Tag: Textual Criticism

The Message, an Unnecessary Tool

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Evangelicals, for some strange reason, feel the need to defend the Message. In a recent video, a commentator on Bible translations advocates for it as a helpful tool that should be used to get Christians out of their Bible reading ruts. It is not a Bible in every place, but it is a Bible in some places, and therefore should be used. The overwhelming perspective that conservative Christians share on the Message is that it is not a Bible, and should be avoided, but there has been a recent push to crush this line of thinking.

I used to joke that the “Calvinist Starter Kit” included slamming the Message and listening to Paul Washer. Now it seems that Calvinists are welcoming the Message into the standard lineup of acceptable translations. Sadly, Calvinists seem to be leaders in accepting bad ideas into their doctrinal corpus. In every case that I have seen of people advocating that Christians use the Message, they also advocate that the King James should not be used. Such is the case for Andrew Naselli, author of the critically acclaimed textbook, How to Understand and Apply the New Testament.

The phenomenon of conservative evangelicals warming up to the Message is commentary on the doctrinal downgrade happening in the church. Rather than teach people what difficult passages mean, pastors would rather just hand them a dumbed down Bible that often times is so paraphrastic it misses the point of entire verses and passages. It demonstrates that there is a trend within conservative evangelical churches to have a low view of the Bible, and a low view of the pastorate.

More importantly it reflects a downgrade in Bibliology. Since the modern critical approach to the Bible sets forth that there is not a single representative text that can be called “the very Word of God,” all translations must be viewed as a corpus to help Christians access Scripture. We don’t have the very Word of God, so we have to use every means necessary to access what we do have. They say that not a single Greek text represents the original, and not a single translation renders those incomplete Greek texts 100% accurately into the target language (in this case, English). Since this is the modern academic orthodoxy being pushed out of the seminaries and into pulpits, it should surprise nobody that modern evangelicals have such a low view of Scripture. The modern church is fine eating scraps off the floor like a dog when Christ has offered them a meal at His table.

You might take issue with the claim that modern, Bible believing, evangelicals have a low view of Scripture, but it is true. I am not just asserting that for shock value. There used to be a standard for what Bible was acceptable in churches. Now, the only rule is that it can’t be a KJV. If Christians actually held Bible publishers accountable, there would be much less translations and paraphrases on the market. Instead, academics are actually supporting the idea that a translation can be poor, because they all have their value in some regard or another. The goal for these scholars is not, and never has been, to give the people of God something tangible to hear the voice of their shepherd.

This is the product of a low view of Scripture. Christians should expect that a Bible translation would get more and more accurate until all of the kinks are worked out and a final product can get to market. ESV tried to do this in 2016 and received such push back that they had to recant. Even a common novel like Harry Potter can be accurately translated into 80 different languages accurately. Why can’t the scholars, who allegedly have much more interest in the Holy Bible than the translators of Harry Potter have in an entertaining story, continue to produce translations that they admit aren’t 100% accurate? Instead of aiming for a 100% accurate translation, these academics say, “They all are imperfect, so read them all.”

The scholars and academics will continue pushing this on the church until it is the accepted orthodoxy. The time to push back on this lunacy is now. The church needs to stop letting the “niceness” of a scholar determine whether or not an idea is good or bad and simply evaluate what is actually being said. If you have such a low view of the Bible translation you read that you feel the need to go out and supplement it with the Message, it is probably time for you pick up another translation that is adequate in every regard.

The “Earliest and Best”

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

This is the first article in the series commenting on brother Robert Paul Wieland’s YouTube channel.

Introduction

Greetings and felicitations! In this first article I will be reviewing Robert Paul Wieland’s video, A Partial Answer to Dr. White, which happens to be the first video he posted on his YouTube in 2012. Amazingly, his commentary is still relevant today. Wieland opens his video by graciously offering a “handshake across the internet” and points out that he was simply commenting on White’s view, and not White himself. If we can learn anything in addition to Wieland’s actual arguments, it is how he approached the discussion with grace. I have not found any posts where White interacts with Wieland’s videos, so if you have any posts where James White interacts with Wieland, please link them in the comments so I can add them to this series.

In this 15 minute video, Wieland presents an argument that is hardly considered by those in the critical text camp: that the Byzantine text tradition can be dated as early as the Alexandrian text tradition.

The “Earliest and Best” Myth Addressed

James White has commonly made the claim that the early Papyri and Uncials are “all Alexandrian in form.” This may be hyperbolic, but it is inaccurate nonetheless. This is highly problematic, as there are Byzantine readings in both the Papyri and the Uncials. Wieland brings this fact to the forefront of his response to White by highlighting that this means Byzantine readings pre-date the Lucian recension.

The Lucian Recension Theory (hypothesis) was proposed by Westcott and Hort in part to prop up the supremacy of their new text. They argued that the Byzantine text emerged as a result of a text-critical effort led by Lucian which birthed the Byzantine Text, which was then propagated forth by way of Constantinople. That means that the Byzantine Text could not have been as early as the Alexandrian Text, and further was an adaptation or evolution from the earliest text types. At the time, this was a strong case for exchanging Westcott and Hort’s text for the previous standard, the Textus Receptus. While this is widely rejected within the text critical community now, the residual has stuck within the mainstream orthodoxy of text critical dogma.

Wieland addresses the claim that the Alexandrian Text is “earliest and best” by quoting scholars that are hostile to the Textus Receptus, Bruce Metzger and Gunther Zuntz. It is possible that the reason so few have interacted with Wieland is due to the fact that he uses scholars critical of the Textus Receptus to support his arguments. The quotes are quite lengthy so I’ll post partial quotes here. If you wish to see Wieland’s full presentation, I provided the link to the video in the introduction.

“During the past decades several papyri have come to light which tend to increase one’s uneasiness over Hort’s reluctance to acknowledge the possibility, though it be absent from all great uncial manuscripts. Since the discovery of the Chester Beatty Papyri (P45 and P46) and the Bodmer papyrus II (P66), proof is available that occasionally the later Byzantine text preserves a reading that dates from the second or third century for which there had been no other early witness.”

Metzger, Bruce. New Testament Studies, 189-203.

“To sum up, a number of Byzantine readings, most of them genuine, which previously were discarded as “late,” are anticipated by P46. Our inquiry confirmed what was anyhow probable enough: The Byzantines did not hit upon these readings by conjecture or independent error. They reproduced an older tradition.”

Zuntz, Gunther. The Text of the Epistles, 55-56.

It may come as a surprise to many people, but the Papyri are actually quite powerful in contesting Alexandrian priority, which is in large part responsible for the footnotes, asterisks, and brackets in modern bibles. I imagine this is why White continues to say that the Papyri overwhelmingly prove his point, because if people found out the Papyri actually do not support his claims, they would begin to be skeptical of his presentation overall. He assumes his audience will not look into it, and for the most part, they don’t.

