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.