Proverbs 30:5. ‘Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.’
Regular readers of this forum will have noticed that I use the New King James Version almost invariably. The reason for this is that I believe that the Traditional Text of the New Testament, used in the Authorized Version (or King James Version, hereafter A.V.) of the Bible and in the New King James Version is more likely to be correct than the so-called Critical Text favoured by the Bible Societies {1}, most writers on the subject, such as Don Carson and James White and by most other modern Bible versions such as the NIV, ESV, NASB etc.
My qualifications for writing on this subject are somewhat tenuous. As an unconverted teenager, I studied Classical languages for my B.A. degree and that included a limited amount of Textual Criticism. My concern is that the same secular methods of textual criticism that I studied as a youngster and applied to ancient secular writers such as Catullus, Cicero and Thucidides are being applied to the holy and inerrant word of God and that the work of liberal theologians and unbelieving textual experts are being accepted by evangelicals in a way that they would never accept a liberal exegetical commentary.
Let me say out the outset that I do not regard this controversy as being a matter of absolutely crucial importance. Indeed, my own church uses the NIV, and I believe that it is more important for me to support the preaching of the Gospel and to maintain unity than to insist upon my view on Bible Versions. Moreover, we now have so many ancient manuscripts available to us and they all share so much in common despite their differences that we can say that none of them challenges in any way the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. However, evangelicals believe that the original writings were inerrant and it must therefore be important to us to get as near as possible to those divinely-inspired sources. Also, since commentators who support the C.T. do not hesitate to speak of the ‘most reliable manuscripts’ whilst ignoring 95% of the extant sources, I feel it is legitimate for me to take up the cudgels on behalf of the Traditional Text.
For those who may be unfamiliar with this controversy, I will now give a short summary. In 1516, a Dutch scholar named Desiderimus Erasmus published a new Greek Testament along with a Latin translation. He prepared this from a very small number of ancient manuscripts that were available to him. In 1526, William Tyndale translated this Greek Testament into English, and Erasmus’ New Testament, slightly modified, became the basis for a series of new English Bibles which culminated in the famous Authorized Version of 1611. From around 1700, this became pretty much the only Bible version used in Britain. Over the years, many new Greek manuscripts and fragments were discovered, but these tended (with a few exceptions) to be in line in most places with the ones which Erasmus had used.
However, there was one very ancient manuscript, lodged in the Vatican library in Rome, now called Codex Vaticanus, which differed in a number of places from what we will now call the Traditional Text. It appears that Erasmus and many scholars who came after him were aware of this manuscript but had rejected it as inaccurate. Then, late in the 19th Century, a complete manuscript was discovered in a monastery in the Sinai Desert which seemed older than any other one discovered and which agreed in many ways with Codex Vaticanus, though with several differences. It was given the name Codex Sinaiticus. Following this, the English textual scholars, Westcott and Hort, proposed that a revision of the English Bible be prepared in line with their theories and with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Despite much resistance from various quarters, this eventually appeared as the Revised Version. This new Bible did not achieve universal acceptance and the A.V. continued to be the Bible most commonly used. The Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible and the Good News Bible appeared after the War, all based on Westcott and Hort’s Critical Text (hereafter C.T.), but none of these supplanted the A.V. It was not until 1973 that the New International Version was published, once again using the C.T., that the supremacy of the A.V. was successfully challenged. Since then there has been an avalanche of new Bibles, all of them except the NKJV based on the C.T.
Most of the arguments against the C.T. have come from those who are wedded exclusively to the A.V. Some of these have been just plain silly, contending that the A.V. itself is somehow inerrant. Others, notably those from the Trinitarian Bible Society are more serious, but are marred in my opinion by the utter determination to stick with the A.V. My position is different. Whilst I respect the A.V. and am always happy to preach from it when asked, I do not believe that it is sensible to persevere with a Bible version with archaic language which many people find almost impossible fully to understand. The Bible should be written in the language of ordinary people; I therefore use and recommend the NKJV, but am quite prepared to consider another version if one should come out based on the Traditional Text and prove to be more accurate. I understand that such a BIble version is about to appear, the Modern English Version http://modernenglishversion.com/clear/ I have only had time to glance at it, but it is not yet clear to me that it is an advance on the NJKV.
