There was no update for this week.
9 February 2007
WESTCOTT AND HORT (Continued)
This week we are looking at another of the operating principles under which Westcott and Hort sought to undermine the Traditional Text and supplant this with a contrived and eclectic text. They saw as the need for this an underlying assumption that God either could not, or did not, preserve His Own Text. They assumed, and to me this is a simple evidence that they were not �good and Godly men� as my seminary lessons taught, that the true text which God had inspired for mankind had been lost.
To me at least, the entire assumptive process was one of unbelief. There is an unbelief in the power of God to preserve His Word to mankind. There is an unbelief in the goodness of God to ensure that His important message to mankind be available to all men of all ages, let alone the unbelief that this Word would reside in the churches which Jesus had established.
There is also an unbelief that the originally inspired Word was actually all that important. After all, if God was not powerful enough to preserve His Word, it follows that He is not all powerful. If God was not caring enough to preserve His word, He is not all loving. If the words which God inspired were not worthy of preservation it must follow that the message contained therein is not eternally important; in such case God is not seen as all wise in His inspiration.
The only faith exhibited by these correctors of the Biblical record seems to reside in their own abilities and intelligence in that they considered themselves as able to regain those Words which God had lost.
The principle considered today is the conflate theory of Westcott and Hort. For the most part this section considers a bias that the Traditional Text is simply a blending together of the Western and the Alexandrian text types.
An example of the principle of conflation is supplied by C. I. Scofield in his notes on Matthew 27:37 as contained in The Scofield Reference Bible.
�Cf. Mk. 15:26; Lk. 23:38; John 19:19. These accounts supplement, but do not contradict each other. No one of the Evangelists quotes the entire inscription. All have �The King of the Jews.� Luke adds to this the further words, �This is�; Matthew quotes the name, �Jesus;� whilst John gives the additional words �of Nazareth.� The narratives combined give the entire inscription: �This is (Matthew, Luke) Jesus (Matthew, John) of Nazareth (John) the King of the Jews. (all.).�
A �conflate� is simply a melding together of disparate accounts into a new account. The problem with this theory, from a theological standpoint, is that this makes man the sole authority of what God is allowed to have said. Rank error, simple gloss, and editorial notes such as offered by Scofield, are then considered to have as much weight as that which God had originally spoken.
Westcott, Hort and their followers through the decades since, consider that the Traditional Text is an amalgamation of disparate texts into a new text type.
Hills (The King James Version Defended) quotes from Dean John Burgon , in Revision Revised (which, by the way, has been reprinted and is available from The Dean Burgon Society) in which Burgon argues against the principle.
�Why ... If conflation was one of the regular practices of the makers of the Traditional Text, could Westcott and Hort find only eight instances of this phenomenon? Their story ... Has at least forced them to make an appeal to Scripture and to produce some actual specimens of their meaning. After ransacking the Gospels for 30 years, they have at last fastened upon eight.�
Hills continues:
�In these eight passages ... It is just as easy to believe that the Traditional reading is the original and that the other texts have omitted parts of it as to suppose that the Traditional reading represents a later combination of the other two readings.�
Hills also notes that the radical German scholar Bousset [Text und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur], examined the eight conflate readings of Westcott and Hort. He agreed with them �...in only one of their eight instances... In four of the other instances he regarded the Traditional readings as the original reading, and in the three others he regarded the decision as doubtful. �Westcott and Hort�s chief proof,� he observed, �has almost been turned into the opposite.��
Not even all of the critics agree with the reasoning process of Westcott and Hort. Yet they slavishly follow the conclusions reached by means of those processes. What, other than the belief in the weakness of God to preserve His Word combined with the power of man to reconstruct that word, is the rational by which the Traditional Text been dismissed by these scholars and critics?
I find no satisfactory answer to that question which would reside in honest belief and faith in the powerful God of Love and Eternity.
One last reference to the work of Hills: It is argued by some critics that the Traditional Text �...is characterized by harmonization, especially in the Gospel of Mark.� The argument being that the editors of the traditional text smoothed over what they saw as errors of agreement. However, �There is no evidence ... To prove that the Traditional Text is especially addicted to harmonization.� Indeed, it is the Alexandrian Text (Aleph, B, C, L and a few others) which add And another, taking a spear, pierced His side, and there flowed out water and blood, after Matthew 27:29 in an effort to make it harmonious with John 19:34. It must be noted that Westcott and Hort (N. T. in the Original Greek), �Because this reading occurs in B, ... Were unwilling to reject it completely...�
About Aleph and B, we will discuss the prejudice of Westcott and Hort toward these two early manuscripts when we resume for our next session. But, for now we should look at the mind set of Origin, and those of his school, when we consider these two texts.
