Thesis 5: The argument to the effect that what the majority of believes in the history of the church have believed is true, is ambiguous at best and theologically dangerous at worst; and as applied to textual criticism, the argument proves nothing very helpful anyway.

I will point the reader to the following passages: The inseparability of the written word and Spirit – John 14:26, John 16:13-14. Also 1 Cor. 2:14-15 – the bond between the Word and Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave us the word and guides our application of the word. Our understanding if Scripture is only correct and complete when the Holy Spirit interprets the word in the Church. The Holy Spirit did not merely give us a book and then leave it to us to figure it out. He continues to be our Teacher. “The Spirit is he Master Theologian, Teacher of the Church.” Kuyper. The three-part dynamic of Spirit/Word/Believer permeates the Scriptures. I give but 4 examples; Isa. 59:21, word, spirit, believer God’s mechanism to bring his redemptive plan to eschatological consummation. Eph. 1:13 – heard the word of truth — word/ye were sealed – believer/with that Holy Spirit of promise/-Holy Spirit. Eze. 36:27 – Spirit, statutes and judgments, God’s Word, within you, the believer. John 16:13 – Spirit of truth, guide you into all truth, God’s Word, he will guide you – the believer

Calvin, reflecting this exegetical and theological truth, comments,

“[But] I reply, that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to all reason. For as God alone is sufficient witness to himself in his own word, so also the word will never gain credit in the hearts of men, till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit. It is necessary, therefore, that the same Spirit, who spake by the mouths of the prophets, should penetrate into our hearts, to convince us that they faithfully delivered the oracles which were divinely entrusted to them…; because, till he illuminate their minds, they are perpetually fluctuating amidst a multitude of doubts.” Calvin, Institutes, 1.7.4.

Carson, does himself and the reader a disservice with the inclusion of Thesis 5. Please note, that Carson, like White, says nothing of the role of the Holy Spirit as if to abandon the Church and the text to its own deductions and finally to a handful of textual critics. Carson’s secular approach to the text also looks at the Church as natural, 1 Cor. 2:14, where jot and tittle preservation (Matt. 5:18) is foolishness but omitting the central role of the Spirit at work through the saints and Word.

What Carson calls dangerous, if not obeyed, Tyndale calls idolatry, writing,

“God is not man’s imagination; but that only which he saith of himself. God is nothing but his law and his promises; that is to say, that which he biddeth thee to do, and that which he biddeth thee believe and hope. God is but his word as Christ saith, John viii. “I am that I say unto you;” that is to say, That which I preach am I; my words are spirit and life. God is that only which he testifieth of himself; and to imagine any other thing of God than that, is damnable idolatry.” William Tyndale, “The Obedience of a Christian man,” Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, edited for the Parker Society (Cambridge: The University Press, 1528, 1848), 156-161.

Yet, this is precisely what Carson strives for; he is fabricating God out of his own imagination. God is what he says about Himself, but Carson has chosen to speak for God. When when speaks for God, creating God from their own imagination, Tyndale calls this usurpation “damnable heresy.”

I hope the reader recognizes the depth of Carson’s errors and the subsequent demonization of pre-critical theological thought all for the sake of hoping to engender trust in a failed and vacuous text critical method and resulting multiple version onlyism. And after 150 years of this textual and subsequent theological recreation, Ligonier reports the following:

“The 2022 State of Theology survey reveals that Americans increasingly reject the divine origin and complete accuracy of the Bible. With no enduring plumb line of absolute truth to conform to, U.S. adults are also increasingly holding to unbiblical worldviews related to human sexuality. In the evangelical sphere, doctrines including the deity and exclusivity of Jesus Christ, as well as the inspiration and authority of the Bible, are increasingly being rejected. While positive trends are present, including evangelicals’ views on abortion and sex outside of marriage, an inconsistent biblical ethic is also evident, with more evangelicals embracing a secular worldview in the areas of homosexuality and gender identity.” https://www.ligonier.org/posts/state-theology-survey-2020-results/

And before someone says, yes but not major doctrine is missing in the recreated text, stop, look around, and ask yourself whether that objection is at al relevant or meaningful. Even if that objection were valid, which it is not, that feckless half measure has still brought the Church and American culture to the spiritual decay we are now experiencing. Saying the Bible is the essentially the same is an entirely different category of assertion than saying the Bible is the infallible word of the living God. The first assertion carries no authority; the second statement asserts there is an Authority to which every man, woman and institution must yield.

