Does the Devil Just Hold to Textual Variants?

Gen. 3:4, And the serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die.” In this passage Satan contradicts the word of God in Gen. 2:17, “for in the day that thou eatest thou shalt surely die.” Considering the latitude given Evangelical text critics and in the spirit of giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it is time to do the same for the devil. After all, contradicting God’s word is a common practice of those who claim the name of Christ while maintaining a critical approach to the Scripture. For instance, consider the normative negation of God’s command found in Deut. 12:32, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.” Contradicting the word, once considered a work of the devil has gained respectability among the ecclesiastical intellectual elite and wandering sheep. And in this sphere of respectability, perhaps its time for the ecclesiastical social imaginary to recognize and accept the intuitive congruence between scholars and the devil. Maybe it’s time for a kinder, gentler approach to the devil; after all the contradiction of God’s Word has become so common place as to make it part of the fabric of modern ecclesiastical social imaginary. A less hypocritical Church would also be less critical of the devil.

Also note the devil’s quotation of Scripture in Luke 4:10, “For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee. And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” First note that the devil introduces the quote from Psalm 91:11 in the same manner as does the Lord in verse 8. This shared convention of informing the reader that what follows is drawn from the Old Testament should be the first consideration why the modern Evangelical reader should consider tempering his/her attitude toward the devil as a negative influence. After all, the devil’s introduction to the Old Testament citation is exactly that of the Lord.

Secondly, please note that Psalm 91:11-12 is in the Hebrew text is 14 words:

כי מלאכיו יצוה-לך לשמרך בכל-דרכיך

על-כפים ישאונך פן-תגף באבן רגלך

In the BHS there is no entry in the critical apparatus for either verses 11 or 12; there are no other contending readings, LXX or otherwise, to the Hebrew text in these verses. The LXX in Psalm 91:11 is consistent with the BHS and reads, ἐν πάσαις ταῗς ὁδοῗς σου, “in all the ways of you” or “in all thy ways.”

Of the 14 words the devil omitted only 2 — בכל-דרכיך – “in all thy ways.” That is, the devil quotes the Scripture correctly 86% of the time, only deviating by the omission 14% of the time. This high ratio should fall under the accepted category of sufficiently reliable. Additionally, the omission “in all thy ways” could easily be considered superfluous. In the angelic realm, “in all thy ways” should be understood considering what the Scripture tells us about the power of angels. “In all thy ways” falls under the paradigm of changes that do not affect sound doctrine. There is a high degree of intrinsic probability of “in all thy ways” being inferred by what the devil said without the necessity of it being restated. Thus, to quibble negatively about the devil’s omission creates more heat than light.

And thirdly, what then, can we make of the claim made by the Apostle John in the Apocalypse chapter 12, verse 9, “And the great dragon, was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiving the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Is the omission of “in all thy ways” really some kind of well-played, subtle, demonic deception meant to undermine God’s Word or merely an insignificant textual variant? Considering the continuity between the words of the devil in Luke 4 and the words of Moses in Psalm 91, and the relative insignificance of the omission, it would be reasonably difficult to argue that the exclusion was any part of a grander scheme in “deceiving the whole world.” It seems reasonable that within the relative degrees of doubt allowed by the editors of the UBS Greek text, the devil should be allowed equal latitude without accusing him of the moral sin of deception. Before harsh judgments are made, the devil’s omission should first be given minimally either a C or D rating or a conjectural emendation. Additionally, the devil may have access to more ancient manuscripts not yet discovered. It only seems like the fair-minded, balanced, scholarly thing to do. After all, in the current social imaginary of the Therapeutic man our teleological perspective should focus on pleasing each other’s feelings.

Ward Continues to Show Himself To Be Out of His Depth

Ward recently offered reasons for why he believes KJV-Onlyism and Confessional Bibliology are for all intents and purposes the same argument. Dr. Riddle took the opportunity to help Ward with his confusion on this point in a recent Word Magazine episode. Below is a video of that episode where Riddle carefully works through the fallacy of Ward’s conflationary and unfortunate assertion.

Ward continues to show himself largely out of his depth in dealing with Confessional Bibliology, Reformed Epistemology, Reformed Bibliology, and apparently even KJV Onylism given his penchant to equate KJV-Onlyism and Confessional Bibliology.

To make matters worse, in addition to Ward being out of his depth so frequently, there seems to be blood in the water around Ward’s entire enterprise. All major elements of his argument [e.g., false friends, KJVO/Confessional Text equivalence, and textual confidence etc.] have been eviscerated under only mild scrutiny.

Thanks to Dr. Riddle for his patient and careful treatment of Ward on this point. Check out more of Riddle’s work here: http://www.jeffriddle.net/

A Recent Discussion with Elijah Hixon (Part 2)

In yesterday’s post I shared a portion of a discussion I had with Dr. Elijah Hixon over the weekend on Mark Ward’s Facebook wall. Here is the rest of that discussion.

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Hixon: Peter Van Kleeck Thanks for this. Your reasoning with your credentials sounds a little close to saying I should trust that you’re right because you’ve been “validated by the best institutions of the day.” No, I’m saying that I’m an active researcher in that area, and I’ve read your descriptions, and they are not accurate. It’s not my job to do your homework for you. If all your degrees haven’t been enough to give you an accurate understanding of textual criticism, then maybe there is another problem (such as a problem with your approach to studying it). Again, this isn’t a problem with Byzantine prioritists, so it’s not that someone has to agree with mainstream textual criticism to be able to understand it.

That being said—by your logic, it seems that you are suggesting that the vast majority of Christians are not following the Holy Spirit, and you and a small band of TR defenders are alone trying to fend for God. Both can’t be right in the way you define it, so am I without the Holy Spirit? Are all those Christians worshipping Baal? My argument is not majority=right, it’s “1. you’ve made a claim that only Christians can hear she Shepherd’s voice in the Scriptures, 2. You have defined “the Scriptures” in such a way that the ESV, CSB, NIV, etc. are excluded,” so 3. it’s hard to escape the conclusion that to be consistent, you must be implying that none of us are regenerate or are at least living in sin and deaf to the Spirit’s voice, so what do you do with that?” Again, Jesus said ye shall know them by their fruits, and the fruits of TR advocates when it comes to this issue are regularly rotten in a way other believers’ fruits are not—so why not consider that either you haven’t defined “Scriptures” accurately, or perhaps it is your camp that is blinded by sin on this issue and not the millions of others who (in my experience) usually default to trusting the (modern) Bibles in their hands until someone like you tell them not to?

//To claim that textual criticism done on New Testament is not an “explicitly theological setting” is perhaps the greatest distillation of why the position you hold is confused, dangerous, and must be refuted. The New Testament is by its very nature theological in a way that nothing else in the world is. Yet by your words, you believe the opposite. Indeed, you believe what is clearly false by the lights of elementary Christian teaching.//

No, see this is just plain wrong, and it’s a very uncharitable way to read what I said. As I mentioned above—”Augustine put it well: an author can only be understood through friendship.” If you’ve decided beforehand that anyone who disagrees with you is an enemy and an opponent and “must be refuted”, do you have the humility to see what they believe as it really is? Do you know what most text-critical research is? I wrote a whole book on scribal habits in the 6th-century that has almost nothing to do with what the original text *is*, and it’s been decently well-received as text-critical research because outside of editing editions or arguing for one reading over another (which are other matters altogether), most text-critical research is actually historical work with historical documents and looking at what was happening historically. For example: “here’s a collation of all the manuscripts at John 18” (and it is not inherently a theological exercise to record what words are on a manuscript and what words are not, other than that everything we do should be done with God in mind), or “here’s a set of manuscripts that were copied from other known manuscripts, and here’s how that copy-process went.” Or: “here’s a new manuscript we just discovered—here’s what its text is and here are some notes about how it agrees/disagrees with other manuscripts.” Does someone need to be a Christian to be able to accurately say what letters a manuscript has on it, or do they need to ground those claims about what letters are on a manuscript in Scripture? Your comments are dangerously close to Prov. 18:2: “A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.”

Van Kleeck: Elijah Hixson > “Your reasoning with your credentials sounds a little close to saying I should trust that you’re right because you’ve been ‘validated by the best institutions of the day.'”

All I was trying to communicate is that I have experience with it and I have come to the conclusions that I have. You say, my conclusions are wrong. Demonstrate it.

> “That being said—by your logic, it seems that you are suggesting that the vast majority of Christians are not following the Holy Spirit, and you and a small band of TR defenders are alone trying to fend for God.”

No, this is not what I am saying. My argument on this point is one of sanctification not salvation. I believe you are my brother in Christ, but I also believe the position you hold lacks necessary and proper exegetical and theological underpinnings. Simply put, your thoughts on the version issue, not being in submission to and grounded in Scripture are not in captivity to Christ [2 Cor. 10:5] i.e., are not sanctified. [Note how I pointed out how your representation of my position is inaccurate without pulling the go-do-your-own-study-and-find-out-for-yourself card.]

>” If you’ve decided beforehand that anyone who disagrees with you is an enemy and an opponent and “must be refuted”, do you have the humility to see what they believe as it really is?”

No, again I think you misunderstand me. I do see you as a brother and as a friend/professional acquaintance. This is what real friends do, they challenge each other. Iron sharpens iron [Prov. 27:17]. This is a metaphor that includes considerable friction, collision, and/or confrontation. Paul was no enemy of Peter when the former withstood the latter to his face. I do not equate disagreement with being an enemy. In fact, I find it as a mark of brotherhood in Christ and brotherhood in humanity. Rather, it seems that you do. It has been my experience that defending the TR and KJV has only been met with jesting and derision because descension on this point is largely unallowed in academic circles. [See our current discussion/thread for examples and the jesting in the OP article.] If there is anyone who has equated “disagreement” with “enemy” it is the Critical Text position and especially in academic environments.

