Tag: textus receptus

Authorized Review – Chapter 5: The KJV as a Second Language

The Young, Textless, and Reformed10 Comments

This article is the sixth in a series reviewing Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible.

Introduction

In chapter 5 of Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible, Ward finally says clearly what has been lurking in between the lines in first four chapters: that the KJV should not be read. The reader would likely be better off if the first four chapters were excluded and the book simply started here. He has contradicted every argument he has presented thus far, and if we take this into consideration, the premise for this chapter has absolutely zero foundation. I would be surprised if the reader wasn’t genuinely confused at the alarming escalation from chapters 1-4 to 5. The only words I can use to describe what takes place in Chapter 5 is “disconnected” or “unraveled.” Ward goes from arguing that the KJV is in some places unintelligible to claiming that the entire thing cannot be understood. See this syllogism he provides on page 79:

    1.      We should read the Scripture in our own language.

    2.      The KJV is not in our language.

    3.      Therefore we should update the KJV to be in our language, or we should read vernacular translations.

Ibid., 79

He concludes with this, 

“I therefore do not think the KJV is sufficiently readable to be relied upon as a person’s only or main translation, or as a church’s or Christian school’s only or main translation.”

Ibid., 85

Ward arrives at this conclusion by building a case that the KJV is “no longer a vernacular translation,” and makes use of Glen G. Scorgie to seemingly say that the KJV is not “really a translation” (85). He, like many opponents of the KJV, makes comparisons between the KJV and the Latin Vulgate (62) and notes that the translators of the KJV “were not KJV-Only” (83). It shouldn’t need to be said, but I want to remind my reader that the difference between Latin and the vernacular tongue of the people during the time of the Vulgate is not even comparable to the difference between KJV English and modern vernacular English. It is also unfortunate that Ward, and many apologists for modern Bible versions, continue to compare their assault on the KJV to what happened during the Reformation. More importantly, Ward’s reader should be noticing the ramped up rhetoric of this chapter. He employs many of the Anti-KJV arguments such as the “KJV translators wouldn’t believe what you do” argument.

This chapter is possibly the most helpful to understanding the goal of Ward’s work thus far. In my opinion, it would have served well as the opening chapter. He reveals most clearly what he has been getting at up to this point, that the KJV as it exists now should not be read any longer. This is persuasive writing, and now the objective has become clear: to convince people not to read the KJV. An important question to ask is this, “Has Ward demonstrated that the KJV is not modern English leading up to chapter 5?” Interestingly enough, the content of Authorized so far has shown that the KJV is actually quite intelligible. Even Ward’s strongest argument of “false friends” are not significant enough to impact doctrine according to him. Many people mistakenly label Ward as a “KJV advocate” or that Ward “loves the KJV,” and this chapter demonstrates clearly why this is simply not true. Ward’s solution to the 55% of the Bible readers is that 1) the KJV should be updated or that they should 2) read a modern translation. He argues that a,

“KJV with tons of footnotes offering contemporary equivalents of archaic words is not enough.”

Ibid., 75

Interestingly, Ward argues in this chapter that the KJV is not written in the same language as contemporary vernacular English. Now, I agree with Ward that the KJV is not written in our colloquial way of speaking, I don’t think anybody would argue that it is. The confusing part of this logic is how you go from the KJV being different from our vernacular English and the KJV being an entirely different language. Typically it is recognized that literary English and vernacular English are different. The argument that the KJV is literally a different language mimics the thought of Dr. Andrew Naselli, who says,

“I was raised on the King James Version, so I’m bilingual: I can speak KJV…the KJV was an outstanding translation for its time, but today – over four hundred years after it first released in 1611 – I think it belongs in a museum.”  

How to Understand and Apply the New Testament, 42

Responding to the Vernacular Argument 

In chapter 5, Ward presents what seems to be the purpose of writing Authorized, and primarily builds his argument upon the claim that the KJV is no longer vernacular English, and therefore should not be read. He provides a definition of “vernacular” from the New Oxford American Dictionary as a starting point for his argument.


“It refers to language ‘spoken as one’s mother tongue; not learned or imposed as a second language’”

Ibid., 68

Is this the argument then, that the KJV is not English? Are KJV readers bilingual? He seems to be leaning on the first part of the definition, which indicates that the language must be “spoken.” Since people do not speak KJV English, then it apparently qualifies as “a second language.” He continues on, hinting that the KJV cannot be understood and that it is Elizabethan English, which is untrue on both accounts. It is demonstrably different than Elizabethan English, and can be understood, as Ward has admitted all throughout his book. Even if the KJV were as complex as Elizabethan English, American middle schoolers are made to read Shakespeare in English class. This is the first time in my life that I have heard the argument that Shakespearian English is not intelligible. The basic argument seems to be that since we do not use the syntax and exact vocabulary of the KJV in our daily speech, that it is no longer acceptable as a translation. 

This is a fundamental flaw in Ward’s argument. Simply because modern English speakers do not speak in the King’s English, does not mean they cannot understand the King’s English. He uses Luke 14 to demonstrate that the KJV is written in a way that we do not speak any longer. Yet I fail to see how this is relevant at all. Let’s take a look at verse 1:


“And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.”

Luke 14:1

It is true that we do not say “and it came to pass” in our daily speech, but does that mean we cannot understand what that means? We don’t use the term “eat bread” to mean “mealtime,” but we do say “break bread” to mean the same thing. The question that needs to be answered is not, “Is the KJV vernacular English,” it is, “Can the English of the KJV be understood?” More importantly, Ward fails to comment on the fact that our daily speech is not typically narrative, it is conversational. Most of what we say is not structured like the genres found in the Bible in any translation. The genre of Luke is not conversational, it is narrative. The phrase “and it came to pass” is found in all sorts of modern literature, including writings by J.R.R Tolkein. 

Ward is actually arguing that if a Bible translation is not written in our conversational English, it must be updated or retired. If this is the case, the ESV does not pass this test either. Take for example Matthew 12:44.

“I will return to my house from which I came”

Nobody talks like that in normal conversation, yet we do not say it is unintelligible. The point is that written English is different from spoken English. 

Ward adds another strange layer to his argument by saying that God didn’t originally speak in KJV English, but he did speak in modern version English.


“God did not say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”; he said, “You shall not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat”; he said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.” The KJV and modern translations are saying precisely the same thing, of course, but they’re speaking to different audiences. And only one of those audiences is still living.”

Ibid., 79

I don’t think this is very controversial to say, but I don’t think God said anything in English to Adam and Eve. In any case, it appears Ward is taking issue with the difference between “Thou” and “You.” Following Ward’s logic about vernacular speech, the example Ward gives fails his own test. Nobody says, “You shall” do this or that in vernacular English (sorry NIV, ESV, and NASB, you need an update). Notice that Ward says, “The KJV and modern translations are saying precisely the same thing”. I want to further emphasize that English did not exist at the time of the writing of the Bible. If the statements both mean the same thing, and God did not speak originally to the people of God in English, what is Ward even trying to say here? This is arguably one of the most confused statements in the entirety of the whole book so far, and borders on absurd.

Ward presents his argument convincingly enough, but it fails the test of common sense. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of phrases in every translation that are written in a way that we do not speak in our daily vernacular. We do not say, “You shall not,” or “To you it has been given.” The simple response to Ward’s entire argument is this – does anybody actually expect the Bible to sound exactly like our vernacular speech? Does anybody want the Bible to sound exactly like their daily speech? Is any form of written English syntactically the same as spoken English? Ward’s argument that the KJV is an entirely different language is nothing but rhetoric, and it should even be apparent to the reader that Ward has disproved that in the pages of his own book. 

