The Intellectual Dishonesty
of The Chicago Statement
on Biblical Inerrancy
So the process is not a process of ascertaining
inerrancy. It is a process of assimilating
Truth and custodianship of Truth, as Scripture is handed from the Father to the
Son to John to The Church.
“The things which you have heard from me among
many witnesses; commit these same things to faithful people, who are able to teach
others as well.” — 2 Timothy 2:2
Articles of Affirmation and Denial
The articles of
affirmation and denial specifically say:
Article X
“We affirm that inspiration, strictly
speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture,
which in the providence of God can be ascertained
from available manuscripts with great accuracy.
We further affirm that
copies and translations of Scripture are the Word
of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
“We deny that
any essential element of the Christian faith is
affected by the absence of the autographs.
We further deny that this absence renders the
assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.”
Introduction
We deny, as intellectually
dishonest, that any reconstruction or recovery of the autographs, if possible
at all, is achievable by simply examining the surviving manuscripts.
[1] This paper outlines a few of the difficulties
in getting from inerrant autographic text of Scripture, to available
manuscripts with great accuracy, to copies
[2] and translations of
Scripture, which faithfully represent the original, without losing any
essential element of the Christian faith along the way.
Article 10 uses the phrase, “in the
providence of God”: at least for some theologians and many lay people, this
means Textus Receptus, or even King James Only.
The providence of God does not certify for us, lives free from pain and
suffering; nor does it certify freedom from error. Error, like rain, falls on the just and the
unjust alike.
This creates a considerable
obstacle, especially for the lay person.
Inerrancy attempts to convince us that the problems are few, and easily
resolved by methods of human wisdom.
This is simply not the case.
We do not discuss the immensity of
the problem to frighten you; rather to enlist you in the fight for better
solutions. Not nearly enough effort and
financial support are being devoted to solving real problems; while much of the
existing effort and financial support is misspent and misdirected. The Church needs you to get more
involved. Inerrancy hides from you,
where your involvement should be focused.
Let us begin with Bible Translations
and work backwards.
Translations
The problem with translations is
that the Bible has been translated to death.
Moreover, the translators themselves believe that they have a moral and
legal right to copyright the Bible, charging a considerable fee along the way. Selling Bibles is a very lucrative
business. Aside from the fact that this
is pure rubbish, the average person is confronted with so many choices that it
is impossible to pick the “right” one, even if we could afford it.
This is not just an individual’s
personal decision. Many denominations
are weighing the best choice of Bible as an annotated study Bible or
recommended pulpit Bible for their denomination: today the leading options seem
to be the ESV and the New NIV. Which is
better? Neither one: neither one of them
is any better than average.
Which is the “right” one? None of them.
Let us explain. Since you are
most likely reading this on your computer, we direct you to an informative free
website:
At the top of the page, you will
find two large white blocks. Depending
on the size of your viewing window or desktop, these blocks will either be
arranged side-by-side each other, or immediately above-and-below one
another. The left or top block is for
your topic or verse of search interest. The
bottom or right block is for the Bible Translation or Version which you want to
explore. There is a little grey
“drop-down” or “pull-down” arrow at the right side of the Bible Translation or
Version selection block. If we select
that arrow, Bible Gateway shows us numerous language choices from Amuzgo de
Guerrero (AMU) to (ZH) Chinese Union Version Modern Punctuation (Traditional)
(CUVMPT). Overwhelming isn’t it?
There are other choices of greater
interest to us right now. In the middle
of the pile we find English (EN) Bibles, I counted fifty-four of them, over
fifty to chose from: KJ II, Douay-Challoner, and several others were not found
in the list, so the problem is worse than it looks. If you wanted to choose the best, you
wouldn’t even know where to begin and neither would I.
So the claim, “We further affirm
that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent
that they faithfully represent the original,” is nothing more than an arrogant,
audacious, pompous, and rude presumption or pretension; an abduction or wild
speculation of the worst sort. How would
we ever know which ones “faithfully represent the original” since we can’t and don’t
have the original in our possession?
No small task is set before us in just selecting a good
English Bible. If such a task is
monumental for whole denominations with several experts at their service, how
will you or I make a good choice, let alone the best choice? How can we represent our local churches
faithfully in any denominational meeting?
We can’t, and neither can any denomination. What ever choice is made, will lead to other
problems. If you have a favorite, you
may as well stick with it. If you do not
have a favorite, and need to buy a Bible you may as well grab the cheapest KJV
or RSV you can find. Or just read Bible
Gateway for free.
[3] Be sure to pray every day that the Holy Spirit
will lead you in the way. Pray for the
Spirit’s help with every word and verse: for He promises to lead you into all
Truth.
