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Hello, and welcome to another
episode of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Ridley, pastor of
Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is
Saturday, December the 9th of 2017. It was a cold and snowy
day. Here in central Virginia, we
get our first snowfall of the season. It seems like every year
around the first week in December, we get snow here in central Virginia. And this year didn't disappoint.
I remember about eight years ago or so, I think, was when
we had this snowpocalypse. Around this same time, we had
about two feet of snow dumped on us. Today, much less than
that, maybe two, three inches at the most. It doesn't look
like it's sticking on the roads, so hopefully we'll have no problems
getting to Lord's House tomorrow. Well, in this episode of Word
Magazine, I wanted to offer a review of a new edition of the Greek
New Testament known as the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. This
was recently released. I think it was actually in November
or so. They printed the hard copies
of it. And I had several people who
asked me about several sections within it. Someone had emailed
and asked asking me about how it treats So I ordered my own hard copy
and I got that, actually got it, I think, back during Thanksgiving
week. And I went through it and didn't
read the entire thing, but I read part of it. The front matter
in the introductory article, and I looked up some specific
passages and filled up about 10 pages of a legal pad, scribbling
out some notes. And I was going to do, I think,
a Word magazine that week or the week after, and just each
week something came up and I wasn't able to do it. And actually with
the snowy weather today and sort of being homebound, not going
out and doing other things, I had the time to sit down finally
and take some of these notes and look over them and review
them and type them out and put them in a Word document. So,
I'm going to sit down, record now this word magazine, offer
this review, and of course, as usual, at jeffriddle.net, I will
post some of my notes from this so you can take a look at it
in a written form as well. Well, the Tyndale House edition
of the Greek New Testament, and I've seen two different abbreviations
for it. One is to abbreviate the T-H-E-G-N-T,
Tyndale House edition, Greek New Testament. It's kind of interesting
because in that way, it could also be thought of as the Greek
New Testament, T-H-E, Tyndale House edition. I've also seen
some people simply abbreviate it as the T-H, I think that's
probably what I'm going to use for it. Again, this just recently
came out. It has been produced by several
scholars working in collaboration at the Tyndale House. which is
an independent Christian study center founded in 1944 with an
evangelical Christian heritage and located in the university
town of Cambridge, England. Sometimes I think there is some
confusion when it says Tyndall House, Cambridge. I don't think
there's any official connection of Tyndall House. It's more of
an independent. Christian Study Center, much like in Charlottesville,
where I live, there's the Center for Christian Study, which is
close to the university and hosts various things, but isn't really
officially connected to the university. And so I think Tyndall House
is sort of like that. The Tyndall House Greek New Testament is
edited by Dirk. Jongkind. I'm not sure how you
pronounce it. It's J-O-N-G-K-I-N-D. We'll go with Jongkind. That's
a Dutch name. Anyways, he is the academic vice
principal and a research fellow at Tyndale House. The associate
editor is Peter J. Williams, who is the principal
or the director of the Tyndale House. And this work reflects
the fruit of more than 10 years, more than a decade of collaboration
and study by the editors in putting together this Greek New Testament. It is published by Crossway and
will eventually apparently be freely available in an online
edition. And I'm guessing it will also
be showing up in lots of Bible software programs and so forth. There's also a promotional video
that Crossway has put out, which you can watch at Vimeo. So this edition is noteworthy
on several levels, and certainly there could be very detailed
scholarly discussions that could be held on the textual decisions
that were made and on the decisions about what is in the apparatus
of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. And indeed, there
already have been some discussions about this, some reviews. You
can look for those online if you do the proper Google searching.
In my review, I'm not really going to be delving into a lot
of the minutiae. I'm going to be instead just
offering some general observations, some general overviews, and really
just trying to present the perspective of a pastor who holds to the
Texas Receptus. to sort of give a response to
this new printed Greek New Testament. Again, there are several other
reviews already that are out there. I profited from reading
the one by Peter Gurry at the Evangelical Text Criticism blog,
and also one I thought that was very detailed from a Byzantine
affirming perspective from James Snapp. And I'll put links to
both of those reviews if you want to read more. So it comes
as a nicely bound book, just looking at it physically. It
has a black cover, a hardback cover, a hard but sort of a flexible
cover. It came in a nice box to sort
of keep the cover intact so that it didn't get crushed. The font
is very nice and nicely laid out. It's quite readable, fairly
easy on the eye. The work is divided into five
sections or parts. The first part is what we could
call the front matter. Then there is a preface that
is on Roman numerals seven and eight. And then there is the
bulk of the Greek text itself, from Matthew to Revelation, although
we'll talk a little bit about some differences in the order
in just a minute, but that's on pages 1 to 504. And then, interestingly, the
fourth part of the book is labeled the introduction, even though
it appears at the end. It's very important. We'll talk
about it in just a moment. It's found on pages 505 to 524. And then lastly, there's just
a couple pages of acknowledgments on pages 525 to 526. So that is it. It's in five parts. And what
I'm going to do is just go through those five parts, and I'm just
going to share my notes. Again, this is pretty much what
I wrote down on my legal pad. and then have typed into a Word
document, and I'm just gonna share some observations. And
I thought about actually moving my comments and notes on the
introduction into the first place, because the introduction obviously
gives a whole lot of insight as to what the editors were thinking
about, what their intentions were. But then I thought, you
know, they laid it out in this way, I'm just gonna take it,
piece by piece as it appears if you are picking this up and
reading it from front to back. So let's see if we can delve
into this a little bit. So let's talk about, first of
all, the very first part, which is what I've called the front
matter. And this is just the typical stuff you find in a modern
printed book. So it tells us that it's printed
by Crossway, that it's come out in 2017. that it was produced
at the Tyndale House, Cambridge. Again, it might be a little bit
confusing if someone thinks it has some kind of official connection
with Cambridge, and it's not an independent study center.
But anyways, it's produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge. The
editor, again, is Dirk Junkind. I wanna say Youngkind, Youngkind,
however it's pronounced. The associate editor is Peter
J. Williams. The assistant editors are Peter
M. Head and Patrick James. So those four persons are listed
as the editors and some more is said about them and their
relationship and their work in the end in the acknowledgements. I went to the Tyndall House staff
page and looked up the bio for a young kind and I've definitely,
you know, seen his name before. I've seen that he, things he's
posted on the Evan Joel Test Criticism blog. I've not honestly
read much by him, but he is a Dutch scholar who apparently had a
previous career in Holland in horticulture. and then decided
to go and do graduate level work in biblical studies. He ended
up completing a PhD in New Testament at Cambridge. He has a dissertation
that was published under the title, Scribal Habits of Codex
Sinaiticus, that is published by Gorgias Press in 2007. And so as the title of the book
reflects, and as some of the blog posts I've seen, particularly
on the Evangelical Church Criticism blog indicate, his specialty
was in studying Codex Sinaiticus, one of the great early unseals. And in particular, looking at,
studying, becoming familiar with the so-called scribal habits
of the scribes who copied Codex Sinaiticus. So that's a little
bit about him. There's also a table of contents
that is in the front matter. If you look at the table of contents,
the thing that's gonna strike you is that the order of books
in the Tyndale House, Greek New Testament, is altered from what
we could call the standard printed order that we see in most of
our Bibles, whether it's in a translation or in the standard modern critical
Greek editions of the New Testament. That is, the order reflected
is the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then Acts. But
here's the different thing. Next are the Catholic epistles. beginning with James. So there's
James, and then 1 and 2 Peter, and 1 and 2 and 3 John, and then
Jude. And then there are the Pauline
epistles, beginning with Romans and down through Philemon. And
then the book of Hebrews appears. And then finally, the book of
Revelation. So the difference in order is
that the Catholic epistles are up front. and that the Pauline
epistles follow the Catholic epistles and also that Hebrews
is put together with the Pauline epistles. And of course, this
is something that those who have studied the transmission of the
New Testament are aware of that early on before there were collections
of the entire New Testament that various sub-collections circulated
together, the Gospels circulated together, the Pauline Epistles
circulated together. There's evidence of that already
in the New Testament in places like 2 Peter 3, 15 and 16, where
Peter can talk about Paul's letters, that unstable men are resting.
