Tag: KJV

Reconstructionists, The Burden of Proof is On You

The Young, Textless, and Reformed13 Comments

Introduction

A common refrain in the text-criticism discussion is the appeal to “the burden of proof.” The burden of proof is on those who advocate for the traditional text to demonstrate that the readings within the text are original. This appeal is a simple misdirect that should not fool any sound thinking Christian. In making this argument, it draws the attention away from the failure of reconstructionist textual criticism apologists to fulfill any sort of burden of proof themselves. Typically, those in the modern critical text camp do not venture past manuscript evidence to examine the theological, epistemological, and logical implications of approaching the text in the way they do. Due to framing the discussion within the narrow frame of manuscript evidence and textual variants, it is possible to completely avoid the marrow of the discussion. If it is possible to demonstrate that a variant is supported by one manuscript, or a church father, or an ancient version, then it doesn’t matter what the theological implications are of adopting that particular reading. This methodology is appealing because it seems scientific, logical, and conclusive. In the case of evidential reconstructionist textual criticism the reality is that it merely has the form of science, but not any sort of real power. In other words, it is completely, and utterly, arbitrary. Let me explain. 

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that modern reconstructionist textual criticism is consistent in its methodology – which it is plainly not. At one reading, they appeal to one standard, and at another they appeal to entirely different standards. Any claim saying that the axioms of modern textual criticism are consistent is either misleading, or relying upon their audience’s ignorance of the system.  Even if these axioms were consistent, they will never be able to claim any sort of practical certainty on a given reading. Since the goal is reconstruction of the text, the starting principle of the methodology itself is that the text of Holy Scripture has been lost. Since this is the theological and epistemological starting point, all methods that proceed from this point begin the effort of textual criticism standing three feet in mid air, because the earliest manuscripts do not reach back to the time of the Apostles. No matter how you spin this reality, you will never escape the fundamental truth that all reconstructive methodologies are operating entirely from conjecture. The genealogical methods employed to reconstruct the text of the New Testament simply cannot demonstrate a reading original. It may be the case that somebody believes a reading original, but that belief does not originate from reconstructionist principles. They have to borrow that from a system which offers epistemological certainty. The method of reconstruction is arbitrary, and any claim to certainty of any kind is alien to the reconstructionist system. 

The Arbitrary Standard of Reconstructionist Textual Criticism

These methods are arbitrary because of the standard itself. Often times, proponents of reconstructionist textual criticism will appeal to the axioms of other systems to bolster the weaknesses of the system they have chosen. In other words, they borrow capital from the theology of the Protestants to put newspaper over the milk that they spilled. See, if the Bible has been lost to the point that it requires reconstruction, then it has not been preserved. There is no escaping this reality, and this is colorfully highlighted in the fact that the term Initial Text is being employed in place of Original or Autographic Text. Even when the term Original is used, it is employed in an entirely different way than it has been historically in Protestant Theology. No matter how hard one tries to put a Theological spin on this concept, a duck dressed up as a swan is still a duck. Simply calling the theological concept of the Initial Text equitous with the Original text does not make it true, and the methodology used to construct such an Initial Text cannot make any such claim responsibly. The fact remains that our earliest manuscripts are not the earliest manuscripts, patristic quotations are not inspired and often are paraphrastic, and ancient versional evidence faces the same problem as ancient manuscript evidence. The plain truth is that our earliest manuscripts have no pedigree. We don’t know who made them or who used them. The only thing these sources demonstrate is whether or not a reading existed, and has nothing to say about whether that reading was original from the pen of the Apostolic writers or a machination from an early heretic. The simple problem with genealogical reconstructions is that they can just as easily place a late reading in the spot of an early reading without being detected at all. In fact, scholars are quite vocal in admitting this. In addition to the logical flaws with these early manuscripts, the material flaws are overwhelming. There are more places where the darling early Uncials disagree than agree, and if our manuscripts of Shakespeare were of such quality, we would have something like, “The question is, to beat, or not to beat Toby?” We wouldn’t have Shakespeare at all, just an echo of Shakespeare. 

This is what happens when human reconstructionist principles of textual criticism are inscripturated. The educated Christian church has been catechized to believe that these axioms are the only way to determine the text of Holy Scripture, and therefore forcing an arbitrary text onto the church. A text that can present later, unoriginal readings, into the text and pass them off as original without any knowledge of such an event. The major problem with this is that if reconstructionist text critical principles are the only way to determine what is Scripture, then Christians must place their faith in a method that is entirely arbitrary and in no way conclusive. Since the material is not perfectly preserved, the doctrine of inspiration must be refashioned around a text that is not materially pure. 

The Reconstructionists Must Defend Their Thesis 

At the outset, the method admits that the text of Scripture, at least part of it, has been lost and must be reconstructed. The principle axiom of the method looks at the text of Scripture and says, “We don’t know what it says, and we don’t have the whole thing.” The next step should have been, from that point on, figuring out if a reconstruction effort could be done with the materials. “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:28). In fact, this was done by Dr. John Burgon in the 19th century (The Revision Revised), wherein he conclusively demonstrates that the source material for this reconstructed text was utterly devoid of the quality required for such an effort. This was again demonstrated by H.C. Hoskier in the 20th century (Codex B and its Allies). In the 21st century, the answer to whether or not the extant data is sufficient is succinctly answered by Dan Wallace, “We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain” (Myths and Mistakes, xii). If the answer wasn’t apparent in the time of Westcott and Hort, it certainly is now. If the theological and epistemological case that I have laid out in this blog over the last few months is not convincing, the fruit of the reconstructionist effort should be. If the data is available, if the text of Scripture is preserved, why can’t the well meaning scholars get back to it? How long is the church going to entertain this project? 

Theologically, the church should reject any method that starts with the premise that any text of Scripture has fallen away (Mat. 5:18; Mat. 24:35). Epistemologically, the church should reject any method that says the Word of God must be authenticated by scientific principles (2 Tim. 3:16). Logically, the church should reject any method that plainly admits they have not, and cannot reconstruct the text (Luke 14:28). Yet reconstructionist textual criticism continues to be the muse of the Christian academy. With each passing year, the incomplete text continues to be propped up and celebrated by Christians all over the world. The conversation of “Which text?” is irrelevant from a reconstructionist textual model because the method itself doesn’t believe that any text is “the text.” Why would somebody entertain the arguments of somebody whose starting point rejects the concept of “the” text of Holy Scripture? That is why it is important to investigate the effort that led to conservative Christian scholars adopting such a theological position. If the effort cannot be justified, and has not borne good fruit, why should the church continue to prop it up? Why should Christians act like the modern critical text is the “better” text, when the scholars producing it and advocating for it are unwilling to call it “the” text? If the so called “new” data has given us so much more insight than our fathers of the faith, why has it produced so much uncertainty? It is one thing to make appeals to “new and better data,” and another to actually prove it. It is foolish to continue to defend such “new” data when the data has overwhelmingly failed in producing anything but uncertainty. 

Conclusion

Christians are called to “Prove all things” (1 Thess. 5:20), and the axioms and text of the reconstructionists is objectively the new thing on the scene that must be proved. It has the burden of proof, not the traditional text. The reconstructionists need to demonstrate that their method can produce a text. The traditional text is not the problem, it is not the newcomer that needs to be proved. Why unseat the text of the Protestant church for a model that has not produced a text, cannot produce a text, and will not produce a text? What reason shall we give for such an illogical departure? It is time that Christians reject the misdirection of the reconstructionists who insist that the burden of proof is on the traditional text advocates, when the method they demand for establishing that proof is insufficient to do so. Since the reconstructionist model has not proved a text, those that advocate for the ongoing effort are literally defending an immaterial text that doesn’t exist. On one hand they say “we do not have the text,” and on the other they say, “But our text is better.” These two principles cannot stand together, and until the reconstructionists demonstrate that their effort is justified, the burden of proof is on them. 

Going Back to the Start

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

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

A Short History of English Translations 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answering the Difficult Questions

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

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

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

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


Substantial Preservation and the Sin of Certainty

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

Introduction

In today’s world of Biblical scholarship, a common idea is that Christians should have a good amount of confidence that the sum total of the Bible has been preserved. This means that while Christians should not have any dogmatic ideas of perfect preservation of words, they should have confidence that God has given to His people enough. That is to say that despite the fact that there are challenging passages in the Scriptures, none of these challenges are so great that Christians should lose confidence in their Bible as a whole. This concept of general reliability is agreeable even to some unbelieving textual scholars, which is possibly why it has become a sort of default position within Evangelical textual scholarship. The idea of absolute certainty in every word of the Bible is not considered a viable theological position due to the perspectives of modern textual scholars. According to this view, there is simply no justifiable reason to believe that every word has been kept pure, and to hold to a view like this is unnecessarily dogmatic. This article is not meant to challenge the integrity of the scholars, some of which are genuine brothers in Christ, but rather to put forth a serious problem with the general reliability theory of the New Testament. While I understand the sentiment behind this mediating position between radical skepticism and absolute certainty in the Text of the New Testament, I believe that this perspective, which may be called Substantial Preservation, is not defensible, practical, or Scriptural. 

Substantial Preservation is Not Demonstrable by Evidence

John Brown of Haddington wrote on this very topic in his systematic theology in the 18th century when defending the Scriptures against such a view that certain truths had fallen away. He argued that all Scriptures, while some are less essential than others, are “essentially necessary in their own place.” That is to say, that while many passages discuss matters not pertaining directly to salvation, that does not make those passages any less important is it pertains to the whole of what God is saying to His people. The Scriptures affirm as much in 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Despite some passages which may be considered more or less important by some, the Bible is clear, “all Scripture” is profitable and is to be used for every matter of faith and practice. Brown then comments on the fundamental challenge of dividing the Scriptures into essential and non-essential.

“All attempts to determine which are fundamental, and which not, are calculated to render us deficient and slothful in the study of religious knowledge; – To fix precisely what truths are fundamental and what not, is neither necessary, nor profitable, nor safe, nor possible” (Brown, Systematic Theology, 97). 

When the theological position is taken that says that the “sum total” or the “necessary” or the “important” parts of Scripture have been reliably transmitted, this is what is taking place. An attempt is being made to say that while some or many words have fallen away from the Scriptures, the whole sense of the thing is not lost by certain words falling away or indeterminate. Brown makes an extremely pointed observation here – how would one even come to a determination like that? There is absolutely no way to know if a doctrine is lost, unless of course that person is omniscient, or all knowing, and can determine that those words were not meant to be preserved by God. The weight of the substantial preservation argument rests on a faith claim that God never desired to preserve every word, and that Christians should have a reasonable amount of certainty that the words we can have confidence in are the ones God intended to preserve. 

Since the starting point of this claim is evidential, the conclusions and further claims made from this starting point must be evidential as well. That means that if one is to make the claim that the evidence demonstrates a substantially preserved Bible, one has to demonstrate that the words we do have represent substantially what was originally written. This of course is impossible to demonstrate from evidence. Dan Wallace admits as much, “We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it” (Gurry & Hixson, Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, xii). So in this view, we don’t know exactly what the “authors” of the New Testament wrote, and we have no way of demonstrating what they wrote, even if we did have it. This being the case, there does not seem to be a reason to responsibly make such a determination regarding the general reliability of the New Testament. The claim that the New Testament is generally reliable is not proven by lower criticism, it is simply believed despite the conclusions of textual scholars. Since our earliest extant New Testament manuscripts are dated to well after the authorial event, there is no way of determining, evidentially, how different those manuscripts are from the authorial text. This perspective may have been rejected, even fifty years ago by Evangelicals, but according to Wallace, believing textual scholars are  “far more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than the previous generations” (Ibid., xii). While many scholars may be comfortable with this view, the millions of Christians around the world who believe in verbal plenary inspiration may not be. 

Substantial Preservation is Not Practical 

If the Bible is preserved in the “sum total” of its material, then Christians must add an additional layer to their Bible reading. Rather than simply reading the words on the page, Christians must first establish that those words are reliable. Since some words cannot be trusted outright, there is no reason to believe that all of the words can be trusted outright. That is due to the fact that the methodology which deems some verses reliable and others not is completely and utterly subjective. In some cases, the majority reading is the deciding principle, in other places, the least harmonious reading is the deciding principle, and in more places, what is considered the earliest reading is the deciding principle. In order to validate these deciding principles, Christians must become text-critics themselves. They must examine the evidence for each verse in the Bible and determine if it meets some threshold of certainty based on the current canons of text-criticism or develop their own. Most Christians are not equipped for this kind of work. 

