Well, this is indeed a very important topic. It's one that many people just have their opinions and shut their minds to any other considerations, so I salute you for the interest in considering this very important subject. Last time I was here, as we dealt with the issue of canonicity, there were two basic questions that I posed. First of all, how do we know that the Bible is the word of God? And number two, how do we know we have the Bible? We know that the Bible is God's word because of faith. We believe that God has inspired his word even as we have just heard. the very word of God coming from the mind of God, coming from the mouth of God to the ears of man, to the mind of man, and inspiration, that's supernatural. And we understand that inspiration was a historic event. Those holy men of old were moved by the spirit of God and they wrote down what God communicated to them. Inspiration is a historic process, but it resulted in an inspired book, the Bible. And my argument is, and what we argued last time in regard to canonicity, that inspiration demands and guarantees canonicity. by the providence of God. Inspiration, a supernatural work. Canonicity, the recognition of those books was a providential work of God, but nonetheless the work of God. And then we come now today to consider the actual text. Inspiration, here's my same rubric, that inspiration, demands canonicity, demands preservation, both in terms of the books and in terms of the words that God has revealed. So in regard to conservative evangelicalism, not much disagreement, really no disagreement in terms of the issue of the canon. But when we come to the issue of the text and how to identify that text, there's going to be significant disagreement, even among conservative evangelicals. And it's not a matter of orthodoxy. We all are going to agree that God has preserved his word. The question and where the difference of opinion is going to be is where has he preserved his word? And I wanna talk a little bit tonight about some of those issues, both in terms of how something is translated and what is translated from. So two key issues as we consider translations. First of all, the text from which it is translated And number two, the philosophy of translation that is used in expressing those words that God has given to us. Now, much of what I say tonight, particularly in regard to the aspects of the text from which it's being translated, is gonna relate to the New Testament. The Old Testament text is of a different history, a different progression of copying and whatever that we have in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, we have what we call the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text is the traditional text, is the text that is established through a whole series of transmission history. but it's fairly well recognized even among liberals as the standard Hebrew text. So I'm not gonna be saying too much about the text of the Old Testament. We'll consider that certainly when we talk about the philosophy of translation, but the text is pretty much settled. The question for the New Testament is going to be a bit different, and we'll address that here in just a moment. But some general thoughts here, first of all. What is the purpose? What is the purpose of a translation? And very simply, the purpose of a translation is to communicate in one language the message that was given in another language. So here is God's word that he breathed out, that he breathed out, giving those precise words, those exact words to those holy men of God as they were moved. So when Moses began writing, God breathed out to Moses, bereshith bara Elohim, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now, did God inspire Moses to write, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth? No. Those aren't the words that God gave him. God gave him Hebrew words. Bereshith, in the beginning, Barah, created, Elohim, God, and so forth. Those are the words that... Now, a lot of us can't read those words. I try to teach students how to read those very words, and they struggle sometimes, and I can't understand that. You should learn Hebrew, right? You should learn Hebrew. That'll give you a head start in heaven because that's the language of heaven, you know, but that's a different story. I can't prove that, but I kind of think that's the case. How do we render those words? So on the one hand, I say, God did not inspire Moses to write, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. But yet, as I translate those words, as I can express those words now in English or whatever language, I'm still communicating what the words are. So the purpose, I say, of translation is to communicate into one language something that was given in another language. Language. The language is the vehicle of communication. And this is the beauty. I wish I had time to develop this in regard even to the very nature of language. Language exists on two levels, if you will. But we call, if I get too technical, I'm sorry, just wave your hand and say, come back, talk to me. But language exists on two levels. On the one hand, we talk about the surface structure of the language. The surface structure of the language is the combination of the words and the syntax, the way I put those words together. So as I'm speaking to you right now, I am speaking in a series of surface structures. I'm choosing certain words. I'm putting those words in a certain syntactical relationship, one with the other, and hopefully communicating an idea. And every language has its own unique surface structures. Surface structure of Hebrew is not the same thing as