Hello and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Pastor Jeff Riddle from Christ Reform Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Saturday, October 15 of 2016. In this episode of Word Magazine, we're going to be offering a review of a recent sermon that was preached on the ending of Mark. The sermon was preached by Pastor Kerry Hardy. It was titled The Added Ending and it was preached on October the 17th of 2012, so just about four years ago. Pastor Hardy is the pastor of Twin City Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. According to the church website, he's been there since 2006. He's a graduate of the Master's Seminary and a former staff member of Grace Community Church, John MacArthur's church out in California. And knowing that makes sense, given the message, because his views on the ending of Mark are very much like those of John MacArthur. And there's a previous Word magazine that I did on MacArthur when he handled this same text, the ending of Mark, several years ago. So if you're interested, you can listen to that as well. This message was called to my attention because a member of my church, someone had shared it with him, and then he shared it with me and asked me, If I would respond to it. And so that is what prompted me doing this word magazine. My purpose is not simply to offer some kind of gratuitous criticism of Pastor Hardy. I don't personally know him. But you know the sermon is on sermon audio. It's there for people to listen to it's a public domain sermon and Pastorally, you know have one of my members asking for my view on it, and I thought that other people might profit from it I plan to send pastor Hardy an email just to let him know that I'm posting this and he won't be blindsided by it and can feel free to respond if he'd like to and Again, I've addressed the ending of Mark a number of times on Word magazine. I've probably addressed it more than any other particular passage in the New Testament. So it's just something that continues to come up again and again and again. And anyways, the sermon is about 64 minutes long, I think. So, I'm probably not going to be able to cover the entire sermon, certainly in one episode, probably not even in two. I'm thinking maybe three, if I can get about 20 minutes of it in each time. And as I listen to it, it seems like it maybe breaks into three parts. Part of it is on some preliminary issues, then he talks about the external evidence, and then the internal evidence. So I'm hoping maybe I'll get through the first 20 minutes, which will be some of the preliminary info and then maybe beginning some of the external evidence. So anyways, we'll just see how far we can get. So what I plan to do is just play the sermon and I'll just stop from time to time and offer some commentary. as we work through it. So, with no further ado, let's go ahead and listen to Pastor Kerry Hardy in his sermon, The Added Ending, from October 17th of 2012. Here we go. Relative to the whole of Scripture, the entire Word of God, there are only a small number of verses that are controversial. And I'm emphasizing that relative idea there, relative to the whole, because there's a lot of verses, obviously, in the Bible. But there are a small number of verses that are controversial. I'll make just pause and say that I find it's typical of evangelicals, especially conservative evangelicals, who have embraced modern text criticism, the modern critical text and modern translations, that there is a tendency to minimize, particularly for the layout audience, the number of textual issues there are in the New Testament. And I would say there are not actually a small number. There are, in fact, lots of textual issues. I mean, all you have to do is take a modern critical Greek New Testament, like the most recent Nessala Land, and look in the critical apparatus, and there are notes about differences. in every verse, multiple ones in most verses. So, although we might say there are certainly major variants and minor variants, I don't think that it is accurate simply to minimize this issue by saying that there are only a small number of controversial issues with regard to the text. I think there are actually quite a few, but there seems to be this tendency to want to minimize, I think for apologetic reasons, because they don't want the people in the pew to feel that the Bible's not authoritative or not reliable. But anyway, let's continue. Let me see, yeah. The reason is they are debated over such things as the fact that they're just plain hard to figure out sometimes, a few, a handful. Or the debate is over seemingly a contradiction between one verse and another verse. Or the reason they are debated is because it's just questionable as to whether or not they are actually part of the original writings. On that last issue, whether something in our Bibles was actually in the original manuscripts, we are talking about usually a particular word that might show up here and there that has to be evaluated from that standpoint. We might normally be talking even about a phrase, perhaps even a verse. It's usually something small like that, with one notable exception. And that is the section consisting of 12 verses in Mark at the end of what we call the Gospel of Mark, Mark chapter 16, verses 9 to 20. Let's pause here for a moment. He says that the issues in the New Testament are all small. With what he says, one notable exception, and that is the 12 verses at the ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9 through 20. And although I agree that there is a significant issue with the ending of Mark, It certainly is true that there is at least one other notable exception, if you were granting that there were only a small number of textual issues, and that is the woman caught in adultery passage, John 7.53 through 8.11. It also is 12 verses in length. So just factually, the ending of Mark is significant, but it's not the only textual issue that involves a larger number of verses, because certainly the woman caught in adultery passage would also be a dispute of a passage of about the same length. So anyway, with that correction