Conclusion

One of the most challenging parts of reviewing this chapter of Authorized is the slew of disconnected thoughts and arguments. His reader has been told so far that the KJV is readable, that the “False Friends” don’t affect doctrine, and that statistically speaking, most people read the KJV. Now, we are finally presented with Ward’s actual argument, that because we don’t talk in KJV English, it is not a suitable translation. An important reality that Ward seems to miss here is that written language and spoken language evolve separately, and are used differently. In writing, there are genres that employ different syntax and vocabulary than the syntax and vocabulary of our spoken language. In fact, Vernacular English is often categorized into its own genre distinct from literary English. In other words, we talk differently than we write. 

While Ward’s demand for Bibles to be written in our daily vernacular is strange and misguided, he also uses this chapter to take quick jabs at the KJV by referencing non-related issues such as textual criticism and modern translation methodology. He even takes some time to address the “KJV Only” crowd. He ends the chapter with conflicted messaging once again. 

“In countless places, the KJV does not fail to communicate God’s words to modern readers; I’m eager to acknowledge this fact, because I grew up on the KJV and it was God’s tool to bring me new life. But in countless places, it does fail—through no fault of the KJV translators or of us. It’s somewhere between Beowulf and the English of today. I therefore do not think the KJV is sufficiently readable to be relied upon as a person’s only or main translation, or as a church’s or Christian school’s only or main translation.Thankfully, we don’t have to give up everything we valued in the KJV in order to gain the readability benefits of newer translations. The best way to honor the translation and revision work of the KJV translators is to allow it to continue.”

Ibid., 85-86

The messaging in this chapter ranges from “The KJV is not in our language” to “The KJV does not fail to communicate God’s words.” These two thoughts are absolutely contradictory. This speaks to the credibility of his argument in a foundational way. Is the KJV a different language, or can it be understood in countless places? Ward seems to view himself as a modern day Martin Luther who is saving the church from captivity to the KJV, even saying himself “I can want no other.” Ward presents the case to his reader that it is a massive problem that people are reading the KJV. Even though Ward has all of the other modern options, he makes his reader believe that he has no other option for him and his kids, when no such problem exists. At the end of the chapter, Ward hints that the KJV simply needs an update, which Ward “graciously” offered his services to TBS a while back. At this point, Ward’s reader should be skeptical. Why is Ward so motivated to retire the KJV? Up to this point, all he has offered is contradiction after contradiction, as I have catalogued in my review.

Authorized Review – Chapter 4: Learning Words is Difficult

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

This article is the fifth in a series reviewing Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible.

Introduction

Thus far in Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible, the reader is being introduced to the idea that the King James Bible is more difficult to read than people may think. The problem with the KJV, according to Ward, is the “False Friends,” which give the illusion to the reader that they understand what they are reading while in reality, they do not. Though he admits that these “False Friends” do not occur that often in comparison to the whole of the KJV, the reader is presented with the reality that they are seriously problematic, despite not affecting doctrine. My reader should get the impression so far that much of Ward’s messaging is conflicting and paradoxical. In Chapter 4, Ward addresses the topic of the comprehensibility of the KJV is as a whole by responding to the claim that many KJV readers make regarding its reading comprehension level. 

This of course needs to be addressed by Ward, because if the Flesch-Kincaid tool is used to assess the KJV’s readability against the ESV’s readability, the KJV apparently wins. Ward argues that the tool is not suited for the English of the KJV, and therefore this line of reasoning is null. I tend to agree with Ward here, though it is fair to point out that the computer tool that assigns reading comprehension level presents the KJV as far more intelligible than Ward has tried to argue. What the reader might take away from this is that Ward has presented another piece of evidence in favor the KJV. Since I agree that computer tools are not an absolute rule for determining readability, I instead want to use this space to again comment on Ward’s rhetorical strategy. 

Rhetoric 

After four chapters, Ward reveals what seems to be a key motivation for writing this book. 

“I do not believe that competent speakers of contemporary English should be required to look up English words in a Bible translation when commonly known equivalents are available.”

Ibid., 55

The problem does not seem to be the KJV, the problem is that Ward takes issue with people needing to look up words while reading their Bible. He goes on to say that computer models should not be used to gauge readability, people should.

“So how can we determine the reading level of the KJV? I suggest that av1611.org passed right over the best measure: people. If reading difficulty is the number one reason people set aside the KJV in favor of modern translations, then perhaps they know better than their computers. In fact, it’s a little odd that some would presume to tell numerous Bible readers, “No, you can read the KJV just fine. My computer says so.””

Ibid., 59

So now the foundational premise of Ward’s argument is again presented as something that must be established upon anecdote and personal experience. Further, he seems to have misunderstood the entire purpose of KJV readers producing a computer based model for the readability of the KJV. It is not to tell KJV readers that it is readable, it is to demonstrate to KJV critics that it is readable. KJV readers already know it is comprehensible because they read it daily. This being the case, Ward relies heavily on anecdotes to support his point, since the data he could appeal to does not work in his favor. The reader is introduced to Ward’s friend who is doing mission work in South America. 

“And yet a KJV-Only acquaintance of mine who is a missionary in the lone English-speaking country in South America told me, “I have found that people living in the jungles of Guyana are having no problem reading and memorizing passages of the King James Version.” I know my friend is not a liar, but I also have a hard time accepting that what he’s saying is true—not because a computer told me the KJV was harder to read than the NIV, but because I’m a flesh-and-blood reader. I know when something is easy or hard to read, and so do you. I have regular trouble following the KJV. I think you and the jungle dwellers of Guyana do too.”

Ibid., 59-60

At this point the reader has to ask, “Okay Mark Ward, you say that ‘people’ are the best gauge for determining readability, but when a person tells you that people living in jungles can understand it, you don’t believe him?” Ward continues to prop himself up as a “language nerd” and a “flesh-and-blood reader,” but I am beginning to question the reliability of Ward’s self-praise. Even if we place the KJV at a college reading level, which is an exceedingly high evaluation, Ward has a doctorate. How is it that a textbook author, doctor, and self-proclaimed “language nerd” have “regular trouble following” a book that is commonly accepted as being between a 5th and 12th grade reading level? My common refrain holds true, that Ward’s messaging is very confused, and at this point, difficult to believe.

Ward continues his argument by saying that,

“In my judgment, the KJV isn’t at any recognized “reading level.” Not fifth grade, not twelfth grade, not grad school, not age eighty-six. The whole concept of “reading level” assumes that we’re talking about more or less contemporary language.”

Ibid., 60

This is where the chapter utterly unravels. Ward insists that the KJV simply cannot be classified into a reading level because apparently it’s not a contemporary language. If this is the case, what language is Ward proposing that it is? Are those that enjoy the KJV bilingual? I really do not think so. There are pre-existing categories for English which fall into Old, Middle, and Modern. Ward admits in a previous chapter that the KJV is early modern English. If the argument is that the KJV cannot even be classified into a reading level, I’m afraid we’ve ventured into the realm of absurdity. The timeline of this chapter is truly a wild ride. Ward, when faced with computer analysis that disagrees with his assessment, advocates against the tool that disagrees with him by simply saying it’s irrelevant, and then proceeds to argue that the KJV cannot even be assigned a reading comprehension level. It reminds me of somebody who loses a board game, and instead of admitting defeat, flips the table and scatters the pieces all over the floor.

