Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 13–
August/2006
What’s REALLY At Stake in the
Textual Issue? (1)
THIS MONTH
WE CELEBRATE ONE
YEAR of Truth
On Tough Texts, and
what a blessing it’s been! The response has been
wonderful, and God has met every need through God’s
people. We rejoice as we begin our second year in this
ministry.
This anniversary
issue is a little different than usual. While we won’t
be examining a particular text, we will be looking
rather at “the text,” that is, the Scripture itself. My
reason for this will, I hope, become clear as we
continue. Before we can ever trust any “text” of
Scripture, we must be clear on “the text” of
Scripture, because THE TEXT IS ALWAYS
THE ISSUE.
There has been for many
years a great deal of controversy, not to mention heated
argument, concerning the “textual issue,” that is,
modern translations of the Bible and the Greek text on
which they are based.
The point of this
two-part article, however, is to explore what is
really at stake here. While, “text types,” “older
versus newer manuscripts,” “translation approach,” and
other matters are most certainly important, there is
another matter that is, I am absolutely convinced, the
real issue and far outweighs all the others
combined. It is this issue,
in fact—an issue I’ve been studying for almost 20
years—that really drives both sides of the controversy,
even though many people involved in the fray are not
even aware of it.
As we begin,
I want to encourage you that this is a complex issue. I
have made every effort to put the matter as
simply as possible. Don’t feel intimidated if you
have to read something more than once to “get it.” Just
take your time.
Foundational Terms
Before getting to that
real issue, we must understand two basic foundation
stones and put them as simply as possible.
First, we
must define the term textual criticism. An easy
definition appears in Henry Halley’s classic Bible
Handbook: “This is the comparison of various
manuscripts to ascertain the exact original text from
which they are copied.”[i] Another scholar goes into
more detail by writing that this is an “[attempt] to
restore the readings of the original text, the
autographs.” It attempts to “[recover] the original
text” since “there are no known extant [i.e., still
existing] autographs of the New Testament.” This is done
by “the study of numerous manuscripts” and the
formulating of “principles of textual criticism that are
applied to many different sorts of literary
works.”[ii] So, in short, the
point of textual criticism is to study the
various manuscripts that do exist of a literary
work (the Bible in this case) and recreate as close as
possible the original text that does
not exist.
Second, there
are two basic schools of thought concerning textual
criticism, that is, how to go about “reconstructing the original
text.”
(1) The first camp
is what is called the Traditional, Ecclesiastical, or
Majority Text theory. This approach follows the vast
majority of manuscripts to support its Greek text of the
New Testament. While the manuscripts themselves do not
date before the 5th Century, this majority
comprises 80-95% of the over 5,000 extant (still
existing) manuscripts, and essentially agree among each
other. It is this manuscript tradition that forms the
basis of the Authorized King James Version. This
approach, as we’ll see, does not actually
reconstruct the text, rather it recognizes
that the authoritative text already exists and
that we have it in our hands now and have
always had it.
(2) In dramatic
contrast, the other camp (the Critical Text camp)
follows a very small number of early manuscripts
that date from the 3rd–5th
Century. The logic used in this theory is that because
the manuscripts in this group are older than those in
the majority, they must be closer to the originals even
though they are much fewer in
number. The oddity in those manuscripts, however, is
that not only do they not agree with the ones in the
majority, but in literally thousands of instances they
don’t even agree with each other. Nonetheless, this
theory maintains that “older is better” (although any
first year student of logic would recognize such a false
premise). It is this second camp, however, that has
dominated the scholarly world for over a century, and it
is this camp that has produced almost all the modern
translations.
Before I go any further, I
want to make something as clear as I possibly can. I
received an email from one visitor to our web site that
said, “How sad, you’re just another King James only
website.” I cannot express how distressed that made me
because it could not be further from the truth. The
typical “KJV only” advocate is an embarrassment as he
“foams at the mouth” and casts aspersion upon anyone who
does not agree with him. That
is not my platform and is not what I’m presenting in this article.
I hope you will read on.