as they do the rest of the scriptures. And it appears that in many of
these early collections that Acts and the Catholic Epistles
were put together, or the Catholic Epistles just circulated together. Then when some of the early copies
of the New Testament were put together, they put them in the
order of Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Revelation. And of course, Also, what we
learned from those early collections, manuscript collections, is that
Hebrews was, by and large, put together with the Pauline epistles,
thought to be one of Paul's epistles. And so perhaps not surprising,
again, that it is here with Paul's letters. Actually, in this way,
it follows, I guess, the normal order of most of our printed
Bibles, in that it follows Philemon. What's different is that then
the Catholic epistles have already been placed in the order before
it, and then Revelation follows right on the heels of Hebrews. If you're familiar with the Robinson
Pierpont Byzantine Greek New Testament that came out in 2005,
that also follows a similar order. It has the Catholic epistles
before the Pauline epistles, although they place Hebrews not
after Philemon, but they place Hebrews after second Thessalonians
and before the pastoral epistles, first and second Timothy and
Titus and Philemon. So you can compare this ordering
system with that of Robinson and Pierpont's Byzantine Greek
New Testament, 2005. So that's the front matter. Let's
move on to the second of the five sections that we're going
to review. And this is the preface, which
is found on Roman numeral pages seven to eight. And again, in
my notes, I just simply, and you'll see this when I put it
up on my blog, JeffRiddle.net, I simply just... have a series
of points and I just wrote down five observations here on the
preface. The first observation is that
the editors note that this edition was based on that of Samuel Perdue
Tregalus's 19th century Greek New Testament. And Tregalus is
one of the 19th century scholars of the Greek New Testament who's
often mentioned along with people like Tischendorf and Westcott
and Hort and others. And I pulled down off my shelf
a copy of Robert Hull's book, The Story of the New Testament
Texts. It was published by SBL in 2010. I found Hull's book to be very
helpful. It's sort of a narrative telling
the story of text criticism. And within that book, he has
a little biographical sketch of Trigalus. And again, I may
be mispronouncing his name as well. murdered Youngkin's name
probably, and maybe I'm doing the same for Tregalus, but it's
T-R-E-G-E-L-L-E-S. I assume it's pronounced Tregalus.
But anyways, in Hull's book on pages 79 to 82, he has a sketch
of Tregalus. Tregalus lived from 1813 to 1875.
Hull describes him as a, quote, blue collar scholar, end quote. And noting that he was a lay
researcher, he did not have a university degree. He actually worked, this
is amazing, he worked in the ironworks during the day. And
at night, when he got off work, he studied biblical languages. He studied Greek manuscripts.
And eventually, he produced, by subscription over several
years, his edition of the Greek New Testament.
He completed that between the years 1857 and 1872. And it was very much a respected
scholarly work, even though he was a man who didn't have academic
credentials per se. Hall notes that Tregalus' significance
was the fact that his Greek New Testament used ancient sources
to construct his text, quote, disregarding the textus receptus
altogether, end quote, page 80. And Hull uses an analogy from
Epp. He uses a military analogy to
describe the onslaught against the Texas Receptus. And we're
in, he talks about different scholars being like generals
and the publication of certain books being like D-Day or V-Day. But anyways, Epps, using that
type of military language, Hull describes Tregellus as, quote,
a brigadier general in the campaign to defeat the Texas Receptus,
end quote. That's on page 81 of Hull. the
story of the New Testament text. So anyways, the preface, the
editors tell us that the Tyndale House Greek New Testament is
based on Samuel Tregellos' 19th century Greek New Testament.
Secondly, it says that it aims to present the New Testament
books in the earliest forms in which they are well attested. And I was sort of struck by that
statement. It's an interesting statement.
Again, it aims to present the New Testament books in the earliest
forms in which they are well attested. What stands out about
me in that description is the fact that they're not saying,
as scholars might've said in the 20th century, even back to
Westcott and Hort, that they are presenting the original Greek
New Testament. that their goal is to reconstruct
the original, the autograph. No, what they're saying is sort
of the best that we hope we can do is provide the earliest forms
of the New Testament that are well attested. And this really
reflects, I think, the modern change that has happened from
20th century New Testament text criticism to 21st century, where
there's sort of been an abandonment of any sense of an ability to
reconstruct really the autograph. But the best we can do is get
it back as close as we possibly can. And so that's sort of reflected
in these in these comments in the preface. Third, I noted that
the editors claim that they are going to do this by using, quote,
careful analysis of the scribal habits and typical transmission
errors of individual manuscripts, end quote. And again, one of
the things unique about the Tyndall House edition of the Greek New
Testament is the reflection of the primary editor's interest
in what are called scribal habits. And we'll see an example of that
when we look at a couple of particular passages. Fourth observation
about the preface, it points to some of the distinctive editorial
decisions that are made within this edition on paragraphs, on
the layout, on spelling, on grammatical markers, on book order, and on
the critical apparatus. And again, it just mentions these
in the preface and these things are explained in a lot more detail
in the introduction and we'll come back and talk specifically
about a few of them. And then fifth and finally, within
the preface, it notes the confessional, a confessional aim, for this
edition of the Greek New Testament. In the final paragraph, it begins,
the focus of these sacred scriptures is of course on the person of
Jesus Christ presented on page after page as the unique son
of God, end quote. And I will commend at least the
editors who are self-professed evangelical Christians for at
least acknowledging the New Testament, not to be simply a secular work
or simply historical work, but seeing it as a religious and
a spiritual work. I disagree with many of the decisions
that they made, but I do acknowledge and respect the fact that they
are attempting to do this. We might say as believers, as
churchmen, again, even though I very strongly would disagree,
with the approach, the theological convictions that underlie this
approach. But anyways, at least they do acknowledge this to be
sacred scripture. Third of the five parts then
is really what you get this book for, and that is there is a presentation
of the text of the New Testament itself. And this is, of course,
the bulk of the book. pages 1 to 504. And I'm going
to now look into the New Testament and I'm going to look at a number
of passages and look at what is in the text and also a little
bit at what is in the apparatus. And I've sketched out here, let
me see, 15 points that I'll go through. So first thing that
I notice when I open up the Tyndall House Greek New Testament again
is that it has a pleasing font. It looks fairly easy on the eye
to read and one of the first things you notice is the paragraph
divisions. You know we typically in English
make paragraphs by the in the first sentence, the first line
is indented. But here it's sort of a, I guess
a reverse indentation where the first line actually extends further
to the left and the rest of the text is inset. Later on in the
introduction on page 512, this is going to be referred to as
ekthesis, e-k-t-h-e-s-i-s, ekthesis, and this is apparently a style
of paragraph division that is reflected in many ancient handwritten
manuscripts, and so that's what they've chosen to do. And there
are, probably just looking at it, glancing at the first few
pages of Matthew, there are many more so-called paragraph divisions
than we are used to in typical standard modern editions of either
a translation of the Bible or an original language edition
of the Greek New Testament. So there are multiple sort of
divisions to sort of divide it out into thought units. So that's something distinctive
about this edition. Also, as I look at it, just looking
merely at the physical layout, at the close of each book, There's
not only that where there's a title not only at the beginning of
each book like for Matthew It says you on galley on kata matheon
in in a larger font and then if you go to the very end of
Matthew and in Matthew 28. It also repeats the title after
the text is complete. This is on page 66, the ending
of the Gospel of Matthew. Also, Euangelion Kata Mathaion
written in all capital letters in Greek. One of the things I
noticed as well is that each new book starts on the right-hand
facing page. So even if that means that there
has to be a blank page inserted on the left-hand side, it starts
every new book on the right-hand page. And so anyways, it makes
it sort of a pleasant thing to look at. It's in legible. font and I would just say it
seems like it's designed for a good reading experience. So
with those sort of things out of the way, let's try and look
at a couple of specific passages. And, you know, I sometimes when
I'm talking to people who are asking about differences in Bibles,
I'll sometimes give them a list of here, you know, think about
these passages when you look at a new translation that you're
not familiar with. How does it handle these particular
passages? And this will give you an idea
for the philosophy of the translators with regard to the text. Sometimes
I'll suggest certain passages to look at with regard to translation.