>” I wrote a whole book on scribal habits”

If we are talking about textual criticism of Plato’s Republic then Christian theology is less germane. If we are talking about textual criticism of the Acts of the Apostles, then the work is necessarily theological in nature. New Testament scribal habits are by default theological habits because said scribes are copying the New Testament. Any work with the New Testament is necessary and properly theological because the New Testament is and can be nothing other than at the ground of Christian theology.

> “For example: “here’s a collation of all the manuscripts at John 18″ (and it is not inherently a theological exercise to record what words are on a manuscript and what words are not, other than that everything we do should be done with God in mind)”

Again, rather than backing up you seem to be digging the hole deeper. Manuscripts of John 18 are not merely historical artifacts. They contain the inspired words of the Creator God graciously given to fallen man for the salvation of his soul and as a guide for all life and practice. To treat them as mere artifacts to be collated is to treat them as something they are not. Manuscripts of John 18 are records of divine words from the one living and true Triune God. So where Ward calls us to look to men to give us God’s word, you unabashedly and repeatedly affirm that God’s words can and in certain academic circumstances should be treated as mere artifacts for collation and comparison.

>”Does someone need to be a Christian to be able to accurately say what letters a manuscript has on it, or do they need to ground those claims about what letters are on a manuscript in Scripture?”

I’ve never made this claim. Certainly, non-Christians can count and collate manuscripts. What they cannot do is know and therefore tell us what is the word of God and what is not.

>”Your comments are dangerously close to Prov. 18:2: ‘A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.'”

So I make the claim that perhaps you need to grow in the sanctification of your mind on this topic and you infer that my comments put me on the verge of being a fool which Christ expressly warns against you doing in the Sermon on the Mount [Matt. 5:22]. This is exactly that cool, calm, even-tempered, text-critical attitude that I’m used to. Thanks for making me feel right at home.

This conversation is and continues to be very fruitful for me so, thank you. I applaud your candor and appreciate the fact that those reading this can observe the readiness wherewith your position casts off exegetical and theological moorings in order to maintain that position. It makes my job much easier.

Hixon: Peter Van Kleeck Thanks for this. I have already hinted at a correct representation of textual criticism, and you have rejected it—let believing text critics be Christians. As far as my own position on the version issue, I do think it is grounded in Scripture. You are free to disagree, of course.

At first, I spoke of research published outside of an explicitly theological setting, and you claim that this is unscriptural and needs rebuke, but then you agreed with me: “>” Does someone need to be a Christian to be able to accurately say what letters a manuscript has on it, or do they need to ground those claims about what letters are on a manuscript in Scripture?”

I’ve never made this claim. Certainly, non-Christians can count and collate manuscripts. What they cannot do is know and therefore tell us what is the word of God and what is not.” [and the language of “tell us what is the word of God and what is not” definitely deserves its own discussion, but that’s another can of worms]

You’re missing the point—most text-critical research is *not* saying anything about what is and is not the [ontological] Word of God. By your own admission, non-Christians *are* able to do that kind of work. That seems to allow Christians to also publish the same kind of research in the same kinds of settings without being unChristian the same way that as a Christian I can drive a car, just like a non-Christian can. I might have a different set of underlying beliefs accompanying my drive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t drive a car without first putting a Jesus fish on the bumper or turning the key in some distinctly Christian way.

I‘m not sure how to read your objection to the manuscripts though, because throughout your book, you’ve given me the impression that two things can’t be the same thing in the same way at the same time, and from that, you conclude that the ESV, TR, NIV, etc. can’t be the Bible in the way the TR is. If that is true, then those manuscripts of John 18, etc. are *not* the words of Scripture (by your definition) because they don’t completely agree with the TR. Sure, they have some words of Scripture in them, but if I understand your definitions right, they can’t be Scripture because there aren’t any that agree fully with the TR, and if they aren’t Scripture, then is it really a theological exercise to study them? If they are *sufficiently* Scripture, then sure, but that undercuts your position’s ability to exclude things like the ESV, NIV, NASB, etc. As to my own position, I allow something to be sufficiently Scripture such that I *do* consider them to be the words of Scripture, but my definition of ‘sufficient’ allows fallen man to have made mistakes that aren’t powerful enough to thwart God’s purposes.

All that being said, we still have the issue that things like recording what readings are found in what manuscripts is most of the work text critics do, which is not the same as saying what is and is not God’s Word, unless you have some postmodern view of the text that says all manuscripts are equally God’s Word (distinct from my position that due to the providence of God in his preservation of Scripture, all manuscripts are *sufficiently* God’s Word). So on the one hand, you say that scribal habits *is* theological because it has to do with how God’s Word was copied, but on the other hand, you seem to say that unbelievers can do anything with manuscripts but know what the original text is—I don’t get it. Scribal habits themselves don’t tell you what the original text is; they have to be applied. Moreover, throughout the Scriptures we see God using non-believers to accomplish his purposes. Sure, it would be ideal if everyone was a believer, but that doesn’t mean God can’t (and doesn’t) use non-believers.

No, I don’t affirm that artifacts of God’s Word *should* be treated as mere artifacts—at least not as a Christian. Nothing we do should be done as if God doesn’t exist (just like I don’t think we should drive cars as if God doesn’t exist), yet you still accuse me of believing that. That being said, I do think God’s word is powerful enough that manuscripts of it *can* be treated as such by non-believers, and that won’t thwart God’s purposes, even if it would be better if they were always treated as God’s Word by believers. (something-something here about Jewish scribes preserving the Hebrew Bible as well.)

I guess fundamentally, my issue is that the definitions and illustrations that you give make me think that you might not really be familiar with enough text-critical research to make the claims about it that you make. Maybe that is my own pride—maybe I am not humble enough to put myself in the mind of another and grasp how someone can actually understand what I do and conclude what you conclude about it.

But I agree, sanctification is indeed a huge issue. We just have to be very careful to make sure we are on the right side of it. You’ve accused me of believing something that I don’t, and presumably that’s because you took words that I said and assumed they could only mean what you think they mean and then came to the wrong conclusion (if so, this would not be the first time a TR person has done this. There was once a time when rumors circulated that I was an annihilationist because misunderstanding something I said, assuming the worst and spreading the rumor). If that is true (and I hope it isn’t), is it possible you’ve done so elsewhere as well?

As far as enemies/opponents are concerned, you say that you aren’t interacting as an opponent here, but is this not your website, that makes repeated reference to “our opponents”, and did you not write this post? Your name is at the bottom. If this is you, do I believe what you are saying here in these comments or what you said there at the blog? This is the post I had in mind when I made those comments above. (https://standardsacredtext.com/…/gotcha-questions-in…/)

Van Kleeck: Elijah Hixson > “You’re missing the point—most text-critical research is *not* saying anything about what is and is not the [ontological] Word of God. By your own admission, non-Christians *are* able to do that kind of work. “

Yes, you have conflated a couple things here. Lost men can do text-critical work but that does not mean their work ceases to be theological. What is more, the fact that they treat the NT as a mere artifact tells us about their theology.

>” If that is true, then those manuscripts of John 18, etc. are *not* the words of Scripture (by your definition) because they don’t completely agree with the TR.”

That is why I specifically said the manuscripts from John 18 “contain” the words of God. There is a vast difference between a cup containing water and a cup being water. I hope you can see that distinction here when it comes to manuscripts.

>”As to my own position, I allow something to be sufficiently Scripture such that I *do* consider them to be the words of Scripture, but my definition of ‘sufficient’ allows fallen man to have made mistakes that aren’t powerful enough to thwart God’s purposes.”

Yes, and we both disagree quite sharply on the notion that “sufficient reliability” is a properly suited adjective to apply to God’s Holy Scripture.

>” Sure, it would be ideal if everyone was a believer, but that doesn’t mean God can’t (and doesn’t) use non-believers.”

Agreed, but simply because Assyrians slaughtered Israel’s infants as an act of providential divine judgment doesn’t somehow make the acts of the Assyrians moral. In fact, for such immorality, God judges them quite severely. The same goes for the Babylonians. Simply because unsaved text-critics are doing textual criticism on the NT does not mean what they are doing is morally good in the eyes of God. Here it seems you have conflated God’s decretive will with His prescriptive will. An unfortunate theological gaffe.

>”Nothing we do should be done as if God doesn’t exist (just like I don’t think we should drive cars as if God doesn’t exist), yet you still accuse me of believing that.”

Ok, if God exists then God gets a say in every choice that is made concerning His own words, right? How does modern textual criticism factor in what God says regarding His own words? How does a text-critic determine what word God says is His word and what word is not? What is the mechanism to determine this? How is that mechanism consistent with what Scripture teaches? What verses do you appeal to in order to construct that mechanism within the scope of modern textual criticism? How many verses do you have?

An axiom of apologetics is that one’s behavior betrays their beliefs. I see nothing in mainstream evangelical textual criticism that invokes Scripture, theology, or church history to ground their methodology in a robust way. I accuse evangelical text-critics in the fashion I do because within the sphere of textual criticism the shoe seems to fit their behavior. Even in this brief conversation, you resisted my calls to distinctively Christian textual criticism by making claims to the unsaved, genre studies, and apparent NT scribal practices having nothing to do with theology.

>”As far as enemies/opponents are concerned, you say that you aren’t interacting as an opponent here, but is this not your website, that makes repeated reference to ‘our opponents'”

Opponent, yes. Enemy, no, and it is “enemy” which I have demured on in this thread. Again, iron sharpens iron. I have no idea how one sharpens a knife except that the whetstone opposes the knife. I have no idea how one grows in strength unless the barbell opposes lifter. It seems odd that you are hung up here, but perhaps this is not something you are used to among your peer group. That is unfortunate.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing for me in this discussion is the fact that I have repeatedly characterized your position as strongly leaning naturalistic, largely devoid of Christian precommmitments in the actual work of textual criticism, and charged your position with a lack of exegetical and theological support. But instead of putting these concerns to rest, you have doubled down on them making no effort to show your robust theological position for modern text-critical practices of making decisions based on mere historical evidence or trained subjective artistry.

