Hello and welcome to this edition of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Saturday, December the 29th of 2018. We just have a few more days in this year before we turn the corner and start 2019, and I'm one of those kind of people who invariably will write the wrong date at least several times in the beginning of January before I get in the groove of writing 2019. But for now it's still 2018 and in this episode of Word Magazine, episode 112, I am going to be responding to reading and responding to some Recent questions that I have received from people who read my blog or who listen to this podcast and just about every week I get a number of questions people send me I try to respond to them. and I'm just going to select a couple that I've received about over the past week or so. One reason I wanted to try to squeeze in another word magazine is due to the fact again that the year is about to come to an end and I had wanted I've always wanted to be able to do the word magazine you know one a week would be perfect if I could do you know 52 in a year but I went back and looked and the very first word magazine that I did in 2018 was word magazine 87 and then the last one I did it was 111 this one is 112 and if i can do this one and maybe on monday the last day of the year i might be able to do one more and then i would at least have 26 so if i did my math correctly from word magazine 87 if i made it to word magazine 113 i will at least have done averaged one every two weeks So I'm not as much of an abject failure by not getting 52 done. So anyways, I'm going to do this one and then possibly if I can get another one in on Monday, I'll try to get that done. So again, what's the topic for today? I'm going to read some questions and I'm going to offer some responses. Those of you who sent the questions know who you are. You already received these email responses, but I'm going to expand a little bit And I will, as always, on my blog JeffRiddle.net, I will put up a post for Word Magazine 112 and I'll include the questions as I receive them and the email responses I gave back along with some expansions. something in right here so that I keep power to my computer. That would be good. All right, so question number one, and I'm gonna keep the names out to protect the innocent, but this questioner said, Pastor Jeff, Of how much use would a fresh translation into English of the TR, with explanatory footnotes or alternative translations, as well as grammar and syntax explanations designed for the use of ministers who hold to the confessional text position, particularly those who struggle with Greek, to use in sermon preparation be? Would this be a worthwhile endeavor? It would not be meant for a translation to use in public preaching and teaching, or to replace existing translations, but to complement them and shed extra light on them." And this was actually, I said, these were questions emailed, but someone texted Me this question and we had some text exchanges and I did give them a brief response back And I think probably I didn't at the time grasped exactly what they were asking because they were really asking would it be helpful to have like a minister's aid and sort of a scholarly translation that could be consulted by ministers, not a translation that would replace, say, reading the King James or the New King James or whatever church happens to use, but something that would just help the minister in the work of rightly dividing the word. The response I gave back, texted back, I said, on a new TR translation, I'd be hesitant. We already have modern translations generally following the traditional texts like the New King James Version and the Modern English Version. These seem sufficient." And when I gave that response, I was just thinking about the fact that I believe we have too many English translations that are out there now. The market is now officially I wonder how many more will be dropped on the market in the coming year. But again, I hear what he's saying. He's saying not, you know, we don't need another translation in the pew, but maybe one that's for the pastor's study. Again, I still might question even that, because it seems to me that a teaching elder who is sort of worth his salt He ought to be encouraged to study, and he ought to be encouraged to learn the biblical languages. And if you're out there and you're a regular preacher, and right now your handle on the original languages is not the strongest, I'd encourage you to make that something that you'll work on in the coming year. I need to improve my Hebrew. I feel like my Greek is pretty proficient, and I can easily read the Greek New Testament. and I can easily prepare sermons. When it comes to the Old Testament, a lot of times I am overly reliant on the English translation, and so I'd like in the next year to improve my Hebrew reading proficiency. But anyways, and then there are all the tools that a minister can acquire, whether that's electronically or you know, in actual paper books, whether that's commentaries, lexicons, grammars, you know, again aside even from, you know, theological works that help with the exposition of Scripture. So I think, unfortunately, there's not going to be an easy fix from the minister. that he he needs to study the original languages and study theology and Then then each week labor over the word read it translate it exposit it So anyways, and you can probably hear me grabbing a drink of water because I'm still dealing with a scratchy gravelly throat I had this humdinger of something that I caught last week. I've had it now for one week and Anyways, but I'm here and let's move on to question