English, not the same thing as Greek, and so forth. But underlying that surface structure is what we refer to as the semantic structure. What is it that is being communicated? What is the meaning? And while the surface structure of languages are going to be different, what is being communicated, and here's the beauty of language as that which is God himself has created for us. There's nothing that can be said in one language that cannot be said with equal clarity in another language. The surface structure will be different. Maybe in Greek, I have to have three words. In English, I have to have seven words to say something, but I can say it. The surface structure is different, but the semantic structure is exactly the same. So in the translation process, it is the goal of translation to take that semantic structure, what is being communicated in those original words, and can we now express those in another language? that can be done. And I say there is the beauty. There's nothing. I love Hebrew. I love Greek. But there's nothing that can be said in Hebrew or Greek that can't be said in English. All right, different surface structures, different words, putting those words together differently, but we can communicate exactly the same idea. So I can take then God's word. I can hold up a Bible. I can take a King James Version right there and hold up and say, this is the word of God. All right, this is the word of God. because inspired and now translated, but yet in the accuracy in which it is translated, we can communicate that and declare that to be God's word. So we have confidence. It would be a sad thing, right? It'd be a sad thing if you had to know Hebrew or Greek to know God's word, but we know it in our own language and this is a beautiful thing. So the purpose of translation, we wanna keep that in mind, to communicate the same message that existed in the original. Now, there are problems then in the translation process. The translator, first of all, has to know the original language very well. He has to know the target language very well. He has to know the best way to express what is in the original language in the target language, how best to communicate that particular information. I can translate Hebrew stuff into English. I can translate Hebrew stuff, Greek stuff into English. I can translate some Greek stuff into Hebrew. I can do it because I know those languages, but there's no way I could translate the Hebrew into Dutch. I couldn't do that because I don't know Dutch, right? So you have to know both languages well, both the original language and the target language in order to communicate this information. And then that raises the question as to the philosophy of the translation. How are we going to best express those ideas? And there are four or five different methodologies. Let me just list them for you and then we'll try to put some of the specific versions, translations into the right categories. First of all, there's what we call a formal equivalency. A formal equivalency. A formal equivalency is sometimes referred to as a literal translation, where the attention is primarily going to be upon reproducing the surface structure. So if I have a noun in the original, I want a noun in the target language verb and try to keep the same order of words, very wooden, very literal. Have any of you ever used what we call an interlinear translation? Anybody have an interlinear? You've seen those? Yeah. If you read just the English part of that interlinear, my guess is it's not going to make a whole lot of sense to you, all right? It's not communicating very much in terms of what normal English syntax is. It's very helpful to know what that word is. It serves a purpose, but it's not a very effective way of translating, because the surface structure of languages are different. But we call that formal equivalency, where the attention is primarily upon the form rather than the meaning. Then secondly, we have what is referred to as dynamic equivalence. Dynamic equivalence is a methodology of translation that focuses more upon the message upon the semantic structure than it does the surface structure. A willingness to sacrifice the surface structure in order to maintain, to communicate what the principle message is of that text. dynamic equivalence. Then we have what I refer to as complete equivalence. Complete equivalence is the methodology that is going to pay attention to the surface structure, but also the semantic structure. And if anything has to be sacrificed, it's going to be the surface structure. I often tell students in this regard that here's our little rule of thumb. I want to translate something as literally as possible, but as freely as necessary, right? As literally as possible, but as freely as necessary. I don't want to abandon the surface structure. I don't want to abandon the figures of speech, let's say, that are going to occur in order to communicate the idea. But let's maintain as much of the surface structure as we can in order, but still communicating the message, complete equivalency. And we'll talk about some of the versions that would be characterized by complete equivalency as well. We sometimes talk about a periphrastic translation. That's not really an accurate designation, because paraphrase is something that you do within a language, not between languages. Now, we do have some Bibles out there. I'm thinking here of what the Living Bible, for instance, that is a paraphrase. It's a paraphrase of the King James Version. You paraphrase within a language, you don't paraphrase between languages. So I hesitate to talk about a paraphrastic translation, although that