Greetings and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle. I'm the pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia, and in this episode of Word Magazine, I'm going to be offering a review of an article written by Mark Ward, and I have titled this review, Seven Significant and Curious Problems with Mark Ward's Recent so-called scholarly article on Psalm 12, verses six and seven. So last week, freelance YouTuber and anti-King James Version crusader, Mark Ward quietly posted a PDF of an article that was published. And the title of that article was, let me just go ahead and pull it up so you can see it. The title of that article was, there it is, Does Psalm 12, 6, and 7 Promise Perfect Manuscript Copies of the Bible, an Exegetical Examination and Multigenerational Interpretive Plebiscite. And this, again, came out in this journal, which I had never heard of before. It's called the Canadian American Theological Review, a journal, sorry, of theology, scripture, and culture. And this was the 2024, volume 13, issue one edition. And let's see, here is the article itself, which we'll do some review of. So, I did find, as you might imagine, some problems with this article, and there are some interesting roots to controversy over the interpretation of Psalm 12, 6 and 7 with Mark Ward that are not mentioned within the article, and hopefully we'll examine just a little bit of the background. I want to point to, as I noted, seven significant and curious problems with this article. And so I'm not going to be able to go through the entire article and critique all of it, but I'm going to choose seven things to point out about the article that I think are problematic. First of all, let's begin with the article's title. And the titular question that is within the title, does Psalm 12, six and seven promise perfect manuscript copies of the Bible? Does Psalm 12, six and seven promise perfect manuscript copies of the Bible? Now, if you were to look at this title, you would think that Mark Ward is going to offer a critique of persons who would argue that Psalm 12, 6, and 7 justifies the belief in perfect, presumably extant, manuscript copies of the Bible. Now, Psalm 12, 6, and 7 is somewhat controversial, I guess, with respect to interpretation. In the authorized version, Psalm 12, 6, and 7 reads, the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. So verse 6 is often a proof text for the purity of God's word. And then verse 7 says, thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. And there is not a controversy, but a question of the proper interpretation. Certainly reading this in English, thou shalt keep them, O Lord, in verse 7, right after the mention in verse 6 of the words of the Lord being pure words, many English readers would automatically assume that the referent for the them in verse 7, thou shalt keep them, O Lord, would be the pure words. But there's a grammatical issue here because the word for words in verse six is in the feminine gender, and the them, the pronoun them in verse seven is in the masculine. And so some have suggested that the referent For the them is not the words in verse 6, but the referent is the poor in verse 5, talking about Israel in its poor state. For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, or merely for the poor within the ancient Israelite society. Psalm 12 is a psalm of David within David's society. And there's also a question in the second half of verse 7, whereas the Authorized Version uses another them pronoun, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever, the Authorized Version points out that in Hebrew it's actually a singular pronoun, And it gives the alternative hymn, but it also explains that the hymn here has a collective sense. And so in the authorized version notes, it says Hebrew hymn, that is every one of them, every one of the words of God will be preserved, or every one of the needy people of God will be preserved. And the translators, though, translated as them, knowing that behind it was this singular pronoun. And sometimes that's the way singular pronouns are to be taken collectively as referring to every one of a particular group or set. So every one of them, basically. So at any rate, though, with respect to this title, Mark Ward, by posing this question, the title, Does Psalm 12, 6 and 7 Promise Perfect Manuscript Copies of the Bible implies that there are people out there who use Psalm 12, 6 and 7 not to argue for God's sovereign preservation of his pure words, alongside of his sovereign preservation of his people. But there are people who use this as a proof text for the idea that there are currently extant, existing manuscripts of the scriptures, whether of the Old Testament or the New Testament, that are in a perfectly pure condition, meaning that there are manuscripts that match up perfectly with the original autographs. And he lists persons within this article who supposedly hold this position. He calls them, on page 30, leading figures and leading defenders of such a position. And guess what? I'm one of the people who's listed there as someone who apparently holds that there are extant right now perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. And I just have to tell you, that's not something that I believe. In fact, I highly doubt whether any of the other persons that Mark Ward lists in this article actually hold to such a position. In fact, throughout this entire article, as he summarizes my views and the views of other people, he never