number two. Question number two begins, Dear Brother Riddle, I need some help from someone who is more knowledgeable than I on textual matters. I listened to several of your word magazines after I corresponded with you some time ago. I remember that. And I appreciate your scholarly work. Some questions have come up. from one whose ear James White has that I hardly know how to answer. I will post three paragraphs from recent emails and then he posts three paragraphs that apparently he had received in email exchanges with someone. He says if you have any insight it would be greatly appreciated. If there is source material to which you can point, that would be fine. I know you're busy, so I'm not asking for a lengthy answer. Thanks for your help." So I did sit down and write responses to the three paragraphs that he sent that he had received, apparently in email exchanges with someone, he says, whose ear James White has, meaning someone that's been influenced by James White. meaning they've been influenced by the modern critical text view. So here's the first paragraph. This is someone challenging this person's wanting to hold to the confessional text position, wanting to hold to the textus receptus as a preferred text of the standard text of the New Testament. So first paragraph, this person, the opponent writes, there are more than 30 TRs. I assume they mean there are more than 30 printed editions of the TR. None of them exactly follow any Greek manuscript perfectly. They were all eclectically put together by incorporating variant readings from different places. So for you to hold that any of them are the exact word of God requires you to say that whoever did the compiling of that particular one did a perfect job. The Stephanus 1550 TR deviates from the quote majority reading in quote in quote aka the Byzantine text a full 1838 times. So you have to have 100% confidence that every single one of those times the people compiling the TR made the right decision. So this was the first challenging paragraph. And let me read what I offered as a response to share with this brother. If I were responding to a person who gave this challenge, I wrote, yes, the TR is an eclectic text. as is the modern critical text. And then I would ask this person, are you opposed to eclecticism? Are you opposed to the reasoned eclecticism that is practiced in the modern critical text? If so, you would reject not only the TR, but you would reject the modern critical text also. Yes, indeed, this means the TR is not based on any single New Testament manuscript or even a family of manuscripts. I know of no current printed Greek text which is based on one single manuscript. So there's no silver bullet single Greek manuscript out there of the New Testament. The closest that we can come to someone who does a printed Greek New Testament based on not a single manuscript but a family manuscript is Wilbur Pickering, and he has an edition of the Greek New Testament that is based on a family of minuscule manuscripts that is known as Family 35. Yes, I said in my response, the TR does deviate from the Byzantine or the majority text. Those who hold to the TR position do not believe that the Byzantine majority text is the authentic text. And yes, I continued, I trust that God was providentially at work during the Reformation era and during the era of the technological revolution of the printing press to fully preserve his word. Look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Paragraph 8. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Paragraph 8. which both describe how these confessions hold that the Bible is immediately inspired in the original languages, but it has been preserved, it has been providentially preserved by God, kept pure and entire through all ages. And I would say, yes, the Lord was at work in the Reformation age. Yes, he supernaturally worked to preserve the text. We don't have to rely just on naturalistic explanations, i.e. through the scientific modern critical method, but we can rely on supernaturalistic methods, that is, God's divine preservation. I continued, I feel much more confident trusting men of this era, men like Stephanus, Calvin, Beza, etc., and their judgments. Then I do the editorial decisions of modern editors. I would ask this person, can you name me the people who are on the committee right now who's deciding what the text is for the NA 29 and for the upcoming new edition of the United Bible Society's Greek New Testament? And again, I don't feel bad at all about saying I trust the judgment of those men of that generation who were godly men, learned men. And then I could just turn the question around. I could say, well, if you accept the modern critical text, which means you, at this point, you accept, I assume, the Ness Elan 28th edition, does this mean that you have 100% confidence that they are absolutely right in all the decisions that they've made? So, does this mean you are absolutely sure that they are right about Mark 16, 9 through 20 when they put it in brackets? Not only that, but also when they insert the so-called shorter ending within the text? Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain that they are right when they remove John 7, 53 through 8, 11 or put it within brackets? What about 2 Peter 3, 10? where they add a conjecture and put in the negative particle, ook, even though it appears in no Greek manuscripts. Do you have absolute certainty in the decisions of the modern critical editors? And that's what I wrote. You can read it, but I just thought of one other thing as I read this. This question assumes that the editors of the TR went through the Byzantine majority text and they came to 1,838 points variations, and they deliberated on each one of those. And I think that's a wrong-headed view. They were not sitting there with the Byzantine majority as the standard. and thinking through variations from it. Yes, there are, I wouldn't doubt, I don't know where he got the numbers from, I wouldn't doubt that there are thousands of variations, most of them probably fairly minor from the majority text or the Byzantine text where readings are adopted in the Texas Receptus that aren't found in the Byzantine text. But anyways, I feel, again, fairly confident, fully confident I'll say, that the Lord was there providentially at work through those Reformed men who were editing and for the first time printing a standard text, and then that text became the basis for the various translations of the Reformation period into the various vernacular languages. Again, not just English, but into Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, French, Spanish, German, etc. So let's move on. The second paragraph of the three, where someone gave him objections to the confessional text position, this paragraph says, no edition of the Greek New Testament agreeing precisely with the text followed by the KJV translators was in existence until 1881, when F.H.A. Scrivener produced such an edition. though even it differs from the King James Version in a very few places. For example, Acts 19 verse 20. It is Scribner's 1881 text which was reprinted by the Trinitarian Bible Society in 1976. This text does not conform exactly to any of the historic texts. dating from the Reformation period and known collectively as the Texas Receptus. So again, this is the second objection paragraph that this brother sent, and how would I respond to this? This is what I wrote to him in an email, and here's my response to this paragraph. Though they are related, we need to distinguish from the beginning between the development of the printed editions of the Texas Receptus and the King James Version translation. And again, this is a very key distinction. It's one that the waters are often muddied and there is a failure to draw this distinction. James White does this all the time. I pointed out recently that Mark Ward did this in the article that I reviewed by him. So let's make clear that we need to make a distinction between the printed editions of the TR and the production of the KJV translation. I'm not defending KJV-onlyism, although I have much respect for the KJV and prefer to use it. What I'm more interested in is defending the Textus Receptus as a standard fixed text for use in translations and preaching and theologizing for the New Testament. When it comes to the King James Version, of course, it was completed, as most people know, in 1611. But it was completed before, really, the I would say the development of the printed editions of the TR was complete. So it was done, obviously, after 1516, when Erasmus put out the first printed Greek New Testament, which was very influential on the TR. But we get the word TR, we get the title, Texas Receptus, from a Bible that was printed only in 1633 by the Elseviers, and that was the edition that had the famous blurb that talked about the textus receptus, the received text. And so again, King James Version is done more than 20 years before the Elsevier brothers coined the term Texas Receptus for this received text. We should note that scholars are still relatively unclear about all the sources to which the King James Virgin translators had access, and we will probably never know all the texts and versions and Greek manuscripts and printed editions of the Greek Bible to which the translators of the King James Version had access. Scribner did come along, actually in 1898, and published an edition of the Texas Receptus that he purposely created to conform closely to the authorized version of the King James Version. I don't think there was anything wrong with that. He was trying to help, I think, pastors and scholars and preachers and teachers so that they could have an addition of the TR. that matched up closely with the translation, the King James Version that was most widely used and was based on the received text. If you look at that printed edition of Scrivener's Textus Receptus, which continues to be reprinted or kept in a publication by the Trinitarian Bible Society. It has a preface and the preface notes that, quote, it follows the text of Beza's 1598 edition as the primary authority. So let's not go overboard and say that Scribner just radically changed Bezos' text. He primarily followed Bezos' text. and it's an eclectic text. He made some variations based on the decisions that were made by the King James Version translators so that those who used the text would have something that matched up with the King James Version. And the person who wrote the paragraph cited in particular Acts 19.20 as a place where Scrivener, even Scrivener, did not make his text conform with the translation decisions of the King James Version. And I looked up Acts 19.20. I honestly was never aware of this, so I'm thankful to learn this. But in Acts 19.20, in Scrivener's Textus Receptus, the question is one phrase, In Greek, it's ὁ λόγος τοῦ Κύριου, which would be literally translated, the Word of the Lord. So it uses the word κύριος, the genitive of κύριος, to κύριο. But in this verse, Acts 19.20, the King James Version reads, the Word of God. So you would expect that Scrivener would read halagos to theu. So it would have the noun theos in the genitive case. That's what you would expect. So how do we explain this? Why didn't Scrivener accommodate his textus receptus to