The ones that I turned to, I just turned to a handful, and I'll
just go in the order that the canonical order as listed here.
I started out by looking at Matthew 6.13. And of course, this is
the passage that holds the Lord's
Prayer. And I'm interested, of course,
in Matthew 6.13 to see what this edition does with the doxology
to the Lord's Prayer. It is omitted in the Nessalon
28th edition, though it's there in the Texas Receptus and in
various printings of the Byzantine text. because it's the majority
text reading. And as I kind of expected, the
Tyndale House Greek New Testament omits the doxology from the text
proper, and it lists it as a variant within the apparatus at the bottom
of the page. Secondly, I looked at Mark chapter
1, verse 1. And this is another, you know,
typical kind of test passage to look and see how the editors
have dealt with a thorny textual issue. And here it's, sorry,
I said Mark 1-1, it should be Mark 1-2. where it says, just
as it is written, and the Tindal House New Testament says, in
Isaiah the prophet, just as it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
behold, I send my messenger before your face. Of course, in the
TR, in the traditional text, it says, as it is written in
the prophets, But the Tyndall House edition follows the typical
modern critical edition in having it read as it is written in Isaiah
the prophet. Although it does list as a variant,
the possibility of as it is written in the prophets as well. Again, that is in the apparatus. Next, I turned, of course, to
the ending of Mark. And this is obviously one of
the two big heavyweights, this and the woman caught in adultery.
And the ending of Mark in the Tyndale House, Greek New Testament,
is indeed very intriguing, very interesting. The first thing
that you might be struck by is the fact that the longer ending
or the traditional ending is not put in brackets, but it's
simply there without brackets. It is included in the text, and
so that is very positive. You will notice in the Tyndale
House Greek New Testament there is an insertion of three lines
in Greek that are all written in capital letters between verses
8 and verse 9. And in the apparatus there is
a reprinting of this note in lowercase Greek letters and also
a translation. Here's what it says in the apparatus
under Mark 16.8, after it lists this transliteration of these
three lines into lowercase Greek. It says, note as found in minuscule
one. And this is the translation of
this insertion that is taken from the scribe in minuscule
one. It says, in some of the copies,
The Evangelist finishes here, up to which point also Eusebius
of Pamphilus made canon sections, but in many the following is
also contained. So this would be an example of
the editors doing, as they said, that they were going to pay attention,
special attention, to scribal habits and scribal notation.
So they include a note from the scribe of minuscule one, noting
that in some copies, Mark ends at Mark 16, 8, that Eusebius
of Pamphilus or Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of church history,
who created the so-called Eusebian canons, that he did not include
this final section in the Eusebian canons. But the copyist of minuscule
1 also says that the following, that is the traditional ending,
Mark 16, 9 through 20, is also contained in many manuscripts.
So again, this is an interesting edition, something you don't
find in any other edition of a Greek New Testament that I'm
aware of at any rate, and that you don't find in any translations
of the Bible that I'm aware of. Minuscule 1, this note here is
interesting. Minuscule 1 is not listed at
the end among the main or primary witnesses that are used for this
edition of the New Testament, although it is listed on page
523 among several other, quote, witnesses which have been consulted
in preparation of this edition, end quote. It doesn't provide,
the Tyndall House Edition doesn't provide a suggested date for
a minuscule one, but I got my Nestle Elan 28. And it lists
all the papyri that were published up until the year it was released
in 2012. And it lists Minuscule I and
suggests that it comes from the 12th century, that is from the
1200s, and that its provenance was basal Switzerland. So in other words, Minuscule
I is a relatively late manuscript. And in, if you look at the content
of this note, it acknowledges that there had been an earlier
textual controversy over the ending of Mark that is reflected
in the work of Eusebius, particularly in the Eusebian canons. what really is the value of a
note that comes from, what did I say? I said from the
1200s, it would have been in the 1100s if it's listed as 12th
century. What really is the value of a
scribe making a note who's writing in the 1100s? I have completed an article, a scholarly
article, that's gonna be appearing in the next edition, the January
2018 edition of the Puritan Reform Journal. It's based on a paper
I did at a conference at Houston Baptist University last year,
titled, The Ending of Mark as a Canonical Crisis. And in that,
I talked about three stages, we could call it the transmission
of the ending of Mark. The early stage, which is from
the time Mark was written to about the year 300. And then
an era where there was controversy about the ending of Mark from
about 300 to about 500. And that's reflected in Eusebius,
it's reflected in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. And then finally,
the last stage is a consensus where the ending of Mark was
just accepted as canonical and not as spurious. Actually, minuscule
one is a reflection of that last period, but with an awareness
of the fact that there had earlier been controversy about it. Then
I suggest we're now in a new controversy, not seen since the
time of Eusebius, where the ending of Mark has been challenged.