offers a quotation from anyone who supposedly holds this view, who actually articulates or uses the term perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. So again, this is from the very beginning with the title. Titles are important. This is setting up. what we call a fundamental logical fallacy, the fallacy of a straw man. He's saying there are people out there who hold Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as suggesting there are currently extant, perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. And I, for one, don't hold such a view. I don't think any of the people he lists here as proponents of such a view hold it. In fact, the closest I know to anyone who would hold such a view would be Wilbur Pickering, who is an advocate for what is sometimes called the majority text or the Byzantine text. And he thinks that a group of manuscripts known as Family 35 Byzantine manuscripts represent the originals. But even he doesn't say any one of those manuscripts within Family 35 uh, individually represents a perfect manuscript. He would say collectively, he thinks that they, he thinks that they possess, uh, the autographic text. So anyways, we've got a major problem here in the beginning with Mark Ward setting up, even in the title, uh, a logical fallacy, a, a straw man fallacy to make matters worse. As you continue within the article, um, the idea of who he's writing against becomes further muddled. And so let's just look at the abstract here for a minute before we plunge into looking at the article itself. Here's the abstract. Defenders of the exclusive use of the King James Version and all their varieties. And you well know that Mark Ward, again, sort of has an obsession with people who use the King James Version. Now this title here, Defenders of the Exclusive Use of the King James Version, that's a problematic title. I don't fit under that. If someone believed that you should exclusively use only King James Version, it wouldn't represent my view. For example, I support the Trinitarian Bible Society, which makes translations of the Bible from the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek Texas Receptus into various languages. I don't expect my Hungarian friends exclusively to use the King James Version. I don't expect my Spanish speaking friends exclusively to use the King James Version. So this is another type of straw man that Mark Ward has created. But let's go on because he's going to muddle here again the persons he's supposedly aiming this article against. He says, the defenders of the exclusive use of the King James Version and all their varieties frequently appeal to Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as a proof text for their doctrine that God promised perfectly pure preservation of the texts of scripture. The words of the Lord are pure words. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them. So he switches now, it's kind of a bait and switch. And the title he said, he was gonna be addressing perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. But now all of a sudden, it's not that, it's simply people who would see Psalm 12, six and seven as addressing a promise that God would perfectly, that God's promised perfectly pure preservation of the text of scripture. You see, those are two different things. You don't have to believe that there are perfect manuscript copies of the Bible to believe that God has perfectly preserved his word. In fact, I would say anyone who fully subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith would hold that God's word has been kept pure in all ages. It doesn't mean they believe that there are currently extant, perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. And then he proceeds, he says, careful, this is the abstract, careful textual and exegetical examination proves the unlikeliness of this interpretation. Again, I don't know anyone who's interpreting Psalm 6 and 7 to say they're perfect. manuscript copies of the Bible. I do know people who would hold a Psalm 12, six and seven as referring to God's word being kept pure in all ages. This article will explore the novel theological idea of perfect biblical manuscripts preserved until the production of the KJV as it has found support from this passage. Now we've got a third idea. So we started off, first idea from the title, there are people out there who use Psalm 12, six and seven to argue for perfect extant manuscript copies of the Bible. Secondly, then we've got the idea of people who use Psalm 12, six and seven simply to, as a pretext for belief in God's perfect preservation text of scripture. Now we've got a third idea of people who believe There are perfect manuscript, perfect biblical manuscripts that were preserved until the production of the KJV, so up to 1611. So apparently they're not in existence today, such manuscripts are in existence today, but they were in existence in 1611 when the King James Version translation was made. So these are some really loaded, charges of identification of who he's going to write against. And I'm one of the people he supposedly who supposedly holds this view. But I would just suggest you go through this article and try to find any quotation of anyone who holds to the idea of the existence of extant perfect manuscript copies of the Bible, or someone who believes that there were such things up to 1611, though they're not in existence today. So the first of seven problems, significant and curious problems with Mark Ward's scholarly