Tag: Textual Criticism

Text and Translation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed4 Comments

Introduction

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

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

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

The Textual Discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Translation Discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

A Scripture is a Scripture, No Matter How Small

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

Many Christians have had trouble understanding what is meant by the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith when they say that the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek have been “kept pure in all ages” (1.8). It does not mean that the framers of the confessions did not know about textual variants, or that those in the Confessional Text camp believe that the Word of God was transmitted perfectly by one manuscript. What this means is that the doctrine of inspiration and preservation disallows for a total corruption of any one reading in the Holy Scriptures. Certain verses or words have not been “lost to time”. 

Doctrinal standards that do not affirm purity in the transmission history of the New Testament are a direct result of modern definitions of inspiration and preservation. This is a standard that is based on the opinions that scholars have of manuscripts rather than theological suppositions from the Holy Scriptures. Due to the heavy weight assigned to certain manuscripts localized to Egypt in the 3rd and 4th century, and the massive difference between those and the rest of the manuscript tradition, scholars have determined that the text has been corrupted and needs to be repaired. The Reformation era work was inaccurate because those scholars did not understand how valuable the Egyptian manuscripts are. As a result, the doctrine of preservation had to be revisited. Had the modern scholars simply consented to the opinions of Erasmus, John Owen, and Francis Turretin regarding the strange Egyptian manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus, this shift may have never happened. 

Inspiration and Preservation

As a result of the reevaluation of Egyptian manuscripts as “earliest and best”, Christians had to separate the doctrine of inspiration from the doctrine of preservation. This is done implicitly by those who adhere to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy when they say that the text has been passed down with “great accuracy” as opposed to “pure in all ages”. Because the idiosyncratic text stream had been deemed as good as “original”, the text of the Reformation was declared unfit for duty. This is the difference between the Reformation view and the postmodern view on the doctrine of inspiration as it pertains to the transmission of the New Testament text. In the confessional view, the text of the New Testament was kept pure in every generation of copying, which is to say that the text was never fully corrupt across all of the authentic copies. There was never “two independent streams of text”. There is no doubt that people used the Egyptian manuscripts, but the use of those manuscripts seemed to be localized to one region for a brief period of time. Despite manuscripts having a multitude of copyist errors, and intentional corruption, the original text was always available and transmitted accurately by God’s “singular care and providence”. The postmodern view gave credence to the idea that the scholars of the Reformation simply got it wrong, and the Word of God fell out of use for nearly 1500 years. 

You might ask, “But what does this have to do with inspiration?” The disconnect between inspiration and preservation is a direct result in the reinterpretation of the Westminster Confession by A.A. Hodge and B.B. Warfield. Sure, the originals were inspired, but that does not mean that these originals were perfectly preserved, in the sense that every word is still intact. The Scriptures were transmitted with “great accuracy”, after all. Which is to say that to some arbitrary degree, the Scriptures have been mostly kept pure. Despite this attempt at redefinition, the Scriptural doctrine of inspiration disallows for this separation due to the covenant nature of the New Testament and its purpose. 

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17 KJV). 

In order to maintain a Scriptural understanding of inspiration, one must accept that all Scripture was inspired, and all Scripture is profitable for all matters of faith and practice. This means that there is no such thing as an inspired Scripture that is not profitable for this covenant purpose. This being the case, this disallows for the distinction between “important doctrines” and “not important doctrines” when it comes to inspiration. This is what is being said when people say that “all the important doctrines are preserved”. If all of the important doctrines have been preserved, then the Scriptures that God inspired are again placed under the microscope of men to be deemed fit for profitability to the people of God. So as long as the editors, contributors, and proponents of the approved modern text(s) determine that doctrine is not affected, the Warfieldian standard allows for continued tinkering. The text may be inspired in its originals, but it has not been kept pure in all ages, because the original form of the New Testament has never been attained. This is not the Scriptural standard. 