Since the reality is that the vast majority of Christains are not equipped for this kind of work, this is done for the Christian by the editors of various translations and rogue Christians with some knowledge of the original languages. Christians are told which verses they are to have confidence in by a handful of people. The footnotes tell a Christian what to read, popular opinion tells a Christian what to read, or Christians decide for themselves what they ought to read. Yet, underneath every verse is a mountain of textual variations and a sign that says, “We do not have now, in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it.” That is to say, that every Christian is held captive by the judgements of textual scholars, translation committees, and the opinions of one or two people with a platform when they read their Bible. What a Christian considers Scripture today could easily be out of vogue tomorrow. This is plainly evident in the transformation of modern Bibles in the last fifty years.  

Even if there is no critical footnote in the margin of a translation, the Christian has to know that every single verse can be questioned with the same amount of uncertainty applied to the verses which do have footnotes. This is due to the fact that the axiom itself produces “radical skepticism.” That is to say, that if a Christian cannot know for sure that the words they are reading are authentic, they must adopt some sort of theological principle which gives them certainty. The common view seems to be, “We don’t know what the original said, yet we are going to read it as though we do anyway.” Yet this view is entirely contingent upon external methods, and produces different results for each Christian. It is perfectly reasonable, for two Christians adhering to this same view of the text to have radically different opinions on each line of Scripture. Since, according to the top scholars, we can’t know who is right, both Christians are equally justified in their decision. There is nothing wrong with one person accepting Luke 23:34 and another rejecting it in this view of the text. On what grounds would one even begin to make a dogmatic statement one way or the other using text-critical methods? In an attempt to combat “absolute certainty,” the people of God are held hostage by the opinions of men. The practical task of reading a Bible has been turned into a task that only the most qualified men and women can execute. The act of reading the Bible is unmistakably transformed into an activity of scrutinizing the text and then reading that text with only a reasonable amount of certainty. The Bible has yet again been taken from the hands of the plowboy. 

Substantial Preservation is Not Scriptural

The Bible is clear that Christians are to have absolute certainty in the Scriptures (Mat. 24:35; Ps. 19:7; 2 Tim. 3:15-17; 2 Pet. 1:20-21; Heb. 1:1-2; Mat. 4:4; Mat. 5:18; Jn.10:27). Absolute certainty in God’s Word is not a bad thing, despite the strange opinions of men and women who say that it is something to be fought off and beat down out of the church. No pastor in his right mind would mount the pulpit and say that we do not know, and have no way of knowing what the original text of the New and Old Testament said. There is no gentle way to put it, this view is dangerous and the proponents of such a view would have been put outside of the camp for saying such a thing all throughout church history. Yet, in this day and age, the view of absolute certainty in the Holy Scriptures is called “dangerous” and is demonized. The visceral reality is, if Christians are not to have absolute certainty in their Bibles, they have no reason to believe it is God’s Word at all. If some of God’s Word is compromised, why should Christians believe that all of it isn’t compromised? That is to say, that if God had the ability to preserve some of the words, He had the ability to preserve them all. There is no reason to believe that God would conveniently preserve the words we, in the 21st century, think are preserved. In order to make a theological claim that God only preserved some words, you must adopt a contradictory view that God is both a) powerful to preserve the words of Scripture and b) not powerful enough to preserve them all. This position is adopted with the guise of humility. Since we “know” that there places where the Scriptures weren’t kept pure, then God must not have preserved all of them! It is actually anachronistic and prideful to think that God preserved every word! Yet, these places where God didn’t keep His Word pure conveniently have aligned with the theories and conclusions of textual scholars for over 200 years. It is rather peculiar that God would think so much like a text-critic.

If Christians are to take a mediating position between radical skepticism and absolute certainty, the process of reading a Bible becomes a burdensome act that few Christians are even capable of doing. 99% of Christians do not know the original languages, and even those who do are not up to date on all of the changes in textual scholarship. That means nearly every Christian is held captive by their preferred scholar or pastor on what their Bible really says. They either have to simply put their head in the sand and go with the flow of every changing edition of their Bible, or get lost in the radical skepticism that is espoused by textual scholars. Do not be mistaken, the idea that we cannot know what the prophets and apostles wrote is absolutely a form of radical skepticism. It may not be the case in intention or heart of these scholars, but in practice I see no way around it. If the Bible is only generally reliable, than each Christian has the responsibility of figuring out the places of general reliability. This view leads to opinions like the one I received on my YouTube channel, where a man said, “The textual apparatus is the lifeblood of the pastor.” This view is so disconnected from any sort of pastoral reality I wanted to scream. No sir, every word that proceedeth forth out of the mouth of God is the lifeblood of the pastor, not the places where God’s Word has been called into question. The act of reading the Bible is not to be an activity of constantly saying, “Yea, hath God said?”

Conclusion

The doctrine of Scripture which says that the words are generally reliable is one that is not defensible, practical, or Scriptural. It is one that is so far disconnected from the people of God that I hope it never succeeds in being forced upon people who actually read their Bible daily. Not only is there no way of determining which passages of Scripture are “important” enough, there is no way to even prove that a passage is reliable if we have no way of validating those passages. This view, as it is articulated now, leaves every single Christian hanging three feet in mid air in the clutches of people who are “qualified” to make judgements on the text of Holy Scripture. The bottom line of this view is that each Christian needs to either a) trust a scholar to tell them what God’s Word says, b) develop their own canons of validating God’s Word by learning Greek and Hebrew and the history of text-criticism, or c) put their head in the sand and ignore the sign post under each verse that says, “this may or may not be God’s Word.” It seems that in an attempt to appease the mockers of God’s Word, scholars have simply given up God’s Word altogether. Yes, this is an all or nothing sort of situation. You cannot say in one breath that the Word of God is reliable, and then in the next say we don’t know what God’s Word originally said. There is no middle ground here. Either we know or we don’t. I think if Evangelical scholars took Bart Ehrman more seriously they may recognize that his fundamental problem is the fundamental problem with modern textual scholarship. It is the problem that the historical protestants defended by standing on the self-authenticating principle of Scripture. 

The false dichotomy of “radical skepticism” and “absolute certainty” misses the point of this discussion entirely. All Christians are commanded to have absolute certainty in the Holy Scriptures. If one rejects absolute certainty, then there is no middle ground between that and radical skepticism. This perhaps would require some scholar producing a work which catalogues all of the verses that are generally reliable and those that are not. Even if that work were produced, it would have an asterisk next to every determination that would read, “I have no way of proving this.” The fruit of such an opinion is evident in the real world. Since the axioms and implementation of modern text-criticism has only produced a data set, and not a text, every single Christian with a bit of knowledge on the topic is encouraged to produce their own text.This is made clear in the fact that this is exactly what Christians are doing. 

The modern printed texts are simply a guide as to what one should read as Scripture. Protestantism was founded on the self-authenticating principle of Scripture, Sola Scriptura. This was the foundational doctrine which caused the Reformation to succeed. Christians did not need a magisterium for Scripture to be authenticated, the Scriptures themselves provided the authority. Yet, in the modern period, this has been abandoned. Every Protestant has their own Bible, their own authority, which may or may not be God’s Word. Christians leap into battle with this Bible and try to combat the Muslim or the Roman Catholic, and they do so thinking that they are winning. The fact is, when Christians adopt an uncertain view of the text, they rush into battle with a Nerf sword thinking they have a hardened Claymore, and the opponents of the faith know it. Why do you think these apologists are so eager to broadcast these debates worldwide? 

I can already see people trying to make this conversation about textual variants, because that is all they can do. Yet, I want people to remember, when an Evangelical shouts about variants from a modern critical text position, they are standing on grounds that cannot support any of their claims with any amount of certainty. Absolute certainty is bad, if you recall. Remember this quote the next time somebody tries to say they know what the author originally wrote at Ephesians 3:9 or 1 John 5:7: “We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it.” Any argument for absolute certainty on a text from a modern critical perspective is built on a foundation that does not claim to know what the original reading said absolutely. There is no consistent methodology that can produce a printed text that represents exactly what the prophets and the apostles wrote, and the honest scholars admit as much. So when somebody says, “I want what Paul wrote!” and then argues for a modern critical methodology, just remember that they have not adopted a methodology that can produce what Paul wrote. 

Even if it could, they would not know it. At the end of the day, they are cold and naked, trusting with blind faith that their autonomous reasoning and critical methodologies have given them at least a middle ground between skepticism and certainty. That is why the war which is waged against those with absolute certainty doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The real argument that is made when somebody asks, “Which TR?” or makes a demonstration from evidence against or for a reading is, “Why are you so certain that this reading is original?” The only thing that is inherently problematic, from a modern critical perspective, is absolute certainty, not the readings themselves. Anybody who says that the readings themselves are wrong is simply being inconsistent, because they have adopted a system that does not pretend to have produced original readings (or at least know they have produced original readings). It is impossible to have any legitimate problems with a particular printed text because these critics aren’t claiming to know what it says themselves! The only appropriate answer from a modern critical perspective to somebody who believes 1 John 5:7 is Scripture is simply, “I don’t have confidence that that is original, but I can’t prove it either way.”

I imagine that many will take issue with this article. They will say that I have misrepresented the perspectives and opinions of those who adopt a form of substantial preservation. To these critics I say, can you produce a list of verses that the people of God should be certain about? Would you be willing to take those verses to Bart Ehrman and DC Parker  and Eldon J. Epp and say that those readings are original? Can you detail the methodology you used to determine which doctrines are important and which are not? Can you prove to me that the verses you deemed unoriginal weren’t in the original text of the prophets and apostles? Did you use a methodology that is consistent and repeatable? The fact is, there is not a single responsible scholar alive who would be willing to produce answers for these questions. Instead, they will instruct Christians to believe that a) we don’t know absolutely what the prophets and apostles said and b) that Christians should believe that the words placed in the printed Greek texts and translations are the words of the prophets and apostles anyway, with a medium amount of certainty. Either that, or they will continue to shout about a particular variant they have researched and ignore the underlying reality that I have presented in this article. 

This is not the ticket, church. The only outcome of this view, ironically, is radical skepticism. Fortunately, God is not tossed to and fro by the opinions of 21st century scholars. He has indeed given His Scriptures to the church, and the church has received them in time. I don’t believe that God is “generally reliable,” I believe He is absolutely reliable. Which means I believe His Word is absolutely reliable, and should be absolutely trusted. If the only grounds we have for believing in Scripture is the conclusions of modern textual scholars, I don’t see any good reasons for any Christian to believe in the Scriptures at all. Yet, the Scriptures are clear. The grounds for believing in Scripture is the fact that God has spoken, and has spoken in His Word. If God has truly spoken in His Word, the Holy Scriptures, then Christians have every reason to believe that they can be absolutely certain about God’s Word.    

A Summary of the Confessional Text Position

The Young, Textless, and Reformed19 Comments

Introduction

In this article, I will provide a shotgun blast summary of the Confessional Text Position, as well as some further commentary which will help those trying to understand the position better. In this short article, I do not expect that I have articulated every nuance of the position perfectly, but I hope that I have communicated it clearly enough for people to understand it as a whole. My goal is the reader can at least see why I adhere to the Traditional Hebrew and Greek text and translations thereof.

In 15 Points

1. God has voluntarily condescended to man by way of speaking to man (Deus Dixit) and making covenants with him (Gen. 2:17; 3:15)

2. In the time of the people of God of old, He spoke by way of the prophets (Heb. 1:1)

3. In these last days, He has spoken to His people by His Son, Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1)

4. The way that God has spoken by Jesus Christ is in Scripture through the inspiration of Biblical writers by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21; 2 Tim. 3:16). The Bible is the Word of God, and in these last days, is the way that Christians hear the voice of their Shepherd by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 10:27). The Bible does not contain the Word of God, or become the Word of God, it is the Word of God.