Wieland notes that the “testimony of a hostile witness” carries more weight than that of a friendly witness, and he’s right. If the scholars critical of the TR are saying that the textual data shows the antiquity of the Byzantine tradition, there is credibility in what those in the TR camp are saying, even if the scholars and apologists for the critical text won’t admit it or mitigate the importance of this reality.

He makes another great observation when he points out that manuscript age is not all that important, it is the age of the reading is what matters. Seeing as this was made in 2012 it shows that Wieland was far more up to date in his knowledge of textual scholarship than White, or at least that White was not willing to discuss the challenges to his position. Having been on the receiving end of White’s critiques many times, I can attest to this personally. The point is, that it doesn’t matter how old the paper of the manuscript is if the readings can be shown to be ancient. In the case of Alexandrian vs. Byzantine, this is extremely important.

Conclusion

Wieland concludes by making the point that it is not responsible to say that Alexandrian readings are necessarily more ancient than Byzantine readings. In his first video on his YouTube channel, he delivers a powerful blow to the common orthodoxy of the critical text dogma. If the Alexandrian readings are not necessarily earliest, what ground is left for the modern critical text apologists to stand on? The two positions might as well be on the same playing field as it pertains to antiquity.

The problem is that modern critical text apologists commonly conflate the antiquity of a manuscript with the antiquity of a reading when they present their argument at a layman’s level. Most honest scholars will admit that the point Wieland made is valid, while arguing that the later date of the Byzantine manuscripts implies that the readings are late as well. It is possible that critical text advocates and scholars tend to avoid this fact because it is extremely problematic to the entire structure of the critical text methodology. If the Byzantine Text is as old as the Alexandrian Text, the case for the modern critical text becomes much less relevant. I’ll conclude with this: if the Byzantine tradition, which is commonly labeled as a later evolution of the Alexandrian Text, is actually as old as the readings which make up the modern critical text, the case for using modern bibles in the church all but falls apart.

One thing that you will not get from reading my analysis of Wieland’s videos is his tone and charitable demeanor. I highly recommend for my reader, if you haven’t, to watch his videos and see what I’m talking about. Wieland had the amazing ability to deliver powerful arguments in such a way that disallowed critics to go after his character. I hope you have enjoyed the first article in this series, and I look forward to what lies ahead.

Ever Learning, Never Able

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

This is the eighth and final article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”.

Introduction

In the last installation of this series, I’d like to highlight possibly the number one reason people seek answers outside of the critical text, which inevitably leads people to either the Majority Text or the Traditional Text. What is likely the number one reason people abandon the critical text is the fact that it is incomplete, and has no function built into it that sets parameters on the scope of the work. In other words, it is not finished, and never will be. This is a challenging reality if you take into consideration even the standard view of Scripture held to by the majority of Bible believing Christians, let alone the Reformed view found in 1.8 of the Westminster and London Baptist confessions of faith.

When a pastor encourages his congregation that they have in their hands the very Word of God, it is objectively a false statement according to the critical text methodology. In the first place, textual scholars wouldn’t have a job if that were true. Secondly, the same scholars wouldn’t be working on new editions of the Greek New Testament if it were true that the church has in the critical text some sort of final product. In fact, the 2016 ESV was marketed initially as the “Permanent Text Edition”, which Crossway rolled back shortly after its release. While this reality is actually exciting for those that work in the field, this is the last thing that the majority of Christians want to hear. Most Christians don’t even know this about the modern critical texts. The changing nature of the modern critical texts can be broken into the categories of text and translation, which I will discuss in the final article of this series.

Text & Translation

There are very few realities other than this that should raise red flags to Christians when it comes to the modern critical texts. The general assumption made by most Christians is that we have over 5,000 manuscript copies of the Bible and those manuscripts give us enough information to know exactly what the Bible contains. This is probably due to the fact that most defenses of the Bible begin with, “We have 5,400 manuscripts!” Anybody who knows anything about textual criticism knows that this argument simply proves that a bible was written, not what that bible actually said. To many secular scholars, the manuscript tradition simply proves that there were multiple bibles that represent multiple Christianities that developed over time. The argument is completely bankrupt and should really not be used – especially to a textual scholar.

That point aside, the most problematic thing about the modern critical texts is that they are not finished and ever changing. Not a single scholar that I am aware of, Evangelical or not, will say that any edition currently available represents the original as it was penned, or that the versions we do have will not be revised in upcoming editions. In fact, the Evangelical scholars say the opposite! Here are several quotes just to give you a general idea of what I am talking about:

“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.”

Gurry & Hixson, Myths & Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, xii. Quote Dan Wallace.

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

DC Parker, BBC Radio Program “The Oldest Bible”. Editor of the Gospel of John in the ECM.

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

Gurry, Peter, A New Approach to Textual Criticism, 6. Discussing the changes that will be made by the CBGM.

It is easily established that the scholarly guild believes that the modern text is not finished, and is expected to change. As I stated in previous articles, TR advocates take these words very seriously. That is the first component of the discussion. The second is that modern translations are also changing.

Not only are the underlying texts from which bibles are translated changing, the translation methodology itself is adapting with the culture of the American church. There is a reason MacArthur has endeavored to adapt the NASB into the Legacy Standard Bible to avoid politically correct translation methodology being applied to his favorite translation. This has been a long standing critique of modern bibles that even the most staunch advocate can recognize is a problem. Most bible believing Christians do not want a their translation to go “woke”. Further, the bible industrial complex is a real thing. There is a lot of money in bible sales. Changing up a few words every few years is good for business. Groups that want to create a study bible do this all the time to avoid paying royalties to an existing publishing house. The changing nature of the critical text is actually quite good for the companies that make money selling bibles.

Conclusion

The fact that modern bibles are constantly in flux is a major draw to the TR for most people. You don’t need to be a fundamentalist to want to read one translation your whole life. As somebody who has gone from the NIV to the NKJV to the HCSB to the NASB to the ESV to the KJV, I have Scripture memorized in all of these translations and it’s obnoxious. I wish I would have just had one translation from the start. It is especially concerning when three different editions of the same translation differ from each other, like the ESV. You don’t need to know anything about textual criticism to be turned off by this reality.

If you add to this problem the issue of the actual underlying Greek changing every few years, you begin to see how the average Christian might take issue. So this is the final reason I will give in this series why somebody might be drawn to the TR for reasons other than Fundamentalism, Textual Traditionalism, or Emotionalism. A changing and incomplete bible is no bible at all, and most Christians recognize that. The problem is, the vast majority of Christians don’t even know that this is the reality of modern textual criticism, in large part due to irresponsible apologists who give Christians false comfort with poor argumentation.

Modern Textual Criticism is Not Properly Scientific

The Young, Textless, and Reformed6 Comments

This is the seventh article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”.