stated, let's go on as he turns now to talk about the issue of the ending of Mark. concerning these verses, Mark 16, 9 to 20, is over whether or not Mark actually did write these verses. Now the King James Version, or what is sometimes also called the Authorized Version, as you know, does contain these verses. Other translations, however, as you probably know as well, all indicate in one way or another that there is doubt about their authenticity. Let me just pause here for a moment. Now, he mentions that the King James Version contains these verses, that it contains Mark 16, 9 through 20. And my observation here is that this, I think, is a little bit confusing probably for the audience because it's confusing the issue with relation to the ending of Mark as being merely a translation issue rather than being a textual issue. The issue with the ending of Mark is not that the King James Version includes Mark 16, 9 through 20 as part of the authentic text of the Bible. The issue is the fact that the King James Version includes those verses because it's based on the Greek Texas Receptus and modern translations either bracket that material or put it in the footnotes or add Vesperia's shorter ending or even what's called the Freer Logion after verse 14 because they are based on an eclectic modern text attempting to reconstruct what they believe The original text was or try to be so inclusive that they try to include all early Christian traditions Which is more in the postmodern vein. So the issue is not this is not a KJV issue This is not a translation issue. This is a textual issue. Those are two Related but distinct matters. What is the proper text of the Bible? And then what is the proper way to go about translating the Bible? So again, I think it can be confusing for people to sort of pose it in terms of this is about the King James Version. It's really not about the King James Version. It's about the text, the inspired text of the Bible. But let's continue. For example, the revised standard version, RSV, relegates them to just a fine print footnote at the end. The Phillips translation calls them, quote, an ancient appendix. And others, such as the New American Standard or the ESV, which we're very familiar with both of those around here, translations like those put this section in brackets, beginning brackets and ending brackets. Or sometimes you'll find a note to the effect that something like this, the earliest manuscripts or the oldest and best manuscripts do not contain this verse. In this case, the translation might say those oldest and best manuscripts do not contain these verses, verses 9 through 20. So it is obvious that everyone is not in agreement over this issue since there is at least one major translation that includes them as being authentic, the King James. There are other translations that include them, but put notes or brackets. So everyone's not in agreement over this issue. But when I say everyone, I am talking about everyone even within the conservative camp. So again, he's rightly saying there is a question about the proper text, the proper translation of the ending of Mark. In some ways he makes it sound as though there are some translations that include this and some translations that don't, but the background of that is in truth that all the early translations of the Bible in various languages that began to be done in the Reformation era all use the Textus Receptus. So this is not an anomaly of the King James Version. If you look at all the early English translations, whether it's the Bishop's Bible, or the Great Bible, or the Geneva Bible, if you go back to Tyndale, his first English New Testament, translated from Greek, 1525, it includes Mark 16, 9-20, because they were based on the Textus Receptus. It's only modern translations, based on the modern critical text, that began to question the authenticity of the ending of Mark. And so, unsurprisingly, it's the modern translations that are the ones that have chosen to bracket Mark 16, 9 through 20, or to put notes saying some early manuscripts do not include this passage or even more boldly some are now inserting within the text what is called the shorter ending or putting it in the footnotes. So there is a big, there's a major issue here. We're trying to establish what is the text of the New Testament? It's a very important question. And I do commend Pastor Hardy for taking this issue on head on, addressing it head on. I mean, many people don't, they sort of put their head in the sand or they haven't thought about it. And I do appreciate the fact that he's going through, he's preaching through a series through Mark, and he gets to this passage, and he's going to deal with it. He's going to talk to his people about it. I don't agree with the conclusions that he comes to, but I do appreciate the fact that he at least is attempting to address this. But what he's wanting to say here sort of defensively is, hey, this is an issue even for conservatives. Even conservative men question this. That might be true, otherwise conservative evangelical men and Calvinistic men like a John MacArthur or a John Piper, other evangelicals who have embraced the modern critical text do question this ending, but that's a relatively recent phenomenon. I mean, it's only been since the late 19th century that conservative men have asked questions about the proper text of the New Testament. And this has happened largely as they have embraced the modern critical text. And what I'm asking is, has that been wise? Has that been wise for Orthodox believers? to jettison the traditional text of the Bible and to embrace a text that has been reconstructed by scholars, the modern critical text. So he, I think, is a little defensive about this. Maybe he's caught some criticism from some people about this, and he's going to explain a little bit more. So let's listen. In other words, there have been some folks who try to make the case that those who doubt the veracity of a passage like this are obviously liberals, and that's not true. Or New Agers, I've heard that as well. They try to make the case that people who don't affirm a section like this or