[4]
With the Spirit’s help and leadership, there is a better
path: original languages….
Greek
If you look farther down the list of
Translations or Versions you will find Español (ES), Suomi (FI), Français (FR), and finally
Κοινη (GRC), which is just the Greek word
for Common. Don’t worry, you don’t need
to be fluent in Greek, yet. Don’t tell
me that this is too hard for you either: you can play some part, no matter who
you are. You do need to learn the Greek
alphabet and how to pronounce it.
[5] You also need an Analytical Greek Lexicon,
such as the one Zondervan publishes.
[6]
Now when you check the Bible Gateway
“drop down” arrow, you see that there are only four choices: 1550 Stephanus New
Testament (TR1550), 1881 Westcott-Hort New Testament (WHNU), 1894 Scrivener New
Testament (TR1894), and SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT). You’ll also notice date clues which tell you
that western Christians have been working on this problem since before 1550;
466 years or more.
[7] We’ll start with the last choice, SBL Greek
New Testament (SBLGNT), until we develop more skill: because it’s easier to use. Working with your
Analytical Greek
Lexicon and the SBLGNT, one verse, and one word at a time, you can
begin working on the New Testament from the original language. This sort of approach might work best in a
study group, where each of you can take a word or a verse and share the
load. Eventually, you will build up a
Greek vocabulary. In any case you will
develop part of the tool set necessary for evaluating a good English
Translation.
If you take some Greek courses and
study some Greek grammar, with hard work you might become fluent in a dozen
years or so.
What we want you to see is that what
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy implies in Article 10,
as fairly easy and very trustworthy, is not as easy as it first looks and we
are just starting to acquire the skills necessary for evaluating a good English
Translation. To evaluate a good English
Translation, we need to become fluent in Greek and that is not so easy. If working backwards from English to Greek is
difficult, working forward from Greek to English is no easier. Greek is a relatively easy and simple
language to learn. English is one of the
most complicated languages ever known to man.
If you are not up to gaining Greek
fluency, maybe you can help a young person learn Greek: for the simple problem
is that not enough people know Greek in our churches. Maybe you can sponsor beginner’s
classes. People can improve their
fluency and pronunciation by listening to Greek Bible readings such as Dr.
Spiros Zodhiates narration.
[8] Again, group study works best.
If promising students develop who
are loyal to your church, perhaps a collection could be raised to fund a year,
or two, or more of language study in Greece.
Maybe you could even sponsor a team of twelve or thirteen recent high
school graduates, who will study together in Greece.
Text Criticism
Along the way, students will begin
to realize that the Greek Bible developed along differing lines in different
major cultural areas of the Greco-Roman world.
Perhaps the first such area was Alexandria, Egypt, which once had the
best library in the Greek empire. This
is probably why the Old Testament is thought to be first translated into Greek
in Alexandria. Representatives of the
Sanhedrin went to Alexandria to work because of the quality of research that
could be done there. Later, Byzantium
became a great center of culture and scholarship. Of course, Rome eventually became a leading
city. Other centers include Jerusalem, Antioch,
and Ephesus. Greek study cannot advance
without a good detailed understanding of the cultural development of these
places. Alexandria and Byzantium are
especially important: for these are the places with sufficient funding and
resources to pursue Greek language research and studies.
From such a cultural base we can
begin the study of Text Criticism.
[9] The usual approach to Text Criticism is
eclectic: 1881 Westcott-Hort New Testament (WHNU) for example.
[10] What is the eclectic approach? It is as if someone cut the pictures in a
picture album apart, then proceeded to guess at what the real people looked
like by attempting to form a composite, so the “experts” voted to select the
“best” ears, eyes, lips, noses, and other features to construct the best
person: any relationship to the original would be purely accidental. So this is the method that eclectic “experts”
use to construct an “original” New Testament.
No scientist would tolerate such destruction of evidence. Recently scholars like Robinson and Pierpont
[11] have battled against such
foolishness, yet their work is not widely enough known.
Most pastors are still working from
an eclectic version, such as Westcott-Hort.
We have access to one of these eclectic versions in Bible Gateway; yet
there are at least a half dozen other eclectic versions and editions, several
of which are still in print. Needless to
say, we do not have enough competent scholars to check this work.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical
Inerrancy, Article 10, boldly claims “that copies and translations of
Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the
original.” How many copies and
translations using the eclectic method faithfully represent the original? None.
Bible students are just starting to wake up to the fact that we have
been sold a modernist bill of goods.
Copies and translations are notoriously unreliable. The newer translations are often worse than
the old ones. Instead we are following
blindly where no man has ever gone before.