so-called article is that he sets up a straw man, an absolute straw man. And again, if we're going to go into the text itself and we begin the article, he starts off, introduction, defenders of exclusive use of the King James Version and all their varieties frequently appeal to Psalm 12, six and seven as a proof text for their doctrine that God promised perfectly pure preservation of the text of scripture. And I would say, If he just left a statement like that, and he took out all this thing in the title about there being extant, perfect manuscript copies of the Bible in existence right now, I would say that this position, those who hold to Psalm 12, six and seven as a pretext for the doctrine that God promised, perfectly pure preservation of the text of scripture, I would affirm that, yes. I think that's the classic Protestant view. I think Whitaker held this view, Manton, Owen, Turreton, Thomas Watson held this view, but they didn't believe in extant perfect manuscript copies. They recognized that the copies that we have have a transmissional shortcomings, but collectively God worked providentially in what was preserved to allow the true text to be acknowledged, recognized, translated into the various vernacular languages, despite there being no single perfect manuscript copies. So anyways, all of this article fails at the very beginning for lack of clarity and proof, basically, of the opponents that Marquardt is writing against. Second of seven significant and curious problems, let me just go on a little bit further with the article, has to do with some of the things he says about the English words, pure and preserved. So he says, two of the words KJV, defenders, most often used to describe this act of God, pure and preserved, are drawn from the KJV's rendering of Psalm 12, six and seven. Well, what I find curious about this is that Mark Ward wants to emphasize the King James Version's translation of these two Hebrew words the adjective meaning pure and the term preserved. And he wants to say that this error in interpretation comes from apparently a bad translation or a misunderstanding of the words used in the King James Version. But there are some problems with this. First of all, if we're talking about The scriptures, the main thing for interpretation is not going to be these English words, but the underlying Hebrew words. Do these words mean pure? Do they mean kept or preserved? And then, aside from that, the King James Version did not introduce the interpretation of these words. the use of these words to translate the Hebrew. You could go back to the Coverdale Bible of 1535, and some of you know that in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, it still has the Psalms in the Coverdale translation of 1535, preceding the King James Version by almost a century. And if you read the Coverdale Bible in the Book of Common Prayer, used liturgically in churches today, it translates Psalm 12.6, which is listed there as Psalm 12.7, as the words of the Lord are pure words. It uses pure as a translation. And if you look at Psalm 12.7, listed in the Coverdale Psalter as Psalm 12.8, it says, thou shalt keep them, O Lord, exactly as the authorized version reads, and it says thou shalt preserve him. Now, it takes a more literal rendering of the singular masculine pronoun, but with respect to the word preserve, it uses the English verb preserve to translate. So the use of pure and preserve is not unique, and it wasn't introduced by the King James Version. But as with so many things, Mark Ward almost has an obsession with the King James Version, and he wants to blame the wording of the King James Version, which isn't the wording of the King James Version. I would call it the classic Protestant tradition of English translation that he's rubbing up against. A third serious and curious problem with Mark Ward's scholarly work in this paper is something he says right at the end of this paragraph. He says, finally, I will propose my own interpretation of the passage. In all, I hope to demonstrate how English-only exegesis can give rise to falsehoods and unnecessary divisions within the body of Christ. So there are a couple of things problematic about this, but I would describe it as chiefly this. He suggests here that interpretations of Psalm 12, six and seven related to the preservation of scripture only result from what he calls English-only exegesis, which can give rise to falsehoods and unnecessary divisions within the body of Christ. So he's assuming the only reason somebody would use Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as being linked to the preservation of scripture is because they're only relying on an English translation of Psalm 12, 6, and 7. And also implies this causes divisions. He never gives any proof that there has been any division caused by someone interpreting Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as relating to scriptural preservation. But he also doesn't demonstrate in this article that those who hold Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as relating to preservation of God's Word, that they do so merely on the basis of the reading of English translations, in particular the King James Version. And he goes ahead and starts to list some of the people that he's writing against. He mentions Thomas Ross and Kent Brandenburg. By the way, just listen to this section on them. Thomas Ross and Kent Brandenburg are indeed leading defenders of exclusive use of the King James Version. The former, Ross, has