Introduction

The best claim to support the methods and conclusions of modern textual criticism is that it is scientific. You can’t argue against its conclusions, because well…science. This is one of the only real positive reasons critical text apologists ever give for why people should fully embrace the modern critical text. James White for example will offer a brief assertion to the scientific and trustworthy nature of modern textual criticism and then spend the rest of the segment slamming the TR and those who use it. In the mind of the critical text apologist, there shouldn’t even be a debate, because the science is settled. Yet, according to these scholars, the science is far from settled. It is still a work in progress, and anybody who claims otherwise simply isn’t up to date with the scholarship.

This is one of the biggest problems that those in the TR camp have with modern textual criticism, and why many people leave the critical text. Most of the claims that are made by textual scholars cannot be falsified, replicated, or tested. Additionally, when a hypothesis is found to be falsifiable in actual science, the hypothesis is modified or discarded. Despite this basic principle of the scientific method, the textual scholars tend to double down on falsified hypotheses or modify their hypotheses with non-falsifiable claims to try and support a failed hypothesis. In short, it’s more religious and dogmatic than it is scientific.

The Greatest Scam in Textual Criticism

The perfect example of this is what is often called Alexandrian priority. Early modern text critics like Westcott & Hort hypothesized that the Vatican Codex (B) was the earliest type of manuscript to exist. All later manuscripts evolved from this text type through scribal errors and emendations. Dean Burgon and Herman Hoskier dismantled this hypothesis so thoroughly it is amazing that anybody still holds to this today. Yet, when you open an ESV, NASB, CSB, or NIV, they follow Codex Vaticanus in nearly every place that deviates from the TR. You can do this comparison yourself by comparing a KJV to an NASB and then seeing if the NASB takes Vaticanus in places of deviation.

Not only did 19th and 20th century textual critics overwhelmingly falsify Hort’s hypothesis, the newest method called the CBGM also suggests that Alexandrian priority is problematic. Most honest textual scholars will admit that “later” Byzantine readings could very well be original, and there are Byzantine readings in the earliest Papyri which tell us that the “text type” considered to be an evolution from the Alexandrian text was actually, at least in part, contemporaneous with the early Alexandrian texts. Instead of trying to modify the hypothesis to account for early Byzantine readings, almost every modern Bible prints a text platform that assumes Vaticanus is “earliest and best”. Certain individual scholars may hold to some hybrid hypothesis of Hort’s theory that accepts the occasional non-Alexandrian reading, yet this has no bearing on the actual bibles the church reads.

The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) is a great case study of this phenomenon. In the latest and most respected work on the topic called To Cast the First Stone, the author suggests that the church was reading the passage, at John 7:53, as early as the fourth century. This is consistent with the conclusions of other Pericope scholars like Chris Keith. The same can even be said about the so called longer ending of Mark. Bart Ehrman, in Lost Christianities asserts that there were two contemporaneous versions of Mark circulating in the early church, one with and one without the passage.

Despite this scholarship, the dogma of the modern critical text still adheres to the supremacy of Vaticanus. In other words, the standing tradition of the modern critical text seems to point to Hort’s hypothesis existing as a theory, not a hypothesis. Meaning that the actual product of the modern critical text assumes that Hort’s hypothesis was not falsified. Even if it is the case that the modern scholars do admit Hort’s hypothesis was bad, our modern bibles are agnostic to their opinion.

Now, if you have read any of the recent works in textual scholarship, you will see that textual scholars are mostly attempting to interpret data to support Hort’s theory, at least some version of it. Rather than reworking the hypothesis, the methods of modern textual scholarship are simply reinterpreting data with the assumption that the Alexandrian text platform is the earliest, even though many scholars readily admit that earliest does not necessarily equal best.

In the case of the CBGM, the goal seems to be to create a hypothetical archetype of Vaticanus and other contemporaneous texts to find what is called the initial text. The CBGM, practically speaking, doesn’t really consider the Byzantine manuscripts in the same way Metzger didn’t really consider the Byzantine manuscripts. In other words, the earliest manuscripts we have are the best manuscripts we have, and the effort has doubled down on Hort’s hypothesis using modern computer tools and genealogical modeling. Most of the 5,000 plus manuscripts you always hear about are, for the most part, not even considered in the CBGM, despite the computer tools suggesting that many readings that exist in later manuscripts could very well be extremely early.

Conclusion

All that said, the major problem with calling modern textual criticism “scientific” is that the methods quite frequently violate the scientific method. Non-falsifiable assertions are added to the mix frequently, and falsified hypotheses are assumed to be true all the time. For example, the Pericope Adulterae is assumed to be a verbal tradition that recalls an actual event that was added to the text around the fourth century. How can this claim be falsified? How can it be tested? It can’t. Yet it is essentially the academic orthodox position on John 7:53-8:11. It could just as easily be said that the passage is original to John and removed from several manuscripts in the fourth century, which actually has historical support from men like Augustine.

The underlying principle that causes modern textual scholars to assume passages were added rather than removed finds its basis in the old school of modern textual criticism. The shortest text must be the earliest because the text expanded and evolved over time. This is yet another axiom that cannot be falsified and is therefore not scientific. There are many principles like this that are not only problematic scientifically, but also from a Christian perspective. If you hold to the doctrine of Inerrancy, then you believe that the original manuscripts were perfect. That means that the text must have devolved by the time we get to the fourth century Alexandrian manuscripts, not evolved. The grammar didn’t get better, it got worse.

An easy explanation for this de-evolution is that scribes unfamiliar with Greek were copying Greek manuscripts. It makes sense that a scribe might make blunders in a language they are not comfortable with. This supports the hypothesis that the text must have gotten more grammatically troubling in our early Alexandrian manuscripts, not less. Further, from a Christian perspective, taking the shorter, more difficult reading is in conflict with the doctrine of Inerrancy because the originals are said to be without error. If we really want to consider historical context, the Alexandrian Uncials are said to be created right around the time where Arianism was having its field day. Those are two explanations that are not even considered in the modern critical axioms.

This is yet another appeal to the TR that doesn’t include fundamentalism, emotionalism, or traditionalism. If the axioms of the modern critical text are hardly scientific, then what basis does one have to claim that the reason to support it are founded upon science? It may be the case that the modern method is scientific, but it is certainly not the case that the method is good science. If we take on the lens of a scientific perspective and try to offer an alternative explanation to their hypothesis, we can easily paint a picture where the Alexandrian manuscripts are the anomaly, not the archetype.

The early Byzantine readings in the Papyri and the Uncials may point to an early Byzantine text from a scientific perspective. The text traveled to Alexandria, where it was poorly copied, and we have evidence of this in the handful of manuscripts that survived due to the desert climate. This hypothesis may be further supported by the reality that many of our Papyri were discovered in trash heaps. The texts that we have later evidence for are largely uniform and grammatically better than the early manuscripts, so why would we assume they evolved from poor manuscripts? Again, this claim that the text evolved is not falsifiable. So if the only real reason to adopt the critical text is because it is “scientific”, the critical text is really not standing on solid ground.