And what would you expect when a trusted seminary professor is arguing for a critical method that excludes the Spirit/Church/Word paradigm and leaves the text in an always evolving state. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then Carson has been derelict in his duty to be a watcher on the wall. Instead, by opposing a standard sacred text he has contributed to opening the ecclesiastical gates to the spiritual enemies of the Church.

Thesis 4: The Alexandrian text type has better credentials than any other text type now available.

Quite a dogmatic statement, don’t you think, especially when you consider that Thesis 4 includes the adjective, “better.” On what grounds can Carson say that the Alexandrian text type has “better” credentials than the other 5,100 extant manuscripts? Well, after saying it has “better” credentials, Carson goes on to ay that it is not always “better” – “This does not mean that the Alexandrian tradition is to be preferred in all cases.” p. 54. So it is generally “better” but not always “better” and this is from a Cambridge Ph.D. You’d begin to think that this convoluted line of reasoning is purposely designed to weary the reader. Carson referenced sources who date P75 about 200 AD and perhaps earlier. p. 53. Myths and Mistakes more cautiously date P75 writing, “Always use the full range for the manuscript rather than the midpoint or early end of the date range. The date, ‘circa AD 200’ might imply either a range of 175-225 or a range of 150-250, and it does not convey that fact that the manuscript dated 150-250 is just as likely to be written in 248 as it is likely to be written in 156, or anywhere in between. We simply cannot be more precise.” The contributor of this chapter adds in a footnote, “At this point I must confess my own sins. In 2015, I gave the dates of P46 and P75 as “around A.D. 200’ in a chapter that I coauthored with Timothy Paul Jones, “How was the New Testament Copied?,” in How We Got the Bible, by Timothy Paul Jones, (Torrance, CA: Rose, 2015), 120. If I could do it over again, I would give the date ranges AD 200-300 for P75 and AD 176-250 for P46.” p. 108.

So what are we to gather from this material. That the dating of ancient manuscripts is in flux and should no spoken of in terms of giving a date range and not a date, and not inferring that the date may be earlier. The date could just as likely be later. But not for Carson because he has a dogmatic apologetic point to make which necessitates an early date for P75. Carson hopes to dismantle the “Hesychian hypothesis” where Hesychius according to Jerome produced an important revision of the Septuagint about AD 300. Some continental scholars have argued that Vaticanus [Alexandrian text type] came from the same hand as the LXX revision. If P75 [AD 200] predates Hesychius’ work by a century [AD 300], P75 proves the text type of Vaticanus antedates Hesychius by a century or more. P. 53. But, if the date range for P75 includes AD 300 which would make it contemporary with Hesychius’ revision of the Septuagint supporting Carson’s King James Version supporting interlocutors and making Carson’s argument mute.

Can you image how conclusive Carson’s argument must have sounded in 1979, and how many ungrounded saints gave up their standard sacred text based on this material, when all along it was feckless chatter.

Please also note that changing date ranges of manuscripts is tough, scholarly work. Good scholars make new discoveries and make changes to match the facts. It is the nature of any science. Dogmatism and scientific discovery are incompatible. For example, “if men were meant to fly, he would have wings.” “As far as we know,” or “according to the available sources and research,” or “according to our preliminary findings,” if not stated is inferred in scholarly scientific work. But Carson’s book is not the work of a measured scholar but of a mimicking apologist with an ideological bent. His work is not meant to inform but to persuade, and because his data is faulty those who follow his piping will be led astray.

Also note there is nothing in Thesis 4 that demonstrates that the Alexandrian text type is better other than that it is older. That the oldest is to be preferred is based on multiple erroneous assumptions. Of course, these assumptions don’t matter to Carson because Westcott and Hort’s method for determining the “better” manuscript was not to be deviated from. False assumption 1: there were minimal second, and early copy errors mistaken for the exemplar. 2. that an unconcentrated early epoch of accurate copies and therefore less possibility of an erroneous entry, when there was a concentrated number of copies made that included multiple errors. 3. that correcting by subtracting erroneous readings is superior to correcting by adding missing correct readings. 4. that a modern assessment and worth of the copy is consistent with the initial receivers’ validation of the copy. 5. that the older reading simply by its existence accurately represents one or more unknown intervening copies. 6. That the oldest reading is not the beginning of its own manuscript tradition. 7. And if not the oldest extant copy as the beginning of its own manuscript tradition, the lost copy from which it was translated was. 8. that the oldest reading was written for positive reasons and not for nefarious purposes. 9. that the oldest copy is intrinsically better is not a scholarly principle; it is really a crime looking for a culprit, an ideological prejudice that the oldest is best to support the overthrow of a standard sacred text and the usurpation of an evolving critical text. 10. Oldest is not to be preferred because it is historically older than other manuscripts but because of the value assigned to the copy by those who have transformed their prejudice into a scientific method. 11. That the critic has no original exemplar from which to judge the legitimacy of the copy. 12. All oldest copies are lost, including the autographs. The oldest copy is a copy of a no longer extant manuscript. Without the exemplar, the oldest extant copy’s credibility is suspect, unless one argued that the extant manuscript is the exemplar of a new manuscript tradition. And 13, the most egregious assumption is that science can determine what God says is His word. The Holy Spirit through the Church and written word is the final arbitrator of what is Scripture. While all these points can be argued, there is sufficient doubt to assert, that oldest is to be preferred fails as a scientific method and that it’s assertion as such is unfounded. For these 12 reason the radically empirical methodology that purports that oldest is best is a scholarly, waving of the hand, yes, we sawed the lady in half, prevarication.