produced a declaration of my own position on the inspiration and preservation of Holy Scripture, to which the latter has given assent. The two men confess. The Bible promises that God will preserve every one of his words forever down to the very jot and tittle, the smallest letter. and there are various proof texts, the Bible assures us that God's words are perfect and pure. So they're arguing for the preservation of God's word. Did you read anything in there about them saying there are currently extant perfect manuscript copies? We could point to this manuscript is perfect or sort of the Allah Wilbur Pickering family 35 or manuscript 35, that one is perfect. No. So what Ward has done is conflate those who believe in the preservation of God's word, kept pure in all ages, to use the confessional language. He's conflated that with someone who holds to their being currently extant, perfect manuscript copies. But he doesn't quote a single person who ever articulates that. I mean, he put that in the title, but he has not a single person who articulates any such thing. But anyways, I'm on point three, which is him making the argument that this is done merely on the basis of people who are limited to English only exegesis. But one of the people he lists as believing that Psalm 12, six and seven has something to do with preservation of scripture is Thomas Strauss. And if you read the section on Strauss, Mark Ward points out, that he's dealing with this text in Hebrew. He sees, argues that Psalm 12 is a chiasm. He sees verse five is the lynchpin. And most significantly, Strauss argues that the masculine pronoun them in verse seven, thou shalt keep them and thou shalt preserve them is properly can be properly interpreted as referring to the words in verse six, which are feminine. And he points out a phenomenon in Hebrew that is known as gender discordance. And so he writes, as cited by Ward, it is important for the careful exegete of the Hebrew scriptures to recognize the biblical phenomenon wherein the biblical writers employed masculine pronouns in reference to feminine antecedent nouns when those feminine nouns were synonymous with the words of God. And he points out there are several examples of this in Psalm 119, where there's a feminine form of the term words and a masculine pronoun is used to refer to them. But my point now is simply that Mark Ward suggests that anyone who takes Psalm 12, six and seven is relating to the preservation of God's word is doing so on the basis of English only exegesis. But then he cites people who supposedly hold this view. And we find that they're referring not merely to the English, but they're referring to the underlying Hebrew and how properly to interpret the Hebrew. Another example, this is Peter Van Cleek and Van Cleek, as Ward points out, cites Ganesius' Hebrew grammar. Through a weakening in the distinction of gender, which is noticeable elsewhere and which probably passed from the colloquial language into that of literature, masculine suffixes, especially in the plural, are not infrequently used to refer to feminine substantives. So both Strauss and Van Cleek Sr. were making an argument for the masculine pronouns in Psalm 12, seven as properly referring to the pure words feminine in verse six. And they were giving Hebrew grammatical arguments in favor of this. But Mark Worden previously said that such a view of Psalm 12, six and seven relating to the preservation of God's word is a matter of English only exegesis. And then he demonstrates that's not the case. Fourth, a serious and curious problem with Mark Ward's paper, academic scholarly paper, has to do with listing me as supposedly a leading proponent of the interpretation of Psalm 12, six and seven, which he opposes. I've already pointed out he doesn't accurately present my view because I don't believe there are currently extant, perfect manuscript copies. God did not, was not pleased to provide currently extant manuscript copies, nor were they available up to 1611 and all of a sudden they disappeared. But I find it curious exactly what he wrote about me. It seems like maybe I'm guessing this was probably an add on to the article. And so he starts off. Jeffrey Riddle is a leading Calvinistic KJV defender. It's interesting that he doesn't bother to say that not only do I hold the Calvinistic soteriology, but I fully subscribe to 1689 Confession. And he well knows that my main thrust is not defending any particular translation, although I love the King James Version, preach from it. But most of what I address is the underlying text. I defend the Reformation text, the traditional Protestant text, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, the received text of the Greek New Testament. He proceeds. Riddle calls Psalm 12, 6 and 7, the jewel of the constellation of statements about providential preservation in Scripture. And he doesn't, at this point, provide any footnote for where this statement comes from. He proceeds then, he says, after citing these verses, I think most Christians, and let's pause here. What's odd about this? Well, I'm wondering who did the editing for this article. Not only is there a lack of a space between the comma after verses and the word I, but what else is missing? A quotation mark. If he's offering, this is apparently a quotation of something that I said, there should be a quotation mark here. Quote, I think most Christians who are reading through the Bible would come to a kind of common sense understanding and expectation that