affirm some of the modern translations are people who really don't even believe in the inspiration and inerrancy and authority of Scripture. Some even say that Christian orthodoxy itself depends on whether or not you believe these disputed verses are part of God's Word. Those are the same types of people who insist, as well, that the New American Standard Bible or the ESV translation and anything like those are nothing more than demon-inspired translations. I read things about that from time to time, especially in our area. Again, apparently, maybe he's had some personal contact with KJV-onlyists who have been critical of him or his church for adopting the use of modern translations. And indeed, there are a lot of scurrilous attacks that people who are committed to the KJV-onlyism may have made against those who adopt modern translations. I'm asking, can there be a little bit of a nuanced approach here? You're saying you don't want people to criticize you as being liberal because you're asking questions about the text. On the other hand, I might say, well, can you also not assume, perhaps, that someone who would want to defend the traditional text would be a wild-eyed KJV-oneliest who would think that all modern translations are demon-inspired? Is it possible that there are some people out there who have raised questions about the evangelical church's embrace of the modern critical text and modern translation? There might be people who are doing so for sound reasons and for thoughtful reasons, and that their opinions and views ought to be taken seriously as well. So you're right, let's not demonize anyone who is passionate about seeking the truth and seeking to understand what is the proper text of the Bible for Christians to embrace. Let's have a conversation about that among conservative Bible-believing Christians, but let's not discount any criticism against our position as being KJV-oneliest or people having sort of outlandish views. Let's look at it seriously and soberly. Let's continue. But all that is just not true. Many who doubt the legitimacy of this passage are conservatives who love Christ, who believe the gospel, people who affirm the inspiration of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, and the sufficiency of the Bible. So as we discuss this Again, I hear what you're saying and he seems pretty defensive about not wanting to be criticized for challenging the authenticity of Mark 16, 9-20. He's going to challenge, he's going to say in the end that he does not think that Mark 16, 9-20 is inspired scripture. Now, I mean, if you can understand, If we're to defend the authority and the infallibility of Scripture, if someone challenges a part of the Bible that we believe to be part of the inspired Word, you can understand how people will be defensive about that and will challenge that. Hopefully they will do so charitably, but it is a serious doctrinal issue. I mean, we can't say this is a non-controversial issue or that it doesn't have to do with doctrine. It very much has to do with doctrine. And I would say, you know, he listed a number of things that people can hold this view who still uphold the inerrancy of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture and so forth. The one word that was left out was the preservation of Scripture. And as I've said many times on Word magazine, when you're confessionally reformed, if you hold to one of the classic reformed confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, there in chapter one, it affirms not only the immediate inspiration of the scriptures in the original languages, but also the fact that they have been providentially preserved. in all ages. So we've got a basic doctrinal issue here of how has the Bible been preserved? Has it been preserved in the way that many modern evangelicals have suggested that it's preserved in the lost original autographs and we should trust modern scholars to reconstruct what that original autograph was even though we don't have it? Or is it the view that I think was held by the men of the Reformation era, whether it's John Calvin or whether it's John Owen, and that was that they believed that the Bible had been immediately inspired of the original languages and that it had been faithfully preserved in the copies down to the present age, and those copies contained the word of God accurately reflecting the divine autographs, and then those could reliably be used for translations, for study, for preaching, and for teaching. So we're really talking about two very different views the preservation of the Bible and that's a theological issue. That's a key theological issue and it's one that should be talked about. So he's going to turn I think from this point on and talk a little bit more now about some of the technical issues related to the transmission of the Bible and and how some of the scribal differences and variants arose. So let's resume listening to the sermon. Tonight, I believe we need to see this debate mostly as one that is within the family, so to speak, of what I would call conservatives who affirm Scripture. Now there's something else we need to understand as we take on this controversy tonight. And that is something related to the original manuscripts, the actual Papyri, I think it means papyri. So papyri, of course, was a writing material made from the papyrus plant. And so some of the earliest manuscripts that we have of the New Testament were written on papyri. There have been, you know, more and more of these are being discovered as time goes on. The most recent modern critical text of the New Testament, the Nesolan, I think it lists 127 or 128 papyri and there have been a few more that have been found since 2012 when that was printed. So anyway, so he mentions the papyri. He's going to go on to talk about the fact that we do not possess any of the divine autographs, the original manuscripts that were written by the scriptural authors, and he's going to talk more about the transmission process, so we'll resume. Notebook paper, they didn't have that, but you know something, whatever they had, the actual documents that the original writers wrote