A mighty fortress is our God, the whole world never failing. They get rid of their organs, they get rid of their choirs. So you have a tiny little Reform Baptist movement in this country of about two dozen dead musicless churches. Because if you have any wavering in your confidence about the integrity of your translation of the Bible, it will suck the conviction right out of your heart. And that leads to some very interesting, heretical, and very important conclusions. on doctrine, on culture, on practice in the church. This is Jeff Riddle. I'm the pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is Saturday, August the 23rd, 2014. It's been a rainy day here in Central Virginia and I thought I would sit down and record another episode of Word Magazine. Looking forward tomorrow morning to heading down to Roanoke, Virginia, where I'm going to be preaching at the Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Boone's Mill just outside of Roanoke. We're doing a pulpit exchange with them and one of their members who is a preacher, Earl Byrd, is going to be coming up and preaching in Charlottesville. And I'm going to be going down and preaching in the morning and then doing a Sunday school lesson in the afternoon. They have a schedule that's similar to ours where they worship in the morning and then have lunch and then have, in our case, we usually have a second service, but sometimes we have a Sunday school or a Bible study class. So I'm looking forward to going down there and having fellowship with those brethren. I did a Word magazine last week on reviewing a book by Rodney Stark. And I said then that I wanted to get back in the groove of trying to do a weekly Word magazine, so I'm going to try to do one today. I've been wanting to do another one on the topic of text criticism. It's an area of interest of mine. And many months back, a friend had emailed me and sent me a link to a YouTube video that was an excerpt from a wretched radio broadcast. hosted by Todd Friel. And I looked at the Wretched website and it looks like this is a ministry that used to be associated with Ray Comfort and his evangelism ministry. Now it seems to be something that's on its own. I noticed also that Todd Friel, the host, who talks with a real exaggerated voice, was at the Q&A session for one of John MacArthur's Shepherd Conferences. He was sort of hosting the Q&A. Anyway, this friend had sent this because the topic of this, it's episode 1326, which can be found on YouTube. I'll have a link to it when I post this on my blog, but it's titled, Dr. James White, Which Bible Translation is the Most Reliable? and looks like this is from a longer presentation that James White did on text criticism and they have a little excerpt here that's about eight minutes or it's actually eight minutes and 46 seconds long and so I thought I would play some of it and give some responses because it touches on some kind of typical things that are often criticized about the traditional text. One of the general things I would say about this that Todd Friel in particular, the host, confuses the issue of KJV-only-ism with holding to the traditional text of Scripture. Those are two completely different issues. If you hold to the traditional text of Scripture, meaning that you believe that translation should be made from the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible for the Old Testament and the traditional text or the Textus Receptus of the Greek New Testament for the translation of the New Testament into English or French or Spanish or Hungarian or whatever language, that's a completely different position than being a KJV-onlyist. A KJV-onlyist doesn't concern himself with the original languages. He believes, or she believes, that the English translation, the 1611 English translation of the King James Version is especially inspired. Somehow, again, Mr. Friel sort of confuses that, which I would say is a definite wrong-headed view. It's even a heretical view, KJV-onlyism. He confuses that with those who believe that the underlying text the original language Hebrew and Greek texts from which the King James Version and other even English language translations like the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible, and then other translations in the vernacular languages that were made following the Reformation period, that we would defend those texts, not any particular translation that comes from those texts. But anyways, let me play some of Mr. Friel, and he does a little introduction, and then he goes to some Q&A with James White. So let's just listen to some of what he has to say. This is an issue? Wow! Can we Christians ever go to the mats on this one? What exactly is the controversy? Well, give or take about 500 years, predominantly, the Protestant Church has loved the beloved, and rightly so, King James Version of the Bible. Alright, well, actually, just one thing here. It's been 400 years. I mean, 1611, the King James Version was translated 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of that, and he talks about how Protestants have revered the King James Version. That's true among English speakers. Of course, non-English speakers haven't grown up reading the King James Version, although in most languages they have a choice between the historic Protestant translations that were made from the traditional text, like the King James Version was made from the traditional text, and modern translations that are made from the modern critical text. So that's, again, an important point to make. I mean, you could have a fruitful conversation about translations and about KJV-onlyism, but this presentation is going to kind of mix the issues of KJV-onlyism and defense of traditional text. And again, they're two separate issues. I did a tract, and I'll include a link to this again when I post this on my blog, to a little article that I did where I discussed the issues of English Bible translations, and in that I said there are two primary issues when it comes to choosing a translation. One is, what is the underlying text from which the translation is made? And there are basically two choices. Either you're going to use the traditional text, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, the Textus Receptus of the New Testament, or you're going to use the modern critical text, which has been developed in the last hundred years. And the state-of-the-art for the New Testament, they just revised it, is the Nestle-Leland 28th edition of the Greek New Testament. So, what are you going to make your translation from? And then the second issue is called translation philosophy. Are you going to try to translate word for word, which is called formal correspondence, or are you going to try to translate thought for thought? That's called dynamic equivalence. And then, of course, there are some translations that are sort of a mixture of the two methods. Sometimes they use a formal correspondence