Origin believed that nothing in the Scripture should be in opposition to his natural reasoning. He argued that God would so prepare His Word as to make it reasonable to the human mind. Therefore, when a passage did not past muster with Origin�s preconceived theological and metaphysical reasoning, he dismissed it as an error to be corrected. It was much more likely that Origin would �correct� a passage to make it harmonize with his mind that it would have been for a copyist who revered the God of the Word and the Words of his God, to make such revision.
In our last session we saw that the revision theory of Westcott and Hort was a gossamer castle constructed in the clouds of their imaginations. So, also, is the conflate theory. Yet we are asked to trust our immortal and eternal souls to a faithless faith in an uncertain word constructed in this ethereal factory of fiction.
16 February 2007
WESTCOTT AND HORT (Continued)
In this section we have been considering some of the basic assumptions of Drs. Westcott and Hort as they labored with the 1881 English Revised Version translation committee. These same basic assumptions have been assumed by most other translations committees since that time.
I recently read on a Christian blog site where one of the writers made the assertion that he could not accept the King James Bible because he had read that 37.1% of the New Testament verses in the KJB contained error. My first thought was to confront him with a simple question: From what template are you suggesting that the King James Bible has varied in order to produce mistranslation?
I didn�t. But, I should have.
The template generally ascribed by the modern critic is the same template to which the 1881 committee appealed. They both accept the sanctity of Aleph and B as pure texts. The assumption is that the vast majority of textual evidence (old manuscripts, the writings of the �church fathers,� and the ancient lectionaries) has been corrupted by time and error. Only, it is argued, the few Egyptian manuscripts, most especially B and sometimes Aleph, are examples of the pure text from before these errors entered.
Since these two texts are known to disagree within themselves in over three thousand instances in the Gospel accounts alone, how could they be combined to produce a coherent base text? The fact is they cannot.
Instead of being the best possible evidence, Fuller (A Comparison of the New American Standard Version with the King James Version) rightly speaks of the unreliability of Aleph (Codex Sinaiticus) and B (Codex Vaticannus).
�...the Greek text of Westcott and Hort, founded as it was on two of the worst manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticannus, is filled with errors and contradictions as of necessity it must have been with such a shaky, unstable, inaccurate foundation.�
Yet, this is the base text which the modern Bible critic asks us to accept. We are told that the Traditional Text, despite the overwhelming weight of the evidence (early manuscripts, writings of the church fathers, and ancient lectionaries) must be jettisoned in favor of an eclectic text which is primarily based upon these two, and several other like texts, witnesses.
Why?
I firmly believe that this has more to do with the pride of man than with the faith of a searching soul. We are asked to disallow any consideration that God has actually preserved His Own text while simultaneously accepting that sinful mankind has been able to ferret out a close approximation of what God probably said. I might add that the same race of sinful man which is charged with altering the original text is ascribed the honor of claiming to have restored this text.
McKingley argues that Aleph and B are essentially the same text.
�...the Westcott and Hort Greek Text, which is equivalent to Codex (manuscript) Vaticannus, which is also the same thing as Codex Sinaiticus (with numerous changes), which are two manuscripts considered to be attributable to a man named Origin.�
These two old manuscripts have so many disagreements among themselves that it is hard to call them �equivalent.� But, as McKingley points out, they do share a common ancestor in that they are both derived from the Scriptorium at Alexandria where the influence of Origin, a heretic with Gnostic tendencies, was felt in the production of the copies of the text.
Fuller (True or False) asks a reasonable question.
�How can anyone honestly say that any modern version based upon the Westcott and Hort Greek Text is more accurate than the Authorized Version when the Westcott and Hort text is based upon two of the worst manuscripts, Aleph (Sinaiticus) and B (Vaticannus)?�
McKingley further casts doubt upon the authority of the text of Westcott and Hort as it is derived from Aleph and B. He notes that the New Testament was written in a type of Greek called Koine, which means �common.� It was the Greek of the common man. Both Codex B and Aleph were written in Classical Greek which was �...the Greek of the pagan, unsaved, unregenerated, God-rejecting philosophers...� B and Aleph were both �...altered to the Koine of the first century so you will think that those manuscripts were written in the language of the New Testament.�
If true, this would be a damning indictment of both Aleph and B. The language of the Greek pagan was the language of the Gnostic who valued knowledge above faith. The central point of the Gnostic faith was that salvation was available to those who had found the �hidden� things of faith. It is the faith of mans ability rather than God�s grace.
Isn�t this the mindset of those who worship the god of man�s intellect? Man is the one who has, the argument goes, restored the text which God allowed to be lost. That, alone, must give one pause in accepting the modern translations based on a �new� and eclectic text which has �corrected� the Traditional Text of history and blessing.
Westcott and Hort were so wedded to these two texts that they chose to ignore other evidences of history. Fuller (True or False) notes that Westcott and Hort �...admitted that the Textus Receptus [the Traditional Text] is substantially identical with the Text used in the Churches of Syria and elsewhere in and prior to the fourth century.�
While arguing that the oldest text is always the best text, Westcott and Hort chose to ignore textual evidence among the ancient translations which pointed away from Aleph and B and toward the Traditional Text they sought to supplant.
