[The following material is published by Way of Life Literature and is copyrighted by David W. Cloud, 1986. All rights are reserved. Permission is given for duplication for personal use, but not for resale. The following
is available in booklet format from Way of Life Literature, Bible Baptist Church, 1219 N. Harns Road, Oak Harbor, Washington 98277. Phone (206) 675- 8311. This article is number four in a set of five booklets.]
MYTHS ABOUT THE KING JAMES BIBLE:
Copyright 1986 by David W. Cloud. All rights reserved.
MYTH # 5: TRUE SCHOLARS REJECT THE RECEIVED TEXT
By David W. Cloud
Let us consider another matter which is frequently brought out in
discussions about the KJV and the Received Text: Modern scholarship
supposedly is fully arrayed against the TR and is on the side of the
"oldest is best" line of textual theory. The evangelical leader we
have quoted several times in these studies says:
"There are some in this country and elsewhere who are very zealous for the textus receptus ... But unfortunately, the basis on which they are
operating is wrong, and I have always tried to do what I could in a gentle
way to lead them to appreciate good, current evangelical scholarship where
the Greek text and the translation are concerned. The situation is somewhat complex, and many people do not understand it as a result of that
complexity" (Letter from James M. Boice, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Dr. Thomas Hale, United Mission to Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal, September 13, 1985).
It is true, of course, that "evangelical scholarship," for the most
part, is indeed predisposed against the TR. But if we had only this letter upon which to base our thinking, we would be left with the idea that NO evangelical or Bible-believing scholar today holds the opinion that the TR
is the preserved Word of God. The silence of Boice regarding the existence
of such men implies that this is the case.
This same silence is promoted in most classrooms of Bible colleges and seminaries when the subject of Greek or Bible texts and translations is discussed. David Garrett, a California pastor who graduated from a
prestigious school, acknowledges this silence. He testifies that he was shocked when, seven years after graduation, he read Which Bible and
saw the power of the Bible-honoring dissertations contained therein. "I
was unaware that such a position existed! The issue of a rival theory was
not even mentioned in class and was given one page in my textbook for
textual criticism" (David Otis Fuller, Four Recognized Greek
Scholars, p. 6).
@PARABEFORE2 = Dr. Donald Waite, director of Bible for Today ministries, is
at home in the Greek and Hebrew languages, and he defends the Received Text
as the preserved Word of God. Consider his testimony of how he was kept in
the dark concerning the Received Text position during his schooling:
@BODY TEXT2 = For about twenty years I was in darkness about this issue. I knew nothing of it from roughly 1951 to 1971. ... I was at Dallas
Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1952. That was my Master of Theology. Then I stayed an extra year, 1953. Throughout those years we were simply
told to use the Westcott and Hort Greek New Testament, which we did in the Greek classes. It was the actual text Westcott and Hort developed. It was
not simply another text--the Nestles Text or the Souter Text--but it
was Westcott and Hort. And I didn't know there was any other Greek
text. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = I majored in classic Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan, 1945-48. Took three years to get my four years of work. I went summer and winter, so that I could marry my wife. Then I came to Dallas Seminary. I was learning New Testament Greek, and I didn't pay much heed to the text. I didn't care. I just wanted to learn the forms and get good
grades, which I did. But I did not examine the textual base that we were using. I just assumed that was the only one to use.
@BODY TEXT2 = You ask the question, then, how I came to understand the
Bible version issue. I guess the first thing I read about, or knew about,
my mother-in-law to be, Mrs. Gertrude Grey Sanborn, gave me the book
God Wrote Only One Bible. I didn't say or think too much about it. I
didn't study it at the time, but that was my first introduction. Then as I
was teaching as professor of Greek at Shelton College in Cape Maine, New Jersey, one of my pupils, Sandra Devos--Sandra Phillips, I think, was
her name then--said that there was a book in our library at Shelton by
Dean John William Burgon that defends not only the King James Bible, but
also the Greek text, the Received Text, that underlies that Bible.
@BODY TEXT2 = "Have you ever seen that book, Dr. Waite?" she asked
me.
@BODY TEXT2 = I said, "Well, no, I haven't."
@BODY TEXT2 = I think I might have looked at it; I might have glanced at
it. I thought to myself, "Here is an interesting thing. Here is the
first book that I have seen that says there is a difference in the Greek
text that the modern versions are using, and that the King James Bible text that underlies it, the Textus Receptus, is superior to the Westcott and Hort-type text, or to the critical text."
@BODY TEXT2 = ... Then about that time, I think it was about 1969 or 1970, along in there, Dr. Fuller came out with his book Which Bible. I
read that. Also I looked at at least one of the books by Dr. Edward F. Hills--Believing Bible Study. I don't think I saw at the time his
other book, The Defense of the King James Bible.
@BODY TEXT2 = So in 1971, having read these various books, I was deeply convicted and convinced that the King James Bible and the Greek text that underlies it, as well as the Hebrew text--although I got into the Hebrew
text a little bit later--but I was convinced that the Greek text that underlies the New Testament of the King James Bible was the accurate text
to use. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = So you can say the first twenty years, from 1951-71, I was in somewhat of a daze, somewhat of a darkness, concerning the issues. Then from 1971-91, twenty more years, I have been writing, I have been studying,
I have been preaching, I have been teaching, I have been debating, I have
been arguing, I have been talking about, I have been preaching from, I have continued to memorize from and believe the King James Bible and the text
that underlies that Bible. So for twenty years I've been a stalwart
defender of that Book.
@PARAAFTER2 = A great many preachers can testify of similar experiences.
When I took Greek at Tennessee Temple, I was instructed to purchase a
United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (the Westcott-Hort text) and
was never told that the Received Text was the ancient, traditional text. We were not instructed in the issues surrounding this crucial matter.
To return to the point at hand, though, we note that it is popular to characterize those who uphold the Received Text as unscholarly. Another example of this is seen in a speech by Bible editor Eldon Epps to a group
of "scholars" in 1973. After noting the fact that there are still a considerable number of men who are defending the TR and KJV as the
preserved Word of God, Epps observes: "I am being facetious only to a
limited extent when I ask, if the T.R. can still be defended, ALBEIT IN
MERELY A PSEUDO-SCHOLARLY FASHION [emphasis is the editor's], how much
solid progress have we made in textual criticism in the 20th century?"
(Eldon Jay Epps, Journal of Biblical Literature, 1974, No. 93).
Epps seems amazed that after a century of the promotion of Westcott-Hort's critical theories, some persist in defending the TR. This same attitude is expressed by Christian leaders within practically every spectrum of Christianity--Liberal, Evangelical, Charismatic, Fundamental, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Brethren, Baptist, you name it.
@PARABEFORE2 = Consider another testimony which illustrates what the
average Christian "scholar" thinks of those who defend the TR and
KJV. After being given a copy of Which Bible by Cecil Carter, an
elder in a brethren assembly in Canada, Bible translator Dick Walker shares what he thought at that point in time:
@BODY TEXT2 = I received [the] book and exhortation at `arms length.' I considered your opinion genuine but perhaps naive. After all, I had
graduated from a seminary in California which had one of the highest accreditations on the west coast. I had majored in New Testament, taken two and one-half years of New Testament Greek from a scholar who had his Ph.D
in Greek studies and who also had many years of related semitic studies. My studies also included a course in the text and canon of the New Testament
as well as writing my graduation thesis titled `The Exegetical Value of the Greek Participle.' I was satisfied with the science of textual criticism
and the `Nestles' text, which is based on the Westcott and Hort text.
@PARAAFTER2 = This Bible translator later saw that he had been led astray
by modern scholarship and had been kept in the dark about the writings of godly men who defend the TR, but his thinking upon receiving the copy of
Which Bible? well illustrates the common attitude.