We do not have nearly enough qualified people to check and perfect this
work. So, you see, we are on a very
difficult path, and we have been sold a lie convincing us that this is easy,
that lay people do not need to learn Greek, do not need to understand the
pitfalls of Text Criticism, do not need mastery of the cultural historical
setting, etc. etc. etc.
We have yet to really discuss the
Greek Old Testament which came into existence around 200-100 BC or earlier. Of course it is a translation from
Hebrew/Aramaic. Still, it is a better
representative of the Hebrew Old Testament than the MT Hebrew Old Testament
versions that would not develop for nearly one thousand years. The situation is more complicated than this;
this is just to convince you that there are not enough laborers to complete the
work: we must always pray to the L
ord
of the harvest for more competent laborers.
[12] This, of course, speaks of evangelism; yet,
how will we conduct decent evangelism when everybody is convinced that the work
is all done, and done well?
Hebrew
We would advise that you stay away
from Hebrew until you are fluent in Greek, have some mastery of Text Criticism,
and are well grounded in early church history.
Then you could start with the Greek
Old Testament. Here is one place to get
a copy:
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/default.asp
You will also need an,
Analytical
Lexicon to the Septuagint.
[13]
After you learn to swim in Greek,
you may be ready to get your feet wet in Hebrew. We can find Hebrew under the Bible Gateway
“drop down” arrow: The Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) is found immediately
after the Greek. The Leningrad Codex
(1008-1009 AD) is the oldest surviving “complete” MT manuscript; only a very
few other fragments remain. It must be
tested against Greek and Latin for accuracy.
Archaeology
Archaeology has uncovered vast
quantities of ancient documents: Egyptian, Akkadian, and several others. Reading these documents is critical to
correct understanding of the Bible record.
We do not even know how to translate some of these documents: the code
has never been broken. This work
requires other experts: epigraphers, ink and writing material experts, pottery
and radiocarbon dating experts, students of ancient cultures, and several
others. An expert epigrapher like
Kenneth Kitchen takes years to develop. Manfred
Bietak’s employment of ground-penetrating radar is cosmic.
When we have developed the skill-set
to spot a palimpsest from across the street, or smell a fake manuscript from
across the room, we may have developed sufficient skills to begin to understand
the more difficult problems involved with reading ancient manuscripts, and
start on our way to creating a better English translation.
Autographs
If we are having a bad day, we have
pushed the calendar back to 1550 AD. If
we are really lucky we may have reached as early as 400 with the Byzantine
text, or 150 with the Alexandrian text, or possibly even earlier with the Greek
Old Testament text. It is presently
unthinkable that we would have solved every text critical problem by then.
We would have to take all our work
from Greek, Text Criticism, Hebrew, Archaeology, and all their supporting
sciences and skills; not to mention Latin, and dozens of other first century
languages. We would have to crack the
code and translate other ancient languages like Akkadian, Egyptian, and
Sumerian to be able to guess at the exact content of the Autographs. We would still have no way to be absolutely sure
that “our guesses had been good.”
We say again, from Revelation 5,
that the Father has given the Autographs to Jesus alone; He alone is worthy to
touch them; He alone is worthy to read, interpret, and fulfill them. That excludes all the rest of us.
Yet, in spite of the magnitude of
this impossibility, we are not to despair for we have direct access to the
Father, to the Son, and to the Autographs by the power of the Spirit. In spite of the Glory of this great gift, how
many of us continue to try to read Scripture in the flesh? The Scripture cannot be read like any other
book. The Scripture can only be eaten
and digested, by much toil of prayer in the Spirit. Without the Spirit we are less than nothing.
Textus Receptus
So, how, pray tell, will we make the
leap backwards from 1550, 400, 150 back to the Autographs of the Greek New
Testament. Or how will we jump backwards
from 100 BC, past the temple destruction (586), past David (1010), past the
invention of Hebrew (1200) as a language, past all the troubles in Judges, to
the Autographs of Moses (1406-1366), written in ancient Akkadian? It cannot be done. The Autographs, by definition are not
available to us; even if we stumbled on them, we would have no means to
identify the importance of our discovery.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article 10,
assures us that we don’t need the Autographs, everything is cool. Well, it’s not so cool from this worm’s
perspective. I’ve been poking away at
this since around 1970, and it looks like a very thorny problem to me.
It should be clear by now that a
great deal of intensive Greek study, both Old and New Testament Greek study
went on in the east for over a millennia before very many people started such
study in the west. To be sure, there
were such studies around Rome; yet, the output of such studies was Latin, not
Greek. Still the Greek Old and New
Testaments were for many years, The Bible of The Church: this was not even open
to dispute. Augustine (395-430)
vigorously defended the necessity of the Greek Old Testament against Jerome
(347-420). When Robert Stephanus
published his Greek edition in 1550, he was already over one thousand years
behind, more nearly one thousand five hundred years behind. It is unlikely, with his limited supply of
manuscripts, that Stephanus stumbled upon the best solution. Scrivener, working 344 years later in 1894
did not have good odds of doing any better.
