Carson’s 14 Theses: Horse and buggy arguments in a C8 Corvette World

Chapter 7 Carson begins, “In what follows I shall not argue that the vociferous defenders of the TR are knaves or fools. I shall seek to demonstrate, rather, that their interpretation of the evidence is mistaken…Their presuppositions in favor of the TR have made most of them careless about determining the truth of many of the oft repeated contentions, with the result that not only their interpretation of the facts is incorrect, but also their alleged ‘facts’ are too often simply untrue.” Carson disapproves of the notion that departure from the KJB is a sign of “corruption and degeneracy” while citing the error that Warfield, Machen, and Fee all considered the Byzantine text type late.

Carson is beset by the erroneous foundation that late is inherent bad and early is inherently good, believing that proximity to the autograph is a measure of manuscript adherence to the original writing. It’s interesting to note, that in Myths and Mistakes, p. 66, no manuscript evidence exists for Mark chapters 2,3,10,13,14,15,16 in the first four centuries, but amazingly, we have 16 chapters of Mark. How does Carson account for the corruption of the Apostolic writings in the 1^st c., cf., 2 Thess. 2:2, making a 1^st c. copy early but spurious.

Theses 1: There is no unambiguous evidence that the Byzantine text type was known before the middle of the fourth century. See below: Dean John William Burgon, The Traditional Text, 1896, 99-101. “Traditional Text” is Burgon’s nomenclature for Byzantine and “Neologian” for the Westcott/Hort tradition.

Like today, Burgon’s work was suppressed by the academy’s information dominance who supported Westcott and Hort. Burgon’s genius and research was ignored. Carson can make the false assertion that there is no unambiguous evidence because of the traditional censoring of this evidence, e.g., there is no resurrection of the dead if you deny all those who have been raised from the dead. Who in grad school or post-grad school has heard of the brilliant and erudite scholar Dean John William Burgon? Burgon crushed the Westcott and Hort method, not theologically but evidentially. Carson mentions Burgon, only to discredit his work, p. 43. If you can’t beat them, demonize them.

Answer 1: There is unambiguous evidence of Byzantine readings before the 4^th c.

Objection 2: But let’s say, for arguments sake, Burgon fabricated the numbers and there is no evidence in the first four centuries.

Answer 2: Is this argument a deal breaker for the TR/KJV position? The answer is no. In Myths and Mistakes, p. 115-116 we read the following:

“The entire textual stream — including the Byzantine tradition – is far more stable than typically admitted. As mentioned above, certain scholars tend to privilege the earlier majuscules and papyri (or the so-called Alexandrian text type) [read Carson and White] and pit the Byzantine tradition against it as largely corrupt and secondary; the reverse holds among Byzantine proponents. Only recently, however, have we been able to quantify rigorously the overall stability of the textual stream. For Acts and the Catholic Epistles (one-fifth of the Greek New Testament) 15 percent of the text is completely nonvariant among the hundreds of collated Greek witnesses, including the Byzantine; and additional 54 percent is likewise nonvariant among the most frequently cited sixteen majuscules and minuscules (including four Byzantine) spanning over one thousand years….Put differently, the core tradition remains remarkably stable over time, in that the differences between the two texts usually thought to be most polarized is actually fairly small.”

That is, Carson is making a fabricated and polarizing argument as his first of 14 theses that has been in print since 1979. Continuity in the textual stream is the point. Early or late is not how the argument is made. If the textual stream is cohesive and the differences “very small”, essentially the Alexandrian text type could likewise be characterized as “Byzantine” effectively making the categories of text types superfluous. Cason’s hyperbolically stated first thesis is, evidentially speaking, making a mountain out of a mole hill, which for someone who lives in the realm of probability should be of little or no consequence.

Objection 3: Carson writes as a secular author

Answer 3: Carson writes about manuscripts and translations (Syriac Peshitta) but not about Scripture, or the written words of God, read by the Church throughout history. In this regard, Carson writes as a secular author. The trajectory of his book is the discrediting of any author who hoped to defend the credibility of TR/KJB position as if writing so the saint in the pew can trust his Bible is a liability to the Church. [This is also what we heard from White.] There is something very twisted about this trajectory, but it is Carson’s contribution to the debate. Before he can plea for realism, he must demonstrate the erroneous path defenders of a standard sacred text were leading the Church. But the Scripture cannot be spoken of in secular terms; while historic documents, Scripture is not solely historic, in that they have a transcendent origin and transcendent quality as the very written words of God, taught by the Holy Spirit to the covenant keeper. This formula is foreign to Carson. His problem is that of so many who have lost their way; the manuscript evidence is so problematic that it is impossible for a seminary professor to take God at His word. Furthermore, because of the information dominance over and in the academy, if he writes from a pre-critical, theological, historical, exegetical perspective, he would have been in danger of loosing any accrued academic credibility and perhaps his livelihood.