@PARABEFORE2 = Another Bible scholar, William Bruner, Th.M, Ph.D., gives further illustration of this attitude. In a letter to David Otis Fuller he says this:
@BODY TEXT2 = On May 12, 1970, you wrote me a very kind letter and sent me some sample materials from your book Which Bible? You might as well
have been shooting a pop gun at a stone wall. My mind was so strongly fortified in the doctrine of Westcott and Hort that I could not for one
moment consider the King James Bible. Had I not studied Textual Criticism under the great Dr. A. T. Robertson? I thought that you were just one of
those die-hard Fundamentalists who were striving to keep the Christian
world under the bondage of traditionalism. Such men are interested only in pleasing the people by catering to their ignorance, prejudice and sentimentality! But just a few weeks ago I happened to read your two books, Which Bible? and True or False? For the first time a little new light shone in. I saw that there is another side to the argument. Dr. Robertson had not given us all the facts (Four Recognized Greek Scholars, p. 2).
@PARAAFTER2 = Indeed, Dr. Robertson had not given his students all the
facts!
@PARABEFORE2 = Wilber N. Pickering is a recognized Greek scholar and a defender of the Traditional Text. At the turn of the century, Anglican
scholar John Burgon raised powerful arguments against the theories and the textual work of Westcott and Hort and the English Revised Version
translation committee. Burgon's treatises were never answered. From a Bible-believing viewpoint they are unanswerable. In reviewing some of
Burgon's arguments, Pickering makes an interesting and indicting
observation:
@BODY TEXT2 = The prevailing ignorance concerning Burgon and his work may
be largely attributed to the circumstance that he is either ignored or misrepresented in every handbook (that the author has seen) published in English in this century that touches on the method of New Testament textual criticism (Wilber N. Pickering, "Contribution of John William Burgon to
New Testament Criticism," True or False? p. 218).
@PARABEFORE2 = Who actually was this John Burgon? Why is it so strange that
he is not so much as mentioned in many handbooks dealing with New Testament textual criticism today? Consider these facts:
@BODY TEXT2 = Burgon was a man of unquestioned scholarship. His biographer lists over fifty published works, on a considerable variety of subjects, besides numerous articles contributed to periodicals. ... He contributed considerably to Scrivener's A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of
the New Testament in its various editions. Edward Miller, who became posthumous editor to both Scrivener and Burgon, said of this contribution,
"He has added particulars of three hundred and seventy-four manuscripts previously unknown to all the world of letters."
@BODY TEXT2 = Of the considerable volume of unpublished materials that Dean Burgon left when he died, of special note is his index of New Testament citations by the Church Fathers of antiquity. It consists of sixteen thick manuscript volumes, to be found in the British Museum, and contains 86,489 quotations. It may be said that Burgon's scholarship in this facet of the total field has never been equaled (Ibid., p. 217).
@PARAAFTER2 = And yet this man of such prestigious scholarship, a man whose work in the field of Greek textual criticism was so uniquely important, is consistently ignored or misrepresented today. Why? The answer can only be
that Burgon unhesitatingly defended the Textus Receptus and aimed mighty
blows at the popular Westcott-Hort theories of textual criticism, and therefore at those who are following those theories. Burgon doesn't fit the popular mold; his arguments are powerful, so he is simply ignored; or if
not ignored, his well-reasoned observations are subtly replaced with
"straw men" which are then easily dismissed as unworthy of the
modern critic's time.
That is fact, dear friends. This same treatment is allotted to every man of God who defends the Received Text.
In the secular field, this same game is played by the humanists who control much of today's mass media--newspapers, radio, television, periodicals.
It is possible for people to survey the media continually and not even
learn of the existence of many important people, groups, and philosophies. Someone from the lunatic fringe of an issue can show up in front of an embassy, for example, with two or three likeminded loonies and the media
will make it into a front page event, while a convention of 15,000 Fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians in the same city is completely ignored. By selective use of this media blackout, those in charge of pro gramming can effectively control the thinking of the average person who is without alternate sources of information.
This is what is happening in regard to the important issues of Bible texts
and translations. Even the graduates of basically sound Bible institutions are, as we have seen, practically unaware even of the existence of a
scholarly "other side" of the issue. Because of evangelical
"media blackout" on this subject, they are aware only of views
closely paralleling Westcott-Hort's turn-of-the-century theories:
"Oldest and better manuscripts are to be preferred in passages of
question" (meaning Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the few other
manuscripts which follow their corrupted pattern are to replace the
readings of the entire majority of other textual witnesses), etc., etc.
Some years ago I published a study on the history and work of the United
Bible Societies. Included in this was a brief sharing of my conviction that the TR is the pure, preserved Word of God as opposed to the text
represented in the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament. Actually I
did not spend a great amount of time defending the TR, since that was not
the primary purpose of the study. I did mention the fact that the editors
of the United Bible Societies Greek text are apostates--Modernists and
Roman Catholic prelates--and I quoted from the Preface to the American
Bible Society's RSV which states that the KJV and the Greek text upon which
it is based are gravely defected. I then proceeded to demonstrate just how significantly different the UBS text is from the Textus Receptus, and concluded with the contention that it is not possible, in light of God's promises to preserve His Word pure through the centuries, that the text which went throughout the earth during the past centuries was a gravely corrupted one. The opposite is true. It is the United Bible Societies' text which is the gravely defected one. That was all. Certainly it was no wild-
eyed rampage about the King James Bible being inspired down to the jots and tittles of every antiquated word. The main thesis of the book had to do
with the deep theological apostasy which has taken root within the United Bible Societies, and I occupied myself primarily with a thorough
documentation of this frightful apostasy.
Shortly after the release of this study in Asia, a letter arrived from a professor in a theological school in India. He claimed to be an evangelical professor of Greek who believes in the verbal inspiration of Scripture, yet consider what he thinks of my view of the TR--"Your theory that
God's promise of preservation applies only to TR is rather ludicrous."
This man has a doctorate in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Of course he has every right to reject my position regarding the TR, but the
very fact that he calls it "ludicrous" shows that he is ignorant of
the Bible-believing scholarship which is arrayed on the side of the
venerable Textus Receptus.
SCHOLARS WHO SUPPORT THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS
What follows is basically my reply to this Greek professor:
Dear Brother: According to my dictionary, "ludicrous" means
"absurd; ridiculous." It refers to something which has no backing
whatsoever in reality; something which cannot possibly be true. This
statement is a strong hint that you are not familiar with the basic
arguments and issues at stake here. If my position is truly absurd, meaning "opposed to manifest reason or truth; irrational" (Funk &
Wagnalls), please tell me how a great number of very godly and scholarly
men can hold this very position?
You might disagree with the position, and I admit that many men do; but it
is folly to call the position ludicrous.
I do not want to be a follower of men, because men can be found on either
side of any doctrine or issue, but I do want to point out the fact that a great number of born again scholars have and do hold the same basic
position that I presented in my study. The following are just a few.
I do not make it a habit to "glory in man," but, as Paul said, you
have forced me. "Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will
glory also." I will not glory in myself, of course, for in me there
is no special scholarship in which to glory, but I will list a few men who could, if they so desired, glory in such scholarship and who hold basically the same position as I hold.
It should be kept in mind that these men will not agree on some
particulars. Some stand strictly for the Received Text underlying the
King James Version, while others prefer what they call the Majority text
which in some points differs from the Textus Receptus. Some believe the
King James Version is without error, while others believe there are slight changes which should be made in the KJV. But all agree on the basic premise that the Received Text is the preserved Word of God and represents the
Divine Original, whereas the Westcott-Hort text is a corrupted one.
