetical discussion as to what the Scriptures say about the doctrine of inspiration and preservation and what “original” means, not a discussion of how the evidence is interpreted. A major focus of this blog is to demonstrate that the discussion of Textual Scholarship should be framed from a theological starting point, not a historical critical one. I have already received the critique by some that since I do not have a PhD in the area of textual scholarship, I do not have the right to speak on this issue. While I understand the nature of this argument, my understanding of the Scriptures is that they are sufficient to speak on matters of faith and practice (2 Tim. 3:16). This is most certainly one of those areas, though I can understand if somebody wishes to exit out of the article at this point based on my lack of credentials. 

The Pursuit of the Divine Initial Text 

The reality is, that the methods being employed to construct the ECM do not offer the degree of certainty that the theological giants of the past had in the Holy Scriptures. Thomas Watson says this, “We may know the Scripture to be the Word of God by its miraculous preservation in all ages … Nor has the church of God, in all revolutions and changes, kept the Scripture that it should not be lost only, but that it should not be depraved. The letter of Scripture has been preserved, without any corruption, in the original tongue.” (Body of Divinity, 19). It is clear that the methods being employed simply cannot ever produce this level of certainty. So regardless of whether or not some may believe that the Initial text, as defined by Mink, represents the authorial text – it can never be said with absolute certainty that this is true using the methodology itself. 

The problem is a matter of methodology, not a matter of interpretation. Thus my critique is not of those who believe the initial text represents the authorial text, it is of the methodology used to arrive at such conclusions. Parker agrees with my understanding of the Munster Method (CBGM), though I disagree with his view of the text vehemently. “I say again that the user who treats the text of James in the Editio critica maior as identical to a letter written several hundred years before the oldest extant manuscript was copied has made a serious methodological error” (Parker, 122). Regardless of Parker’s opinion, those who believe that the initial text represents the authorial text will take the same data as Parker and come to the opposite conclusion as him.

While Parker’s conclusion, and thus my conclusion, might be considered inflammatory by some, an examination of the method demonstrates that it is simply a cold truth regarding the methodology. The Munster Method (CBGM) itself can never prove that it has produced an original text, in any sense of the word, that recreates exactly what Paul wrote. The text that Paul wrote might be considered as a highly likely original reading, but scholars might delegate it to the apparatus due to the limitations of the methodology and data used for analysis. It is the interpretations of scholars that will ultimately come along and conclude which version(s) of the initial text represents the authorial text. So in a very real sense, the interpreters’ theology of preservation and inspiration, along with other suppositions, is being applied retroactively to the work done by the methods being employed, and the flawed decisions of men are the final authority over which texts are considered “original”.

This shifts the authority of the Holy Scriptures from the object to the subject. Because the authority lies in the subject, and the subject is not omniscient, it is not only likely, but inevitable that a legitimately original reading is rejected for some other reading that is determined “earliest and best” by a scholar. It does not matter how earnest a particular scholar is in saying that “I want what Paul wrote!”, the fact remains that the methodology does not allow for that desire to actualize in any meaningful way. The final authority will always rest on the determinations of scholars and their theological suppositions. At the end of the day, the modern textual scholar must employ faith in believing that they have chosen God’s Word correctly. This is part of the reason why the historical doctrine of the Scriptures as self-authenticating is held by those in the Confessional Text camp. A return back to the 16th century is most necessary, for both practical and theological reasons. The authority of the Scriptures does not rest in the determinations of men, but the providential work of God. This is the fundamental difference between those in the modern camp and those in the Confessional camp, which is why I continue to press theologically on the issue and not evidentially.  

Conclusion

I have taken some time to demonstrate the nuance in the discussion of what “original” means. Historically, as I have shown by quotations of those at the Westminster Assembly, the word “original” meant the words penned by the prophets and apostles. In the modern period, scholars prefer the term “initial text”, and the definition of that term is debated. To some, the initial text is the hypothetical archetype that all texts flowed from, and to others, it is the text that represents the earliest extant form of the New Testament texts. In all three cases, three different things are being discussed. Thus, using the definition provided by the framers of the 17th century confessions, I do say confidently that there are no scholars in pursuit of the original as defined by the Reformed in mainstream New Testament textual scholarship. Therefore it is especially appropriate that the view of the text of Scripture presented and defended here on this blog be called “The Confessional Text”, as it not only represents a physical form of the text, but also a distinct theological foundation with specific definitions of terms that have evolved in the modern period. 