There has been no exegesis put forth that modern textual criticism is God’s vehicle for finding and knowing what words are God’s words. B.B. Warfield tried but even he is now abandoned because few share his dependence on Scottish Common Sense Realism. None on your side of the debate have yet to find a meaningful place for the Spirit of God moving through the word of God in the people of God to accept God’s word by faith in the text-critical process. Rather, all I hear lecture after lecture from Hixon, Gurry, Wallace, White, et al are arguments for mere evidential probabilities coupled with snide remarks toward TR/KJV users. It’s an old tune but a familiar one to be sure. Where in the Bible does Scripture claim our faith rests in mere evidential probabilities that this or that reading is indeed the word of God and not men? The Critical Text side of this discussion should have answers to these questions at the tip of their tongues, but alas they are not.

Well, my wife just finished teaching and I told her I would be done when she was done, so I leave the last word to you, Elijah. As always I appreciate the interactions. Perhaps one day we could meet face to face, get a cup of coffee, and a donut or two from the local bakery. Until next time.

Hixon: Peter Van Kleeck Thanks for this. I think the fundamental issue for me is how you are characterizing “How does a text-critic determine what word God says is His word and what word is not?”, which as I mentioned deserves its own discussion, too much for here. I am a bit perplexed why I would need to articulate a theological argument in light of the existence of TR editions. We know a lot about what they are and how they were made, and while I actually agree with much of what you say about a regular Christian trusting the Bible in his hands, I’d put a strong emphasis on “sufficient” and place the object of that trust in *God who preserves his words sufficiently* and not in editors, whether they be editors of the NA/UBS/ECM or of TRs. Or to flip it, if TR defenders can accept the TR by faith, it doesn’t seem right to me for TR defenders to say that ESV believers aren’t allowed to accept their ESV (as at least sufficient) by faith (and I’ll add that the mischaracterization “we don’t have a Bible so neither can you” that I’ve seen more than once is slander and is not remotely what I or any other believing text critic I know believes). Consequently, I don’t see anything in a theological grounds of textual criticism (that accurately understands textual criticism and allows a Christian approach) that excludes modern work without cutting off its own feet. Or to put it another way, it’s hard for me to understand how you can want me to give a theological grounding for my work on ‘my’ text when you have already accepted a theological grounding for the same kind of work involving your text, if you really do understand what the work is.

That being said, if you want a theological treatment, Frame’s Doctrine of the Word of God is a great example of a reformed, confessional theologian getting into textual criticism, understanding it and allowing it to be done by Christians. Lorraine Boettner has a little book called The Inspiration of the Scriptures that’s good too.

Some feedback on your book though as I have been reading it—Have you considered filtering what Calvin said though the fact that he engaged in conjectural emendation at times in his exegesis? In light of how he worked out his theology in the way he dealt with textual issues, his view of the sufficiency/certainty of the Scriptures seems more in line with my position than yours. I could be wrong though.

Thanks again.

A Recent Discussion with Elijah Hixon

Over this last weekend I was in a Facebook discussion with Dr. Elijah Hixon. Some of his credential are: (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is a research associate at Tyndale House in Cambridge. He completed his doctoral thesis on a trio of manuscripts from the sixth century and their scribes. His areas of research include New Testament textual criticism, papyrology, early Christian apocrypha, early Christian theology, and apologetics.

This is now the third time at least he and I interacted in a prolonged discussion on the text/version issue. I have to say, having spoken with him these many times he is easily the most intelligent interlocutor I have thus far engaged on this topic. I always appreciate his comments and the foil he offers on the text and version discussion.

Below you will find the first part of last weekend’s discussion. I think it will be fruitful to read his statements in particular. Note specifically how readily he defends mere evidential and naturalistic means. It is as if being Christian doing textual criticism is enough to claim that textual criticism is a Christian enterprise steeped in robust exegetical and theological support.

Here is the first part of our conversation which took place on Mark Ward’s FB wall after he posted a cheeky article in the Baptist Bulletin:

Hixon: A scenario: My wife’s uncle was a faithful pastor for 20 years and never strayed from the teaching of God’s Word. However, at one point several people in the church decided that he *had* strayed from God’s Word. Most of the faithful Christians who took the time and trouble to study God’s Word and weigh what he was preaching against the Scriptures came to the conclusion that he was, in fact, preaching God’s Word. The problem was that there were many people on the church membership roll who lacked the humility to study the Scriptures honestly and though they were willing to claim he was being unbiblical, they were unwilling to study to learn what is and is not biblical and historically orthodox. Much of what they accused him of was a straw man. The church ended up splitting over it.

I have yet to read a single TR person who has summarized and described modern textual criticism accurately (I haven’t finished your book yet, but I am at the last chapter), and many who have described it objectively incorrectly have doubled-down in their misrepresentation when challenged on it. On the other hand, there are millions of Christians who believe the ESV, NIV, NASB, CSB and trust it because they hear the Shepherd’s voice in it, and they rightly understand that those words are not authenticated by any human scholars anymore than the words of the KJV/TR are. Could it be that TR ‘activists’ (not counting the simple Christian here) are not the Protestants resisting the pope in your analogy, but rather the church members who don’t like what the pastor is saying [=a believing text critic saying that we can have confidence in a non-TR edition] and feel like they are entitled to have an opinion more valuable than his without having to study the Scriptures to see if what he is saying is true? You actually touch on this on p. 46 of your book, but you brush it off saying there’s “little merit in the charge of egoism”. Yet Jesus said ye shall know them by their fruits, and I am hard-pressed to find very many TR defenders willing to admit that they made a mistake about anything. It’s more common to see comments deleted when someone is called out for misrepresenting/being factually wrong (two examples are the way Matthew Rose’s comments have been deleted from the YouTube chats of a couple of Christian McShaffrey’s videos when he has rightly called McShaffrey or Riddle out for mistakes/taking things out of context, and how the Confessional Bibliology group hides behind the private group settings—such behavior reminds me of John 3:20: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”). It’s not usually a problem with Byzantine prioritists though, nor do I see it a whole lot from the reasoned eclectics who are actually doing the work. Just something to consider. Jesus said “ye shall know them by their fruits”, and unwillingness to repent/persistence in misrepresentation is easier to see and understand than complex issues in textual criticism/how to read minuscule text/Byzantine liturgical history/papyrology, etc.

Van Kleeck: It is always good to hear from you. That is a horrible story about your wife’s uncle. No doubt sin can enter into the church and cause the very thing you described. That said, it is the Barean church members [Acts 17:10-11] and the saints in Ephesus [Rev. 2:2] that critiqued and judged the words of apostles and supposed apostles. Most NT scholars hold that the early church was largely composed of illiterate slaves and yet it was they who were commended by Luke and John for the capacity to discern the true Apostolic Message from the false one. If the Church of the first century could discern what words of professing apostles were God’s words and what words were not, certainly the Church of today having the same Christ, the same Spirit, and the preserved words of God can do the same when a text-critic [who is not an apostle] claims this or that about the content of Scripture [i.e., the Apostolic Message].

In all honesty, I don’t want to get textual criticism wrong. I don’t want to strawman the position. Every book I read on textual criticism is not distinctively Christian. All or the vast majority of the words could have been written by Bart Ehrman with minor or no change at all. Peter Gurry’s introduction to the CBGM could easily have been written by a godless Christ-hating atheist. Apparently, the discipline of textual criticism operates just fine without ever appealing to the theological realities which gave rise to God’s words. Christians and non-Christians alike can spill thousands of pages of ink without even mentioning let alone treating these theological realities and be applauded and published for such fine work.

The current evangelical position has not relinquished Alexandrian priority though interestingly enough Byz now holds greater sway in the advent of the CBGM. It seems to me that text-critics are two-faced to the Church regularly and publicly when they tell the Church we have an “embarrassment of riches” because we have so many manuscripts only to turn around in the privacy of the academy and tell young scholars that Byz (which accounts for the vast majority of the “embarrassment of riches”) is the most corrupted text-form, that Byz is often only counted as 1 source in the apparatus, and that the number of manuscripts is not what matter but the quality/age of the manuscript.

I may be wrong on these things. Perhaps Gurry’s book is a monolith of exegetical and theological erudition grounding and supporting the CBGM and I just missed it. Perhaps Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are no longer the best manuscripts and I just missed the news. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that of written manuscripts minuscules count for the largest share and of that share Byz accounts for nearly 80% of those manuscripts. I am open to correction but I think I’m spot on or at least in the neighborhood with these conclusions.

Then there’s the claim by the OP that we “get God’s words” by trusting “well-validated academic men.” The hubris is palpable and it tastes like Roman Catholic dogma dressed in doctoral regalia.

Then there’s the modern practice of textual criticism which seems wholly absent of any exegetical, theological, or church historical guardrails. But this post is already way too long. In sum, if you will offer an accurate [your word] summary of modern textual criticism and assuming there are no meaningful follow-up questions I’d be willing to accept that summary and move forward with it in my apologetics and polemics on this topic.

Hixon: Thanks for your reply. A few days ago, one of my former professors included this in one of his posts: “Augustine put it well: an author can only be understood through friendship.”

If you have taken it upon yourself to teach others about textual criticism, it is not my responsibility before God to do your work for you and give you an accurate definition of it—you should be having that as your top priority. If you’re looking for reasons to be against it rather than seeking to understand how a believer can have this position, you’ll never understand it. Maybe you don’t read text-critical works that way, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that many TR advocates do (Jeff Riddle’s recent review of Myths and Mistakes being one example). I doubt many text critics (assuming they have the time to do so) would be opposed to reading your description and giving you feedback, but asking someone to do your work for you is asking too much. I forget who said it but “a desire to preach without the burden to study is a desire to perform”—the same goes for positions in which we teach others about things like textual criticism. I spend more time reading KJV/TR literature and bibliology these days than I spend reading actual textual criticism and papyrology because I do want to know what y’all are saying and what y’all’s arguments are.