Myths and Mistakes appreciates the work of Westcott and Hort writing, “It is also true that a very good and reliable text existed with Westcott and Hort’s edition [1881] published more than a century ago, when there were far fewer, manuscript available.” The leap of faith Carson wants us all to make is to accept the Westcott and Hort Greek text as the New Testament. Listen to Tyndale’s words in the prologue of his 1534 English NT: “Here thou hast (most dear reader) the new testament or covenant made with us of God in Christ’s blood.” Is this what Westcott and Hort gave us, or Carson wants us to believe? No, this reconstructed text, the text Carson is stumping for, is not spoken of in covenantal terms; it’s a mutable science project in appropriately called the “New Testament.” We get into the weeds with distributive changes of portions of the text, but collectively, canonically, is the W/H text the “covenant made with us of God in Christ’s blood?” No. I write this to say that only when the “science” of textual criticism encroached into the truth and purity of Holy Scripture did the critic begin to work out of his or her depth. And this encroachment is Carson’s part in the play. His role is to assert and synchronize secular notions with long standing theological doctrine in a way palatable to the passive church goer. So he jumps on the bandwagon protected by information dominance and writes his little book, and without ever seeing the autographs writes on p. 53 of the Alexandrian text type, “is the best text-type now extant: that is, closest to the original.” He writes as if the autographs are in his back pocket, and he can pull them out anytime he wants to check a reading. This writing is entirely irresponsible, a jaundiced zealot for party orthodoxy.

The so-called Alexandrian texts are valuable but not better, and they are old but not better.

In this entry Theses 2 and 3 of Carson’s Plea are considered. In 1979 he did not, or course, have access to recent text critical findings, which makes his book the more egregious. Speaking dogmatically, as if the textual critical discipline was a settled science, he delivers this polemic against the Greek and English standard sacred texts. Of his many misjudgments, he writes as a critical text zealot rather than with a balanced scholarly skepticism, overestimating the credibility of his chosen methodology. In this book, Carson is a fundamentalist evangelist for critical orthodoxy. On these pages is the call for repentance from a pre-critical malaise brought on by KJB pamphleteers and to personal faith and trust in his scholarly acumen and an ever-fluctuating critical system.

You haven’t done the textual critical work he has; few in all of Church history have. Can you imagine if the prerequisite for understanding your Bible was the capacity to read 4^th c. majuscule manuscripts? What about just trusting your Bible or is it required that everyone has advanced theological degrees. Is this what God intended for the Church? Is Carson’s model the better model for the Church? The answer must be a resounding no.

And so we press on with comment on Theses 2 and 3.

Thesis 2: The argument that defends the Byzantine tradition by appealing to the fact that most extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament attest to the Byzantine text-type, is logically fallacious and historically naïve. P. 48

At issue with this thesis was referenced earlier. In Myths and Mistakes, 116, “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.” Hodges was indeed correct when referring the number of manuscripts preserving the text best because according to recent textual analysis extant manuscripts look more like “fairly small” differences of the “core tradition” overwhelmingly represented by the Byzantine text type or text form. The minority readings are more like little streams that differ from the river which is the Byzantine text form. Only when texts are weighed by scholars for their significance is the rivulet manuscript considered, on a par of equality with or superior to, the entire core tradition. What contemporary scholarship has found is significant continuity between what during Carson’s time where prejudicially weighed text types. The textual facts have hardly changed but the manner in which the data has been interpreted has become more balanced.