I am not saying that every doctrine is as important as the next. There are certain doctrines that Christians divide over, and others that they do not divide over. These distinctions are fine to make, unless we are talking about “important doctrines” within the bounds of inspiration. The framing of inspiration in terms of “all the important doctrines” has cleverly shifted the standard of authority for the Holy Scriptures. Rather than the inspired text being the authority, the authority now rests on men and women to determine which are the important doctrines. The Scriptures are no longer self-authenticating. They are self-authenticating insofar as they represent the important doctrines, or some other arbitrary standard of accuracy. 

The modern view of inspiration has allowed Christians to essentially believe that the only people who ever had God’s Word in the original, were the people who had access to the unaltered originals. By the time the first copy was made, the first corruption took place, and the people of God would never have anything more than a Bible that is “close enough” to the original. The people of God will never have the exact wording, but they will have the doctrines. Yet this is not the doctrine put forth in the Scriptures. In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, the text clearly says that all Scripture is given by inspiration, and that all Scripture is profitable. The Bible does not set the bar at verses that pertain to salvation, or some other arbitrary standard. The Scriptures do not put forth the postmodern views of inspiration, where all Scripture means “All the important doctrines”. 

The text of Holy Scripture does not say that inspiration applies to doctrines, it applies to the actual text. If the text is inspired, it has a use for God’s covenant people, even if not equally weighed. The weight of a doctrine does not disqualify it from being preserved. Thus, in order for 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to be true, the text that God inspired must also be kept pure, “That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works”. If a Scripture has been inspired, it must be preserved as well, and not just in the ideas. 

This raises further questions regarding what exactly it means to have a “greatly accurate” Bible. Who gets to say what “great accuracy” means? What percentage of the Bible do we have? It could mean that the people of God have a 95% original Bible, or a 70% original Bible, or even worse. Using the modern text-critical standards, it is impossible to determine to what degree of accuracy a text represents the original. In order to do that, one would need to have the original as a point of comparison. As it stands, the standard of comparison is a cluster of 3rd and 4th century Egyptian manuscripts. So even stating that the Bible has been preserved to a great degree of accuracy is completely arbitrary and unverifiable using modern standards and methods. 

Conclusion

A common misunderstanding of the confessional language of “pure in all ages” is that it means that literally every manuscript has been preserved completely. This has never been the case, and was not the perspective of the framers of the confessions. They did not see the printed editions of the Greek New Testament as a mere representation of the manuscript tradition, they viewed it as the completed effort of collating the authentic copies. Which is why the framers of the confessions, and the theologians of the time, all accepted the Received Text of the Reformation period. 

It also does not mean that handwriting, text size, and document formatting has been preserved perfectly. The preservationist view set forth in the confessions is that the words have been kept pure across the authentic manuscripts. Every manuscript contains scribal errors, this does not affect the doctrinal statements of the Reformation and post-Reformation period because these errors are not so great that the original has not been available in every generation. These great men of old were not ignorant of variants, or even the readings that modernity has deemed “earliest and best”. 

Regardless of the position you take on the Text of Scripture, it should be one that comports with the testimony of Scripture itself. Do the Scriptures present a view that only the important doctrines have been preserved? Or do they say that all Scripture has been preserved? A Scripture is a Scripture, no matter how small. Rather than being swayed by the compelling evidential arguments of men, take the time to see if those arguments can withstand the weight of its own critiques. See if the methodology aligns with Scripture. Start theologically, and then examine the evidence. View the evidence in light of God’s Word, not the other way around. 

In Pursuit of the Divine Original

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

What does it mean to have the original text of the Greek New Testament? There are varying definitions of this term “original”, which adds confusion to the discussion of New Testament textual criticism. I won’t go down the road of explaining every nuance in the discussion of defining terms, but I will say that not everybody agrees on what exactly it means to possess the Divine Original. In order to simplify the skewed beliefs in this topic, I will present the varying views people espouse in the form of a spectrum. The spectrum does not necessarily present any one view, the goal is to provide two extremes so that the reader can understand the discussion generally. 