Many scholars have attempted to reinterpret Francis Turretin and James Usher and others to fit the modern definitions of “original”, “preserved”, “kept pure”, and so forth, but the fact remains that these theologians did indeed mean what they said plainly. It is simply more accurate to say that the modern view of the text of Holy Scripture is different than the view presented by the Westminster Divines and their contemporaries. In recognizing this difference, I believe it possible to have a fruitful discussion on the theological differences underpinning each position. The modern method is to many hidden in a black box, and as it becomes more developed, will come into plain sight by all. When this time comes, the Reformed must be prepared to stand on the truth that the Scriptures are self-authenticating. 

“The marvelous preservation of the Scriptures [demonstrates this]. Though none in time be so ancient, nor none so much impugned; yet God hath still by his providence preserved them, and every part of them” (James Usher. Body of Divinity, 8).

Text and Translation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed4 Comments

Introduction

It is easy to read an article or facebook thread on the issue of textual criticism or translation and have trouble understanding what is going on. The conversation is shrouded by specialized terminology and polemics. This is often due to people getting their information from their favorite podcast or YouTube program. Often times, the conversation becomes muddled when it comes to differentiating between the underlying text and the translations made from those texts. There are two important conversations that happen regarding the Bible – the conversation of which New and Old Testament texts should be used for translation, and the conversation of translation methodology and quality. Yet these two distinct topics are constantly conflated and mixed together.

The most common occurrence of this conflation happens when people utilize the term “KJV Onlyist” when discussing the Greek and Hebrew. This argument was made popular first by internet podcast host James White and reiterated in Dr. Andrew Naselli’s critically acclaimed textbook How to Understand and Apply the New Testament. It is almost impossible to have a conversation about which underlying Greek and Hebrew should be used in translation now without being called a “KJV Onlyist” if you are brave enough to affirm against the modern text.

Yet there is an important difference between the text a Bible is translated from and the translation itself. This is easily demonstrated in the fact that people disagree on which modern translation is the best. Some people swear by the NASB because they believe it to be “the most literal translation available”, and others only read the ESV because it is the “most scholarly translation”. Most times, Christians select their Bible based on the translation methodology and the quality of the translation itself. The underlying Greek has nothing to do with it. So it is absolutely possible that somebody prefers the modern Greek texts, but does not prefer any of the modern Bible translations, and reads a traditional Bible based on their preference of translation alone. Yes, it is possible that somebody would prefer a KJV without knowing anything about the underlying textual discussion. 

The Textual Discussion

The conversation of “which Bible is the best” can be separated into two categories, text and translation. The first category has to do with the Biblical languages, which are the Hebrew Old Testament (which includes small portions of Aramaic or Chaldean as the Puritans called it) and the Greek New Testament. Some people have also taken the modern position that the Bible can also be translated from other translations, such as the Greek Old Testament or the Syriac Old Testament. The ESV, NIV, and NASB all do this. This would be akin to creating a fresh Bible out of the ESV. The confessional position states that translations should not be made from versional readings like the Greek Old Testament, but that falls into the category of translation methodology. 

In terms of the first category, which is the text, the conversation has to do with answering the question “which original text should be translated from?” There are a handful of positions when it comes to text. The first can be generically called the modern critical text position. Within this camp, there are an array of different thoughts, so this brief description will obviously not cover every nuance of the conversation. The main thought is that the Greek Testament is best represented in Codex Vaticanus and other texts similar to it. Codex Vaticanus is said to have originated in Alexandria around the fourth century and was published in the 19th century. Codex Vaticanus is stored at the Vatican Library and the first time it was explicitly mentioned was in the Reformation period due to Erasmus consulting some of its readings as a part of his work on his Latin and Greek New Testaments. Erasmus believed that the Vatican codex followed Latin versional readings, and rejected it based on his detestation for the contemporary iteration of the Vulgate he was seeking to correct in his Latin edition. 