Today, we think it strange if new information is not published every
year.
If the TR falls so far short of the
millennium and a half work of the Greeks, then what should we call the labors
of Westcott and Hort, and every other eclectic text, if not a misguided
blunder, a slaughtering of the manuscripts.
At such a point we are no longer
asking if The Church has custodial authority over the Bible manuscripts; we are
asking where The Church keeps custodial authority over the Bible manuscripts,
and what is the provenance of such manuscripts.
At least Robert Stephanus was wise enough not to rip the manuscripts to
shreds, and try to paste them back together again.
The question that is now before us
is no longer about finding the Autographs.
We know where the Autographs are, and we are not allowed to touch them. The question before us now is about recovering
and assembling the best possible manuscript evidence. Is the best possible manuscript,
Codex
Sinaiticus, which Tischendorf discovered (1844) in a wastebasket at St.
Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai?
[14] Is the best possible manuscript a manuscript
that Greeks refugees brought into the west toward the end of the late Middle
Ages (1500)? Is the best possible
manuscript a manuscript given to Rome, later found buried in dust in Roman
libraries? Is the best possible
manuscript an aggregate manuscript pasted together by modernist scholars?
[15] Is the best possible manuscript one of the
manuscripts discovered at Alexandria?
[16] Or is the best possible manuscript the
manuscript preserved by the Greek church for nearly 2,000 years?
[17] Or is it something else? Our necessary task is not finding the
autographs. Recovering and assembling
the best possible manuscript evidence is the difficult and necessary task that
we must do, and do now. What is the
Textus Receptus anyhow?
King James Only
If establishing the Greek text is so
difficult; and yet, has not been accomplished to the satisfaction of all earthly
churches to this very day, how can any translation be up to the task? How can England, with its limited knowledge of
Greek grammar and vocabulary in 1611, possibly produce an “inerrant”, or even a
good translation? As we begin to toil at
the older prodigious works, we stumble upon the errors of our predecessors: we
are confounded by only one question, how on earth did they get as far as they
did with the tools that they had? Truly,
there were giants in the land; yet, we can stand on the shoulders of such
giants to see farther than they could possibly see.
Still, the task is greater than
this: for the target language, English, is a moving target. The English of 1611 is no longer fully
sensible to English speakers of today, especially not to those who speak the
United States dialect.
Those who cling to the King James
version as THE Divinely inspired version, are not being any more rational that
those who cling to an eclectic Greek text.
Providence of God
What does God provide for you. He provides food and clothing, house and
home, family and village, church and country; in brief, everything that you are
and have. Have you tasted of His
salvation? He gave it to you. Have you escaped death in the arena? He protected you. Still He did not protect Felicitas &
Perpetua (203), who died in the arena, one little bit less. Nor did He neglect the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
(320), who froze to death on the ice or drowned.
The providence of God does not
guarantee an earthly life of health, wealth, and happiness. The providence of God guarantees an earthly
life of crucifixion, pain, persecution, sorrow, and suffering. Take up your cross and follow Him. The providence of God guarantees that you
will die in the arms of your faithful Creator, as you hear the words, “Well
done, good and faithful servant.” The
only guarantees that providence brings, is the comfort of the Spirit in this
life, and blessedness in the heavenly spiritual life to come.
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a
spiritual body. There is a natural body,
and there is a spiritual body.” — 1 Corinthians 15:44
Summary
The work cannot be done without
developing a highly competent and qualified work force, and without adequate
funding. Statements like, “We further
affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the
extent that they faithfully represent the original,” or, “the autographic text
of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available
manuscripts with great accuracy,” only serve to trivialize the problem and
convince the rest of us not to look into it.
As a result, the work does not always faithfully represent the original.
Much of this work has fallen to
individuals who do not share our world and life view, and whose methods are
highly suspect.
If we want a good English language
translation of the Bible, many of us are going to have to learn this difficult
material, with a view to producing our own Bible. The work needs to be done voluntarily so that
such a Bible can be offered to the world without copyright or other use
restrictions. This Bible needs to be a living
translation, so that as new discoveries are affirmed, appropriate revisions can
be made without a lot of folderol; so that new students can make their own
notations, some of which may be worthy of inclusion.