term is often used really equivalent to dynamic equivalent, that is a very free kind of translation. But we'll try to avoid that particular notion. And then you have what's referred to as an expanded kind of translation. If you've ever seen the Amplified Bible, for instance, the Amplified Bible that tries to incorporate into every single word, every possible meaning of that word, and it just, again, loses the message. So we want to avoid those, principally, we want to talk about the formal equivalency, we want to talk about the dynamic equivalence, and we want to talk about the complete equivalence. And those philosophies of translation are going to be employed whether we're in the Old or the New Testament, all right? Same basic philosophy. But ideally, ideally, I would argue for the of what we call the complete equivalent translation. And we'll look at that here in just a moment. So, well, let's talk about the King James here. Where would you put the King James, do you think? Formal? Dynamic? Complete? I would put it in the category of complete equivalency. There are times when the King James translators employed dynamic equivalence. I just, not too long ago, it was in the Book of Daniel, and in the Aramaic section of Daniel, in chapter three there, remember, after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to the image, the Jews came and they began to accuse the Jews before Nebuchadnezzar. And the text says literally they accused the Jews. But if you look at the literal Aramaic expression there, it literally says they ate the pieces of the Jews. They ate the pieces of the Jews. The sense of that is the accused. So what the King James translators have done there is an example of dynamic equivalence, where they get the idea but have eliminated the particular figure of speech, make sure that we communicate the idea. I think of Psalm 49, for instance. King James says, as it gives the invitation to wisdom there or to people to hear the wisdom, it speaks to both the low and the high together. Both the low and the high together. The word low literally is the sons of man. The word high literally is the sons of man. but a different word for man, right? A different word for man. The low is b'nei abam, sons of mankind. It's a term that expresses man's humility. The other is b'nei ish, which expresses man's nobility. Translated the same way, but if they would have translated that literally, son of man, son of man, it wouldn't communicate the information. So that's dynamic equivalence. Overall, there are going to be instances, I say, within the King James where complete equivalency really becomes the standard to be used. Now, we have a lot of modern translations. Let me just highlight something before I even get to those. I gave some handouts out there. You have this, one on the history of the Bible. All right, one on the history of the Bible. And you can see that in the providence of God, how the word of God was brought into the English language. And this was a great blessing that could not be overestimated, and I'm not gonna go through all of these, but you can see beginning just with the Psalminia, the Wycliffe, and most importantly, the Tyndale Bible, all the way ultimately to the King James Bible, and all of these, many of them based upon Tyndale's work. I can't emphasize enough how important Tyndale's work was in regard to the King James Version. You can see all that they depended upon in writing. But I say, if I would have continued that line, and I'm not going to talk about this just for your information, but if I would have continued this line into the 20th century and the 21st century, you wouldn't have had enough paper, right? List all of those versions. We live in a day where there is a plethora of versions. We have, I think, far too many, and many that are doing much the same thing. So how do we evaluate all these translations? What text do they use? I'm gonna talk about that here in a moment. That's gonna be our main discussion tonight, I think. What text, but also what is their philosophy? And there are many of these, the ESV, which as I go around, the ESV is, it is becoming the go-to Bible in so many conservative evangelical churches. I would say it's a complete equivalency. The same basic translation philosophy that we have with the King James Version. The difference there is going to be the text, and we'll talk about that in a moment, you see. But the same translation philosophy. So I'm not going to go through all of the possible versions, but let me just give you one thing that I would suggest that you do. As you look at different versions, every time I get a new version that comes across my desk, the very first thing I look at is Romans chapter 9, verse 5. That's the very first thing that I look at. Let me get a Bible here. You know the context here. And I go here because this verse is going to reveal to me the theological bias, the theological foundation from which that version is going to be made in other areas of the text as well. There's no textual problem, there's no variance in the reading, but how this verse is translated in terms of the punctuation is going to tell me everything that I want to know about whether I use that version, consider that version, or put that version on the bottom part of my bookshelf. Here's what it says. Here's what it says. Speaks in verse four, who are the Israelites? To whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises? Whose are the fathers? and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever." This becomes an outstanding statement concerning the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. You're