and sometimes they use dynamic equivalence, the NIV. is a good example of a kind of a hybrid attempt to use both translation methods. So text and translation philosophy are going to dictate what a translation is like. Those are very important foundational questions. And again, that's a question that's sort of aside from KJV-only-ism, but let's listen as he's going to continue. Well, again, this is another point that I think I would dispute. It's one that's often put forward and it basically is that the reason that the King James Version was overthrown was because of new manuscript discoveries. And there are a couple things again that are disjointed about this. It's not that the King James Version was overthrown, but it was the underlying text from which the King James Version and other translations from the Protestant era were made. That text, that traditional text, was overthrown in the 19th century. It really came to culmination in 1881 with the production of the Greek New Testament from Westcott and Hort, and then there was a corresponding English translation, a revised version that came from that. But anyways, the attack was not on the King James Version per se, but the attack was on the underlying text. from which the King James Version translation and other Protestant translations were made. And again, he's saying that this had to be done because of new manuscript discoveries, but in fact, the Protestant reformers knew essentially about all the major textual issues in the Bible during their own time. If you go back and you read Calvin's commentaries or you read Matthew Henry or Matthew Poole, Puritan expositors, you'll find that they were aware of things like the ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9 through 20, the pericope adultery, the woman caught in adultery, John 7, 53 through 8, 11, new manuscript discoveries have not changed really anything, and the challenges to the traditional text came really before a lot of major manuscript discoveries were made. Now, granted, there have been discoveries of manuscripts that are continuing to be made, and yes, in the 19th century Tischendorf found and published Sinaiticus, There were papyri discoveries, but actually the papyri discoveries were pretty much more in the early 20th century. So they come after the Texas Receptus was challenged in the 19th century by Enlightenment-influenced scholars. And then many of the Byzantine, or many of the papyri finds support the traditional text. Some support the text that is more similar to Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus that underlie and undergird the modern critical text. So, again, one of the, I think, myths we could call it is that the traditional text was overthrown because of so-called manuscript discoveries. But let's go on and listen to more of what Todd Friel has to say. Alright, well, again, this is another confused point. What he's saying is that he doesn't give a date, but he says in the modern period, we have these new manuscript discoveries. And therefore, at that time, we came up with an eclectic text. Eclectic simply means to choose. I mean, so if you have an eclectic homeschool curriculum, you choose some material from one curriculum provider and some material from another curriculum provider and you create your own curricula, curriculum. And so, yes, the modern critical text is an eclectic text. Manuscripts, various readings from different manuscripts are chosen and they are gathered together. But the Textus Receptus is also an eclectic text. It was just created by scholars, both humanist scholars like Erasmus, and then later his work was taken up by Protestant ministers and printers like Stephanus, like the Elsevier brothers, like Beza, And so the traditional text, the Textus Receptus, that underlies, again, the Protestant vernacular translations, traditional translations like the King James Version and others in other languages, it also is an eclectic text. Another thing that's kind of confusing is he mentions 5,000 manuscripts. Yes, there are 5,000 manuscripts, but a lot of those are just fragments. a verse or two. Very few of those are entire books and even fewer entire collections of the New Testament. So, anyway, what he puts forward is a little lopsided, a little confused and disjointed for someone to be able to follow. But let's listen to... he's going to talk about modern translations and he's going to mention ones like the NASB, well that didn't come about until the 1970s. The key first English translation to try to overthrow the KJV was the revised version in 1881. It really didn't catch on, but there was then from that the American standard version of 1901, then the revised standard version of the 19, I think it was completed in 1952, And then from that then came the new Revised Standard Version, which is used in most mainline Protestant churches. That was done, I think, in the 19, maybe 1989. And then the English Standard Version, which is very popular among some evangelicals, Calvinistic evangelicals. It also traces its roots directly back through the RSV to the Revised Version of 1881. But let me let Mr. Friel continue. Alright, one more time, we have to distinguish between KJV-only-ism which I do not affirm, and an affirmation of the traditional text, which I do support. Those are two completely different issues. You can support the traditional texts of scripture and not be a KJV only-ist. It's just a basic courtesy I think, to try to understand the position of people that you're trying to critique. And Mr. Friel doesn't really seem to understand that. But in just a moment, he'll switch over and ask James White some questions, and I'll respond to some things that James White has to say. we do with this controversy? Well, we turn to the eminent Dr. James White, who is right here in this here studio, to do a presentation on New Testament reliability. I thought he was very, I asked him, he was thoughtful, he was polite, he wasn't trying to be snarky, so for your consideration, the new King James Version, or the old King James Version, controversy with Dr. James White. James White is a Reformed Baptist apologist, has the Alpha and Omega ministry out in Arizona, and I appreciate a lot of his ministry. I listen to the Dividing Line podcast pretty regularly, and I think he does some great apologetics and ministry with Muslims and Roman Catholics. However, I'm not in agreement with his position on the text of Scripture. But anyways, he's going to be asked to address some of these issues and I'll give, again, some responses to what he has to say. Which perhaps brings us to a controversy of the day. Which one of the manuscript or manuscripts is the line that is most accurate? It is the King James Version only controversy. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things I didn't have time to get into is the fact that when we started producing printed Greek New Testaments, the first printed and published Greek New Testament was by a man named Dept. Darius Erasmus. Erasmus was a Dutch humanist scholar. He rushed his first edition to print because his printer, John Froben, knew that Cardinal Jimenez had already done a multi-volume called the Complotensian Polyglot. But back then, you had to get papal approval before you printed anything. And you didn't have fax machines. and there was all sorts of red tape to go through. They were sitting in a warehouse. And so Erasmus' printer is an entrepreneur, shall we say. And so he's pushing him to get this thing done, to get it out. As a result, as Erasmus himself said, his first edition was precipitated rather than edited. It had a number of errors in it. He went into the hook of Revelation. Now let me just pause here before he takes up the ending of Revelation. And so let me deal with the first point here, that James White makes. He's asked about the text from which the the King James Version and again we could say also all the traditional Protestant translations of the Reformation era were made in whatever language, French, Spanish, Hungarian, whatever. And he undermines, he wants to undermine here the work of Erasmus. Now Erasmus, as he mentioned, was a Dutch humanist scholar, and he published the first printed Greek New Testament in 1516. It came out over the course of the next several years in several editions, and then it was picked up and it was used by a number of Protestant ministers and printers and scholars, and it became, again, the basis for the Protestant translations of the Scriptures. Now, the thing that he charges Erasmus with, and this is something that you hear all the time, is that Erasmus rushed the 1516 edition of his Greek New Testament into print, and because he had to rush, it was filled with errors. And the reason he rushed, and he and his printer rushed it to press was because they wanted to get it on the market before a printed Greek text could be put out that was being worked on by a group of Catholic scholars led by a man named Cardinal Jimenez and it's called the Complutensian Polyglot. So again, I have heard this and heard this argument I've read it. It appears in Bruce Metzger's classic textbook called The Text of the New Testament. It has the subtitle, It's Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. And I have the second edition of it. There's a new edition that he co-edited with Bart Ehrman. but I've got the old edition. And this is the one that I think many pastors, even scholars, academics in New Testament, this is probably the work that has been most influential in their understanding of text criticism. And Metzger has this same anecdote that Erasmus rushed to print. And the question is this. Did that really happen? Is that really the case? And like I said, I'd heard this, I'd read this, and I generally had accepted it too, until a couple years ago I was doing some research on Erasmus and his Greek New Testament, 1516, and I ran across a book. The book is one that was edited by Anne Reeve that's R-E-E-V-E, and it's titled Erasmus's Annotations on the New Testament, The Gospels. It was printed by Duckworth in London in 1986. This is a scholarly work on the annotations of Erasmus. In addition to his Latin Bible and Greek Bible that were printed in 1516, he also printed a series of annotations or notes on the text of the New Testament. And anyway, this book is about those annotations in the Gospels. And the foreword to the book is written by a fellow named M.A. Screech. That's S-C-R-E-E-C-H. He is an Erasmian scholar who teaches at Oxford University. So this is not a KJV only-ist. This is a credentialed scholar of humanism and of Erasmus, very well respected. And I read the introduction and I was really bowled over by Screech's response to the charge that Erasmus rushed his Greek New Testament into print and that because he had to rush it was filled with errors. And I started writing an academic article on this a couple years ago and it's still a work in progress. I haven't completed it, but I went back and I noted in my article that Screech makes five responses to the Erasmus rushed to print argument that James White perpetuates in this little video clip with the end result that it undermines the validity of the traditional text. And here are Screech's responses. He says, first of all, he says that Erasmus does make a reference to his project going to the printer quickly, but he doesn't say that he rushed in his preparation process of it. but simply that they rushed in the printing process. Screech says, this is a quote from him, quote, since the printing of the work as a whole did not begin until 2nd October 1515, it was set up and printed with some considerable speed. Dashed out, and he uses the Latin word praecipitatus, is the term Erasmus used. And people like James White and others have quoted this phrase, praecipitatum verius quam editum, that it was precipitated rather than edited. But again, Escrite says that when Erasmus said that, it was not the preparation process he was talking about, but it was the printing process that was speedily done between October 2nd, 1515, when Erasmus delivered his material to Froben, who was his printer, and March 1st, 1516, which is the dated colophon on the finished first edition of his work. So that's the first point that Screech makes is when Erasmus talks about it being precipitated rather than edited, he's talking about the printing process, not his preparation process of the text, which he had done very carefully. Secondly, Screech also defends Erasmus' first edition of the Novum Instrumentum from the charge of sloppiness. He acknowledges that Erasmus was encouraged by Froben, his printer, and others quote, to make fundamental modifications and additions to his text as he went along, that the Greek of the New Testament itself was modified during printing, not always by Erasmus in person, and he also acknowledges that the annotations, quote, were recast and expanded in proof up to the last moment in what must have been a nightmare, end quote. Nevertheless, Screech concludes the following, quote, yet the 1516 annotations were remarkably free from misprints. Even the Greek New Testament is not quite so full of them as is often alleged. So here's an Erasmian scholar who knows well the work of Erasmus, who has read and studied the Novum Instrumentum, And he says that the annotations are remarkably free from misprints and that Erasmus' Greek New Testament isn't as full of them as it has been charged or alleged to be. Screech's third point then is that there has been a tendency in mainstream New Testament scholarship to detract from Erasmus' work and even, and this is a quote from Screech, to pass on fantasies and legends about it. This is his assessment, quote, anyone who reads the New Testament scholarship finds that Erasmus has his detractors who repeat each other with bland assurance. Writers of established reputation pass on fantasies or legends