What seems to be the elephant in the room is that most text critics are actually professing believers, and millions of Christians trust non-TR translations as their Bibles (I’d argue that there are probably more Christians who are led by the Spirit to trust these Bibles as God’s Word than there are TR defenders, so if that is your argument and both can’t be right, it does raise the question of who is in sin). Not all equally conservative, for sure, but at the same time, not all are flaming liberals either. I don’t think I have ever seen a TR person have the attitude of “wow—these guys have spent years of their lives studying this issue and know WAY more about this stuff than I do, and yet they have this position that doesn’t seem right to me. What am I missing? How can we reconcile these two positions?” There’s not even a need to agree with text critics to have that approach—just look at nearly any Byzantine prioritist for an example of how that’s possible—Dwayne Green, Maurice Robinson, Jonathan Borland, etc.

What unspoken theological underpinnings are at work in people who are not writing in an explicitly theological setting? There’s an aspect of genre in academic writing (not everyone would agree with it, but it’s a thing). Reading some of the academic works by Pete Williams on Syriac translation technique, Simon Gathercole on the Gospel of Thomas, Dirk Jongkind on scribal habits, if you knew nothing else about them, you might not know that they are all members (at one point at least some of them were elders) at the reformed Baptist church that Mark Dever attended when he lived in Cambridge, but it would be a mistake to say that because they didn’t explicitly mention their theological presuppositions in an academic context, their content is on par with Ehrman’s. A parallel example might be my undergraduate research supervisor. In organic chemistry, green chemistry, etc. he would come across exactly like one of the token atheists in the department (in fact, he and one of them were among the organic chemistry professors). But if you asked his personal beliefs, he would tell you that he saw chemistry as obedience on his part to the command to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth,” so his research was an outworking of his active obedience to the Scriptures (he also said that when it came to the age of the earth, there was only one who was there to see it, and since He told us what He did, we should believe him). Nobody ever accused him of having atheistic positions because they allowed him to be a Christian.

Why don’t TR defenders ‘allow’ believing, conservative, evangelical text critics to be believing, conservative, and evangelical Christians?

Van Kleeck: Thanks, Elijah Hixson If you are unwilling to offer an “accurate” description of modern textual criticism then I will continue to believe I am accurate. I have indeed taken it upon myself, and my professors across my BA, 3 graduate degrees and a Ph.D. have all compelled me to hear their arguments, read their books in favor of your position, and write like papers. This is the conclusion I have come to. If textual criticism is so Kingdom-oriented perhaps your side should spend more time talking about the exegesis that grounds your position rather than the supposed objective evidential superiority of Vaticanus.

You say that the elephant in the room is that “most text critics are actually professing believers, and millions of Christians trust non-TR translations as their Bibles.” This is hardly an argument. To use your own words, “Most worshipping Baal at the foot of Mt. Sanai were professing Jews, and millions of Jews on that day trusted in a non-I AM being as their god.” You must know that your reasoning on this point does nothing to support the claim that modern textual criticism is a Christian enterprise grounded in exegesis and Christian theology.

>”What unspoken theological underpinnings are at work in people who are not writing in an explicitly theological setting? “

To claim that textual criticism done on the New Testament is not an “explicitly theological setting” is perhaps the greatest distillation of why the position you hold is confused, dangerous, and must be refuted. The New Testament is by its very nature theological in a way that nothing else in the world is. Yet by your words, you believe the opposite. Indeed, you believe what is clearly false by the lights of elementary Christian teaching.

>”but it would be a mistake to say that because they didn’t explicitly mention their theological presuppositions in an academic context, their content is on par with Ehrman’s.”

Ok, so in a world where babies are being torn apart at the behest of their mother, where the average age for being exposed to porn is 8, where men are “transitioning” to women, where it is increasingly difficult for academics to define what a woman is, and the Protestant Church is slowly shrinking you think now is not the time to state our explicitly Christian precommitments in an academic sphere of textual criticism? Indeed, in your last post you defend such private holding of beliefs. If not now, when? By the looks of it your answer is, never.

It is always good to interact with you Elijah.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Part 2 comes tomorrow. Blessings.

The Historical Flow and the Authoritative Means: How Do We Know What is Scripture?

Over the weekend I had several fruitful conversations with Critical Text/Multiple Version Onlyists. These conversations are going to serve as the larger bulk of my musings this week on the textual/version issue.

One conversation I had over Sunday lunch with a very hospitable family form my church. At one point in the discussion I began to explain that academic conclusions about manuscript evidence do not possess the requisite authority to declare whether the story of the woman caught in adultery is Scripture or not. To which the wife, a dyed in the wool James White fan, declares, “It’s all about the manuscripts.”

To which I replied, “Then where is the place in a discussion that’s ‘all about the manuscripts’ for the Spirit of God speaking through the words of God to the people of God who then receive the true words of God by faith?” Really no place was provided for the content of my question. My gracious interlocutors merely stated that God does that, but they did not locate it anywhere in the knowing and determining what is or is not Scripture.

So in thinking about it since that conversation I think there needs to be a clear nuance between a decidedly non-Christian Historical Flow of how the Bible comes to the Church and a decidedly Christian Authoritative Means whereby the Spirit-led Church, as the only determiner of what is Scripture, determines what is or is not Scripture. Below is a rough comparison of how I believe these two should be divided.

In the left column is the Historical Flow which is how the Bible comes to the Church through the moments of history which any deity from any Abrahamic religion could do. The right column is the distinctively Christian Authoritative Means whereby the Church evaluates the Bible as it comes to them through history. These of course are generalities aimed at presenting the basics of these distinctly different sides. As such, these sides can generally be applied to anytime the Bible has come to the Church through historical means, but only one makes specific room for the Holy Spirit in determining which words are His and which are not.

1.) Textual Scholars evaluate the textual
evidence and make the best judgement
they can based on the data and their
own subjective judgment.

2.) The decisions of the textual scholars are passed down to the Church through the Greek text and the subsequent versions translated from the Greek.

3.) Left to itself, the Historical Flow makes the textual scholar to be the authority in determining what are or are not the words of God, and the Church merely submits to those decisions.

Observation 1: There seems to be little to no place in this system accounting for the role of the Holy Spirit in authoritatively determining what words are and are not His words.

Observation 2: Assuming the flow of the above, there is little difference today between the way God’s people submit to what words are God’s words via textual scholars and the way God’s people submitted to what words are God’s words as declared by the Catholic priest or Pope.

Observation 3: If this flow or something near it accounts for how the modern evangelical textual critics account for how the Bible rightly comes to Christ’s Bride in time and space and how Christ’s Bride is to submit to those chosen words as the words of God, then the Confessional Text/Standard Sacred Text position is correct in labeling such a method godless, transcendentless, and worthy of opposition and ultimate defeat.

If it is not, then the literature and lectures offered by the modern evangelical textual scholar have largely failed to indicate that such is not the case.

1.) Textual Scholars evaluate the textual
evidence and make the best judgement
they can based on the data and their
own subjective judgment.

2.) The decisions of the textual scholars are passed down to the Church through the Greek text and the subsequent versions translated from the Greek.

3.) The Church, recognizing that while several Greek texts/versions contain the Gospel, each Greek text/version differs and God does not differ with Himself in the slightest. Therefore each of the several Greek texts/versions cannot equally be the word of God in totality.

4.) As a result the Church, by the Spirit of God recognizing the voice of the Shepherd in the words of God, accepts and/or rejects some or many of the decisions made by textual scholars because the Church does or does not hear the voice of the Shepherd in some or many of the readings chosen by the textual scholar. In short, the Christian plumber and stay-at-home mom tell the textual scholar that his choice to put in or take out these or those words was a mistake or acceptable.

5.) The textual scholar as a servant of the Church humbly accepts the decision of God’s people and as a result the scholar retracts their choice as unacceptable.

Observation 1: In this flow there is a robust exegetically and theologically based position for the role of the Holy Spirit in authoritatively determining what words are and are not His words.

Observation 2: Assuming this flow is to plainly and clearly remain in the vein of our Reformation era forefathers in rejecting man, whether Pope or textual scholar, as the one who declares to the Church what is or is not God’s word. Rather this flow, preserves the Reformation truth that the Scriptures are autopistos, trustworthy in and of themselves needing no scholar to bolster or supplement that trustworthiness.

Often an objection comes up at this point which says, “Assuming that the Church is the final authority in determining what is or is not the word of God, can’t they make a mistake and choose something that is not God’s word thus calling the whole method into question?”

Indeed, the Church could make a mistake but that is not grounds to reject the method of having the Church as the final arbiter of what is or is not the word of God. Could we not say that pastors make mistakes? Indeed we could. Does that mean we ought to do away with the office of the pastor? The same goes for deacons. Has the Church at times, even now, failed to perform its duty as the instrument of God’s will in the world as salt and light? Indeed, it has, but that doesn’t mean that now the local Moose Lodge and 4H Group is now the means of salt and light in the world while the Church is not. Yes, the Church can be mistaken but that doesn’t somehow make textual scholars the final arbiter of what words are or are not the words of God.

The Spirit guides His people into all truth including the truth of what words are God’s and what words are not. This is the way.

Another objection is, “Well what do you do with the fact that the Church at one point held to the Latin Vulgate, a translation, and now the Church holds to the Hebrew/Greek, and you hold to the KJV in the English. How can all of those be right and also wrong?”