The TR position recognizes that we do not know a lot about the manuscript transmission history. There is a lot of data missing. The most important data that could support or falsify any hypothesis regarding the transmission of the text from the first to fourth century is incomplete. There is a staggering gap in our manuscript data from this time period. So instead of entertaining the bad science of liberal scholars, those in the TR camp look back to a time where men weren’t trying to “do science”. They believed that the manuscripts they had were the manuscripts that God providentially delivered, and made a text from it. The TR position is not scientific, it is theological. Considering the scientific approach of the critical text has many flaws which compromise the integrity of the method, Christians should especially stick with what the Scriptures say, not what the scholars say.

Unholy Hands & Genetic Fallacies

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

This is the sixth article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”. As a disclaimer, no emotions were involved in the crafting of this article.

Introduction

In the context of the textual discussion, there are many appeals to the character of the scholars which had their hand in creating the available Greek New Testaments. It’s important to note that the qualifications and character of the scholars which produce Greek texts is not necessarily a positive argument for or against one text, but this should at least be considered. The CT side is quick to point out that Erasmus was a “Roman Catholic Priest”, and the TR side is quick to point out that men like Bruce Metzger denied many fundamental doctrines of Christianity, such as the virgin birth of Christ.

There is a serious difference between the two camps in the way they make appeals to the creators of each respective text platform, which I will attempt to highlight in this article. If you wish to understand the TR position better, it is important to know how these kinds of appeals are made from both sides, and to evaluate whether or not these appeals are even factors that should be considered when discussing the text. Both sides do it. The question is, for what purpose?

Evaluating Appeals to Authority

An appeal to authority is not always bad, despite it technically falling into the category of informal fallacy. There are times where appealing to the character or qualifications of a person is actually quite important in determining if what they have to say is valuable. If I want to talk to somebody about improving my golf swing, I’m going to go find a golf trainer. There are other times where this is irrelevant and unnecessary. Somebody can have a great golf swing, despite not being a golf trainer, and give great advice on how to improve my swing. The point is that appealing to qualifications or character is helpful, but ultimately doesn’t credit or discredit the truth of something. A golf trainer can give bad swing advice. His advice isn’t true because he’s a golf trainer.

Erasmus is a great example in the context of textual criticism. He is often depicted in church history lectures as being “the smartest man alive” during the Humanist Renaissance. He wrote scathing satire and was a brilliant scholar. He also shared correspondence with Michael Servetus and never technically abandoned Rome, in part due to Martin Luther’s callous response to the peasant revolt which gave license to the nobles to slaughter thousands of rioting peasants. Disgusted with Luther’s endorsement of violence and the general lack of organization of the Reformers, Erasmus considered it better to distance himself from the Reformation and try to fix the papacy from the inside. His decision led to him being ostracized by both Rome and the Reformers, and he died alone in isolation as a result of rejecting the Reformers and also being heavily critical of the papacy.

Erasmus is a good character to study, because he is the focus of many of the critical text arguments. There is likely no other scholar from the Reformation era whose character and qualifications have come under more scrutiny than Erasmus. Those in the critical text camp say that he was a papist, and therefore his text should not be lauded by those in the TR camp. The title “papist” would be an important appeal to consider, if by papist it meant that Erasmus represented counter-reformation principles. Yet Erasmus was one of the most brutal critics of the Latin Vulgate and the papacy. Two of his most notable works are his Latin translation and the satire piece which is now credited to him called, “Julius Excluded from Heaven”. These two facts alone tell us that a) Erasmus was such a critic of the Vulgate he deemed it necessary to create a new Latin translation and b) Erasmus was so critical of the papacy he literally wrote a satire piece where he describes the pope getting rejected from heaven. In other words, calling Erasmus a papist or a Roman Catholic Priest is a sort of bait and switch which attempts to appeal to people’s Protestant sentiments.

A brief survey of Erasmus’ writings tell us that he was not in lock step with the counter Reformation, and he was also not a fan of the text of the counter Reformation. That is why genetic fallacies can be dangerous. Simply calling Erasmus a “papist” or “Roman Catholic Priest” intentionally portrays Erasmus as a loyalist to the papacy and doesn’t give an accurate picture of the role he played in the Reformation. There are other reasons to cast doubt on Erasmus’ work on the text, such as his association with known heretics, such as Michael Servetus. If Erasmus was sympathetic to anti-Trinitarian theology, this would be something to consider when evaluating his textual decisions.

This is the reason those in the CT camp desperately wish to paint Erasmus as the text-critic of the Reformation, despite not being championed as such by those in the TR camp. In fact, those in the TR camp take on Stephanus and Beza as representative scholars, and are somewhat neutral or even critical when it comes to Erasmus’ work. You can understand the importance and weight of Erasmus’ work without hailing him as the chief architect of the TR. This is one area that CT apologists are absolutely unwilling to do. They constantly paint the Reformation era scholars as ignorant and careless when it comes to the topic of the text. They will praise these scholars in the context of the Reformation, but interpret them in the most uncharitable light when it comes to their Greek bibles. This lack of objectivity and fair handling of church history is a huge reason many are turned off of the CT position. Many people do not take kindly when scholars and apologists try to reinterpret church history to prop up their position on textual criticism.

I have argued many times before that Erasmus’ text is not even representative of the TR corpus in it’s first two editions, as these two editions were widely rejected due to their exclusion of the Comma Johanneum. His correspondence with Stunica and Leigh, and his commentary on why he eventually included the Comma demonstrate why those in the TR camp reject these two editions. Erasmus himself stated that he included the Comma because the people of God simply wouldn’t have read it if it was excluded. This points to the consensus that existed on this verse at the time, but that is also conveniently ignored as a part of the historical record from the CT perspective. It is why appealing to the character of Erasmus is a very misleading and even deceptive rhetorical strategy. When people from one side of an argument constantly appeal to Erasmus, who does not represent the TR in the way that CT apologists say, it should tell everybody that CT apologists are willing to play with the details of history to push their point. This might be expected from those in the liberal schools, but not from “Evangelical” textual scholars.

As we have seen recently, those in the CT camp are willing to do this without shame. For example, saying that the Latin Vulgate was the text of the Reformation, that there simply wasn’t a TR, and that the Puritans didn’t have a unified text. In the same presentation, they will say that the Puritans were simply wrong for believing that the text they had was “pure in all ages.” So what is it? Were they wrong about the text they had, or were they critical text advocates who didn’t have a text? This screaming contradiction should give pause to every onlooker. The willingness of CT apologists and scholars to play with history and misrepresent men like Erasmus to bolster their argument is a clear indication that their argument is not all that strong.

