The King James Version
Defended
By Dr.
Edward F. Hills
PREFACE
If, indeed,
we are in the midst of "a revival of the almost
century-old view of J.W. Burgon" (Eldon Jay Epp, "New
Testament Textual Criticism in America: Requiem for a
Discipline," Journal of Biblical
Literature 98 [March 1979]: 94-98.), the question
naturally arises: How did such a development come to
pass? Our answer in a large measure is to be found at
the doorstep of Edward F. Hills (1912-1981), in his
comprehensive work The King James
Version Defended: A Christian View of the New Testament
Manuscripts (1956). This publication was, in its
day, an indication to the established school of New
Testament text criticism that Burgon was not without an
advocate from within its own ranks, even if such a
position were only to be regarded as an anomaly (v.
Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New
Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration
[1968], p. 136 n. l; J. Harold Greenlee, Introduction to New
Testament Textual Criticism [1964], p. 82 n. 2).
Recently,
however, his contribution has brought new entrants into
the textual arena who have followed his lead (if not his
entire methodology) and thus have opened for fresh
debate a forum for the defense of the Byzantine text.
Hills lived to see this gratifying development, noting
thankfully that his work was finally being seen by some
as more than just a "scholarly curiosity" (a la
Greenlee op. cit.). On the
contrary, he will now be regarded as the Father of this
20th century revival of the Majority
Text.
It is,
nevertheless, ironic that of all who have offered a
contribution to the Byzantine text defense, Edward F.
Hills is the only bonafide New Testament text critic to
do so since the days of Scrivener, Burgon and Hoskier.
Why then are his views not playing a larger role in this
current stage of the debate? An answer in part is to be
found in a sentiment expressed to this author by Gordon
Fee when he was asked why Hills had been ignored in the
lively exchange that took place in the Journal of the
Evangelical
Theological Society (Vol.
21, nos. 1&2 1978). His response was that Hills'
works were "museum pieces." This impression, no doubt,
is a result of Hills choosing to publish himself, rather
than go through the conventional publishing channels.
But, the climate then—in 1956—was not that of today. It
is, therefore, high time to dispel forever any such
unrealistic and flippant
impressions.
Moreover, the time
has now come for this present edition to make its unique
contribution felt. Unique in that, while Hills was the
only recognized, published New Testament text critic to
advocate the primacy of the Byzantine text either in his
day or in the present, no one since has been more
innovative than he was in attempting to integrate his
confessional, theological perspective with the
discipline of New Testament text criticism. This is a
taboo that even the recent Majority Text advocates have
attempted not to transgress, preferring to work from
within a purely scientific framework. But Hills'
training under J. Gresham Machen, John Murray, R. B.
Kuiper and most especially, Cornelius Van Til, would not
allow him to rest content with the neutral method to
which he had been initiated at the University of Chicago
and Harvard. Kuiper recognized the value of this
integrational approach to a highly specialized
discipline, in which few confessing evangelicals had
ever distinguished themselves, in his preface to the
first edition of this work:
For more
than a decade he [Hills] has taken a special interest in
New Testament Textual Criticism. The subject of his
dissertation, written in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Th.D. degree was: The Caesarean Family
of New Testament Manuscripts. The Journal of Biblical
Literature has published three articles by him, each
bearing directly on the field of his special interest:
"Harmonizations in the Caesarean Text of Mark" in 1947,
"The Interrelationship of the Caesarean Manuscripts" in
1949, and "A New Approach to the Old Egyptian Text" in
1950. Professor C. S. C. Williams of Oxford University
took cognizance of the first of these articles in Alterations to the
Text of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts (1951), and
the second was referred to by G. Zuntz, another Oxford
Professor, in The
Text of the Epistles (1953).
It is evident that
Dr. Hills is entitled to a hearing because of his
scholarship. I think it no less evident that he deserves
a respectful hearing because of his theological
convictions. This is not just another book on New
Testament Textual Criticism. On the contrary, its
approach to that theme is decidedly unique. Dr. Hills
founds his criticism of the New Testament text squarely
and solidly on the historic doctrines of the divine
inspiration and providential preservation of Holy
Scripture, and it is his firm conviction that this is
the only proper approach. Hence, he not only differs
radically with those critics who have a lower evaluation
of the Bible, but is also sharply critical of those
scholars whose evaluation of the Bible is similar to his
but who have, in his estimation, been persuaded that
they ought not to stress the orthodox view of Scripture
in their study of the New Testament
text.