On one end, there is a hyper-literal understanding of “original”. In this understanding, attaining the original would mean to have not only the words penned by the authors, but also the handwriting, the size of the text, punctuation, formatting of the document itself, and so on. This definition requires an absolute facsimile-style replica of the original text of the New Testament. Defining the original on such strict terms disallows for any meaningful pursuit of the original, and more or less rejects any view from being considered that isn’t trying to attain the level of precision required by this perspective. 

On the other end, there lies a more allegorical or historical understanding of what it means to have the original. The original simply represents a historical perspective of the communities that scribed the manuscripts, and thus it is more accurate to say that there are original(s). Each independent manuscript and its copies represents its own original, which speaks to the historical effort of transmitting the New Testament text(s). The original is not really the goal in the sense that one version of the New Testament is the “correct” version. All of the manuscripts are “correct” in their own, unique way, because they are simply representatives of the “kaleidoscopic” nature of human communities. 

In the middle of these two views are two perspectives that represent the majority of conservative Christian scholarship. On the left of center is the view that to have the original is to have the original intentions and doctrines that the authors attempted to communicate. God has preserved everything He intended to preserve, which is not necessarily every jot or tittle, just every important doctrine. On the right of center is the view that God has kept His Word “pure in all ages”, and that every word has been exposed to the people of God and received by them. 

The former view requires a continued effort to reconstruct those places of the Greek New Testament that are not certain as original, and the latter view says that the original text has been delivered to the people of God in every generation, even today. These two theological understandings of what it means to have the Divine Original are the major epistemological foundations for what view of the text of Scripture one takes. There is obviously a wealth of nuance in between and on either side of these two positions, and not everybody fits perfectly into one of these two categories, but it is important to offer basic definitions in order to properly interact with them.  

An Examination of the Majority Conservative View of Preservation

The majority view of conservative Christians is that the Bible has been preserved, just not precisely. This allows for wiggle-room for textual variants and places where the original, or earliest text cannot be determined. To them, this is the simple reality of the story that the manuscripts tell. Because there are places where the original reading cannot be determined with absolute precision, God never intended for His people to be absolutely certain on every word of Scripture. That is not to say that those who adopt this position are not in pursuit of the Divine Original. In fact, there are many scholars who desire greatly, and are determined to find every original reading. This is probably worth noting, especially considering the opinion that there are “no text critics attempting to find the original”. Yet, in some regards, this opinion is true. There are few, if any, textual scholars who are trying to find the original in the sense of “every jot or tittle”. Note how the different understandings of what it means to have the Divine Original can cause a disconnect between these two camps within conservative Christianity. 

The fundamental sticking point, and the reality of this optimistic outlook, is that even the most idealistic text-critic does not believe that the original has been attained as of yet. There may be some that believe they have found the original, but when pressed on what text they should point to, I have yet to see one actually point to a text and say, “this is the original text of the New Testament in Greek”. That is because the effort of reconstructionist textual criticism is still ongoing. If there was a text to point to, the efforts of modern textual critics would be done. The reality that the work of reconstruction of the Greek New Testament is still ongoing demonstrates that even the most conservative of text-critics do not believe that there is a final text just yet. They may believe that the text can be found or reconstructed, but this still remains to be done. 

This, of course, is an optimistic perspective, and for every text-critic that believes the original can be found, there is a counterpart who does not believe it can be found. This should cause one to raise an eyebrow and ask, “why is that?” What is it about a supposedly preserved text that makes it so elusive to textual scholars? And why is there disagreement on whether or not the original can be found? In any case, all of these scholars agree that the original has not been found, which is demonstrated by the reality that the work of New Testament textual criticism is still a thriving discipline. 

An Explanation for the Ongoing Pursuit of the Divine Original

The ongoing pursuit of the Divine Original is not due to the lack of intellectual fortitude of textual scholars. In fact, some of the brightest doctors of the Christian faith have taken up this mantle. The reason that this work is still in progress is due to the weakness of empirical methodology in light of the extant data. Most Christians have woefully misunderstood the nature of the extant manuscript data, believing that the thousands of copies are all ancient or early. While many understand that the majority of New Testament manuscripts are from the early-middle period and beyond, there remains a large number of Christians who truly believe that there are thousands of early papyri witnesses that testify to the New Testament text. The reality is, that one could not collate an entire Greek New Testament from the papyri. 