Conclusion

Ward ends the chapter by offering a solution that already exists in many KJV text blocks. 

“I could imagine that footnotes (“halt here means limp”; “commendeth here means showcases”) would allow us to have our KJV and read it too.”

Ibid., 60

There is an important point to note here. Ward indicates in this chapter that the KJV cannot be assigned a reading level because apparently it’s not a “contemporary language.” I have argued that the KJV will need an update when today’s written literature is as far from the KJV as the KJV is from middle English. A quick search of a section of Chaucer will give my reader insight as to just how far that gap must be. The discerning reader should see past the rhetoric of Ward’s argument and recognize how absurd it is to suggest that the KJV is so archaic that it cannot even be assigned a reading level.

The most interesting observation I have about Authorized thus far is that every single one of Ward’s arguments is contradicted by his own words. He says that the KJV is difficult to read, while most people who read a Bible read it. He says that the KJV has “False Friends,” but not very many in comparison to the whole book. He says that “False Friends” deceive the reader, and at the same time do not affect doctrine. He says that the readability of the KJV should be established by what people say, but if they do say it’s readable we shouldn’t believe them. The amount of confused messaging in this book is staggering. 

If it is true that Ward’s issue with the KJV is that people shouldn’t have to look up difficult words when an easier one exists, it should be noted that this problem is solved in many KJV text blocks, most notably the Westminster Reference Bible sold by Trinitarian Bible Society. If this is our approach to the Bible, it is also important to ask the question, “How colloquial do we want our Bible to be?” Even more importantly, I have yet to determine why this book was even written. So far, Ward introduces problems, explains how the problems aren’t actually problems, and then offers a solution which already exists.

Authorized Review – Chapter 2: Jokes & Anecdotes

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

This article is the third in a series reviewing Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible. 

Introduction

In the last article, I addressed Ward’s evaluation of what is lost if the King James Bible is retired. In this article, I will review Chapter 2 of Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible, where Ward readies his audience for the pinnacle of his argument – false friends. If you follow Ward online, you know that the thrust of his work is identifying false friends and making the case that this is a primary reason to put down the KJV. He begins chapter 2 by proposing that the NIV is the probable successor to the KJV based on sales figures for the popular translation. The reader should note that sales figures are not a reason to adopt a translation. Christians should be concerned with whether or not the translation accurately translates the providentially preserved text from the original into a target language. Ward begins to develop his case for retiring the KJV in this chapter further by saying, “we’d better have very good reasons for giving it [KJV] up” (Ibid., 17). This gives the impression to the reader that Ward is about to present an argument that justifies all of the downsides to retiring the KJV. According to Ward, this reason is that people cannot understand it. It is “foreign and ancient.” As I noted in the introduction of my book review series, Ward’s own research and anecdotal experience seems to contradict this fact, but we will see how he develops this thought as we get further into the review. Throughout the work so far, this continues to be his driving argument. 

“So if the KJV is indeed too difficult to understand for modern readers, we’ve got a significant problem—the most significant problem a translation can have: What’s the point in using a translation in old English that people can’t understand anymore?”  

Ibid., 18-19

Ward introduces his primary argument with a huge “if”. He proposes that if it is the case that the KJV is too difficult to read, then we should retire it. As the reader will see, support for Ward’s argument is entirely dependent personal experience and anecdotes. He even admits that the KJV “falls in the same category, broadly speaking, in which our English belongs.” So far the reader has learned that 55% of English Bible readers use the KJV, Ward grew up reading the KJV, and that the King’s English falls into the same category of English that we speak today. The KJV is not old, middle, or Elizabethan English – it is early modern English written in a syntax and vocabulary that matches closely with the original languages. That is why the Trinitarian Bible Society has labeled it, “Biblical English.” Ward again drives home the point that, “I could not only understand but reproduce the major features of KJV diction as a young child.” Despite writing this multiple times in the book so far, Ward introduces his reader to yet another paradox, which I will highlight below. In this chapter, Ward discusses his transition from advocating for the KJV to advocating against the KJV. I will organize my review of chapter 2 into Ward’s anecdotes, his narrative, and his problem. 

Anecdotes

According to Ward, two major life experiences led to his shift in thinking. The first is that Ward has spent more time than the average Christian studying the Bible in various translations. The second is that he has spent years sharing the Gospel. In his experience, he argues that learning the English of the KJV is not a reasonable expectation to impose on the average Christian. Here’s the plot twist: He then admits that he actually has trouble reading certain passages in the KJV. After repeatedly stating that he understood the KJV growing up, he now says he actually cannot. He recalls an experience at a summer camp, where not one person of 10,000, pastors included, could understand the phrase, “fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.” This is a perfect example where Matthew Henry could have helped Ward understand this “cryptic” passage. “Do not envy them their prosperity.” 

Ward attempts to convince his reader, with anecdote, that the passage is impossible to understand in the KJV. Gill, Calvin, and Henry all share the same opinion on the verse, so perhaps that is more of a testimony to the quality of modern scholarship than anything else. I’m more concerned that there were seminary trained pastors and college students at this camp that couldn’t understand this passage. It seems that somebody at that camp should have had access to a commentary, at least. Ward ends by presenting his reader with a strange hypothetical conversation between a child and an adult, where the child is presented as a guru of sorts by saying, “Well why didn’t the KJV translators just use the word I think they should have used?” This all contributes to the narrative that drives the primary argument of Ward’s book – that not only is the KJV too difficult to understand, the KJV translators could have used easier words and syntax. Even a child knows that much! In this chapter the reader begins to see the contradictions in Ward’s anecdotal evidence. This being the case, I encourage my reader to reflect on the value of such evidence as it pertains to Ward’s thesis.

Narrative

The narrative that Ward presents is that while most people can understand the KJV, there are verses that require a second look, and that many readers will not understand certain verses the first time around, if they ever do understand them. This is the entry point to Ward’s primary argument. Upon first glance, this standard could also result in every translation being considered for retirement if applied equally. The reality is, there are verses in every translation that require explanation. The NIV, for example, contains words such as “aloes,” “odious,” “stadia,” “sistrums” and so on. There are difficult concepts and words in the Bible that do not appear in our common vernacular. If we step outside of Ward’s narrative for a moment, it is plainly evident that the Bible isn’t easily understood in every place. 

“As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood”  

2 Peter 3:16

The quoted material above is one of the Biblical proofs Ward uses to support his argument. The reader will see later that Ward will call upon Scripture to make the claim that if something can’t be understood, it cannot be of value to the people of God. It is important to recognize that Ward has relied heavily upon anecdotes to develop his narrative up to this point, and now he is beginning to invoke Scripture to support these anecdotes. In effect, Ward is saying, “These people I knew once didn’t understand this verse.” He is beginning to make the case to his reader, that while most people read the KJV, many of them don’t even know they can’t understand it.

Problem

The problem that Ward presents to his reader is that people that read the KJV cannot understand it, and sometimes don’t even know they cannot understand it. As a KJV reader, this feels extremely condescending. It assumes that the average Bible reader doesn’t try to understand difficult passages, or is too dull to know when they cannot understand a passage. Ward offers his reader some perspective on himself, which may help understand his book in addition to how Ward can make these types of claims about other Christians who read the KJV:

“I was a somewhat intellectually arrogant kid.”

Ibid., 25

This is in effect to say, “The only reason I thought I could understand the KJV was because I was arrogant.” While this is a very strange thing to say, I believe Ward has missed the point entirely. The problem he is presenting as a reason for retiring the KJV is simply a description of learning something new. Every Christian has to learn new words, no matter which translation they read. There are times when you are a child where you will misunderstand words and get them wrong, and not just in the Bible. This happens as easily reading a Goosebumps novel while you are learning to read. Getting words wrong is a part of the learning process.

