THE OLD MSS. (Continued)
We are sold a �bill of goods� that the �oldest is best� among the manuscripts. These disagree with those manuscripts which are the God preserved Word. Among those ancient manuscripts there are many which bear witness to the Traditional Text.
About these ancient texts, Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) has noted that...
�There are copies of the autographs of the Scripture in Minuscules (Small letters used only. They are the most numerous and may be in scrolls [papyrus the more cheaply made, vellum the more valuably made] or codex [book type with pages]) or Majuscules (Also called Uncials. They used the large letters. They appear in the 4th century and are less readily available.)�
James (The Corruption of the Word) makes note that it was easy for the early Christians to identify copies which were not accurate copies. In our day there are large publishing houses, with wide distribution which causes deviations from the true text to circulate widely. It was not so in ancient time. �The copying of manuscripts was a private affair and any great deviations could be detected.�
That is just one of the reasons why the Traditional Text is found, in letters of the church Fathers, in lectionary, and in manuscript, over the entire world of the ancients. The Alexandrian texts of the newer versions, meanwhile, resides mostly in the land of Egypt. The scriptorium of Alexandria, known to be awash in theological speculation, is notorious for �editing� the Scripture as they �copied� the words.
As we look at the works of these early church �Fathers,� we see that they left us, as Gipp says, a �...record of their early sermons, books, and commentaries. They will be able to provide us with much information on disputed passages. Many [of these men] may have seen the original autographs.�
One such example is Irenaeus. He was a disciple of Polycarp. Polycarp, in turn, was a disciple of John the Apostle. Might these men have had an idea or two what was the correct text of the inspired Word of God? It�s possible! And yet, while the modern day versions dismiss the last half of the final chapter of Mark as a late addition, Irenaeus quotes from those very same verses.
The so called �oldest and best� disagree with words which are older and better. We don�t normally hear that story.
The simple truth is that even those purported �oldest and best� manuscripts are not as old as are many of the writings of the church fathers. These men, early leaders in the churches, used the text that was then the current standard. That text was the Traditional Text which underlies the King James Bible.
These men, as Fuller (True or False) notes, quoted �...extensively from every part of the New Testament. In this way also a vast amount of evidence of the highest credibility, as to the true reading of disputed passages, has been accumulated.�
It has been said that the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from the writings of these church fathers. The New Testament so constructed would that which underlies our King James Bible. When the critics, or our Bible marginal notes, claim that the �oldest and best texts� disagree with out King James Bible, what they are telling us is that a mere handful of manuscript copies from antiquity disagree. These are not the oldest witnesses. Neither are they, demonstratibly, the best witnesses as to the Words originally inspired by God.
There is also a wealth of manuscript evidence available from the Lectionaries of the early church. Once again, Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) makes note of these.
�These are equivalent to the �responsive readings� found in the back of today�s hymnals. Due to the shortage of copies of Scripture, lectionaries were used to put key verses into the hands of the people. In many cases their readings are very early, i.e., closer to the originals.� than are those so-called �oldest and best� upon which our modern English versions are based.
These, the lectionaries and writings of the church fathers, are available representatives of the Words of the autographs of the Scripture. They are much earlier than the soiled manuscripts which hail from Egypt even though those Egyptian copies are given great status by the modern Biblical critic.
But, what of the ensuing ages? The preservation of the Scripture during all those years was overseen by the Spirit of God working through the many churches of Jesus.
Hills (The King James Version Defended), speaks of the special work of the God ordained priesthood of the believer. Unlike the Dispensation of the Law, every believer under Grace is a priest under the Great High Priest, Jesus. The New Testament Text is preserved by its use of the true Christians throughout history. They have known, and loved, and used, the God-given and preserved Text which was originally inspired.
Whenever the churches have abandoned this true text, there has been spiritual weakness among the Christians of those churches, and a march toward error. It was a fidelity to the True Text which caused the Christians of the first several centuries to spread throughout the world. It was the polluted text of the Alexandrians, which is once again being foisted upon unsuspecting Christians in our day, which lead to relic worship, Marioloity, and the Dark Ages of medieval Europe.
The early churches used the Bible. They were not concerned with social customs and political intrigue. They were a people of one Book!