5. The purpose of this speaking is to make man “wise unto salvation” and “furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:15;17; Rom. 1:16; 10:17)

6. Jesus promised that His Word would never fall away, as it is the means of accomplishing His covenant purpose (Mat. 5:18; 24:35)

7. Since God has promised that His words would not fall away, the words of Scripture have been kept pure in all ages, or in every generation (WCF 1.8; Mat. 5:18; 24:35) until the last day

8. Up until the 15th century with the invention of the printing press in Europe, books were hand copied. This hand copying resulted in thousands of manuscripts being circulated and used in churches for all matters of faith and practice. These manuscripts are generally uniform, except for a handful of manuscripts formerly known as the “Alexandrian Text Family”, which were not really copied or circulated. When Constantinople fell in 1453, just 14 years after the invention of the printing press in Europe, Greek Christians fled to Italy, bringing with them their Bibles and language.

9. The printing press was put to use in the creation of printed Bibles, in many different languages, specifically Greek and Latin

10. If it is true that the Bible has been kept pure, it was kept pure up to the 16th century. Thus, the manuscripts that were used in the first effort of creating printed text was the same text used by the people of God up to that point. Text-critics such as Theodore Beza would appeal to the “consent of the church” as a part of his textual methodology, which demonstrates that the reception of readings by the church were an integral part of the compilation of this text

11. The text produced over the course of a century during the Reformation period was universally accepted by the protestants, even to the point of other texts being rejected. It is historically documented that this is the “text received by all” (Received Text), which is abundantly made clear in the commentaries, confessions (see proof texts), translations, and theological works up until the 19th century.

12. This Greek text, along with the Masoretic Hebrew text, remained the main text for translation, commentary, theological works, etc. until the 19th century when Hort’s Greek text, based on Codex Vaticanus was adopted by many. At the time, many believed that Hort’s text was the true original, which caused many people to adopt readings from this text over and above the Received Text. This text was rejected by Erasmus and the Reformers, and has no surviving contemporary ancestor copies, meaning it was simply not copied or used by the church at large.

13. This Greek text was adopted based on Hort’s theory that Vaticanus was “earliest and best” and the text of modern Bibles all generally reflect this text form, even today. Due to the Papyri and the CBGM, Hort’s theory has been rejected by all in the scholarly community. Not to mention Hoskier’s devastating analysis of Codex B (Vaticanus).

14. Thus, the Confessional Text position adopts the Greek and Hebrew text, and translations thereof, that were “received by all” in the age of printed Bibles, and used universally by the orthodox for 300 years practically uncontested, except by Roman Catholics and other heretical groups (Anabaptists, Socinians, etc.).

15. The most popular of these translations, the Authorized Version (KJV), is still used by at least 55% of people who read their Bible daily as of 2014, and at least 6,200 churches. Additionally, Bibles made from these Greek and Hebrew texts into other languages remain widely popular across the world. Other English Bibles are based on this text, such as the MEV, NKJV, GNV, and KJ3, but they are relatively unused compared to the AV.

Further Commentary

The adoption of the Greek Received Text and the Hebrew Masoretic text is one based on what God has done providentially in time. Many assert that the history of the New Testament can only be traced by extant manuscript copies, but those copies do not tell the whole story. The readings in the Bible are vindicated, not on the smattering of early surviving manuscripts, but rather by the people that have used those readings in history (John 10:27), which are preserved in the texts actually used by those people. Since we will never have all of the manuscripts due to war, fire, etc., it is impossible to verify genuine readings by the data available today, as there is no “Master Copy” to compare them against. That is why the current effort of text-criticism is pursuing a hypothetical Initial Text, which relies on constructing a text based on the first 1,000 years of manuscript transmission.

The product of this is called the Editio Critica Maior (ECM), and it will not be finished until 2030. The methodology used (CBGM) to construct this text has already introduced uncertainty to the editors of those making Greek texts as to whether or not they can even find the Initial Text, or if they will even find one Initial Text. That is to say, that from the time of Hort’s text in the 19th century, the modern effort of textual criticism has yet to produce a single stable text. The printed editions of the modern critical text contain a great wealth of textual data, but none of these are a stable text that will not change in the next ten years. That is to say, that translations built on these printed editions are merely a representation of what the editors think the best readings are, not necessarily what the best readings are in reality.

Rather than placing hope in the ability of scholars to prove this Initial Text to be original, Christians in the Confessional Text camp look back to the time when hand copied manuscripts were still being used in churches and circulated in the world. The first effort of “textual criticism” if you will, is unique because it is the only effort of textual criticism that took place when hand copied codices were still being used as a part of the church’s practice. That means that the quality and value of such codices could be validated by the “consent of the church”, because the church would have only adopted a text that was familiar to the one they had been using up to that point. This kind of perspective is not achievable to a modern audience. During the time of the first printed editions, the corruption of the Latin Vulgate was exposed, and the printed editions created during that time were in themselves a protest against the Vulgate and the Roman Catholic church, who had in their possession a corrupted translation of the Scriptures. It was during this time, and because of these printed texts, that Protestantism was born.

Any denomination claiming to be protestant has direct ties back to this text, and the theology built upon it. The case for the Confessional Text is really quite simple, when you think about it. God preserved His Word in every generation in hand copied manuscripts until the form of Bibles transitioned to printed texts. Then He preserved His Word in printed Greek texts based on the circulating and approved manuscripts. This method of transmission was much more efficient, cheap, and easily distributed than the former method of hand copying. This text was received, commented on, preached from, and translated for centuries, and is still used by the majority of Bible reading Christians today. The argument for this text is not one based in tradition, it is one based on simply looking back into history and seeing which text the people of God have used in time. Not simply the story that the choice manuscripts of the modern scholars tells.

Any theories on other text forms are typically based on a handful of ancient manuscripts that were not copied or used widely, and the idea that this smattering of early manuscripts represents the original text form is simply speculation. What history tells us is that the text vindicated in time is the text the people of God used, copied, printed, and translated. This does not mean that every Christian at all times has used this text, just the overwhelming testimony of the people of God as a whole. The fact is, that we know very little about the transmission and form of the text in the ancient church in comparison to what we know about the text after the ancient period. The critical text, while generally looking like the Received Text, is different than the historical text of the protestants, which is why those in the Confessional Text camp do not use them. The few Papyri we have even demonstrate that later manuscripts known as the Byzantine text family were circulating in the ancient church.

Conclusion

So why is there a discussion regarding which text is better? Up until this point in history, the alternative text, the critical text, has been thought to be much more stable and certain than it is now. Currently, the modern critical text is unfinished, and will remain that way until at least 2030 when the ECM is finished. Those in the Confessional Text position might ask two very important questions regarding this text: Does a text that represents the text form of a handful of the thousands of manuscripts, a text which is incomplete, sound like a text that is vindicated in time? Does a changing, uncertain, unfinished text speak to a text that has been preserved, or one that has yet to be found? I suppose these questions aren’t answerable until 2030 when it is complete. This alone is a powerful consideration for those investigating the issue earnestly. Most people in the Confessional Text camp do not anathematize those who read Bibles from the critical text, or break fellowship over it, but we do encourage and advocate for the use of Traditional Text Bibles, as it is the historical text of the Protestant church.

For More Information on Why I Prefer the Received Text, Click Here

For Interactions with Arguments Against the Received Text, Click Here

A Crash Course in the Textual Discussion

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

When I first started learning about the textual variants in my Bible, I had a great number of misconceptions about textual criticism. I thought myself rather educated on the matter because I had read the KJV Only Controversy twice and had spent hours upon hours watching the Dividing Line. Yet, when it came down to actually understanding anything at all about the matter, I realized I didn’t know anything. Even though I knew a lot of text-critical jargon, and could employ that jargon, much of the arguments I had learned were factually incorrect or misinformed. A comment on my YouTube channel earlier today demonstrated to me that many others are in the same boat I was in. 

The fact is,I couldn’t tell you why the Papyri were significant, or even how many Papyri were extant and what sections of the Bible they included. I couldn’t even name a proper textual scholar, except for maybe Bart Ehrman, but I thought he was just an angry atheist. I had heard that the CBGM was going to get us to a very early text form, but I couldn’t explain how or if that text was reliable. I knew that textual criticism was changing, but again, I didn’t know what those changes were or how they affected my Bible. There are a lot of downsides to getting your information from one or two sources, especially if those sources are simply interpreters of textual scholarship and not textual scholars themselves. The only thing that I had really adopted from the sources I had interacted with was confidence that I was on the right side of things, without really knowing why. I developed a list of questions that I wish somebody had asked me before I adopted the axioms of the Modern Critical Text, and perhaps they will be helpful for my reader.

  1. How did the Papyri finds impact the effort of textual scholarship?
  2. Is the concept of “text-type” a driving factor in the current effort of textual scholarship? 
  3. Which manuscripts are primarily used as a “base text” of the modern critical text as it is represented in the NA27 and 28? 
  4. What is the Editio Critica Maior (ECM)?
  5. Which textual scholars are involved in creating the Editio Critica Maior (ECM)? 
  6. What is the Initial Text, and how is it different than the Original?
  7. What is the difference materially between the Received Text and the Modern Critical Text?
  8. What is the CBGM, and how is it impacting modern Greek texts and Bible translations? 
  9. Which scholars are contributing to the current effort of textual scholarship, and what are their thoughts on the CBGM and ECM? 
  10. What do the scholars who are editing the modern Greek New Testament as it is represented in the Nestle-Aland/UBS platform think of the text they are creating? 
  11. What is the TR?

This “quiz” of sorts is a good litmus test as to whether or not you are up to date on the current trends in textual criticism. 