on, the original manuscripts. The bottom line is this, the Christian Church does not possess the original manuscripts. Not any of them. And of course that shouldn't bother us apologetically because we don't possess the original manuscripts of any works of antiquity. We don't have the original copy of Caesar's Gaelic Wars or Cicero's On the Good Life or any of them. All we possess of any work of antiquity are copies. So, anyways, that's not something that should be at all disconcerting to Christians that we don't have the autographs of any book in the Bible. And that means we don't have the original manuscript of the gospel which Mark wrote. Just like for all other books, we have only copies. And in many cases now, fragments of copies, of various copies. Sometimes those copies or fragments of copies contain slight differences from one to another. It may be a word that is different or occasionally, like I said before, even a phrase or even an entire verse. But as I've already noted, here in Mark chapter 16, we encounter this unusual problem that a long section consisting of 12 verses is considered by many not to be part of the original manuscripts. Let me just stop and ask the question, how does that occur? The fact that there can be copies of manuscripts that don't agree with one another. There can be some variation between them. Why do these differences occur? Well, just remember something. That the Gospels, and we'll just use that as an example tonight as we're talking about the Gospel of Mark, the Gospels were written long before the invention of the printing press. Well, let me say yes. So obviously, something I've said many times in various Word magazines in the past, yes, the admonition in the printing press was a very providential point. And it resulted in the ability to have a standard printed form, a uniform standard text of the Greek New Testament, for example, when Erasmus printed the first Greek New Testament in 1516 it was the beginning of a standard printed text for the New Testament and before that there were the handwritten manuscripts. Sometimes though I think what is overlooked is the fact that the early Christians, I think, would have been very careful in transcribing and copying those various manuscripts of the New Testament. They would have been very careful in doing so. I mean, first of all, many of the early Christians were Jews and they had a tradition for careful copying and careful handling of the New Testament manuscripts. From what we read in some of the church fathers, it seems that although we don't have the autographs any longer, that many of those autographs were set up in various churches. People could come, they could look at them, they could make copies from them. They would also, if there was an error that was made in some of the copying, it could be compared. with more authoritative copies, or perhaps in some cases in the beginning with the original. Certainly, I know John Owen makes this point in his writings on the transmission of the Greek New Testament. He says, you know, if the ancient scribes were very careful in making the copies of Aristotle or Plato, Don't you think that the early Christians would have been very careful in how they copied the New Testament? So I think we should be careful about playing up sort of how the the copying of the New Testament was done how it was approached because I Think a good argument could be made that it was it was done very carefully early on obviously there were there were transmissional difficulties and there were variants that arose that But I believe an argument can be made for the careful, meticulous transmission of the New Testament as well, because the early Christians valued the New Testament, and that just didn't happen when the printing press was invented. Now, there may have been, again, We'll talk about this more in just a moment as he gets to this. There could have been human unintentional mistakes in transmission. There also could have been intentional efforts to alter the text by persons who had a sort of a theological axe to grind. But anyways, I get what he's saying that it's not until the printing press that we get the standard form, but I don't think that means that we have to necessarily downplay how serious and how carefully, how seriously and how carefully the early Christians would have handled their copying of the New Testament. Mark was not able to take this document he had been writing and take it to the local printer and ask them to typeset it and then, you know, get the proofs back from them and kind of read over it and say, well, you know, my first order, I want a thousand copies. Exactly the same, printed for distribution. How did somebody get a copy of Mark's Gospel? Well, if anyone wanted a copy, they had to sit down with what Mark had written and laboriously copy it by hand. And if by any chance they copied a word wrongly or left something out, then that mistake would likely be repeated when someone else made a copy of their copy. That's just the way it is. This is what did transpire for 1,500 years until another method became available. People making copies by hand for 1,500 years. So it's not surprising that if you think about it, the earliest manuscripts and copies would stand to be the most accurate and that many small discrepancies crept into more likely later manuscript copies. That's just the nature. OK, now he pivots to another kind of argument here. And his argument is essentially the superiority of the earliest manuscripts. So the earlier a manuscript we have of the Greek New Testament or a book or passage in it, the more likely it is to be reliable. And again, I think we could have a debated conversation about that. Later on, though, he's going to say that he's going to base his argument for Mark 16, 9 through 20 as not being original. He's going to base that largely on the fact that it's missing in two manuscripts, in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Those are actually not extremely early manuscripts. I mean, they're the earliest unseals that we have, and they're sometimes dated to the 4th century, 5th century. We're not really sure