The Underlying Approach of Modern Textual
Criticism
Again, what’s
really at stake in this controversy transcends
“text types” and all the other technical matters. The
real issue is the underlying approach that modern
textual criticism takes to reconstructing the original
text and its underlying attitude toward the Bible
itself.
Now, lest I be accused of
misrepresentation, I will be quoting textual critics
verbatim as we progress. I’m not reading anything into
their statements, rather quoting their own clearly
stated attitude toward Scripture and its
reconstruction.
To state the matter
simply and succinctly: the basic underlying approach
to Scripture held by modern textual criticism is that
the method of restoring the original text of Scripture
is no different than for any other literature. That
was stated plainly in our earlier quotation concerning
“principles of textual criticism that are applied to
many different sorts of literary
works.”
It is that very fact
that many, if not most, people either do not
realize or simply do not
recognize. But it is that
issue that is really at the core of this
controversy.
Among the first “textual
critics,” for example was Johann A. Bengel (1687-1752).
While an orthodox German Lutheran in other areas of
doctrine, when it came to New Testament textual
criticism, he took a totally rationalistic approach.
Read carefully what he wrote:
Concerning the care of the
early Church for the purity of the manuscripts and
concerning the fruits of this care, whatever is clearly
taught must be eagerly and piously maintained. But it is
certainly difficult to explain through what churches and
ages this care extended, and whatever it was it did not
keep from coming into existence those variant readings
which circulate today and which are more easily removed
when their origin is known.[iii]
That statement makes
clear the core belief of modern, rationalistic textual
criticism, which is: instead of there being a text that
has been recognized down through the ages as the
preserved text of God’s Word, what must be done is to
compare various classes of manuscripts with each other,
along with their “variant readings,” to reconstruct the
original text, whatever that might be. We repeat:
that is and always has been the very root and
foundation of textual criticism.
This is nowhere better
illustrated than in one of the chief tenets of that
approach, which not only Bengel advocated but every
critic since supports. Second only to the first tenet
that “the older reading is to be preferred,” another
chief rule is that “the more difficult reading is to be
preferred.”[iv] In other words, as
Bengel decided, and as every critic since argues, when
there is a choice between a reading that is hard to
understand and a reading that is easy to understand, the
hard reading must be the genuine one because orthodox
scribes always changed the hard readings to make them
easy. While that should sound absurd to the ear of any
Christian, it is, in fact, the second rule of textual
criticism. Is it spiritual or based on God’s
sovereignty? Hardly! It is entirely humanistic, as it is
based on total conjecture
that has no authority whatsoever. It is the creation of
human reason, and nothing more.
“But what is really the
harm in that?” we might ask. Simply the inescapable
conclusion that orthodox Christians deliberately
corrupted their own New Testament text by making
readings easier. In other words, let’s call it what
is—They lied! As scholar Edward Hills (who we
shall examine in Part 2) points out, there was even in
Bengel’s own day an outcry by conservative Christians
because his view was a blatant “denial of the doctrine
that God by His special providence had preserved the
true text down through the ages in the usage of
believers.”[v] Where is the
outcry today? Bengel’s attitude was not that GOD
preserved the true text but that WE must
discover the true text. And that
attitude continued.
Johann J. Griesbach
(1745-1812) took up the baton from Bengel (as well as J.
S. Semler [1725-91], who was known as the “Father of
German Rationalism”).[vi] Griesbach was, by his own
admission, a skeptic of the New Testament text, that is,
the Received (or Traditional) Text. Of that text he
wrote, “The New Testament abounds in more glosses,
additions, and interpolations purposely introduced than
any other book.”[vii] He agreed with Bengel
that early Christians corrupted the Scriptures. He also
stated that when a variation appeared, the Traditional
reading was to be immediately rejected. But may we
humbly ask, “On whose authority, Sir?”
Critics who followed, such
as Johann L. Hug (1765-1846), Martin L. Scholtz
(1794-1852), Karl Lachmann (1793-1851), Lobegott F. C.
von Tischendorf (1815-1874), and others agreed on the
essential point early made by Bengel.