few of those who do show much acquaintance with the annotations." So I think that Screech just hit the nail on the head. Bruce Manning Metzger mentions this anecdote in his book, The Text of the New Testament. People like James White, D.A. Carson, and others read this and then they pass it on to their students whether in classrooms or in popular formats like this Wretched Radio interview and people accept it as fact, but here is an Erasmus scholar saying it's just not the case. It's not historically accurate. It is a fantasy and a legend. And he says that most of the people who do this have simply read someone else that they respect and they've never actually consulted Erasmus' work directly. And I think that's probably the case. with many people who passed this on. How many people have actually sat down and examined Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum? How many people have actually sat down and read the annotations, which are still in Latin and haven't been translated into English? Very few people, but people like M.A. Screech have. His fourth point against the, what he would call, fantasy and legend that Erasmus rushed the first edition of his printed New Testament to to press and thus it was riddled with errors. He says, anyway fourth point, is that Screech takes particular exception to the notion that Erasmus' first edition was a rush job to beat the Spanish completention polyglot to the market. We just heard James White popularize that argument with Todd Thriel. In fact, Screech dismisses the whole notion of this race with Cardinal Jimenez as a completely legendary fabrication. I'm going to read Screech's entire comment here. Again, this is from the book edited by Anne Reeve. that's titled Erasmus' Annotations on the New Testament, the Gospels, Duckworth, 1986, and this is from the introduction by M. A. Screech, page Roman numeral 12. This is what he says, quote, One legend, repeated from book to book for a century or more, asserts that Erasmus and Froben hurriedly skimped their work in order to steal a march on better scholars in Spain. In Alcala de Henares, and that's a Spanish name, place name, and I probably have butchered it, Complutum in Latin, what's the name of this place, A team of scholars and theologians were working under Cardinal Jimenez and Lopez Stunica. Their aim was eventually fulfilled in a major work of scholarship, the Complutensian Polyglot, the complete Bible with texts in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. It is a fact that the New Testament, forming part of this polyglot, had already been set up and printed at Complutum by 10 January 1514, two years before Erasmus' edition appeared on sale. But the work was not published, the intention being to bring out all the volumes together. Let me just pause from the quote. The point wasn't that they were waiting for papal approval, but they were waiting to complete all the volumes of the polyglot in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin before they published the whole. Let me go back to the quotation now from Screech. Manuscripts were sent from the Vatican and funds seemed limitless. Eventually a papal faculty to publish was granted on 22 March 1520 but even then there was delay and it was not put on sale until 1522. Erasmus and Froben had no need to hurry. Alcala de Hanares, Complutum, is the home of Manana." So, Screech makes the point that there was no race between the Complutensian polyglot and Erasmus. Think about it. Erasmus' Greek New Testament came out in 1516. The Competition Polyglot wasn't published until six years later and so somehow this legend of there being a race to beat the Spanish to get the Bible on the market, Screech, who's an expert in Erasmus, says this is a total fabrication and it's been passed on for a century now, he says, by largely by New Testament scholars, academic New Testament scholars. His fifth point is that another thing that's been largely overlooked by New Testament scholars who are critical of Erasmus is the fact that Erasmus' primary purpose in the Novum Instrumentum was not to produce the first printed Greek New Testament, but a new Latin one. As Screech observes, here's another kind of longer quote, but I think it's worth hearing. Quote, one curious byproduct of this legend of Erasmus' unseemly haste is that a role has been foisted onto his Greek New Testament which was never claimed for it. The volume which Froben printed is not primarily an addition of the Greek text at all. This is an important point. Erasmus never gave the Greek pride of place in his work as an editor. Where New Testament texts were concerned, his scholarly life was dominated by recensions of the Vulgate. Of course, the evidence of the Greek New Testament played a vital part in such a work. Of course, he realized that Greek texts needed editing, but that purpose remained subsidiary to another. Erasmus' starting point was the Vulgate, and his goal was a scholarly revision of it. It is often assumed that he translated his own new Latin text directly from the Greek. He did not. The enterprise was far more complicated than that." So Screech's point here is that Erasmus, the 1516 edition, when he published the Greek New Testament, his primary purpose was not to publish a Greek New Testament. His primary purpose was to put forward his new version of the Latin New Testament and that was his primary purpose that he printed the Greek New Testament was simply subsidiary to that and so this also undermines the whole legend that he was rushing to get a Greek New Testament on the market ahead of Cardinal Jimenez. So again, James White has perpetuated again what an Erasmus scholar calls a fantasy and a legend about Erasmus. So why has this been perpetuated? Well, it's been perpetuated because there has been an effort primarily since the late 19th century to undermine the validity of the Texas Receptus. And one of the methods for undermining the validity of the Texas Receptus is to attack Erasmus. Because it was Erasmus' printed Greek New Testament that was used by Protestant ministers and scholars as the basis for the Protestant translations that were made in the various vernacular languages like English, again, Spanish, French, Hungarian, or whatever, Italian. So that's one key point. We can refute the Erasmus rush to press legend. And then right on the heels of that, right where I cut the recording off, a related point that is often made similarly, a similar popular argument against Erasmus is that he did not have a text of the Book of Revelation, a manuscript, a Greek manuscript of the Book of Revelation, and he was only able to get a hold of one copy and the one copy that he was able to get hold of was a commentary on Revelation from Andreas of Caesarea, and Erasmus borrowed this commentary manuscript from another humanist scholar, a German named Johannes Reuchlin. Reuchlin lived from 1455 to 1522, and it's put forward that this is the only