The Byzantine text type became more dominant in the East because it was not merely considered a text-type, but the Holy Scripture. Essentially, Erasmus’ contribution was to introduce the sacred text of the Eastern Church based on the Byzantine text into the Western Church where Latin was considered the sacred text. When the dust settled, the Renaissance model ad fontes, or “back to the fountain” or primary source, lead the Reformation scholars to reject the Latin as secondary, a translation of the Greek, and, with some modifications, adopt the Greek sacred text of the East. Carson’s principal error of Thesis 2 is his conspicuous and prejudicial rejection of the value of the Byzantine text-type recognized by his contemporary interlocutors in 1979 and which is currently supported by modern text critics

Thesis 3: The Byzantine text-type is demonstrably a secondary text. This for Carson is one of his more absurd arguments for the following reason. He’s never seen the autograph. Yet he writes, “The only way to circumvent the evidence is to deny that these are harmonizations or to argue that harmonizations are not secondary; and I find it very difficult to conceive how either of these alternatives can be defended by the person who has spent much time pouring over the primary data.” P. 52.

So we deny that what Carson calls “harmonizations” are such and argue that they are the Original reading. This straight-forward rebuttal of Carson’s argument is beyond contestation. Unless he is possession of the autographs, then there must be more evidence required than his or someone else’s assessment to confirm the validity of either the long or short reading. Indeed, as we have seen, in a discipline as fluid as textual criticism, thriving on scholarly skepticism, there is hardly space for dogmatism.

No matter how many times one reads the evidence, it is a deduction based on a presupposition that would lead one to conclude that what in one manuscript is shorter and less complete is closer to the original that the manuscript that is longer and more robust. For Carson, his prejudicial handling of the Byzantine text type leads him to call the longer and robust reading “harmonization.” And he tests the reader’s patience by inferring that some how the capacity to examine the original sources will inevitably lead to his conclusion. This closed-minded evaluation of the manuscript evidence is what made the writing of Myths and Mistakes necessary. The entire Byzantine Church did not consider their Greek text to be full of erroneous harmonizations, nor did the Western church after its introduction by Erasmus, and yet this is what Carson would have you believe. It appears that Carson, rather than the Byzantine text is the odd man out.

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.

For those that are following this thread, Carson writes of the Textus Receptus as if it were the creation of Erasmus, uniquely named by Elzevir publishers in 1624, years after the publication of the KJB. Named the Textus Receptus in 1624, the Church finally had the Textus Receptus. This old and worn-out line of reasoning persists to this day and is designed to isolate the standard sacred text of the Church to a short epoch of time, making pre-critical analysis a glitch so to speak in history, unworthy of the significance TR/KJB advocates attribute to it. Granted, the text was not called the Textus Receptus until 1624, but the substance of the text has existed since the autographs, making the statement, “The text of the Textus Receptus existed in the 1^st century and is equal with the autographs” a valid statement based on the Church’s 400-year validation of the TR/KJV as the standard sacred text. This text is indeed the received text of the Church. For Carson, the origins of the TR are the 15^th century; for the Church, the origin of the TR is the 1^st century. On balance, the dating of the TR should be of no consequence to Carson. The text he advocates did not exist until the 19th century and has been constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed based on changing scholarly notions of transmission.

As pathetic as this might sound, Carson is pleading for the critical text to be the received text of the Church and English translations of the critical received text to be the standard sacred text of the Church. Any reasonable thinker would say 150 years has been enough time for the critic to make his case and overcome and surpass the KJB as the English standard sacred text especially when Myths and Mistakes show the myths and mistakes of the method endorsed by Carson. It’s not the KJB guys who point out the myths and mistakes; it is scholars in his own camp. Carson, in the final analysis, does not know what he is pleading for, or what the definition of realism is. But the damage has already been done. His pusillanimous offering has already poisoned the well. Dr. Van Kleeck called this genre of apologetic writing “bandwagon theology.” Carson is a bandwagon theologian, a theological opportunist who contributed nothing to the literature, who wrote uncritically protected by publishers that secured information dominance. The theological bandwagon in 1979 was to disparage and demonize the KJB and its supporters as being in need of realism.