It also should be noted that these men vary in the degree of
scholarship possessed in the traditional sense of holding high formal
degrees and being recognized Bible linguists, but none of them can be
lumped in the category to which today's defenders of the TR and KJV are usually assigned--ignorant, uninformed, weak-minded men who cling to old
ways because of some strange bias against that which is modern!
@PARABEFORE2 = DR. EDWARD F. HILLS graduated from Yale University and Westminster Theological Seminary, received the Th.M. from Columbia
Seminary, and the Th.D. from Harvard. He also pursued graduate studies at Chicago University and Calvin Seminary. Dr. Hills authored The King
James Version Defended and Believing Bible Study, both of which
uphold the TR alone as the fulfillment of God's promise of preservation. To illustrate briefly the conviction of this scholar in regard to the TR and
KJV we will quote from one of the closing paragraphs in The King James
Version Defended:
@BODY TEXT2 = In regard to Bible versions many contemporary Christians are behaving like spoiled and rebellious children. They want a Bible version
that pleases them no matter whether it pleases God or not. "We want a
Bible version in our own idiom," they clamor. "We want a Bible that
talks to us in the same way in which we talk to our friends over the telephone. We want an informal God, no better educated then ourselves, with
a limited vocabulary and a taste for modern slang." And having thus
registered our preference, they go their several ways. Some of them unite
with the modernists in using the R.S.V. or the N.E.B. Others deem the
N.A.S.V. or the N.I.V. more "evangelical." Still others opt for the
T.E.V. or the Living Bible.
@BODY TEXT2 = But God is bigger than you are, dear friend, and the Bible version which you must use is not a matter for you to decide according to
your whims and prejudices. It has already been decided for you by the
workings of God's special providence. ... Put on the spiritual mind that
leads to life and peace! Receive by faith the True Text of God's holy
Word, which has been preserved down through the ages by His special
providence and now is found in the Masoretic Hebrew text, the Greek Textus Receptus, and the King James Version and other faithful translations!
@PARAAFTER2 = DR. DAVID OTIS FULLER (D.D.), editor of Which Bible, True
or False, and Counterfeit or Genuine, all of which present in no
uncertain terms the position that the Textus Receptus is the pure, holy, preserved Word of God. Dr. Fuller obtained his Bachelor of Arts at Wheaton College, majoring in English literature. He obtained the Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, studying under men such as Robert Dick Wilson who was a master of 45 ancient languages and could repeat from memory a Hebrew translation of the entire New Testament without missing a single syllable. Dallas Theological Seminary awarded Fuller the Doctor of Divinity degree. He pastored the Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 40 years. While there he founded the Grand Rapids Baptist Institute which later became the Grand Rapids Baptist Bible
College. Fuller co-founded the Children's Bible Hour radio program in 1942
and for 33 years was its chairman. The Children's Bible Hour is on nearly
600 radio stations. For 52 years Fuller was on the board of the Association
of Baptists for World Evangelism. Fuller's published books totaled fifteen
to twenty. Fuller's Which Bible, which has 350 pages, has gone
through more than a dozen printings totaling more than 50,000 copies.
@PARABEFORE2 = The following excerpt from one of Dr. Fuller's sermons illustrates his view of Bible versions:
@BODY TEXT2 = But someone replies, "We believe in the inerrancy of the original manuscripts." All right, I agree with you there. But then we
ask the question, and it's a good one, too: "Was God careless? Or
didn't He realize that these errors were creeping in? Or was He impotent
that He could not keep His Word even if He wanted to?"Look out yonder
into space, will you please? Listen to some of the Christian astronomers
and scientists who study the stars and all the planets and constellations there in outer space, and they will tell you that God has so created them
in such a meticulous fashion that they obey all the laws that He has laid
down for His whole vast creation. If God is that careful to keep His
universe, do you think He is going to be careless about His sacred, holy
Word upon which hangs the destiny of the souls of men, whether for heaven
or hell? You know good and well He could not possibly be careless about
such a wonderful Book. But if you want to go ahead and believe in a God who has just let his book go and become filled with errors through the mistakes
of men, you go ahead, but please count me out as of now.
@BODY TEXT2 = I believe with all my heart that there was a time in the
early church when God blessed certain men to choose the twenty-seven books which comprise our New Testament, and in this order we have them now. The proof for that is in the Bible. There they are. Twenty-seven books in that particular order. Just so, I believe God was very definitely in the
choosing of the forty-seven scholars who came together at the command of
King James I around 1605 to produce a new version of the Bible. We are bold enough to say that we don't believe there was ever such a collection of
great, I mean truly great, scholars as these who were so chosen.
@BODY TEXT2 = You see, God knows what he is doing. He always does, and He chose that particular time and age when the English language was at its zenith, to use these men for that purpose.
@BODY TEXT2 = Now let me say here before I go any further, I have never claimed to be a scholar. I do not claim to be one now, and I never expect
to claim to be one. But there are two very definite claims that I make
without hesitation, or trepidation, or reservation. One is I claim to have studied under some of the greatest scholars this country has ever produced,
if not the world. It was my privilege to be a student at Princeton Seminary and to graduate from that institution just before the flood. I mean by
that, before the flood of modernism. Today Princeton is modernistic in
every sense of the word, but not then. There were giants in the earth in
those days.
@BODY TEXT2 = Consider Robert Dick Wilson. He was one of the greatest linguists this country has ever seen. He was at home in forty-five
languages and dialects. He was a contemporary of the great scholar of
Oxford, England, Dr. Driver, who claimed that the book of Daniel was wrong because of certain statements or phrases in it. Dr. Wilson spent years
going through some 50,000 manuscripts to prove that Driver was wrong and
that Daniel was right.
@BODY TEXT2 = A second claim is that I can tell a true Christian scholar
when I hear him, or read his works, or talk with him. By Christian I mean
one who holds to and reverences the Word of God as being THE Word of God,
and as being different from any other book that has ever been published because it is the only book that God ever wrote.
@BODY TEXT2 = As I have said before so say I now again, there are those
people who tell us today that there is no version of the Scripture that is without error. Very well, then, where does the doctrine of inerrancy go
if there are errors in the Bible? They come back with that statement,
"Well, we believe that the original autographs were inspired, but not
those copies of them." We agree that the originals were inspired, but
my question is simply this: If God wrote this Book in the beginning,
wasn't He able to keep it intact and pure and without error all through the ages? My answer to that is that He certainly was and He still is so
capable. I would remind you again that God is jealous for His Word, just as much as He is jealous for His blessed Son, Jesus Christ.
@BODY TEXT2 = If someone says to you that all manuscripts and all versions today have errors in them, then ask them in return what kind of a God they worship. A careless or impotent God in my book is a monstrosity. I believe that the King James Version does not have any errors.
@BODY TEXT2 = Please remember this. You and I are facing, as I have said before, the most vicious and malicious attack upon the Word of God that has ever been made since the garden of Eden, and the modern attack began with
the publication of the Revised Version of 1881. This is an unpopular cause
at present in Christian circles. I have found this out again and again, and
I am going to find it out in the future. But I can say as far as I am concerned it doesn't make any difference what happens to me, but it makes a whale of a difference what happens to the cause of Jesus Christ. And
someday you and I, my friend, will have to stand before a holy God and give
an account to what we did or did not do in seeking to open the eyes of
people to the facts that have been covered up for so long concerning His
holy, indestructible, impregnable Word.