When I studied textual criticism at University, I recall that there were three {2} particular rules which scholars used to try and establish the true text when the surviving manuscripts disagreed. We shall look at these in turn
1. The oldest manuscript is likely to be the most accurate. It needs to be understood that all ancient writings other than the Bible have a very small number of surviving manuscripts. One of my ‘Set Texts’ at University was the Poems of Catullus. As I recall, there are only three surviving manuscripts of Catullus, all dated 600 years or more after his time. One of these is believed to be older than the others, and so, when they differed, the older one was preferred. This might seem to be reasonable, but there is no assurance in the matter. The older manuscript might well have been copied more times than the more recent ones; or the older one might have been copied badly one or more times while the more recent ones may have been copied faithfully dozens of times. We have no way of knowing.
However, when we come to the New Testament, there are literally thousands of extant manuscripts. So let us consider the last nine verses of Mark 16. The NIV states, “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.” The ESV is a little more circumspect: “Some of the earliest manuscripts so not include 16:9-20.” What are the facts? Well, our old friends Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do not contain the verses, although the latter has the space for them left blank, showing that the scribe was at least aware of them. There is also one other Greek manuscript in which the verses are missing. They are contained in more than 600 other Greek manuscripts and in the old Latin and Peshitta Syrian versions as well as being quoted by 2nd Century writers such as Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian who wrote almost 200 years before the estimated dates of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. I ask, is it sensible to prefer two, admittedly older manuscripts over hundreds of others?
[Continued]
Notes
{1} But not, of course, by the Trinitarian Bible Society http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org which upholds the Received Text which underlies the A.V. and NKJV. I do not wish to tie myself to the Received Text in its entirety, and am therefore speaking of the Traditional Text; but I believe that the Received Text is likely to be more correct in many more places than the Critical Text.
{2} After 40 years, my memory is not what it was. There may well have been more, but these three stand out in my mind.
Regular readers of this forum will have noticed that I use the New King James Version almost invariably. The reason for this is that I believe that the Traditional Text of the New Testament, used in the Authorized Version (or King James Version, hereafter A.V.) of the Bible and in the New King James Version is more likely to be correct than the so-called Critical Text favoured by the Bible Societies {1}, most writers on the subject, such as Don Carson and James White and by most other modern Bible versions such as the NIV, ESV, NASB etc.
My qualifications for writing on this subject are somewhat tenuous. As an unconverted teenager, I studied Classical languages for my B.A. degree and that included a limited amount of Textual Criticism. My concern is that the same secular methods of textual criticism that I studied as a youngster and applied to ancient secular writers such as Catullus, Cicero and Thucidides are being applied to the holy and inerrant word of God and that the work of liberal theologians and unbelieving textual experts are being accepted by evangelicals in a way that they would never accept a liberal exegetical commentary.
Let me say out the outset that I do not regard this controversy as being a matter of absolutely crucial importance. Indeed, my own church uses the NIV, and I believe that it is more important for me to support the preaching of the Gospel and to maintain unity than to insist upon my view on Bible Versions. Moreover, we now have so many ancient manuscripts available to us and they all share so much in common despite their differences that we can say that none of them challenges in any way the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. However, evangelicals believe that the original writings were inerrant and it must therefore be important to us to get as near as possible to those divinely-inspired sources. Also, since commentators who support the C.T. do not hesitate to speak of the ‘most reliable manuscripts’ whilst ignoring 95% of the extant sources, I feel it is legitimate for me to take up the cudgels on behalf of the Traditional Text.
For those who may be unfamiliar with this controversy, I will now give a short summary. In 1516, a Dutch scholar named Desiderimus Erasmus published a new Greek Testament along with a Latin translation. He prepared this from a very small number of ancient manuscripts that were available to him. In 1526, William Tyndale translated this Greek Testament into English, and Erasmus’ New Testament, slightly modified, became the basis for a series of new English Bibles which culminated in the famous Authorized Version of 1611. From around 1700, this became pretty much the only Bible version used in Britain. Over the years, many new Greek manuscripts and fragments were discovered, but these tended (with a few exceptions) to be in line in most places with the ones which Erasmus had used.