The most significant markers of these types of manuscripts are their short, abrupt readings and the absence of the three most discussed variants (John 7:53-8:11; 1 John 5:7; Mark 16:9-20). It also excludes many majority readings such as John 5:4 and Romans 16:24. If you look in a modern Bible, these verses are simply skipped over without renumbering the whole chapter. The Vatican Codex was employed heavily by Westcott and Hort in their Greek New Testament published in 1881 and all modern translations closely follow the readings of this manuscript and those like it. Out of the close to 6,000 manuscripts extant today, Vaticanus represents anywhere from 17 to 30 of them. These manuscripts were formerly called the “Alexandrian Family”, but recent scholarship has moved away from that conclusion due to their lack of coherence with one another. It is more accurate to say that they are cousin manuscripts than a text family. 

In any case, those that hold to the modern critical text position believe that the Bible is best preserved (Read partially or generically preserved) in the readings contained within these manuscripts, and make textual decisions based on prioritizing the Alexandrian texts as better than the majority of the manuscripts available today. There are many nuances within this camp, and some modern critical text advocates adopt some majority readings over Alexandrian readings (Like the Tyndale House Greek New Testament at John 1:18). The Greek New Testament most employed by those in this camp is the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament which is now in its 28th edition. The Nestle-Aland text is the base text used for almost all of the modern Bible translations made today. The modern critical text position also tends to favor Old Testament versional readings like the Greek, Syriac, and the Latin Vulgate over the Masoretic Hebrew text (see ESV 2016 prefatory material for more information). 

The second position is called the majority text position, which also has an array of different thoughts within it. Some scholars, like Wilbur Pickering, take a theological approach within the majority text position, and others take more of an evidential approach. In both cases, the majority text advocates reject the theory that the Alexandrian manuscripts are “earliest and best” and instead start with the readings represented most abundantly in the manuscript tradition (Or even pick one manuscript as the authentic representative). The basic premise of this position is that the readings that are most abundant are the readings that God preserved. Some within this camp do not dogmatically pick the majority reading every time, however. They still make decisions on each variant like one might do within the modern critical text camp based on the extant data available. There are Bible translations made from various collations of the majority text, like the family 35 majority text. Often times, the majority text advocates do not read a Bible that represents their favorite text, though the NKJV and even the KJV are popular within this camp. 

The third position is called the confessional text position (also called the Ecclesiastical text, canonical text, or less preferably TR advocates). This position favors the texts that were employed during the time of the Reformation and confessional period after which are represented by the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament and the Received Text of the New Testament. While this position typically favors the Authorized Version (KJV), many within this camp read the NKJV, MEV, or GNV, and are open to fresh translations of the texts of the Reformation. Most read the AV simply because they believe the translation methodology employed by the translators is more faithful than the other Bibles available. This position is not so much about translation, but rather about the underlying Biblical texts used for translation. Since the modern Bibles employ a different underlying text, this camp rejects those Bibles because they do not believe they represent the original.

The Greek text preferred by the confessional text position aligns most closely with the majority of manuscripts available today, though it does depart from the majority text in certain places, which makes it a distinct position. This is why this position is often conflated with the majority text position, though they are different from one another. This conflation is made in Dr. Andrew Naselli’s textbook mentioned above. The major difference between this and the modern critical text position, is that this camp believes the work of collating manuscripts was accomplished during the Reformation period. During this time, the process of copying manuscripts evolved from hand copying to printing with the invention of the printing press, and thus the method of copying was formalized and a more concentrated effort of textual criticism was warranted. Since this text was to be massively distributed for the first time in church history, this effort represents a significant phase in the providential preservation of the Word of God. 