This is why there has been a shift from finding the original to finding the Ausgangstext. Since all of the substantial extant data is localized to one region and mostly dates to the third and fourth century, that is as far back as many scholars are willing to go. The Ausgangstext will inevitably take on some form of the early Egyptian manuscripts because the earliest manuscripts survived due to the dry climate of Egypt. Scientifically speaking, the earliest manuscripts can only show what the New Testament text looked like in one localized region 300 years after the autographs were penned. There is no empirical methodology that can show conclusively that the Egyptian manuscripts from the third and fourth century represent the original text of the New Testament.

Scholars can spend decades trying to explain the origin of each reading and variant, but ultimately this effort is limited by the extant data, which is disjointed from the originals by several centuries. A lot of copying can happen in that amount of time. Comparing the transmission of the New Testament to the Iliad and other ancient works does not objectively address the problem at hand. It does not matter how accurate the Bible is in relation to other ancient texts. The only observation that one can conclude from comparing transmission histories is the purity of the New Testament in the light of the purity of another text. 

Scholars can compare these early Egyptian readings to later Byzantine readings and try to develop genealogical maps of how those readings are related. They can even attempt to determine which of these readings came first. But at the end of the day, the limitations of the scientific nature of reconstructionist textual criticism prevents such a determination from being final. They can only say, with varying degrees of probability and confidence that the reading is likely to be early or original. This is due to the preferences of the text-critics making these determinations. In any field of historical-empirical-scientific pursuit, the science will be guided by the biases of the scientists. The only way a scientific method could prove, without any hesitation, that one particular text is the original, would be if the originals were found. And even then, there would be no way of determining if those originals were actually original. At the end of the day, scholars are comparing a text hanging three feet in midair to other texts hanging three feet in midair. 

The Necessity for a Theological Method

The ongoing and well-intentioned pursuit for the Divine Original by empirical methods is indicative of a larger theological conundrum. The very premise assumes a theological position of the text of the New Testament that is difficult to defend. The assumption is that God has preserved His Word, in so far as they represent all of the original doctrines and ideas the authors intended to convey. This standard is unfortunately too arbitrary. It is one thing to posit that all the original doctrines have been conveyed, and another to actually support that position with data. Who gets to decide which doctrines were the ones conveyed by the original authors? At this point in the history of textual criticism of the New Testament, this takes a default position of, “The doctrines that can be demonstrated to be as early as the Egyptian manuscripts”.The doctrines that God has preserved just so happen to be the doctrines that the small group of text-critical scholars have approved. 

The approved text(s) of the modern period has trimmed and updated the authorized text of the Reformation period. There is no doubt that the modern text is substantially different than the traditional text in its variant units. This being the case, rather than trying to prove empirically which text is better, the real effort must be to understand this shift theologically in light of the Scriptural doctrine of preservation. Sure, it is helpful to understand the transmission history of the New Testament text, and it is important work indeed, but the fact remains that the work of modern textual scholars has introduced a serious theological paradox. Either there are two (or more) lines of transmission that God has preserved, or one of them is correct and the other is an anomaly. 

In the case that God preserved two (or more) Bibles, then the subject of doctrine becomes a matter of preference. If there is not one Word of God, then one can adopt any reading they deem fit to justify their theological position or opinion of the evidence. There are enough variants within the manuscript tradition to do just that. Christianity becomes Christianities, and one can easily fall into the assumptions of Walter Bauer and those like him. There was not one Bible, and there is not one Christianity. This paradox of course was capitalized on by secular scholarship which has culminated in various mythicist positions, which are built on the premise of multiple Bibles, multiple Christianities. The Bible is yet another example of humans trying to find meaning.  Assuming that no conservative scholar would be comfortable allowing such a doctrine of preservation that says that multiple Bibles have been preserved, I turn now to the real paradox – that one of the two lines of transmission is errant, and the other representative of the original.