Answer Key

  1. The Papyri, while initially exciting, did not yield the kind of fruit that many would have hoped. In the first place, they disproved Hort’s theory that Codex Vaticanus was earliest text, because the Papyri included readings that were not extant in the Alexandrian manuscripts, which were called “Earliest and Best” all throughout the 20th century and even still today by some. This means that the Papyri do not vindicate the Alexandrian text form as “earliest”, and in fact, they prove that there were other “text forms” circulating at the same time. While the Papyri may be helpful in establishing that the Bible existed prior to the fourth century, every single Christian, in theory at least, believes this to be true regardless of the Papyri. Christian apologetics were done successfully well before the discovery of the Papyri. The Christian faith is one which believes that the eternal Logos became flesh in the first century, lived a perfect life, died on a Roman cross, was dead for three days, rose again on the third day, appeared to a group of disciples and a multitude of others, then ascended to the right hand of the Father. This is established without the Papyri, as the Bible is not established based on the Papyri. Further, there are less than 150 Papyri manuscripts, and many of them are scraps. We could not construct a whole New Testament with the Papyri manuscripts. So while the Papyri may to some serve some sort of apologetic purpose, their value as it pertains to actually creating a Greek New Testament is much less significant than other later New Testament data. 
  1. Due to the pre-genealogical coherence component of the CBGM, the concept of text-types has largely been abandoned by textual scholars, except for perhaps the Byzantine text-type, which is largely uniform. Due to algorithmic analysis driven by the power of electrical computing,  modern critical methods have demonstrated that the manuscripts formerly classed in the Alexandrian, Western, and Cesarean text families do not share enough statistical similarity to be properly called a text-family. Further, the current text-critical scholars have adopted a different method, which focuses primarily on evaluating individual verses, or readings, rather than manuscripts as a whole. So not only are the manuscripts formerly classed into the Alexandrian, Western, and Cesarean text families not families, the concept of text families is not necessarily being used in the current methodology. 
  1. The two manuscripts which serve as a “base-text” for the NA/UBS platform are Codex Vaticanus (B), and Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph). Significant variations between the Received Text and the Modern Critical Text are typically the result of prioritization of these two manuscripts over and above the readings found in the majority of manuscripts or other manuscripts. This is shifting as the concept of text-types is being retired, but the text as it exists in modern Bibles generally reflects the text form of just two manuscripts. As the CBGM is implemented, this may cause certain Alexandrian readings to be rejected, but as it stands, modern Greek Texts and Bibles heavily favor the two manuscripts mentioned above. These two manuscripts do not belong in the same family, which is to say that they likely do not share one common ancestor or ancestors. It is possible that perhaps that they share a cousin manuscript, but even that is speculative. 
  1. The Editio Critica Maior (ECM) is a documented history of the Greek New Testament up to about 1,000AD which considers Greek manuscripts, translations, and ancient citations of the New Testament. The ECM also provides information on the development of variants according to the analysis of the editors. The first edition was published in 1997 and is slated to be finished by 2030. The ECM is not necessarily a Greek New Testament per se, but rather a history of how the text is said to have evolved in the first 1,000 years of the church. This means that it excludes copies made from manuscripts after 1,000AD that predate 1000AD. For example, if a manuscript was copied in 1300AD from a manuscript created in 500AD, the readings from the 1300AD copy will not be considered, despite preserving very old readings. The main text printed in the ECM contains the readings which are said to be the earliest, though there are many places where the editors of the ECM are split in determining which reading came first. Due to these split readings, the ECM functionally serves as a dataset, which the user can individually evaluate to select which readings they believe to be the earliest. A current weakness of the ECM is that it does not consider all of the extant data, and it is yet to be seen if the final product in 2030 will incorporate all extant New Testament witnesses. As it stands, it is an incomplete history of the New Testament, despite being the largest critical edition produced to date. 
  1. It is difficult to find all of the men and women working on the ECM, but some of the scholars who have worked on, or are working on the ECM are Holger Strutwolf, DC Parker, and Klaus Wachtel. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Munster is overall responsible for the project. The ECM is supported by the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. 
  1. The conversation of the Original text vs. the Initial Text is still one being hotly debated amongst textual scholars, but Dr. Peter Gurry defines it as, “The ECM editor’s own reconstructed text that, taken as a whole, represents the hypothetical witness from which all the extant witnesses derive. This hypothetical witness is designated A in the CBGM, from the German Ausgangstext, which could be translated as “source text” or “starting text.” The relationship of the initial text to the author’s original text needs to be decided for each corpus and by each editor; it cannot be assumed” (Peter Gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism, 136). Simply put, the Initial Text is the “as far back as we can go text.” It is up to the editor, or perhaps the Bible reader, whether or not that Initial Text represents what the writers of the Bible actually wrote. It is important to keep in mind that the Initial Text is likely to favor texts from a particular region. That is to say, that the Initial Text produced by scholars is only one of many potential Initial Texts. Despite the fact that many are optimistic regarding the Initial Text, the fact stands that there are many readings in the ECM which the editors are split on which reading is initial. That means there is no consensus on what the Initial Text is, or what it will be. How this will be determined has yet to be seen. I comment on the discussion here and here. 
  1. The difference between the Received Text (TR) and the Modern Critical Text (MCT) is significant. The MCT is at least 26 verses shorter, as it excludes the ending of Mark (Mk. 16:9-20), the Pericope Adulterae (Jn. 7:53-8:11), the Comma Johanneum (1 Jn. 5:7), John 5:4, Acts 8:37, and Romans 16:24. There are also a number of places where the readings are different, such as John 1:18, and 1 Tim. 3:16. There are also places in the MCT like 2 Peter 3:10 where the readings has the opposite meaning as the TR. Many advocates of the MCT are quick to point out that the TR does not have Greek manuscript support for Revelation 16:5, but the MCT also has readings that do not have Greek manuscript support, like 2 Peter 3:10, mentioned above. This does not mean that the verses cannot be supported, just that it is rather hypocritical that many MCT advocates demand extant manuscript support when there were manuscripts available at one time that may have had a reading. In many of the doctrinally significant places where the MCT and TR differ, the TR contains readings found in the majority of manuscripts, whereas the MCT represents a small minority, and in some places, just two manuscripts (Mk. 16:9-20). In other places, the TR contains minority readings, though I argue that these minority readings can be substantiated by the consensus of commentaries, theological works, and Bible translations throughout the history of the church. In any case, the amount of variants in the within the TR tradition is minute compared to the amount of variants that must be reconciled within the MCT tradition. 
  1. The Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) is “a method that (1) uses a set of computer tools (2) based in a new way of relating manuscript texts that is (3) designed to help us understand the origin and history of the New Testament Text” (ibid. 3). The CBGM uses statistical comparison to determine how closely related two witnesses are to each other, and then text-critics evaluate that comparison to determine which reading potentially came first in the transmission history of the text. This is the method that is primarily being used to construct the ECM. To see a basic overview of the method, please refer to this video, which is a thoughtful and helpful examination of the CBGM. I comment on the CBGM more here.
  1. The scholars that are using the CBGM and creating the ECM have varied opinions on what is being constructed. Men like Eldon Epp and DC Parker do not believe that the ECM has anything to say about the original, or authorial text of the New Testament. Others are more optimistic, such as Dirk Jongkind and Peter Gurry. As it stands, it has yet to be demonstrated how the ECM can definitively say anything about the original or authorial text, as the methods of the CBGM do not offer this sort of conclusion. Further, it has yet to be shown how a text with split readings can be said, in any meaningful way, to represent one unified Initial Text, let alone an original. That is to say, that the ECM contains the potential for multiple Initial Texts. The problem of split readings in the ECM has yet to be addressed adequately as far as I know. 
  1. The scholars creating printed Greek texts such as the NA/UBS platform do not believe they are creating original texts. They are simply creating printed texts that serve as a tool in translation and exegesis. The editors are typically disinterested in speaking to whether this text represents the authorial text, that is up to the user of the printed edition. This is evident in the fact that the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland text and the 5th edition of the United Bible Society text are not a final text. Due to the ongoing creation of the ECM, these printed Greek texts are going to change, even optimistic scholars, such as Dr. Peter Gurry, comment that these changes “will affect not only modern Bible translations and commentaries but possibly even theology and preaching” (ibid. 6).
  1. The Received Text (TR), is the form of the Greek New Testament as it existed during the first era of printed Greek Bibles during the 16th century after the introduction of the printing press in Europe. Up to that point, all books were hand copied. There is not one “TR”, per se, but rather a corpus of Greek Texts which are generally uniform. The places of variation between the TR are minor when the significance of these differences is considered. The opinion of textual scholar Dr. Edward F. Hills was that these variations amount to less than 10. High orthodox theologians such as Turretin considered such variations to be easily resolved upon brief examination. This was the Greek text that the Westminster Divines considered “Pure in all ages” and is the text platform that the Reformed and Post-Reformation Divines used in their commentaries and theological works from the middle of the 16th century up to the higher critical period when Hort’s text (Based on Vaticanus, generally the same text that is used for the ESV) was introduced as an alternative. There are varying views on what “the” TR is, but across all of the printed editions of the Received Text corpus, the differences are so minute that it can be considered the same Bible nonetheless. Modern debate tactics have introduced much confusion into the definition of “the’ TR, but the fact stands that this sort of question was not a problem to the men who used it to develop protestant theology up to the higher critical period. Adherence to the TR is based on the vindication of readings by the use of such readings by the people of God in time over and above extant manuscript data, which cannot represent all of the manuscripts that have ever existed, since a great number have been lost or destroyed.

Conclusion

Prior to entering into the Textual Discussion, I think it wise that Christians are up to date on not only the updated jargon, but also the information that underlies the jargon. If one wants to argue that the Papyri are definitive proof of one text being superior to another, he should be ready to substantiate that claim by demonstrating how the readings of the Papyri have impacted modern text-critical efforts. In the same way, if somebody wishes to stake a claim on the CBGM, it should also follow that one should be ready to demonstrate how this method has proved one conclusion or another. Simply saying that the Papyri and the CBGM have “proven” a particular text right or wrong is simply an assertion that needs to be substantiated. It may be the case that the claim is correct, but it is important that we hold ourselves to the same standard an 8th grade math teacher might hold us to, and “show your work.” The fact stands that a Bible cannot be constructed from all of the Papyri and the CBGM has introduced a “slight increase in the ECM editors’ uncertainty about the text, an uncertainty which has been de facto adopted by the editors of the NA/UBS” (ibid. 6). 

It is easy to get caught up in conversations on textual variants and the scholarly blunders of Erasmus, but these discussions do not come close to addressing the important components of the Textual Discussion. An important reality to consider when discussing variants from an MCT perspective is that the modern critical text is not finished, and the finished product is not claiming to be a stable or definitive text. The opinions on a variant may change in the next ten years, and new variants may be considered that have been ignored throughout the history of the church. One might make a case for why Luke 23:34 is not original, but the fact is that it is impossible to prove such a claim by modern critical methods without the original to substantiate the claim against. Even in the case of 1 John 5:7, which is admittedly a difficult verse to defend evidentially, it cannot be proven that other manuscripts contemporary to Vaticanus and Sinaiticus excluded the passage, because those manuscripts are no longer extant. Since it is well known that other Bibles with different readings existed at the time of our so called earliest manuscripts (because of the Papyri!), we can at least say with confidence that these two manuscripts do not represent what all of the Bibles looked like at that time. That is to say, that those who argue vehemently for Bibles which closely follow these two manuscripts are simply putting their faith in the unprovable claim that the other contemporary manuscripts did not have the readings that explode into the manuscript tradition shortly after and even minority readings that made it into the TR. Some people, like James Snapp, have developed entire textual positions which recognize this problem, which I consider a sort of mediating position between the Received Text and the Modern Critical Text. Unlike many of the MCT advocates, James Snapp is more than willing to show his work.  

In any case, it is high time that the bubble of Codex B is pricked. Times have changed, and even the most recent iteration of modern text-criticism has supposedly done away with Hort’s archaic theories. It may be time that Christians stop appealing to the Papyri and the CBGM without actually understanding what those two things are, and instead pick up some of the literature and become acquainted with what has changed since Metzger penned his Text of the New Testament. In my opinion, Snapp has answered many of the questions that modern textual scholars are unwilling to answer with his Equitable Eclecticism. While I believe his position still faces the same epistemological problems as the ECM and the CBGM, it certainly is an upgrade from the MCT. I hope that this article has helped people understand the effort of modern textual criticism better, and perhaps even sparked interested in investigating the information themselves. 

Sources for Further Reading on Modern Textual Criticism

D.C. Parker, editor of the ECM for the Gospel of John

Peter Gurry’s Introduction to the CBGM

Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixson’s Latest Book

The Latest, Authoritative Work on the Pericope Adulterae (Jn. 7:53-8:11)

Sources for Further Study on the Received Text Position

Audio from the Text and Canon Conference 

Audio from Dr. Jeff Riddle’s Word Magazine

Mark 16:9-20 is Scripture

The Young, Textless, and Reformed4 Comments

Introduction

The rejection of the ending of Mark, formally known as the “longer ending of Mark”, is a Canonical crisis. In this article, I want to make a case for why people who read and use modern Bible translations should be outraged at the brackets and footnotes in their Bible at Mark 16:9-20. This is the textual variant that ultimately led me to putting down my ESV and picking up an NKJV, and then a KJV. When I understood the reason that my Bible instructed me to doubt this passage, I realized the methods which put the brackets and footnotes in my Bible were not to be trusted. The primary reason that I did not believe this passage to be Scripture was due to my blind adherence to things I had heard, not the reality of the data. The quickness with which I cast God’s Word into the trash caused me to be deeply remorseful, and I’m not alone in that . Not only had I been catechized to reject the ending of the Gospel of Mark, but I was instructed to berate others who were “foolish” enough to believe it is original. Meanwhile, enemies of the faith delight in the fact that Christians boldly reject this passage, because it proves their point that the Bible is not inspired. I will now walk through the data that caused me to be deeply remorseful of casting this passage aside.

The External Evidence

The first step in my journey was to examine the actual manuscript evidence for and against the passage. There are over 1,600 extant manuscripts of Mark, and only three of them end at verse 8. The decision to remove it, or delegate it to brackets, was made on the basis of only two of these. When I discovered this, I was dismayed. I had been using the argument that “we have thousands and thousands of manuscripts,” and I realized, based on my own position of the text, that I could not responsibly use this apologetic argument. My argument for the text, at least in the Gospel of Mark, was not based on thousands of manuscripts, just two. Yet even in one of these manuscripts (03), there is a space left for the ending of Mark, as though the scribe knew about the ending and excluded it. I later discovered that text-critics such as H.C. Hoskier believed that very manuscript to be created by a Unitarian, and that Erasmus thought the manuscript to be a choppy mash of Latin versional readings. I realized, that only some textual scholars thought these manuscripts to be “best”, and my research seemed to be demonstrating that this claim of high quality was rather vacuous indeed. I was operating on the theory that these two manuscripts represented the only text-form in the early church, which I discovered has been mostly abandoned. This is due to the Byzantine readings found in the Papyri, and the statistical analysis done by the CBGM. Further, and most shocking to me at the time, is that the two manuscripts in question do not look like the rest of the thousands of extant manuscripts of Mark. Below is the % of agreement that these two manuscripts share with the rest of the manuscripts of Mark – most of them are not even close enough to be cousins, let alone direct ancestors.   