when, but I mean, they're on vellum. They're unsealed manuscripts, but I mean, that's, you know, three, four hundred years after the original was written. So that's not really at the pure source. The earlier manuscripts we have would be the papyri, but we don't have any papyri evidence for the ending of Mark's gospel. We don't have any papyri evidence that omits Mark 16, 9 through 20. So I would say actually the earliest manuscripts that we have of the New Testament, the papyri, we don't really have any available evidence for the authenticity of the ending of Mark. We'll talk later in this series, I don't think we'll get to it today, evidence in some of the church fathers, but we know that Mark 16, 9 through 20, there's evidence of its use in the church father Irenaeus. So there's very early evidence for the ending of Mark, the longer ending of Mark or the traditional ending of Mark. He's basing, he and others who reject the ending of Mark do so largely on the basis of its omission in two unsealed manuscripts, again, that are from the fourth century. And that's not really at the, that's 400 years removed from the source. So I could kind of use this argument that is just laid out there. against him and I could say that those manuscripts maybe corrupted the original by attempting to remove or suppress the traditional ending of Mark and that the traditional ending should be affirmed because the actual earliest evidence of it in say Tertullian shows that it was there and that it was original and authentic. But I'll maybe say more about that later on in this series. Let's continue. So how can we be sure that we have then the genuine text which Mark wrote or anybody else wrote? Only by trying to trace the copies back to their originals the best we can and examining these copies from what in theology we would call a textual standpoint. That is what textual criticism experts do. There is a whole discipline called critical or textual criticism. They start by, this is a very brief overview of that Just pause for a moment. He's going to go on and talk a little bit more about text criticism. But essentially, what he's going to be presenting is a particular view of text criticism. And it's the view that is sometimes called reasoned eclecticism, the idea that you take the massive manuscripts that exist, you study them, and you use reasonable, rational arguments to choose different readings. That's the eclectic choosing. Choose different readings and then you attempt to reconstruct what you believe the original text read. That was a way of doing text criticism that was very popular. in the 19th century through to the 20th century. It actually is not the sort of position that is held by many modern academic text critics today. They have essentially abandoned any hope of being able to reconstruct the original manuscript they say we just can't do it there's there's no way logically and reasonably to be able to reconstruct the original manuscript and they have sort of a postmodern view all streams are sort of as valuable as any other heterodox streams are as valuable as orthodox streams and so forth. But there are still many pastors who were trained and a handful of evangelical text critics who still embrace this view of text criticism, this reasoned eclecticism, and this reconstructionist view. So anyways, this is essentially the viewpoint that he is going to put forward. So we'll continue with his analysis on how text criticism is done. I start by placing copies in families. based upon various characteristics that are similar. And then they determine which ones from that are the earliest copies. And finally, through some very technical evaluations, they work out what the likelihood of certain mistakes could have been made in the copying, even determining how Again, some of this is a little bit dated, I think. If you look at the modern state of the art, the idea, the view of there being text families, that was certainly a view that was held. in the 19th century, even goes back further than that I think to the 18th century. Bengal was one of the first ones to talk about this and you had people who talked about, you know, the Byzantine text and the Alexandrian text and the Caesarean text. And Westcott and Hort certainly did this. They called the Alexandrian text the neutral text. They looked at the Byzantine text, the majority text, as being corrupted. But one of the odd things is that many modern text critics are beginning to question the whole idea of the text family divisions. I should have added also, along with Alexandrian and the Byzantine and the Caesarean, also the Western texts. But again, the consensus about the text families has been challenged and is in some ways unraveling in many circles in academic text study as I read it, as I see it. So, but let's continue. So overall, all I'm telling you is, overall, it is best to find the earliest and oldest manuscript copies. Because the later that manuscript is dated, the more likely there could be the presence of some changes. Well, again, I know he's trying to talk about a lot of very complicated issues and simplify them in a short span of time. And certainly the earlier a manuscript is, it certainly could be very valuable. But it's also true that an early manuscript, if we're talking about an early unseal, that is coming 300 years after the original was written, that an early unseal could have been corrupted. And it might be that a manuscript that we have from the 10th century, some written in the 900s, may be a copy or may represent a line that goes back earlier than that unseal, back to an authentic reading. So in that sense, sometimes the physical date of a copy might not be as valuable as one might at first think. It has to be evaluated. One of the things that we found, for example, is Westcott and Hort, for example, said that if we could get back closer to the originals, we would find that we would find a pure Alexandrian text. And what the papyri finds of the 20th century have revealed is that the papyri is a mixed text, using the old language of the text families. There are Byzantine readings. There are Western readings. There are