God would preserve not just the concepts, not just the ideas in scripture, but the actual words of scripture, that these words would be preserved. There should be a ending quotation mark there. And there is a footnote here. So there's some problems with the editing, the writing of this. Like I say, it was probably an add-on. And then, you know, what is the source? I'm a leading proponent of this view. I must have written a book about this. I must have written scholarly articles about this. But let's go down and see what the source, for me, a leading proponent of this position. And it comes from a podcast video when I was a guest on Dwayne Green's podcast on June 2nd, 2022 on YouTube. So again, this is a serious academic scholarly article and I am supposedly a leading proponent of this view that is significant enough that would merit the writing of an academic article, you would think that perhaps I had written something about this. In fact, again, I don't have any published materials on Psalm 12, six and seven. Have I spoken about it in a couple of podcasts? Perhaps. But what I really find interesting about this is, I did actually write about this one time. I wrote about it in a blog article. And Mark Ward makes no reference to this blog article. And it was a blog article that I wrote, Mark Ward's discussion, Psalm 12, six and seven. But he doesn't reference this at all. This is the most substantial material that I've ever written on Psalm 12, 6, and 7. And I wrote it because in Mark Ward's, this is back when he was doing the Textual Confidence Collective, he made a statement there where he said, I could not find anybody who use Psalm 127, especially the second half of verse seven, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. I couldn't find anybody in the history of the church until KJV onlyism. I can't find anyone who applied Psalm 127b to textual preservation. So he made the comment in that podcast that no one before 1611 had ever argued for Psalm 12.7 as relating to scriptural preservation. And no one, even since that time, no one until King James Version Onlyism, which I guess King James Version Onlyism would date from maybe the mid 20th century, no one had ever used Psalm 12.7, especially Psalm 12.7b, thou shalt preserve them. from this generation forever had ever used or considered that this related to the preservation of scripture. And as I went back and looked at this, the only article I've ever written about it, which he didn't cite, really it came out of something that Mark Ward had said when he wrote a very toxic review of the book that I co-edited on why I preach from the received text. He said, speaking of me and the other persons who contributed that article, they misuse Bible passages such as Psalm 12, six and seven, which I have shown in a recent paper, have never in the history of the church until the advent of King James Version only has been used the way King James Version slash TR defenders use this passage. And by the way, He's talking about this scholarly article that was just published in 2024, but this was back in August the 9th, 2022. So what actually happened was because of some of the blowback that Mark Ward received from this, including what I wrote and what some other people wrote, he apparently put off this article and tried to nuance it and improve it. And by the way, in this article, I addressed some of the issues. Again, this is the most I've ever written about it, although Mark Ward doesn't cite it. So I addressed the questions about people who object to using verse seven as relating to the text of scripture. I addressed the whole issue of the gender continuity between the feminine, verse six, the pure words, And the masculine pronouns. I also addressed the question of the singular masculine pronoun in the Hebrew him in verse 7B versus the plural them in verse 7A and I pointed out. that it doesn't have to be, you either choose that verse seven is about preserving Israel or preserving the words. I say you can follow what Matthew Poole did, the Puritan exegete. And he said, verse seven talks about both things. He's talking about the preservation of God's pure words and the preservation of his people. And then I also discussed the question of how this passage has been understood in church history. And I cited here some of the work of Peter Van Cleek, where he points out that an Italian exegete of the late 14th, early 15th century had understood this passage as relating to the preservation of scripture. There's an argument that Martin Luther understood it this way, that various Protestant translations. The Bible understood it this way. Matthew Poole did. This is one to point out. John Wesley, in 1765, in his explanatory notes on the Old Testament, said, Thou shalt keep them thy words or promises. These thou wilt observe and keep. both now and from this generation forever. God's words and his promises, Wesley said. Was Wesley a King James Version onlyest, I wonder? He was saying this. And then R.L. Vaughn, who is a Baptist pastor in Texas, had gotten involved in this conversation, and he had given Mark Ward pushback on this idea that no one in the history of Christianity, until King James Version only ism in the mid 20th century, had ever understood Psalm 12, seven as relating to the providential preservation of scripture. And he had made some comments on Mark Ward's blog, and he had provided a list of people. W.A. Gerald, 1907, Louis Gossin, I don't know if you can pronounce his name, but I know his famous