@PARAAFTER2 = JOHN WILLIAM BURGON held several high degrees from Oxford University. "Most of his adult life was spent at Oxford as Fellow of
Oriel College and then as vicar of St. Mary's (the University Church) and Gresham Professor of Divinity" (Which Bible, p. 86). He made
several tours of European libraries, examining and collating New Testament manuscripts wherever he went and personally inspected the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts in 1860 and 1862 (Ibid., p. 87). "His biographer
lists over fifty published works, on a considerable variety of subjects, besides numerous articles contributed to periodicals. He contributed considerably to Scrivener's A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of
the New Testament in its various editions. Edward Miller, who became posthumous editor to both Scrivener and Burgon, said of this contribution,
`He has added particulars of three hundred and seventy-four manuscripts previously unknown to the world of letters.' Of the considerable volume of unpublished material that Dean Burgon left when he died, of special note is his index of New Testament citations by the Church Fathers of antiquity. It consists of sixteen thick manuscript volumes, to be found in the British Museum, and contains 86,489 quotations. It may be said that Burgon's scholarship in this facet of the total field has never been equaled (Wilbur Pickering, "Contribution of John William Burgon to New Testament
Criticism," True or False? p. 217).
@PARABEFORE2 = Without question, Burgon was a Greek scholar of the highest order and also an unwavering, very bold defender of the TR. Though he
believed there might be room for minor changes in the TR, he was completely opposed to the modern critical text. Consider an excerpt from his critique
of the English Revised Version of 1881. Everything he says about the ERV is applicable to the popular versions of our day:
@BODY TEXT2 = In the end, when partisanship had cooled down, and passion
had evaporated, and prejudice had ceased to find an auditory, the
`Revision' of 1881 must come to be universally regarded as what it most certainly is, the most astonishing, as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the Age. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = In thus demonstrating the worthlessness of the `New Greek
Text' of the Revisionists, I considered that I had destroyed the key of
their position. And so perforce I had. For if the underlying Greek Text be mistaken, what else but incorrect must the English Translation be? ...
@BODY TEXT2 = A yet stranger phenomenon is, that those who have once
committed themselves to an erroneous theory [Westcott and Hortism], seem to
be incapable of opening their eyes to the untrustworthiness of the fabric
they have erected, even when it comes down in their sight like a child's
house built with playing cards, and presents to every eye but their own the appearance of a shapeless ruin. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = For we resolutely maintain, that external evidence
must after all be our best, our only safe guide. And to come to the point,
we refuse to throw in our lot with those who, disregarding the witness of every other known Codex, every other Version, every other available Ecclesiastical Writer, insist on following the dictates of a little group
of authorities, of which nothing whatever is known with so much certainty
as that often, when they concur exclusively, it is to mislead. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = Shame--yes, shame on the learning which comes abroad only
to perplex the weak, and to unsettle the doubting, and to mislead the
blind! Shame on that two-thirds majority of well-intentioned but most incompetent men who, finding themselves (in an evil hour) appointed to
correct `plain and clear errors' in the English Authorized Version,
occupied themselves instead with falsifying the inspired Greek Text in countless places, and branding with suspicion some of the most precious utterances of the Spirit! Shame, yes, shame upon them! ...
@BODY TEXT2 = Changes of any sort are unwelcome in such a book as the
Bible; but the discovery that changes have been made for the worse, offends greatly. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = What offends us is the discovery that, for every
obscurity which has been removed, at least half a dozen others have been introduced: in other words, the result of this Revision has been the
planting of a fresh crop of difficulties, before undreamed of, so that a perpetual wrestling with these is what hereafter awaits the diligent
student of the New Testament. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = Call this Text Erasmian or Complutensian--the text of
Stephens, or of Beza, or of the Elzevirs--call it the `Received,' or the Traditional Greek Text, or whatever other name you please--the fact
remains, that a Text has come down to us which is attested by a general consensus of ancient Copies, ancient Versions, ancient Fathers (John
Burgon, Revision Revised).
@PARAAFTER2 = TERENCE H. BROWN. Terence Brown is retired from the position
of Editorial Secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society, and he is but one example of the godly, evangelical scholarship which resides within that organization. The Trinitarian Bible Society has the remarkable testimony
that for more than 150 years it has held fast to its founding principles,
one of which is that it will publish and distribute only the Textus
Receptus and faithful translations based on it. The Trinitarian Bible
Society has existed since 1831 and has not ceased to uphold the TR and faithful translations of this text as the perfect and preserved Word of
God. They translate, publish, and distribute Received Text-based Scriptures
in many languages and nations. They also publish a Greek edition of the Received Text.
DR. DONALD A. WAITE. We referred to Dr. Waite earlier in this study, so we will not repeat his credentials here. He is a scholar who stands
unequivocally for the Received Text.
@PARABEFORE2 = ZANE HODGES. Hodges is Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, and has taught Greek for thirty years. He wrote "The Greek Text of the King James Version" which
appeared in the journal Bibliotheca Sacra. An excerpt makes it clear
where Hodges stands in regard to Majority Text as contrasted with the new critical texts:
@BODY TEXT2 = The average well-taught Bible-believing Christian has often heard the King James Version corrected on the basis of "better
manuscripts" or "older authorities." Such corrections are often
made from the pulpit as well as being found in print. If he has ever
inquired into the matter, the Bible-believing Christian has probably been
told that the Greek text used by the translators of 1611 is inferior to
that used for more recent translations. He has perhaps also been told that
the study of the Greek text of the New Testament (called textual criticism)
is now a highly developed discipline which has led us to a more accurate knowledge of the original text of the Bible. Lacking any kind of technical training in this area, the average believer probably has accepted such explanations from individuals he regards as qualified to give them. Nevertheless, more than once he may have felt a twinge of uneasiness about
the whole matter and wondered if, by any chance, the familiar King James Version might not be somewhat better than its detractors think. It is the purpose of this article to affirm that, as a matter of fact, there are
indeed grounds for this kind of uneasiness and--what is more--these
grounds are considerable. ...
@BODY TEXT2 = ... The Majority text, upon which the King James Version
is based, has in reality the strongest claim possible to be regarded as an authentic representation of the original text. This claim is quite
independent of any shifting consensus of scholarly judgment about its
readings and is based on the objective reality of its dominance in the transmissional history of the New Testament text. This dominance has not and--we venture to suggest--cannot be otherwise explained.
@BODY TEXT2 = It is hoped, therefore, that the general Christian reader
will exercise the utmost reserve in accepting corrections to his Authorized Version ... He should go on using his King James Version with confidence.
New Testament textual criticism, at least, has advanced no objectively verifiable reason why he should not.
@PARAAFTER2 = I must note here that Dr. Hodges does not believe exactly
like I do regarding the Received Text. I believe the TR is perfect and that
it has no need of modification, but Dr. Hodges, while supporting the
Received Text in general, believes it should be modified somewhat by principles he and others have developed and which they call The Majority
Text. In 1982 Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad published The Greek New
Testament According to the Majority Text based on these principles. I
reject these efforts to change the Received Text, but it is also a fact
that though the Hodges-Farstad Text does differ somewhat from the Received Text, its differences are slight compared with those of the Westcott-Hort Text.
The point of this study is to illustrate that there are scholars who reject the Westcott-Hort text and who follow the Received textual line. Zane
Hodges is certainly an example of this as can be seen in the excerpts we
have given from his writings.
@PARABEFORE2 = DR. THOMAS M. STROUSE has a B.S. in engineering from Purdue University, a M.Div. from Maranatha Baptist Graduate School of Theology, a Ph.D. from Bob Jones University, and has completed all residence work for
the Th.D. from Maranatha. He has been Professor of Theology at Tabernacle Baptist Theological Seminary since 1988, and he heads up the Doctorate
Program at Tabernacle. That Strouse stands for the Received Text is evident
in his book The Lord God Hath Spoken: A Guide to Bibliology,
published in 1992:
@BODY TEXT2 = The student of the Bible must recognize that the Bible's underlying texts are extremely important. ... The student of the Word
should use the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew OT because it is the standardized and traditional text of the OT, and the student should use the Received Text of the Greek NT because it is superior to the Critical Text
and Majority Text textually, historically, and Christologically. Not only
is the text of the Bible important, but so is the translation of the Bible. Since the Masoretic and Received Texts are superior, it follows that their resultant translation, the KJV, is superior. ... The KJV is the Word of
God in the English language. It has no errors in it because it carefully reflects the original language texts closest to the autographs. The AV,
like all translations, has `language limitations,' but these are not
errors.