manuscript that he had. And then, furthermore, it is stated that this manuscript was missing some of the final verses, and so Erasmus had to back-translate the last few verses of Revelation used from the Latin and so let me let James White speak to this and I'll come back and give some response to it because it seems to be a pretty devastating charge against the Texas Receptus. So let me let James White address it and then I'll come back and speak to it. I've got to tell this story now. He went into the book of Revelation, he thought the library in Basel, Switzerland would have multiple copies. He couldn't find a one. So he borrowed a commentary on Revelation from a friend. And he had to extract the text of Revelation from the commentary. And he got to the last chapter and discovered that the last pages had fallen off. And so what he did is he translated from the Latin Vulgate into Greek for the last six verses of the book of Revelation. The amazing thing is he came up with readings no one had ever seen in any manuscript before. That was in his first edition. That was in all five of his editions, all the way through 1535, and to this very day, the King James Version of the Bible has the weird readings that Erasmus came up with from the Latin in its readings in the text of the Book of Revelation to this very day. Alright, let me pause right there. Well again, this sounds like a really serious charge and once again, when I hear something, anything like this, a fact like this put forward it just makes me curious to want to validate it. Again, I've heard this popularly said, and my guess again is that James White and others probably get this story from Metzger. And in fact, if you look in the second edition of Metzger's book, The Text of the New Testament, you find on page 99 that Metzger says the following, for the book of Revelation he that is Erasmus had but one manuscript dating from the 12th century which he had borrowed from his friend Reuchlin. Unfortunately this manuscript lacked the final leaf which had contained the last six verses of the book. For these verses as well as a few other passages throughout the book were the Greek text of the Apocalypse and the adjoining Greek commentary with which the manuscript was supplied are so mixed up as to be almost indistinguishable, Erasmus depended upon the Latin Vulgate translating this text into Greek." That goes on over to page 100. So that's my guess is the source for James White on this and others. And what I notice about this in the second edition, and I want to check the most recent edition with Aramings, I know there were some updates that were made in that, But there's no footnote. And again, I'm curious when a story like this is perpetuated and there's no reference to the writings of Erasmus, there's no reference to his annotations, there's no reference to the Novum Instrumentum, even his private correspondence. And I'm not sure, can we really say historically I don't know, I'm not enough of an expert on Erasmus and the process that he used. I'd be curious to ask somebody like M.A. Screech who is an expert. How many manuscripts exactly did he have? What manuscripts did he have available? If you don't know much about Erasmus, historians aren't completely sure about when Erasmus was even born. There's a debate that goes on to this day among scholars of Erasmus as to when exactly he was born. And so if they're not sure when he was born, my guess is they're not completely sure how many manuscripts he probably had to work on his Greek New Testament in the Novum Instrumentum. The other source, aside from Metzger, for this account of the back-translating of the ending of Revelation is probably, for English speakers, a biography of Erasmus, very well known, that was done by the Yale church historian Roland Bainton. It's a classic work, it's titled Erasmus of Christendom. Let's see, it was first published in 1969, And in that work, on page 133, Bainton says the following, Erasmus had but one manuscript with interlinear comments in Greek, one manuscript of Revelation. Erasmus committed this task to an assistant who made errors in transcription which Erasmus did not take time to check for the first edition nor adequately at any time. The manuscript lacked the last five verses of Revelation which Erasmus himself translated from the Latin back into the Greek. Let me pause here for a moment. Now we've got a conflict, don't we? Metzger and James White following him said that it was the last six verses that were missing. Bainton, however, says it was the last five verses. Well, when you have two people giving two conflicting accounts, it sort of begins to, you begin to raise a question about, you know, what's the source of this? And which is it? Five or six? Or is it less than that? Or did it happen at all? Now, Bainton does give one footnote. Unlike Metzger, he provides a footnote. If you look at the notes on page 148 of Erasmus of Christendom, however, it is not to anything, again, from Erasmus. He quotes a secondary source. It's a German source, and I think I've mentioned this before when I did an earlier text criticism podcast on Dan Wallace, because Dan Wallace like James White, D. A. Carson, and others, passes on, I think, probably this account that has its source in Metzger or Bainton. But anyways, his source is the German Old Testament scholar Franz Delitzsch, and the title of it is Die Entstehung des Erasmuschen Textes des Neuen Testaments in Sonderheit des Apocalypse. and it's in the book Hans Schriftlicher Funde, published in Leipzig in 1861. So, again, we've got nothing in Erasmus. As far as I have been able to tell, and I'm interested in this and I haven't done more research on it, but as far as I can tell, probably the idea that Erasmus back-translated the last six verses or five verses of Revelation probably has its source in this 1861 German article which I have not yet been able to read. I'm not sure where the author got his ideas, so I would just say it may be the case, it may be right, but thus far I haven't seen the evidence yet. The other thing, the other point I would make about this is, you know, it sounds like a really devastating critique that Erasmus back-translated and it gives us, as James White put it, bizarre readings. However, now if you take the New Testament and you look at the ending of Revelation, and I sat down and I took my copy of the Texas Receptus that is printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society, which is based on an 1894 edition from Scribner that drew upon the work of Beza. Beza drew upon the work of Stephanos, and Stephanos drew upon the work of Erasmus. And I read the last... I went with Baton's estimate, lower estimate, five verses. I read the last five verses, and then I took my copy of the Nessal on 28th edition. I got a brand new copy of it. I just got it in the mail a couple weeks ago. I've been reading it and studying it. And what I find is that there are differences, but the differences aren't as strange or bizarre as White and others make it out to be. I mean, they make it out to be that Erasmus just put some really weird things in there. There is, you know, one of the most notorious differences in verse 19 in the traditional text, the TR, it says Book of Life, and in the modern critical text it says Tree of Life. But I just took a couple verses and read through them, and let me just share a little bit of the analysis. I look at verse 17, for example. Verse 17 in the Textus Receptus has 25 words. In the Nesolon 28th edition, that same verse has a total of, let's see, 19 words. I take that back. It's got a total of 23 words. So the TR has 25 words in verse 17, and the state-of-the-art Nesolon 28th edition has 23 words. 