It seems the argument that Ward is making is that the average Christian must learn more words to read the KJV than they would with modern translations. Yet as Ward loves to say, this seems to be more of a problem of quantity, not kind. The problem of Christians misunderstanding the Bible is not unique to KJV readers. There are many times where Christians believe they understand a passage, but then a pastor or friend comes along and informs them that they do not. If we again step outside of Ward’s narrative, it should be common sense that Christians do not understand the Bible perfectly in a vacuum. 

I will pause my review for a moment to make a point. Every Christian needs to study and be taught. What I have a difficult time understanding is why one would argue that this should be done to a lesser degree. We have seen Ward admit that reading the KJV improves literacy among other things, so why advocate for its retirement on these grounds? It is true that KJV readers must learn more words than modern Bible readers, but that is not a convincing argument for the KJV being put behind glass in a museum. In fact, it seems like a huge positive that our children would be raised with a higher reading comprehension vocabulary. And if this principle were truly adhered to among the academic types, why do these scholars constantly advocate for learning multiple languages to read the Scriptures? The same scholars who claim the KJV is too difficult to read also recommend learning the original Biblical languages to “go back to the Greek and Hebrew.” In any case, Ward’s argument takes the anecdotal experience of the few and projects it to the many. As we have already seen, and will see more later in this review, the case that Ward is building contradicts itself to such a degree that he presents and refutes his own thesis within the cover of his own book.

Conclusion

It is clear that so far in Authorized, Ward relies heavily upon rhetoric, anecdotes, and narrative building to convince his reader that the KJV should not be read. In this chapter, his primary argument is that KJV readers may think they understand what they are reading, but actually do not. The reader is led to believe that Ward’s difficulty must be a problem for everybody. Again I will highlight that the people who are likely to be convinced by these arguments are people that do not actually read the KJV. He uses an anecdote of a summer camp where not a single person, pastors included, could understand Psalm 37:8 to support this point. Ward uses personal experience and anecdotes to establish his premise to build a narrative that the KJV simply cannot be understood. What Ward seems to miss is that the average Bible reader cares deeply about the words in the pages of their Bible. They study the Bible. They try to understand the Bible. It is not prideful to have a sound working knowledge of Scripture. I tested all of Ward’s example passages against some commentaries that are available online for free and all of them provided helpful and thorough explanations of the passages in question.

The most off-putting part of Ward’s book so far is the juvenile tone he takes. He inserts poorly placed and in my opinion, inappropriate jokes and commentary in the middle of a very serious topic. In a piece of persuasive writing, Ward discusses his failed attempts at impressing girls and his “smug satisfaction” of being intellectually superior than his peers in grade school, among other things. His premise for chapter 2 is also incredibly demeaning and insulting to the people who read the KJV. Ward discusses how smart he is, how much he has studied, and his self-proclaimed expertise in linguistics in order to make the concluding point: that God broke him of his pride and showed him that he didn’t actually understand the KJV. Ward seems to be making the point that if he, in all of his learning, cannot understand the KJV, neither can his reader. Thankfully he clarifies that,

“just because I was arrogant and ignorant doesn’t mean all other KJV readers are the same.”  

Ibid., 27

Authorized Review – Chapter 1: A Strange Start

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

This article is the second in a series reviewing Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible. 

Introduction

In the first article of this series, I highlighted several key observations from the introduction of Mark Ward’s book, Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible. Notably that most people who read a Bible read the KJV (55%), that Mark Ward can read the KJV, and that the audience for this work seems to be those who do not read the KJV. The goal of this work seems to be to bolster the narrative that the KJV should be retired due to its lack of readability. In chapter 1 of the work, Ward gives the reader five things we lose as “the church stops using the KJV.” 

He opens the chapter by listing some of the English Bibles leading up to the KJV to demonstrate that retiring Bible translations is a normal part of the Bible translation lifecycle. What he does not tell his reader is that these Bibles which were retired leading up to the KJV were extremely similar to the KJV, and presented to the reader the same text form as the KJV. The largest shift from these Bibles to the KJV was spelling and typesetting. In other words, these Bibles really weren’t all that different from each other. What is described as a normal process doesn’t offer the kind of analysis I would have hoped for. The KJV was produced at the end of a technological advancement – the printing press. It would have been nice to see more thoughtful analysis on what technological or scholarly change resulted in the “translation lifecycle” being kicked off the second time. Considering how long the KJV ruled supreme, the sudden advocation for it’s retirement is not what I would consider a normal process.  

The shift from the KJV to modern translations isn’t as simple as updated spelling and syntax. It involves changing and removing verses from the underlying text and applying different translation methodologies. This is a huge gap that is completely ignored in Ward’s analysis. Ward says, “I don’t think many people have carefully considered what will happen if we all decide to let the KJV die and another take its office” (Ibid., 5). This signals that Ward believes he is writing to an audience who has not considered these issues, which points again to the reality that his audience are those who are not familiar with the KJV and its history and impact. Those that have not made such considerations are likely in the camp of people who have already adopted a modern translation. In this article, I will review Ward’s take on the “what we lose” discussion by evaluating his commentary on each of the five things. 

We Lose Intergenerational Ties in the Body of Christ 

Ward begins this section by appealing to an anecdote where his Grandma gifts his children their first Bibles due to, by his own admission, indecisiveness. 

“I spent an inordinate amount of time before marriage considering which Bible translations I would hand to my children (inordinate because I didn’t even have a girlfriend at the time). I dithered so long in this decision, even after marriage and the birth of my three children, that Grandma ended up deciding for me by buying the kids Bibles. And one of the reasons I struggled so hard was that I knew that if I didn’t hand my kids KJVs I would be severing some rich connections between them and their heritage.”  

Ibid., 6

Ward rightly notes that if he rejected this gift, he would be “severing some rich connections between them and their heritage.” Ward makes many powerful points here. The KJV connects Protestant Christians to their heritage, helps them become “skilled readers”, gives them easy access to the theological works of the Puritans and other post-Reformation divines, helps them understand the theological lexicon of English Christianity, helps them understand the hymns and psalms sung in churches today, and even provides a connection to the older generation who grew up on the KJV. 

Despite this powerful argument for retaining the KJV, Ward ends this section by stating that while the strings that connect Protestants to the past are important, “we can’t keep all the strings. Some of them must or even should be cut. But let’s at least be aware of what we’re doing” (Ibid., 8). This section exemplifies the paradoxical nature of Ward’s thesis. In one breath, he gives great reasons for retaining the KJV, and at the same time argues that modern Christians should cut ties with it. This is, as I’ve come to recognize it, is a trademark of Ward’s rhetorical strategy. What the careful reader will notice is that Authorized offers many strong arguments to actually retain the KJV while simultaneously dismissing these reasons as unimportant.

We Lose Scripture Memory By Osmosis 

This section does a great job demonstrating the the damage that has been caused by the inundation of Bible translations into the Christian church. 

“When an entire church, or group of churches, or even an entire nation of Christians, uses basically one Bible translation, genuinely wonderful things happen.”