Of special note is Samuel
P. Tregellas (1813-1875) “who was chiefly instrumental
in leading England away from the Textus Receptus
[‘Received,’ or Traditional, Text], during the
mid-nineteenth century.”[viii] Additionally, Henry
Alford (1810-1871) is well known for his work to bring
about “the demolition of the unworthy and pedantic
reverence for the received text, which stood in the way
of all chance of discovering the genuine word of
God.”[ix]
The pattern here can
be seen by even a blind man—It is clear that early in
the modern era any thought of an already existing,
divinely preserved, definitive text of the New Testament
has never existed and, as we’ll see, still
does not exist today. In
this view, it is left totally up to man to “[discover]
the genuine Word of God.”
The baton then passed to
two Cambridge scholars, Brooke F. Westcott (1825-1901)
and Fenton J. A. Hort (1828-1892), and Christianity has
never been the same. While “their views were not
original but were based on the work of Lachmann,
Tregellas, Griesbach, Tischendorf, and others,”[x] they made clearer than
anyone else their approach to “rediscovering the
original text.” Not only did they believe that orthodox
scribes altered the text, but Hort added:
The principles of
criticism . . . hold good for all ancient texts
preserved in a plurality of documents. In dealing with
the text of the New Testament no new principle whatever
is needed or legitimate . . .
For ourselves we dare not
introduce considerations which could not reasonably be
applied to other ancient texts, supposing them to have
documentary attestation of equal amount, variety, and
antiquity.[xi]
I strongly encourage you
to read that again. It could not be clearer that
Westcott & Hort believed that the Bible could, and
actually should, be approached like any other
literature for the purpose of reconstructing the text.
This fact, of course, is not at all surprising since
both men rejected Biblical infallibility, as stated
unambiguously in their biographies. Hort was the most
outspoken, scoffing at that doctrine and saying that
anyone who believed it was perverted.[xii] While both men
professed faith in the Deity of Christ, His saving
death, and His resurrection, their low view of Scripture
simply cannot be ignored (or
tolerated). To trust their
attitude toward and treatment of Scripture is absolute
folly!
Another example, believe
it or not, was B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). While one of
the Church’s greatest defenders of the faith, he
actually helped forever change the doctrine of Verbal
Inspiration. After returning from Germany, where he
studied textual criticism under German rationalists, he
virtually turned his back on Verbal Inspiration. His
view changed to that of Westcott & Hort, that when
reconstructing any text, the method is the same,
“Whether the writing before us be a letter from a
friend, or an inscription from Carchemish, or a copy of
a morning newspaper, or Shakespeare, or Homer, or the
Bible.”[xiii]
An almost
unconscionable move by Warfield was his reinterpreting a
statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith
(1646) to actually “prove” the validity of textual
criticism. The Confession
reads:
The Old Testament in
Hebrew . .
. and the New Testament in Greek . . . being
immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care
and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore
authentical . . . so as, in all controversies of
religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.
(Ch. I, Sec. 8)
The Confession (sect. 8)
asserts that final appeal in all controversies is to be
made to the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which
are alone safeguarded in their accuracy by Divine
inspiration, and it asserts that these originals have
been, “by His singular care and providence, kept pure in
all ages.”[xiv]
“What’s wrong with
that?” you might ask. Only that the Confession had
never been interpreted that
way in its 245 year history.
Dr. Theodore P. Letis, a
contemporary textual scholar with a Ph.D. in
Ecclesiastical History from the University of Edinburgh,
has done extensive research on Warfield. He writes of
Warfield’s “ingenious new interpretation” of the
Confession,” that “which had once taught the
providential preservation of the extant
[presently existing] Church texts, was now used to
affirm the providential restoration of an
inerrant original text, by means of modern text
criticism.”[xv] In other words,
before Warfield’s reinterpretation, the Confession had
always referred to already existing Greek texts
as being inspired, not just the originals.
Warfield’s reinterpretation of the Confession, in fact,
is now mimicked by virtually every evangelical today.
And it’s wrong!