So anyways, I would refer you to that article, which will be
forthcoming. When it is out, I will be putting
it on my academia.edu site, and you can look it up and reference
it there. Another thing that's interesting, by the way, about
minuscule one, and I'm spending a lot of time here on the reference
to Mark 16 here, but it's worthwhile. All the people that I've read
about Erasmus, when they talk about what text did Erasmus use
to create his 1516 Greek New Testament that became so influential
and was picked up by Protestant scholars like Stephanus and Beza
and became the Texas Receptus. is most scholars acknowledge
that Erasmus made use of minuscule one. Minuscule one was one of
the manuscripts that he had access to. And the interesting part
here, I'm reminded by, I wasn't aware of this note at Mark 16,
eight, but Erasmus saw that note. Erasmus read that note. So Erasmus
was not ignorant relating to problems in the textual transmission
of the ending of Mark. And yet he still included Mark
16, nine through 20. He had no qualms about including
it as part of the text proper of his printed Greek New Testament. Actually, Menuscula 1 would simply
be one of many witnesses for the authenticity, I think, of
the so-called longer ending or traditional ending of Mark. Well,
at the least, looking at the Tyndale House Greek New Testament,
it is interesting to have that note from Menuscula 1. It's also interesting that Mark
16, 9 through 20 is not in brackets. Another thing that I I'm happy
about this edition is that it does not put the so-called shorter
ending in the text proper. Although it does list it, I think
appropriately in a scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament,
it lists it in the apparatus. It actually makes reference to
the fact that it appears in two of the codices, rather late codices,
L and Codex Psi. Another interesting thing about
the apparatus here It lists W, Codex Washingtoniensis, as one
of the manuscripts in support for the inclusion of verses 9
through 20, but it does not give any reference to the so-called
Freer Logion, which only appears in Codex W after verse 14, unlike,
say, the Nessalon 28th edition. It doesn't include the Greek
text of the Freer Logion, unlike some modern translations of the
Bible, which are now translating the Freer Logion and putting
it in either the footnotes or in some cases even in the text
itself of their translations. So it obviously is downplaying
the significance of the Freer Logion, and I think rightly so.
Obviously, it was very late and not accepted in mainstream Christianity
at any time as part of the proper text of the Gospel of Mark. So,
again, some negative, some positive for the way it deals with the
ending of Mark. Next, I looked at Luke 23, 34. This is the prayer
of Jesus from the cross. Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do. And there it is. It's in the text of the
Tyndale House, Greek New Testament. It does not appear in brackets.
In the apparatus, it does list the omission as a variant, and
it does mark it with a black diamond. And again, there are
not a lot of, the apparatus in the Tyndall-Howe Scrutiny Testament
is fairly minimal. We'll talk about why that is
later when we get to the introduction. And again, this is the odd thing
about kind of putting the book in the order that they did. I
don't know why they didn't put the introduction first, but the
introduction is at the very end. If you read the introduction,
we'll get to it in a moment, they mark texts that were particularly
difficult for them to adjudicate what the reading should be. They
mark it in the apparatus with a black diamond, and Luke 23,
34 is marked with a black diamond. So they put it in the text, but
they put a diamond that says, we don't know. We think that
the evidence, external evidence is roughly divided, and we think
it could be in there. It could not be in there, but
at least they don't put it in brackets. Of course, I believe
it should be in there. It's in the text of Receptus.
And I think there's every reason in the world to believe it's
authentic. I actually, the fact that they
included in the text without brackets, I was thinking about
James White, who on several occasions has dogmatically said, this is
not part of scripture and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah. And I wonder what he's saying now. when probably people that
he has some respect for, the Tyndale house have put it into
the text proper without brackets of their edition of the Greek
New Testament. Along those lines, the next passage I looked at
was John 1, 18. And this is another key passage
that has become a sort of a textual battleground as to what it should,
how it should properly read. By the way, many of these texts
that I'm referring to, I've done individual either word magazines
on them, or I've done blog posts, and you can go to jeffriddle.net
and just do the search, put the verse in and see if it comes
up. I have done a word magazine on
John 118, the issues related to John 118. And the controversy
here is whether it should read that Jesus was the only begotten
son or the only begotten God. And the traditional text, as
Textus Receptus reads, only begotten son, the monogenes quias, Whereas
the modern critical text, following some of the unseals, will read
instead of the only begotten son, it'll read the only begotten
God, the monogamous Theos. And guess what? The Tyndale House
Greek New Testament reads only begotten son. monoghanes quias,
so in other words it follows the textus receptus here rather
than the reading that is found in the modern critical text and
of course it lists as a variant only begotten God and by the
way interestingly enough it does not put a black diamond here
One of the other things we'll get to with the introduction
is they apparently are eventually going to put out a textual commentary.
It'll be interesting to read that as they'll explain why they
think that beyond any reasonable dispute that this should read
only begotten Son and not only begotten God. It's very interesting. Next I looked at John 5, 3b. And John 5, 4, this is the passage
relating to the man at the pool of Bethesda and the angel coming
down to stir the water. Again, perhaps unsurprisingly,
this is completely omitted from the text proper, although it
is listed as a variant in the apparatus. Next, I looked at
another of the two big heavyweights, along with Nanning of Mark. I
looked to see what the Tyndale House Greek New Testament did
with the pericope adultery, the woman caught in adultery, John
7.53-8.11. And although there were some things I could say,
gladly say that I was pleased with, with regard to the handling
of the ending of Mark, I cannot be so encouraging with regard
to the pericope adulteri. It is completely omitted from
the text proper in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. It
is relegated to the apparatus. So if you're looking at the Tyndale
House Greek New Testament, you're at John chapter 7 and verse 52
on page 195, and you turn the page over to page 196, and it
begins not at John 8.1, but it begins at John 8.12. And if you
look at the footnotes, It's interesting because it lists
the manuscripts that omit 753 through 811. It lists P66, P75,
Sinaiticus, Vaticanus. It lists then Codex L. And then it has a note that says,
space left open. I guess this would be another
example of attention to scribal details. Then it lists, again,
supporting omission, Codex T, Codex W, Washingtoniensis of
the Freer Logion, and Codex Delta. And then it also says, after
delta, space left open. And it mentions several others,
chorodethy and psi. And then it lists codex 14, or
minuscule 1424. Then it lists the evidence for
omitting it. but then inserting this same
passage after Luke 21 verse 38, and here it lists a single minuscule. It lists minuscule 69, and we'll
talk more about that because there are very few minuscules
that are listed. It's mainly the papyri and the unseals in
the in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. And I guess by
having this textual note about in minuscule 69, that it appears
after Luke 21, 38, they are perpetuating the idea of the pericope adultery
as a so-called floating tradition, that it never really had a settled
place in the New Testament. And again, you'll have to look
at some of the previous Word magazines, some of my previous
writings, where I have cited the work of other scholars who
have noted that there's really no grounds to argue on the earliest
levels that the Perikope adultery was a floating tradition. It's
there when it appears, it's there early on in the same place. It
has always appeared at 753 through 811. The only evidence for it
being taken out and put in Luke are in manuscripts that are very,
very late. It probably has to do with other things that are
going on in those traditions, the background for which is now
completely lost to us. Again, when it comes to listing,
In the apparatus, the manuscripts that support the inclusion of
the pre-copay adultery, again, still looking at the apparatus,
it mentions just two codices, Codex D, Codex K. It also mentions 1424, minuscule
1424, and says that it's in the margin of that manuscript. And I think what could be a little
bit out of balance with this Someone who, again, would be
just looking at the unseals might say there's not a lot of unseal
support, but this would neglect to take into consideration that
it is the majority text reading. It is the reading in the vast
majority of the so-called Byzantine manuscripts, but the Tyndale
House Greek New Testament does not give a lot of weight to the
minuscules. The weight is upon the unseals
or the majuscules. It's interesting also, and if
you look at the introduction again that appears after the
text in the Tyndale House New Testament, there are only two
minuscules that are listed among constant witnesses, and they
are minuscule 69, the so-called Lester Codex, and minuscule 1424. 69 dates to the 15th century. 1424 dates to the 9th or the
10th century. centuries and so these are obviously
very late manuscripts and yet these are the only ones that
are that are cited here with regard to the Pericopa Adulteri.