This is not a question of which text can be proved to be original or better than the other. The ongoing efforts of modern text-critics demonstrates that there are enough doctrinal differences between the modern text and the traditional text to continue the work to prove the modern text superior. If the traditional text accomplishes the goal of preserving the doctrines and intentions of the New Testament authors, the work, in theory, would be done. There would be no need to carry on, as all of the doctrines are preserved in the traditional text. The somewhat vague standard of the modern preservationist doctrine actually allows for adherence to the traditional text, given that one believes that text has all of the important doctrines. That is why the modern definition of preservation is somewhat at odds with itself. In one sense, it only requires all the basic doctrines, and on the other, it desires that the words be correct as well. This reality demonstrates that the theological position of “all the important doctrines” is in itself at odds with modern text-critical efforts. Either the traditional text contains all the important doctrines that were intended by the New Testament authors, or it is seriously flawed and should be rejected. The fact that scholars are still working demonstrates the belief in the latter.

That is why this must be approached theologically. By understanding the implications to the doctrine of preservation, one should be able to determine if the traditional text should be rejected for the approved text(s) of the scholars. In the case that the modern text is original or earliest, the majority of the manuscripts of the New Testament are largely errant and the people of God, for an egregious amount of time, received a version of God’s Word that was flawed. They read, studied, and preached from passages that were incorrect, or added to the text. They did not hear the voice of their Shepherd. And since no final product has been produced, this is still the case. The people of God are waiting for the next breakthrough in text-critical studies to tell them which passages of Scripture should, or shouldn’t be read. 

The reality of ongoing text-critical efforts betrays the theological foundations of the effort itself. That is to say, that in creating a substantially different text from the traditional text, one must admit that either God did not preserve just one stream of text, or that the church did not have the correct text for a long period of time. One can say that these two text forms are not significantly different, but if that be the case, the modern scholars and theologians and pastors should have no issue with the traditional text being used for all matters of faith and practice. 

If the form of the modern text(s) generally represent a text that was buried in the sand for over a thousand years, and that text is different from the text that was not buried in the sand, then the implications of that reality must be that either both texts are just fine, or that the people of God were without the voice of their Shepherd. In the case that the modern text-critic says that the traditional text preserves the important doctrines, then it must be admitted that by preservation it is actually meant partial preservation. And the most critical observation of this entire discussion is that this is assuming the Egyptian texts are as significant as they are made out to be. From a theological perspective, the text that was buried in the sand, that doesn’t relate to the rest of the manuscripts in the variant units, seems like more of a localized anomaly than anything else. If the goal is to find the original, as it is said, which seems to be the more significant text? Without even examining the evidence, or collating manuscripts, the theological determination must be that the Egyptian texts were a strange anomaly in the transmission history of the New Testament text, or that the differences are so minor that the work can be finished. 

Conclusion

It may be that the theological approach to the Holy Scriptures is too meticulous, and the standard of precision too stringent. Yet if this is the case, where is the standard? What level of precision are we trying to attain? Who gets to decide what is an important doctrine, or what doctrines the authors intended to communicate? This of course culminates practically in the Bible one reads in their mother tongue. At this point, there are two major options for Christians – traditional Bibles and modern Bibles. Theologically speaking, both represent two schools of thought in conservative Christianity on preservation. On one hand, the traditional Bibles represent the scholarship of a different era, and generally take the form of the majority of the extant data (the 5,000+ manuscripts), and on the other hand the modern Bibles represent the scholarship of the modern era, which rely heavily on a cluster of Egyptian manuscripts and the theories of scholars who approve them. It is up to the Christian to determine which understanding of “original” they wish to adopt. By original, does it mean “original in doctrine”, or “original in words”? If the former is taken, then both texts seem to be fine. If the latter is taken, then there appears to be less options for translational choice, namely the Bibles of the Reformation period. No matter which road one takes, the fact remains that scholars will continue their pursuit of the Divine Original, or at least the earliest one can get back to with empirical methodologies.      