19 of the 23 words in the NA 28th and 19 of the words in the TR are exactly the same and they appear in exactly the same sequence. There are two words that are in the TR that are not in the Nessalon 28th. One is the conjunction chi, which means and, and one is the definite article. So those are the two extra words. Then there are four places where a word in the TR and a word in the Nessalon 28th edition are different. But in all those cases, two of them have to do with the word erchemi, actually three of them have to do with the word Erechemai, one with the verb lembano. In all cases it's the same root word, just handled in a different way. And then I went, and again I'm just doing, at some point maybe I can do a longer, more exhaustive study of those final verses, but I looked at verses 20 and 21 as well. Verse 20 The TR has 12 words, the Nesolon 28th edition has 11 words, and 11 of the words in both the texts are exactly the same and in exactly the same sequence. The TR has one word, the word nigh, which means yes or indeed, is added in the TR. And then verse 21. Verse 21 is the final verse in the book of Revelation. There are 11 words in the TR, and there are 7 words in the Nesselon 28th edition. So, the TR adds 4 words. Instead of saying, the grace of the Lord Jesus as it is in the Nesolon 28, the TR has the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and instead of be with all, as in the Nesolon 28, the TR has be with all of you, and then also the TR adds the word Amen at the end. And if you pick up the Nesolon, let me just take this one tiny example in the Nessalon 28th edition in a textual apparatus for Amen. It notes that Amen appears in Codex Sinaiticus, it appears in the majuscules 046, 051, in the minuscules 1611, 1854, 2030, 2050, 2053, 2062, 2344, 2377. It also appears in the majority of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It's in the Vulgate, the Syriac, the Coptic, Basically, it's the Byzantine or traditional text that is reflected in Erasmus' TR. So, you know, the charge that he did this back translation and there are these scores of bizarre readings is, quite frankly, just an overblown charge. And again, its purpose is to make the textual foundations of the traditional text, which undergirded the translations into the vernacular languages in the Reformation period, it's meant to undermine our reliability in those texts, and I don't think that that charge is actually well-founded. I'd like to do more research on the ending of Revelation and what manuscripts Erasmus used, but I don't think perpetuating the story without any facts to back it up, helps the matter. Again, I'm not sure we can have complete confidence as to how many manuscripts Erasmus consulted. And again, he uses the same figure, I think, that Todd Thriel did. Yes, we have 5,000 manuscripts now, but a lot of those are fragments. Some of them are just a few verses. And anyway, it doesn't really matter whether you have a few manuscripts or a lot. What matters, and you can take a few manuscripts, if those few manuscripts that you have accurately reflect the traditional text, then you don't need 100 that basically say the same thing. If you've got six or seven that basically accurately reflect the traditional text, that would be adequate. So again, it's an argument that sounds good. Oh, five manuscripts compared to 5,000. He fails to say that of those 5,000 manuscripts, the vast majority support the traditional text, the Byzantine text that is reflected in Erasmus' printed Greek New Testament. But let's listen to a little bit more. And so, that text that was used for the King James became known as the Textus Septus in 1633, the Elder Brothers put out an advertisement for their printed edition, and they called it, back then, Latin advertisements, or advertisements were in Latin, if you can believe that. It really wouldn't work today very well. And textus receptus means received text. And so for quite some time, from the 1600s till the late 1800s, that was pretty much the text that was used, even though it had a very small manuscript tradition behind it. Well, again, it had a small manuscript tradition behind it? Well, it has the majority of manuscripts that support most of its readings. The majority of New Testament, Great New Testament manuscripts have the Woman Caught in Adultery, John 7.53-8.11. The majority have the longer ending of Mark, Mark 16.9-20. It's only a minority, a very small minority, that omit the ending of Mark, that omit the woman caught in adultery. So James White, like many others, seems to sort of turn the argument on its head by saying that the traditional text isn't widely supported. Now, I think I understand his point. His point is that there are some readings in the TR that are not the same as the readings in the majority text, and he's going to refer to an example of this in just a moment. the so-called Koma Yohaneum in 1 John 5, 7, and 8. But that doesn't eliminate the point that the TR, most of its readings, like the Longer Ending of Mark, like the Woman Caught in Adultery, are supported by the vast majority of manuscripts and by many ancient manuscripts, including papyri, including some of the oldest majuscule manuscripts that we have. Then, as more and more manuscripts are found, you have the drive to create a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Once again, the development of modern critical text in the 19th century had nothing to do, I think, with recent manuscript discoveries except perhaps for Codex Sinaiticus but the Reformation scholars knew about most of the major textual differences. As he's going to say in a moment, Erasmus had access to some of the readings in Codex Vaticanus, but he chose to reject those. So, anyway, let me let him continue. Much earlier manuscripts. Erasmus wanted to use Vaticanus. He wouldn't have had any problem using Vaticanus, but it was in Rome. He couldn't get to it. And so, as we found earlier in earlier manuscripts, now our critical editions, which take into consideration not only the Greek manuscripts, but all these other translations, have a much broader textual basis, and so there are differences between that and the Textus