work on inspiration, 1844, Samuel Hanson Cox, Joseph Parker, Spurgeon has a sermon on Psalm 12, six, a Dutch writer, Donner, Samuel Howard Ford, Ebenezer Ritchie. And so Marquardt had gotten pushback. And I think that's the reason why that article was not published in 2022. and why it was only published last year, and maybe why Mark Ward only makes reference of it this year, makes reference of it being published this year very quietly. So, this fourth problem is, I am listed as a leading proponent of a view that I do not hold, that there are currently perfect manuscript copies, and there is a confusion of the view that I do hold. And rather than citing an actual source where I have written about this topic, the best that he can do in this scholarly article is cite statements I made in a podcast interview about this topic. Let's move on to the fifth serious and curious problem with Mark Ward's article. He makes much in this article about a so-called interpretive plebiscite. He can't just say a survey of reception history. He's got to say he's going to make an interpretive plebiscite. By the way, this is really weird. After me, He mentions a couple of King James Version only churches that give Psalm 12, 6, and 7 as a proof text for their use of the King James Version. I mean, are they really representative of anybody who's making a scholarly, serious argument based on the Hebrew, based on the Protestant, English interpretation and translation tradition? So again, it's just not an accurate, fair representation of things. Now, again, he has a discussion of some of the issues that I discussed in my article. The gender issues, continuity between verses six and seven, the plural versus singular, pronouns in verse 7. Again, it's nothing new. It's things that I wrote about, things that I discussed, things that others have written about, Strauss has written about. But even as a discussion of optative versus declarative, I don't think that's really a significant issue. But anyways, let's talk about this discussion of his interpretive plebiscite about the reception history of Psalm 12, 6, and 7. And here you can see he's going to perpetuate this idea of those who hold Psalm 12, 6, and 7 having to do with the preservation of scripture that somehow we believe that there are currently perfect manuscript copies And so look at the way he starts out the discussion. The question before us is whether the text as now established should be read to promise perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. That is not the question. A fair question would be, does Psalm 12, six and seven, has it been interpreted as relating to the preservation of scripture, the perfect preservation of scripture, Allah the confessional statements of the English reformers That God's Word has been kept pure in all ages none of them were arguing that there are Perfect manuscript copies of the Bible or that is what Psalm 12 6 and 7 is about so he goes through this survey and of course, he's not going to find anyone who says I believe that Psalm 12, six and seven has to do with perfect manuscript copies. But there are plenty of people who will say, I believe Psalm 12, six and seven talks about the purity of God's word and how God's word will be kept and preserved by God, providentially kept and preserved by him. And so we have people who say this. I could mention a couple of these when he talks about men from the 16th century. We've got John Calvin. Calvin didn't hold this view if you look at his commentary on Psalm 12, seven, but he says, some give this exposition of the passage that will keep them namely thy words. Now Calvin goes on to say that that's not the way he interprets Psalm 12, seven. For our purposes, it shows that in Calvin's day, He recognized there were people who held Psalm 12.7 as relating to the preservation of God's words. And I've already mentioned Matthew Poole, the Puritan exegete. He also refers to Psalm 12.7 as relating to both the people of Israel, the poor and needy among them, and to the words. So this is Matthew Pool, thou shalt take from either one, the poor and needy from verse five, or two, thy words or promises last mentioned, verse six. So was he saying that there are currently extant perfect manuscript copies? No, but he was saying that Psalm 12, six and seven can be interpreted as relating to the preservation of God's word. Again, I find it's interesting, some of the people that Ward did not include. When we get to the 18th century interpreters, he mentions someone named H. Dimmock, he mentions Thomas Boston, he mentions Matthew Henry, but he doesn't mention John Wesley. that Peter Van Cleek Senior cited. When it gets to the 19th century interpreters, he mentions a number of people who interpreted Psalm 12, seven as relating to the poor or to Israel. But one of the people that he omits is a man named Ebenezer Ritchie. And this is another one that R.L. Vaughn pointed out to Mark Ward. posted on Mark Ward's blog. Mr. Ritchie, Pastor Ritchie in 1868 wrote, before passing from the subject, I would advise in reference to the canon of scripture that you meddle not with them that are given to change. We might reason a priori from the regard. God has to his word and the important ends intended by it as a perfect, perfect and infallible record and rule that it is so much the object of his care and superintending providence that no book of scripture has perished and even that no words of God contained in it have been lost. And what does he cite to prove that? Psalm 