First, in order for there to be a contradiction there must be contradiction in time and way. Are the Latin Vulgate and the Hebrew/Greek the word of God at the same time and in the same way? No. Without getting into necessary details the Latin only contained the words of God while the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the TR are the word of God. The difference of course here is the difference between an glass containing water and a glass being water. Furthermore, the Latin can only at best possess the substantia doctrinae of the original while the Hebrew/Greek possess the substantia doctrinae and the substantia verbae. As a result of these two reasons, among others, the Holy Spirit’s voice is more clearly and completely heard by the people of God in the Hebrew/Greek original than in Rome’s Latin translation.

“But what about modern versions?”, you say. The same applies. In many of the modern versions the voice of the Shepherd can be heard in them so that the reader can come to saving knowledge in Jesus Christ. But in many other ways the opposite is true.

Take for instance the fact that many of the most popular modern versions, excluding the KJV at this point, include the long ending in Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery albeit in brackets and/or with a footnote mentioning that the oldest and best manuscripts do not include these texts.

Why the contradiction? The scholars claim these passages aren’t original, and yet they are printed in our English modern versions. The reason is that the Authoritative Means still reigns because that is the way God intended to inform His people of His words.

What do you mean?

Well, in an interview with Daniel Wallace, he was asked why the publishers of these modern versions continue to publish the long ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery? His reply was that publishers are afraid that if people in the Church pick up a new Bible and that Bible doesn’t have the story of the woman caught in adultery, those people will return that Bible, news will spread, and no one will buy that Bible which will be a huge financial cost to the publisher. So instead, against the advice of the scholars, the publishers leave these texts in because the publishers recognize what the people want.

Such a scenario is the very definition of the Authoritative Means: 1.) The textual scholar says X should not be in the Bible. 2.) God’s people disagree. 3.) The Bible retains X despite the expert opinion of the textual scholar. The problem is that the textual scholars are too proud to submit to God’s people and so they persist in their rebellion against Christ’s Bride.

In this sense then it is fair to say that the ESV, which retains and brackets the story of the woman caught in adultery, is as a translation more reliable, more accurate, and more the Scripture than the Greek of the NA 28. Put simply, in this case a translation [i.e., the ESV] is superior to the original [i.e., NA 28].

Just as the KJV informed Scrivener regarding what is now the TBS Greek NT, so the ESV is informing the NA 28. But where Scrivener was humble enough to make the changes, the modern evangelical text critics remain in their hubris and rebellion to the Church as the Authoritative Means or final arbiter of what are or are not the words of God.

At this point you could offer servings of irony by the spoonful.

Thomas Stackhouse (1677–1752) and the Magnificence and Sublimity of the KJV

[Against the backdrop of recent posts addressing the disparagement of the KJV, the following 18th century assessment if presented. The modifiers “magnificence,” “sublimity,” “eloquence,” “grandeur,” “nobleness,” and “majestic” are applied to the KJV. By inference, by referring to “St. Paul’s writings,” “the Apostle’s eloquence,” and “the holy Penmen,” Stackhouse argues that the beauty of the vulgar Translation is because of the original writings from which it was translated. The stark contrast of attitude toward the literary style of the KJV between the mid-18th century to the present day begs the question as to how the Christian social imaginary developed to bring us to his place in history. Perhaps better stated, how the Academic social imaginary influenced a change in the broader Christian social imaginary when dealing with the Bible.]

Translations, [in general] as we said before, are a great detriment to the turn of a period or the majesty of style; and yet we may venture to maintain, that, is St. Paul’s writings (even according to our vulgar Translation [KJV]) there are several passages, that have such magnificence and sublimity of expression, and as true a cadence of period, even according to the nicest rules of rhetoric, as in the most celebrated compositions of the heathens. To mention one for all, which is the place where the Apostle undertakes the vindication of himself: Whereinsoever any is bold, I speak foolishly, I am bold also. Are they Hebrews? So am I, Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they the ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool, I am more; in labors more abundant; in stripes above measure; in prisons more frequent; in death often. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once I was stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I have been in the deep. In jouneying often; in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils abomg false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often; in hunger and thirst, in fasting often; in cold and nakedness; besides these things which are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Hitherto the division and cadence of every period has been very rhetorical, and consonant to the nicest ear, and the matter throughout noble, but in the next verse, the Apostle’s eloquence is still more surprising: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern my infirmities. Here the heroicalness of the Apostle’s religion inspires his style with a new degree of sublimity and gives it a turn of grandeur and nobleness of thought, as in inimitable by pagan eloquence. Those infirmities, which a pagan would have palliated by little extenuations for the fear of impairing his reputation and affected fame, our Apostle values himself upon, as the glory of his religion, and the brave conquest of the flesh, by the grace of God under the Christian dispensation, which heathen morality knew nothing of.

From these few examples (for it would be endless to proceed in instances of this kind) it appears, that the Holy Scriptures are far from being defective in point of eloquence; and (what is a peculiar commendation of them) their style is not only full of grateful variety, sometimes majestic, as becomes that high and holy one that inhabiteth eternity; sometimes so low, as to answer the other part of his character, who dwelleth with him who is of a humble spirit; but at all times so proper, and adapted to several subjects they treat of, that when they speak of such things as God would not have men to pry into, they wrap them up in clouds and thick darkness, by that means, to deter inquisitive man (as he did at Sinai) from breaking into the mount; when they speak of things of a middle [complex] nature, (which may be useful to some, but not indispensably necessary to all) they leave them more accessible, yet not so obvious, as to be within every man’s reach. But when the speak such truths that are necessary for everyone to know, they are as plain as possible, and condescensive to the meanest capacity; it being agreeable to the wisdom and goodness of God, that, what he has made the revelation of his will, should contain an exercise of all sorts of readers, to humble the learned and instruct the modest Christian, and, in this respect resemble the fulness of a river, wherein the lamb may quench its thirst, and yet the largest elephant not be able to exhaust it.

Giving a succinct tutorial on inductive Bible study, Stackhouse writes,

And while we are employed in reading it, the first thing we are to do is settle our minds into a fixed attention to the sense of what we read; to consider diligently the principal design of the holy Penmen, and the weight of every argument he makes use of to enforce his doctrine or precepts; to attend carefully to the context and be always mindful what the words refer to, and what coherence they have with the things which went before, or follow in the thread of discourse; to compare one place with another, or with several others, if there be an occasion, that the doubtful and obscure may be ascertained and illustrated by those what are more plain and easy; and lastly, to observe (as we go along) the peculiar force and elegancy of the sacred style, which, in several instances will be found (to the great satisfaction of every impartial reader) to rise above the strains of the most eloquent orators of Greece and Rome.

Thomas Stackhouse, A Complete Body of Speculative and Practical Divinity, 3rd ed. (London: Printed for T. Cox, at the Lamb under the Royal-Exchange, Cornhill, 1743), 61-62, 68.

Andrew Willet, (1562-1621), on the Sufficiency of Scripture

Now the Church must hear Christ’s voice. Christ’s sheep will hear his voice, John 10:16. They will neither hear nor follow a stranger, ver. 5. Christ’s voice is not to be heard but in the Scriptures. Therefore other doctrine must not be received of the Church than is taught and delivered in the Scriptures. This directly impungeth the popish opinion of unwritten traditions which they bring in beside, yea contrary to the scriptures, which the they hold not to contain all things necessary to salvation. But the Apostle saith otherwise, that the Scriptures are able to make one wise unto salvation and to make the man of God perfectly prepared to every good work, 2 Timothy 3;15, 17. If perfect wisdom be found in the scriptures, what need is there of any other additions. Whatsoever is added to that which is perfect showeth a defect and is superfluous. Therefore Tertullian saith excellently, We need no curious invention after Christ, nor no inquisition after (of beside) the Gospel. If any will search further, he is like a wayfaring man without a guide in a desert country, and as a ship on the sea without a pilot. To leave the scripture is a way to error, not a stay from erring as he again worthily saith, They believe without Scripture, that they may believe against scripture.

[Tertullian makes an interesting observation in the last quote. To believe without Scripture does not give the believer a neutral viewpoint, or an open-minded perspective, or a scholarly reserved perspective in relation to the Scripture. Rather, to believe without Scripture sets them on a trajectory to “believe against scripture” or to oppose the content of scripture. Again we see the Orthodox Reformation theme of the incompatibility and indeed the warfare between faith human or faith divine.]

Andrew Willet, A Treatise of Solomons Marriage (London: Imprinted by F.K. for Thomas Mann the elder and William Welby, and are to be sold at the Swanne in Pauls church-yard1612), 8-9.

Carl. R. Trueman’s important book, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” and climbing out of the rabbit hole.

I am almost finished reading Carl. R. Trueman’s important book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 425 pages. Of the many things this book illustrates is that one’s worldview is the product of sentiment or how one feels about self, and not reason, especially if the issue under discussion is easy to understand or seems intuitive. “Human nature, one might say, becomes something individuals or societies invent for themselves.” [42] Following Rieff’s categories, this is the Psychological man or the Therapeutic man where there is an “inward quest for personal psychological happiness.” [45] Trueman illustrates this when discussing the inroads of Darwinian evolution into mainstream cultural thought. Acceptance came not by some rigorous biological study but by an intuitively simple argument that apes, that look very similar to man, preceded man on the evolutionary scale, and other kinds of similar tripe. Without further investigation, critical or otherwise, a theory that obliterated humanity as possesses transcendent teleological attributes and thus a unique identity was considered merely evolved animals with no teleological purpose. The immanent is all there is. Thus, because it seemed intuitively right, the entire idea of what makes man human was turned upside down. Culture altering and culture destroying attitudes and actions are in place not because a few elites were disciples of radicals of the past, but that vestiges of that radicalism that could be easily understood simply have been uncritically accepted as intuitively correct.