A major point of confusion by those who do not adhere to this position, is the fact that the confessional text camp is not trying to find the original Bible, they believe they have it. They are not primarily concerned with supporting every reading with extant manuscript evidence (though they can) because they do not believe this aligns with the Biblical doctrines of inspiration and preservation. The manuscripts do not offer definitive conclusions on the text 400 years removed from the time when they were still being copied in the Reformation period. Modern critical text advocates have trouble understanding the idea that the Bible was never in need of reconstruction, it was received in every generation and massively distributed for the first time in the 1600s. The effort of Reformation era textual criticism was not an effort of reconstruction, like today’s effort, but rather a collation and editing. Simply put, the Reformation era text-critics (not just Erasmus), were collecting faithful copies of the New Testament, and editing them into printed editions. Reformation era scholarship on inspiration and preservation demonstrates that this was the common thought of the day. They believed that the text of the New Testament was available, and with editing into one edition, could be found easily. Commentary by the Westminster Divines and other Puritan scholars affirms this overwhelmingly. Those in the confessional text camp affirm the determinations of these scholars and theologians, and believe that the text used for translation and theology for the next 300 years was the text that the people of God had used since the beginning (While acknowledging aberrant text streams and variants). 

Notice that while translation is connected with the textual discussion, it is not the same discussion at all. Those that are nuanced in the conversation select their Bible translation based on their understanding of the underlying text, but the translations themselves are entirely distinct from the text they are translated from. That is why it is unhelpful and actually detrimental to reduce the conversation of text to a matter of translational preference, as many do today. In fact, labeling somebody a “KJV Onlyist” for preferring the Received Text or Majority text only demonstrates an extreme amount of ignorance on the topic. Conflating the Received Text with the Majority text is even more condemning. The conversation of text can take place without discussing translation at all, though translation often comes up. It has to do with the underlying Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. 

The Translation Discussion

A translation is simply the product of translating one language to another. In the context of Bible translation, the translations are typically made from the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament (though many modern translations translate from translations in the Old Testament). It is true that people often select the translation they read based on their view of the underlying text, though this is not always the case. That is because translation methodology is an entirely different discussion. A good translation has nothing to do with the text it is translated from. In fact, it is possible to make a horrible translation from a great underlying text, and an accurate translation from a horrible underlying text. A translation simply takes a text from one language into another. 

The conversation of translation can be separated into two categories – translation methodology and the accuracy of the translation itself. Translation methodology is more closely related to the textual discussion due to methodology often being impacted by the translator’s view of the text. For example, the Reformation era translators did not translate from versional or translational readings. They translated from the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. Modern translation methodology does not strictly translate from the original languages, but often translates from other ancient translations. Somebody could agree that the modern critical text is better, but disagree with the modern translation methodology, and choose to read a traditional Bible because of it. 

In my experience, translation methodology is actually way more significant to people when choosing a Bible than the textual discussion. Most people choose the NASB because it is “the most literal” or the ESV because it is “the most scholarly” or the NIV because it “captures the original intention of the authors”. Most people reject the KJV because they “cannot understand it”. While the textual discussion is extremely important to some people, most Christians choose a Bible based on the translation itself. In fact, most people pick the ESV simply because they enjoy how it reads. 

Translation methodology is actually an extremely important topic that often goes neglected. It is important because most people only have access to a translation, so they have to trust that the translators have faithfully given them God’s Word in their mother tongue. Translation methodology has to do with which texts are being used to translate from, whether the translators are attempting to translate more formally (ESV, KJV, NASB) or dynamically (NIV, MEV), and even the complexity of the vocabulary. Bibles that are translated using formal equivalence (more literal) are often preferred over Bibles that are translated using dynamic equivalence (thought for thought). A simple internet search reveals that when people are selecting a Bible, this is the primary motivating factor for most people when selecting a translation.  

The second category of the translational discussion is the actual accuracy of the translation itself. This has to do with the accuracy of a word actually being translated from one language into another. It is more uncommon for people to choose a translation based on accuracy, but it is a factor that people take into account. People want to know that what they are reading represents the original language. This part of the discussion is another important component that is frequently neglected but it is certainly becoming more central to the translation discussion as the NASB and ESV are beginning to do more interpretation instead of translation in each new edition. A great example is whether or not αδελφοι should be translated as “brothers” or “brothers and sisters”. A literal translation would simply translate the plural form of the word “brother” (αδελφος) into “brothers”, but modern translation methodology has evolved into doing more interpretation than translation. While the usage of the word can include both men and women depending on the context, it literally just means “brothers”. In the case that a translation team decides to translate the word into “brothers and sisters”, the translators are making a decision to include an interpretation of the word in the translation itself. 