However, there was one very ancient manuscript, lodged in the Vatican library in Rome, now called Codex Vaticanus, which differed in a number of places from what we will now call the Traditional Text. It appears that Erasmus and many scholars who came after him were aware of this manuscript but had rejected it as inaccurate. Then, late in the 19th Century, a complete manuscript was discovered in a monastery in the Sinai Desert which seemed older than any other one discovered and which agreed in many ways with Codex Vaticanus, though with several differences. It was given the name Codex Sinaiticus. Following this, the English textual scholars, Westcott and Hort, proposed that a revision of the English Bible be prepared in line with their theories and with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Despite much resistance from various quarters, this eventually appeared as the Revised Version. This new Bible did not achieve universal acceptance and the A.V. continued to be the Bible most commonly used. The Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible and the Good News Bible appeared after the War, all based on Westcott and Hort’s Critical Text (hereafter C.T.), but none of these supplanted the A.V. It was not until 1973 that the New International Version was published, once again using the C.T., that the supremacy of the A.V. was successfully challenged. Since then there has been an avalanche of new Bibles, all of them except the NKJV based on the C.T.
Most of the arguments against the C.T. have come from those who are wedded exclusively to the A.V. Some of these have been just plain silly, contending that the A.V. itself is somehow inerrant. Others, notably those from the Trinitarian Bible Society are more serious, but are marred in my opinion by the utter determination to stick with the A.V. My position is different. Whilst I respect the A.V. and am always happy to preach from it when asked, I do not believe that it is sensible to persevere with a Bible version with archaic language which many people find almost impossible fully to understand. The Bible should be written in the language of ordinary people; I therefore use and recommend the NKJV, but am quite prepared to consider another version if one should come out based on the Traditional Text and prove to be more accurate. I understand that such a BIble version is about to appear, the Modern English Version http://modernenglishversion.com/clear/ I have only had time to glance at it, but it is not yet clear to me that it is an advance on the NJKV.
When I studied textual criticism at University, I recall that there were three {2} particular rules which scholars used to try and establish the true text when the surviving manuscripts disagreed. We shall look at these in turn
1. The oldest manuscript is likely to be the most accurate. It needs to be understood that all ancient writings other than the Bible have a very small number of surviving manuscripts. One of my ‘Set Texts’ at University was the Poems of Catullus. As I recall, there are only three surviving manuscripts of Catullus, all dated 600 years or more after his time. One of these is believed to be older than the others, and so, when they differed, the older one was preferred. This might seem to be reasonable, but there is no assurance in the matter. The older manuscript might well have been copied more times than the more recent ones; or the older one might have been copied badly one or more times while the more recent ones may have been copied faithfully dozens of times. We have no way of knowing.
However, when we come to the New Testament, there are literally thousands of extant manuscripts. So let us consider the last nine verses of Mark 16. The NIV states, “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.” The ESV is a little more circumspect: “Some of the earliest manuscripts so not include 16:9-20.” What are the facts? Well, our old friends Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do not contain the verses, although the latter has the space for them left blank, showing that the scribe was at least aware of them. There is also one other Greek manuscript in which the verses are missing. They are contained in more than 600 other Greek manuscripts and in the old Latin and Peshitta Syrian versions as well as being quoted by 2nd Century writers such as Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian who wrote almost 200 years before the estimated dates of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. I ask, is it sensible to prefer two, admittedly older manuscripts over hundreds of others?
[Continued]
Notes
{1} But not, of course, by the Trinitarian Bible Society http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org which upholds the Received Text which underlies the A.V. and NKJV. I do not wish to tie myself to the Received Text in its entirety, and am therefore speaking of the Traditional Text; but I believe that the Received Text is likely to be more correct in many more places than the Critical Text.
{2} After 40 years, my memory is not what it was. There may well have been more, but these three stand out in my mind.