going to see some versions that translate it this way. Whose are the fathers? Of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, Period. They put a full stop there. They say, God, who is over all, be blessed forever. And they take that as a doxology that is independent of Christ. But if you look at the Greek text, even a first-year Greek student is going to understand the syntax here enough to realize that this is a statement that is modifying Christ. Christ, who is over all God, blessed forever. In fact, I would change the punctuation even from the authorized version here a bit and put the, put the full stop after God, who was over all God, that one who was blessed forever. That tells me, all right, there's a theological statement there that is going to tell me what the philosophy, the theological bent is of that particular translation. So immediately, I'm gonna reject something like the New English Bible. I'm gonna reject something like the Jerusalem Bible. denying the deity of Christ was going to make everything else under suspicion. But many of these that are adopted by evangelical conservatives, They recognize that as a statement of the deity of Christ. But let that just be your key thing. Romans 9, that will tell you a great deal about the whole perspective of what the translators are going to be doing theologically. And it is possible, right? It is possible for your theological bias. to come out in various translations. So the philosophy of the translations. Many of these modern versions, even the NIV, while it's often accused of being dynamic equivalent, when linguists have looked at it, they'll put it in the sense of complete equivalency. So the philosophy translated is very, very important. And I say I like what the King James is doing in that regard, New King James following the same Basic procedure, ESV, same basic procedure. The question then comes, if I have these versions that are expressing the same translation philosophy, employing the same translation philosophy, what about the text? And this is where the controversy comes. All right, this is where the controversy comes. How do we identify the proper text from which the translation is made? Now, I'll say some things, but I want to take the other sheet, first of all, and just make sure we understand some terms. All right? I find that many people that talk in this area, how can I say this politely? Yeah. They don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. They just don't know what they're talking about. And terms are used incorrectly. and misunderstandings therefore are made. Textual criticism, now even the fact that we call it textual criticism or lower criticism, that sounds very pejorative. Criticism, all that means is we're analyzing, all right? That's not a bad word. It's not a bad word. We're simply analyzing what the text is saying. It becomes a means, it's a discipline, all right? It's a discipline. textual criticism, whereby we examine the texts that are available to us, all of the evidence that's available to us, with a view to identify what the original words are. Now, if I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, if I believe that God has breathed out every single absolute word, and I believe that that word has been preserved, I want to know where those words are. I want to identify what those words are. And textual criticism becomes the means, becomes the discipline of looking at all of the evidence, looking at all of the evidence. We'll look at what the evidence is here in just a moment. But looking at all the evidence with the objective of identifying what that text is. And it's a welcome discipline, I say, to those of us who affirm the verbal inspiration of scripture. With that in mind, just some key terms I'll define and then we'll put some of this together. Some of these I'm sure that you know. We talk about the autographer. The autographer are the actual documents that the inspired author wrote or one of his secretaries in the case of Paul sometimes, in the case of Jeremiah using Baruch sometimes. But the original document, the autograph, That refers to the actual parchment or papyrus or whatever it was that the inspired author was writing on as he recorded every word that God gave to him. Now, we don't have those, all right? We don't have the autographer. In the providence of God, in the providence of God, no longer exist. We know from, what's his name, Tertullian, one of the early fathers, about 200 or so. He said in his writings that the original documents of Paul, for instance, were still in the churches to which he sent them. So as late as 200, there's evidence that the autographer were still in existence. In the providence of God, I say they've been long gone. And given man's nature and given the fact that Rome had such a hand on some of this stuff, ultimately, they probably would have been venerated and worshiped himself just as objects. So they don't exist. They don't exist. But copies, copies of them do exist. And we have multiple. We have multiple copies. Now, these copies were made in one of two ways. Either one individual would have a document in front of him and he would copy what he saw. Look at that, write it down. Look at that, write it down. Look at that, write it down. One on one. So sometimes that was the way it was done. Not very efficient in that you only got one copy from one copy. Other times there would be a lecturer, there would be a room full of scribes, and someone then would read that text, and then you would have all of those in the scriptorium, copying down what they heard. And the advantage of that was that you have multiple