Providential Exposure as it Relates to Preservation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

The Theological Method and Preservation

The Theological Method for determining the text of Scripture heavily relies upon understanding the text that has been received by Christians, which is commonly called “exposure”. The text of Scripture is that which has been exposed to the people of God throughout the ages. John 10:27 says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (KJV). Michael Kruger, in his book Canon Revisited, says this,

“When people’s eyes are opened, they are struck by the divine qualities of Scripture – it’s beauty and efficacy – and recognize and embrace Scripture for what it is, the word of God. They realize that the voice of Scripture is the voice of the Shepherd” (101). 

This might seem like subjectivism, but this is the historic doctrine that has been recognized throughout the ages by the theologians of the faith, most notably John Calvin and Herman Bavinck. This doctrine is not to be confused with the Mormon doctrine of “burning in the bosom”, which has been done by men like James White. Many false doctrines are based on truth, and here the Christian must recognize that God’s Word is the means that He is speaking to His people in these last days, regardless of how that doctrine has been twisted by other systems. 

What distinguishes this doctrine from its Mormon counterpart is that this reception of the Scriptures by the people of God is not purely individualistic. The text of Scripture, as it has been handed down, exists ontologically, not just subjectively. There is a concrete shape of God’s Word that exists, and the people of God have had that Word in every generation. The text of Scripture must primarily be viewed as a covenantal document given to the covenant people of God for their use in all matters of faith and practice (LBCF 1.1). That does not mean that all those professing Christianity throughout the ages have agreed upon what belongs in Scripture, or that every Christian has had access to the whole of Scripture in every generation. In fact, there are a multitude of Christians that do not have access to God’s Word, either by circumstance, or by choice. 

It is important to take note of how the Apostolic church received the text of Holy Scripture to understand the doctrine of exposure as it relates to preservation. In the New Testament, there is never a case where Scripture is said to be a gift delivered to individual people. The Scriptures were always a corporate blessing to the covenant people of God (Acts 15:14; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9). In the testimony of Scripture itself, we can see that God delivers His Word to the people of God, not individual people of God. So the doctrine of exposure does not crumble due to certain individuals not having a copy of the Bible at all times. If this were the case, the fact that there are Christians who simply do not own a Bible would discredit this doctrine altogether. 

Despite the fact that the Canon is recognized in part by its corporate reception, this doctrine of providential exposure does not rest on ecclesiastical authority, as the papists might claim. There is no one single church which is responsible for giving authority to the text of Holy Scripture. In fact, no church could give authority to the Scriptures, they are authoritative in themselves (αυτοπιστος). Kruger explains this well, “The books received by the church inform our understanding of which books are canonical not because the church is infallible o because it created or constituted the canon, but because the church’s reception of these books is a natural and inevitable outworking of the self-authenticating nature of Scripture” (106).

It must be stated, that Kruger makes the distinction between the canon, and the text of the canon, which is the common thought amongst conservative scholarship. Upon examination of the theological method  however, there does not seem to be good reason to separate the two. If the doctrinal foundation of providential exposure demonstrates the “efficacy of the Shepherd’s voice to call”(106), then it follows that there must be a definitive voice that does the calling. The name of a canonical book is simply not efficacious to call sinners to repentance and faith. Simply listing off the canonical list is not the Gospel call. So the material that is providentially exposed to the people of God must also contain the substance which is effective unto life by the power of the Holy Spirit. God has not just preserved the book sleeves of the Bible, He has also preserved the words within those book sleeves. 

Since the Bible is self-authenticating, Christians cannot look to the totality or purity of its reception to determine which books or texts of the Bible should be received today. That is to say that because the majority of the Christian people do not accept one passage as authentic today, does not mean that it has not been properly received in the past, or that it is not ontologically a part of the canon. A passage of Scripture may not have been accepted as canonical by various groups throughout history, and this has indeed been the case, usually due to theological controversy. 

It is antithetical to the Theological method to say that the Scriptures are self-authenticating, but then also say that people must authenticate those Scriptures by a standard outside of the Scriptures themselves. Either the Scriptures are self-authenticating, or they are not. Which is why evidence are great tools to defend the Scriptures, but those evidences can never authenticate those Scriptures in themselves. It is problematic to say that God’s Word has been preserved, and kept pure in all ages, and then to immediately say that He has done so imperfectly, or has not fully exposed that Word to His people yet. 