Alexandrian readings. And so the Byzantine readings have antiquity. The Western readings have antiquity. The Alexandrian readings have antiquity. And so, again, I think it's a bit simplistic to say, well, the Alexandrian readings are the earliest and all the Byzantine readings are late, and so therefore we can't give any weight to the Byzantine readings, but we must give great weight to the Alexandrian readings. That's an old way of looking at reconstruction of the critical text. It was the method of Westcott and Hort, but I'm not sure that it's a method that has been proven to be true and it has been challenged in modern times. Think about this with me too. What is the most common kind of change that would occur? This has been proven over and over and over that no doubt the most common kind of change that would happen would be additions, additions to the text. OK, this is another interesting assertion. He's saying that the most common kinds of changes that scribes would have made to the copies is that there would have been a tendency to add. There would have been a tendency to expand. And again, this is another sort of an assertion that I think could be open to challenge. I just pulled down off my shelf my copy of Metzger's, Bruce Metzger's classic work, The Text of the New Testament, and I'm actually looking at the second edition. There's a third edition that was edited by Co-edited with Bart Ehrman, but he has a section in there on See it's a chapter 7 the causes of errors in the transmission of the text in the New Testament and he goes through the various scribal Variants and how they came about and he puts them in two categories first of all he talks about what he calls unintentional errors and So he talks about errors, first of all, of sight. And he talks about parablepsis. Sometimes a scribe would, the word parablepsis means looking to the side. They would just simply get, their eye would be distracted and they would skip sometimes a word or two, sometimes a verse. There's also related to that a phenomenon that's called homo eotelioton, which is a Greek word for similar ending. And so you might have one word that, Greek is an inflected language, so sometimes the endings are similar, and there might be one word that ends in one way, and there might be another word in two or three verses down that ends with the exact same letters, the exact same ending, and the scribe could glance from the first word down to the second and resume copying from there and therefore he would skip over some material and this would be an example of parablepsis. So this would not be an error of addition, but this would be an error of diminishment, an error of taking away. And then there's just outright omissions that are called haplography. There are errors of addition. Metzger talks about dittography, and that is copying something twice, giving it a ditto, dittography. He also describes errors of hearing. There is a phenomenon called an idiocysm, which Greek, like most languages, has some vowels that are similar to each other. And sometimes, maybe in a scriptorium, there would be someone who would be a lector or reader who would be reading out the text, and people would be copying it. and it would be read aloud, and there'd be an iticism. Somebody writes a word using one vowel, somebody writes another word using another vowel. The same thing could happen with consonants. The Greek consonant kappa, the K sound, would sound a lot like the consonant zi. And so these words could be interchangeable for each other. He also talks about errors of mind. substitution of synonyms, sequence of words in a sentence, transposition of letters in a word, assimilation of wording in one passage to another. And then he talks about errors in judgment. That's when perhaps a marginal note is included or when a lectionary instruction is included in a manuscript. And those are just the unintentional changes. And then he has a whole section as well about intentional changes. where a scribe might want to alter a passage for theological reasons or he thinks he's trying to help, he's trying to correct what he sees as a problem. So there are all types of scribal errors or scribal differences that lead to variant readings. Only some of those are additions. Many of them are deletions or diminishings. And so I would just question his assertion that the main problem with the transmission of the text in the New Testament is addition. And I would just say in support of that as well is, how do you prove that? How do you verify that assertion? I mean, can you actually go through all the extant copies of the New Testament and do some kind of count and come up with a conclusion that the major problem with the scribes was that they had a tendency to add things? Again, I just don't think that's a verifiable, just logically, it's not a verifiable assertion. And there are plenty of examples, once more, of haplography, of parablepsis, of omissions, of deletions. Then I would just also add, on a theological level, I think this idea that the best text is a shorter text and the best text is one that doesn't have what some believe are pious expansions. I believe it actually comes from a kind of a queer source for conservatives, because I think if you trace it back theologically, you have to go back to the Enlightenment, the post-Enlightenment, go back to the 19th century. You had a lot of New Testament critics. who had a sort of a doctrinal axe to grind. Many of them were Arians. They denied the deity of Christ and they had a theory that primitive Christianity did not emphasize a high Christology. And therefore, they like to see sort of what they see are explicit references to the divinity of Jesus or ascriptions of titles to Jesus like Christ and Lord. They have a tendency to see those as not being primitive. Because if they were primitive, they wouldn't reflect that high Christology. An example of this is the treatment of 1 Timothy 3.16. The modern critical text says it should read, He was manifested in the flesh. While the traditional text reads, God was manifested in the flesh. And some people have argued against God was manifested in the