Interesting. Let me go on and cite a few more.
Acts 8.37, the passage relating to the confession of faith of
the Ethiopian eunuch. You can be baptized if you believe.
I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This is omitted
altogether from the text, although it is listed as a variant in
the apparatus. Going ahead, what about 2 Peter
3.10? This has become a very important
verse, particularly after the publication of the Nessalon 28th
edition of the Modern Critical Greek New Testament in 2012,
because in the NA28, they include a conjectured negative particle,
ook, And it's interesting to see the Tyndale House Greek New
Testament has not followed the Nessalon 28th edition. It does
not follow them in including a conjecture, a reading that's
not found in any extant Greek manuscript, that is to include
a negative particle, euc, Instead, it omits that so it keeps it
as a positive sentence rather than negative sentence. However,
it does follow the Nessalon 28th in using the verb urethesitai
to be laid bare from the verb heurisco. rather than following
the traditional text, the TR reading, which is kata kaeste,
to be burned up from kata kayo, where it talks about everything
will be the King James Version, other translations based on the
traditional text say everything will be burned up or consumed. Whereas in modern translations,
it'll say everything will be laid bare. But now in the Nestle
on 28th edition, it says kind of the opposite. Everything will
not be laid bare. And I don't know of yet of any
modern translations that have followed on Followed the suggestion
made by the Nestle on 28th edition. So this would be example here
at 2nd Peter 3 10 Something we'll get to later. It's an example
of the Tyndale house Greek New Testament departing from basically
the stream or the movement of reflected in German criticism,
the use of the so-called coherence-based genealogical method. And so maybe
there's a little pushback there saying, you know, it's gone a
little too far in offering conjecture, there's offering a caution on
having a critical Greek text that has readings that don't
have any Greek manuscript support. Next, again, just continuing
to flow a few kind of test passages from the New Testament, I looked
at the Koma Yohaneum, the Three Heavenly Witnesses passage, 1
John 5, 7, B through 8a. And unsurprisingly, again, the
Tyndale House Greek New Testament omits the Koma Yohaneum. But
on the other hand, kind of intriguing, it does provide an extended discussion
in the apparatus of the variants circling around this passage.
And it notes this in the introduction that will follow the text of
the New Testament, that this is one of two passages The other
being Hebrews 2.9, where the editors chose to go beyond citing
just the sort of constant witnesses of papyri and unseals they think
are important, and they also listed some of the evidences
from the minuscule witnesses. And I think this is at least
positive, encouraging to some degree, in that the editors were
trying to take seriously, I think, the theological significance
of this passage. The fact that it is an important
Protestant proof text, not just orthodox proof text for Trinitarianism,
And so more than, I think, as is reflected in some English
translations, which now just simply omit it without any reference,
without any footnote, they give some attention in the apparatus
to dealing with the Koma Yonaum, even though by virtue of the
fact they remove it from the main text, they're reflecting
a judgment that they don't think it's authentic, that they believe
it's spurious. going on Jude, Jude 5. This is another one that's become
a matter of controversy, particularly since the Nessalon 28th edition
came out here, whereas with 2 Peter 3 10, they did not follow the Nessalon 28,
here they do follow the NA 28, and they read here Jesus, Jesus,
rather than Kurios or Lord, which is found in the traditional text,
and then although they list the reading Lord and the variants,
they also list the variant God, the variant Christ, and this
one is actually marked also with a diamond to say, okay, although
we've put Jesus in there, We believe there's strong evidence
for keeping with the traditional reading, reading reflected in
the text of receptus of the Lord. So at least that's semi-encouraging. Then, I guess, so most of what
I've looked at here are gospels and the Catholic epistles. I
did look at 1 Timothy 3.16 from Paul. And again, unsurprisingly,
they go with interpreting the text here as using the masculine
pronoun, has, he. He was manifest in the flesh
rather than the reading of the text of Receptus. Theos, God,
God, manifest in the flesh. Unsurprisingly, they follow what
has been sort of the consensus of the modern critical text since
the 19th century on that. And the last one I looked at
was just Revelation 2219. It's a distinctive TR reading. And again, unsurprisingly, I
found that they read tree of life. rather than Book of Life,
which is in the TR, and they do not even list that as a variant
in the apparatus, mainly because, again, they're only dealing with
the Greek unseals and papyri. So that is a survey, a very brief
survey of a few passages. And I know probably in the weeks
and months and probably years to come, this edition is going
to be on my shelf and there are going to be plenty of times in
the future where I'm going to be looking at a passage and I'm
going to pull this thing down to see, okay, what did the Tyndall
House people do with this passage? How did they handle it? But there
just gives you some idea. Again, by and large, they're
following the, Unsurprisingly, the modern critical text, although
there are a few places where they do make some surprising
decisions that are at variance with particularly the newest
new text, that produced by the German Bible Society, that which
is being produced through the coherence-based genealogical
method and the way that's updating and changing these new editions
of the New Testament that started with the NA28 with this new method
being applied to the Catholic Epistle. So there's a little
bit of pushback there in 2 Peter 3.10. And again, I think a little
bit of a cross current also with the way the ending of Mark, at
least, is handled. Let's go on then to part four,
which is the introduction found on pages 505 to 523. Again, in
this edition, the introduction comes not at the beginning before
you read the Greek text, but it comes at the end. And although
this introduction is brief, what is it, about 18 pages or so,
it is very dense. And this introduction requires
some really, requires you really to read it closely and pay close
attention to it. It deals with definitely some
minutiae that went into their decision making. And I have a
list of, oh my goodness, I've got, over 20 notes here. And I'll try to summarize and
share some of these with you. So it begins on page 505, noting
that this edition of the Greek New Testament seeks, quote, the
best approximation to the words written by the New Testament
authors, end quote. And as with the preface, I'm
sort of struck by this language. We're going to give you the best
approximation that we can get. of the words written by the New
Testament authors. They can't say as the men of
the Protestant Reformation era did, the framers of the confessions
did, they can't say we have the word of God, we possess it. What
they can say is we've got something that's not exactly it, but it's
the best we can do. It's the best approximation we
can come up with. And again, that's just a major
worldview shift. from the way the confessional
men of the past saw scripture and the preservation of it, the
transmission of it, and the way modern enlightenment influenced
people, even if they're believers, look at the text of the Bible. Second, it notes that the standard
the standard that a reading had to be contained, quote, in at
least some Greek manuscripts, end quote. This is page 505.
So this means, as we've already seen with 2 Peter 3.10, that
the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament has no
conjectures. And a conjecture is when an editor
doesn't have a Greek manuscript, but maybe because of what he's
read in a version, a translation, the Bible into another language
or because of something in a church father or simply because of a
rational deduction. He conjectures what he thinks
the text should read or what it might have read and they're
saying we're not going to do that. We've got to have a Greek
manuscript and actually you know I think that's in general a good thing to affirm. It reminds me
very much of Calvin in his commentaries when he talks about text criticism.
