Continuing Comparing Versions Of Translation--Necessary To Come To The Truth

The Law of the LORD 

is perfect, converting 

the soul;

the testimony of the LORD

is sure, making wise

the simple;

the statutes of the LORD

are right, 

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment'

of the LORD

is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

Psalm 19:7-8

     This psalm of David clearly underlines the need, the necessity to know the truth, especially when it come to know whether or not the Bible we hold in our hands, that we read, that we have come to teach us is truly the "testimony of the LORD." As David writes this knowledge will "enlighten the eyes." The only way to know is to examine those translations, and come to understand why there are variants, differences. The reason, most important reason for this examination is that these translation teach us Christology. Jesus Christ is the Gospel and His act, His death upon the cross is the outward expression of Him and His love; but none-the-less, it is Jesus Christ that is the Gospel, that God came to earth, His Wisdom clothed in humanity to pay a debt of sin that man could not pay for himself so as to have a hope of eternal life as promised in God's word. Guided by the Holy Spirit, God, the third Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, as man, and as God, accomplished the purpose of God, to have a people for eternity to live with Him and enjoy all that God has purposed for those who He redeems. How we view Jesus Christ, our Christology is most important and will determine our religion, our actions. A question to show that that is true, our religion is determined by our Christology we must look at an organization that has a Christology developed from certain manuscripts: i.e., Greisback translation, along with Westcott's and Hort's translating work, translating from the Vatanicus and Sinaiticus manuscripts, those Alexandrian texts, and have an Arian theology towards Jesus Christ, and this after so many years using the King James Version of the Bible; this is just one such organization, there are more. 