It’s equally unmistakable
that, like their predecessors, Westcott & Hort’s
descendents today hold a demonstrably rationalistic view
of Scripture. One noted contemporary scholar, for
example, writes:
. . . in general
the most difficult reading (that is, more difficult to
the scribe) is to be preferred, since a scribe is more
likely to emend a difficult reading than an easy
one.[xvi]
Another contemporary
writer reaches into thin air and invents the term
“expansion of piety” to refer to the third
artificial rule of the critics, that “the shorter
reading is to be preferred.” He writes, “Additions have
been made to the text that flow from the desire to
protect and reverence divine truths.” He goes on to call
this a “logical explanation” for longer readings, such
as: “Jesus” in the Textus Receptus versus “He” in
the Critical Text (Matt. 4:18; 12:25; Mk. 2:15; 10:52),
“Jesus Christ” in the Textus Receptus versus just
“Jesus” in the Critical Text (Acts 19:4; I Jn. 1:7; Rev.
1:9; 12:17.), and so forth.[xvii]
The same writer
(whose book is a totally one-sided presentation of the
whole subject) elsewhere makes it glaringly apparent
that he does not hold to true Providential Preservation.
He does so by first lumping all defenders of the Received Text, even the
embarrassing “foam-at-the-mouth” type, into one group
(an unfair tactic he uses many times throughout his
book, as do many writers on this issue). He
writes:
Almost all KJV Only books
will contain a section on how God has promised to
preserve His words, and they will, of course, assume
that these “words” are found in the KJV. At this point
they believe themselves to be holding the “high ground”
in the debate . . .
It’s wholly
incomprehensible to me that someone who believes in
Providential Preservation is actually
“guilty” of something, namely, taking the
“high ground.” Yes, the writer veils his sarcasm with
the widely-held accusation that all defenders of the
Textus Receptus believe that “the KJV were the
words of Paul” (which is most certainly NOT true
of all defenders), but his general attitude to true
Providential Preservation comes through loud and
clear—he doesn’t believe in it.
What he says next,
however, is the real key: “What if God preserved His
Word in a much less flashy way?” The “flashy way” he
refers to, of course, is the Textus
Receptus. His alternative,
therefore, is this:
Instead, God worked with
His people over time, leading them to recognize what He
had already done through the act of inspiration. It took
time, and some might wish for a more “spectacular”
method, but God did it in His way, in His time.[xviii]
There are three
things wrong with that statement. First, it’s as guilty
of conjecture as the writer accuses the Textus Receptus
advocate of doing. It states authoritatively that God
did it “over time,” but that is the writer’s
opinion. Second, are we to actually believe that God
preserved the true text in such a way that it can be
discovered only by the efforts of rationalism “over
time”? Third, it ignores the plain fact, as we’ve
outlined, that from Bengel to Westcott & Hort, such
critics have rejected the whole
idea of Providential
Preservation. By offering his own theory of
“preservation” (however erroneous), he betrays his own
confederates and is more in the Textus Receptus camp
than in the Critical Text camp (a thought that would
appall him). His argument is absurd and
self-refuting.
The underlying approach of
modern textual criticism that we’ve shown has resulted
in the inevitable conclusion: if man is responsible
to discover the true text, he will NEVER reach
that goal.
Is such a radical
statement true, or is it just more rambling of the “KJV
Only Cult,” which is an accusation unfairly leveled by
some?
Well, consider the
following and judge for yourself. In 1963 Robert M.
Grant, a well-known Bible scholar, wrote:
The primary goal of New
Testament textual study remains the recovery of what the
New Testament writers wrote. We have already suggested
that to achieve this goal is well-nigh impossible.
Therefore we must be content with what [many scholars
call] an “impossible possibility.”[xix]
If the double-talk
(“impossible possibility”) were not bad enough, here
is a statement that destroys any possibility of an
authoritative Bible. Even before that, Grant wrote
in 1947, “It is generally recognized that the original
text of the Bible cannot be recovered.”[xx] Likewise, scholar Gunther
Zuntz remarked in 1953, “The optimism of the early
editors has given way to that skepticism which inclines
towards regarding the original text as an unattainable
mirage.”[xxi]
Again, in their rationalistic
pride, men are merely grasping smoke to think that they
will discover the “original text.” That
ship sailed when they rejected Providential
Preservation, and the honest critic admits
it.