He often wants to make sure that he's appealing to a Greek manuscript.
Third, the formatting the editors tell us seeks, quote, to constrain
editorial choice, end quote, as, quote, a check on editorial
fallibility and eccentricity, end quote. It's on page 505. And again, this may be related
to the whole idea of conjectures. It may be sort of a subtle critique
of the coherence-based genealogical method. Their German counterparts
in text criticism that maybe they want to stick with the Greek
manuscript, so they want to constrain editorial choice, as they put
it. Fourth observation on the introduction, it says that the
work, they give a little more explanation to what was said
in the preface. They note that the work began
as a revision, once again, of Tregalus. They note that Tregalus
was used by Westcott and Hort. in their famous 1881 Greek New
Testament, but the editors say that in their opinion Dragalus's
work has been undeservedly ignored, so this edition attempts in part,
they say, quote, to compensate for this oversight, end quote. The editors note that there have
been two major advances in critical research in the text of the New
Testament since the time of Tregalus. And those two critical advances
are first, the discovery of the papyri. And then secondly, they
say the second major change has been the study of scribal habits. Again, this is the editor's wheelhouse.
And so obviously he's interested in that. Then they acknowledge,
although this started out to be simply a revision of Tregalus,
they say that in the end it became more thoroughgoing and it has
resulted in what they call a completely new edition. Fifth observation
about the introduction, the editors say that in keeping with Tregalus,
this edition required each reading to have at least two Greek witnesses,
at least one of which had to be from the 5th century or earlier. So now they're telling us here
was our method. Everything in here had to be
in at least two Greek witnesses, not just one, not a single attestation,
had to be two witnesses. And at least one of those two
had to be from the 5th century or earlier. And this should shed
light. For example, for us on how Mark
16, 9 through 20 is in their text, how the prayer of Jesus
on the cross is in their text. These are not late, spurious
readings. These are readings that are ancient, that are well
attested. Six observation that they offer on their introduction. They note that a textual commentary
will be presented later. So they're apparently working
on a textual commentary where they explain some of these decisions. And of course, that will be much
anticipated, give more insights into their decision making process.
Seventh observation, they say the most prominent scribal tendencies
included, one, the influence from a text elsewhere, and second,
the habit of copying the text in the form that requires the
least energy to retain it. Eighth observation, attention
was also given to tendencies of individual manuscripts, page
507. Tenth note I've got here, like
Westcott and Hort's New Testament, the value of this edition, they
say, is not in the apparatus, but in the text itself. And having
looked at the apparatus of the text, we've already seen that
the apparatus in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament does
not include versional evidence. That is, it does not include
evidence from early translations of the New Testament into Syriac
or Ethiopic or Old Latin or Gothic or Arminian or whatever. Armenian,
it only sticks with the Greek text. It also does not include
any patristic evidence, so it doesn't cite the church fathers.
Although the editors acknowledge the influence of this evidence,
virginal and patristic evidence, in their thinking, in their scholarship,
they conclude, this is page 507, nevertheless, quote, we have
not felt at any point that their witness was strong enough to
change the decision we made on the basis of the Greek manuscripts,
end quote. My question would be, is it wise
to ignore completely the virginal and the patristic evidence? And
I think in particular, with regard to the ending of Mark, since
that's been something I've looked at most recently, again, this
forthcoming article that I have, when we look at the early evidence
for the gospel of Mark, there simply isn't any papyri evidence
for the ending of Mark. So there's nothing for the first
300 years. in Greek manuscripts. However,
we have lots of information about the traditional ending of Mark,
verifying it. It's there in Justin Martyr. It's there in Irenaeus of Lyon. It's there in the apostolic constitutions. It's there even cited in pagan
opponents of Christianity like Celsus. and periphery. So if you ignore that evidence,
you're ignoring the earliest levels of attestation for the
traditional ending of Mark. So I don't think it's wise to
ignore the version or the patristic evidence. Eleventh observation I have on
the introduction, I've written here, the editors note that their
focus on early Greek manuscripts depart from the current, and
they don't mention the coherence-based genealogical method, but by drift
they do, but they recognize they're differing from the current approach
to the modern critical text and that method reflected in the
coherence-based genealogical method allows that later manuscripts
may reflect earlier readings. And so, this seems to be more
and more the case with the coherence-based genealogical method. They're
saying, you know, we're not going to depend, we're not going to base our reading
on the papyri or the unseals. We realize that there's some
late management, there's some minuscules that may be copied from much
earlier sources. And sometimes, the minuscule
is actually the earliest reading. We need to pay more attention
to it than we do to a papyri or to, Of course, that is very
much counter to what they're doing with the Tyndale House
Greek New Testament. The editors acknowledge here, this is page
507, quote, that at times a late manuscript may contain a text
that is logically prior to and ancestral to that in the earliest
extant manuscript, but they contend that their aim was to produce,
quote, a text with a high degree with a high degree of directly
verifiable antiquity." And so this is their summation. They
say, throughout the text, the editor sought to consider the
most ancient Greek testimony wherever feasible. So their standard
was, Not that we'll give credence to a minuscule having an earlier
reading than a papyrus, an existing papyrus or unseal, but we have
to have what they call directly verifiable antiquity. This was
their standard for the Tyndale House Greek New Testament. Obviously,
that's a departure from what is currently being done the method
that produced the most recent handbook of the Greek New Testament,
the Nessalon 28th edition and the UBS 5th corrected edition.
12th note I've got here, there's a discussion of orthography,
spelling and writing on pages 508 to 512. It's noted here that
this edition relies on spellings, from manuscripts of the 5th century
and earlier. One example that is given is
that in some words they choose to spell the vowel that in many
modern editions is simply written with a single iota or the letter
I. And instead, they write it with
an epsilon, iota, or an ei. So for example, the verb for
to become is genomi, typically. And they often spell it not as
genomi with a, if I were to transliterate it, g-i-n-o-m-a-i. They are going to transliterate
it. They're going to write it, if it were transliterated, as
G-E-I-N-O-M-A-I. So they prefer epsilon iota. In many cases, we're in modern
printed editions of the Greek New Testament. It's written simply
with a single iota. And they do this, again, because
they say that this is the typical spelling that we find in the
earlier manuscripts. And it's also noted on page 511
that the, quote, modern habit of printing the New Testament
in a form in which the spelling is almost entirely uniform gives
a misleading historical impression. So they're saying we're going
to reflect the spelling as we find it in the earlier manuscripts,
and that means that sometimes a word is going to be spelled
in different ways, and that sometimes rather than spelling a word like
genomi with a single iota, it's going to be spelled with an epsilon
iota. 13th observation, this edition does not make use of
the nomina sacra, the sacred names. And these were abbreviations
for various highly used words, like instead of writing out the
word thaos, they would simply write the first letter and the
last letter and then put a line over it, a theta sigma with a
line over it. This edition, the editor's note,
does not make use of Nomen Isacra, but it leaves open the possibility
that it might use Nomen Isacra in future editions of the Tyndale
House Greek New Testament. It also notes that the usage
of some such words, some such nomena sacra, are not consistent
in the earliest manuscripts, and it would be against the principles
of this edition, quote, to impose uniformity in a global way, end
quote, page 511. In other words, they're not going
to give a standardized nomena sacra, because they aren't used
in a standardized way across all early manuscripts. Fourteenth
observation to quote optimize readability, end quote, the lower
case is generally used in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament,
and this includes in the writing of the title Christos or Christ. That is, in the Tyndale House,
Greek New Testament, they do not capitalize the leading Chi,
the first letter in Christos, but they simply write it with
a lowercase letter. 15th observation, the discussion
on the order of books, paragraphs, breathings, accents, and punctuations
appears on pages 512 to 515. 16th observation, it suggests,
the edition does, that the Catholic epistles after Acts is the best
attested order, but it concedes that a good case can be made
for Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians. This is made on page 512, and
I already noted that's precisely what is done by Robinson and
Pierpont in their 2005 edition of the Byzantine Greek New Testament.