MacGregor (The Bible in the Making) noted that Bible reading was extensive in the early church. �...from the first century onwards. ... Books were not unduly expensive, in terms of the spending power of the well-to-do, and no doubt the houses of such Christians, where the brethren at first gathered, would contain, in a cupboard or chest, at least a few scrolls.�
From the bulk of evidence available the claims of the modern day critic ring hollow. They have departed from the Words of antiquity because they doubt the power of the Almighty to preserve His Word. They expect that Word to have been lost and corrupted. This mindset compels them to jettison the preserved Word and try to reconstruct that which was never lost.
Hills (The King James Version Defended) states the obvious when he says, �The Traditional Text, found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts, is the True Text because it represents the God-guided usage of this universal priesthood of believers.
Next week we will begin to examine the trail of this True Text from its original autographs until this day.
9 June 2006
THE OLD MSS. (Continued)
This week we will begin to consider the transmission of the Scripture from those �original autographs� to the texts which underlie the Bibles we carry to church on Sunday.
The first thing to notice, of course, is that the True Text was preserved by much copying. From the earliest days of the churches, there was a respect for the Words which God had inspired and given to those churches. Biographies of Jesus, the Gospel accounts, were written very early, while there were still people alive who could either dispute and disprove those accounts or give assent to the truth which they contained.
Also very early - within the first few decades after the ascension of Jesus back into the Heavenly realms, the Apostles began to write that which they had received from the Lord in inspired instruction to the people and churches of Jesus. These were eagerly copied and distributed to the churches through the travels of evangelists and missionaries. Trade routes made this very easy. So, also, did the peace enforced by the Roman armies give an added ease to the transmission of these manuscripts. I believe that this is part of what was meant when God said, �But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.� (Galatians 4:4-5)
The coming of Jesus into the world was the most important event in the history of mankind. It was also important that the true message of the love of God, as manifest by the coming of Jesus, should be sent into the entire world. This is illustrated by the political and travel situation of the times. This is also an evidence that God did intend to preserve His Words to man. Had this not been His intention, any time period might have sufficed.
At these churches which received the copies, additional copies were made to further go into the world. When another missionary or evangelist would come by these churches, those copies would be compared to assure that the copies were kept pure from distortion. The Holy Spirit was the Agent of Preservation of these important documents as He worked among the believers in the various churches.
Fuller (Which Bible?) Notes that �The manuscript tradition of an ancient book will, under any but the most exceptional conditions, multiply in a reasonably regular fashion with the result that the copies nearest the autograph will normally have the largest number of descendants.�
An illustration of this process. At a trial the Court Stenographer will use a machine to record a word-for-word transcript of the trial. Modern courts will also use a recording device to insure complete accuracy. Also, a reporter may make notes as to what was said. An interested observer, maybe the relatives of the defendant, may also make copies.
The �True Copy� of the stenographer will be available to any who might wish to obtain a copy. Both the reporter and observer may avail themselves of the stenographer�s copy to make correction in their notes of the trial.
When the �stenographer�s copy� of an inspired text arrived at a church it would be copied. Others might make copies from what they recalled as being read to them. Churches would also make copies for the lectionaries which would be used during services. Preachers would quote from those words in their sermons and writings.
The latter two examples would be subservient to the former (�stenographer�s� - or true) copy. It would be that copy which would be recopied for succeeding generations and churches. Thus these copies would be of the greatest number. These would be the �true� copies. Still, in a time of question, the other copies could be compared to ensure that the �true� copy was, indeed, pure - that it had not been tampered with by the hand of a sloppy copyist or given a heretical �make over.�
Also, as is well noted by Dr. Waite of The Bible for Today, the great number of true copies would mitigate against error. An error made in one copy, for instance, would not be carried forth by, for instance, five other copies. Thus, the preponderance of evidence would indicate the true Words which had been inspired by God.
This principle is illustrated by Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible).
�Any corruption to the New Testament text would obviously have to begin after the original autographs were completed, or there would be no originals to corrupt! If the originals and the first corruption of those originals multiplied at the same rate, the correct text would always be found in the majority of MSS.�
Depending upon the source consulted, it is acknowledged that the Traditional Text resides in anywhere from 85% to 95% of the evidence of antiquity. This is the vast majority and should, to any unbiased observer, �seal the deal� as to the correct textual tradition. What has been done, however, by many critics, is to consider the Traditional Text as simply one witness - in total. Thus, the Alexandrian Text, the Western aberration, etc., are all given equal footing in argumentation. This bias has reduced, in the mind of the critic, the Traditional Text to only about 20% to 30% of the available evidence. There is even a copy of �The Majority Text� on the market which has used this biased fiction in the compilation of their texts.