Trueman throughout the book emphasizes that the conditioning of the masses to accept this was not done by the elite steeped in these philosophies but what he refers to as “intuitive simplicity” when dealing with Darwinian evolution; “intuitive authority” relating to science; “intuitive” part of societal discourse; intuitive cultural orthodoxies relating to the acceptance of homosexuality; and “intuitive associations” of associating sexual freedom with political freedom.” None of these “intuitions” developed because of study, lectures, or critical evaluation, but were normalized because elements of their thought simply made sense. It just seemed like the right thing to do; it felt right; it was simple to understand; just a matter of taste. Trueman is saying that though few know the writings of those he quotes, the culture and therefore, we, are living in a world of their creation. Trueman points out that these developments are fundamentally, antihistory, anticultural, and antichristian. So, in my words, for no good reason, you and I find ourselves in a world that one man Trueman cites says is “signifying the death of culture rather than the birth pains of a coming liberated utopia.” [55]

And what about the undermining or the eliminating all together of the historic sacred text of the English-speaking Western Church, the KJV? While those who disparage the KJV have probably never read or read little of Marx and his disdain for history because for him it was the history of oppression, nonetheless the simplest, and most intuitive understanding of Marxism has been adopted by Evangelicals (and with the rest of modern culture) and are engaged in anti-historical actions. Pre-critical orthodox theological formulation is disparaged and ignored and the history of the English Bible from Tyndale to the KJV are mere vestiges of an unenlightened, unimportant time. History for Marx was the record of repression and oppression of which Christianity played the primary role. Indeed, the source of oppression is the Bible. “For Nietzsche and for Marx, however, history and culture are tales of oppression that need to be overcome and overthrown.” [192] MVO Evangelicals are not connoisseurs of Marx, but they do show an affinity to Marxist thought and practice by obliterating the historic importance of pre-critical theological thought and writings and specifically the KJV to the Church. Where Marx in propagating his radical worldview failed, Evangelicalism, by joining religious sentiment with Marxist antihistory has succeeded in removing the historic exegetical, theological, and philosophical Foundation of the Church.

This in turn demonstrates why arguments from reason have been unsuccessful in the defense of Biblically based, historical institutions such as traditional marriage, the definition of male and female, the uniqueness of man being made in the image of God, and the authority of the Reformation Bible. Reason confronts the bulwark of intuitively (not critically) informed cultural orthodoxy the “social imaginary,” “a common understanding which makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy,”[37] and thus to say otherwise is ridiculous, even hurtful to the sentiments and feelings of the Psychological man. It is not his choices or practices that are under assault – it is his very identity as a modern self that is being attacked. If psychological happiness creates the self’s identity all external reason to the contrary is an attack on the person as king. Reason did not get the culture, or at Trueman says, the anti-culture, to this point, and reason will not shake the culture free from its “obvious” conclusions. After all, they’re obvious.

Please don’t take this post as some kind of review or synopsis. About halfway through the book his arguments began to coalesce, and I started to systematize my notes and to speak to members of my family about the framework and content of what I was reading. Trueman does not attempt to provide a solution for which he should be further applauded. The gospel witness, or the message of being born again starts with the knowledge of sin. If you’re not a sinner, you have nothing to be saved from. Christ died for the ungodly so if you’re not the ungodly then its not for you he died. Trueman’s book leaves us all sinners, which is precisely the place to begin.

Sometimes we get the notion that Bible defense to be such has to “stay in its lane” and limit itself to past formats of presentation. But the Bible is the Word of God. It informs us personally, theologically, philosophically, exegetically, teleologically, et al – it speaks to man with the limitless potential of being made in the image of God. The notion of limiting the scope of Biblical application, is, to say, intuitively ludicrous. Trueman has done us all a favor. Everyone should read this book. You will find it enlightening. You will question how deeply you are already down the rabbit hole without really knowing, and then you will confront the fears of climbing out.

Is the Angel at the Pool of Bethesda Scriptural?

Do you remember the story in John 5:3-4 of the angel who moves the waters at the pool of Bethesda and the first to enter would be healed of their infirmity? This story appears in the KJV and many modern translations remove it.

Here again we draw on the work of Will Kinney to show that a thorough and reasonable answer can easily be found to support the inclusion of the story and also diminish the strength of the position which demands the story be taken out.

Perhaps one of the more interesting observations made by Kinney is the fact that NIV publishers excluded the story in the English NIV, included the whole story in the Spanish NIV, and only included verse 4 in the NIV published Spanish speakers of Spain. Sometimes you can only shake your head.

The following is a portion of an article written by Will Kinney all of which can be found here.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Likewise, and not surprisingly, James White also criticizes these verses as found in the King James Bible. In his book, The King James Only Controversy, Mr. White says on page 156: “This verse provides a classic example of how a marginal note explaining something in the text can end up as part of the text somewhere down the line. John’s reference to the pool of Bethesda and the sick lying about it would be confusing to some. A marginal note explaining the traditional belief of the Jews regarding the angel stirring the waters COULD HAVE easily been accidentally inserted into the text by a later copyist, thinking that it was actually a part of the text that had been accidentally left out and placed in the margin.”

Well, it’s nice of Mr. White to give us his conjectures and personal theories, but we may well turn the tables on his view and suggest that some few scribes may have had a problem with what the verses clearly say and simply removed them.

Not only are the verses found in the Majority of all Greek texts, including at least 22 uncial copies, but, as Dean Burgon and Jack Moormon note, so also in the Old Latin copies of a, aur, b, c, e, ff2, g1, j, r1, Latin Vulgate, the Vulgate Clementine, the Syriac Peshitta, Harclean, Palestinian, some Coptic Boharic copies, the Armenian and the Ethiopian ancient versions.

Jack Moorman significantly points out that by omitting the last part of verse three and all of verse four, we then have no explanation as to why all those people were gathered at the pool, and verse 7 makes no sense at all. Verse seven states: “The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.”

Both Burgon and Moorman also confirm that the verses in question are quoted by many early church Fathers including Tertullian 200 A.D; Tatian 175 A.D., Gregory of Nazianzus 390 A.D.; Ambrose, Chrysostom 390 A.D. and Didymus 379 A.D, Ammonius, Hilary, Ephraem the Syrian, Nilus, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, and Theodorus Studita. (See Burgon, The Traditional Text, Volume 1 pages 82-84).

Many early church writers testified to the legitimacy of these verses -“And there was in Jerusalem a place prepared for bathing, which was called in Hebrew the House of Mercy, having five porches. And there were laid in them much people of the sick, and blind, and lame, and paralysed, WAITING FOR THE MOVING OF THE WATER. AND THE ANGEL FROM TIME TO TIME WENT DOWN INTO THE PLACE OF BATHING, AND MOVED THE WATER; AND THE FIRST THAT WENT DOWN AFTER THE MOVING OF THE WATER, EVERY PAIN THAT HE HAD WAS HEALED.” Tatian (140 AD), Diatessaron

Tertullian (160-221 A.D.) in one sermon On Baptism makes it clear that the passage was in the early manuscript that he was using for he says, “If it seems a novelty for an angel to be present in waters, an example of what was to come to pass has forerun. An angel, by his intervention, was want to stir the pool at Bethsaida. They who were complaining of ill-health used to watch for him; for whoever had been the first to descend into them, after his washing ceased to complain.” (On Baptism I: 1:5)
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/evans_bapt/evans_bapt_text_trans.htm


“Therefore it is said: AN ANGEL OF THE LORD WENT DOWN ACCORDING TO THE SEASON INTO THE POOL, AND THE WATER WAS TROUBLED; AND HE WHO FIRST AFTER THE TROUBLING OF THE WATER WENT DOWN INTO THE POOL WAS HEALED OF WHATSOEVER DISEASE HE WAS HOLDEN.” Ambrose (339 – 397 AD), On The Mysteries, Chapter 4

“And all benediction has its origin from His operation, AS WAS SIGNIFIED IN THE MOVING OF THE WATER AT BETHESDA.” Ambrose (339 – 397 AD), On The Holy Spirit, 1.7

“You read, too, in the Gospel that THE ANGEL DESCENDED AT THE APPOINTED TIME INTO THE POOL AND TROUBLED THE WATER, AND HE WHO FIRST WENT DOWN INTO THE POOL WAS MADE WHOLE.” Ambrose (339 – 397 AD), On The Holy Spirit, 1.7

“Now there is at Jerusalem a sheep pool, called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of halt, blind, withered, WAITING FOR THE MOVING OF THE WATER.” Chrysostom (347 – 407), John, Homily 36

“Around this pool lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, WAITING FOR THE MOVING OF THE WATER; but then infirmity was a hindrance to him who desired to be healed, now each hath power to approach, FOR NOW IT IS NOT AN ANGEL THAT TROUBLETH, IT IS THE LORD OF ANGELS WHO WORKETH ALL.” Chrysostom (347 – 407), John, Homily 36

“WHEN THE ANGEL GAVE THE SIGN BY THE MOVING OF THE WATER. FOR THUS WAS THAT POOL SANCTIFIED, FOR THAT THE ANGEL CAME DOWN AND MOVED THE WATER.” Augustine (354 – 430 AD), Sermon 75

“And when did the sick man descend into the pool? WHEN THE ANGEL GAVE THE SIGN BY THE MOVING OF THE WATER.” Augustine (354 – 430 AD), Sermon 75

“Bethesda, the pool in Judea, could not cure the limbs of those who suffered from bodily weakness WITHOUT THE ADVENT OF AN ANGEL.” Jerome (347 – 420 AD), Against the Luciferians

“And in the same way in the case of the man who had been lying for thirty-eight years near the edge of the pool, AND HOPING FOR A CURE FROM THE MOVING OF THE WATER.” John Cassian (365-433 AD), Conferences 13.16

In his book, The Revision Revised, Dean John William Burgon adamantly defends the authenticity of these verses. He says on page 283 regarding the troubling of the pool of Bethesda that this passage “is not even allowed a bracketed place in Dr. Hort’s Text. How the accomplished Critic would have set about persuading the Ante-Nicene Fathers that they were in error for holding it to be genuine Scripture, is hard to imagine.”