Conclusion

It is true that those in the TR camp appeal to the credentials and character of those that have created and are creating critical texts. I am not saying that CT advocates are the only ones who do this. The important thing is to try and understand is how these appeals are made. In the case of CT advocates, these appeals are made in such a way that portrays the scholars of the Reformation as papists, Vulgate loyalists, and general ignoramuses – all of which are simply untrue. These are often dishonest attempts to discredit the work of the Reformation. The character attacks made today against the Reformation era textual scholars by critical text apologists are often the same exact attacks made by the counter-Reformation Jesuits in the 16th century. We can learn a lot by examining the form of an argument.

When TR advocates appeal to the character and qualifications of those that have been historically responsible for crafting critical texts, they do so to point out that many of these men were objectively not even Christian or had interests which contradict the gospel. The popularization of the critical text as it exists today involved Unitarians, Jesuits, and others who did not have the interests of the Christian church in mind. Even today, the vast majority of scholars responsible for creating bibles and contributing to the scholarly material openly reject the idea of The Bible and are deeply entrenched in critical theory and historical criticism. In my opinion, the reason CT apologists go after Erasmus so hard is to distract from the reality that the scholars that represent the CT are far more scandalous.

This is especially important because the Christian church is under the assumption that Evangelical Text Criticism is different from other forms of textual criticism, when it is in fact, no different at all. I am confident that most Christians have no idea who is making their bibles or what they believe. In the same way we analyze Erasmus, we should analyze modern textual scholars, and recognize how their character, beliefs, and qualifications may impact the textual decisions they are making.

The TR isn’t disqualified because Erasmus was a papist, but we should try to understand if Erasmus was influenced by his alignment with the Roman church. In this case, we know that he was one of the most severe critics of the Roman church and her text! If we were being objective about Erasmus, we would be talking about his sympathetic disposition towards anti-Trinitarian heretics. History tells us that Erasmus wasn’t just some loyalist to the papacy. He despised the Latin Vulgate. That is why he rejected the readings he was sent from Vaticanus, because he considered them to follow corrupt Latin readings. Erasmus is far better described as one of the top minds of the humanist renaissance and outspoken critic of the corrupt papacy, not simply a “Roman Catholic Priest”. He obviously wasn’t a Reformer, but he played an integral role in the Reformation.

In the same way, we can evaluate the background of critical text scholars and see if their beliefs, character, and qualifications might impact their ability to objectively create Greek texts. I argue, as do most TR advocates, that rejecting the notion of The Bible is something that might stand in the way of being objective when engaging in the task of reconstructing The bible, which is what they are supposedly claiming to do depending on the day. It is concerning when prominent Evangelical critical text scholars reject the notion that the Holy Spirit has anything to do with the task of delivering bibles to the church. It is alarming that the scholarship which influences whether or not a text is in your Bible takes very seriously the opinions of gender and feminist studies professors when they form their opinion on a text. It is especially concerning when the academic consensus, which these evangelical scholars appeal to, uniformly rejects the notion that the church has ever had a bible, or that the church ever will have a bible. This is the “scientific” orthodoxy of textual scholarship, and putting the word “Evangelical” in front of “textual criticism” doesn’t change that fact. Simply because a scholar considers themselves an Evangelical doesn’t mean they are engaging in the topic as an Evangelical. You may think that I’m attacking them now, but I’m not. I’m simply describing them according to their own words. This blog is full of quotes which overwhelmingly prove my point here.

So I turn to my reader to be the judge for themselves. Is it important that the textual scholars who create the bible you read believe in such a concept as The Bible? Is it important that one of the most influential textual scholars of the 20th century, upon whose scholarship is the basis of much of the modern critical text position, denied the virgin birth of Christ and other key doctrines? Do you consider it valuable to know that every bible that is produced today is done so with the assumption that it is not the Divine Original? The Evangelical textual scholars will try convince you that these are not important, but I think the average Christian would disagree.

You, my reader, have the ability to think for yourself, and you should. When it comes to understanding the TR position, it is wise to take into account the measures the critical text advocate will go to spin history to work in their favor. It is valuable to know that these scholars likely do not agree with you on the definition of what The Bible is. Instead of answering these questions head on and taking a firm stance in one direction or another, the scholars and apologists of the critical text will squirm and deflect and project. They will argue in bad faith, say that your arguments are “emotional outbursts”, and try to have you disciplined by your presbytery. Many people have come over to the TR position because they see these things as unbecoming. They do not wish to align themselves with people who capitulate to critical scholarship, twist history, and tattle on somebody’s pastor because they had the nerve to disagree. There are many simple reasons other than blind fundamentalism to adhere to the TR, and this kind of argumentation and behavior is one of them.

The Issue of Certainty

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

This is the fourth article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”.

Introduction

A common discussion point within the textual discussion is the issue of certainty. How much certainty is allowable when it comes to our Bible? When we say, “I believe I am reading the very Word of God when I open my Bible”, what exactly does that mean? The average Christian understands that doctrine to mean that what is on the page is a translation of what God had written down. The critical text platform does not affirm this without disqualifying nuance. The TR platform affirms this wholeheartedly, without reservation.

One major critique of the critical text methodology is that it demands, to one degree or another, a level of analysis prior to reading the Bible. Those that educate the Christian church practically encourage this by advising readers to inspect the critical footnotes in their Bible to understand the textual data provided on the page. The average Christian does not know what to do with this information, and those that do often do not realize that the sparse critical footnotes never tell the entire story of the text-critical discussion as it pertains to one passage or another. This is an exhausting practice for the average Christian because this reading methodology requires the reader to add an additional, non-Biblical step in order to access God’s Word. More importantly, it requires that the Christian approaches their bible with a certain level of scrutiny.

How Do We Read Our Bible?

From a critical perspective, the Christian is advised to read multiple translations in order to understand the Bible. This is particularly complicated, because each Bible may use different texts to translate from, and even render words inaccurately or imprecisely. This forces the reader to use some sort of lexicon dictionary just to read their bible(s). Since most Christians do not understand translation methodology or have the training to use a lexicon responsibly, this method leads people into wild word studies which often obfuscate the text. Further, it teaches Christians to be decoders, not receivers.

Now, the larger issue here is the reason why many Christians are flocking to Rome, Greek Orthodox, Neo-Orthodoxy, and Word of Faith movements. Since the foundation of critical methodology is empirical, and that empirical standard doesn’t claim to have produced the original text at any given place, the question of certainty is at the forefront of this discussion. It isn’t just the fundies who recognize that the foundation offered by the various critical methodologies is three feet off the ground. Now, if the espoused method of the critical texts doesn’t claim to offer certainty, yet all Christians are required to use it just to read their bible, the effect is that many people flock to a system that offers what the critical texts do not.