17th observation, it notes that the paragraph divisions by ecthesis
may seem eccentric, but they add that it is according to ancient
custom and, quote, it is at least equal in elegance to modern indentation,
end quote, page 512. Eighteenth observation as regards
breathings and accents. The editors note that they have
sought, quote, to print what is consistent and attested in
the manuscripts containing accents, end quote. While acknowledging
that the study of these matters is still in its infancy, they
further acknowledge that choices here were made in part based
on their easiest access to manuscripts that they could look at online.
That's on page 514. Nineteenth observation here regarding
the introduction. The editors note their attempt
to present the Greek text with as little interruption as possible.
Thus, they add, we have avoided scholarly signs within text,
as well as brackets, dashes, or markings of perceived citations
by special typefaces. And this latter statement means,
among other things, that unlike some modern editions of the Greek
New Testament, they do not set off Old Testament citations in
italic, or they don't set it off in some other way to let
the reader know that what is appearing is a quotation from
the Old Testament or from some other early source and we could
debate the wisdom of that. I kind of appreciate sometimes
in a Greek text when it puts an Old Testament citation in
a different font or in italic, because it gives me information
that this is a quotation that's coming from the Old Testament.
But they did not do that. 20th observation, as for punctuation
marks, the edition uses full stops or periods. It uses raised
points, which is the equivalent to the semicolon in English.
And it uses commas. And it also uses what it calls
the Greek question mark, which is a semicolon. Even though it
points out that this, the use of a semicolon in a Greek text,
what we call a semicolon as a question mark, did it become sort of among the
practices in manuscripts in New Testament till roughly over a
thousand years after the New Testament had been written. So
we don't see evidence of that till the minuscules post the
year 1000 or so, or 1100 or so. 21st note, with pages 512, 515
rather, to 523, we come to the apparatus, description of the
apparatus, then a listing of the constant witnesses used in
this edition, and the editors explain the choice of variants
listed in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament in three categories.
This is page 515. Three categories are first, They
say variants that were in the eyes of the editors, extremely
close contenders for consideration for the main text. In some cases,
the editors were in doubt as to the correct decision. These
are marked by a diamond. So I already noted that. And
I noted several passages where they include that, like Jude
5. If they're unsure, they put a diamond. category, they said
there are some variants that have a high exegetical importance. And then third, they selected
some variants which illustrate particular scribal habits. So
that was their, those were their three categories for variants.
22nd observation, the primary focus in the apparatus is evidence
from the papyri and the majuscules, something I've already alluded
to. The only minuscules that are consistently cited are minuscule
69 and minuscule 1424, since the editors say these two minuscules
are diverse and significant textual witnesses, end quote, page 516.
23rd observation of the 26, believe I'm getting close to the end.
For two of the variants, 1 John 5, 7 and Hebrews 2, 9, the editors
say, quote, manuscripts are listed only for the occasion of that
specific unit, end quote. So they gave special attention
and listed more minuscule evidence for 1 John 5, 7, Hebrews 2, 9. 24th observation, sometimes Codex
D is not cited as are the other so-called, what we could call
constant witnesses used in this edition because the editors say
on some occasions D has substantial recastings of the text. 25th
observation, there is a partial list of the papyri that are included
in this edition on pages 518 to 520. Again, it doesn't list
like the Nesolon 28 gives you an exhaustive listing of all
the papyri that are extant and the dates for it, where it's
found and what passages it contains. The Tyndall House listing of
the witnesses that they use is much more selective, so they
don't include all the papyri. But interestingly enough, they
do include several that are not in the NA-28. That is, ones that
have been discovered and cataloged since the NA-28 came out in 2012. Among these are Papyrus-129,
Papyrus-130, and Papyrus-135. So if you look at the Nessalon
28th edition, there are only 127 papyri listed, although it's
exhaustive. And I'm sure that when the Nessalon
29th edition comes out, Now we know it's at least going to have
135 papyri and probably more that are being discovered and
cataloged in the meantime. And yet I must say the papyri
really have not, I think, made that big of a difference in the
printed forms of the Greek New Testament or the translations
that are made from them. And last observation about the
introduction, I know it's a lot. They also have pages 520 to 522,
a listing of the unseals that were sort of the constant witnesses
used by the editors. And as I've already noted, they
list just two minuscules that they frequently turn to, 69 and
1424. And then also on page 523, they
give a list of some selected other witnesses, like minuscule
one, for example, is listed there since it was used at Mark 16
native, maybe used in other places in the New Testament, I'm not
sure. The fifth and final part of the Tyndall House Group New
Testament is the acknowledgements on pages 525 to 526, and there's not a whole lot there, just some
typical acknowledgments. They do note how the work began
in their collaborations and conversations during what they call their famed
tea and coffee breaks at the Tyndall House there in Cambridge.
And they also note that Youngkind, the editor, did the bulk of the
work. And they give acknowledgments
of other people who helped. So that's it. That's it. We have
covered the entirety. It's taken a long time. Thank
you for your patience, but we have covered some observations
about the Tyndall House Greek New Testament. Let me finally
just add a few words of evaluation. What would I say about the Tyndall
House Greek New Testament? This is a physically attractive
printed edition of the Greek New Testament. It's a nice looking
book. It's being promoted by Crossway, and if you've read
any of my stuff on my blog and other places when I've critiqued
the ESV or the ESV Study Bible, I have noted that Crossway, I
would call them the masters of evangelical marketing and merchandising. The way they've promoted the
ESV, the way they've promoted the ESV Study Bible among The
Young Russellson Reformed among Calvinists and broad evangelicals
is really amazing. They've gotten a lot of people
on the bandwagon. And, you know, if they're promoting this Tyndale
House Creek New Testament, you know, they're going to do their
best to make it known, to make it used. There's already a very
slick video that has been put out, high quality production,
short video that discusses the work and shows the editors and
so forth. And I'm gonna put a link by the
way to that video at the posting at JeffRiddle.net so you can
look at it. You can look it up on Vimeo.