Receptus. So if anyone has the King James, and remember, if you had a King James today, you don't have a 1611 King James. You have a 1769 Blaney revision of the King James. Alright, well, you know, again, I'm not going to dispute that, I'm sure. Again, the issue isn't KJV-onlyism. Yes, if you prefer to use the King James, you're using the Blaney edition of 1769 and not the original 1611, but again, I'm not arguing for KJV-onlyism. It just seems to be sort of an effort to divert attention from the real issue of the original language text upon which the translation is based. But, let's continue. Alright, let me just address this for a second. He says that the TR has the Koma Yohaneum. And again, this is accurate. This is a place where the TR would diverge from the so-called majority text or Byzantine text. He mentions that the Koma Yohaneum doesn't appear in Greek manuscripts until the 14th century. Let me address a couple things related to that. I haven't gone to check the apparatus to see when exactly the first, the earliest Greek manuscript that includes the Comaeonanum is. It may be late, but again, the date of the manuscript should be less important. A late manuscript may contain a tradition that goes back to the very earliest sources. So just because a document is late doesn't mean that it is invalid. The other thing to take into consideration is that the Koma Yohaneum, there is evidence that that reading had been around for a lot longer than nearly the 14th century. I picked up from my desk here a copy of Bruce Metzger's textual commentary on the Greek New Testament. And this is the, let's see, corrected edition of 1975, and this is his comments on the Koma Yohaneim, 1 John 5, 7 and 8. This is page 716. Metzger says the following, the earliest instance of the passage being quoted as part of the actual text of the epistle is in a 4th century Latin treatise entitled Liber Apologeticus, or Apologetic Book, chapter 4, attributed either to the Spanish heretic Priscillian, who died about 385, or to his follower Bishop Instantius. Apparently, the gloss arose when the original passage was understood to symbolize a trinity. Notice the apparently. Metzger doesn't think that the Koma Yohaneum was original and he wants to reject it and so he's giving his explanation that it was apparently just a gloss. related to the Trinity. Let me go back to what he says. Through the mention of three witnesses, the spirit, the water, and the blood, an interpretation which may have been written first as a marginal note that afterwards found its way into the text. In the 5th century the gloss was quoted by Latin fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle and from the 6th century onwards it is found more and more frequently in manuscripts of the Old Latin and of the Vulgate. So, contrary to what James White implies when he says that it doesn't appear in Greek manuscripts until the 14th century, now first I've said just because it doesn't appear in a Greek manuscript until late doesn't mean it doesn't come from a much earlier source. Secondly now, we've got Metzger telling us that it's being quoted as early as the 4th century in Latin works and then by the 5th and 6th century in the Western Church it was automatically accepted as part of the Scriptures. Now, if there were Latin versions of it in the 4th century, there were probably Greek versions of it, even if we don't have manuscript evidence of that until the 14th century, if you follow me. So, the antiquity of the Koma Yohaneum is obviously very ancient, and it is a typical argument against the Koma Yohaneum to say that it was only introduced in the church very, very, very, very late. And that's just not true. That's not what Metzger says. It's not what I think any credentialed New Testament scholar would say, even if they reject it. Now, the other thing I would say is if you read the Nessalon 28th edition, which I'm starting to do, there are places in the Nessalon 28th edition where there are complete, what are called, conjectural inundations. That is, there are places in the new modern critical text where the editors have given a reading that doesn't appear in any extant Greek manuscript that we have. I was talking about this when I was at the Pericope Adulteride Conference in Southeastern with Maurice Robinson, and he said if you look at Acts 16.12 and I think it's 2 Peter 3.10, it might be 1 Peter 3.10, but anyways, 1 Peter 3.10 or 2 Peter 3.10, those are places where in the New Nessalon 28th edition they offer a conjecture that doesn't have any extant Greek manuscript that supports the reading. If James White and other people are so upset about the Koma Yohaneum not appearing in a Greek manuscript until the 14th century, what do they say about the current modern critical Greek New Testament that has readings that have absolutely no Greek manuscript support? Are they going to say we're not going to use this modern critical text and translations that are going to be made from it? And by the way, in the future, all the modern major translations will come up with new editions that will adjust to the Nessalon 28th edition. My point here is that those who support the modern critical text are sort of caught in a conundrum. They want to criticize the TR for readings that have less solid support, but then they're willing to accept a modern critical text that has readings that have, in some places at least, no support. But let's listen to a little bit more of what James White has to say. There's going to be those places that it's going to vary in its text. from ESV, NASV, NIV, Holman Christian Society, which are all based upon the modern eclectic texts which have this much broader textual basis. Alright, let me just boil that down. King James Version of the Bible, Textus Receptus, the received text from a manuscript that was a fair distance between the time of Jesus. Manuscripts that were about 1,200 years after Christ. Whoa, so he's saying, James White just said, the manuscripts that were used in the TR did not come until 1200 years after the time of Jesus. Well, perhaps some of the manuscripts that Erasmus used dated from the 12th century, but that doesn't mean the content of those manuscripts just sort of magically appeared in the 12th century. They include copies of copies of copies that go back, we could say, to the very beginning of the Christian movement. look at text like Codex Alexandrinus, which dates to the 5th, some would even say the 4th century, so it's as old as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, the twin heavyweights that are used by those who accept the modern critical text. Anyway, Codex Alexandrinus supports the Byzantine or traditional text in the Gospels. Read Harry Sturtz, who has studied the papyri and has argued that many of the papyri, now we're getting to the 3rd century, and sometimes even the late 2nd century, support Byzantine readings. So yes, some of the manuscripts that Erasmus had