Codex Vaticanus (03) and Codex Sinaiticus (01), the two early manuscripts in question, do not agree with any other extant manuscript in the places examined in Mark in a significant way, other than minuscule 2427, which has been known to be a 19th century forgery since 2006. What these numbers mean is that these manuscripts look very different from the rest of the manuscripts of Mark. I realized I could not responsibly claim that these two manuscripts were “earliest and best”. There was no way I could defend that in any sort of apologetic scenario, at least. I abandoned this belief on the grounds of two realities: 1) The data shows that different text forms were contemporaries of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, so they weren’t necessarily “earliest”, just surviving and 2) these manuscripts did not look like the rest of the thousands of manuscripts I was constantly appealing to in apologetic scenarios. Further, I found it quite easy to demonstrate that there were other manuscripts circulating at the time which had the longer ending of Mark in it! Even Bart Ehrman admits as much (Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 78,79). This is a simple fact, considering the amount of quotations from the ending of Mark found in patristic writings, including Papias (110AD), Justin Martyr (160AD), Tatian (172AD), and Ireneaus (184AD). The most compelling of these witnesses is Irenaeus, who directly quotes Mark 16:19 in the third book of Against Heresies. “Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: ‘So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God.’” So the passage most certainly existed prior to its exclusion in the two manuscripts in question. Hierocles(or porphyry), a pagan apologist, even provokes his Christian reader to drink poison, quoting the ending of Mark. It seems that atheists never tire of that retort. 

In order to reject this passage from an evidentiary standpoint is to completely ignore not only the manuscript data, but also the patristic citations which predate our earliest surviving manuscripts. If manuscript data does not matter, and patristic sources do not matter, than what does matter? Well, tradition matters, apparently. See, up until recently, the theory about the ending of Mark was that it was simply lost to time. The book did not initially end at verse 8, but the true ending has been lost. Well that doesn’t quite work for most Christians, so other theories had to be contrived to hold onto the supremacy of these two manuscripts. Rather than adopting the ending that is found in over 1,600 manuscripts, the default position of the 20th century has lingered in modern Bibles in the form of brackets and footnotes. The reason for this? Some of the earliest manuscripts don’t have it. “Some”, as though the number of manuscripts cannot be counted or determined. It seems that the editors of Crossway might want to consider being more precise, but I imagine it would be harder to justify those brackets if the reader knew the actual number. Even the RV, which is the ESV’s predecessor, contained this information. I still, to this day, feel betrayed by the way that my ESV presented that information in my Bible. I felt further betrayed by all of the people who knew this information and still told me that the ending of Mark was not Scripture.   

The Internal and Theological Evidence

If you are a Christian, you believe that the Bible was inspired by God. That means that the New Testament should be coherent, both grammatically and theologically. That is reality that kept me assured during my examination of the ending of Mark. I figured if God had truly preserved His Word, there would be a simple answer to whether or not this passage was indeed Scripture. I found that there was, and overwhelmingly so. I didn’t even need to go sifting through all of the evidence to know what the true reading of the ending of Mark was, the answer was laid out in the doctrine of Scripture in my London Baptist Confession of Faith. 

“We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies, and entire perfections therefore, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts” (LBCF 1.5). 

If Mark ends at verse 8, there is a significant problem, at least from a confessional standpoint. The problem is that verse 8 requires a verse 9 due to its grammar. There is no place in the whole of ancient Greek literature that ends a narrative with the word “for” (γαρ). This means that Mark did not stop writing at verse 8, if the assumption is that the Scriptures were at least perfect in the autograph. So if Mark did not stop writing at verse 8, and the Bible is indeed inspired and would not have included such a basic grammatical error, I figured perhaps it is the case that the reading that occurs in over 1,600 manuscripts should be considered over and above the two manuscripts which contain this idiosyncratic grammar mistake. In order to adopt the abrupt ending of Mark, I could not say that the Bible had any sort of “majesty of style” because it in fact, contains this atrocious grammar error at the “ending” of Mark. 

Further, if Mark ends at verse 8, there is a basic theological problem that puts the Bible at odds with itself. The confession says that the Bible should be esteemed on the account of “the consent of all the parts.” If the Gospel of Mark ends at verse 8, it does not consent with all the parts of Scripture. It excludes an appearance account, which is included in Matthew, Luke, John, and even in Paul’s testimony of the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. That means that Mark is apparently the only Gospel writer who didn’t have his story straight. 

Even Paul, who wasn’t there to experience the life of Jesus, has his facts in line. It is vital that the Gospel that Christians use contains the life, death, burial, resurrection, and appearance of Jesus. I figured that Mark would not have been ignorant to this. It seemed illogical in fact, to affirm the opposite, that Mark would have excluded such a fundamental detail. The burial and appearance are crucial to affirming two fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith: 1) That Jesus was very man and actually died, and 2) that after dying, Christ was raised up and thus very God. Without the appearance, there is no actual vindication of the latter. Turretin even affirmed this truth in saying that the ending of Mark was necessary for establishing the truth of the Gospel account, which I imagine he included as a means to respond to people like me, who were calling the passage into question. At first I said that it didn’t matter because this account is available in other places, but I was making the assumption that early readers of Mark had access to those other witnesses. See, I sat through a semester at Arizona State University where I heard all of the theories of Bauer and Ehrman, so I should have known better than to make that argument. If one takes the higher critical perspective of Markan priority, that Mark was the first Gospel, than the earliest Christians did not have a Gospel account which vindicated the truth of the resurrection. Which is to say, that the only apologetic defense of the Gospel I had to the actual critics of the faith was essentially to say, “Well that’s just wrong!” Kant and Kierkegard would have been proud of me. 

Conclusion

At the end of my research on the ending of Mark, I found that there was no good reason to continue propagating the idea that the Gospel of Mark ends with poor grammar, two scared women, and no vindication of the resurrection. If one of the uses of the Bible is to defeat the enemies of the faith in debate, than this clearly was not the way to go about it. In this journey, I also learned something vitally important – that the purpose of the Bible was not to defend the faith, it was to have faith and increase in faith. It was the means that God had given me to commune with Him. The majority of the Christian church, who reads their Bible to hear the voice of their Shepherd, should not be subject to the threadbare theories of higher and lower critics in the footnotes of their Bible. There are certain places that warrant a serious discussion regarding textual variants by Christians, this is not one of them. 

Not only is the evidence overwhelmingly in support of this passage being original, it is impossible to responsibly say that rejecting this passage is in line with a Reformed, confessional view. Not only does it violate the basic principles of the doctrine of Scripture in 1.5, it ignores the fact that doctrines are actually built upon the ending of Mark as a proof text (WCF 28:4; LBCF 7.2). In both the LBCF and the Westminster Larger Catechism, this passage is used to establish the ascension of Christ, which is doctrinally significant. Even more important to me, was how I had to view the Bible as a whole if I accepted the theory that the ending of Mark was not original. I had to believe that a passage of Scripture has fallen away, lost to time, and cannot be recovered. Since this must be true for the ending of Mark, I might as well apply that theory to every other area of textual variation in the New and Old Testament texts. The theories of higher critical thought must be adopted to explain how the text evolved, and justify the ongoing effort to reconstruct this lost bible. I later discovered that is exactly what is being done by nearly every textual scholar, so it seems I was not alone in my conclusions. 

In my examination of just one textual variant, I came to a significant conclusion. Using Dr. Jeff Riddle’s words, we are living in the age of a Canonical crisis. The fact that the Gospel of John as it exists in the NA28 is different than the Gospel of John as it exists in the unpublished Editio Critica Maior demonstrates this reality. Christians are reading the Gospel of John as it existed in 2012, while the “true” Gospel of John is currently being constructed in Munster, Germany. Who knows if the John that is produced out of the black box sometime in the next 10 years will be the same as the Gospel of John as it is being read now? I wonder what Schrodinger would think of this paradox? 

It is important that Christians realize that the artificial divide between higher and lower criticism is just that – artificial. The footnote which has informed Christians to call into doubt the text of Holy Scripture at the end of Mark is not purely informed by manuscript data. Science is done by the intellect, and the intellect of man is terribly limited and subjective. Theories must be applied, and there is not a single textual scholar who approaches the text without assumptions. The deconstruction of the New Testament text is higher criticism restrained by the religious feelings of Protestants who actually buy Bibles. Honest scholars admit as much. “With the rise of an Enlightenment turn to ‘science,’ and informed by a Protestant preference for ‘the original,’ however, critics like Johann Jakob Griesbach, Karl Lachmann, Constantin Von Tischendorf, Samuel Tragelles, and finally, B.F. Westcott and F.J.A.; Hort reevaluated the evidence…” (Knust & Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone, 16). The reevaluation of the manuscript data in the 19th century is what unseated this passage in Mark from the canon, and the church complied. The people of God do not have to comply with this opinion, and that is the reality. Read the ending of Mark, and know that it is authentic. 

Post Script: A Personal Note from the Author

I do not have the scholarly credentials, but I do have one unique qualification that I believe is important. I am a part of the first generation of Christians who came to faith after the battle for the Bible. My generation is feeling the impact of a changing Bible harder than any other generation to date. I was taught how to read my Bible after the longer ending of Mark had been overwhelmingly dismissed. When I approached bracketed texts, I ignored them, because that is what I was told to do. I did not consider the theological impact of removed texts because modern exegesis and hermeneutics are designed around a shifting text. That is why, when I began to study historical protestant theology, these modern hermeneutical methods were so crazy to me. If doctrine cannot be established upon contested verses, what place is left to build doctrine upon? The answer is very few places, and the diamonds in the apparatus of the NA28 are proof of that. The Reformed believed that every word, all Scripture, should be used. That is why it was such a shock to me when I discovered the reasons that these texts were put into brackets. I was raised in a generation of skeptics, and I did not become converted under the assumption that I would need to take a Kantian leap of faith to believe in my Bible. Christians in my generation should not have to believe that they must wait until 2030 to read God’s Word. That is unprecedented in the history of the church. If the Bible isn’t going to be ready for another ten years, what is the point of even reading it until then? The answer is simple: there isn’t a good reason to read it until then, or after then for that matter.   

If the longer ending of Mark is not Scripture, what then is Scripture? What piece of the text cannot be put under the same scrutiny if all it takes is one shoddy manuscript that is stored in the Vatican to change the whole Bible? How many manuscripts would it take to unseat John 3:16 or Romans 8:28? The reality is, the modern Bible is being held together by the people that read it, not the evaluation of manuscripts. The Bible becomes smaller with each implementation of text-critical methods. I imagine that the rapid progression of the modern text-critical effort is directly related to the fact that people simply don’t read their Bibles anymore. It’s easy to ignore footnotes and brackets and a constantly changing text if people don’t know that anything has changed in the first place.  

It is clear that something needs to change, or the Christian church will be in deep trouble by 2030 when scholars begin teaching the people of God how to construct their own Bible using online software. Yes, that is the reality, not some speculation. The split readings in the ECM will eventually make their way into the text of translations, and by that time, the Christian will not have a Bible or a defense for the Bible. If the CBGM has proven one thing, it is that none of the scholars using it can determine what the original said. My hope is that things will change before that happens, but time will tell. 

The Reformation Day Post: VERY Spooky

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In the Beginning

God’s Word has been contested since the very beginning in the Garden when Satan said, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Eve then changes what God said, and Satan reinterprets it. “God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:1-4). Yes, from the very beginning of time, the battle for the authority of God’s Word has been fought. God has delivered His Word in every generation, and even delivers it anew to His people when it was thought to have been lost (2 Kings 22-23). The struggle for the authority of the Scriptures continued on through the Old Covenant, as the unfaithful kings of Israel continued to build and rebuild the high places. During Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had so distorted the meaning of God’s Word that Jesus issued a lengthy rebuke to them in the form of His exegesis of the law in Matthew 5.

And Again

Even past the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, with Marcion and others, the authority of the Scriptures continued to be questioned, and the actual words and passages themselves were contested and removed in some unfaithful manuscripts. Augustine of Hippo comments on the phenomenon, “Some men of slight faith, or, rather, some hostile to the true faith, fearing, as I believe, that liberty to sin with impunity is granted to their wives, remove from their Scriptural texts the account of our Lord’s pardon of the adulteress” (De adulterinis coniugiis 2.7.6). In the New Testament age, the method of attacking the authority of God’s Word has not changed.