Take Their Word for It

Modern scholars recognize this issue of certainty and foundation and have presented a view that Christians are not to have absolute certainty that what they are reading is God’s Word, but they also should not have radical skepticism over each passage. This is essentially Dan Wallace’s response to the issue of an ever-changing, never settled text. We have to ask ourselves, “Is this an adequate theological framework that explains how we should read our Bible?” Most Christians become so enamored with the humility, niceness, and scholarliness of the critical text presentation that they don’t stop and think what exactly is being said.

What is actually being said here, is that there is no reason to believe that we have the original in our modern texts, and despite this, it should not concern us. It is reasonable to be skeptical, and it is reasonable to be relatively certain in reference to that skepticism, but it is not reasonable to be absolutely certain or absolutely skeptical. Practically, this tells men like Bart Ehrman that he is wrong for being so skeptical, and it tells Christians that they are wrong for being so certain. Christians, according to modern scholars, are to compromise somewhere in the middle and be grateful that we have as much as we do.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that this view is problematic. It isn’t just the fundamental emotionalists who take issue with this framework. That is because there is a logical reason to challenge this balance between skepticism and certainty. See, if we do not have exactly the original today, and even if we did we wouldn’t really know that we did, there is no reason to have any level of certainty at all in the available bibles. The modern evangelical scholars scoff at this, but without cause. The argument that men like Dan Wallace sets forth is easily defeated by men like DC Parker and other scholars. The Living Text view is quite compatible with this spectrum between radical skepticism and absolute certainty.

In admitting that there is no valid means of verification of a given passage, evangelical scholars have quite literally given up the case for an inspired, preserved bible. As much as they argue that the text we have is “good enough”, this isn’t based on any definitive empirical analysis. If it were, Bart Ehrman would likely still be sitting in a pew on Sundays. It’s a faith claim. It is a claim that says, “Yes, we know we don’t have the Bible, but I believe in God, so therefore we have something”. It is a claim that says, “Bart Ehrman is right in his analysis, and wrong in his conclusion”.

The support for this argument is simply to make the case that the amount of evidence is proof of some level of accuracy. That may be true, but there is a significant lapse in the manuscript tradition from the 1st century to the first complete manuscripts, and there is no way of proving that what we have from the 3rd and 4th century represents what existed in the 1st century. Therefore, any claim that proposes such a view extends beyond textual criticism and into the realm of faith.

Conclusion

Again, the discussion of certainty is another topic where those in the TR camp listen to the scholars far more closely than those in the critical text camp. All of the scholars, both evangelical and secular, agree that we do not have the original Bible (yet). Most of them will admit that we will never have the original pending some miraculous discovery. That is to say, that empiricism cannot produce certainty, and never can produce certainty. If you are among the group of Bible believing Christians that say the Bible is the “very Word of God”, the scholars are telling you that you have no reason to actually believe that based on text-critical scholarship. In other words, you must suspend your trust in textual scholarship and take on a “fideist” view of the Scriptures. You have to do the very thing that the critical text camp accuses the TR camp of doing. The only difference is that the critical text camp must do so in spite of their Bibliology, whereas the TR camp does it as a fundamental component of their Bibliology.

Because those in the TR camp listen to the scholars, they recognize that textual data cannot produce the certainty the Bible requires. That is why the TR position isn’t an empirical framework, it is a theological one. It isn’t just blind fundamentalism, it actually takes very seriously the claims of textual scholars. TR advocates recognize that empirical proofs can bolster a theological position, but they cannot “prove” that what we have is original. It is the exact same case for creationism vs. naturalistic origin stories. Because the thing being examined cannot be replicated, scientific methods are an inadequate tool. So why is it the case that people who listen to the scholars, recognize the self-proclaimed flaws in the methodology, and reject the conclusions are portrayed as wide-eyed fundamentalists bound to tradition? There is no good reason.

The reason the apologists in the critical text camp must paint people in the TR camp as fundies driven by emotion is because it distracts and diminishes what those in the TR camp are saying. It is the same kind of rhetoric that is used by propaganda media outlets. If you can’t answer the intellectual question, discredit the opposition. When Christians start seeing that this is happening, the TR position becomes attractive simply because propagandist arguments typically indicate that the position itself cannot be defended from a theological or intellectual standpoint.

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser”

Socrates

If you want to understand why people adopt the TR over the critical text, take a look at the core arguments. While it is true that both sides engage in ad hominem, the core methodology of the critical text is often founded on ad hominem. The Reformation scholars didn’t know Greek. They actually loved the Vulgate. They didn’t know they were wrong. Erasmus was a papist. TR folks are fundamentalists, traditionalists, and emotionalists. Those in the TR camp are dangerous, divisive, and combative. All of those things may be true, but none of them defend the critical text or discredit the TR. When Christians start to see this, they begin investigating the TR position more carefully, and often times see that the theological merits of the TR are far more sturdy than that of the critical texts.

The Scholars Don’t Agree With You

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

This is the second article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”.

Introduction

In the last article, I discussed the reality that those in the TR camp tend to take critical scholarship far more seriously than those in the critical text camp itself. Bible believing Christians say their Bible is preserved, and the scholars uniformly say that it is preserved enough. Reasonable Christians take that seriously. In my opinion, this basic reality is enough to definitively end the discussion over which bible is acceptable for use in public and private. If you don’t have the original, and you can’t know if you have the original, you might as well pack up the church and go home. Yet well meaning conservative Christians will state that every word in their bible is Scripture, and in doing that, contradict the scholars they claim to agree with.

Shining a Light Through the Fog

This is one of the most fundamental concepts to understand for those that are genuinely trying to get in the mind of a TR advocate. Despite the common talking point which says that TR Onlyism is a symptom of fundamentalism, emotionalism, or some other “ism”, this is simply not the case for many who read a Traditional bible. Before I continue on in this series, I have to hammer home one very important point:

If you believe that the Bible is preserved and you have it today, every single New Testament scholar fundamentally disagrees with you.

Take for example this quote by John Piper from Desiring God:

Evangelicals believe — indeed most Christians through history have believed — that since the original writings of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew have been faithfully preserved, and the translation faithfully rendered, we hold in our hands the very word of God. It is a breathtaking affirmation, and an infinitely important reality.

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-infinite-worth-of-the-word-of-god


The above quote is readily affirmed by all Bible believing Christians, yet it is incompatible with modern scholarship. This quote, rendered according to the scholarship of Evangelical text critics, might read:

Evangelicals believe – indeed most Christians through history have believed – that since we have good reason to believe that the original writings of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew have been adequately preserved, and the translations faithfully rendered, we may hold in our hands the Word of God.

This is a sore spot for those that identify as “Evangelical text critics” and apologists. I have seen reasonable discussions end in Presbyteries being contacted when this is pointed out. It is for this reason that most arguments for the critical text don’t actually answer any of the important questions. Many “defenses” of the critical texts are simply arguments against Erasmus, the people who use a TR translation, or perhaps that a translation is too difficult to read. They attack the scholars of the Reformation, often times using the same arguments the papists did in the 16th century. They rarely offer a comprehensive theological defense of their own text, and when they do, it does not come out sounding like what most Christians believe.