While this might seem like an unimportant nuance, translation accuracy is the reason many are decrying the next edition of the NASB. People are not comfortable with the translators interpreting a passage – they simply want the passage translated and the interpretation left to the person reading the text. Due to the trend of modern Bibles doing an increasing amount of interpretation in the translation itself, many people have actually decided not to purchase the newest editions of the ESV, NASB, and NIV. This is another great example of how translation methodology can cause somebody to determine which Bible they read, despite somebody’s understanding of the textual discussion. When I was a modern critical text advocate, I had already considered abandoning modern translations based on the direction that the translation methodologies were going. There are many people who read the KJV and NKJV simply because the modern translations take many liberties in translation. 

Conclusion

The conversation of text and translation is complicated and nuanced. There are a vast array of reasons that one might decide to read a particular translation over another, and the underlying text is only one of those reasons. In many cases, the underlying text is not even the main reason somebody picks one Bible over another. The important thing to recognize is that there are many important differences between text and translation, and some people care more about one than the other. In fact, most people are fine with the differences between the underlying texts used for translation because they believe they have “all the important stuff” no matter which Bible they read. The reality is, that many Christians read the NKJV or KJV based on translation methodology, preference, or familiarity over and above the textual discussion. That is because it does not matter how pure the underlying Greek and Hebrew is, if the translation is not faithful, than people want nothing to do with it. 

Simply calling somebody a “KJV Onlyist” reduces the conversation to polemics and is entirely unhelpful and even detrimental to the discussion. There is a plethora of reasons to reject modern Bibles, tradition is just one of them. It is time that Christians realize that being a “KJV Onlyist” is not the only reason to read a KJV, or the only reason people reject modern Bibles. The fact is that many Christians are becoming disenchanted with the increasing number of revisions to the underlying modern Greek text and the evolving translation methodologies of modern Bibles. People do not want a changing Bible. They want consistency and stability. The direction that modern translations have been heading for decades does not, and cannot offer this. 

There is No Modern Doctrine of Preservation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed12 Comments

Introduction

There is no modern doctrine of preservation, and I’m not sure people have realized it quite yet. What does preserved mean? It means that something has been kept safe from harm, uncorrupted, or maintaining the same form as it was when it was created. In this case, the New Testament corpus is the object that is said to be preserved. This means that in order for the New Testament to be preserved, it had to have stayed the same from the time it was penned and in the collection of faithful copies and collated editions going forward. That does not mean that every copy or collation is faithful to the text that God inspired or preserved, just that original was transmitted faithfully throughout the ages and even to the modern period. The words of the New Testament were not lost. The existence of different text forms and variants does not disqualify the Bible as being preserved. It simply indicates that certain lines of textual transmission were corrupted, and even within faithful manuscripts there were variants introduced into the text. There is no mistake that the manuscript tradition tells a complex story full of many scribal errors and corruptions. 

In order for a text to be preserved in light of textual variants introduced by scribal errors and corruptions, there is one process that could have resulted in the original text being transmitted faithfully into the modern period. This process would have involved correcting scribal errors and corruptions as the manuscripts were copied throughout the ages. This can be observed in surviving manuscripts by the existence of corrections by various scribes, as well as the increased uniformity of texts going into the middle period (though not perfect uniformity). In order to believe that the text of the New Testament has been preserved, one has to say that the effort of the scribes was successful in every generation of copying. If the text has been preserved, one would expect the text to become increasingly uniform over time, as the number of copyists increased along with the number of Christians.

Due to the heavy persecution of Christians in the early church alongside the fragility of stationary, the early manuscript evidence of the New Testament is sparse. All of the extant, early manuscripts generally represent a different text form than what survived later in the textual tradition, and is generally agreed to have originated in one locality. Based on empirical methods, there simply is not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions on the authenticity of surviving manuscripts from the third and fourth century. It would be more definitive if the earliest manuscripts agreed in more places, but even the early surviving witnesses to the New Testament are massively divided. The only thing that the handful of texts surviving from that period can tell us is that there was a unique stream of manuscripts with many idiosyncrasies, generally existing in one locality, that seems to have died off. That means that, if the New Testament is actually preserved, the later manuscripts provide the best insight into what the original text looked like because they are more abundant and uniform.