Fuller, again, has this to say about the bias of those who distort the evidence thusly:
�Herein lies the greatest weakness of contemporary textual criticism. Denying to the Majority text any claim to represent the actual form of the original text, it is nevertheless unable to explain its rise, its comparative uniformity, and its dominance in any satisfactory manner. All these factors can be rationally accounted for, however, if the Majority text represents simply the continuous transmission of the original text from the very first.�
The critics have argued for a �revision� of the text by some church council. But, they have never been able to find any historical evidence that such a council ever existed. And yet, without any evidence other than a bias that the Traditional Text can not be the original text because it is too uniform, those critics will argue for a revision.
Fuller, again, comments on this bias.
�No one has yet explained how a long, slow process spread out over many centuries as well as over a wide geographical area, and involving a multitude of copyists, who often knew nothing of the state of the text outside of their own monasteries or scriptoria, could achieve this wide-spread uniformity out of the diversity present by the earlier the earlier forms of text.�
Note that Fuller was not arguing that there where any earlier forms of the text. He was only explaining the absurdity of arguing that an earlier form had been replaced by the Traditional Text which we find throughout the world, both geographically and in all time periods.
The argument is that, without some sort of �official� revision there could not be this uniformity. This the critics argue. But, there is no evidence that such a revision ever took place. Thus the onus is upon the critic to explain the uniformity. The only honest explanation is that God has preserved His Words. Since the critics reject this possibility, they search for other fictions to back their preconceived bias against the goodness and power of God.
The extensive copying of the true text was a safeguard which God used to preserve His True Text among the true churches of called out believers. Fuller, again (True or False), well notes that the �...great and steadily increasing multiplication of copiers; for this provides automatically the most effectual security imaginable against corruption of the Text.�
We will pick up this same topic next week.
16 June 2006
THE OLD MSS. (Continued)
In the past few weeks I have alluded to the concept that the large production and distribution of copies of the originally inspired documents of the New Testament was a guard towards the preservation of the words of these autograph copies. I would like to quote what Fuller (True of False) has said about this very subject.
�When an error crept into a copy, or was purposely introduced, it would naturally be perpetuated in copies made from that one; and thus variations from the original would tend to multiplication. There was, however, a check upon this tendency. For such was the reverence paid to the sacred Text, and such the desire that copies used in the churches should be pure, that every opportunity would be embraced for comparing one Text with another; and where differences were observed there would be naturally an investigation for the purpose of establishing the true reading. Thus, by examination and comparison of a moderate number - say ten or twenty - comparatively late manuscripts from widely separated points, it would be possible to establish, almost to a certainty, the original reading of any disputed passages, or, if it were a passage whose authenticity was as a whole questioned, to decide whether it were genuine Scripture or not.�
This principle would hold to keep the text pure in antiquity. But, it would also hold to establish the true text even in our day. The reason why this has not kept our text pure from the modern critic is that they have abandoned this technique. The modern critic considers that the entire witness to the Traditional Text (Remember that this is from 85% to 95% of the available witnesses!) is to be discarded.
The modern textual critic, fed on the theories of Westcott, Hort, et. al., considers the entire manuscript evidence of the Traditional Text to be of late construction. Question him as to how this �edited version� came to be accepted in nearly all of the Christian world and he will dismiss this great weight of evidence with something like, �It is obviously a doctored, official edition because it reads almost as though it were photocopied and distributed around.�
What!
We are instructed that we can not trust the Traditional Text because it has been too well preserved! When I have charged that there is a bias against the thought that God might have preserved His Own Words, I am not exaggerating. The simple bias against the possibility that God could have, or would have, preserved the inspired Text is a matter of faith. It is a faith that man is the arbitrator of what God might have said. This is a faith that will not be abandoned; although, it will be denied - except in practice!
It is also worth noting that the original documents of the New Testament were written in Greek.