more clearly reflect the King James Version? And I think there are two possibilities. First of all, The KJV translators may have had a manuscript that read Halagas 2.0. And they were following that, and Scrivener simply overlooked it. So that's one reason why the King James Version may read the Word of God. And I went and looked, in fact, in the Nestle on 28th edition, and it does list one unsealed manuscript, Codex E, that does read Feu there. There were obviously Greek manuscripts that read that. A second possibility, though, is that the King James Version translators were perhaps had to curry you as the reading there, but perhaps they took the liberty of translating the word that's normally translated as Lord by the English word God. And perhaps Scrivener simply assumed this and just didn't call attention to it. And if you're familiar with the famous preface to the King James Version, where the reader is addressed, it is explained there that the translators did not always render the same original word, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic in the Old Testament or Greek in the New Testament, with the same English word in every case, but variety. of language was applied. And so this is one of the hallmarks of the King James Version as a translation. So it's possible that they had halagos to curio, and in this case, rather than translating it, we might say literally, as the word of the Lord, they translated it as the word of God. It's also interesting, I checked and looked in the New King James Version and the Modern English Version, And Word of the Lord is the majority text reading, and in both of those modern translations, they render it as, indeed, the Word of the Lord. So let's move on to the third paragraph, the third objection paragraph that this brother got from someone. challenging the confessional text position. And this paragraph is, do we have, says, do we have a full Greek New Testament that we have 100% confidence is the exact word of God to the last jot and tittle? If so, which of the 30 plus TR versions is it? And why that one? And if you have been in, and that's the end of the paragraph, if you have been in any of these apologetic conversations, whether in person or online, and you hold to the confessional text position, you have undoubtedly heard this objection. You hold the TR? Well, which one? Which one? There are over 30 of them. Which one do you hold to? It's something that you just hear over and over again. How do we respond to this? Well, I've given this response in various Word magazines in the past, and I'll just reiterate it because it seems like I continue to have people ask me about it, and I'm not exactly sure all the places where I've addressed it, but I feel sure I've addressed this a number of times. Anyways, so the first thing I'd say is I agree that we could use, we would benefit from something like a critical edition of the TR. That is, it would be nice if there were a print or digital layout of the TR of maybe, you know, several of the most prominent, important ones. or just an effort to print the TR and have footnotes, explanations when there are variations. Most of the variations would be extremely minor. Most of the variations, again, would mainly have to do with things like spelling and punctuation, capitalization, things like that. But for now, I see no problem, until we have a nice critical edition of the TR, I see no problem with using Scrivener's text that is reprinted by the Trinitarian Bible Society based on Beza's 1898 with some eclectic decisions to make it conform to the most widely used and venerated English translation, the King James Version. So I don't see anything wrong with that. And especially if you use, if you preach from the King James Version or even the Geneva Bible or the New King James Version or the Modern English Version, I think Scrivener's text will serve you well just practically in what you need in your preparation for the pulpit. I would also add, let's not exaggerate the differences between the printed editions of the TR. Yes, there are many printed editions of modern Bibles and study Bibles and other things, and you will occasionally find slight differences in the printing of them. And so, yes, there are some variations in these printed editions of the so-called TR. But let's not exaggerate those differences. Every single one of them includes Mark 16, 9 through 20 as part of the Word of God. There are no brackets around it, around those verses in any of the printed editions of the TR. Can you show me one printed edition of the TR that has brackets around Mark 16, 9 through 20? There is not a single printed edition of the TR that puts the Pricipe Adulteri, John 7, 53 through 8, 11 within brackets. There is not a single printed edition of the TR that puts the doxology of the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6.13b, in the footnotes or drops it from the text. There's not a single printed edition of the TR that drops Acts 8.37 from the text of the Word of God. And there is not a single printed edition of the TR that excludes the Coma Yohaneum, 1 John 5, 7b through 8a, the so-called three heavenly witnesses. And I could go on and on and on, so let's not exaggerate. the differences between the printed editions of the TR. I would just say also with regard to this objection, I find it very disingenuous that this is objected against the TR given that the alternative to the TR, at least one of the alternatives to the TR, is to embrace the modern critical text. And what is the modern critical text? It is an ever-shifting, ever-changing text. So I might turn the question around. I might turn this