The Theological method provides a framework that actually gives more weight to historical thought as opposed to modern thought. It disallows for a perspective that believes that the people of God had lost or added passages of Scripture, and that these texts need to be recovered or removed. It prevents certain theories that the text evolved, or that Christ’s divinity was developed over time. It especially rejects the idea that the original text of the New Testament was choppy, crude, and in places incoherent, and that scribes smoothed out the readings to make the text readable. In fact, it exposes those manuscripts that are choppy and missing parts to be of poor quality by assuming that the Holy Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit rather than invented by ostensibly literate first century Jews. 

There may have been localities that corrupted the text (usually intentionally), but this does not represent the providential preservation that was taking place universally. The vast majority of textual variants are due to Scribal errors, but the significant variants were certainly an effort of revision. A Scribe simply wouldn’t have removed or added 12 verses by accident. A great example is the idiosyncratic Egyptian manuscripts uncovered in the 19th and 20th centuries, which tend to disagree with the general manuscript tradition in important variant units. These manuscripts have been given tremendous weight in the modern period due to shifting views of inspiration and preservation. 

If the Scriptures truly were inspired and preserved, then one should expect that the text did not evolve, or that the closest representative of those originals would be riddled with short, abrupt readings. One would expect that in every stage of copying, Scribal errors would be purged out, and that the true readings would persevere. In fact, this phenomenon can be observed in the vast majority of the extant New Testament manuscripts, which has unfortunately been described as Scribal interference, or smoothing out the text. When the transmission of the New Testament manuscripts are viewed Theologically, an entirely different story is told by the manuscripts which largely disagrees with the modern narrative which favors those choppy manuscripts which existed in one locality of the Christian world. 

The preservation of God’s Word can be demonstrated evidentially, but not without the proper Theological lens. Evidential arguments can be a powerful tool in all disciplines, but they often are not effective in themselves to change anybody’s mind. That is why the Theology of scholars will ultimately determine the manuscripts they deem to be earliest and best. Simply counting manuscripts, or weighing manuscripts, is simply not consistent with the conservative doctrine of preservation. In both cases, these methods attempt to take an external authority, such as manuscript count, or the age of the manuscript, and use that to authenticate the Word of God. Yet both of these are at odds with the doctrinal standard that is laid forth in Scriptures themselves, that the Word of God is self-authenticating. That is why the language of “the text that has been received” is warranted in this conversation, because it recognizes God’s providential preservation and exposure of the ontological canon to the people of God in every age. 

Conclusion 

The doctrine of exposure is often misunderstood as being too similar to the Mormon doctrine of “burning of the bosom” or the papal doctrine which states that Rome has the authority to authenticate the Bible. Despite these abuses of Scripture, the fact remains that the Scriptures are self-authenticating. It is easy to fall back onto empirical approaches, because they seem to be the most logical. Yet these empirical approaches do not do what they claim they can do, and this is becoming increasingly evident with each passing year. The number of Bibles has only increased, and exponentially at that. Modern methodology has not narrowed the text of the New Testament to fewer legitimate readings, but has expanded greatly the number of readings that “could be” original or early. 

The efforts of modern textual scholarship has only increased the uncertainty of the text of the New Testament. This has culminated in the abandonment of the search for the original text of the Bible for the Ausgangstext, or the earliest text scholars can get back to (which is 3rd or 4th century). Practically speaking, this pursuit will simply result in arriving at some hypothetical form of the text that may have existed in Egypt in the third century. Since this seems to be the direction of most current New Testament text-critical scholarship, it seems that it is time to return to the old paths. The Theological method has been expressed by countless Theologians of the Christian faith, and it should not be abandoned for the sake of adopting the modern critical scientific method. The Scriptures should always be handled as self-authenticating, and a shift to this way of thinking would result in a massive change in the direction of modern New Testament scholarship.