While this seems straightforward, there are many who disagree with this assessment and believe that the text must be reconstructed. Scholars have doubled down on the theory that the smattering of early surviving manuscripts can be collated to find the original. Secular scholarship has overwhelmingly admitted that the effort of finding the original was a farce. When this effort failed, the more faithful set out to find the hypothetical archetype that the earliest surviving manuscripts were copied from by developing genealogies of each variant. While this is a clever idea, the result will only be a hypothetical possibility. Others have adopted a Byzantine priority or a majority text position, which weighs the vast majority of manuscripts more heavily than the thinly distributed minority which seems to have existed in a bubble for a couple hundred years. In any case, these positions on the text should be viewed in light of a doctrinal position on preservation. This leads to the main focus of this article, that the modern period has no doctrine of preservation. 

Generic and Partial Preservation

Is it a fair assessment to say that there is “no modern view of preservation”? Not in a practical sense, because there are in fact many presentations of preservation offered by various people. But in the technical and formal sense, this statement holds true. This is because while many say that the Bible has been preserved, the actual articulation of the nature of that preservation violates what it means for something to be preserved. Remember the basic definition of what “preserved” means. In its application to the text of the New Testament, it means that there is one stream of text that was preserved in faithful and authentic copies and collations of copies in every generation. Which means, that if the text of the New Testament is truly preserved, the authentic text would have been the text that continued to be copied while copies were still being made up into the 16th and 17th century. 

That means that during the time of the first effort to massively distribute the Bible to people in the 16th and 17th centuries, the authentic text of the New Testament was still being copied. If the early surviving manuscripts were authentic, why weren’t those too being copied? Why do the thousands of surviving manuscripts tell a different story than the early surviving ones? The reason that the first effort of unifying the text did not use texts that looked like the earliest surviving manuscripts is because those manuscripts were not considered to be authentic by the people of God leading up to and during that period. This is further demonstrated by the fact that there are less than a handful of manuscripts copied in the middle period that represent the text form of the earliest surviving manuscripts. The manuscript tradition, along with the textual decisions during the Reformation period, tells a tale that the people of God rejected the texts that are being considered “earliest and best” today. 

So in one sense, yes, people do offer various understandings of the word “preservation” and how that applies to the New Testament text. But in a much more real sense, those presentations do not adequately explain the existence of two text streams, or the ongoing effort of modern scholars to find the original text. Something that is preserved does not need to be reconstructed or found. The Bible is not a mosquito preserved in amber waiting to be dug up by an archeologist. It is not a 1,000 piece puzzle in which we only have 900 pieces, or a 10,000 piece puzzle to which we have 10,100 pieces. It is a 5,624 piece puzzle to which we have all 5,624 pieces. The method of preservation that God used was not encasing the Bible in a cave, or a bucket, or the sand. He used human copyists, which eventually evolved into the printing press, and again with the introduction of digital storage. The Bible has always been available to the people of God, whether in manuscript form, or printed edition, or even a digital copy. 

The modern understanding of preservation is vague and indecisive. It doesn’t actually put forth a meaningful definition of preservation. In a very practical sense, it accepts that the general form of the New Testament has been preserved, with wiggle room for disagreement on certain texts that may or may not be original. The Bible has been preserved in its basic form, to the degree of “great accuracy”. The Bible is partially preserved, and that is the way God designed it to be. The effort of modern textual criticism is to increase the level of “great” in “great accuracy”. The efforts of the Reformation were good, but flawed. So to some degree or another, most people with a modern understanding of preservation accept the Reformation era text as “good enough”, it’s just not the “best”. This reveals a greater issue, which should be picking at the back of your brain. 