Ibid., 8

If it is wonderful for the church to share a translation, what word should we use to describe a Christian church that does not have a unified text? Awful? Dreadful? There is tremendous value in a church sharing the same translation, which Ward highlights in this section. In addition to Ward’s point, which is that much of Scripture is memorized in community, I will add that theology can be done more effectively in a community with one Bible. Unlike the Bibles leading up to the KJV, modern Bibles take different textual and translational choices which change the meaning of passages. In the best case scenario, competing translational choices add an additional step of exegesis into the church by forcing members to decide which translation is better, rather than simply being taught by the same text. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve sat in a Bible study that devolved into debates over which translational choice is the “best.” Here is yet another example of where Ward provides a powerful argument against his own thesis, which we will see later is to read a plethora of translations.

Ward then makes one of the most compelling arguments from God’s providence in favor of the KJV.


“But no other translation seems likely to serve in the role [of a unified translation]. If indeed the King is dying, it is just as sure that none of his sons or cousins have managed to become the heir apparent.”

Ibid., 9, brackets added

In other words, the Christian church had unity under one translation for centuries, now they do not, and it does not appear that this will happen in the age of modern translations. This is a point often presented by KJV advocates – that it will not change, and the church can rally around it. If there is no hope for unification around a single modern translation on the horizon, it seems to make more sense to rally around a translation that most of the church already reads.

We Lose a Cultural Touchstone 

Ward opens this section by again comparing the shift from the KJV to modern versions to the shift from the KJV predecessors by using the Coverdale Bible as an example. The KJV is a polished and refined pinnacle of the translations produced during this time in history, which explains the dominance of the KJV during that time and beyond. The largest difference between the Coverdale and KJV is updated spelling and typesetting, and the modern reader would have a much harder time with the Coverdale for this reason. See John 1:1-2 as an example.


“In the beginning was the worde, and the worde was with God, and God was ye worde. The same was in the beginning wt God.” 

The Coverdale is actually a great example of a Bible that needed an update for standardized spelling, and the KJV was a perfect successor. It was also based in Tyndale’s New Testament, which the KJV retains up to 95%. Comparing the Coverdale to the KJV is like comparing a red delicious apple to a honeycrisp apple, whereas comparing the KJV to the NIV is like comparing an apple to a grapefruit. It is important that the reader understands the rhetorical tool Ward is employing here. 

It is interesting that Ward then employs Dawkins and Hitchins, infamous critics of Christianity, to rebuke himself and the modern Christian church. Here is Hitchins on the importance of the KJV:

“A culture that does not possess [the KJV’s] common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update [the Bible] or make it “relevant” is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare.”

Ibid., 11

Even the heathen can recognize the importance of the KJV. Ward finishes the section by making a theological blunder. He states that Hitchens is “confusing ‘the Bible’ and translations of the Bible.” Here is a reminder to the reader that an accurate translation of the original languages is the Bible. The Scriptures were immediately inspired in the original languages, and accurate translations of these texts are mediately inspired and are equally the Bible (WCF 1.8, LBCF 1.8). This theological mistake is often used against people who advocate for the use of a single translation. What most people who make this argument don’t realize is that it sets a precedent for an undefined Bible.

We Lose Some of the Implicit Trust Christians Have in the Bibles in Their Laps 

It is difficult to understand at this point why Ward has argued to sever ties with the KJV. Not only has he made several compelling arguments for it’s retention, he has eviscerated any case that can be made for adopting a modern translation. 

“It follows on from the second point: as the KJV fades, so does at least some of the trust Christians have in their Bible translations.”

Ibid., 11

“Bible translations succeed or fail based on Christian trust, because only a vanishingly small percentage of Bible readers can, and even fewer do, go through the laborious process of checking their English translations against the Greek and Hebrew. The vast majority of Bible readers simply take—they have to take—the word of others that the translations in their laps are faithful. When scholarly Christians and ministry-leading Christians go to battle over Bible translations, in dog fights far above the it’s-all-Greek-to-me heads of people in the pew, some of the flak falls on the flock.”

Ibid., 12-13

Not only does Ward point out that ever-evolving translations diminish trust that Christians have in their Bible, but also that the modern method of Bible reading imposes a gate keeping process that pressures Christians to be bound to a lexicon while reading so that they can understand what “it really says in the original.” The layman is encouraged to learn Greek and Hebrew to understand the “true” meaning of their English Bible, rather than simply reading what’s on their lap. I have argued before that this establishes a neo-papacy with the academics as pope. You can’t read your Bible for yourself, the scholars must tell you how to read it, what verses to read, and how those verses ought to be translated.

We Lose Some of the Implicit Trust Non-Christians Have in Scripture 

The title of this section speaks volumes to the damage that has been done in the last 100 years. I recall a recent debate where a belligerent atheist held up a KJV, tried to throw it in the trash, and then held up a blue Nestle-Aland text to his Christian opponents and mocked them for not having a Bible. While I do not think the critiques that Atheists have of Holy Scripture are particularly important, it demonstrates how devastating the current state of the English Bible is to Christian apologetics. Ward takes notice of this as well.

“The more Bible translations we have, and particularly the more Christian fur they see flying over them on the Internet, the less reason non-Christians will have for believing that the Bible speaks with one voice. A rising tide can sink all boats, at least a little.”  

Ibid., 13-14

He again quotes Hitchens:


“Not to over-prize consensus, it does possess certain advantages over randomness and chaos. Since the appearance of the so-called “Good News Bible,” there have been no fewer than 48 English translations published in the United States. And the rate shows no sign of slackening. Indeed, the trend today is toward what the trade calls “niche Bibles.” These include the “Couples’ Bible,” “One Year New Testament for Busy Moms,” “Extreme Teen Study Bible,” “Policeman’s Bible,” and—somehow unavoidably—the “Celebrate Recovery Bible.” (Give them credit for one thing: the biblical sales force knows how to “be fruitful and multiply.”) In this cut-price spiritual cafeteria, interest groups and even individuals can have their own customized version of God’s word.”

Ibid., 14-15

Ward ends this section with a powerful retort to the atheist’s critique when he says,

“As it is written in the prophets: ‘Ouch.’”

Ibid., 15

We often hear that the Modern Critical Text is necessary for apologetics, yet in Ward’s own words we see that this is not the case.

Conclusion

In the first chapter of his book, Ward makes a compelling argument for the benefit of retaining the KJV, and highlights the damage that modern versions have had on unity in the church and Christian apologetics. Ward lightens the mood by presenting his reader with what seems to be a poorly placed joke.



“Should we permit the KJV to slide into disuse, when we lose so many things of value along with it? Okay, maybe the bath water is getting a bit tepid, but the babies—think of the babies!”

Ibid., 16

Yes, after demonstrating the serious problems modern versions have caused and the opinions of prominent atheists on the matter, Ward feels it is appropriate to offer his reader some light-hearted humor. He ends the chapter by asking, “What do we do with the KJV?” I think a more appropriate question is, “What do we do with Mark Ward?” How is the reader of Authorized supposed to reconcile his paradoxical thesis?

Thus far in Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible, Ward has shown his reader several important realities: The first is that of the people who read their Bible, most read the King James Version. The second is that there is a tremendous benefit to the unity of the church and to Christian apologetics in retaining a unified translation. The third is that there is no other translation that has taken the spot of the KJV or can take the spot of the KJV. Despite this, it seems that Ward is working towards telling us why we should cut ties with the KJV. As a KJV reader, Ward has done a great job in reassuring me that my decision to put down my ESV was the right call. 