DR. WILBUR N. PICKERING, Linguist-Translator and Director of Public
Relations for the Assoiacao Wycliffe para Traduao da B!blia in Brasilia, Brazil. Pickering is the author of The Identity of the New Testament Text, which is based partially on his master's thesis at Dallas Theological
Seminary in 1968 entitled "An Evaluation of the Contribution of John
William Burgon to New Testament Textual Criticism." While Pickering does
not believe the Received Text is perfect, he does take a clear stand
against the modern critical text:
"I am thinking of the degree to which they [the critical texts] differ
among themselves, the uncertainty as to the identity of the text reflected
in the many footnotes regarding textual variants, and the nature and extent
of their common divergence from the King James Version. ...
:Down through the centuries of copying, the original text has always been reflected with a high degree of accuracy in the manuscript tradition as a whole. The history of the text presented in this chapter not only accounts nicely for the Majority Text, it also accounts for the inconsistent
minority of MSS. They are remnants of the abnormal transmission of the
text, reflecting ancient aberrant forms. It is a dependence upon such
aberrant forms that distinguishes contemporary critical editions of the New Testament. ...
"I have demonstrated that the W-H [Westcott-Hort] critical theory and
history of the text are erroneous."
What has been said of Zane Hodges can be said of Dr. Pickering. He does support some slight modification of the Received Text, but it is also plain that he unhesitatingly rejects the Westcott-Hort text.
DR. ALFRED MARTIN, Vice-President and Dean of Education Emeritus of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. For his Doctor of Theology
dissertation at the Graduate School of Dallas Theological Seminary in 1951, Dr. Martin presented "A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory." Consider an excerpt from this:
"Bible-believing Christian had better be careful what he says about the
Textus Receptus, for the question is not at all the precise wording of that text, but rather a choice between two different kinds of texts, a fuller
one and a shorter one. ...
"The present generation of Bible students, having been reared on Westcott and Hort, have for the most part accepted the theory without independent or critical examination. To the average student of the Greek New Testament
today it is unthinkable to question the theory at least in its basic
premises. Even to imply that one believes the Textus Receptus to be nearer
the original text than the Westcott-Hort text is, lays one open to the suspicion of gross ignorance or unmitigated bigotry. ...
"At precisely the time when liberalism was carrying the field in the
English churches the theory of Westcott and Hort received wide acclaim.
These are not isolated facts. Recent contributions on the subject--that is,
in the present century--following mainly the Westcott-Hort principles and method, have been made largely by men who deny the inspiration of the
Bible. ...
"Textual criticism cannot be divorced entirely from theology. No matter how great a Greek scholar a man may be, or no matter how great an authority on
the textual evidence, his conclusions must always be open to suspicion if
he does not accept the Bible as the very Word of God. ...
"The great difficulty in New Testament textual criticism today, which makes
it impossible for Bible-believing Christians to be sanguine about the
results of present research, is the almost universally held view among
critics of the relative nature of truth. Textual criticism has become more
and more subjective since Westcott and Hort opened the door of subjectivism wide."
DR. JAKOB VAN BRUGGEN, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the Reformed Theological College in Kampen, The Netherlands. Dr. Van Bruggen obtained
his doctor's degree under Prof. Dr. W.C. can Unnik (Utecht). Consider his position on the Bible text as published in The Ancient Text of the New Testament. This was a lecture which he preached in the Netherlands in
December 1975:
"One can even say that the modern textual criticism of the New Testament is based on the one fundamental conviction that the true text of the New Testament is at least not found in the great majority of the manuscripts.
The text which the Greek church has read for more than 1,000 years, and
which the churches of the Reformation have followed for centuries in their Bible translations, is now with certainty regarded as defective and
deficient: a text to be rejected. ...
"This rejection of the traditional text, that is the text preserved and
handed down in the churches, is hardly written or thought about any more in the 20th century: it is a fait accompli. ...
"The textus receptus, which stands very close to the Byzantine text, is considered a "tyrant" that finally "died a slow death." ... It is strange
that in the realm of modern textual criticism all types of searchers and skeptics are given a place, but that those who revert to a former certainty are disqualified as renegades. ...
"Over against this modern textual criticism, we plead for rehabilitation of the ancient and well-known text. This means that we do not dismiss this text which is found in a large majority of the textual witnesses and which underlies all the time-honored Bible translations of the past, but prize
and use it."
What we have said about Zane Hodges and Wilbur Pickering is also true for
Dr. Van Bruggen. He supports efforts to modify the Received Text along
lines he calls strict Majority principles. It is plain, though, that he rejects the Westcott- Hort text and stands for the Received Text in most details.
It is important to point out that the facts brought to light in Dr. Van Bruggen's lecture make it plain that the theory presented so matter-of-
factly by great numbers of Christian scholars is becoming increasingly debunked, not only by evangelicals but by liberals as well.
A similar situation exists in regard to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Even secular scientists are rejecting the basic tenets of evolution in
rapidly increasing numbers. And yet, though they have nothing better with which to replace Darwinian theories, they do not wish to admit that the
entire idea is an utter falsehood. And they refuse even to consider the possibility that divine creation could be true; therefore, they cling resolutely to the broad conclusions produced by Darwinian thinking even
while having rejected that thinking!
Likewise, the pillars of Westcott-Hortism, the theory of a Syrian recension and the neutral text concept, have been torn down. It was with these
theories that Westcott-Hort and their followers built the Greek texts in
which a few supposedly older manuscripts overthrow the witness of the majority. Yet even with the pillars pulled down, the foundationless
building is still upheld by modern textual scholars. This is very strange.
Is it because these scholars have a prejudice against the God-honored
Textus Receptus and for some reason do not desire to see it returned to its proper and reasonable position as the preserved Word of God? In my opinion, the facts point to this conclusion.
I will hasten to mention a few other evangelical scholars who teach that
the common evangelical theories about the TR are wrong.
BRUCE LACKEY. Dr. Lackey, who died December 1, 1988, taught at Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for nineteen years and was the dean of
the Bible school department. He pastored the Lakewood Baptist Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for eight years, and pastored two other churches before that. The last few years of his life he traveled as a Bible
conference speaker and authored several books. He was an accomplished musician, a highly respected Bible teacher, and was proficient in the Greek language. He was a diligent student of the Greek Received Text. Dr. Lackey held that the Received Text is the preserved and perfect Word of God. In
his book Can You Trust Your Bible Dr. Lackey states:
"The King James Version was the only Bible available to most English-
speaking people for centuries. The manuscripts from which it was translated were used by the majority of believers through the centuries. Thus they represent the Word of God which He promised to preserve for all generations. "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever" (Psalm 12:6-7). "For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations" (Psalm 100:5).
"Almost every modern version has been made from manuscripts which were
rather recently discovered, though they claim to be more ancient. These are highly touted to be more accurate than those from which the King James
Version came, and have led to the charge that many errors exist in the KJV.
It is the author's experience that this has caused many people to doubt whether there is any Bible in the world today that is accurate, infallible,
or dependable. ...