manuscripts, multiple copies that were coming from the one copy. And that was certainly a great advantage. But you can imagine what happens. All right, you can imagine what happens, that whereas inspiration was a supernatural event in protecting and guarding those writers, the copying process was simply a human exercise, simply a human exercise. And the fact that humans are involved simply means that there are going to be mistakes that are made, not intentionally, Not intentionally. Sometimes there were intentional things that were done, but many times, just unintentional mistakes. Let's just imagine, we're not gonna do this, but let's just imagine that I took out my Bible here and gave you all a piece of paper. And I'm gonna get an affirmation, first of all, how many of you are believers? How many of you love the Lord? How many of you love the Bible? And you all are gonna affirm that you love the Lord, you love the Bible, what have you. And I'm going to say, we need some copies of First Chronicles. We need some copies of First Chronicles. So the best way to do that, I'm gonna read First Chronicles to you, and I want you to copy what I write, what I say. become those genealogies where we get so-and-so begetting so-and-so and so-and-so begetting so-and-so. We can't even pronounce the names right. And here they go. But I'm going to pronounce those with my impeccable diction, right? And you're going to write down. Now, I wonder, I wonder, after all that was said and done, we collected the papers. I wonder, I wonder how many would be the same. How many of you spell those words correctly every time? Most likely, most likely there's gonna be some mistakes there, right? That happened, that happened. And when those mistakes, when those errors happened, we refer to them now as being corrupt readings. That's the next little point there. corrupt, to alter from the original or correct form of the text. In this sphere of usage, it does not have a moral or pejorative connotation. It simply refers to a reading at variance with the original. And I hear people say all the time, well, that manuscript is corrupt. It's corrupt. something morally wrong with it. We're gonna be careful here. All right, this is technical language, and I'm just trying to indicate to you what the technical understanding of these terms are. A corrupt reading. I don't even wanna talk about a corrupt manuscript. We're gonna talk about corrupt readings. The manuscript, let's skip down here for a moment. Yeah, right in the middle of the page. A manuscript. The actual document of the copied text. It could be complete or incomplete on papyrus or parchment, written in unsealed capitals or minuscule small letters, et cetera. But the manuscript refers to the actual literal physical document, right? When we talk about the readings, look at down the third from the end, the variant reading. The particular part of the text, word, phrase, paragraph, etc., that differs between manuscripts. The variants are either intentional or unintentional. Again, any reading at variance with the original is said to be corrupt. It's different. So the word corrupt there is different from what the original would be. But we're talking about readings. I'm not talking about the manuscript. I'm talking about the readings, the individual word, how it's spelled, the syntax, how those words are put together. I'm talking about the word that may be left out or something. Those are the readings, the readings that are part of the manuscript. And that's where our primary concern is going to be. So when I say corrupt, I'm not saying that, oh, you're bad in a moral sense. I'm just saying there's a mistake there that is at variance with what the original would have been. Addition. a printed or a published form of the text, applicable both to original languages and versions. So an edition is simply a published or a written text. A version is a translation of the text. So this is the King James Version. It's a King James Version. It's a translation of the text. But this particular version is an edition that was printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society, all right? So that's the edition. Oxford has their editions. Cambridge has their editions. Broadman and Holman have their editions. Crossway has an edition of the Bible, of versions. So that's what we mean by a version. A version is the translation of the text. The edition is a actual printed or published copy of that text. Majority text. The largest number of witnesses that agree on any given reading. It would be possible for a given manuscript to be sometimes in the majority and sometimes in the minority. How can that be? It can be because I'm not talking about the manuscript itself, I'm talking about the reading, right? I'm talking about the reading, that word, that phrase, that expression, whatever, that is going to be at variance with other manuscripts. When I speak of the majority text, I'm simply talking about where we have the majority of the witnesses, the majority of the witnesses that are going to agree. And I say a given manuscript in this particular instance may be in the majority. In that instance, it may be in the minority. It depends. But that's a very important statement. Now let me just skip down to the very bottom of this. I said the largest number of witnesses. What are the witnesses? What are the witnesses? When we come to the New Testament particularly, we have these three different witnesses to the status, of the original text, the manuscripts. And this is amazing when you think of all the other literature of the Roman world, of the ancient Near Eastern world. When we think of the number