There is No Modern Doctrine of Preservation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed12 Comments

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Generic and Partial Preservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capel’s Remains pg. 79-80

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Yes, Doctrine Is Affected

The Young, Textless, and Reformed4 Comments

Introduction 

Many Christians have become disarmed by the claim that there are no doctrinal differences between the Reformation Era and modern era texts of the New Testament. This may sound comforting, but it does not accurately represent the reality that doctrine is affected, and will continue to be affected as changes are made in further editions of the Greek New Testament. One reason somebody can say that “doctrine is not affected” is because of the centuries of theological work that has been done. People read the modern texts through the lens of the theology of the Reformation text. Sound theology is never done in a bubble, and many fail to recognize how influenced they are by historical theology. 

In fact, it is most often that those who come up with false doctrines are the same that have not studied historical theology. Most, if not all, modern heresies are just reiterations and adaptations of a false doctrine from the past. This makes it near impossible to accurately claim that modern Greek Texts and translations do not impact doctrine, because anybody who is making this sort of determination has been influenced by the theology of the past. It would take a completely blank-slate-human to even conduct such an experiment. It is possible, however, to determine if doctrine has been changed, because of the wealth of theological works that utilized the Reformation era text. There is a point of comparison. There are two major areas that modern translations and Greek texts effect doctrine, the first being the actual doctrine of inspiration, and the second being the doctrines affected by passages that have been deemed “unoriginal” and removed.

The Doctrine of Inspiration Dismantled and Reassembled 

The doctrine of inspiration laid out by the theologians of the Reformation and post-Reformation is that the Bible has been kept pure in all ages. In accepting a modern text, which is a very different text from the text of the Reformation, one has to accept one of two realities. The first is that one must accept a Bible that has been kept in two text streams. This theory requires the belief that there were two Bibles used in the early church, and that one of them fell out of use. The one that fell out of use, of course, is the one the modern text represents and is said to be “earliest and best”. This poses a conundrum to the doctrine of preservation. The first option is that both forms of the text are equally authoritative and there are two Bibles. The second option is that the Alexandrian text is the Bible and the Word of God was corrupt for centuries, only to be recovered in the 19th century. The only way one could arrive to either of these conclusions is to shift the definition of inspiration and preservation. 

In order to hold onto the doctrine of preservation while accepting the modern text, one has to define preservation differently. Rather than God preserving every word, He preserved most of the words. Many will claim that doctrine is not affected by this, but as I stated in the introduction of this article, it is difficult to determine this. It is much easier to demonstrate that doctrine has been affected, rather than proving that is has not. That is because everybody takes their theological system into the text, whether they want to admit it or not. What can be easily demonstrated to be different is modern interpretations of the doctrines of inspiration and preservation. 

There is a difference between every word being preserved and most of the words being preserved. There is a difference between the Westminster and London Baptist Confessions of Faith and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. If the Chicago Statement affirmed the same standard of preservation, they would have utilized certain language such as “pure in all ages” as opposed to the arbitrary standard of “with great accuracy”. The former affirms preservation through time, and the latter affirms that the scope of preservation must be retroactively determined, and only to the degree of “great accuracy”. Many are fine with this reinterpretation of the doctrine of preservation, claiming that the standard of “pure in all ages” is too meticulous. Rather than accepting that these are two different doctrines, many have attempted to reinterpret the confessional language, or even try to prove that the drafters of the confession had the same view as the modern interpretation of preservation. This is demonstrably false. Garnet Howard Milne’s book Has the Bible Been Kept Pure? Handles this quite well. 

It may be the case that the doctrine of preservation as described in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is more accurate than the Confessional doctrine of preservation, but the fact remains that these are two different standards. So in a very real sense, the rise of the modern texts resulted in a fresh interpretation of the doctrine of preservation. Doctrine has changed in order to accommodate the modern texts. 

Affected Doctrines

I will not make a case for how each update and revision to the text of Scripture has tarnished doctrine. There are many theologians, scholars, and laypersons who have already done as much. Instead, I will focus on how any update to a word, phrase, or an entire passage does affect doctrine by its revision, and supply two examples demonstrating this fact. The first point to note is that doctrines cannot be developed without words. A doctrine is developed from a text. So when that text changes, the doctrine is liable to change as well. A common modern thought is that a doctrine, idea, or message can be preserved without the underlying text itself being preserved. There are many ways to say the same thing, after all. This is demonstrated in the common opinion that “all the important doctrines” are preserved, when dismissing the importance of variants between the Reformation and Modern text. 

The only reason this claim can be made is due to the fact that theological systems are extremely stable in the 21st century. That is not to say that the proponents of these systems are stable, but the systems themselves have been fleshed out extensively in the last four hundred (or more) years. As much as people dislike admitting it, the majority of exegesis done today is done primarily through a theological lens. Much of the time, when somebody says that doctrine is not affected, they are really saying that “My doctrine will not be affected by changes to the text”. This is the case because the changes between the texts should result in doctrinal change due to the significance in difference. So if the change in the text has not resulted in a change in theology, the reason for that is not that the text is saying the same thing, it is because the person is making the text say the same thing based on their theological commitments. 

A perfect example of this is John 1:18. In the modern text, it says that Jesus is “the unique God” or the “only begotten God” or the “only God”. If the modern reading is taken, one must rely on their existing understanding of the trinity to properly ascertain a trinitarian doctrine from this text. The text itself declares the uniqueness of the Son, which is to say that the Son is unique in essence from the Father. This must result in tritheism or social trinitarianism or unitarianism, if a plain reading of the text is allowed. Many speculate that this is the reason for the original corruption of the text from “Only begotten Son” to “only begotten God”  by Valentinus during the second century. At best the modern reading obfuscates the clear trinitarian nature of God, and at worst it clearly articulates anti-trinitarian doctrine. Many theologians, scholars, pastors, and laypersons abuse the hermeneutical principle of letting scripture interpret scripture to justify this corruption, but that principle is only properly applied when a passage is not abundantly clear. In this case, the modern reading is as clear as it gets. In fact, it should be the interpretive lens that all other claims regarding the Son are made in the Bible if the modern reading is correct. It distinctly teaches that the Son of God is unique, not begotten of the Father. By affecting this one place, the rest of the trinitarian passages of Scripture are compromised, which was probably the intention of the person who originally corrupted the text. 

The claim that “doctrine is not affected”  might be true if the difference in variations between the Reformation era text and Modern text were just spelling errors, word order, and other scribal errors. This is not the case. There are countless places where the text is demonstrably different between the two texts in message, vocabulary, and substance (See Hoskier’s work for details). The reason so many Christians are willing to accept these corruptions is because they tend to look at variants from a modern perspective. Today, the Bible is accessible to anybody with the internet. Modern Christians in the west do not know what it is like to not have a complete Bible. So it is anachronistic to look at a variant, as if every Christian throughout the ages had access to the 75 translations and countless books and articles explaining each variant. It is easy to write off the significance of a variant when one has access to 2,000 years of textual scholarship. 

A great example of this is how readily modern Christians pass over the ending of Mark. They take for granted the fact that they have the ending of the Gospel account in Matthew, Luke, and John. If one accepts that Matthew is the first Gospel (which is the historic perspective), the early church also would not have been doctrinally rocked by the ending of Mark being lost as well. Yet, much of modern scholarship has adopted the theory that Mark is the earliest Gospel, and that Matthew and Luke expanded on Mark’s account, embellishing the story and adding in important phrases that clearly demonstrate the divinity of Christ. This culminated in the Gospel of John, which is the most clear expression of the development of Christianity and the divinity of Christ. The story of the Gospels is more aptly a story of how Jesus became God than a true narrative of Jesus’ ministry. 