challenge around. When someone comes up to you and says, well, which TR do you accept? Which TR is the Word of God? I would suggest we simply turn that around and say, well, fine, I'll tell you that. After you tell me this, can you tell me which edition of the modern critical text do you embrace as the definitive Word of God? Which edition of the modern critical text? Because there are so many. Do you embrace the Nesolon 26th edition? Do you embrace the Nesolon 27th edition? Do you embrace the Nesolon 28th edition? Or perhaps you're waiting. You have a futuristic view of the text of the Word of God. You have a view of the text of the Word of God that is eschatological. already, but not yet. So you're waiting for the Nessalon 29th edition, or you're waiting for the Nessalon 30th edition. Or maybe you think that the Word of God is contained in the Greek New Testament that was put out by the Society of Biblical Literature in 2010, the one that completely removes the pericope adulteri from the text of the Word of God. Or maybe your preferred text is the Tyndale House Greek New Testament that just came out in 2017. which also removes the precopae adulteri from the text proper and puts it in the apparatus at the bottom of the page. Which of these modern critical texts do you believe is the Word of God? So again, I think it's disingenuous and it's hypocritical to challenge those who hold to the TR as if somehow we're being inconsistent when we recognize historical reality that there were various printed editions of the TR that were by and large uniform when this challenge is coming from people who hold to the modern critical text, which by definition is never fixed, is always shifting, and can always change based on any discovery that might be pulled out of the Judean desert. you know, in any time in the future. And besides that, the modern critical text is a position that never promises to arrive at a fixed text. It assumes permanent epistemological uncertainty as to the text of the Word of God, and that's why I prefer the TR. So anyway, brother, I hope that helps. I sent you those email responses and I added, I think, just extemporaneously a few other things here. Let's go to question three, third question that I want to respond to. Someone wrote, hello pastor, I really enjoy your podcast. I was wondering if you had ever thought about having Peter Gurry on the podcast. He is very active on Twitter and seems to love to talk about textual criticism. I think I saw in one Twitter thread that he might be leaning towards a TR view too, and he gave me the Twitter a link to the Twitter account of Peter Goury. Here's the written response, and I'll just add a little bit more. By the way, I don't do Twitter. We had a friend from church over on Friday evening, young man, and he was explaining Twitter to me a little bit, but I don't have Twitter. Who knows? Maybe one day. Anyways, so I wrote back. I said, thank you for your note. Sorry to be so long in getting back. I was out of town for Christmas. I'll take your suggestion on Guri into consideration. I've had some interactions with Peter and find him to be a person of good will. And I put a post where Peter and I had some back and forth when my article on the ending of Mark as a canonical crisis came out. He gave me some good feedback on it. and you can follow the link when I put this up if you want to read that if you haven't seen it already. I continued, as I understand him, Peter Gurry has some views that are somewhat encouraging to those of us who hold the confessional text position. For example, he holds that Mark 16 9 through 20 is part of inspired scripture. But he doesn't believe that it's Markan, so he holds the view that sort of like that of Bruce Metzger and David Alan Black also holds this position that Mark 16 9 through 20 is part of the text of the Word of God. It is inspired, although it is not Markan. that it was added by someone other than Mark. So there would be, you might say, multiple authorship of the traditional texts of the Book of Mark. Although he doesn't think that Mark 16, 9 through 20 was original or was written by Mark, the Holy Spirit was at work to include this as part of the Word of God. And so it's inspired and can be used as a doctrinal standard, can be preached and taught from. And again, I hold the position that not only is it inspired, but it's original, and that Mark, the evangelist, wrote it. But I'll take that halfway position of Gurry, and in this case of Metzger and David Alan Black, over those like, interestingly enough, John MacArthur, who completely reject Mark 16 9 through 20 and believe that it's completely spurious and should is not inspired and shouldn't be preached shouldn't be taught Anyway back to Peter Gurry Peter Gurry if you if you keep up with the I don't keep up with his Twitter account, but I do read his posts on the Evangelical Text Criticism blog, and he's mentioned there several times, and he did so recently, that he is right now reading and studying some of the Reformation-era writers on text. And I think some of that reading may be challenging some of his modern critical assumptions. But as I understand him, he hasn't undergone any significant recent changes in his viewpoint. He still holds to the modern critical text. And he is an expert on the coherence-based genealogical method. He did his PhD at Cambridge. but he's a very charitable fellow, and so he's someone certainly with whom we can have conversation. What I really appreciate about Peter is he's somebody who's willing to learn and understand before he criticizes, and I think he's come to understand and recognize the confessional text position, which