It is frustrating to continue a work
with one qualified laborer, where one hundred, possibly one thousand laborers are
necessary. Again, our intention is not
to terrify you. We are not in as good a
place as The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy might lead
us to believe; yet we are not in a hopeless place either. Very many problems of text criticism reduce
to trivia; few represent translatable differences. We are in a place that simply requires a lot
of highly skilled work, without enough highly skilled workers, and no means of
supporting them financially. Most of
this work is getting our local churches involved. Gradually, as we discover that many of our
pet opinions have no basis in fact, we will be drawn more closely together,
until at last, we again speak with one voice.
Even though the evidence of the text
manuscripts has been pretty badly treated by some critics who hold the absurd
extremes of higher criticism: the faithful were always there, so that much, if
not most of the damage is recoverable.
The untraced moving and handling of manuscripts may have obliterated the
provenance of most of them, and that is a terrible travesty of human
carelessness and even malice. Still,
this is not a completely hopeless obstacle.
On the other hand the TR is not the
solution: for if we pause to consider, which TR, the TR of 1550, of 1894, a
full 344 years apart, or some other TR?
Why not the TR of 400: for there are ample Byzantine manuscripts to
examine? Why not the TR of 150: for we
have Alexandrian manuscripts, as well.
Who gets to decide what an authentic TR is: certainly not WH
[18], or NA
[19], or even my own mentors HF
[20]. If the TR Bible in Greek is the only
authority for the TR Bible in Greek, we are locked in an unsolvable argument, a
tangle of circular reasoning.
The KJV only is no solution
either. While there are many wonderful
things we may say about the KJV, good translation is not among them: the
English idiom has changed and is now hopelessly antiquated; our knowledge of
language has advanced, so now it is clear that some translations are not
correct, or so trite that they have no modern meaning.
The Best Path
The Chicago Statement on
Biblical Inerrancy has insisted that this work, “can be ascertained
from available manuscripts with great accuracy.” We have just explained how difficult this
work of ascertaining really is, while exposing a few of the colossal blunders
that have taken place along the way. We
have also insisted at every turn that ascertaining is the wrong method. We proclaim that:
The process is not a process of
ascertaining inerrancy. It is a process
of assimilating Truth and custodianship of Truth, as Scripture is handed from
the Father to the Son to John to The Church.
“The things which you have heard from me
among many witnesses; commit these same things to faithful people, who are able
to teach others as well.” — 2 Timothy 2:2
If we search for the caretakers for
this process of assimilating Truth and custodianship of Truth, we will most
likely find them in the Eastern Orthodox Church, especially in the Greek
Orthodox Church, where Greek is still their first language.
If we would search for manuscripts, the
Greek Orthodox Church, was likely their first custodian. Such manuscripts made their way into western
Europe because Greek Orthodox Christians brought them with them or sent them as
gifts. Other manuscripts were found in
Greek monasteries.
All these years the Greek Orthodox
Church has maintained faithful custody of the Greek language Old and New
Testament manuscripts and the publication of them. Other, segments of The Church have labored as
well. Holy people of God have followed
the pattern of Saint John the Evangelist and Revelator, in devouring these
words handed down, and giving them to us by pouring them through their lives.
We have these treasures in earthen
vessels, only because they were handed to us on platters of gold. So if there is any ascertaining to do we
shall have to do it at the feet of the Holy Spirit and of the Greeks. There we will be humbled to discover that it
is not the ascertaining of our minds; rather the Spirit powered assimilating of
our hearts that brings us to Truth.
“Where [is] a wise person? Where [is] a scribe? Where [is] a debater of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish, the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did
not know God by wisdom, it pleased God, by the foolishness of the proclamation,
to save those being persuaded: for Jews also demand a sign, Greeks seek [only]
wisdom:”
[21] — 1 Corinthians 1:20-22
Conclusion
Instead of focusing on theoretical
problems, such as the inerrancy of autographs, which we will never find; maybe
we could focus on real problems such as: too many bad translations, uncertain
and blunder filled text criticism, and shallow understanding of Scripture.
Books presumably had one origin, an Autograph. This presupposition is not necessarily
true. One author, writing on the same
subject matter to different audiences may be highly motivated to customize
nearly identical letters to each specific audience. Unless such customized presentations were
widely separated in time subsequent readers would not know which one was the
original or the Autograph. Only the
original author, or his very close associate, his personal scribe would know
which one was the Autograph, and which were copies. Depending on the author’s intent there may
not exist any real distinction at all.
In the author’s mind we may be confronted with several documents of
equal importance. In this case we would
be confronted with a collection of Autographa, not a single Autograph. Each document would have equal claim to being
an Autograph and it would be impossible to sort them out. Nor would it make any real difference if we
could sort them out. Each would receive
equal weight. The compiled result would
be a single core document with one apparatus assigning equal value to all
variants. This line of discussion calls
the whole idea of an Autograph in question.