12, 6 and 7. The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. But the question occurs, where are the original inspired words of scripture to be found? Are they to be found in extant, perfect manuscript copies? We answer, no, in the received Hebrew and Greek texts with their marginal readings, which are the prototype of our English version and of almost all vernacular translations of the scriptures at the present time. I don't think Mark Ward ever addressed Ebenezer Ritchie. And so sometimes you get the sense, even though R.L. Vaughan had pointed out Ritchie as an example of someone who was promoting the view of Psalm 12, six and seven having to do with preservation of scripture long before the advent of so-called King James Version only ism. It seems that Mark Ward did not countenance Ritchie's witness on this matter. Let me just go on. It's interesting. He mentioned some people even up into the 21st century. So very recently, Let's get a little bit further ahead, up into the 21st century. He mentions a fellow named Samuel Terrien, a contemporary Old Testament scholar, takes, you will keep them to refer to the promises God has just made. And then Jim Hamilton, Southern Baptist scholar, theologian, sees 12.7a as a promise that Yahweh will guard his words, and 12.7b as a promise that God will guard the godly ones, mentioned already in 12.1a. So he has kind of a Matthew Poole type of position. So Was Mark Ward able to find anyone who argued for the currently perfect manuscript copies? No. But he was able to find many people, and he even omits some that he could have found, like Ritchie, who argued that Psalm 12, 6, and 7 can be properly interpreted as relating to the preservation of Scripture. Six serious and sometimes curious problems with Mark Ward's scholarly article is that he insists that the purity and preservation of Scripture in Psalm 127 can only apply to the content of Scripture and not to the words of Scripture. And this is a really significant theological issue with not only Mark Ward's interpretation of the Bible and the Doctrine of Preservation, but it's a major problem, as I see it, with many modern interpreters of the Bible. And that is, they want to talk about the infallibility of the content of Scripture, but not the infallibility of the words of Scripture. And there's interesting discussion here that Marquardt has on what the term pure means. So the people who understand Psalm 12, 6, and 7 wrongly, he says, they insist that when it says pure words in Psalm 12, 6, it's talking about pure meaning free from of textual corruption, or yet more specific, free of textual variance. But that cannot be the focus of Psalm 12, 6. The psalmist cannot be saying the promises God just made to the poor in the previous verse will be copied perfectly down through the centuries, not a jot or tittle will be lost. He has to be saying God's promises are completely reliable, unmixed with ulterior motives. Indeed, this is the way interpreters commonly take Psalm 12, six, Augustine gloss, pure to mean without the alloy of pretense, cragy to mean free from any falsity or impairment. In this sense, God's word has certainly remained pure in all ages, but not in the sense meant by King James Version defenders. And this is really, I think, a crux of the problem because Mark Ward and other modern evangelicals have basically given up on the idea of the preservation of the words of the Bible, and instead are arguing much interestingly enough, as liberal Protestants did in the late 19th and early 20th century, that we can only talk about the purity of the ideas, the purity of the so-called content of scripture or doctrines, but we shouldn't expect the purity of the words. In the past generation, it was an argument about inerrancy and infallibility of scripture. And the Protestant liberals said, yes, we can expect, we can accept the authority of the Bible, the authority of the ideas and the infallibility of the ideas, but we can't expect that scripture is without error. We can't really expect that it's pure. In these modern days, we have modern evangelicals say, I believe in inerrancy. I just don't believe the Bible has been providentially preserved so that we can now point with confidence to what the words of the Bible actually are. And we've pointed this out a number of times. I don't think Mark Ward has yet understood what we've been saying. But we're saying is this perspective that he has is actually a departure from, I think, the classic Protestant view. And I recently ran across, I was gonna say a friend, but somebody I really don't know, haven't met, but a pastor in California sent me just this past week, a quotation from Thomas Watson on the preservation of scripture. And this is taken from, his commentary on the Shorter Catechism. And I want you to listen to this, and it provides a striking contrast between the way the Protestant Orthodox thought about the purity of scripture and the preservation of scripture, and the way modern evangelicals like Mark Ward Think about the purity and the preservation of scripture. So Thomas Watson, the Puritan Thomas Watson wrote, we may know the scripture to be the word of God by the miraculous preservation of it in all ages. The holy scriptures are the richest jewel that Christ hath left. And the church of God have kept these public records of heaven that they have not been lost. The Word of God hath never wanted enemies to oppose, and if possible, to extirpate it. They have given out a law concerning Scripture, as