"When the so-called facts of textual criticism produce doubt in the Bible which people have had for centuries, they should be considered as no better than the so-called facts of evolution. In reality, there are very few
"facts" in textual criticism today. It is very difficult to get textual critics to agree on their conclusions which are drawn from the principles which most of them accept. Even a cursory study of the material available
on the subject today reveals that there is much personal opinion and bias regarding which manuscripts are the oldest or best. ...
"The most serious problem created by the multiplicity of versions and half- truths from textual critics is that many believe that we have no accurate, infallible Bible anywhere in the world today. To say that it exists in all
the versions is to say, in effect, that you can not find it, since no one
can agree on the best way to resolve all the differences in the versions.
"To say that the various differences in versions are unimportant is to
raise a basic question: Why make them? If there is no basic difference, why
do we need them? ... Every version claims to be "more accurate ... more understandable," but when faced with the problem of difference with others, almost every scholar, professor, translator, and textual critic says that
no major doctrine is affected, and that the differences are minor and relatively unimportant. One wonders if the motive for more and more translations might not be commercial, rather than spiritual.
"The fact is that many a Christian has had doubts, fears, and skepticism instilled in his mind by these claims of discovering "more accurate manuscripts." ...
"If we believe God's promises of preservation, we must believe that the
Bible which has been available to all generations is that which God has preserved. Conversely, that which was hidden was not God's truth, `which endureth to all generations'" (pp. 48-52).
DR. MYRON CEDARHOLM, retired President of Maranatha Baptist Bible College
and Graduate School of Theology, Watertown, Wisconsin. During Dr. Cedar
holm's tenure at Maranatha, the school stood resolutely for the Received
Text. Following was the school's position statement in those days [sadly,
the position has changed since then]:
"Maranatha Baptist Bible College is dedicated to the defense of the
Massoretic Text, the Textus Receptus, and the Authorized Version and uses
them in its classes for study and the Authorized Version in the churches
for preaching. Maranatha is the first college to organize on its campus a
Dean Burgon Society chapter, which society exists for the defense of the traditional Baptist texts."
DR. JAMES HOLLOWOOD, retired professor of Theology and Philosophy at
Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Graduate School of Theology, Watertown, Wisconsin. Dr. Hollowood is a member of the Dean Burgon Society which
stands for the Received Text and the King James Bible. Dr. Hollowood gave editorial supervision to the publication of Evaluating Versions of the New Testament by Everett Fowler, and he stands without hesitation for the
Received Text.
EVERETT FOWLER, author of Evaluating Versions of the New Testament, had an engineering degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts. The following is from the Foreword to Evaluating Versions:
"Mr. Fowler held the office of a deacon for 50 years as well as other positions in the First Baptist Church of New York ... known from its
beginning in 1711 as a center of fundamentalism. It was his privilege to
sit and serve under the outstanding fundamentalist pastor, Dr. Isaac M. Haldeman, whom God used throughout a long pastorate (1884-1933) to preserve that church from modernism. To the glory of God, First Baptist Church has, from its beginning until this day, enjoyed pastors preaching from the Authorized Version and proclaiming the truths thereof as the very Word of
God. Though Mr. Fowler was not an ordained preacher and did not possess an advanced degree in theology, he studied diligently from the Greek New Testament for more than 30 years. It was in 1953 that he attended Greek classes with the express goal of reading the Greek New Testament.
"After reading the Nestle text several times Mr. Fowler began to note and, later, to list the significant omissions and instances which did not correspond with his Biblical knowledge. ... This treatise is the product of his findings through hours of labor over the years, beginning with the
listing of differences in the Nestle text and growing through the years by
use of various helps and methods. Not only did Mr. Fowler regularly read
the Greek New Testament, but he also read his English Bible. ... For some
40 years he read the Bible through twice a year in English."
DONALD T. CLARKE, former Dean and Chairman of the Greek Department at Bible Truth Institute, Sunbury, Pennsylvania; author of Bible Version Manual.
Thomas E. Baker, President of Bible Truth Institute says of Donald Clarke:
"[He] is the most practical proponent of the Greek New Testament of anyone
I know. His knowledge has come through his dedication to the Holy Spirit
and a diligent comparison of the manuscripts of the Word of God. His conclusions are clear and positive in relation to the history of the Scriptures. In the Introduction to Bible Version Manual the position of its author is clearly stated: `God has not only inspired His Word, but He has
also preserved it down through the corridors of time. I rest in the
knowledge that God has safeguarded the Bible in the past from the wicked poison of vain philosophy and will continue to do so in the future.'"
JAY P. GREEN, SR., General Editor and Translator of The Interlinear Bible,
now in its fourth edition. The Interlinear Bible employs the Hebrew
Masoretic text and the Greek Received Text published by the Trinitarian
Bible Society in 1976, based upon the text followed in the Authorized
Version. I will quote some excerpts from the Introduction to this volume to show that Green is unswerving in his defense of the Majority Text. Please
keep in mind that there is some difference between a so-called Majority
Text and the Textus Receptus upon which the old Protestant versions are
based, but it is also true that the differences are, to say the least, very few and minute when compared with those between a Westcott-Hort type text
and the TR. It also should be pointed out that many who defend the TR and
KJV would not be happy with Green's own translation which he called the
King James II, but which actually is a new and different translation. These things, though, do not detract from the fact that Jay Green is a scholar
who defends the Received Text and rejects the Westcott-Hort text as
corrupted.
"Considering, then, that the words of this Book [the Bible] are the ones
that will judge every person who has lived in all the ages, how important
it must be that the very words of God, and no other, shall be contained in
a portable book, to be distributed far and wide. ... With these
considerations in mind, and in holy fear inculcated by our God, we have
sought to provide in The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek-English Bible all the original God-breathed Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words. And after much laborious study, accompanied by much prayer, it was concluded that this
could best be done by providing you with the two attested texts that alone have been uniquely preserved whole, having been accepted in all
generations, in all lands, by the vast majority of God's people as their `received texts.' ...
"These new versions [of the Bible] are not only marked by additions, but by subtractions (enough to make up at least four whole pages of words,
phrases, sentences, and verses). And the words left out are attested to as God's words by overwhelming evidence contained in all the Greek
manuscripts, in the ancient versions, in the writings of the early fathers; and these from every inhabited land on the earth, anywhere that
Christianity has been introduced by God the Spirit. ... What then is the evidence these Bible-alterers offer to persuade you to give up the precious words they have removed from their version? Mainly, they cite two
manuscripts, admittedly old (c. 300 a.d.), but also admittedly carelessly executed."
DONALD R. WHITE, editor of the Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, published by Baker Book House. I will quote from the Preface to this
volume:
"The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament ... is based on the Greek Text
of Stephens, 1550, which (with the Elzevir Text of 1624) is commonly called the Textus Receptus, or the Received Text, from which the New Testaments of the King James Version, William Tyndale's Bible, Luther's German Bible, Olivetan's French Bible, the Geneva Bible, and many other vernacular versions of the Protestant Reformation were translated. It is the
"Traditional Text" that has been read and preserved by the Greek Orthodox Church through the centuries. From it came the Peshitta, the Italic,
Celtic, Gallic, and Gothic Bibles, the medieval versions of the evangelical Waldenses and Albigenses, and other versions suppressed by Rome during the Middle Ages. Though many copies were ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed,
the Received Text has been preserved by an almighty Providence. This interlinear text maintains the basic integrity of the Received Text (also called the Majority Text, since it is represented by 95 percent of the manuscript evidence). This is in sharp contrast to the Westcott-Hort
tradition (which leans heavily on two manuscripts of the unreliable Alexandrian Text type), the shaky foundation of many of today's versions.