Hills (Believing Bible Study) marks the importance of this fact. �We may well suppose ... that because most of the New Testament books were either written in Asia Minor or sent to churches of that region, the New Testament text was copied more carefully there. In other words, it was there that the Traditional text was preserved.�
Fuller continues on the same subject. Burgon also noted that, �...Greek being the mother tongue of Greece and because of the close distance and ties to Asia Minor, the Greek language continued in common use here much longer than in other areas such as Italy and Egypt. This factor is relevant because the continuing demand, therefore, would enforce a continuing supply of [Greek] copies.�
Simply put, the Greek speaking world would be where one would expect to find a true succession of true manuscript evidence. Rome moved on to Latin and produced a flawed textual tradition based on the Egyptian manuscripts of Origen. It is interesting to note that we are seeing a revival of these discredited texts in our modern language English editions.
It is also interesting to note that the Egyptian text was Coptic. In the earlier editions even this text followed the base of the Traditional Text, as did also the earlier Latin (pre Jerome) editions. Both changed in time to reflect the scholarship of Origen and the Alexandrians.
As to the Coptic texts, almost all of the newly �discovered� Gnostic texts, which originated also in Egypt, are written in Coptic as opposed to the Greek of the truly God inspired New Testament Books.
We should realize that God used the true Christian, the humble servant of God, to work His preservation of the Scripture. It was not the great intellect, or the professional theologian (Although God could and did use these as well!) who was used, primarily, to transfer His Pure Word down through the ages. God used the Christian who simply trusted God, and loved God, and served God, to keep the Words which God had committed to humanity.
As we read the tenth chapter of Acts the story of Cornelius stands before us. An angel stood before Cornelius and commanded that Peter be sought to explain the way of life. The angel was neither lazy nor uninformed about the facts of Jesus� life, death and resurrection. But, God had ordained that men, who were sinners themselves saved by grace, would transmit the story of salvation through the ages.
As God committed the story of salvation to men and women to transmit to others through time, so also did He commit the very Words of His inspired Scripture to Christian men and women to keep pure and transmit down through the centuries.
�The Church,� or even �the churches,� is not given the responsibility to lead a soul to Christ. That is the responsibility of the individual Christian of those churches. Neither has God given the churches, as corporate entities, or theological schools, as corporate entities, the duty of safeguarding and transmitting His perfectly inspired Word. That is the duty of the individual Christians who populate those Bible preaching churches and Bible teaching schools.
Hills (Believing Bible Study) makes this observation about the transmission of the Scripture by those early Christian believers.
The Western Text became the text of Rome, while the Alexandrian Text became the text of the Scribe and Scholar of Alexandria. These were the prestige texts. �The True Text, on the other hand, continued in use among the poor and less learned Christian brethren. These humble believers would be less sensitive to matters of prestige and would no doubt prefer the familiar wordings of the True Text to the changes introduced by the new prestige-texts. ... And since they were poor, they would be unable to buy new manuscripts containing these prestige-texts.�
I think the point here is that the �professional� Christians would begin to let their pride stand in the way of their true fidelity to God. The great push for the new text began in the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century. This was the time of great industrial innovation. It was a time of great scientific discovery. This was also the time of the beginnings of Darwinism. Many of the �clergy� were interested in showing that they were not being made irrelevant by the advances of the secular world. I believe that this was the spawning ground of the perceived need for �new� texts and �new� discoveries. Pride goeth before a departure from a faith and reliance upon the God of the Universe.
Fuller, again (Which Bible?) reminds us.
�We shall need to the Lord Jesus in the hour of death; we shall need Him in the morning of the resurrection. We should recognize our need of Him now. We partake of Him, not through some ceremony, wherein a mysterious life takes hold of us. When we receive by faith the written Word of God, the good pleasure of the Lord is upon us...�
That written Word of God is that Traditional Text which underlies our English King James Bibles. We can trust God�s Word because we can trust God. What He has given to us can not be snatched from our fingers by time or man.
Next week we will begin to look at some of the evidence that the Majority Text (the true Traditional Text) is the true text.
23 June 200
THE OLD MSS. (Continued)
This week we will begin to examine the evidence that the Traditional Text is the true, preserved, Text of the New Testament which God gave to His churches and people.
First, it would be good to state that the original autograph copies of the New Testament books and letters were written in the Greek language of the day. This, to borrow a phrase from debating, is nearly a �given.� A �given� is a point which is so obvious that it is not part of the debate. All sides agree that it is correct. This is nearly so with the concept of the earliest text copies being written in Greek.
There are a few who would argue that the New Testament texts were originally written in Aramaic. To bolster this argument, they would argue that this was the language of Palestine from where came the apostles and early church leaders.