In the case of the discussion between The Glory and Moses,
there was a single audience, Israel.
Hence, in this case, there exists the possibility of a Torah Autograph
in the Akkadian language, but it was destroyed or lost in 586 BC. Today, we can say without much fear of
contradiction that this Autograph is still extant, and it is resident at the
right hand of God in heaven (Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 31:24-27; Revelation 5).
In the case of the epistles, many of them were intended to be
circular, with multiple audiences. It is
impossible to say that these were not customized. Moreover, there is some evidence of lost
epistles of which we know nothing at all, except for vague references.
We could examine other scenarios, but the result would be the
same. The only Autographa we have is
that found in Revelation 5, where Jesus is, at one and the same time, Author,
Fulfillment, and Interpreter.
Hence, the subjects of Inspiration, Autographs, and Canonicity
are nearly irrelevant or moot. We have
no direct access to any of them, and we need to rethink what they mean.
Inspiration, because we tend to say that it only applies to
Bible Autographa; we tend to deny that any Inspiration is involved in Bath Kol,
and the like. Moreover, we tend to claim
that there is any Inspiration associated with new ideas, art, etc. Consequently, we continue to heap up glory to
ourselves, collecting accolades, patents, and the like; while consistently
failing to give glory to God for His gifts.
Autographs, because we have no access to them: we cannot
manually, visually verify our copies. We
should be asking if there is any way to verify our copies at all.
Canonicity, because genuine Canonization appears to be the
work of God employing the service of man under the direct supervision of God: much
of our standard view of Canonization is simply the work of corrupt human flesh.
“The basic problem, as described by Paul Maas, is as follows:
‘We have no autograph manuscripts of the Greek and Roman
classical writers and no copies which have been collated with the originals;
the manuscripts we possess derive from the originals through an unknown number
of intermediate copies, and are consequentially of questionable
trustworthiness. The business of textual
criticism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original
(constitutio textus).’ ” —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism
“Maas comments further that ‘A dictation revised by the author
must be regarded as equivalent to an autograph manuscript’. The lack of autograph manuscripts applies to
many cultures other than Greek and Roman.
In such a situation, a key objective becomes the identification of the
first exemplar before any split in the tradition. That exemplar is known as the archetype. ‘If we succeed in establishing the text of
[the archetype], the constitutio (reconstruction of the original) is
considerably advanced.’ ” — ibid.
Copies are manuscripts written by professional scribes. Before the invention of the printing press
and moveable type, documents were published by manual transmission. The publisher would employ sufficient numbers
of scribes to meet his customer demand and run a profitable business.
One method was for a master reader, slowly and precisely, to
read the master document. This may, at
times have required letter by letter reading.
Scribes would listen to the reading and write down what they heard. One hundred scribes could produce one hundred
copies at a time. Errors in the master
copy would extend to dependent copies as well.
Readers could make reading errors.
Scribes could make hearing errors.
Other types of errors were possible.
The work required meticulous attention to detail. Such work was necessarily conducted at or
near Solomon’s Temple to meet the need for Torah and other scrolls throughout
all of Israel. After the development of
synagogues, this demand only increased.
Another method, a slower one was for the scribe to read and
copy the master document by himself. The
reading and writing process conducted by a single person was not only slower
individually, but only one document could be produced at a time. This method resulted in its own set of
errors: some identical, some similar, some unique.
Later generations of copies accumulated previous errors and
added new ones. The manuscript stream
became more divergent.
The problem is, of course, to move in the reverse direction,
up the manuscript stream, resolving all the connections; and hopefully arriving
at a relatively pure archetype. This
supposes several things that are obviously untrue.
To have a complete picture, we must have all the copies, at
least from some terminal date (say before 1000 AD) backwards. Obviously, this is not realistic. We do not have all the copies. We have no way of even knowing how many
manuscripts are lost. New manuscripts
are being discovered rather frequently.
Many known manuscripts have never been collated.
Then the documents must be studied for scribal style,
materials, and variations in text. Such
studies may result in the grouping of copies and fragments into like sets.
Once sets are constructed, a hoped for pattern may emerge from
the evidence. If a pattern is discovered
it can be arranged in an historic tree.
With a little luck the trunk of the tree will be the
Archetype, and the Archetype will be an accurate representation of the
Autograph, assuming that there is one.
We will also have a critical edition, which represents the historic
tree, and most of the major variations.
The editors may also include a report of their working principles.
[3]
Suppose you want to study John 1:1. Just
open up
https://www.biblegateway.com/
and type John 1:1 into the left or top block.