In the sixteenth century, Erasmus and the Reformers knowingly rejected the Gnostic readings of Codex Vaticanus and other very old uncial (i.e., all capital-letter) manuscripts, whose variant readings they judged to be
corrupt. They regarded such dubious `treasures' as the products of scribes
who had doctored the text to suit their own private interpretations. They
also rejected Jerome's Latin Vulgate as a corrupt version and as an
improper basis for vernacular translations" (Donald R. White, Editor, pp.
xi, xii).
PHILIP MAURO was a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United
States and one of the foremost patent lawyers of his day. Mauro is the
author of Which Version? Authorized or Revised?, and a quote from this book leaves no doubt as to the position of this brilliant man in regard to the textual and translation issue:
"It will be seen, therefore, that the making of a Greek Text, as the first step in producing an English Version, involves the immense labor of
examining, for every disputed word and passage, the numerous manuscripts, ancient versions, and quotations now known to exist, and also the making of
a decision in each case where there is a conflict between the various witnesses. This is a highly complicated task; and for the performance of it other qualities besides Greek and English scholarship are required. For example, one must settle at the outset what degree of credibility is to be imputed to the respective manuscripts; and this is where, in our opinion,
the compilers of the Greek Text used as the basis for the R.V. [the Revised Version of 1881] went far astray, with the result that the Text adopted by them was much inferior to that used in the translation of the A.V. Our
reasons for this opinion, which will be given later on, are such as to be easily understood."
JOSEPH C. PHILPOT. Of Philpot, True or False? records: "One time fellow of Worcester College, a faithful Minister of the Gospel, and Editor of The
Gospel Standard 1849-1869 ... one of the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars
of his day, and certainly a deeply spiritual man with a sanctified
discernment of the evil trend of the apostate church" (p. 21). Referring to the King James Bible and the call for a revision, Philpot held this
opinion:
"We appreciate any alteration as a measure that the smallest sprinkling of good would deluge us with a flood of evil. The following are our reasons.
1. Who are to undertake it? Into whose hands would the translation
fall? ... Of course they must be learned men, great critics, scholars, and divines. But these are notoriously either tainted with popery [a reference
to the Tractarian movement within the Anglican church--of which Westcott
and Hort and others of the translation company were members or
sympathizers] or infidelity ... 2. Again, it would unsettle the minds of thousands, as to which was the Word of God--the old translation or the new. What a door it would open for the workings of infidelity. ... 3. ... There would be two Bibles spread throughout all the land, the old and the new,
and what confusion would this create in almost every place! ... 4. If the
new translation were once to begin, where would it end? It is good to let
well enough alone, as it is easier to mar than to mend. The Socinianising Neologian would blot out `GOD' in I Timothy 3:16, and strike out I John 5:7
as an interpolation. The Puseyite would mend it to suit his Tractarian
views. ... Once set up a notice, `The old Bible to be mended,' and there
would be plenty of workmen, who, trying to mend the cover, would pull the pages to pieces. ... Instead of our good old Saxon Bible, simple and solid, with few words obsolete, and alike majestic and beautiful, we should have a modern English translation in pert and flippant language of the day. ... We should be traitors in every sense of the word if we consented to give it up
to be rifled by the sacrilegious hands of the Puseyites, concealed papists, German Neologian, infidel divines, Armenians, Socinians, and the whole
tribe of enemies of GOD and godliness" (True or False pp. 21-23).
Looking back upon the history of Bible translation during the past 100
years, it is evident that this man was a true prophet of God!
WILLIAM T. BRUNER, Th. M., Ph.D. Dr. Bruner once held the typical position
of today's scholarship, considering the Westcott-Hort text a vast
improvement upon the ancient Textus Receptus and the versions (such as the KJV) based upon it. The views of this scholar were changed, though, through
a careful reading of the studies of men such as Burgon and Hoskier.
Bruner's own testimony is contained in a letter to Dr. David Otis Fuller:
"Dear Dr. Fuller:
"On May 12, 1970, you wrote me a very kind letter and sent me some sample materials from your book Which Bible? You might as well have been shooting
a pop gun at a stone wall. My mind was so strongly fortified in the
doctrine of Westcott and Hort that I could not for one moment consider the King James Bible.
"Had I not studied Textual Criticism under the great Dr. A.T. Robertson? I thought that you were just one of those die-hard Fundamentalists who were striving to keep the Christian world under the bondage of traditionalism.
Such men are interested only in pleasing the people by catering to their ignorance, prejudice and sentimentality!
"But just a few weeks ago I happened to read your two books, Which Bible?
and True or False? For the first time a little new light shone in. I saw
that there is another side to the argument. Dr. Robertson had not given us
all the facts.
"As I perused your selections from Burgon and Hoskier, the idols of B and Aleph started to totter, and soon they fell off their pedestals. That was
all I needed. I bought a copy of the Textus Receptus and am now using it. Thanks to you ...
"Sincerely yours,
"William T. Bruner, Th.M., Ph.D.
DICK WALKER, Bible Translator. Walker is another scholar whose views were changed and whose heart was turned toward the Received Text after a careful study of the writings edited by Dr. Fuller. We have the testimony of this Bible translator in a letter to Cecil Carter, an elder for the past 50
years in a Brethren assembly in Canada.
"July 13, 1976
"Dear Brother Cecil:
"Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the joy of knowing Him, whom to know is life eternal. I well remember your visit a few years back when you expressed your deep concern to me over so many Christians who are using translations not based on the Textus Receptus (from which we get the King James Version). Also you gave me a copy of the book Which Bible? by David
Otis Fuller.
"I received your book and exhortation at `arms length.' I considered your concern genuine but perhaps naive. After all I had graduated from a
seminary in California which had one of the highest accreditations on the
west coast. I had majored in New Testament, taken two and one-half years of New Testament Greek from a scholar who had his Ph.D. in Greek studies and
who also had many years of related semitic studies. My studies also
included a course in the text and canon of the New Testament as well as writing my graduation thesis titled `The Exegetical Value of the Greek Participle.' I was satisfied with the science of textual criticism and the `Nestles' text, which is based on the Westcott and Hort text.
"I never knew then how mistaken I was! I had forgotten, or ignored, in
Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians, the folly of applying human
reasoning to God's pattern of revelation, ` ... that in the wisdom of God
the world by wisdom knew not God ...' I Cor. 1:21 (this is true both of Himself and His ways). I did not realize that I, like so many others who
love the Lord Jesus, had accepted unquestioningly the unproved and
unfounded reasoning that the `oldest manuscripts are the best.' I had
placed my confidence in the scholarship of others who have undoubtedly also accepted the same logic while at the same time ignoring the fact that men
of God were quoting from the last 12 verses of Mark (which verses are not found in the so called `oldest and best' manuscripts) and that the writings
of these men of God who quote from the last 12 verses in Mark predate the `oldest and best,' i.e. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
"I praise God for sending you to me and for the kind and loving manner in which you shared these truths with me before I commenced the translation of the Carrier New Testament. I do pray that the Lord Jesus will continue to use your many, many years of solid research into this attack on the Word of God for the edification of other sincere but deceived believers. To the end that the day will come when believers in our Lord Jesus Christ will cease
from using translations which are not the Word of God but corruptions of
the Word of God.
"Sincerely in Christ,
"Dick Walker, Bible Translator"
DR. FRANK LOGSDON. Dr. Logsdon was on the committees which produced the New American Standard Version and the Amplified Version. Logsdon was a highly respected pastor and Bible conference speaker. He pastored Moody Church for
a number of years, as well as other churches. After reading Dr. David Otis Fuller's most excellent books, Which Bible? and True or False?, he writes
as follows:
"I carried these titles with me all the summer long, and immersed myself in them. I have never underscored books so much as I have done in them. They enhanced my appreciation of the K.J.V. as the true revelation of God as no other writings. As a member of the committee in the production of the Amplified New Testament, we conscientiously and honestly felt it was a mark
of intelligence to follow `Westcott and Hort.' Now what you have in these books strikes terror to my heart. It proves alarmingly that being conscientiously wrong is a most dangerous state of being. God help us to be more cautious, lest we fall into the snare of the arch deceiver."