Rather than arguing for an original Aramaic text, this would actually argue against such a language for those first texts. Yes, Aramaic was the tongue spoken by those first apostles. But, the first books and letters were so early that there were still eye witnesses, of the events of the New Testament, living when they were written. These earliest books and letters were written to proclaim the Truth to people in other parts of the world who had not yet heard the message.
Listen, as a �for instance,� to the words with which Luke opens his Gospel account:
�Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou has been instructed.� (Luke 1:1-4)
When these documents were written, from the human standpoint they were needed to instruct those who had no direct knowledge of the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The churches were spreading into the rest of the world at large. There was a need for documents to carry forth the apostolic teaching to those who were in other lands. Greek was the language of the empire. Greek was the language of commerce and travel. Greek was, basically, a universal language. If the documents were to be disseminated among the world, Greek was the proper - and logical - language to be utilized in the writings. I believe that this was part of the meaning of Galatians 4:4 - �But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.�
Thus, when we are speaking of a �preserved text,� we are speaking of the preserved Greek Text of the original autographs. Even our venerable King James Bibles are not the preserved text of the inerrant Scripture. They are, however, an accurate translation of that preserved Greek Text. To the reader and speaker of the English language, we can rightly say that our King James Bibles are the Word of God to us.
Other English language �versions,� no matter how accurately translated, can not say this if they are translated from texts other than the God preserved Traditional Text. At the base of these newer translations is the opinion that God could not, or did not, preserve His Word. These �bibles� (small case intended) may be right in many instances; but not in all as would be the case of the properly translated King James Bible.
Even so, this is not the reason that I would argue against these spurious versions of today. These newer �versions� are seeped in a lack of faith in the enduring Words of God in their very make up, production, and purpose. This, along with their lack of fidelity to the true Words of God, is the reason why I reject them.
Fuller (True or False), quoting Wilber Norman Pickering (Contribution of John William Burgon to the New Testament Textual Criticism), has this to say about the wide distribution of copies of this Traditional Text:
�The use of such terms as �Syrian,� �Antiochian,� and �Byzantine� to refer to the Traditional Text are indications of the general identification of this Text with that geographical area. It is precisely the area of Greece and Asia Minor that one would logically expect to have maintained the purest transmission of the New Testament.�
Although originally from this area, the Traditional Text is found throughout the world where churches remained faithful to the Word and Witness of the early churches to the things of God.
When we speak of the Alexandrian Textual base of the modern translations, we are speaking of a localized text from Egypt. When we speak of the Western Text, we are speaking of a localized text which covered much of Europe. But, when we speak of the Traditional Text, no matter by which appellation we name that Text, we are speaking of a universal text found among the entirety of the Christianized world. Somewhere, depending upon which expert is consulted, between 85% and 95% of the evidence of antiquity points to the Traditional Text as the template. All others are merely aberrations.
Yet, it is upon such aberrations that the modern textual critic places his trust. I hate to use the word �faith� in this context because it seems that �faith� in God to preserve His Own Words, has been jettisoned so that we are told to have trust in the modern critic to restore what God has lost! That is the issue that is at the base of the argument and study in this day: Could God preserve His Words? Did God preserve His Words? Is man more powerful than God in that he can reconstruct what God has lost?
Fuller continues by quoting Hills (Believing Bible Study) who says:
�This area [Asia Minor] started out with the original copies of John�s writings, almost all of Paul�s and probably a number of the books as well. Because of the great success of the Gospel in the area, it became the center of gravity of the Christian Church in the post-apostolic period. Thus all seven of the churches directly addressed in the book of Revelation are in this area.�
Hills (Believing Bible Study), continues on this geographical theme when he points out that there is reason to trust that the Traditional {Byzantine) Text was best preserved. Since of the 27 books of the New Testament, 17 were �...written in or sent to the church of this area [Asia Minor].�, they began with the original autographs rather than copies. Since this is true, it is likely that they were the first to �...assemble them into one single New Testament canon and to accord them full recognition...� This would, in turn, lead to more careful copying. �Here it was preserved all through the Middle Ages and brought to Western Europe by learned Greek refugees after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.�
Fuller (Counterfeit or Genuine) notes that the Byzantine Empire had been the strongest power on earth, �...especially during the reign of Justinian I (527-565)...� But, �In 1452 Constantinople was invaded by ... Moslems and fell prey to its hordes.� The Christian and the Greek scholars fled �...into Europe with their Greek New Testament manuscripts.� They took with them the grammars based on the work of Dionysius Thrax. These, produced 15 centuries before, were as Hill notes (The King James Version Defended), the �...same grammars which were first used by the men who produced the first Greek New Testaments.�
These pure texts arrived in time to fuel the fires of the great revival of the Protestant Reformation. Other groups, which had stayed true during the dark spiritual time of the middle ages, already had translations of the Traditional Text. These also began to see the light of the dawning of a new day of evangelism as the pure Word spoke to the hearts of men and women and drew them from the darkness of superstition toward the pure light of the Day of Grace.