is not something that is not KJV-onlyism. He doesn't agree with it, and he would no doubt have a critique of the position that those of us who hold to it, we ought to listen to it, and his critiques of charitable people like him can help us improve our position. So anyways, who knows, maybe we can get Peter, I've never met him, never actually talked to him, my conversations with him have all been via emailing, but perhaps we can have him as a guest sometime, it'd be great to do. And I might just add, That's what I emailed back to the brother who asked the question. And I'll just add that Peter Gurry is one of the editors of the Evangelical Text Criticism blog, and he recently put up there an article on my review of the Tyndall House Creek New Testament. that my review that appeared in Puritan Reform Journal. This was back December 13th of 2018. I'll put a link to this. And so he put a link to my review and it's now got 20 comments on it. And there were some people who were very critical. There were others who were encouraging. In responding to my review, there were some people who took exception to my observation that perhaps the Tyndale House Greek New Testament reflected an English-speaking hesitancy to fully adopt a new German method because the Tyndale House Greek New Testament definitely is following a method that is not based on the developing German coherence-based genealogical method. Also definitely there were some people who apparently could not understand my last line. in the review in which I expressed my doubts about whether or not the modern critical text method could ever come up with anything other than a scholarly approximation of the text. Again, it will never be able to give you the fixed fixed certainty about the text of the Word of God, but they will always have a position of, oh, we've almost got it, or we're very close. But anyways, there were some interesting comments, including one from Maurice Robinson that shows me that at least he now, definitely the confessional text position is on his radar. And I don't know if that's from his reading of the confessional bibliology, Facebook group participating in that, or maybe his interactions with other people who hold the confessional text position. But anyways, I'll put a link to that if you haven't already come across that on the evangelical text criticism block. All right, let me move on to question number four. I got an email and this question was posed. Pastor Riddle, I saw that Covenant Baptist Seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky is having James White teach an upcoming January module, and they include a link to this module. on the Covenant Baptist Seminary website, and I'll put a link. I'll include this email so you can follow the link yourself. Anyway, the January module on reliability of New Testament documents and textual criticism. I am disappointed that students in this class will be exposed to modern criticism and not the confessional text position. I assume they mean to modern text criticism and not the confessional text position. Are there any RB seminaries, Reformed Baptist seminaries, that are willing to teach the confessional text position? Thanks and blessings, this person said. Now, I mean, at first I went to the site and took a look at it. And indeed, a lot of seminaries have these, we used to call them when I was in seminary, J-terms. When I was in seminary, before the electronic age, they would meet for three weeks This one, however, just meets for several days, January 3rd through the 5th, but they meet like all day long. Here's their schedule. They meet on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 8 in the morning to 5.30 in the afternoon. And James White is going to be teaching this. Again, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. This is the one that is administered. by Sam Waldron. And I'm just looking at the required texts. He has three texts that he's using. Interesting choices. He's got the Keith Elliot Ian Moir edited manuscripts and the texts of the New Testament. And then David C. Parker's textual scholarship in the making of the New Testament from Oxford University Press. I've written a review of that book. that was published in American Theological Inquiry. And then he's got Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry, speaking of Peter J. Gurry. their little book, A New Approach to Textual Criticism, An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method. So those are the three textbooks that he's using. And from what I've gathered, I have not listened to White's dividing line in quite some time. But last time I was listening, he was talking about the fact that he started doing his doctoral studies at a university in South Africa. And apparently, he is trying to get up to speed on the coherence-based genealogical method. I don't think he knew anything about it until about a year ago. But I would be curious. There might be someone out here listening who's going to take this class. If you're in the class, I'd be curious to hear from James White whether he acknowledges that there's been a shift in the esteem with which the Byzantine text tradition, which is very well represented in the TR, there's been a shift in the esteem of this And I pulled down my Wasserman and Gurry book, A New Approach to Textual Criticism. This is on page 10, and they note that one of the things about the coherence-based genealogical method has been a renewed appreciation for the Byzantine text. In fact, they said the coherence-based genealogical method practitioners do much more than merely accept it. They have re-evaluated it and concluded that it