The so called “oldest and best” manuscripts, upon which many modern versions rely, omit not only these verses in John 5, but anywhere from 11 to 45 entire verses from the New Testament. They frequently don’t even agree among themselves. Instead of the traditional reading of BETHESDA, Vaticanus reads Bethsaida, D has Belzetha, while Sinaiticus has Bethzatha.

Before going on with what some other scholars of equal or greater learning than those behind the modern version bibles have said regarding John 5:3-4, I would like at this time to mention the long list of Bibles that continue to include all the words found in John 5:3-4.

The Anglo Saxon Gospels 990 A.D.

The oldest Bible translation online that I was able to find is the Anglo Saxon Gospels, of 990 A.D. There is also a copy of the Saxon Gospels from 1175 A.D.  Both copies contain all the words in both verses 3 and 4.  It is almost impossible to read, but you can clearly see that this very old pre-English translation contained all the words found in

John 5:3-4 This is what it looks like – “John 5:3 on þam porticum læg mycel menygeo ge-adlugra blindra. & healtra ænð forscruncenra & ge-anbidedon þæs wæteres steriunge.  John 5:4 “Drihtnes engel com to hys time on þonne mere. & þæt wæter wæs astyred. and se þe raðest com on þonne mere æfter þas wæteres steriunge wærd ge-hæld fram swa hwilcere utrumnysse  swa he on wæs.”  

Bible translations that include the two verses in full are Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, the Great Bible 1540, Matthew’s Bible of 1549, the Bishops’ Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1560-1599, the Beza N.T. 1599, Mace N.T. 1729,  Wesley’s New Testament 1755, Worsley Version 1770, Haweis N.T. 1795, the Thomson Bible 1808, The Revised Translation 1815, the Living Oracles 1835, Pickering N.T. 1840, Morgan N.T. 1848, the Boothroyd Bbile 1853, The Revised English Bible 1877, Darby 1890, Youngs 1898, J. B. Phillips translation 1962, New Life Version 1969, Living Bible 1971, The New Berkeley Version in Modern English 1969, the NKJV 1982, Amplified Bible 1987, KJV 21st Century 1994, Third Millennium Bible 1998, The New Testament 1999 by Jonathan Mitchell, Green’s Modern KJV 2000, Tomson N.T. 2002, The Resurrection Life N.T. 2005, the Concordant Version 2006, the Holman Standard Bible 2009,  the Jubilee Bible 2010, the Orthodox Jewish Bible of 2011 and The Legacy New Testament 2021.

Other English Bibles that contain all these words are The Word of Yah 1993, Interlinear Greek N.T. 1997 (Larry Pierce), Lawrie Translation 1998, The Koster Scriptures 1998, God’s First Truth 1999, Last Days Bible 1999, The World English Bible 2000, the Sacred Scriptures Family of Yah 2001, The Evidence Bible 2003, the Pickering N.T. 2005, the Faithful New Testament 2009, Bond Slave Version 2009, English Majority Text Version 2009 (Paul Esposito), Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010, Holy Scriptures VW Edition 2010, The New European Version 2010, the Online Interlinear 2010 (André de Mol), Biblos Interlinear Bible 2011, The Aramaic N.T. 2011, Far Above All Translation 2011, The Work of God’s Children Illustrated Bible 2011, Orthodox Jewish Bible 2011, Interlinear Hebrew-Greek Scriptures 2012 (Mebust), Modern English Bible 2012, the Natural Israelite Bible 2012, the International Standard Version 2014, Hebrew Names Version 2014, The Modern Literal New Testament 2014, the Modern English Version 2014, the International Children’s Bible 2015 and The New Matthew’s Bible 2016.

Now there are several new bible versions recently put out that are based primarily on the Westcott-Hort revised Greek texts which generally omit some 3000 words form the New Testament, and yet they have included all these words in their versions.  

These include the Living Bible 1971, the Amplified bible 1987, New Century Version 2005, the Holman Standard of 2009, the 2014 International Standard Version, the Expanded Bible 2011 and The Voice of 2012. All these versions have gone back to including all the words in these two verses. The new versionists are nothing but consistently inconsistent.

Foreign Language Bibles that contain ALL of John 5:3-4

In addition to all these English Bible that contain the ending of verse three and all of verse four, the following foreign language Bibles also contain all these words: The Spanish Sagradas Escrituras 1569, the Spanish Reina Valera 1602, 1909, 1960 and  1995, La Biblia de las Américas 1997 and La Nueva Biblia Latinoamericana de Hoy 2005, the Italian Diodati 1649 and the New Diodati of 1991, the Riveduta 1927, La Parola e Vita 1997, the Afrikaans 1953, Arabic Smith & Van Dyke, and Arabic Easy to Read Version 2009, Basque Navaro-Labourdin, Bulgarian Protestant Bible 2000, Chinese Union Version Traditional, Croatian, Czech, the Danish BPH 2006, Dutch Staten Vertaling, Danish, Finnish, the French Martin 1744,  Louis Segond 1910, French Ostervald 1996, the French Louis Segond 21 of 2007, the German Luther 1545 and the 2000 German Schlachter Bible, Icelandic Bible, Hungarian Karoli, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori Bible, the Netherlands Het Boek 2000, Norwegian En Leavened Bok 1988, the Polish Updated Gdansk Bible 2013, the Romanian Cornilescu Bible and Romanian Fidela Bible 2014, the Portuguese Almeida Corregida 2009 and O Livro 2000,  , Russian Synodal Version and the Victor Zhoromsky translation, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, Vietnamese

the Modern Greek Bible 

3. Εν ταυταις κατεκειτο πληθος πολυ των ασθενουντων, τυφλων, χωλων, ξηρων, οιτινες περιεμενον την κινησιν του υδατος. 

4. Διοτι αγγελος κατεβαινε κατα καιρον εις την κολυμβηθραν και εταραττε το υδωρ· οστις λοιπον εισηρχετο πρωτος μετα την ταραχην του υδατος, εγινετο υγιης απο οποιανδηποτε νοσον επασχεν. 

https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/bible/greek-modern/john/5/

and the Modern Hebrew Bible – “שמה שכבו חולים ועורים ופסחים ויבשי כח לרב והמה מיחלים לתנועת המים׃  כי מלאך ירד במועדו אל הברכה וירעש את מימיה והיה הירד ראשון אל תוכה אחרי התגעשו המים הוא נרפא מכל מחלה אשר דבקה בו׃”

The NIVs in other languages

Even though the English version of the NIV omits all these words in John 5:3-4, yet the NIV Portuguese bible of 2000 called Nova Versao Internacional, has them all in the text!

It reads: João 5:3 “Ali costumava ficar grande número de pessoas doentes e inválidas: cegos, mancos e paralíticos. Eles esperavam um movimento nas águas. 

João 5:4. De vez em quando descia um anjo do Senhor e agitava as águas. O primeiro que entrasse no tanque, depois de agitadas as águas, era curado de qualquer doença que tivesse.” 

And among the NIVs in Spanish, the NIV sold in Mexico and South America, called Nueva Versión Internacional, OMITS  “waiting for the moving of the waters” from verse 3 and ALL of verse 4. It looks like this – 

Juan 5:3 – “En esos pórticos se hallaban tendidos muchos enfermos, ciegos, cojos y paralíticos…………………………

Juan 5:4 …………………………………………………

But the NIV sold in Spain, called Nueva Versión Internacional (Castilian) 2005, OMITS “waiting for the moving of the waters” from verse 3  (even though the Portuguese NIV DOES include them) BUT it adds ALL of verse 4.  It looks like this –

Juan 5:3-4 –  3. En esos pórticos se hallaban tendidos muchos enfermos, ciegos, cojos y paralíticos…………

 4. De cuando en cuando un ángel del Señor bajaba al estanque y agitaba el agua. El primero que entraba en el estanque después de cada agitacíon del agua quedaba sano de cualquier enfermedad que tuviera.

So, the NIV English version omits all these words but the NIV Portuguese version includes them and the NIV Castilian Version adds all of verse 4.  Folks, these are the type of “serious bible scholars” we are dealing with here.

Other Bible Scholars and Commentators –

John Calvin included these verses of John 5:3-4 in his translation without any note of doubt as to their authenticity and expounded upon them in great detail. He says: “At intervals – God might have at once, in a single moment, cured them all:, but, as his miracles have their design, so they ought also to have their limit; as Christ also reminds them that, though there were so many that died in the time of Elisha, not more than one child was raised from the dead, (2 Kings 4:32-33) and that, though so many widows were famished during the time of drought, there was but one whose poverty was relieved by Elijah, (1 Kings 17:9; Luke 4:25). Thus the Lord reckoned it enough to give a demonstration of his presence in the case of a few diseased persons. But the manner of curing, which is here described, shows plainly enough that nothing is more unreasonable than that men should subject the works of God to their own judgment; for pray, what assistance or relief could be expected from troubled water? But in this manner, by depriving us of our own senses, the Lord accustoms us to the obedience of faith. We too eagerly follow what pleases our reason, though contrary to the word of God; and, therefore, in order to render us more obedient to him, he often presents to us those things which contradict our reason. Then only do we show our submissive obedience, when we shut our eyes, and follow the plain word, though our own opinion be that what we are doing will be of no avail. We have an instance of this kind in Naaman a Syrian, whom the prophet sends to Jordan, that he may be cured of his leprosy, (2 Kings 5:10) At first, no doubt, he despises it as a piece of mockery, but afterwards he comes actually to perceive that, while God acts contrary to human reason, he never mocks or disappoints us.”