of manuscripts that we have of the New Testament scriptures in the providence of God, in the providence of God, absolutely phenomenal. There are almost 6,000, almost 6,000 separate manuscripts. They're not all complete. Some of them are complete New Testament. Some even have this Septuagint, the old Greek. The Greek version in it, they're not all complete. Some are just fragments of this part of a book or this section of a book. But together, I say we have almost 6,000, almost 6,000 manuscript evidences of the Word of God. That's exciting. It's amazing in the providence of God how that has been preserved. How that's been preserved. So we want to look at that manuscript evidence. We want to compare those manuscripts. We want to collate those manuscripts and see where those variant readings occur. Then we have the ancient versions. The ancient versions. What were the ancient? This will give us the traditional understanding. And this is going to be more important. This particularly is more important in the Old Testament. The Septuagint version, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is going to give us some important information. The versional evidences, the Vulgate and things like that, we want to factor in as part of the evidence, the traditional understanding of the text, and the patristic evidence. The early fathers, the early fathers who quoted, they would quote various portions of the New Testament. And as we look at the way they translate it, the way they quoted those portions of the New Testament, it will agree with or disagree with perhaps some of those variants that we have observed. So these are the witnesses. These are the witnesses. Now, how do we, How do we handle, this is where we are gonna end up with a significant difference of opinion, even among conservative evangelicals, as to how we interpret and how we evaluate those manuscripts. for years, all right, for years, and Brother Elsop mentioned this in his opening, for years and years and years, this was no controversy, all right? We had what we refer to as the received text in the Christian world, and virtually until the 20th century, 19th century, some of this starts to come into play certainly as well, 19th century. All of a sudden, these manuscripts are being discovered. Manuscripts are being discovered. And what are you going to do with those? It ought to generate an excitement, should it not? Here are these manuscripts, and they're dated. Some of these manuscripts date to very early, 3rd century, 4th century. AD? That's exciting. So you look at those. You look at those. And as you look at those and you examine those, guess what happens? You start seeing variants. You start seeing variants. Oh, what to do? What to do? And so various theories began to be developed as to how to evaluate those particular manuscripts and those variants. In the 19th century, when this first started to really come into play, there were various scholars and Lockman and Tregellus and all of involved there in one way or another, but it became popular with the names of Westcott and Hort. You've heard of Westcott and Hort perhaps? These were Anglicans, New Testament scholars, and they popularized, I don't want to say they completely developed it, but they popularized a particular way of examining and classifying these manuscripts. They're referred to as the genealogical method. And in this genealogical method, they would group these manuscripts according to their various readings. They would have certain characteristics that they shared. And so they started to put these in this pile, let's put these in this pile, let's put these in this pile. Their idea was that if they said something the same, then they came from the same place. Their basic rule was community of reading suggests community of origin. Community of reading, so the commonality of the reading, suggests the commonality of the source. It's kind of like the old teacher joke. You know this one? Teacher, give him a test. Give him a test. And he sees one student that he's pretty sure is cheating, copying from his neighbor. And of course, we bring the students in and we question them. We said, this appears that you cheated. He says, no. And of course, all the students always say, no, no, I didn't. No cheating. But the professor then looks down each answer. He said this, you said this. He said this, he said that, right on down the line. At this place, he said, I don't know. And you said, I don't know either, right? Yeah, that's a funny teacher joke. Maybe not being a teacher is not funny, but that's funny to me. But the idea was, because it said the same thing, it must have come from the same place. And that's the idea of the genealogical method. If it says something similar, it must come from the same place. And so they developed what they call families of manuscripts. Families of manuscripts. They talked about the Alexandrian manuscripts and the Western manuscripts and the Caesarean manuscripts and the Byzantine manuscripts. They had these basically four families of manuscripts. And the largest amount were in what they identified as the Byzantine. And these were dated manuscripts that were dated later. Some of those Alexandrian were very early, very early. And so the mentality was, well, we want the earliest, we want the earliest reading, we want the earliest reading to, reflect the original more likely than these that were copied much, much, much later. Doesn't that make sense, to have something that much closer to the original? And so the preference was made upon these Alexandrian family of manuscript because of the date. And here's where they make a terrible, a terrible