Suppose you want to see what RSV has to say. Use the “drop-down” arrow and select RSV from
the list. Your results should look like
this.
You can continue reading the rest of the chapter by changing
the search to John 1.
You can go backward or forward by picking the arrows on the
left and right side of the page. You can
scroll down or up to see the rest of the chapter.
Suppose you want to do a parallel comparison study between
RSV, Greek, and NRSV. Let’s stick with
John 1. At the far right side of the
gray heading bar, below the white blocks, you will find an icon that looks like
two combs back-to-back. Pick on this
icon. A new (third) “drop-down” arrow
appears in the gray bar. Find and select,
SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT). Choose
the comb icon a second time. Another new
(forth) “drop-down” arrow appears in the gray bar. Find and select New Revised Standard Version
(NRSV). You should now be looking at
RSV, SBLGNT, and NRSV side by side on the page.
You are not familiar with the Greek words, Ἐν ἀρχῇ, so you
look them up in your new Analytical Greek Lexicon. There you learn that Ἐν is the Greek
preposition that means exactly the same thing as “in” in English most of the
time. You can even see how en developed
into in. You also find that ἀρχῇ means
beginning. Now you see that there is no
word “the” at this place in the sentence: Greek uses “the” in a very different
way than English uses “the”. You’re
going to have some trouble with this if you don’t already know the Greek
alphabet (alphabetw).
Suppose you are at Romans 1:12 and don’t remember the last
verse of the chapter but want to look at it anyway. You could always go back to Romans 1, but
this would lose your focus on verse 12.
Instead, change your search to Romans 1:12-2:1, it will roll right
around the corner and find the last verse for you.
Suppose you wanted to compare Matthew 1:1, Mark 1:1, and Luke
1:1. Just type Matthew 1:1, Mark 1:1,
Luke 1:1 or Matthew 1:1; Mark 1:1; Luke 1:1 in the search block.
Let’s try a word search.
This doesn’t work very well with multiple versions, so close all the
columns except RSV by picking the X in the gray bar right corner, just right of
the double comb icon. Do it again. Only RSV is left. Does the RSV have the word, Nicodemus? Type, Nicodemus, in the search block instead
of a verse. You learn that “Nicodemus”
is found five times in the RSV, all of them in John.
Let’s try a multiple word search. You may have to experiment a little or change
Versions to a more familiar Version. You
can have too many words or too few words.
Try to limit yourself to important key words (you just don’t need to
look for a, an, I, me, you, the, them, they, and the like very often). I always find the verse I’m looking for. Now where is, Jesus wept? Type, Jesus wept, in the search block. You find five more verses: two say that Peter
wept (these were found because Jesus is in the same verse); two say Jesus wept;
one says that Mary wept (it was found because RSV has a title, with Jesus in
it, attached to the verse).
When we get really stumped, we go back to Google and type in a
whole phrase as best as we can remember it.
This has (so far) always turned up one or more verses to look up. Then I go back to Bible Gateway and get it by
typing the verse in the search block.
One last search…. Type,
love, in the search block. The word,
love, is used 745 times in an RSV Bible: 419 times in the Old Testament, 234
times in the New Testament, 31 times in SOS, 18 times in 4 Maccabees, 39 times
in John’s Gospel, 33 times in John’s epistles, 7 times in Revelation. Who knows more about love? John?
or Solomon? Now change the
Version to KJV. Only 442 verses were
found? Why?
[5]
There are at least two vocalizations: the Modern Greek one, which we recommend;
and the one that Erasmus invented, which we do not recommend. You can learn both alphabet and vocalization
from the Papaloizos Publications CD,
Learn Greek the Easy Way. The course presentations have changed and
expanded somewhat; this link should get you started in the right
direction. If in doubt, call 1-855-473-3512
and ask.
[6] My
copy is,
The Analytical Greek Lexicon (Zondervan, Grand Rapids,
1973: 444 pages), reprinted from Bagster’s.
Here is a link to the 1978 edition, followed by a *.pdf link:
[7]
Previously, Latin translations were prevalent in the west.
[8] My
CD cost around $5.00 on the internet; bulk prices were also available. Dr. Spiros Zodhiates’ narration is available
in several places: here are two.
[10]
Eclecticism does not refer merely to the gathering of as many copies, opinions,
or voices as possible. It refers,
rather, to the attempt to organize and sort all known copies on the basis of
clearly observable variation, into distinct groups. Ostensibly, documents with identical
additions, errors, and omissions would belong to the same group; it would be
highly unlikely that these identical additions, errors, and omissions would
accidentally cross-pollinate another group.