If the above quotations
don’t get your attention, how about one by James
Moffatt, who has been lauded by many for his
contribution to Christianity? He was one of the first to
offer a modern translation, but consider what he wrote
in the Preface to that work in 1913:
Once the translation of
the New Testament is freed from the influence of the
theory of verbal inspiration . . . difficulties cease to
be formidable.
THAT is the
issue, my Dear Reader. Once we get rid of Verbal
Inspiration, we can do anything with the Bible and its
text that we want, and that is precisely what we’re
doing. It continues to baffle me how any evangelical
can tolerate, much less
advocate, such an attitude
toward Scripture, but the majority does just
that.
We’ll conclude our
look at this issue in our next paper (Lord willing) with
a look at the late Dr. Edward F. Hills, who while a
renowned textual scholar, has been almost totally
ignored on this issue, but who truly understood that
Providential Preservation is at the very heart of the
whole issue.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible
Church
NOTES
[i]
Henry Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1927,
1965), p. 747.
[ii] Norman Geisler and
William Nix, A General Introduction to the
Bible, Revised and Expanded
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1968, 1986), pp. 433, 435,
465.
[iii] J. A. Bengel,
Novum Testamentum, Graecum (Tubingae: George
Cotta), p. 420. Cited in Edward F. Hills, The King
James Version Defended (Des
Moines, IA: Christian Research Press, 1956, 1984), p.
64.
[iv] Geisler and Nix (p.
478) listing the seven principles, according to
priority, offered by Gleason Archer, A Survey or Old
Testament Introduction, Revised
Edition (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), pp.
57-60.
[vi] Geisler and Nix, p.
454.
[vii] J. J. Griesbach,
Opuscula Academica, Jena,
1824, vol. 1, p. 317. Cited in Hills, p.
65.
[viii] Geisler and Nix, p.
455.
[ix] Henry Alford,
“Prolegomena,” The Greek Testament, 1:76. Cited in Geisler and Nix, p.
455.
[x] Geisler and Nix, p.
455.
[xi] Introduction,
The New Testament in the Original Greek (London: Macmillan, 1881), pp. 73,
277.
[xii] Arthur Westcott,
The Life and Letters of Brook Foss Westcott, Vol.
1, (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 207 and Hort’s own
The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony
Hort, Vol. 1 (London:
Macmillan), p. 400.
[xiii] B.B. Warfield,
An Introduction to Textual Criticism, 1886, p. 10.
[xiv] B. B. Warfield,
“Westminster Doctrine of Holy Scripture” in Selected
Shorter Writings of B. B. Warfield, edited by John Meeter (Phillipsburg: P & R
Publishing, 1970, 1973), Vol. II, p.
569.
[xv] Theodore P. Letis,
The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism.
Biblical Authority, and the Popular Mind (Philadelphia, Edinburgh: The Institute for
Renaissance and Reformation Biblical Studies, 1997), p.
22 (emphasis in the original). We highly recommend this
book. (My thanks to Dr. Letis for reviewing this article
for historical and technical accuracy before
publication.)
[xvi] D.A. Carson, The King James
Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979), p.
30.
[xvii] James White, The King James Only
Controversy (Minneapolis:
Bethany House Publishers, 1995), pp. 43,
46
[xix] Robert M. Grant, A Historical
Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Harper
and Row, 1963), p. 51. Also cited in Wilbur Pickering,
The Identity of
the New Testament Text, Revised
Edition (Nashville: Thomas
Nelson, 1977, 1980), pp. 18-19.
[xx] Robert M. Grant,
“The Bible of Theophilus of Antioch,” Journal of Biblical
Literature (LXVI, 1947), p. 173.
Also cited in Pickering, p. 19.
[xxi] G. Zuntz, The Text of the
Epistles (London: Oxford
University Press, 1953), p. 9. Also cited in Hills, p.
67.