logical mistake. The manuscript, the manuscript dated, Early, no question, but we're not talking about the date of the manuscript, we're talking about the date of the reading, right? There must be that distinction made between the reading and the date of the manuscript. Yeah, but they assume because it's an early manuscript and how many times even then, Would you look at some of these other English versions? Most of the modern English versions, ESV, New American Standard, and NIV are going to follow this particular idea about the manuscripts. It's the oldest manuscript. You can see the margins of the oldest manuscript says this. Frankly, I don't care how old the manuscript is. The age of the manuscript is not the issue. It is the reading. This is why we want to factor in the patristic evidence that's earlier yet and see how that factors in. Some of the version of evidence even earlier. I want to look at the totality. So the majority of manuscripts The majority of manuscripts, as far as the count of, would fall in that Byzantine family that they say is just a later redaction, a later manufacturing, changing of the text to make it standardized. And so even though the majority of the manuscripts are Byzantine, yeah, they're rejected. They're rejected. So if, In Westcott and Hort's idea, if one manuscript said A, and there were 14 manuscripts that said B, well, we're going to go with A, even though it's only one against 14 or whatever it was there, because it's older, you see, an older date. I don't care. I don't care how old the manuscript is. Our concern must be upon the reading of that, not the date of the manuscript. So that's one theory. And I must say, I must say that that is the most widely accepted theory in even conservative evangelicalism today. Yes? The reading is what is being said. All right, so let's say I have, let's say I have a manuscript that dates to, 300 AD, all right? And it says, I'm just going to make up something here, all right? It says, he saw the bird, all right? And I've got all these other manuscripts over here that say, he did not see the bird, okay? Now, that manuscript is early, all of these are very late, all right? But that reading, that statement, because I just read in, in polycarp that he did not see the bird, right? And polycarp dates way back turn of the century AD, right? So the reading is older, right? The reading can be older than the manuscript, right? But their idea is that they discovered this manuscript and it's old and it says this and so now they wanna change discovery is not preservation, right? Discovery is not the same thing as preservation. And I wanna see, I'll be arguing here for the... How long do I have to argue? Yeah, let me finish a couple thoughts here. I have a first hour class tomorrow, so I gotta get home. I forgot what I was gonna say. What was I saying? Yeah, so I don't care that it's early. Preservation requires a continuity, right? A continuity through time. That's preservation, not discovery, right? So for whatever reason, and I say I have colleagues right across this whole country that I respect and love the Lord. They love the Lord, and they're orthodox, and they preach the gospel, but they hold a different view of the text than I have. I'm not ready to condemn them because they don't agree with me on the issues of textual criticism. Now, I hold to what's referred to as the majority text, right? Where we look at the majority of the evidence, and there are some that are close to what I wanna say, but they say, no, You want the Alexandrian, just a few manuscripts, we hold the Byzantine manuscripts. Because most of the manuscripts are in the Byzantine family according to their observation. Can I say this before I forget it? I'll get you right now. I reject. I reject the whole notion of Byzantine manuscripts. I don't accept the idea of families of manuscripts completely. If I argue that, well, you like the Alexandrian, I like the Byzantine, then we're giving them their premise, that there are families of manuscripts, you see. And I don't like that notion. I don't believe in families of manuscripts. That's why I say I want all the manuscripts put in the same pot. All the manuscripts put in the same pot. Every manuscript is going to speak for itself. That's why I said there are going to be some manuscripts that in a given reading are in the majority. Other times it may be in the minority. That's true for every manuscript, all right? But let's look at the totality of the witnesses. And I don't, so, you know, we have those that would hold to, you know, similar to my view, that we say, well, Alexandria manuscript, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, ah, they were Catholic. Or, you know, they were, Do you realize that in most instances, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus are part of the majority text? See? I don't want to throw them out, but we want to examine them in terms of the whole, yeah. Nothing? Okay. So that's my particular idea. I want to look at all of the witnesses and see what they, are saying and every manuscript, every reading is to be judged on its individual basis, right? So I don't like the whole genealogical method. I think we fall into their hands and accept their premise. I don't accept the premise of families of manuscript. Every manuscript is gonna stand on its own and evaluated in terms of its, now, Do some of them have intentional changes? Yeah. But I can find those out when I look at the majority of the evidence, you see. It's going to show itself easy enough. Now, let me put this in the context. I'll finish this up real quick. I'm sorry. I teach this course in