If this modern theory is the case, and the Alexandrian version of Mark is the “earliest and best”, then the earliest gospel did not have an appearance account. It simply ends with two scared women and the word γαρ in Greek, which occurs nowhere else in Greek literature. If Mark ends at verse 8, than the earliest Christians did not believe in a literal resurrected Christ. The other alternative is that the ending was lost to time or Mark was a poor writer that didn’t know Greek very well (which some assert). The only fact conveyed is that the tomb was empty, and that the women were scared. 

This is the kind of variant that allows Bart Ehrman to have a wildly successful career. Because Christians are willing to throw out the ending of Mark, they give license to men like Walter Bauer and Richard Price who have spun wild tales of the invention of Christianity. Further, if the ending of Mark does not contain an appearance account, then the apostle Paul did not consider Mark to be a gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-11). And if Mark is not a proper gospel, what is it doing in our Bibles? Did the Holy Spirit make a mistake? The only reason Christians need to defend against Bart Erhman is because they opened the door and let him sit at the table. The theory of Alexandrian Priority, the underpinning of “earliest and best”, has given a robe and a ring to agnostic scholars who wish to critique God’s Word. 

Conclusion

It may be the case that I have not convinced anybody that the two texts I cited affect doctrine. It may hold true that John 1:18 and Mark 16:9-20 truly do not affect doctrine. Yet this determination can only be made while standing on the shoulders of the men of old while receiving beatings by Bart Ehrman and co. Christians are standing in the middle of a field being shelled by artillery, plugging their ears and shouting “No doctrine is affected!” Christians have been pacified for too long by these empty assertions while men like Bart Ehrman have built their entire career on the very fact that variants affect the authenticity and doctrines of the Bible. 

Even if a handful of variants do not affect the corpus of the New Testament text and the doctrines contained within, they impact the doctrines of inspiration and preservation by standing in opposition to the text that the people of God have received throughout the ages. In proposing a genuine corruption of the Biblical text (not just a scribal error, but a total corruption), one has to shift the definition of preservation. Preservation cannot be talking about words, but ideas and doctrines (Or words to the degree of “great accuracy”). So as long as the sum total of doctrines are preserved, the Bible can be considered preserved. While this may be practically true due to the wealth of theological works available, it is not true as it pertains to the actual text of the New Testament. The text of the New Testament is a relatively small corpus of literature, and when a small collection is altered, there are grave consequences to the whole ecosystem of the text. 

A single variant can indeed change the message of the Trinity that the Bible puts forth. Another can “prove” that there was no resurrected Christ. The only reason most Christians do not consider the gravity of just two variants is because they assume the system developed from theological works of the past which rely on the texts they reject. If anything, the Christian needs to realize that it does not follow to say that a doctrine can be unaffected if the words the doctrines are built on are affected. Changed words mean changed doctrines. One might be fine with this reality, but it does not bode well with a conservative doctrine of preservation. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the text of the New Testament being preserved in the words, and not just the “original message”. Without the original words, there is no original message. So when discussing variants, the conversation should not be framed in the question, “Well, does it affect doctrine?” The obvious truth is that yes, it does. The real question one should ask is, “Does this affect doctrine enough for me to say something about it?” The obvious truth is that yes, it does. 

Received vs. Reconstructed

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

Those that are new to the discussion of Bible translation, Greek text, and textual criticism might often feel overwhelmed by the amount of specialized terminology. I thought it might be helpful to write an article discussing some of that terminology, and what the difference is between receiving the text of Scripture and reconstructing the text of Scripture. These two epistemological positions represent two views of the Bible, the reconstructionist view being far more popular. Those in the reconstructionist camp consider modern Bibles such as the ESV, NASB, and NIV to have a better base Greek and Hebrew text and translation methodology than the Reformation era Bibles such as the Geneva Bible and King James Bible. On the other side, those in the Received Text camp consider the base Greek and Hebrew text and translation methodology of the Reformation period to be superior to the modern text. There are also many Christians who read the Bible without having an opinion at all on the discussion, and mostly pick the translation they have picked due to preference. 

Terminology Matters

It can be difficult to keep track of all the names and titles floating around for various views of the text of Scripture. Often times the names that stick are the most unhelpful and least descriptive, such as “TR Onlyist” or “Textual Traditionalist”. Those that prefer translations made from the Received Text of the Reformation, which is the Hebrew Masoretic text and Greek Received Text (TR), have used many titles such as Confessional Text, Canonical Text, Ecclesiastical Text, and Traditional Text. I prefer the title Confessional Text, because the Received Text of the Reformation is the text used by the framers of the Puritan era confessions and represents the doctrinal position of chapter one, paragraph eight of the both the Westminster and London Baptist confessions. This was the text that theologians used to develop the wealth of theological works that modern Reformed believers look to today, regardless of textual preference. Additionally, the confessions cite passages and verses that are not in the modern text. People can debate that point all they want but the fact remains that the text of the Confessional era is the Received Text of the Reformation. 

Regardless of which title is used, they all convey the same epistemological position of the Text of Scripture. This position is generically summarized in 6 points:

  1. The Text of Scripture is self authenticating, and thus unbiblical standards of critique and revision are not appropriate for the text of Scripture (such as expansion of piety, taking the less harmonious reading, total Scribal corruption, etc.)
  2. The Text of the New Testament has been, in every age, been available to the people of God (though not every Christian has had a Bible throughout the ages)
  3. The Bible is not just preserved in the original manuscripts (which no longer exist), but was also preserved in the manuscript copies of the New Testament, which includes printed texts (though some manuscripts are better than others, and no one manuscript is perfect)
  4. The text-critical work done during the Reformation period resulted in the successful collation of manuscripts which represents the original text of the New Testament in Greek 
  5. The printed texts of the Reformation do not represent, in any one edition, the original text of the New Testament in Greek (There is not one printed “TR” that represents the Received Text perfectly, but the Scrivener Greek New Testament published by TBS is the closest representative)
  6. All translations should be made from the masoretic Hebrew Old Testament, and the Received Greek New Testament

This is the general outline of the views adhered to by those who claim the title Confessional Text, Canonical Text, Ecclesiastical Text, or Traditional Text. In essence, they all mean the same thing. Certain unhelpful titles have been employed polemically such as “TR Onlyist”, “Textual Traditionalist”, or “KJV Onlyist”, but none of these are accurate and often are used to mischaracterize those who believe the Reformation Era Greek text is the text God preserved.

9th Commandment Violations 

The first title, “TR Onlyist”, does not accurately represent the position because it neglects the fact that the Hebrew masoretic text is also a building block of the  position. Modern Bibles utilize texts outside of the Hebrew text to translate, which violates the doctrinal standard set forth in 1.8 of the confessions. In addition to this, Christians within the Confessional Text camp believe the Bible should be translated into every tongue. In order to be a “TR Onlyist”, one would have to only accept one version of the Greek TR, and reject the Hebrew Old Testament as well as any translation. 

The second title, “Textual Traditionalist” doesn’t say much about the position at all. Everybody who has an opinion in this discussion is a “Textual Traditionalist” because they have a tradition which shapes their view of the Text of Scripture. Those who accept only modern editions of the Greek New Testament also are “Textual Traditionalists”, so it only serves to divide and polarize. 