30 June 2006
THE OLD MSS. (Continued)
Last week we looked at the fact that the original manuscripts were written in Greek. We studied how this fact would be a preservative agent of the True Text of the inspired Words of God. We also saw how this Greek Text was spread throughout the Roman world. We noted that from 85% to 95% of the witnesses from antiquity agree with the Traditional Text which is the base of our King James Bibles.
Sadly, we also had to note that, almost without exception, the modern �versions� do not follow this Traditional Text as the base for their efforts.
About these aberrant texts, Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) has noted:
�These surviving witnesses of the Greek New Testament text which we now possess are found to generally fall into two groups, or �texts.� ... We find that these two texts disagree consistently concerning the major doctrines of the Bible. They are found to disagree on readings concerning the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the blood atonement, Christ�s second coming, the deity of Christ, and many other fundamental Christian doctrines.�
Gipp says that there are only two groups of texts. As we have seen previously, there are several other �families� of texts. But, I still agree with what Gipp says. There are only two groups of texts. There are those which are the preserved Words of God which are found in the Traditional Text. And, there are those few, 5% to 15%, of the remaining witnesses which are aberrant and demonstrably false.
The texts, generally speaking therefore, are the True Text which underlies the King James Bible and comprise the vast majority of available texts, and as to the �other,� these are those few (Western, Alexandrian, etc.) which would disagree.
For some reason which seems to be centered on only a heart belief of the modern day critic that God either could not, or did not desire to do so, preserve His Own Words which He had inspired for mankind, those few aberrations are accepted by the majority of modern critics.
I think at this time I�d like to say something about the concept of text �families.� This was a concept which was put forth by the Westcott/Hort team of 1881. They used this to downgrade the vast majority of textual witness to the Traditional Text. Basically, they said that each grouping of text types represented a �family� of textual tradition. In this way the, roughly, 90% witness of the Traditional Text was downgraded to a single witness despite its vast numerical superiority.
There are many who would disagree with this method of referring to the various text types. I, however, am prone to accept this concept. Each family, of the false texts, are simply copies of an errant template. They give evidence to the generally high view which the copyist held of what he considered to be the Words of God. This predisposition to revere those Words was held in the human heart. Thus even the false copies were dutifully copied from their flawed templates.
This is, itself, a witness to the preserving power of God in the line of His True Text!
When we consider this fact, and do the math, we find this to be another witness to the truth of the Traditional Text. Suppose that there were just five centers which copied the manuscripts. If only one of them produced a flawed copy - and it were not corrected (An unlikely event unless the error was intentionally made for doctrinal, or other, reasons.) then, after five copies would have been made - and inspected, at each location, there would still be an 80% fidelity among the witnesses to the proper readings. A simple comparison among the copies would indicate the proper wording and expose the improper wording.
This is exactly what we do have in the record. About 90% of the readings are the pure, inspired and preserved, Words of God. The rest are error.
With this simple math in place we must agree with Fuller (True of False) that, even though �...most of the extant copies of the Greek New Testament date from the 10th to the 14th century. ...[That] the concurrence of a large majority of them would correctly decide disputed reading, no reasonable person should ever doubt.�
Hills (The King James Version Defended) gives evidence to this view when he says, �When the Chester Beatty Papyri were published (1933-37), it was found that these early 3rd century fragments agree surprisingly often with the Traditional (Byzantine) Text against all other types of texts.�
The only thing I would take issue with Hills is, what is so surprising? Isn�t this simply what would be expected if God had cared enough to inspire a specific Word to mankind and good and powerful enough to preserve that Word? Although, I guess this was surprising to those critics who would argue that God was either not good, or not powerful, enough to preserve His important Message to mankind.
We will pick up this same topic next week.
June 2005