Underlying
this position taken by Dr. Hills is a philosophy of
truth. God is truth. Because God is one, truth exists as
unity. And as God is the author of all diversity, truth
also exists as diversity. In a word, there is the truth, and
there are also truths.
By reason, which is a precious
gift of the common grace of God, the unbeliever can, and
actually does, grasp many truths. But for the proper
integration of truths and knowledge of the truth, faith
in God, as He has revealed Himself in Holy Scriptures,
is indispensable. Hence, in every department of learning
the conclusions of reason must be governed and
controlled by the truth which is revealed in God's Word
and is perceived by faith. Any so-called neutral science
which seems equally acceptable to the faithful and
faithless but sustains no conscious relationship to the
Scriptures is by that very token headed in the wrong
direction.
Applied to the
subject in hand this means that, while willingly
granting that believers may well be indebted to
unbelieving critics for a number of facts concerning the
Scriptures, Dr. Hills insists that the interpretation
and correlation of the facts can safely be entrusted
only to believing students of the Word. That they too
are fallible goes without saying.
Conservative
Scholars have long taken that position with reference to
the so-called higher criticism. Said James Orr under the
head Criticism of
the Bible in the 1915 edition of the International
Standard Bible Encyclopedia: "While invaluable as an aid in the domain of
Biblical introduction (date, authorship, genuineness,
contents, destination, etc.) it manifestly tends to
widen out illimitably into regions where exact science
cannot follow it, where often, the critic's imagination
is his only "law". In the same article he also stated
that "textual criticism has a well-defined field in
which it is possible to apply exact canons of Judgment".
However, the question may well be asked whether
unbelieving critics have not in that discipline too at
times given broad scope to their imagination.
Significantly Orr went on to say: "Higher criticism
extends its operations into the textual field,
endeavoring to get behind the text of the existing
sources, and to show how this 'grew' from simpler
beginnings to what now is. Here, also, there is wide
opening for arbitrariness". And of the Biblical
criticism in general he said: "A chief cause of error in
its application to the record of a supernatural
revelation is the assumption that nothing supernatural
can happen. This is the vitiating element in much of the
newer criticism".
The assertion
appears to be warranted that the position which was
implicit in Dr. Orr's teaching forty years ago has
become explicit in this book by
Hills.
Recently Hills has
received a degree of vindication from John H. Skilton,
Professor of New Testament, Emeritus, and former head of
the New Testament Department at Westminster Theological
Seminary, for the conscious, theological element in his
method:
For men who
accept the Bible as the Word of God, inerrant in the
original manuscripts, it should be out of the question
to engage in the textual criticism of the Scriptures in
a "neutral" fashion—as if the Bible were not what it
claims to be . . . Whether one realizes it or not, one
makes a decision for or against God at the beginning,
middle, and end of all one's investigating and thinking.
This is a point which Cornelius Van Til has been
stressing in his apologetics and which Edward F. Hills
has been appropriately making in his writings on textual
criticism. All along the line it is necessary to insist,
as Hills does, that 'Christian, believing Bible study
should and does differ from neutral, unbelieving Bible
study.' He is quite correct when he reminds us that 'to
ignore...the divine inspiration and providential
preservation of the New Testament and to treat its text
like the text of any other book is to be guilty of a
fundamental error which is bound to lead to erroneous
conclusions.' (The New Testament
Student Vol. 5,1982 pp.
5-6)
Finally, it
must be stated that Hills did not hold to an uncritical,
perfectionist view of the TR as some have assumed (Believing Bible
Study 2d. ed. p. 83); nor did he advocate with
absolute certainty the genuineness of the Johannine Comma (The
King James Version Defended p. 209). What he did
argue for, however, was a "canonical" view of the text
(KJV Defended p.
106), because, in his experience, this was the only
way to be assured of "maximum certainty" (KJV Defended
pp. 224-225) versus the results
of a purely naturalistic approach to the text of the New
Testament.
Reformation Day
1983
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
Theodore P.
Letis