flesh on the basis of that. It's just a pious expansion. That's later scribes wanting to explicitly say that Jesus is God. Of course, there's a major issue with that passage related to just the orthography. Was it omicron, sigma, chas, he, and was that mistaken for one of the nomina sacra for God, phaos? But anyways, I just think that some conservative evangelicals are naive when they immediately embrace some of these canons of text criticism that have been promoted by men who often were outright liberals, were Aryans, and they don't take into consideration that maybe they had a theological axe to grind in some of the assumptions that they have in these canons that they approve and embrace. Let's go a little bit further. tended to be very prone to adding things and not deleting things. They would add things, a word, a phrase, sometimes even a whole verse, to smooth things over if a statement was difficult for them to understand. I think we've got another issue here that I mentioned earlier. We've got another logical problem with this, and that's verifiability. How do you verify that? How do you know what was going on in the mind of a scribe? How do you prove and show his intentions and why he copied something? Maybe he copied it because it was there in his exemplar. Maybe he wasn't adding or expanding. Maybe other scribes who left that out were diminishing for their theological reasons. So it's an assertion that's a conjecture that can't really be verified. And so I just give that as a challenge to this viewpoint. They would sometimes insert something like that as an interpretation to kind of help the flow of thought. Or if they believed a gap was there, or if they believed something was missing, then they would definitely add something at that point. For that reason, textual experts understand that generally, not only are the oldest manuscripts the most reliable generally, but also the shorter version of manuscripts or the shorter version of verses tend to be the most accurate, because copyists were prone. All right, so he stated it very succinctly. He wants the earliest text. And I've already challenged whether or not the earliest text of the New Testament manuscripts can be definitively proven to have omitted the ending of Mark. But the second thing is that he believes that the shorter versions of manuscripts are more original. And I pulled down a book from my shelf, it's a copy of the New Testament, the original Greek, the Byzantine text form, 2005, compiled and arranged by Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont. And in the back of this volume, there's an appendix. And the appendix is an article written by Maurice Robinson. And Maurice Robinson, if you don't know the name, is one of the foremost defenders of the majority text, or the Byzantine text. He taught at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, not too far from Winston-Salem. And I think that he is still a research professor there. But this article is called The Case for Byzantine Priority. It's actually online also. And by the way, I will be doing a post at jeffridl.net, my blog. And I'll put a link to this article so that you can read it. At one point in the article, Dr. Robinson lists what he calls his principles of internal evidence. And in my copy in this book, it's found on pages 545 to 554. But one of the points that he makes his principles for internal evidence. The eighth point is exactly the opposite of what Pastor Hardy says. And this is what Maurice Robinson writes. Let me just read, if I can find it here, a little bit of what he has to say. This is beginning on page 552. Number eight, neither the shorter nor longer reading is to be preferred. The reasoned eclectic principle here omitted is the familiar Lectio brevior potior. giving preference to the shorter reading, assuming all other matters to be equal." So what Pastor Hardy's put forward is one of the canons of reasoned eclecticism. The shorter reading is to be preferred. But Maurice Robinson, who has spent a career studying this, has said no. He believes that is inaccurate. Neither the shorter nor the longer reading should be preferred. He goes on to say, that this principle, the preference for the shorter reading, has come under fire even by modern eclectics. Not only can its legitimacy be called into question, but its rejection as a working principle can readily be justified. The net effect of such a principle is to produce an a priori bias on insufficient internal grounds which favors the shorter Alexandrian text. The underlying premise is faulty. It assumes that scribes have a constant tendency to expand the text, whether in regard to sacred names, or by a conflationary combination of disparate narratives, lest anything original be lost. Yet scribal habits, as exemplified in the extant data, simply do not support such a hypothesis. So here is one scholar, at least, who studied the material, who says that the shorter reading is to be preferred is inaccurate and that the scribes do not show a pronounced tendency to expand. So as we're going to see A lot of what your opinion comes to on this is who you accept as an authority. Do you accept the canonical principles of Westcott and Hort and their approach to text criticism? Or do you accept the principles put forward by someone like Maurice Robinson, who supports the Byzantine text? He's going to go on and also announce his approval for another key canon of modern text criticism, and that is the idea that the more difficult reading is to be preferred. So let's listen to that. Also, if that shorter version is as well the more challenging version to understand, the more challenging one to accept, it's been proven over and over That that too, then, lends to the proof that it likely is the closest to the original. Because those are the kind of things copies would try to fix. Again, though, I would challenge this on a theological basis. Sometimes scholars will have a tendency to think that a passage that is so-called smooth or that is pious, that it must be late. And so if they find any evidence of something that where a pious affirmation of the deity of Jesus has been emphasized