In a personal letter to Cecil Carter of British Columbia, Canada, Dr.
Logsdon writes with reference to the New American Standard Version:
"When questions began to reach me, at first I was quite offended. However,
in attempting to answer, I began to sense that something was not right
about the N.A.S.V. Upon investigation, I wrote my very dear friend, Dr. Lockman, explaining that I was forced to renounce all attachment to the N.A.S.V. ... I could not add much to what Dr. Fuller has in his books,
copies of which you possess. I can aver that the project (N.A.S.V.) was produced by thoroughly sincere men who had the best intentions. The
product, however, is grievous to my heart and helps to complicate matters
in these already troublous times. God bless you as you press the battle!"
We could continue with this listing of scholars who uphold the Received
Text, but this is sufficient for our purposes. It is the position of men
such as these that is called "ludicrous" by the evangelical professor in India, that is called "pseudo-scholarly" by Kurt Aland, and that is ignored and belittled in the letter from the evangelical leader James Boice. The
fact remains that there ARE a number of scholarly men who remain convinced that the TR is the preserved Word of God and that the Westcott-Hort text is corrupted.
It is not an evidence of superior intelligence or spirituality to ignore or belittle this historical position. In fact, the doctrine of preservation
and the weight of history is on the side of those who support the TR. It is not those who honor the TR who are making a new doctrine; these men are simply standing in the time-honored tradition of loving and defending the Received Text. Even Westcott and Hort admitted that the Textus Receptus was the dominate text throughout the world from at least the third century.
This is an undeniable historical fact. Are we not warned by God against removing the ancient landmark?
MYTH #6:
THE ISSUES ARE TOO COMPLEX FOR THE AVERAGE CHRISTIAN TO UNDERSTAND
This is the last point in our series on Myths About the King James Bible. Consider again the letter from Evangelical leader James Boice to the missionary doctor, Tom Hale:
"The situation is somewhat complex, and many people do not understand it as
a result of that complexity. But let me try to explain what is
involved. ... Let me say that the concerns of some of these people [those
who defend the King James Bible and its underlying textual basis] are undoubtedly good. They are zealous for the Word of God and very much
concerned lest liberal or any other scholarship enter in to pervert it. But unfortunately, the basis on which they are operating is wrong, and I have always tried to do what I could in a gentle way to lead them to appreciate good, current evangelical scholarship where the Greek text and the translations are concerned" (Letter from James Boice, leader with the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy, to missionary doctor Tom
Hale).
As noted earlier in this series of articles, these words were directed to a missionary medical doctor in South Asia in response to that doctor's
queries about the issue of Bible texts and translations. The medical doctor had read several books and booklets I had given him. In particular he had
read Which Bible? edited by David Otis Fuller, The King James Version
Defended by the late Dr. Edward F. Hills, and several smaller works by the Trinitarian Bible Society and others.
Note the paternalistic, condescending attitude of Dr. Boice toward those
who would defend the Textus Receptus. It would appear that there is no possibility that Dr. Boice is the one who is in error, the one who is following unsound "scholarship"! Of course he can maintain this kind of attitude toward those who have not studied the issues very thoroughly, or
who, in his opinion, do not possess sufficient intelligence or education to understand the issues. But if he were writing to some of the men we have mentioned in the last section, he would doubtless demonstrate a different attitude entirely. Would he try to lead Dr. Edward Hills, Dr. David Otis Fuller, or Dr. Donald Waite "in a gentle way to appreciate good, current evangelical scholarship where the Greek text and the translations are concerned"?
Would he say to the learned translators of the King James Bible and other mighty Reformation Bibles that "the situation is somewhat complex,
brethren, and many people do not understand it as a result of that
complexity. But let me try to explain what is involved"!
I'm sure you understand what I am saying. This condescending, paternalistic attitude is a common feature of the writings of those who despise the TR. Surely they know that the difference between their views and those of TR supporters is not a matter of greater and lesser intelligence, but they
often imply that this is the case. There is a myth here.
The most important issue in all the world is to know what and where is the Word of God. By that Word we are born again; in it we find eternal life; by
it we live. As the Lord Jesus said, "It is written, That man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). This being the case,
we must have these words--all of them.
Since the issue before us is so crucial for the souls and destinies of men,
is it unreasonable to believe that God would make it possible for the
average saint, and especially for the average church leader, to know the
truth of the matter? God loves the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son to suffer and die, and He has given a pure revelation of this love in a Book. Has this God allowed the issues surrounding the
preservation and translation of the Bible to be as complex as Dr. Boice
says they are? "The situation is somewhat complex, and many people do not understand it as a result of that complexity." Can it be so?
I am reminded of Matthew 11:25-27--"At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even
so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered
unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son will reveal him."
I am reminded of I Corinthians 1:26-29--"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that NOT MANY WISE men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and GOD HATH CHOSEN THE WEAK THINGS of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and
things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not,
to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence."
I am reminded of Acts 4:13--"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and
John, and perceived that they were UNLEARNED AND IGNORANT MEN, they
marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus."
I am reminded of 2 Corinthians 11:3--"But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be
corrupted from THE SIMPLICITY that is in Christ."
I am reminded of Colossians 2:8--"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments
of the world, and not after Christ."
I am reminded of 1 John 2:27--"But the anointing which ye have received of
him abideth in you, and YE NEED NOT THAT ANY MAN TEACH YOU: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even
as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him."
This is not to say God does not call and use scholarly men. Certainly He
does, but this is not the normal situation in the churches of God. A
few--but not many--wise, mighty and noble are called. The common man has
more often received the truth than the wise and mighty, who have more often than not stumbled in their pride. Even when the Son of God walked the earth such was the case. The religious scholars discounted his eternal wisdom,
while "the common people heard him gladly" (Mark 12:37).
The Bible enumerates the qualifications for a pastor, but nowhere does God
say that he must be a scholar. He must be trained in the Word of God; he
must be a man of study; he must be ready and able to teach--but there is no qualification that he be a scholar, that he possess a M.Th. or Ph.D. Where
in the Bible does God say that a pastor must master Greek and Hebrew, even? This being the case, God simply is not going to make the issue surrounding
the question of the Bible translations so complex that the average church leader cannot readily know the truth of the matter.
How has God made the matter simple in His Word? First, He has given a pure Word. Second, He has promised to preserve this Word. Third, it is evident
that a certain textual family, a certain type of Bible, was preserved and published throughout the world across the centuries. Fourth, this text was adopted by the Reformation translators and editors. Fifth, this is the
pure, preserved Word of God and should not be discarded for a text which
was rejected in past centuries by God's people.
These facts are not complex at all. And THEY ARE FACTS, by the way. There
are certain details and questions in the midst of these simple facts which admittedly are complex. There are things hard to be answered. But the
basic, overall issues are quite simple and straightforward; so much so that the average man of God can grasp them and know where the Word of God is
today.
I therefore reject Dr. Boice's contention that "the situation is somewhat complex, and many people do not understand it as a result of that
complexity." The truth of the matter is that the situation is rather simple and many scholars stumble at the simplicity of the truth!
We have looked at six myths which are continually promoted by those who are opposed to the idea that the pure Word of God is preserved in that Text and
in those Versions which dominated non-Catholic Christian life for the past nineteen centuries. Obviously no attempt has been made to answer all of the questions which can be asked on this subject. Our goal was singular:
Brethren, beware of myths which are disguised as truth.
Kurt,
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