In chapter six Carson names the culprits who reject eclecticism or examining “each reading on its own individual merits” as opposed to those who “slavishly” hold to one text as authoritative. You see, holding to a standard sacred text is written of in derogatory terms. You don’t want to hold “slavishly” to a standard sacred text. Rather, the scholar should let every reading stand on its own merits. Again, we ask, who is to establish what is meritorious? Carson? David Otis Fuller, Zane Hodges, and Edward F. Hills are listed as his interlocutors as well as Jacob van Bruggen and Wilbur Pickering. It was clear before 1979 that the critical method to determine the words of Scripture had miserably failed. In 1979 critics were no more closer to recovering the autographs than they are today. And yet, Carson and his ilk persisted in trying to breathe life into an academic corpse. Indeed, after another 40 years has passed, the same academic corpse of modern textual criticism remains dead.

On page 41, Carson includes a diatribe encapsulating what he holds as the errors of the current KJB defense. It revolves primarily around the rejection of the Westcott/Hort method, (which in Dr. Van Kleeck’s debate with James White was never introduced into the apologetic) and an appreciation for the Byzantine text type that underlies the TR. Carson, as was in vogue in 1979, rejects the importance of the Byzantine text type. While modern text critics continue to show appreciation for the work done by Westcott and Hort, they have moved well beyond their methodology, especially in regarding Sinaiticus and Vaticanus as neutral texts. Myths and Mistakes never mention neutral texts. For Carson, the Byzantine text is the culprit. Myths and Mistakes, p. 114, “The Byzantine text is not monolithic and thus cannot be so easily thrown out en masse,” and p. 166, “Distinctly Byzantine readings often have ancient roots.” I wonder what Carson would do with that finding. This is turn erodes the notion that the oldest, shortest, hardest, and reading that explains the origin of another reading are to be preferred turning Carson’s entire apologetic on its head.

Based on his antiquated assessment of the data, he charges the KJB men of systemic errors. His entire rant is a ruse. Which of the versions derived from the WH text will he argue are verbally inspired? Out of which passage of a modern version will Carson exegete the passage for the verbal preservation of the critical text? It was and is still argued that the critical position rejects both verbal preservation and providential preservation of the critical text that a defense of a standard sacred text was made in the first place. The Church’s reception of texts found in the Byzantine text type is historic evidence for the TR/KJB tradition. Carson, at points, seems to be imbecilic. When a KJB proponent argues that manuscripts would wear out due to use, does that sound absurd or reasonable? Is it reasonable to argue that there were far more manuscripts in transmission than we currently have today — does that sound absurd or reasonable? That past recorded calamities destroyed thousands of manuscripts points to the institutional and personal truth that the manuscripts Carson is referring to do not represent the manuscript transmission tradition. And yet, he mocks the KJB supporter for making that valid assertion. Furthermore, Carson omits the research of Dean John William Burgon, who shows decisively that Byzantine reading were current among the early church fathers before 400AD in the preponderance of citations. This is another demonstration of one-sided, uncritical research. Carson is like the CNN of scholars; he has his agenda — forget the facts. If you have information dominance, as Carson had in 1979, his book published by Baker (while Edward F. Hills, for example, a genuine textual critic, had to be self-published), then the facts don’t matter, only one voice was heard and it was Carson’s.

Carson wraps up the chapter with perhaps one of the most self-serving paragraphs yet. He presents himself as the savior of the church, showing those who may be influenced by the KJB/TR proponents the way out of the version wilderness. Listen to this: “This theory is being presented in popular literature [such as the trilogy edited by Dr. David Otis Fuller] to pastors and laymen everywhere, many of whom have never read a rebuttal at the same level and who are not equipped to do the more advanced work that demonstrates the theory to be false.” p. 42. The critical rebuttal to a standard sacred text was the publishing of modern bibles, the critical notes contained in the bibles, the missing and changed verses and pericopes; the pastors who moved their churches to accept the modern versions; the schism that the new versions made in the Church. Carson, as expected, speaks of the critical position only in glowing, positive terms. He doesn’t like the fact that his ilk longer the only team on the field. Actually, his job is to save the Church from any competing perspective on the bible transmission.

And this idea of those “who are not equipped to do the more advanced work” is another shot at the Church. In 1979 and before and after, the critical position is one that requires the Church to lay aside their own personal responsibility to believe the Bible and trust another source of authority — that of scholars. In 1979, some undoubtedly trusted Carson’s now debunked notions of textual transmission; trusted his glowing approval of the Westcott/Hort method; trusted his disregard for the Byzantine text type; trusted a scholarly system that by its nature is approving fluid. Carson is arguing complexities like stringing beautiful pearls on a silk string hanging it space. While the necklace is aesthetically pleasing it has no basis is reality because it is grounded in nothing but probability and conjecture.