Again, as already noted, apparently the end goal for this is it's
going to be like, as with the ESV, it's going to be available
for free online. And again, I think it's going
to be free law offered in many Bible software packages and so
forth. But apparently that hasn't happened yet. And maybe they're
just trying to get the most advantage out of selling as many of the
printed editions as they can. And I was one of those people
who got in line and bought one, plunked down the money and added
to the coffers of Crossway. Anyways, so it's an attractive
book, and we may hear a lot more from it, given the crossways
behind it. As this edition acknowledges,
it is inspired by Tregalus, and it's focused on the earliest
extant Greek manuscripts, the papyri and the unseals. Of course,
Tregalus didn't have access to the papyri. but it's heavily
based on the unseals. This means, of course, obviously
that it rejects the Textus Receptus. Recall Hull's comments that I
read earlier about how Tregalus was the brigadier general in
the campaign against the Textus Receptus. So obviously, the Tyndale
House Greek New Testament is not in the tradition of the Textus
Receptus or Tyndale of the King James Version with regard to
translations that come from the Textus Receptus. But interestingly
enough, it also, as I've noted, departs from current trends manifest
in the application of the so-called coherence-based genealogical
method in the Editio Critica Maior, and now in the critical
handbooks that are being produced by the Institute for New Testament
Text Forschung. the Institute for New Testament
Study in Münster, Germany. And they're really the ones who
are the editorial overlords over the Nestle Aland editions of
the Bible and also have influence upon the United Bible Societies, handbook editions of the Greek
New Testament. So they're kind of, the Tyndall
House represents a critique and a bit of a movement away from
that. I already mentioned the comments on page 505 that they
want to constrain editorial choice. They want to offer a check on
what they call editorial fallibility and eccentricity. And I was just
reflecting on that a little bit and I was thinking about in the
history of New Testament scholarship, of biblical scholarship. It seemed
like there's been a long history of sort of in the Anglo sphere,
in the English speaking sphere, in the UK and in the US and Canada. It seems to be that the Germans,
you know, have long led the way in historical critical methodology,
and English-speaking people adapt a lot of that, but then they
also often, it seems, particularly obviously people who are more
conservative evangelical, they dissent from it. And this might
be, I think, just another example, historical example of that, where
these fellows who are very steeped in the sort of critical study
of the text of the New Testament that's been influenced by German
higher criticism, and the German critics in Münster are in the
vanguard of this, but now they're sort of dissenting from it a
little bit. Any edition of the Greek New
Testament will be, by definition, a specialty publication aimed
at a limited audience. When you come out with an edition
of the Greek New Testament, who's going to read it? I mean, I guess
everybody could read the preface and the introduction, but the
bulk of it, the 500 pages of the text of the Greek New Testament,
I mean, there are not that many people who can read the Greek
New Testament. And as I sometimes point out
to surprise laymen, many pastors in the pulpits of our churches
can't really read the Greek of the New Testament. They took
Greek perhaps when they were in Bible college or seminary.
And if you don't use it, you lose it. And they're just about
as dependent upon English language resources as laypersons are. So there's a very limited audience
for this type of work. Greek texts are usually read
by pastors, by scholars, by theologians, by Bible translators, and they're
also read by seminarians, Bible college students who are aspiring
to callings to the ministry or to scholarship. So Any work like
this is going to have a limited audience. And it seems to me
that this edition, the Tyndall House Greek New Testament, I
don't see how it's going to gain a strong following or a strong
usage among either pastors, scholars, or by seminarians and Bible college
students. Why? Well, I think the scholars
and scholarly pastors, theologians, are still probably going to continue
to prefer the additions that are overseen by Munster. They're
still going to prefer the United Bible Society editions of the
critical text, the Nessalon editions of the critical text. And I think
that mainstream Protestant and evangelical seminaries are still
going to use those as the handbooks. Now, maybe there's going to be
a few, you know, maybe a handful of reform seminaries that are
teaching introductory Greek who may require the Tyndale House
Greek New Testament. But let's face it, most of them
are going to use the UBS or they're going to use Nestle-Lond. The
Tyndale House Greek New Testament has enough peculiarities to it,
whether it's the ordering of the books, putting the Catholic
epistles up front, whether it's the ecthetic paragraph divisions,
whether it's the lack of versional and patristic citations in the
apparatus, whether it's the removal of traditional passages like
the Pericope Adulteri from the main text. At least the Nessalon
puts it in brackets. I mean, at least it's still there.
And it's quite peculiar they've taken it completely out. All
those factors make the Tyndall House Greek New Testament more
of what I would call a boutique edition. of the Greek New Testament. It's kind of a peculiar specialty
edition. Even the number of people who
would be able to read with discernment, make their way through that very
dense introduction of 18 pages and understand it, that's a pretty
limited group of people who are going to get that. So I don't
see this being widely used, but I think I see it as being, again,
an interesting boutique edition of the Greek New Testament, reflecting
some of the currents and cross currents in modern critical study
of the Greek New Testament. Another question I would have
about it, this project in general, would be whether or not it's
being done for any larger purpose. Will there be a new vernacular
translation in English or some other language that is based
on this text? Will, since Crossway's involved
with it, will the ESV ever be adapted to it? If that were the
case, then the ESV would have to undergo some serious changes
because it's based on the, I think probably most recently on the
Nestle on 27th edition, maybe even the 26th edition. So it,
at John 118, you know, it reads, the only begotten God, It has
John 753 through 811 in the text, but in brackets. So, it would
require a lot of changes to the ESV. I just don't see that happening.
But I wonder about what the larger purpose, if any, there was with
regard to maybe popularizing it more through translations
or some more popular usage within churches for this. In the end,
although we can be thankful for some things in this edition,
like the acknowledgement of the New Testament as a Christ-focused
religious text in the preface, whether the assumption of some
traditional readings in places like the prayer of Jesus from
the cross in Luke 23, or the reading of the only begotten
son in John 1.18, the lack of brackets around the traditional
ending of Mark, although there are some things that we might
find encouraging, or the fact that there is some discussion
of the Coma Ionaeum. In the end, this remains yet
another Enlightenment-influenced modern critical text. For those
of us like me who hold to the traditional confessional texts,
who prefer the Masoretic texts of the Hebrew Bible for the Old
Testament and the Textus Receptus as the text for the New Testament.
I think we will probably just see this as another illustration
of some of the wider problems that we perceive to be inherent
in the modern academic reconstructionist text critical venture. Despite all the erudition and
all the scholarship that's represented by this book, and there's a lot,
it's a very, it reflects a lot of labor and a lot of erudition,
a lot of study, and I respect that. I appreciate the fact that
these men have put in so much time into this study and studying
really these these minute points of things like breathing and
accents and spelling. And I mean, it's commendable,
the amount of time and effort that they've put into it. But
I think in the end, by virtue of its methodology, this reconstructionist
method cannot yield a stable text. But in the end, it can
only yield a scholarly approximation of what it perceives to be an
ever evolving text that seems to be devoid in the end of any
serious consideration of providential preservation. So it gives us
a reconstructed text that's never finished. without reflecting
a stable text that has been faithfully preserved and which gives to
the possession of God's people the Word of God. Not something
that we hope approximates the Word of God, but something that
is in fact and indeed the Word of God. Well, this was a bit
longer, Word magazine. This is maybe why I hadn't gotten
to this in a long time. It took a while to put my thoughts
together and I hope that there's been some measure of clarity
in this. I hope that you will benefit
from this review and I'll look forward to speaking to you in
the next edition of Word Magazine. Till then, take care and God
bless.
WM # 84: Review: Tyndale House Greek New Testament
Series Word Magazine
| Sermon ID | 12917211152 |
| Duration | 1:35:08 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Bible Text | Mark 16:9-20 |
| Language | English |
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