should be given more weight than in the past. And I'd be curious for someone to ask James White. Do you recognize that a lot of things that you said previously about how terrible the Byzantine text was and how wonderful it is that we have the papyri and the Alexandrian manuscripts, do you understand that the coherence-based genealogical method now is not only blasting the whole idea of there being text families, but saying that a lot of those Byzantine readings that were dismissed as late and spurious, now they're saying that those are very important and they may reflect actually the earliest evidences that we have? Anyway, I'd be curious to hear his answer to that. Anyway, here's what I wrote back to the brother who asked about this. I said, thanks for letting me know about this. Yes, interesting that James White is doing this. Most evangelical and even reformed seminaries and Bible colleges continue to hold to the reconstructionist view of modern text criticism. So in many ways, this choice is not surprising. So if you go to, again, any of the Flagship, you know, the Southern Baptist seminaries, they're all teaching modern text criticism. They're all teaching, you know, we got to reconstruct the original autograph. Even though, again, cutting-edge modern text criticism has, in many circles, abandoned that as a goal of text criticism. I continue, James White is well known and will likely attract students to enroll. And again, I'm sure that, you know, Covenant wants students to learn about text criticism. It's very important for pastors to know. I mean, you've got to study Greek, but you've got to know how to read the apparatus. And if you're going to do expositional and exegetical studies, you've got to be able to determine its foundational. What is the proper text from which I'm preaching and teaching? And again, you know, James White has a lot of people who follow his blog, people who follow his ministry, people who follow his Twitter account, no doubt. And he's someone who would probably attract students who would want to attend. And, you know, the bottom line is they want to have people attend the classes. And so, pragmatically, it might be a good decision for them. I think, though, actually, as I continued in this email, the confessional text view is actually beginning to appear on the radar screen for some in this field. Note what I just said about Maurice Robinson making a reference to the confessional text position when he commented on the article about my review of the Tyndale House Creek New Testament. Unfortunately, I continue, I would not count on James White, from what I've heard so far, to be relied upon properly to understand or fairly represent it, meaning the confessional text position. You know, obviously in an academic class, one of the things you should do is you should present all positions. Now, usually if it's an academic class and you're teaching something, you want people to be exposed to what are all the positions. So if you're teaching a text criticism class, you say, here's the, You know, here is the Texas Receptus position. Here's the majority text position. And here's the modern critical text position. And you may say at the end, well, here are the three are, and I prefer, you know, this position over the others. But part of what a good academic class is, you have to be able to properly, fairly represent even the views with which you don't agree, even if it's sort of a, you know, the playing field is not exactly level. you're gonna argue for the superiority of your position. If I were teaching the class, I would certainly try to teach as fairly, accurately, and charitably as I could, the modern critical text position, and the majority Byzantine text position, and the confessional text position, but it would definitely be a slanted black field because I would be, you know, I would be hoping that those who were taking the class would come to agree with me. And James White will certainly be doing that. But he'll be encouraging people to agree with his position, which is to support the modern critical text. It will be interesting to see, though, if somebody is taking the class out there. They can be our spy or mole in there, let us know. You know, how his views might be evolving, possibly. As he's learning more about the coherence-based genealogical method, I expect he's going to be, you know, eventually writing a dissertation. I'm assuming he's probably going to attempt to use this method, and it will be interesting to see how perhaps some of his views on some of these things might shift. I don't expect it, you know, I'm not expecting he's going to move away from the modern critical text position, but perhaps there'll be some variations in it due to his study. Well, those were just four responses. I know there are other people who sent me emails and with whom I've corresponded in the last week or so. And if I didn't include yours, I'm sorry. Had to keep a time limit on this. And if you're out there and you have a question, you can feel free to email me. The best email for me is the church email, which I monitor, and it's info.crbc at gmail.com. I won't promise that I will respond quickly or maybe even at all sometimes, But on normal, I promise that I'll be able to do a word magazine on the topic that you suggest. But I do love to get suggestions. It does give me ideas. And again, this is Word Magazine 112. And possibly there could be Word Magazine 113. By the end of 2018, you'll have to just stay tuned to see if I can actually get it done. So this concludes this Word Magazine. I will look forward to speaking with you in the next one. Until then, take care and God bless.