Consequently, we hope, by a process of diligent sorting to identify
these distinct groups, their priority, and their relationship with each other.
Eclecticism then attempts to arrive at the Archetype by
combining the several witnesses to produce a text that may not actually exist
in any known manuscript.
“Since the mid-19th century, eclecticism, in which there is no
a priori bias to favor a single manuscript, has been the dominant method of
editing the Greek text of the New Testament (currently, the United Bible
Society, 4th ed. and Nestle-Aland, 27th
ed.). Even so, the oldest manuscripts,
being of the Alexandrian text-type, are the most favored, and the critical text
has an Alexandrian disposition.” — ibid.
Eclecticism is supposedly performed without bias. However, current work has tended to favor the
Alexandrian text-type with considerable bias. — ibid
This method also carries the real statistical risk of
producing a manuscript that is worse than any of its parent manuscripts.
Example one: Say we begin with 1000 known true exact copies of
the Autographa (an absurd assumption).
An evil person has mixed 10 fraudulent copies with the good ones. Our inspection accuracy is 99%, which is
exceptionally good. We correctly
identify frauds as frauds, and trues as trues 99% of the time. We only err 1% of the time. The resultant examination identifies 9.9
fraudulent documents as frauds, and only 0.1 fraudulent document as true. 990 true manuscripts are verified to be true,
but only 10 are mistakenly designated to be frauds. Now we regroup and find that we have
identified a total of 19.9 documents as frauds and 990.1 documents as
trues. We seem to have gotten worse, not
better. Why? Moreover, our 19.9 manuscripts identified as
frauds, actually condemn 10, more than half of the documents falsely. Meanwhile, our set of trues actually contains
.1 fraud. We started with a set
including 10 frauds, or 10 Byzantines, or 10 Westerns, and 1000 known
Alexandrians: a 0.99% fraudulent set.
Now we only have a 0.01% fraudulent set.
However, this improvement cost us the loss of 10 good documents
manuscripts. Repeated sorting may
actually make the outcome better, but at a steadily increasing cost.
Example two: Suppose we begin with 1000 known true exact
copies of the Autographa. This time an
evil person has mixed 1000 fraudulent copies with the good ones. Our inspection accuracy is still 99%. The resultant examination identifies 990
fraudulent documents as frauds, and only 10 fraudulent document as true. 990 true manuscripts are verified to be true,
but only 10 are mistakenly designated to be frauds. Now we regroup and find that we have
identified a total of 1000 documents as frauds and 1000 documents as
trues. Our 1000 manuscripts identified
as frauds, still condemn 10 documents falsely.
Meanwhile, our set of trues actually contains 10 frauds. We started with a set including 1000 frauds,
or 1000 Byzantines, or 1000 Westerns, and 1000 known Alexandrians: a 50%
fraudulent set. Now we only have a 1%
fraudulent set, or misidentified Alexandrian set. However, this improvement still cost us the
loss of 10 good manuscripts.
It is even possible to sort the set and make it worse. Such sorting cannot be trusted to the hands
of sloppy workers. It is a high risk
venture that must be committed to the most meticulous and skilled. The better the original set, the harder it is
to improve it. It is entirely possible
to mistakenly identify Byzantine documents as Alexandrian or Western. It is not out of the question that even the
group names Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Western are in error.
I have no experience with sorting ancient documents. I have a great deal of experience with the
nearly identical process of inspecting industrial parts. It is a costly and often worthless enterprise. Once errors are introduced into any system it
becomes unbelievably difficult to weed them out.
[11]
Robinson, Maurice A. and William G. Pierpont,
The New Testament in the
Original Greek Byzantine Textform 2005 (Chilton Book Publishing,
Southborough, MA, 2005: 587 pages).
[12] Matthew
9:38; Luke 10:2
[13]
Taylor, Bernard A., Lust, Eynikel, Hauspie,
Analytical Lexicon to the
Septuagint (Hendrickson, Peabody, MA, 2014: 591 pages).
[21] Imagine
that! God does by the message of declaration,
what men expect requires miraculous signs to confirm, or extraordinary intelligence
to understand. Christ is risen! Christ is ascended! Christ is enthroned! Christ has all authority! The Holy Spirit is descended! The Church is born!
Ironically, most of the Jews missed the coming of the Holy Spirit
over all of The Church.
Ironically, most of the Greeks did not have enough wisdom to see
it.
A mere mortal human being has no strength to attain salvation;
it has to be handed to mere mortal humans on a golden platter.
[22] If you
have been blessed or
helped by any of these meditations, please
repost, share, or use any of them as you wish.
No rights are reserved. They are designed
and intended for your free participation.
They were freely received, and are freely given. No other permission is required for their use.