Little is known about the transmission of the New Testament until the middle ages, other than the fact that a lot of Bibles were destroyed by persecution, war, fires, and other natural causes. The history of the New Testament, as it were, is largely clouded to a modern audience until the explosion of manuscripts in the 9th century. Despite this fact, there are quotations from theologians throughout the ages which testify to the existence of ancient and accurate copies that survived through the age of tampering. Deuteronomy 4:2 became an integral text to Augustine and other theologians during this time. “Augustine and his contemporaries were well aware that editing of this sort could potentially take place, and they invented various strategies to deal with the problem: curses were added to the end of certain treatises, sternly warning those who would dare to alter texts that they would be punished for their misdeeds” (Wasserman, Knust, To Cast the First Stone, 100). 

The manuscripts from the period just before and during Augustine’s time demonstrate that this period of time could be considered a tampering period of the text of the New Testament. Despite this tampering period, and the fact that Christianity almost lost to Arianism at the same time, the orthodox faith, along with the original Scriptures, continued on in time. This is the most reasonable explanation for the explosion of uniform manuscripts suddenly appearing in history during the middle ages. It was not long after this time that the next major attack on the authority of Scripture occurred. As the end of the middle scholastic period came to an end, theologians began to discover corruptions in the Latin Vulgate.

And Again…

The text of the Western church had in some places conformed to the teachings of Rome, which had been heading in a dark direction for quite some time. The Western church had, due to a number of reasons, developed into more of a political player than a religious one. Popes began to sell their papacy to the highest bidder, and one point, three popes occupied the office. Indulgences were introduced to encourage knights to fight for the Holy Roman Empire, and this led to the grossly abusive practice of the church which drained the pockets of the laity. Some churches had failed to give communion to the people in years, and in many cases, the only people taking communion were the priests themselves, with the laity observing. Despite this corruption, the seed of the Reformation lived in the marrow of the church with men like Wycliffe and Hus. In the same way that Athenasius was raised up during the Arian controversy in the early church, faithful men of God were called out of the wilderness and began crying out in protest against the abuses that had developed in the Western church. God began orchestrating the Reformation well before that fateful October day in Wittenberg in 1517. 

In fact, there were several providential events that are often forgotten leading up to the Reformation. In the mid 15th century, two things occur that contribute to the Protestant movement. The first is the construction of the printing press in Guttenberg in 1436, and the second is the fall of Constantinople shortly after that. Up to that point in the west, the Bible that was used was Latin, and the means of reproducing that Bible was hand-copying. When Constantinople fell, the Greek speaking people of God came flooding into the West, bringing with them their language and their Bibles. Bibles continued to be hand-copied for some time after this event, but it wasn’t long until the printing press was purposed for printing the Bible in all sorts of languages. During this pre-Reformation period, men like Wycliffe had already started producing Bibles in English, and in response, the Roman church said that the Bible was only authoritative insofar as it was approved by the church, and the only Bible approved by the church was the Latin Vulgate as it had come to exist during that time. The Roman church was not mighty enough to stop the events that had been started at the fall of Constantinople and the invention of the printing press, however. In 1514, the Complutensian Polyglot New Testament had been printed, and two years later in 1516, Erasmus’ first edition of the Novum Testamentum was hot on the press. There was nothing that Rome could do to stop what would happen next. 

On October 31, 1517, a German Roman Catholic Monk named Martin Luther posted 95 theses which detailed the places the Western church need to change. This moment marks the date that most people consider the Protestant Reformation to have officially started. During this time, the battle for the Bible centered around one question: In what way are the Scriptures authoritative. On one hand, the Roman church said that the Scriptures were authoritative by virtue of the church. On the other hand, the Protestants said that the Bible was authoritative in itself, it was self-authenticating (αυτοπιστος). The doctrine of the self-authenticating nature of the Scriptures was in fact the fundamental principle that drove the doctrine of Sola Scriptura and thus drove the entire Reformation. The only refutation for the doctrine of Rome was to return to the Scriptural reality that God Himself gave authority to the Bible. This doctrine of Scripture ultimately becomes a staple in Protestant doctrine and is codified in all of the major confessions of the 17th century. 

And Again…

If history has taught us anything, the battle for the authority of Scripture did not end with the high orthodox theologians following the Reformation. The next major battle that the church would face came from Germany, the birthplace of the Reformation. Starting with a German theologian named Friedrich Schleiermacher, the way that theology was done forever changed. The Bible no longer was the Word of God, the Bible was the documentation of the experience of communities of faith. In the German schools, the idea that the Bible was infallible came under fire and the way the Bible was described and understood changed rapidly. Due to the rise of the sciences and the development of the philosophy of religion, much of the historical information found in the Scriptures was determined to be factually incorrect. As a result, German theologians made sense of this by splitting the interpretation of history into at least two categories.

The first was history as it actually happened, and the second was history as it was experienced by various communities in time. The miracles in the Bible were not true history, they were the interpretation of history by human communities who were trying to make sense of their religious experience. The birth of historical criticism, or higher criticism, would be the next giant the church had to slay. German theologian Karl Barth, who came onto the scene like a stampeding elephant trumpeting through a Sunday school class, made an attempt at responding to higher criticism with what is now known as Neo-Orthodoxy. The Bible didn’t have to be factually correct or materially correct to be the Word of God according to Barth. The Bible was the authoritative witness to the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Word of God. The Word of God was Jesus Christ, and the Bible became the Word of God when the Holy Spirit worked in the believer. The Bible was not the Word of God, it was a witness to the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and it became the Word of God on occasion.

The theology of Barth sent the church reeling, scrambling to give a response. Theologians like Cornelius Van Til spent nearly 30 years offering a response to idealism and neo-orthodoxy by developing his transcendentalism. Prior to the rise of Neo-Orthodoxy, B.B. Warfield and A.A. Hodge attempted to address higher criticism by reinterpreting the Westminster Confession. The Bible did not have to be materially preserved to be inerrant, they said, it just had to preserve the sense of the thing. The Bible was really only inspired and perfect in the autographs, and that is what the high orthodox meant. Unfortunately, that is not what the high orthodox meant, and the church thought that the high-orthodox doctrine of Scripture could not stand its ground to higher criticism like it had against Rome in the 16th century. What Warfield’s doctrine meant was that the Bible could be proved to be original by way of evidence, that by an effort of lower criticism, the original could most certainly be reconstructed. This articulation of Scripture was entirely dependent on the abilities of textual scholars to demonstrate that an original could be produced from the surviving manuscripts. In other words, the Scriptures are the Word of God insofar as they could be demonstrated to be the Word of God. At the time of Warfield, theologians were nearly unanimous in believing that this could be done with lower criticism. In fact, Warfield believed that the efforts of text-critics in his day were the providential workings of God to restore the original text of the Scriptures to the church. 

Some time later, the battle for the Bible began and led to the production of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. It was a direct response to the neo-orthodox doctrine of Scripture which had turned the church upside down. The latest battle for the authority of Scripture did two things: 1) It codified the theology of Warfield and 2) determined that higher and lower criticism were two separate and unrelated disciplines. Yet the theology of Scheliermacher and Barth were planted, like twin mustard seeds, and today stand as mighty trees in the center of orthodoxy. 

The next battle for the Bible is arguably happening now, and will most certainly rage on until Barth and Schleiermacher are answered totally and finally. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy has not aged well, and the ghost of Schleiermacher haunts the canons of modern textual scholarship. Since Warfield’s doctrine was so reliant on the success of lower-criticism and its separation from higher criticism, it is completely contingent on these two things being reality. Yet, something has happened since Warfield’s time which has given cause for a new battle. The development of lower criticism has resulted in its fusion with higher criticism, and the reality upon which Warfield’s argument rests is no longer reality. See, Warfield’s doctrine was contingent on the success of the lower critics in proving the original from the extant manuscripts. Since the stated goal of textual criticism is now the Initial Text, Warfield’s formulation has lost its power. Further, the line between higher and lower criticism has become blurred and the actual textual decisions being made by the lower-critics are informed by a combination of both textual data and higher critical principles. 

This is evident in that the stated goal of the Editio Critica Maior is not to produce an original Bible, but rather to reconstruct the history of the transmission of the New Testament Text. In other words, the goal of this critical text is to produce the history of how Christians have experienced their religion in time by examining the documents they left behind. The readings which are determined earliest only speak to the written expression of Christianity in the time and place that it represents. The variants which rank later simply represent how faith communities evolved and developed throughout time. Since the goal is not a definitive text, the goal is inherently in line with documenting how Christians recorded their experience in time. The ECM is not the Bible, it may or may not contain the Bible. That means that while printed editions created from the ECM may have the objective of producing an early witness to the New Testament text, it in itself says nothing regarding the authorial text. Some may say that this Initial Text represents the authorial text, but this is simply how Kant would have responded to Schleiermacher. The very concept of the ECM is the direct implementation of higher criticism in text-critical practice.   

There are two ways that Christians can respond to the reality of the ECM. The first is found in Barth or perhaps Bultmann. It is fine that the Bible contains errors and factual problems, the Word of God is contained in the Bible or perhaps the Bible is a witness to the Word of God. In fact, it would be putting limitations on God by saying that He must speak in a narrowly defined set of Scriptures. God is far beyond anything we can comprehend, and therefore the words in Scripture become of the Word of God when God speaks through them. Since the Bible cannot be proven to be original by lower criticism, and higher criticism results in demythologizing the Bible, the only answer must be Barth, or some variation. The second option, which was not tried during the Warfieldian era, is the high-orthodox view of Scripture. The Bible does not need to be reconstructed, or demonstrated to be original by way of lower-criticism, because it was never lost and does not need to be proved. God Himself authenticates the Scriptures and by His special care and providence has kept them pure in all ages. The Holy Scriptures were faithfully handed down in time by the believing people of God until a providential innovation of technology allowed for them to be printed. This text was edited according to the common faith and was universally received by the Protestants by the end of the 16th century. This is the text that won against the Papists and reigned supreme until the theories of higher critics unseated it from the favor of the academy. The reception of this text vindicates God’s providence in the matter and it is the most widely read text, even today. It has been cast down by the schoolmen, but among the people of God it has held its place. 

There is a reason that the Reformed stood on the doctrine of Scripture which said that the Bible was self-authenticating. It was the only response to the Papists that would have resulted in the success of Protestantism. The doctrine of Warfield was bound to fail as it was intimately tied to the success of men in reproducing an original text. When the concept of the “original” became obsolete, so did Warfield’s doctrine. At the same time, this allowed higher critical principles an official seat back at the lower-critical table. It will be interesting to see whether Christians uphold the high-orthodox view of the Scriptures, or retreat back to Barth for empty comfort. 

Revisiting the Fatal Flaw Argument Against the Traditional Text

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

Introduction

One of the primary purposes of this blog is to give people confidence that the Bible they read is God’s inspired Word. Attacks on the Bible of the Protestant Reformation often send people into a spiral of doubt and can damage one’s faith in approaching, reading, praying over, and meditating upon the Holy Scriptures. An argument frequently leveled at the Bible of the Protestant Reformation is what may be called The Fatal Flaw Argument. I initially addressed this argument on the Agros Blog a while back, but since that time I have seen it pop up all over my Facebook feed, so I thought it would be helpful to write a more pointed response than the one I initially crafted. The argument is constructed like this:

  1. The Bible must be able to be reconstructed from extant manuscripts in the event that all printed editions of the Scriptures are wiped off the face of the planet in order to be used, read, preached from, etc. 
  2. If a Bible cannot be reproduced exactly by reconstructive methodologies, than it should not be used, read, preached from, etc. 
  3. The Traditional Text, as it exists in the Textus Receptus cannot be reproduced exactly if a reconstruction effort using a “consistent” methodology was employed in the event of a printed edition extinction event, therefore it should not be used, read, preached from, etc. 