Adam Clarke comments: “Waiting for the moving of the water.” This clause, with the whole of the fourth verse, is wanting in some MSS. and versions; but I think there is NO SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE AGAINST THEIR AUTHENTICITY.” (Caps are mine)

Barne’s Notes on the New Testament says: “In regard to this passage, it should be remarked that the account of the angel in the 4th verse is wanting in many manuscripts, and has been by many supposed to be spurious. There is not conclusive evidence, however, that it is not a part of the genuine text, and THE BEST CRITICS SUPPOSE THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE REJECTED.” (Caps are mine.)

David Guzik’s commentaries does not question the truth of these verses at all, and he comments: “A pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda: This pool has been excavated in the area just north of the temple mount, and found to have five porches, just as John says. There are many unusual occasions healing in the Bible,The purified pot of stew (2 Kings 4:38-41); The healing of Naaman by washing in the Jordan River (2 Kings 5:10-14); The healing of the man who touched the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13:20-21); Healing of those who have the shadow of Peter upon them (Acts 5:14-16); The healing of those who have Paul’s handkerchiefs upon them (Acts 19:11-12).”

Even Jamieson, Fausset and Brown support the verses saying: “The want of John 5:4 and part of John 5:3 in some good manuscripts, and the use of some unusual words in the passage, are more easily accounted for than the evidence in their favor if they were not originally in the text. Indeed John 5:7 is unintelligible without John 5:4.”  

In summary, these words found in John 5:3-4 are part of God’s precious, inspired and infallible words. Any bible that omits them is to varying degrees a corrupt and incomplete Bible.  The only ones that omit these words are the inconsistent witness of the Catholic Church and the new Vatican Version “interconfessional” text United Bible Society versions like the English NIV, [NASBs], ESV, NET, Jehovah Witness New World Translation and some of the modern Catholic versions.

The King James Bible is God’s Book of the Lord and the Standard of absolute written truth. Accept no substitutes.

All of grace, believing the Book, 

Will Kinney

The Failure of Mark Ward’s Arguments Continue to Mount

In a recent Mark Ward video, discussed in this post, he attempts to defend his argument that Edification Requires Intelligibility by appealing to I Corinthians 14. Ward contends that while 1 Corinthians 14 is clearly dealing with the gift of and speaking in tongues during public worship, 1 Corinthians 14 also has immediate application to the Bible itself and specifically to translations.

He goes on to say that his historical theological argument regarding 1 Corinthians 14 is bolstered by the KJV translators themselves because the KJV translators reference 1 Corinthians 14 in the Translators Preface to the Reader. The place which Ward references is,

“But how shall men meditate in that, which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? as it is written, “Except I know the power of the voice, I shall be to him that speaketh, a Barbarian, and he that speaketh, shall be a Barbarian to me.” [1 Cor 14]”

Translation Necessity

Before making the central point of this post it is important to observe that the Preface only goes on to name languages foreign to the English reader: Hebrew, Greek, Scythian, Syrian, and Roman/Latin and even how they were considered foreign when compared among each other. What they do not mention is Wycliffe’s translation in Middle English, and we’ll get to why I think that is important in just a second. But first let’s talk a little bit about Middle English.

Most linguistic historians place Middle English between 1100 and 1500. Here is an example of what Middle English looks and sounds like compared to Old, Early Modern, and Modern English:

Anyone having trouble understanding “norissed” and “fyllyng”? Well you wouldn’t be the only ones. The image that heads this post is a portion of a gloss included in a compilation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tails printed in 1598, 200 years after Chaucer’s original work and only 13 years before the writing of the 1611 KJV.

The aforementioned gloss contained over 2,000 entries of what Mark Ward would probably call archaic words and “False Friends.” And yet, instead of changing the original text of Chaucer, the compiler offered an extensive gloss. Ward would have us abandon the KJV for a puny 56 “False Friends” while Chaucer enthusiasts of the 16th century were fine with over 2,000 such entries. When do Ward’s arguments turn from shallow linguistic commentary to outright calls for lethargy and laziness? For the sake of unity around a standard sacred text I’d think the religious academics like Ward would be at least as stalwart as Chaucer enthusiasts.

But it doesn’t stop here. When did Tyndale write his first New Testament in English? That’s right, 1523, only 23 years into the regular use of Early Modern English. Tyndale’s parents undoubtedly spoke Middle English. Tyndale grew up around it. And yet the KJV translators did not take Ward’s stance on 1 Corinthians 14. They said nothing of Middle English as foreign. Indeed, Wycliffe, before Tyndale, translated the Bible into Middle English but the KJV translators didn’t malign Wycliffe’s work for its “False Friends” and archaic words. No, no, they said,

“we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”

And Answer to the Imputations of Our Adversaries

Critical Text advocates love this line from the Preface, and now it’s time Ward owns it. Wycliffe’s translation was in Middle English, but it was not accounted as foreign by the writers of the preface and they certainly didn’t connect Wycliffe’s work to 1 Corinthians 14. Rather they affirmed it.

And how different is the Early Modern English from the Middle English? This article from the University of Kentucky observes,

“During the early modern period, between 10,000 and 25,000 new words entered the English vocabulary, primarily loan words adapted from Latin and foreign languages. Accordingly, many early modern writers stand as the first evidence for a particular word in the Oxford English Dictionary. As of May 9, 2017, Shakespeare is cited 1495 times as the first evidence of a word; dictionary writers Thomas Blount (1618–1679), Randle Cotgrave (d. 1634?), and John Florio (1553–1625) are cited as the first evidence for 1466, 1350, and 1201 words respectively; and John Milton holds 556 first citations for a word.”

https://exhibits.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/show/english-language/middle-and-early-modern

Could you imagine being someone like Tyndale attempting a translation of the New Testament at the advent of Early Modern English? Some 10,000 to 25,000 new words enter English Vocabulary in the early modern period. That’s a lot of words, a lot of opportunities for False Friends, but of course the KJV translators make no mention of these radical shifts in English, nor does anyone of note mention 1 Corinthians 14 as a biblical proof for condemning this growth in the English language.

Rather the works of Shakespeare and Milton survive as some of the greatest works ever written in English. And this leads me to another point. We are currently in a socio-cultural educational matrix where the literary brilliance of and like those mentioned above is maligned and/or ignored.

Rather than the English language growing more precise and enlightening it is growing more truncated and confused. You need look no further than the fact that so few, and especially academics, are unable to define what a woman is. Or the claim that homosexual civil unions are the same as divinely ordained marriage or the advent of safe-spaces or the obsession with microaggressions and hate speech or the fact that a human in the womb is regarded as a mere clump of cells. The list goes on and one. Words and what they mean are not being made better, more erudite, more beautiful. No, they are becoming more and more truncated, more like double-speak.

The KJV translators did not balk at the growth of the English language, rather they embraced it and translated a marvel of literary genius, the King James Version. Meanwhile, Ward and those of his ilk would have us cast off this marvel. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense to the common folk, he says.

So Ward would have us cast off the KJV and why not Shakespeare, and Milton while we are at it, only to embrace a truncated and deteriorated modern version based on a truncated and deteriorated version of the English language?

What happened to the spirit of the KJV translators who chose to translate the KJV into a language which was old even for their time, embraced a host of loan-words by receiving 10,000 to 25,000 new words into the contemporary vocabulary?

Ward’s arguments are taking us backward. His arguments explicitly and implicitly argue in favor of a devolution of the English language. Modern classical education demands that students read Shakespeare and Milton, and part of what we are saying is that the KJV ought to be retained for the same reasons we retain Shakespeare and Milton. Indeed, we ought to retain the KJV as the standard sacred text of the English-speaking Church.

Ward says the plowboy doesn’t understand KJV English and here my 15, 13, and 12 year old are reading Shakespeare, Milton, Kant, Aquinas and the KJV in high-school as part of the Great Books of the Western World curriculum or as part of Omnibus I-IV.

Do you know why there are words in the KJV that people don’t know? Simply because we stopped reading the Bible, we stopped preaching the Bible, and we stopped studying the Bible. The Multiple Version Onlyists divided the church on the version issue with their misguided and endless insistence on multiplying versions which has lead to greater and greater biblical illiteracy. Churches, individuals in churches, generations of Christians do not share a common biblical language. They don’t know what each other are saying and they don’t know what the Bible is saying. All it takes is a 10 minute look at your Facebook feed to prove that point.

And now that we are grossly illiterate regarding the words of Scripture, Ward would have us embrace a version of the Bible suited to that illiteracy while ignoring the fact that endless versions have drawn attention away from the KJV as the standard sacred text. Now, surprise surprise there are words in the KJV the plowboy doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand because those like Ward promised a better Bible and didn’t deliver only to turn around and blame the KJV for being archaic.

The early text-critics were glad to be emancipated from the Ecclesiastical Text, and in their pride they thought they could make their own, only to fail to replace the KJV as the standard sacred text. Disarray, confusion, and dissention arose within the church and instead of text-critics blaming themselves for inciting such disarray, confusion, and dissention they turn around and blame the KJV for being archaic. Ward continues to carry this same water from the same broken and godless well. His work is merely a variation on the same theme:

KJV bad > Ours better > Ok, ours not better > Ours only sufficiently reliable > “150 years later” > Now church cannot understand KJV > See, KJV bad.

In sum, 1.) while the KJV translators did cite 1 Corinthians 14 they only cited it regarding foreign languages. 2.) Early Modern English is significantly different than Middle English and yet the KJV translators made no such attempt to besmirch the work of Wycliffe, in fact they approved of it. 3.) Early Modern English was in significant flux during the time of the writing of the KJV and yet the translators did not take the opportunity either to associate 1 Corinthians 14 with earlier and advancing versions of the English language. 4.) Finally, the reason why the KJV is archaic is not because it is archaic in itself but because for the last 150 years scholarship and her ecclesiastical acolytes have variously redirected the attention of God’s people to other Bibles and as such the language of the standard sacred text has fallen out of use both in the church and day-to-day living. In short, those like Ward have contributed and continue to contribute to making the KJV unfamiliar only to turn around and blame the KJV for being unfamiliar.