In effect, as Gipp notes (An Understandable History of the Bible), �[Hort] used the same method to overthrow the authority of the [Received] Text as Charles Darwin used to overthrow the fact of creation. He used a THEORY!�
And, as the theory of evolution made man the master of creation, the inference being that there was no God to whom man must give account, the theories of Westcott and Hort have made man the master of the message of religious faith. God could not, or did not, preserve His message. It took the intellect of man to restore the faith to the fathers. We must, in effect, give our spiritual allegiance to humans who are more versed in Scripture than we are to the God Who inspired the Scripture and then ripped it from the hands of His intended audience.
Many of the commentators cited made much of the fact that both Westcott and Hort were heavily influenced by the doctrines of the Romans Catholic Church. This is an important fact in light of the lie permeated by the modern Bible critic who argues that the great amount of evidence uncovered in the past four hundred years has made the text of the King James Bible unreliable.
We must take note that there have been great discoveries in the past four hundred years in the field of Biblical criticism and manuscript evidence. It must also be noted that there has been no new readings found in that time period. All of the �new� readings which make our King James Bible�s �unreliable� were available to the translation committee of the KJB. All of these reading were in the Douay Rheims Bible which was produced some years previous to the King James Bible.
These new translations have adopted the readings of the prereformation Roman Bibles. You may note for yourself how many of these new versions have begun to include the Apocrypha. Interesting, isn�t it?
23 February 2007
WESTCOTT AND HORT (Continued)
I have heard over and over the boast that there is only about one half of one page difference between the base text of the King James Bible and that of the modern translations. Folks, if anyone really believes this fiction, I have some ocean front property in Nebraska that I�d like to sell you!
One half page! Come on. Be serious. What size of a page are we talking about? MacGregor (The Bible in the Making) notes that Westcott and Hort�s �...Greek Text varied from the �received text� in nearly six thousand instances.�
You�ve got to believe in either some very tiny type or some really big pages to accept that there is only about one half page difference between the eclectic text of the modern versions and the Traditional Text of the King James Bible.
What we are really talking about are two different Bibles.
It is no small thing to sway the hearts of men who are otherwise dedicated to the God of the [real] Bible. Gipps notes that �Westcott and Hort were responsible for the greatest feat in textual criticism, They were responsible for replacing the [Received] Text of the Authorized Version with the Local Text of Egypt and the Roman Catholic Church.�
When we consider the rush to jettison the text of antiquity and blessing, which is the Traditional Text, we are astonished that not only rank infidel but also otherwise good men of faith are so eager to follow the teaching of men rather than the Words of God. It is a worship of intellect which we see.
We would do well to consider the caution of which Paul spoke. �Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.� (I Corinthians 1:25) We do not need to slavishly follow the intellect of man. We need to faithfully follow the graces of God.
Even as Origin caused great harm to the churches of Jesus by his mishandling of the Words of Almighty God, so have those critics who assert their own ability above that of God. Fuller (Which Bible) notes that �One cannot help noticing parallels between the brilliant Westcott and Hort of the nineteenth century and the brilliant Origen, their favorite patristic authority of the third century.�
Hills (The King James Version Defended) comments on the manner in which the Holy Spirit has preserved the Word. It is not through human reason but through faith in the goodness and greatness of God.
The common faith �...has from time to time been distorted by the intrusion of unbiblical ideas. For example, many Jews and early Christians believed that the inspiration of the Old Testament had been repeated three times. According to them not only had the original Old Testament writers been inspired but also Ezra who rewrote the whole Old Testament after it had been lost. And the Septuagint likewise, they maintained had been infallibly inspired. Also the Roman Catholics have distorted the common faith by their false doctrine that the Authority of the Scriptures rests on the authority of the Church. It was this erroneous view that led the Roman Church to adopt the Latin Vulgate rather than the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as its authoritative Bible. And finally, many conservative Christians today distort the common faith by their criticism. They smile at the legends concerning Ezra and the Septuagint, but they themselves have concocted a myth even more absurd, namely, that the true New Testament text was lost for more than 1,500 years and then restored by Westcott and Hort.�
The best concept of mankind is error when it fails to consider the preserving power of the God of Goodness and Glory.
Hills (Believing Bible Study) makes further comment: �...teachers talk about the danger of worshiping the King James Version, which would indeed by a great sin were anyone actually to commit it. But isn�t it a still greater sin to worship Westcott and Hort?�
Brethren, we only have a Bible we can trust because we have a God we can trust. The ultimate truth is that if we can not trust both, we can not trust either. Either God has preserved His Word, as He gave it to mankind, or He is not the God of Power and Glory portrayed in the pages of our Bibles.
In our next session we will begin to look at some of the old translations of the Scripture as they relate to the questions at hand.