This argument may seem appealing, but it actually undermines the validity of essentially every Bible on the market today, including the ESV, NASB, and NIV. The fatal flaw in this so called Fatal Flaw Argument is that there is not a single Bible available today that could be reconstructed exactly if this hypothetical extinction event occurred. The primary assumption of this argument is that there are a set of canons that could be consistently applied to manuscripts which would, in theory, produce the current form of the Greek New Testament. The obvious issue with this is that the Modern Critical Text, as it exists in the Editio Critica Maior, has yet to even produce a text in the first place. It will be finished in ten years or so down the road, and even when finished, it is more of a dataset of texts than a text itself. The onus of the person making this argument is to first demonstrate that they have a text in the first place.

Prior to beginning my analysis of this argument, it is interesting to point out that it assumes the Received Text and the Modern Critical Text are inherently different, which some do not readily admit. This is true in two ways. The first is that it grants in its premise that the methodologies employed by the textual scholars during the Reformation era were fundamentally different than the methodologies employed today. This is apparent in the reality that modern text-critical methods could not produce the text of the Protestant Reformation with its current canons. The second is that grants that the actual text form is inherently different, as the claim is that the Received Text could not be reproduced, while the Modern Critical Text allegedly could. In any case, in order to make this argument, one has to be willing to apply the argument to all texts, not just the Textus Receptus. In the event that this hypothetical extinction event occurs, a new form of the Bible would emerge, even if the same methods are consistently applied. D.C. Parker, the textual scholar leading the ECM team for the Gospel of John currently, says this: 

“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.” 

I do not employ this quote to disparage Dr. Parker, but rather to demonstrate the reality that even in today’s current text-critical climate, without an absurd hypothetical extinction event of printed editions, the editors of Greek New Testaments would seem to refute the premise of the argument itself by their own words. This further demonstrates that this argument does not only attack the Textus Receptus, but all Bibles. That being said, I do not think this argument is wise to use, no matter which Bible you read. It is an open invitation to attack the validity and authority of every single Bible on the market for the sake of winning a debate against Christians who read a traditional Bible. This is a good reminder that we should be careful not to attack the authority of the Scriptures in our attempts to defend the current Bible we think is best. That being said, there are three reasons I believe this argument should be abandoned. 

The Fatal Flaw Argument Against the Traditional Text Rejects God’s Providence 

The first reason this argument should be abandoned is that it rejects God’s providence in the transmission, preservation, and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. The assumption on all sides of this discussion is that when somebody reads a Bible in their native tongue, they are reading God’s inspired Word. This is true for Christians who read the ESV as well as the KJV. If a Christian does not believe that their Bible is inspired, I’m not sure why they are even reading it, as it is simply like any other document produced by humans in history. It may be a valuable book of moral tales, but if the Bible is not inspired, it is not more special than the Iliad or Cicero. 

That being said, this argument assumes that what God has done in time does not matter as it pertains to the transmission of the text and reception of the Bible by the people of God. The only effort that matters is the one that is happening now, which is currently ongoing. In any view of inspiration, whether it be Warfield or Westminster, God’s providence is recognized as the instrument working in the production of Bibles. Warfield believed that the efforts of textual scholars in his day were an act of God’s special providence in giving the Bible back to the people of God. The Westminster Divines affirmed overwhelmingly that by God’s special care and providence, the Scriptures had been kept pure in all ages. 

That means that the Bibles that have been produced matter, because the printed texts are the texts that Christians use for reading, preaching, and evangelism. Even if one believes that a particular Bible is of lesser quality, Christians should find unity in the fact that God uses translations to speak in so far as they represent the original texts. If printed editions and translations do not matter, then all Christians need to quickly learn Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, as well as gain access to the compendium of extant manuscripts, so they can read a Bible. That means that regardless of the Bible one reads, all Christians believe together that God Himself has delivered it. The Textual Discussion comes down to determining which text God preserved. In proposing this hypothetical, one is simply saying, “It doesn’t matter what God did in time, the only thing that matters is what is going on now.” I don’t know many Christians, let alone any Calvinists, who would ever say that what God did providentially in time does not matter. 

The Fatal Flaw Argument Against the Traditional Text Assumes That All Current Bibles Are Not God’s Word

The fundamental problem with this argument and the second reason it should be abandoned is that it takes away every single Bible from every single believer. If a consistent methodology must be employed to create a single text from the manuscripts, then it seems that nobody has a Bible, or ever will have a Bible. The fact is that different methodologies have been employed since the first effort of creating printed texts in the 16th century. Erasmus employed different methods than Beza, and Beza employed different methods that Hort, and Hort employed different methods than D.C. Parker and the editors of the ECM. Not only that, there are a wealth of different opinions among textual scholars in between, such as Karl Lachmann, Maurice Robinson, H.C. Hoskier, Edward F. Hills, and even among the editors of the ECM there are differences in opinion on the manuscript data. This argument assumes that all of the editors of Greek New Testaments today are unified in their opinions on the text. The reality is, that they are not. 

Further, if a consistent methodology is required, which methodology should be considered the “most consistent”? Which methodology is going to be used in this reconstruction effort after this hypothetical extinction? The CBGM hasn’t been fully implemented and thus hasn’t been fully analyzed. The existence of the CBGM itself demonstrates that Hort and Metzger didn’t have it all right. That is not even taking into consideration the evolution of opinions on scribal habits, “Text Families”, and weighing manuscripts. Did scribes generally copy faithfully or did they tend to smooth out readings and add orthodox doctrines into the text? If all the printed editions were wiped out, I imagine that includes the ECM. Since the ECM is already going to take ten more years to complete, that means that the people of God would simply be without a Bible for at least ten more years. The argument is so incredibly asinine it is hard to believe that people are using it at all. 

The fact is, that all Christians have to look back at history to have confidence in the Bible they read. The current methodology, the CBGM, isn’t fully implemented yet, and won’t be for another ten years. That means that every single Christian is trusting that the text-critical work done already is the method God used in delivering His Word to His people to some degree or another. The difference is in how Christians believe that God accomplished this task. Some believe the Bible was preserved up to the Protestant Reformation, and thus look to the printed texts of that era which have that text form. Some believe that the Bible was preserved in caves, monasteries, and barrels until the 19th century, and look to the printed texts produced in that era. Some even believe differently than either of these two positions. No matter which view of the text one holds, every single Christian looks into history to see God’s providence in their view of the text. Either that or they believe that all the Bibles up to this point aren’t complete or correct Bibles, and are patiently awaiting 2030 when the ECM is finished. In every case, the argument fundamentally assumes that the work done in history does not matter and should not be considered as a valid “methodology”.  

The Fatal Flaw Argument Against the Traditional Text Misleads the People of God 

The final flaw in the Fatal Flaw argument against the Traditional Text and the third reason it should be abandoned is that it is horribly misleading. It makes Christians think that the canons of modern textual criticism are settled and unified. The fact is that scholars are still discussing the proper application of what the CBGM is creating, and how it should be understood. This argument leads people to believe that if all of the ESV Bibles and the printed texts it was translated from were raptured suddenly, that the methods of textual criticism could give them the same exact Bible. Unless somebody has the all of the underlying readings of the ESV memorized, this simply could not be done. Even if somebody were to have all the readings memorized, they wouldn’t be applying any methodology, they would be copying down what they memorized. The reality is that even without a hypothetical extinction of all printed texts, the methods being implemented are not producing the same text time and time again. With each new iteration of the modern methods, new Bibles are being produced. In some cases, these new Bibles have significant changes. That is not my opinion, that is simply what is happening. There is a reason that Crossway removed the title “Permanent Edition” from the prefatory material of the 2016 ESV. 

That is why, in my blog, I focus so heavily on the doctrine of Scripture. The current efforts of textual criticism are not capable of producing a stable text. In fact, a stable or final text is not even the goal. The goal of modern textual criticism as it exists in the effort of the ECM is to construct the history of the surviving texts of the New Testament, not a final authorial text for all time. The only way the modern critical methods could produce a stable text would be to strip out all of the verses that are contested by variation. Even then, new manuscript finds and reevaluation of the data could just as easily cause that text to change. The fact is that every single Christian looks back to history when determining which Bible is best. The one method that every Christian uses to decide which Bible they read is the one method that modern critical methods do not use – the reception of readings by the people of God. Christians will never be able to escape their history, as hard as they may try. In an effort to defend the ongoing effort of modern textual criticism of the New Testament, many Christians have blatantly undermined the authority of the Scriptures as a whole. If the goal is to give Christians a defense for their Bible, this argument is absolutely not it. In fact, this so called Fatal Flaw Argument hands the Bible directly to the critics of the faith.  

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the goal of this conversation is give confidence to Christians that when they read their Bible, they are reading the Word of God. This kind of argument undermines everybody reading a Bible, no matter which version they read. In fact, it is almost identical to the argument that Bart Erhman makes against Christians who adhere to the modern critical text. When we begin taking our cues from Bart Ehrman, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate. In any case, there is a consistent methodology that Christians can employ to receive the Bible they read, and it does not involve trusting the ongoing reconstruction effort of the history of the New Testament text. 

The fact is that God has spoken (Deus dixit). God speaking is the means that God has always used to condescend to man, from the time of Adam in the garden. His speaking is the covenant means of communication to His covenant people. God will not fail in His covenant purpose, which means that God will not fail to communicate to His people (Mat. 5:18). Since God has ordained the Scriptures as the means of covenant communication in these last days (Heb. 1:1), then the preservation of His Word is intimately tied with His covenant purpose. Since God has not failed, and cannot fail, then He has not failed in speaking, or preserving the Word He spoke. In every generation, from the time of Adam, God has spoken to His people clearly and without error. The introduction of textual variants in manuscripts did not thwart this effort. In every generation, in faithful copies of manuscripts, God preserved His Word. This preservation did not somehow stop in the fourth century, or even in the 16th century. Which means, that if the Bible is indeed preserved, it was still preserved at the time of the Protestant Reformation. If this is the case, then the manuscripts which were used during the time of the Protestant Reformation were indeed preserved. Which means the text-critical work done during this time was done using preserved copies of the New Testament. The manuscripts did not suddenly become preserved during the 16th century, they were the ones handed down in faithful churches from the time of the Apostles. The alternative seems to be that God stored His word away in barrels, caves, and monasteries lined with skulls.

This Fatal Flaw argument, fundamentally, is simply saying, “We don’t have a Bible, so you can’t either”. This is not the way you defend the text of the New Testament, it is how you destroy the validity of the text of the New Testament. It does not matter which Bible you read, attacking the validity of all Bibles in order to win an argument is not appropriate, or necessary. At the end of the Textual Discussion, Christians still need to have a Bible they feel they can read and use. All Christians employ the same methodology when selecting a Bible at the end of the day. They look back in time, and receive a text based on their understanding of inspiration and preservation. Some receive a text they believe was preserved until the fourth century which has been reconstructed to some degree or another, and others receive a text they believe was preserved up to the Reformation and beyond. Others do not receive any one text, but all of the differing texts. The vast majority of Christians are not textual scholars, do not know the original languages, and thus are at the mercy of various scholarly opinions. The average Christian wants to know, “Can I trust my Bible?” If our efforts are not concentrated in that direction, we have already failed.  

Memoirs of an ESV-Onlyist: Reflecting on the Text and Canon Conference

The Young, Textless, and Reformed10 Comments

Introduction

On Reformation weekend, a small conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia called The Text and Canon Conference which focused on offering a clear definition of what it means when people advocate for the Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek text. For those that are not up to date with all of the jargon, the Masoretic Hebrew text is the only full Hebrew Old Testament text available, and the Greek Received Text is the Greek New Testament which was used during the Protestant Reformation and Post-Reformation period. At the time of the Reformation, the Bibles used the Masoretic Text and Received Text for all translational efforts. Bibles produced in the modern era use the Masoretic Text as a foundation for the Old Testament, but frequently use Greek, Latin, and other translations of the Hebrew over the Masoretic text. Modern Bibles also utilize a different Greek text for the New Testament which is commonly called the Modern Critical Text. As a result of these differences, the Bibles produced from the text of the Reformation are different in many ways from the Bibles produced during the recent years.  

One of the major focuses of the conference was to demonstrate that it is still a good idea, and even necessary, to use a Reformation era Bible, or Bibles that utilize the same Hebrew and Greek texts as the Reformation era Bibles. The key speakers, Dr. Jeff Riddle and Pastor Robert Truelove, delivered a series of lectures which demonstrated the historical perspective on the transmission history of the Old and New Testaments and presented a wealth of reasons why the Reformation era Hebrew and Greek texts are still reliable, even today. I will be writing a series of articles which cover some of the key highlights of the conference. In this article, I want to explain why I think this conference was necessary, and also to detail the series of events which led me to attending this conference. 