When you actually press an honest scholar (which most scholars are honest, it’s the apologists that tend to bend the rules) or advocate of the critical text who is current on the scholarship, they will respond that their view of preservation is something along the lines of “Quasi-Preservation”. Others will simply lower the bar and state something along the lines of, “We have what we need. If what we have is good enough for the Holy Spirit, it’s good enough for me.” This response is a thinly veiled rejection of preservation. Anybody who simultaneously argues for the critical texts and also that “we have the very word of God” is likely misinformed on the current scholarship.

Conclusion

I would argue that the number one reason people claim the critical texts is due to simply not being informed on the current scholarship. In other cases, Christians focus so much on the rhetorical devices of critical text apologists and don’t realize that points made in a debate don’t adequately answer the important theological questions that are necessary to have a stable view of Scripture. In other words, being able to effectively communicate does not mean that what is being communicated is correct. Often times the arguments of critical text apologists do not even comport with the scholarship that they claim to be advocating for.

Most Christians want to know one thing when it comes to their Bible. They want to know that what they are reading is the original Word of God, or a translation thereof. The scholars do not affirm this without caveats and nuance. Within that nuance you will find a view that says that we do not have the whole bible, just enough of it to get by. Those in the TR camp are not satisfied with that view of Scripture, and that is typically the catalyst that leads people to explore views outside of the academic mainstream. If you find yourself perplexed as to why somebody might turn to the TR, it is vital to understand exactly what the textual scholars are actually saying about the bibles they produce. It may be beneficial for all critical text advocates to turn down the volume on the apologists, and turn up the volume on the scholars.

Faith Seeking Understanding

The Young, Textless, and Reformed4 Comments

This is the first article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding”.

Introduction

I have been thinking a lot recently about what sort of content would be the most helpful to people at this point. There are many hard hitting content creators that engage in the public discussion surrounding Bibliology and textual issues, so I want to do something different than those that are tackling variants or participating in public discussion. This article is the first in a series that I’ve titled, “Faith Seeking Understanding.” The audience of this series is the people who genuinely wish to understand a TR position on Scripture, not those that wish to enter into the debate arena. While many of my articles are quite informal, this series will be especially casual. I hope that it will be a helpful addition to what is already available on this topic. In this introductory article, I will answer the question, “What exactly is the appeal of a TR position?”

What is the Appeal of the TR?

Many people have a misinformed answer to this question due to the well-poisoning that occurs in this discussion. You have probably heard that TR Only/KJVO people are clinging to tradition, or are exchanging truth for safety, or perhaps are simply ignorant of the available text-critical data. The inevitable outcome is that a vast swathe of people have a shallow perception of the people who use translations made from the Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek Text.

So why do so many people still read the KJV and in some cases the other translations made from the Traditional text? If you are coming from the modern evangelical or neo-Calvinist church, you have likely heard for years that the Traditional text has added verses or is outdated for a modern context. I’m sure you have listened to John MacArthur or John Piper presenting cases against certain passages of Scripture. Many well respected men repeat the same talking points that effectively give the impression that those who still read TR translations are unlearned, unfaithful, unthinking men and women.

Rather than rehash what I have already covered in over 200,000 words on this blog so far, I will give a more human reason. At the core of conservative Christian Orthodoxy is the belief that God will speak clearly to His people until He returns. The method in which God communicates in the church age is the Holy Spirit working with Scripture in the heart of the believer. When Christians who believe the Bible want to hear God’s voice, they open their Bible and believe that God has something to offer in every line for matters of faith and practice. This is not controversial, and I would bet that those who describe themselves as Bible believing Christians would agree with this basic doctrine.

The appeal to the TR is so strong for the average, conservative, Bible believing, Christian because the scholars who produce the critical text do not offer a product that aligns with the standard, orthodox, doctrine of Scripture. The leading scholars within all corners of the text-criticism community frequently renounce the idea that the Bible is preserved, or that the bibles we have today represent the original text that was inspired in the Hebrew and Greek. So if you are perplexed as to why so many people still read Traditional Text Bibles or have ditched their ESV, perhaps take this reality into more serious consideration. This is not a blind appeal to tradition, or a naive exchange of truth for comfort. It is a reasonable response from folks who listen to what the text-critics are saying, and take them seriously. When prominent scholars, all in unison, say “The Bible we’ve given to you is not entirely original that we know of,” you should probably believe them.

Conclusion

It is easy to believe that the appeal to the TR is only for those not brave enough to weather the scholarly storm. This is a rather shallow reading of what those in the TR camp are actually saying, however. When scholars say very clearly that none of the bibles produced represent the original text, and that the quest for the original is all but impossible, it is quite reasonable to head another direction with your doctrine of Scripture. Many get caught up debating individual variants when, as the scholars admit, the critical methodology cannot be used to make any sort of definitive conclusion on those variants. This is one of the most interesting bits of commentary about those in the TR camp that often goes overlooked – in many cases, those in the TR camp seem to take the critical scholars far more seriously than those that claim the critical methodology for themselves.

When a high-caliber textual scholar like DC Parker argues that the text is changing and will always change, TR folks take his word for it. When well established critics like Tommy Wasserman claim that he does textual criticism as though God does not exist and that he doesn’t want to be put in the box of his white privileged perspective, TR folks take his word for it. When Dan Wallace, a champion of the critical text, claims that we don’t have the original, inerrant Scripture and that we never will have it, TR folks take his word for it. When Peter Gurry, a rising star in the text-critical world, states that the upcoming changes will affect doctrine, theology, commentary, and preaching, TR folks take his word for it.

It does not take rabid fundamentalism to want to distance from this kind of Bibliology, and if you are truly attempting to understand the TR position, you will see that. That is not to say there are not academic and historical defenses of the TR, there are plenty. What I am saying, from the perspective of the average Christian, it is not unreasonable to listen to the scholars, take what they are saying seriously, and find that what they are saying is utterly wanting. This is not fundamentalism, or traditionalism, or emotionalism. It is a perfectly logical conclusion drawn from actually listening to what the scholars are saying in very clear terms about modern bibles.

The Big Lie of Critical Bibliology

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

The United States, and many other countries, are seeing the fruit of critical scholarship. Statues are coming down, cities are being vandalized and burnt, and people are being assaulted and even killed in what the media is reporting as “mostly peaceful protests”. Many of us are wise to what’s actually going on – the Frankfurt school had children and those children are living out their revolutionary fantasies. What we are seeing right now is the epitome of what critical theories are designed to do, deconstruct and rebuild.

Critical theories begin with the premise that there is something inherently wrong with whatever was formerly considered “traditional”. Scholars then come along assuming this premise and attempt to deconstruct the traditional perspective and reform the narrative in a way that aligns with whatever the academic orthodoxy is at the time. This deconstructing/reconstructing dynamic is done by assuming that all things must be described through psychological, cultural, and social constructs. It is axiomatically and necessarily godless. The world cannot be explained by what can be learned from divine revelation, it must be explained by way of the experience of individuals and communities.