might not have dated until the 12th century. It doesn't mean that those readings were any less ancient. And so again, I think what he just said actually will confuse people who might listen to this. Yes. Now, since that time, when the King James Version of the Bible came out, we've had more and more manuscripts added called the Eclectic Text. Again, we've got the same confusion about new manuscripts and eclectic text. Which is drawing from the entirety of the spectrum and the other translations, Latin, so on and so forth. And so some of the modern translations that we have today would be NASV, the ESV. ESV, real popular. Okay. Now, an argument that the King James Version folks would use, and I personally sympathize with it, I mean, I'm sympathetic toward it. Why would God do that? Why would he have people for two centuries thinking that the King James Version of the Bible is the most accurate translation and you folks come along with your little eclectic text business, why would God do that? Todd Creel is actually asking, I think, a good question, although it's kind of confused. He's really asking a question about the divine providential preservation of Scripture, which is addressed in Chapter 1 of the Second London Baptist Confession, and likewise in Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. both of which say that God has kept his word pure and entire in every age. And so he's asking about why did God allow the King James Version for 200 years. That's really not the most important question. The most important question is why did God allow there to be a traditional text that was obviously was the one that was most used throughout Christian history, not for 200 years, but for 1800 years until the 19th century when Enlightenment-influenced scholars said, let's overthrow the traditional text and let's replace it with a better text, a modern critical text. Why did God, did we lose the scriptures for that period of time and they were only restored by Westcott and Hort and others in the 19th century. So I think he's asking a good question here, and it's the question about the providential preservation of Scripture. Let's listen to how Light responds. The funny thing is, if they would read the introduction to the King James by the translators, their position would be refuted. Because why is the King James translated? Again, I understand White's dilemma because it is a disjointed question, and he responds by saying that the translators in their preface said, yes, translations need to be made. Again, I'm not going to dispute that. Yes, translations need to be made. I'm not a KJV onlyist, but it really doesn't address the question of the providential preservation of the traditional text of Scripture. In fact, the pilgrims preferred the Geneva Bible to the King James Bible by a long shot, because King James told the translators there were certain words they could not use. For example, they could not translate baptize, anything other than baptize, and the church had to be church, not assembly, and stuff like that. The Puritans, many of them, did not like the King James because of that. But there were English translations before the King James came along. Not only that, but that was the exact argument that was used against Erasmus, because what was in the Bible for 1,100 years for Western Christendom was the Latin Vulgate. How dare you come along and both change the Vulgate and give us a Greek rendering as well? How dare you do that? Simple tradition of use does not indicate godly approbation of that particular text, or we'd have to go back to the Vulgate. And even when the Latin Vulgate was translated by Jerome, there was a near-riot in Carthage, because up till then they had used the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and Jerome more accurately translated that the gourd that grew over Jonah's head was a castor oil plant, and when that was read in public, they almost rioted. Why? Because they were used to the Greek Septuagint. Even though it never even crossed their mind, well, which one is more accurate? It was, this is what I'm used to. All right, I will just respond quickly to this point and we're just about at the end. There's just about 30 seconds more to go. I guess you're making the point that we shouldn't just hold on to things because they are traditional and I completely agree with that. Yes, if we hold something that is wrong and we merely hold to it because it's a tradition, then that ought to be challenged. Sometimes the things that we hold on to as traditions are good things. Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 15 that he passes on to the Corinthians that which he has also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised the third day according to the Scriptures. That's a tradition, but it's a good tradition that shouldn't be overthrown. And it seems strange to me that many evangelicals have rightly recognized that liberal theology has said, you know, we're going to take your doctrine of the virgin birth, and we're going to give you a better understanding of the virgin birth, and we're going to take your traditional understanding of inspiration, and we're going to give you something better. or we're going to take your view of the deity of Christ, or that salvation is through faith in Christ alone, and we're going to give you universalism, or we're going to give you something else. And we've rightly said, no, that is an innovation that we need to reject. And it seems to be, though, when the same Enlightenment-influenced scholar said, we're going to take your Bible and we're going to give you a better Bible, that many evangelicals haven't looked at that critically and suspiciously. And so yes, we should not hold to traditions that are wrong, but we should uphold traditions that are right and that are orthodox. Well, we're just about at the end. I don't think there's really anything else significant that is said, and so I'm just going to wrap things up. I hope you have enjoyed this edition of Word Magazine, and God willing, we'll come up with some more editions in the future. Take care, and God bless. The dance trailer, with sweet voices and rippling harp, your praise inspire. Your deeds, Lord, make me glad, of joy in what you've done. How great your doings, Lord, how dear your thoughts each one, most won't be shown. The foolish can't accept this truth to him unknown. Though sinners grow like leaves, ill-doers blossom late, They're doomed to be destroyed, through Lord Exalted's sake. Lord, your foes, Lord, see how your foes may be, O men, are scattered all. You raise my house, my home, pour fresh oil on my bed. You make me see the skies and hear what Father said. Life-thriving, calm, the righteous grows, my seers, on, on, then on, on. Hosted by the Lord, shall in God's court be seen. When old hills still bear fruit, And flourish fresh and green, And loud throat win, How upright is the Lord, my rock, No wrong in Him.