Why Was the Text and Canon Conference Necessary?  

There are two major reasons that I believe the Text and Canon conference was necessary. The first is that many Christians do not believe that there is any justifiable reason to retain the historical text of the Protestant church. The second is that many Christians are not fully informed on the state of current text critical efforts. Due to this reality, lectures delivered at the Text and Canon conference provided theological and historical reasons which supported the continued use of the Reformation era Hebrew and Greek texts, as well as offered information on the current effort of textual scholarship. An important reality in the textual discussion is that the majority of Christians do not have the time and in many cases, the ability to keep up to date with all of the textual variants and text-critical methodologies that go into making modern Bibles. There is a great need in the church today for clear articulations of the history of the Bible, as well as accessible presentations on how modern Bibles are produced. The Text and Canon conference, in part, met this need, as well as offered many opportunities for fellowship and like-minded conversation. Prior to launching into a series of commentary on the conference, I thought it would be helpful to share my journey from being a modern critical text advocate to a Traditional Text advocate. 

From the 2016 ESV to the Text and Canon Conference

Prior to switching to a Reformation era Bible, I began to discover certain realities about the modern efforts of textual criticism which caused me to have serious doubts as to whether or not the Bible was preserved. I had a hard time reconciling my doctrine of inspiration and preservation with the fact that there is an ongoing effort to reconstruct the Bible that has been in progress for over 200 years. These doubts increased when I discovered that not only had the methods of text-criticism changed since I was converted to Christianity over ten years ago, but that the modern critical text would be changing more in the next ten years. I began to read anything I could get my hands on to see if I could figure out more information on the methods that were responsible for creating the Bible I was reading at the time. When I began this process of investigation, I had just finished my cover-to-cover reading plan of the new 2016 ESV. At first, I was attempting to simply understand the methodology of the modern critical text with the assumption that a better understanding of it would help me defend the Scriptures against the opponents of the faith. The process quickly became a search for another position on the text of Scripture. This is due to some of the more alarming things I learned in my investigation of modern critical methods. There are six significant discoveries I made when investigating the current effort of textual criticism that I would like to share here. These six discoveries led me from being a committed ESV reader to a committed KJV reader.  

The first discovery that sent me down a different path than the modern critical text was when I investigated the manuscript data supporting the removal of Mark 16:9-20 in my 2016 ESV. The other pastor of Agros Church, Dane Johannsson, had called me to tell me about some information he learned about the Longer Ending of Mark after listening to an episode of Word Magazine, produced by Dr. Jeff Riddle. Up to this point, I had heard many pastors that I trusted say that the manuscript data was heavily in favor of this passage not being original. My Bible even said that “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage”. I was seriously confused when I found out that only three of the thousands of manuscripts excluded the passage, and only two of them are dated before the fifth century. This made me wonder, if all it took was two early manuscripts to discredit the validity of a passage in Scripture, what would happen if more manuscripts were found that did not have other passages that I had prayed over, studied, and heard preached? If a passage that had thousands of manuscripts supporting it could be delegated to brackets, footnotes, or removed based on the testimony of two manuscripts, I realized that this same logic could be easily applied to quite literally any place in my Bible. All that it would take for other passages to be removed would be another manuscript discovery, or even a reevaluation of the evidence already in hand.  

The second discovery was the one that fully convinced me to put away my 2016 ESV and initially, pick up an NKJV. At the time of this exploration process I was utilizing my Nestle-Aland 28th edition and the United Bible Society 5th edition in my Greek studies. I was still learning to use my apparatus when I learned what the diamond meant. In the prefatory material of the NA28, it states that the diamond indicates a place where the editors of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) were split in determining which textual variant was earliest. That meant that it was up to me, or possibly somebody else,  to determine which reading belonged in the main text. This is a reality that I would have never known by simply reading my ESV. I discovered that there were places where the ESV translators had actually gone with a different decision than the ECM editors, like 2 Peter 3:10, where the critical text reads the exact opposite of the ESV. This of course was concerning, but I wasn’t exactly sure why at the time. I figured there had to be a good reason for this, there were thousands of manuscripts, after all. I began investigating the methodology that was used to produce these diamond readings, and learned that it was called the Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM). I quickly found out that there was not a whole lot of literature on the topic. The two books that I initially found were priced at $34 and $127, which was a bit staggering for me at the time. It was important for me to understand these methods, so I ended up at first purchasing the $34 book. It was what I discovered in this book that heavily concerned me. Due to the literature on the CBGM being relatively new, and possibly too expensive for the average person to purchase, I had a hard time finding anybody to discuss the book with me. It was actually the literature on the CBGM that motivated me to start podcasting and writing on the issue. If I couldn’t find anybody to discuss this with, it meant that nobody really knew about it.   

The third discovery was the one that convinced me that I should start writing more about, and even advocating against, this new methodology. This was the methodology that was being employed in creating the Bible translations that all of my friends were reading, and that I was reading up until switching to the NKJV. It’s not that I “had it out” for modern Bibles, I figured that if these discoveries had caused so much turmoil in my faith, they would cause others to have similar struggles. Most of my friends knew nothing about the CBGM, just that they had heard it was a computer program that was going to produce a very accurate, even original, Bible. After reading the introductory work on the method, I knew that what I heard about the CBGM was perhaps too precipitated. Based on my conversations with my friends on textual criticism, I knew that my friends were just as uninformed as I was on the current effort of textual scholarship. It wasn’t that I thought I was the first person to discover these things that motivated me to start writing,  but the fact that myself and all of my friends were not aware of any of the information I was reading. Up to that point in my research, I was under the assumption that the goal of textual criticism was to reconstruct the original text that the prophets and apostles had penned. I even thought that scholars believed they had produced that original text which I was reading in English in my ESV. I found out that this was not the case for the current effort of textual scholarship. I learned that the goal of textual criticism had, at some point in the last ten years, shifted from the pursuit of the original to what is called the Initial Text. In my studies, I realized that there were differing opinions on how the Initial Text should be defined, and even if there was one Initial Text. In all cases, however, the goal was different than what I thought. It did not take me long to realize the theological implications of this shift in effort. At the time, I fully adhered to both the London Baptist Confession of Faith 1.8, as well as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. It was in examining the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy against the stated goals of the newest effort of textual criticism that made me realize there were severe theological implications to what I was reading and studying.  

The fourth discovery was the one that made me realize that the conversation of textual criticism was not only about Greek texts and translations, it was about the doctrine of Scripture itself. At the time I believed that the Bible was inspired insofar as it represented the original, and the original, as I found out, was no longer being pursued. The original was no longer being pursued, I learned, because the majority, if not all of the scholars, believed it could not be found, and that it was lost as soon as the first copy of the New Testament had been made. There are various ways of articulating this reality, but I could not find a single New Testament scholar who was actually doing work in the field of textual scholarship who still held onto the idea that the original, in the sense that I was defining it, could be attained. Even Holger Strutwolf, a conservative editor of the Modern Critical Text, seems to define the original as being as “far back to the roots as possible” (Original Text and Textual History, 41). This being the case, if the current effort of textual criticism was not claiming to have determined the original readings of the Bible, than my doctrine of Scripture was seemingly vacuous. If the Bible was inspired insofar as it represented the original, and there was nobody able to determine which texts were original, my view of the Bible was that it wasn’t inspired at all. At the bare minimum, it was only inspired where there weren’t serious variants. In either case, this reality was impossible for me to reconcile. I then sought out to discover how the Christians who were informed on all the happenings of textual criticism explained the doctrine of Scripture in light of this reality. I figured I wasn’t the first person to discover this about the modern text-critical effort, so somebody had to have a good doctrinal explanation. 

The fifth discovery was the one that made me realize that I did not have a claim to an inspired text, if I trusted in the efforts of modern textual criticism. In my search for faithful explanations of inspiration in light of the current effort of textual criticism, I did not find anything meaningful. In nearly every case, the answer was simply one of Kantian faith. Despite the split readings in the ECM and the abandoned pursuit of the original, I was told I had to believe it was preserved. Even if nearly every textual scholar was saying that the idea of the “original” was a novel idea from the past, or simply the earliest surviving text, I had to reconcile that reality with my theology. One of the answers I received was that the original text was preserved somewhere in all of the surviving manuscripts, and that there really was not any doctrine lost, no matter which textual variants were translated. This is based, in part, on an outdated theory which says that variants are “tenacious” – that once a variant enters the manuscript tradition it doesn’t fall out. This of course cannot be proven, and even can be shown to be false. Another answer I found was that all of the surviving manuscripts essentially taught the same exact thing. This would have been comforting, had I not spent time using my NA28 apparatus and reading different translations. I knew for a fact that there were many places where variants changed doctrine, sometimes in significant ways. Would the earth be burnt up on the last day, or would it not be burnt up? Was Jesus the unique god, or the only begotten Son? The answers I received simply did not line up with reality. I had no way of proving which of the countless variants were original. When I discovered this, I finally understood the position of Bart Ehrman. He, like myself, had come to the conclusion that the theories, methods, and conclusions which went into the construction of the modern critical text told a story of a Bible that really wasn’t all that preserved. 

The sixth and final discovery I made, which did not necessarily happen in chronological order with the rest of my discoveries, was that there were several other views of textual criticism within the Reformed and larger Evangelical tradition. Prior to beginning my research project, I had read The King James Only Controversy, which led me to believe that there were really only two views on the text – KJV Onlyists and everybody else. I discovered that this was the farthest thing from reality and a terrible misrepresentation of the people of God who held to these other positions. The modern critical text was not a monolith, and I did not need to adopt it to defend my faith, or have a Bible. In fact, I knew that there was no way I could defend my faith with the modern critical text. In my research, I even discovered countless enemies of the faith who used the modern critical text as a way to disprove the preservation of Scripture. Various debates against Bart Ehrman that I watched demonstrated this fact clearly. I learned that even within the camp of modern textual criticism, there were people who did not read Bibles translated from the modern critical text. There were even people who disagreed on which readings were earliest within the modern critical text. There were people who adopted the longer ending of Mark and the woman caught in adultery who also did not read the KJV. There were also people who believed that the Bible was preserved in the majority of manuscripts, in opposition to other positions which say that original readings can be preserved in just one or two manuscripts. I also discovered the position I hold to now, which says that the original text of the Bible was preserved up to the Reformation, and thus the translations made during that time represent that transmitted original. This ultimately was the position that made the most sense to me theologically, as well as historically. I realized that the attacks on the TR, which often said that it was only created from “half a dozen” manuscripts, was not exactly meaningful, as the modern critical text often makes textual decisions based on just two manuscripts. In any case, the conversation of textual criticism was much more nuanced and complex than I had believed it to be. 

Conclusion

I can only speak for myself as to how my discoveries affected my faith. It is clear that many Christians do not have a problem with a Greek text that is changing, and in many places, undecided. In my case, I was told to take a Kantian leap of faith to trust in this text. In my experience, most of the time people simply are unaware of the happenings of modern textual scholarship. It is not that I have any special knowledge, or secret wisdom, I simply had the time and energy and opportunity to read a lot of the current literature on the latest methods being employed in creating Bibles. One thing that has motivated me to be so vocal about this issue is the reality that most people simply are uninformed on the issue, like myself at the time of starting my research project. Due to one reason or another, the information on the current methods is difficult to access for many, and even more simply do not know that anything has changed in the last 20 years. My gut tells me that if people were simply informed more on the issue, they might at least consider embarking on a research project like I did. The fact is, that many scholars and apologists for the critical text are insistent on framing this discussion as “KJV Onlyism against the world”, and it is apparent that it has been effective. Despite this, it was not my love for tradition or an affinity for the KJV that led me to reading it. In fact, I was hesitant to read it as a result of all the negative things I had heard about it. Primarily,it was my discoveries regarding the state of modern textual criticism that led me to putting down my ESV and picking up an NKJV, and then finally a KJV. 

I thought it would be helpful to detail my discoveries which led me to the position I hold now on the text of Scripture. I will be writing more articles commenting on what I consider to be the more important points of the conference. Hopefully my commentary can serve to give you, the reader, more confidence in the Scriptures, and to share some of the important information presented at the Text and Canon conference.