All forms of critical scholarship share these fundamentals. It is deeply dogmatic, and ironically, a form of fundamentalism. Scripture describes the first principle of critical theories in 2 Timothy 3:

“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of truth”

2 Timothy 3:6

Conservative Christians are seeing the fruit of critical ideology in its extreme form right now, yet many are reluctant to admit that critical textual scholarship does the same exact thing as the ideology that invented “White Fragility”. Students, professors, and pastors have weaponized terms like “fundamentalist” towards “textual traditionalists” just like they weaponized the term against those that believed in inspiration and inerrancy in the 20th century. These same people engage in what can only be called “the big lie” of Bibliology.

The Big Lie of Bibliology is that Higher and Lower criticism are agnostic towards each other. Yet, as we have so plainly seen, the higher and lower critics have been engaged in a ritual dance for decades. Behind every discussion of textual data is a story of how that textual data came to be. A textual variant “came into the text” by way of a sentimental, well meaning scribe, or something like that. Stories and passages were omitted or added depending on the perspective of the communities that copied manuscripts. The history of the text is described not by way of divine revelation, but rather in a manner that adopts the axiomatic foundation of every other critical school.

Big Lies are fundamental to critical ideologies, because they challenge the narrative that has always been told. These ideologies are necessarily destructive, and if you don’t believe me, turn on the news. The traditional narrative must be usurped or critical methodologies die. So what can we learn from what we are seeing on the news right now? Look at the streets of Seattle, Portland, and New York, and look at your modern Bible. They are the same picture, produced by the same kind of ideology.

In the 21st century, Christians must reject critical theories and methodologies of all kinds. They are godless and destructive no matter which discipline they touch.

Is There Evidence of a “Clean Transmission” from P75 to Codex Vaticanus?

The Young, Textless, and Reformed6 Comments

Author’s note: In the first draft of the article, I was responding to the claim that P66 and P75 had a clean transmission to Vaticanus. Dr. Boyce informed me that he was making the claim only about P75. The article has been edited to reflect this correction.

Introduction

In a recent YouTube debate between Dr. Jeff Riddle and Dr. Stephen Boyce, the claim was made that P75 has a clean transmission up to Vaticanus, spanning the “150 year gap” between the two. This occurs around the 24 minute mark in the video which can be found here. In this article I want to present my reader with information regarding this particular claim. In order to frame this discussion, it is important to discuss what it means for a manuscript to have a “clean transmission” to another manuscript. This isn’t defined at all in the debate, but this is a critical component of Dr. Boyce’s presentation. 

A Clean Transmission

The problem with this claim is first that Dr. Boyce does not define what he means for a manuscript to have a clean transmission. Scholars have defined varying levels of agreement between manuscripts, however. A metric used by textual scholars called pregeneological coherence is likely the closest thing we can look at to determine whether or not two manuscripts share a clean transmission from one to the other. This seems to be the best metric that can be used, so I’ll take pregeneological coherence as my baseline for the analysis within this article. Prior to presenting these numbers, it may be valuable for my reader to understand what this metric is actually describing. Pregeneological coherence is defined by Dr. Peter Gurry and Dr. Tommy Wasserman as, 

“The number of shared readings between any two texts constitutes their pregenealogical coherence. This is expressed as a percentage of the number of places where the two witnesses are comparable.”

Gurry & Wasserman, A New Approach to New Testament Textual Criticism, 137

According to Gurry & Wasserman, 78% pregenealogical coherence serves as a sort of baseline, or cut off point in determining whether or not two manuscripts should even be considered as relatives to one another(45). Using this as a basis for my analysis, If two manuscripts have less than 78% coherence, it is very likely that they are not directly related. While this is not an absolute science or definitive, it does give us a lot of information when determining if there is a clean transmission between two manuscripts. Now the challenging component of this discussion is determining where the threshold is for what can be considered a “clean transmission.” Do we say that 85% qualifies as clean, or should we expect closer to 95%? If a scribe generally copies accurately, is a 22% difference evidence of a “clean transmission,” or does it tell us that there is likely another manuscript used that can account for the difference? A new development in modern textual criticism informs us that we should generally trust that scribes copied carefully. 

“1. Scribes typically copy their sources with fidelity so that ancestors and descendants are closely related

2. When scribes diverge from their primary source, it is more often because they have access to another source”

Ibid. 99

Taking into consideration this axiom, it is reasonable to try and make some determinations as to whether P75 and Codex Vaticanus have a “clean transmission” between them. I will be looking at the pregenealogical coherence of P66, P75, and Vaticanus below.

Using the INTF Manuscript Clusters Tool for John, we see that P66 has 59.9% pregenealogical coherence with P75 and 51% with Codex Vaticanus in the places compared. P75 has a 79.1% pregenealogical coherence with Codex Vaticanus in the places compared. This tells us that comparisons between P66 and Codex Vaticanus are not particularly relevant if we are trying to make the case that there is a clean transmission between the two. P75 is better, though if our objective is establishing a “clean transmission” between P75 and 03, we have to say that 79.1% pregenealogical coherence is strong enough to make this judgement. If we take into account that relationships with less than 78% are considered irrelevant for this analysis, the initial data does not bode well for Dr. Boyce’s case. 

Conclusion 

Now, this is where my reader will have to think for themselves. Is Dr. Boyce justified in saying that there is a “clean transmission” between P75 and Codex Vaticanus? We can easily dismiss this claim between P66 and Vaticanus with 51% pregenealogical coherence. These two manuscripts agree in roughly the same places they disagree. In the case of P75, there is a 21% difference in the places compared. If we assume that the scribe of Vaticanus copied carefully, it seems more reasonable to say that he had access to other sources, rather than saying that he made errors in 21% of the places he copied. The simple conclusion is that no, there was not a “clean transmission” between P75 and Vaticanus. In other words, there are pieces missing to this puzzle, and we do not have those pieces. 

Now, to give my reader a picture to put this in perspective, imagine a puzzle that takes up the size of a coffee table. Now imagine that 22% of those pieces are either missing, or belong to another puzzle. It is possible that the scribe of Vaticanus had access to P66 or P75, but our data does not tell us that these were the only two sources used, if they were used at all. It is possible that Vaticanus shares a “clean transmission” with some other manuscript(s), but it is not responsible to say that those manuscripts are P66 or P75. According to Dr. Boyce in his opening presentation, we should be guided by what the evidence says. In this case, it does not appear that the evidence agrees with the claim made by Dr. Boyce in his debate with Dr. Jeff Riddle that P75 has a “clean transmission” up to Codex Vaticanus. There are simply too many pieces unaccounted for to responsibly make this claim.