The greater issue is that if the efforts of the Reformation era were flawed, than the idea of a preserved text, in the sense that I’ve defined it and the Reformation era theologians defined it, has not ever existed, nor can it ever be attained. The word “preserved” is a gooey, moldable, ever-shifting concept that really does not ever take a solid form. One might say that the Bible was preserved until the fourth century, but we do not know exactly what it looked like, or that the Bible is preserved today, just not precisely. In either case, the word “preservation” requires a qualifier. The Bible is either generically preserved, or it is partially preserved. In either case, the word “preserved” is simply inappropriate for what is being described. Here is a quote from Thomas Watson – a Puritan Divine – that adequately describes the historic definition of preservation:

“The Letter of Scripture hath been preserved without any Corruption in the Original Tongue, The Scriptures were not corrupted before Christ’s Time, for then Christ would never have sent the Jews to the Scriptures; but he sends them to the Scriptures, John 5.39. Search the Scriptures. Christ knew these Sacred Springs were not muddied with Human Fancies”

Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 13.

Here is another description of preservation, offered by Westminster Divine Richard Capel:

“Well then, as God committed the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, then to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scapes in the printing, and ’tis certaine, that what mistake is in one print, is correct in another.”

Capel’s Remains pg. 79-80

The foundation of the doctrine of preservation during the time of the Reformation and post-Reformation is that in the same way that God preserved the Hebrew Scriptures, God preserved the Greek Scriptures. And by preserved, they meant “every jot and tittle” (See WCF ch.1). 

The ironic truth of the modern view of preservation is that it does not even allow for proper textual criticism. If God did not preserve every word, then what is the purpose of contemporary text-critical efforts? We have what we need, and that is all that matters. If the standard is “great accuracy”, then the work is done. There is no need to pursue greater accuracy because there is no standard for what “great accuracy” even means. There is no way to determine which words matter, and which words do not matter. Is it greatly accurate compared to other ancient texts? Is it greatly accurate based on the surviving manuscripts? Because the definition of “preserved” is so vague and arbitrary, there isn’t actually a meaningful standard to aim for. Text critics will never be able to determine when the work is done, because there is no definition of what it means to be done. Will the work be done when the true ending of Mark is found? Or will it be when we discover a new cache of early manuscripts? The efforts of modern textual criticism are planted firmly three feet in mid air because the modern method doesn’t allow for a precise definition of preservation. The fact that the work is still ongoing reveals the reality that scholars are either operating from a place of generic preservation or partial preservation. In both cases, the Bible has not been preserved in any meaningful way. 

Conclusion

There is not a modern doctrine of preservation in a very real sense. When the word is used, it either means generic preservation or partial preservation. In the case that by “preservation” it is actually meant generic preservation, then the work of textual criticism is done, because we have the Bible generically. At that point it is a matter of preference whether or not the woman caught in adultery is or is not Scripture, because the Bible contains all the correct doctrines in both instances. In the case that by “preservation” it is actually mean partial preservation, than the work of textual criticism does not matter, because the preserved Word will never be found. It is a matter of preference whether or not one accepts the ending of Mark as original because we’ll never know with 100% certainty. The former espouses the position that God did not intend to preserve every word, so that is not the goal. The latter says that God didn’t preserve His Word at all, so the goal is simply to get as close to the original as possible. Both positions betray the word preservation. 

When the word “preservation” is taken at face value, it simply means that the whole thing being preserved has not been corrupted, or harmed, or destroyed in any way. It does not mean that every single manuscript, or even one manuscript has been kept without error. It means that in every generation, the original text has survived in the approved manuscripts that the people of God have relied on for all matters of faith and practice. It means that scribal errors were corrected and that manuscripts of poor quality were retired or destroyed. This process was done by hand leading up to the 16th century when the printing press revolutionized how copying was done. That is why the Reformation era textual criticism is unique and set apart from modern textual criticism. It occurred during a time where copying was still being done, and a technological innovation was introduced to that process. The manuscripts that were being used by the people of God were still in circulation, and those manuscripts looked nothing like the modern text. 

A proper definition of preservation stands at odds with the opinion that the Bible is generically preserved, or partially preserved. If this seems like an impossibly strict standard, then it is best to say that you don’t believe that the Bible has been preserved. And if you do believe that the Bible has been preserved, the task is now to determine which text tells the story of a preserved Bible. The duty of the Christian is then to receive that preserved text as God has delivered it.