Pharaoh did the midwives concerning the Hebrew women's children, to strangle it in the birth. Yet God hath preserved this blessed book inviolable to this day. The devil and his agents have been blowing at Scripture light, but could never prevail to blow it out. a clear sign that it was lighted from heaven. Nor hath the church of God in all revolutions and changes only kept the scripture that it should not be lost, but that it should not be depraved. They kept it not merely that it wouldn't be lost, but it wouldn't be corrupted. And then he said this, the letter of scripture has been preserved without any corruption in the original tongues. The scriptures were not corrupted before Christ's time, for then Christ would never have sent the Jews to the scriptures, but he sends them to the scriptures in John 5, 39, search the scriptures. In other words, if Christ believed the scriptures were corrupted in his day, the traditional Hebrew text in his day, he would not have said to his Jewish opponents, search the scriptures. Christ knew these sacred springs were not muddied with human fancies. And what is really, I think, important about this passage, as I may know this from my blog, I posted this to my blog, JeffRiddle.net, Thomas Watson upholds not merely the preservation of Scripture's doctrinal content, its matter, but also its words. The letter of Scripture has been preserved without any corruption in the original languages, not just the doctrine of Scripture, but the letter of Scripture. the words themselves. And this is, behind this is the doctrine we've made mention of many times in this podcast, the Protestant Orthodox view of the so-called autoritas divina duplex, the double divine authority of scripture. It's both its doctrinal content and it's the words. It's the matter and the form, the doctrine and the words. And that is what Thomas Watson held to But Mark Ward and other modern evangelicals are saying God has not preserved the words, but he has preserved the matter. And again, we believe that type of approach is an error. Let me move on to the seventh and last significant and curious problem with Mark Ward's article. He wrongly concludes that Psalm 12, six, and seven is completely irrelevant as an apologetic proof text for both the purity of content and words, verse six, and the preservation of scripture, verse seven, as well as the preservation of God's people. So he overlooks the fact that Psalm 12, six, and seven can both be taken as a text that affirms the preservation of scripture and the preservation of God's people. Instead, towards the end of the article, he says, anybody who holds that Psalm 12, six and seven has to do with the preservation of scripture, it's kind of a weird metaphor. He says, they are like Athanasius standing against the world. And is it really far-fetched to think that Psalm 12, six and seven has to do with the preservation of scripture? Again, it's a both and, I agree with Matthew Poole. Thou shalt keep them. Thou shalt keep thy words. Thou shalt preserve them forever. His words and his people. And I thought of another verse that I think makes the same point. It's another proof text for the preservation of scripture. Isaiah 59, verses 20 and 21. And in verse 21 of Isaiah 59, it says, as for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed seed, saith the Lord from henceforth and forever. And so elsewhere within the Bible, There is continuity between God's preservation of his people and God's preservation of his word. Psalm 12, six and seven can teach both things. And I think many interpreters throughout the history of Christianity have affirmed and seen that connection, that Psalm 12, six and seven properly speaks both to the preservation of God's people and to the preservation of his word. And I think with respect to this plebiscite or survey that Mark Ward provides in this scholarly article, I think he misrepresents in the end, the evidence. I just went back through and just from Mark Ward's article and from the statements of Ariel Vaughn, which Mark Ward overlooked. And it's really sad that in this whole article, Mark Ward never makes a reference to R.L. Vaughn, who pointed out to him the contrary evidence. He never makes a reference to him. But here's my list. Michael Egwan, Martin Luther, Men of John Calvin's Day, Matthew Poole, John Wesley, I think it's W.H. Jarrell, Louis Gaussin, S.H. Cox, Joseph Parker, C.H. Spurgeon, H. Donner, Samuel Howard Ford, Ebenezer Ritchie, the translators of Coverdale, the translators of Matthew's Bible, the translators of the Taverner's Bible, the translators of the Great Bible, the translators of the Geneva Bible, the translators of the Bishop's Bible, the translators of the King James Version, Samuel Terrien, James Hamilton. So that's, I think, 23 names that I listed out here. So Athanasius hardly stands alone against the so-called world. Psalm 12, 6 and 7 can appropriately be understood as affirming the preservation of God's pure words, not a straw man, not the preservation of currently extant, perfect manuscript copies, but the providential preservation of his word kept pure in all ages, as it famously says in Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8. So there are some significant problems with Mark Ward's article. I hope that this little review that we have done has been helpful, will be encouraging for those who are listening. I'll look forward to speaking to you in the next episode of Word magazine. Until then, take care and may the Lord richly bless you.