The third title, “KJV Onlyist”, is an actual position on the text, namely that the KJV is the only Bible. Though many Confessional Text proponents read the KJV, many of them read the NKJV, the Geneva Bible, MEV, and so on. At its core, the Confessional Text position isn’t purely about translation methodology, it’s about a particular doctrinal view of inspiration, preservation, and transmission. There are many people that only read the ESV, and that doesn’t make them an “ESV Onlyist”. In any case, Christians should avoid using terminology that mischaracterizes their brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Clearing Up Points of Confusion

The first point of confusion that results in Christians talking past each other in this conversation is the difference between a received text and a reconstructed text. This is a fundamental doctrinal difference between the two camps that will ultimately lead to the translation one reads or which Greek text one prefers. The difference is that those in the Received text camp do not believe any further “tinkering” with the text is necessary. The textual work of the Reformation era scholars and theologians was successful in producing a text, which resulted in the vast majority of the world having the Bible in their mother tongue. Those in the Reconstructionist Text camp do not believe that the work of the Reformation era was successful, and that believers for hundreds of years (or more) did not have an accurate Bible. The work of reconstructing the Bible is still an ongoing effort, and the original text of the New Testament has never been found as of yet. The Bible has been preserved with “great accuracy”, but not totally or perfectly. 

Thus the difference between adhering to the Confessional Text position or Reconstructionist Text position is a matter of how one defines the doctrines of inspiration and preservation, not by examining manuscript evidence. This is the second point of confusion that often hinders productive conversation. Those in the Reconstructionist Text camp demand that every reading of the New Testament be supported by extant manuscript evidence, and often fails to recognize printed texts as containing preserved readings. There is an artificial standard set up by many Reconstructionist Text advocates which says that only hand-copied manuscripts can contain authoritative readings of the New Testament. That is to say, that there is somehow something more authentic about a pen than a printing press. Many, if not most of the extant Greek manuscripts do not have a surviving exemplar they were copied from. The only difference is that after the 1600’s, the form of copying transitioned from hand-copying to printed-copying.

The final point of confusion is that those in the Reconstructionist Text camp believe that the later a manuscript was produced, the less likely it is that the readings in those manuscripts are original. As a result, these people will demand “early” manuscript evidence for every single reading in the New Testament. If there is no “early” evidence, than the reading cannot be original. This is problematic for several reasons. First, it assumes that later manuscripts could not have been produced from an ancient exemplar. In fact, many modern scholars will admit that later manuscripts can preserve extremely early, if not original readings. Second, due to the fact that all of the “earliest and best” manuscripts are from third and fourth century Egypt, it assumes that a reading must be present in Egyptian manuscripts from the third and fourth century to be valid. There is no way to prove that those surviving Egyptian manuscripts even represented the rest of the manuscripts in Egypt, let alone the rest of the manuscripts total. In fact, there is evidence to indicate that the copyists of the extant Egyptian manuscripts knew of readings and passages of Scripture that they did not include in their copies (Such as the longer ending of Mark). There was certainly more than two complete Bibles in Egypt in the third and fourth century, and there is no way of determining that the two we have even looked like the rest of the Bibles that have been lost to time. So to set the standard of proof at the Egyptian manuscripts from the third and fourth century is wildly arbitrary. Thirdly, it assumes a standard that is completely unreasonable and doesn’t account for much of the evidence available. It neglects quotations and commentary on Biblical texts throughout time, lectionary practices, and versional (translational) evidence from the time period. It assumes that the only valid evidence is surviving, hand-copied, manuscript evidence (especially those manuscripts from Egypt). This allows those in the Reconstructionist Text camp to discredit all of the patristic citations and other evidences of New Testament verses that they have deemed unoriginal. 

Received vs. Reconstructed

At its core, the difference between the two camps is a difference in theological perspective. Those in the Confessional Text camp believe that the text-critical effort of the Reformation was not the effort of men who believed the Bible had been lost to time. The work of Erasmus isn’t the only work done in the 16th century, so attacking Erasmus really doesn’t accomplish anything. There were many scholars who worked on the text. They were objectively not doing the same thing that modern text-critics are doing, despite the efforts of modern text-critics of making it seem that way (Jan Krans for example). It is true that they were collating manuscripts into printed editions, but the scope and goal of that work was completely different. The simple fact that the product is so vastly different should be evidence enough to demonstrate that the scholars of the past were not doing the same thing modern scholars are doing today. Simply asserting that Reformation era scholars didn’t have the same data doesn’t negate the fact that they were aware of, and commented on, all of the major variants that are rejected today.

Modern text-critics accept manuscripts and readings that Reformation era scholars rejected (like Codex Vaticanus and other manuscripts sharing the same qualities. See Erasmus and John Owen). They operate from the epistemological starting point that the original text of the New Testament has yet to be found, and that the text of the Scriptures that was received by the people of God for centuries was corrupt. They do not believe that the text of the New Testament was received by the people of God, but needs to be analyzed and decided upon by a select group of elite scholars (who may or may not believe the Bible is God’s Word). 

The Confessional Text position does not suppose that the Bible needs to be reconstructed by the efforts of text-critics, placing the authority of Biblical texts in the hands of men. The text is not shifting with each new piece of evidence or methodology. This has resulted in the Approved Text(s) of the modern period, which is what most Bibles are translated from today. The texts that are translated from are the texts approved by scholars. If a Biblical text is not supported by third and fourth century Egyptian manuscripts, then the text often does not get approved. It disallows for any position that would say the work of finding the original text of the New Testament has been completed because the completed work of the Reformation period does not agree with the modern evaluation of Egyptian manuscripts. 

Conclusion

At the very outset of most conversations between the two positions, those in the Reconstructionist Text camp immediately begin by assuming their own premise, that a reading must be validated by modern text-critical methods. These modern methods almost always lead back to the standard of third and fourth century Egyptian manuscripts. This may be changing in certain corners of the world of textual criticism, but the fact remains that almost  every modern Bible has been revised from Greek Texts that follow the Egyptian manuscripts. I have been in countless conversations where I will point to the thousands of manuscripts that contain a reading, and ultimately, the evidence means nothing to Reconstructist Text advocates, because the texts aren’t Egyptian. This demonstrates that the proponents are not truly interested in having an evidential view of the text. They have a theory, and they use that theory to prove their desired Bible. It is equally as traditional as they claim the Confessional Text position to be. 

The major difference is that the source of the tradition comes by way of 19th and 20th century textual scholars and not the doctrinal statements of the post-Reformation period. This is why I have chosen to use the term “Approved Text(s)”, because modern Bibles rely on texts that are approved by modern scholarship to be “earliest and best”. At the end of the day, it comes down to two different views of inspiration and preservation, not which readings can be proven by evidence. Every single reading of the TR can be backed up with evidence, the Reconstructionist Text camp simply does not accept or approve of the evidence. So the real discussion comes down to theological foundations and perspective. Discussing various readings ad nauseum will accomplish nothing, because the presuppositions of each side are different.

For example, when somebody says, “There is no early evidence for x reading”, all that really means is “the Alexandrian manuscripts don’t have that reading”. The only thing proved is that one tiny subset of the extant manuscript data does not contain the reading in question. The only thing evaluating the Alexandrian manuscripts highly does is demonstrate that there is no Bible, only bibles. If the Egyptian texts are “earliest and best”, then there are multiple valid bibles, and the discussion of preservation doesn’t really matter anymore. It ultimately becomes a matter of arbitrary preference, which is exactly what you see in the scholarly community. Two scholars will approach the same text and come to entirely different conclusions. Ultimately the individual believer needs to determine whether or not the modern methodologies are the most faithful according to Scripture.  

Evaluating the Modern Claim of Better Data

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Introduction

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

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

The Alleged Kaleidoscopic Nature of the Text

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

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

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

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

The Impossibility of Original Egyptian Texts

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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.