or included, they'll have a tendency to say, oh, that must be a late addition, that must be a late addition. And so I'm going to accept the more difficult, what they say is the more difficult or the more primitive reading. But again, it's a circular argument. Definitive way to verify that, you know, one reading is better than another often comes down to a subjective opinion. Who's to say that one reading is more difficult and another reading is easier? It may depend on some of the a priori assumptions of the interpreter as to what is a more difficult reading or what is a smoother reading so-called. Tonight, we're going to tackle this issue in Mark of whether verses 9 through 20 belong to the book. There is no way to cover every position and every subposition held, so we're just going to talk about the two main ones. Position number one, Mark did write it. Position number two, Mark did not write it. Those are the two broad positions. Are we all together then? Mark did write it or he did not write it. Now under that second position, Mark did not write it, that second position is broken down into two branches or two subgroups. We'll go back and talk about all this. Here are the two subgroups under Mark did not write this. Branch number one, Mark intended to conclude his gospel with the words that we studied last time, chapter 16, verse 8. In other words, he did not write the rest of this because he intended all along not to write any more. It was his desire to end at verse 8. Or the other sub-branch is Mark did not write this other section called the longer ending, by the way, that's its sort of colloquial nickname, the longer ending. Mark did not intend to conclude his gospel at verse eight. He did not intend at all to end there, but he did intend to write more. Okay, so those are two sub-branches. Now, I'm submitting to you tonight that of the two big positions, Mark did write it or Mark did not write it. I'm submitting to you, first of all, that the second position is the correct view. Mark did not write versus 9 through 20. Let me just pause here, and I mean, he has laid it out. I do appreciate the fact that he is tackling this issue. I do appreciate the fact that he is laying his cards on the table. But it's a pretty astounding statement, really, to be made by a self-described conservative. He is saying, either on one hand, Mark did write Mark 16, 9 through 20, or on the other hand, Mark did not write it. Of course, there are some variations on this opinion. David Alan Black, for example, believes that someone else wrote Mark 16, 9 through 20, but that person was also an inspired author. And so it'd be another question. One question is authorship. One question would be inspiration. But I'm taking him to mean and listen to the rest of the sermon. He believes that Mark 16, 9 through 20, not only was not an authentic part of the gospel of Mark, was not written by Mark, the author of the gospel, but also it's not part of inspired scripture. And that is a pretty amazing claim to make. I mean, it's a very serious claim to make. If he's right, then there is a spurious section that has been accepted in most Christian Bibles throughout Christian history because it's the reading of the majority text. And there is a spurious passage that is included in most English Bibles, including the most widely read and influential English Bible, the King James Version, but also all the other translations from the Protestant Reformation era. that this was an error, this matter is spurious, it doesn't belong in the New Testament. He's going to go on, he mentioned the sub-branch under Mark didn't write it, either Mark intended to conclude at 1608 or two, Mark did not intend to end at 1608. And he'll go on later on in the message and say, give his argument for why he believes that Mark originally ended at 16, 8. And so again, verses 9 through 20 are spurious and they should not be preached upon. They should not be taught. So again, that is a very bold claim. And again, this sort of speaks to, I think the confusion of our times is, Our self-described conservative men, even Calvinistic men, are rejecting the traditional text of the Bible, the traditionally received text of the Bible. Again, I'm lodging this, I'm trying to speak about it charitably, I'm not lodging this as a wild-eyed KJV only-ist. But I do challenge and question that assumption. I believe that Mark 16, 9 through 20 is part of the authentic word of God, and it should be received not as the words of men, but as the word of God. Well, I was hoping we would get to 20 minutes. We've only made it through about 12 minutes or so. I think, well, maybe 14 minutes. And so maybe, though, it would be good to stop here. Actually, we're at the 13 minute, 28 second mark. Because from this point on, he's going to turn and talk about the external evidence. And then finally, he's going to talk about the internal evidence. So maybe what would work well is if we just stop here with sort of these sort of preliminary matters. And then I can do a second part of the review where we just deal with the external evidence. And then I can do a third part of the review where we deal with the internal evidence. So anyways, I think I will close for right now. But God willing, we will have some future magazines that will continue this review of Pastor Hardy's sermon. on the ending of Mark. Till then, take care and God bless. All these things I call to memory and I ponder in my heart how with throngs I moved rejoicing to his temple's sacred court. Why my soul be in despair? Why this worry and this care? Open, God, my soul's salvation, Him I'll praise with jubilation. When my heart despairs within me, Then will I recall once more As the headwaters of Jordan From the mount of Herm and Por. Deep to deep roars out its sound, Waves and rapids surging round, In the day God's love comes freely, And at night his song is with me. To my God, my rock, I murmur, How could you forget me? How? All my foes, oppress and taunt me, Where's your God, they ask me now. Why my soul be in despair? Why this worry and this care? Open God, my soul's salvation, Him I'll praise with jubilation.