     From the beginning of the early Church the ante-Nicene fathers wrote and taught against heresies that were attempting and at times succeeding to enter into the lives of the Church; one such heresy is Gnosticism, so let us see how that heresy invaded and influenced some translations. By the third century, especially the fourth century, the Scriptures were distributed widely and Christians were by means of those translations able to compare texts, note those that were heretical and reject those heretical texts. With the cannonization of the Bible, the transmission of the texts had been solidified and now came the work of comparing these competing texts, which ones should be chosen by Christians and which should be rejected. In a previous blog I wrote about the age problem, that the oldest and best preserved thing is not always the best, and that criteria is not a valid assumption; for example, to own a car made in the 50's and having low mileage, let say, 1200 miles and never driven more, clean, sharp, and new-like, compared to a 2011 car that has many miles, let say, 100,000 and is dirty, bent in places and is not as clean or sharp, that the car that is older, even though in better physical shape is better is not necessarily true. Metal in time, even without use deteriorates, the engine has less power, and there is no modern digital radio, cd player, etc., which the 2011 car has, and the newer car has been cared for, regular oil changes, driven and repaired as needed, it is a car that has been used and proven itself to be a reliable car. So, let us look at the age of the Alexandrian texts and doing so it will be found that age actually works to the detriment of modern theories based upon antiquity. Let us look at the two basic medium for texts: 1. vellum, 2. papyrus. Neither of these two medias were durable for a long time, although vellum, made from dried sheep skins or other animals was more rugged and expensive. These were used in the copies of the Scripture that were known as "official" and for use by the Churches, and by the wealthy. Both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are vellum manuscripts, and most likely were used in Christian assemblies or liturgy. Here then is a problem with the vellum even if there were more rugged and expensive, they wore out over time through use and needed to be replaced. Without rebinding services as we have today the scroll had to be transcribed into a new manuscript. What do we do with those old worn out scrolls? We put them to rest, they are unusable for daily or regular use. Furthermore, being reverent towards those old manuscripts they would by purpose destroy them, these men of God would so revere these Scriptures so that they would not want these ragged Biblical manuscripts become tattered and fall to pieces for this would show a lack of concern and be careless. (see K. Lake, R.P. Blake, and S. New, "The Caesarean text of the Gospel of Mark," Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 21 (1928), p. 349). With no rebinding then the only thing to do is to transcribe a new manuscript. This thing begs a question: Why are such old manuscripts still in existence and are in relatively good condition, are they not over fifteen centuries old? Numerous scholars such as Jakob van Bruggen (1936), a professor of New Testament exegesis at the Reformed Theological College in Kampen, Netherlands, who holds a doctorate degree in theology, in his scholarly works he defends the trustworthiness of the Bible as the Word of God, and W.N. Pickering's: The Identity of the New Testament Text" in Westminster Theological Journal, 41 (1979), and others suggest that these scrolls are in good condition despite their age because the were not used, or regularly used, therefore they did not undergo repetitive unrolling and rolling back up, being contaminated with sweaty hands, humid breath, tears, bending, and these manuscripts sat on shelves most of their life. Another question raises its head: Why? Using our minds to come to a logical answer we find that logically they were not used because they were rejected from use by these early Christians who understood them to be flawed, and refrained from using them.(see J. Van Bruggen, The Ancient Text of the New Testament, pp. 26-27). Examining the other medium for the texts is papyrus which is even more fragile due to the consistence of low-grade paper. Papyrus was less expensive and was fairly easy to make and was abundant. The Egyptians had been using papyrus for at least two milleniums before Christians. Scholars understand that papyrus was used for personal copies of documents, those documents that were not as important as was the Scriptures that were under the care of pastors. (Early Christian church copies were probably in the care of the pastor/bishops. One of the stigmas against Christian bishops in North Africa, who had recanted during the 3rd century persecutions, which caused so much disdain from the Donatists was the willingness of these bishops to turn over their copies of the Scriptures to Roman persecutors in exchange for relief from persecution). There are some papyri that are in good condition suggesting that these documents, those translations or transcriptions of the Scriptures were little used, and this suggests that they were disdained. To rely upon these papyri in good condition as to relied upon, as do these "modern" theologians, does little to give us confidence as their methodology. In fact these "modern" theologians like these transcriptions or manuscripts because, not only of their age, but because the have at the least partial Alexandrian readings. Are these papyri good witnesses to be relied upon? No! Even the staunch theologians of the Westcott/Hort camp recognize and admit that they are full of scribal errors, additions, deletions, and many give evidence that those transcribers were not proficient in the Greek language. Gonther Zuntz speaks and writes about one such papyri, p46: "In spite of its neat appearance (it was written by a professional scribe and corrected - but very imperfectly - by an expert, P⁴⁶ is by no means a good manuscript. The scribe committed very many blunders...My impression is that he was liable to fits of exhaustion." ⁽G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, p. 18). He further states very plainly that "p46 abounds with scribal blunders, omissions, and also additions" (G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, p. 212). Hoskier also noted the large number of omissions made in this papyrus(H.C. Hoskier, "A Study of the Chester-Beatty Codex of the Pauline Epistles," The Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 38 (1937), p. 162). Other papyri are similarly poor quality reproductions. Colwell says of several of them,"On these last and most important matters, our three scribes are widely divided. P⁷⁵ and P⁴⁵ seriously intend to produce a good copy, but it is hard to believe that this was the intention of P⁶⁶. The nearly 200 nonsense readings and 400 itacistic spellings in P⁶⁶ are evidence of something less than disciplined attention to the basic task. To this evidence of carelessness must be added those singular readings whose origin baffles speculation, readings that can be given no more exact label than carelessness leading to assorted variant readings. A hurried count shows P⁴⁵ with 20, P⁷⁵ with 57, and P⁶⁶ with 216 purely careless readings. As we have seen, P⁶⁶ has, in addition, more than twice as many 'leaps' from the same to the same as either of the others."(E.C. Colwell, "Scribal Habits in Early Papyri: A Study in the Corruption of the Text", The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J.P. Hyatt, pp. 378-9).
     We must consider these many, even overwhelming extant Greek manuscripts that are of the "Byzantine" or "Syrian" text type. Yes, they are younger that the Alexandrian texts, and using the argument from above, it would seem to be apparent that this overwhelming majority of texts is preponderant and was used by the early Church, that these manuscripts were trustworthy. Used, translated, discarded, as they were rolled, unrolled, handled, etc, there was a need for more and newer transcriptions. These greater number of Byzantine texts suggests logically that there were preferred by the early Church, multiplied over the generations to be used by the later Church.
     This method to teach about the Bible may seem laborious, even tedious, at least to some, but when our Doctrine of Christ, our Christology is at stake, that stakes could not be higher. What we have come to believe may or may not be supported by manuscripts that the early Church trusted and has been corrupted by "modern" theologians who hold to a textual criticism that is unsupported by any logic, or by any evidence, unless that evidence is disdained and cast away, not to be considered. I won't do that: I will look, and give to you the evidence, you make the decision for yourself, and to be able to make a good decision you must have the information. The Bible is God's word to man for our faith and for our lives, we must have the correct version. I will continue this study and hope that you will do the same.


The LORD is good to those
     who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks 
     Him.
                      Lamenations 3:25


Hope in the Lord You Will Not Be Disappointed 


Richard L. Crumb