a year, right? So, yeah. Received text, text of receptives. In 1516. Erasmus published the first edition of the Greek New Testament. Now here's the publication or the invention of the printing press. This was amazing. All right, this was no more now are we gonna have to rely upon hand copying with errors of the eye or errors of the ear that are taking place. Yeah, here's this printed edition. And there was a big race to get this on the, the market. So Erasmus published the first edition of the Greek Testament with just a few late manuscripts to Kole. Now in the providence of God, these manuscripts that came into Western Europe, this is in the Reformation time, right? These manuscripts that were coming into the Western world from the Eastern world because of Islamic persecution Most of the Greek manuscripts now are coming. I don't have a problem talking about Byzantine-located manuscripts, right? That's where they were found in the Byzantine Empire. That's where the Greek continued on in the Western Church. Latin surplaced, surplaced, that's not a word, replaced Greek, and so you don't have that many Greek manuscripts coming from the West. after Latin was accepted and adopted as the principal church language. But in the province of God, when the Islamic persecutions began, some of these manuscripts in the East were now shipped to the West, and this is what was feeding and now firing the Reformation. It's what Erasmus had. So these manuscripts, a few late, but they fall in that category that really testifies to the majority text. Later editions were based on similar manuscripts. Erasmus, I think, had two principal manuscripts that he used primarily. A total of six, I think, all total he had available to him. Here's this printed edition. The translators of the King James used Erasmus' text, the Complotensian Polygot published in 1520, Stephanus' text, Biza's text, and then in 1598 edition of Biza and the last two editions of Stephanus were the chief sources for the King James translators. The Elzever brothers of the Neverlands published several editions of the Greek New Testament, essentially the same as that of Erasmus, Bees, and Stephanus. In the Latin introduction to the 1633 edition, Elzever stated that this text was the text received by all. The expression Texas Receptus was then anachronistically applied to all of these earlier editions even. The text received by all. I was telling Bill before we came in, that's kind of like, you know, somebody writing a book and it says, New York bestseller, right? This was a way of really selling the book. But that hasn't been accepted, right? Here's the received text. And it became the ecclesiastical text. that has been used by God and blessed by God over these many centuries. And it is the only, the King James and New King James are the only modern versions that I'm aware of, at least well known, that are based upon this text tradition, right? That are based upon this text tradition. So when it comes then, When it comes to evaluating the manuscripts or the versions, two things I'm concerned about, translation philosophy and then the text, tradition from which it was translated. And from that standpoint of available English stuff, King James stands at the very height. Now, I know And I hold a majority text, and here's where I may get in trouble here, that in places disagrees with the received text. Not many places, not many places at all. But I hold, I say, to the majority text idea. Now, I know that there's a growing trend, and I'm well aware of it, of concern about the King James Version, outdated, outdated, there's language there that we can't understand. I can appreciate that. But at the same time, in everything, there's a specialized vocabulary that you will become familiar with once you start reading it, right? Take baseball. There's a jargon, right, that if you don't know baseball, makes no sense to you. He drew a walk. What does that mean, right? He caught a fly. The pitcher is booed for throwing balls. when that's his job to throw balls, right? But if I know the game, I understand the jargon, right? I understand the jargon. And I think it's the same way when we come to the Bible, there's a, I don't care whether we have a modern version or an older version, like, there's gonna be jargon that we have to learn, right? But it takes time, I realize that. But for pragmatic purposes, I see no reason for replacing the King James in the place of public worship for certain. There's nothing quite like it in terms of majesty of language, style, nothing quite like it. Let's not infuse it with wrong interpretations. They got that these and the thous, right? Got all those these and the thous. We don't talk these and thous anymore. We don't use these and thous anymore, right? It's not the way we do. It's a very helpful thing exegetically at times because the these and the thous are singular pronouns. Boy, I hate to talk about pronouns even today, don't you? You have the singular idea, the plural idea, which is very helpful exegetically. In the King James era, in the Greek era, In the Hebrew era language, those were not terms for reverence, right? They were not terms for reverence. They were terms simply that indicated the number of the pronoun. And I think sometimes those that like the King James will infuse it with a bit of, yeah, not quite accurate statements concerning even the these and the thous. I'm not opposed to them, but let's not infuse them with the meaning that they don't really have in the original. That didn't matter. But I see the language of it, the beauty of it, in public worship certainly I see no reason why it should be replaced.