Textual Criticism Series Continued on the DL

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James White director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 973 4602 or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic here is James White.

Continuing the Textual Criticism Series

And good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line. We continue our series on the subject of textual criticism today getting a lot of positive Inputs a lot of positive responses. Gotten any nasty King James only emails.

I didn't think so. He hadn't mentioned any people. Ask me, you know, do these people writing and getting mad at you or these people writing get mad at you. And so that's that's good to know. That's they must not be listening.

Maybe they just don't know what to say. It's possible.

It'd be a first.

Well, yeah. Prerequisite being that they have to have something to say in the first place has not been our experience in the past.

Is it. Well, no, it's not being they. They always have something to say. Yeah, but whether or not there's any merit to it whether or not is irrelevant, but they always have something to say.

Calling you the past couple weeks, you know, why are you attacking the King James?

He's been calling me for three years. Yeah, that's what I mean. So no, I.

Finally send impact. I know we understand that. I'm just saying that it does happen and Anyway, that's not how I want to start but that's okay. Hopefully you have downloaded the documents on the website and Please keep the website open as well because I have some Graphics there that I want you to look at if you are listening by archive You will find the documents Lord willing.

In.

The blog articles for Let's see here. This would be February 6th. There's some there. Just go from February 6th 7th 8th 9th around in there today looking at some in the 7th range. And so on and so forth.

Just look in early February 2007 and you should find what you need to be able to follow along. If you have a United Bible Society's fourth edition Greek New Testament you can go along as well and Nestle all in 27th edition.

I even have see there's my. There's my Texas Receptus Sitting here. And did you know you're on the webcam today? Yeah, you're on. Everybody's looking at you today and he's waving at everybody at the webcam, there you go.

Just keep that in mind in case you do this number because that the people will save that load it up to my family.

It's really bad.

And so the lights go out, yes, it's so so much now there is a shadowy figure in the background. That's that's good. That's that's all rich. All right, if you have gathered all of your materials together, and I hope you all are enjoying the videos.

You can tell I recently got the software I needed to do video capture and to Pull down not only, you know, I've had these videos for a long time. Obviously, it was just doing the the transfer stuff. That was a bit of a challenge, but now DVDs VHS players.

Last night. I conquered the real media. Thing that was in my way and so now it's we're gonna be dangerous. No, no two ways about it. We're going to be very dangerous With with these things because I think it's much more effective To listen to someone saying something and then respond to it than it is just to read.

Well, they say this and here's my response and I think people will find that to be a most useful. Just recorded two more clips that I'll put up later in the week and so on and so forth. But anyhow. Last week we were looking at if you're looking at your UBS text.

We were looking at a variant. We were using the variant at Luke chapter 23 verse 34 as sort of a baseline now, obviously, it's also an important variant for those of you who weren't with us just a brief recap.

Luke 23:34 and the Canons of Textual Criticism

The.

Phraseology. Jesus said father forgive them for they know not what they do. Is a textual variant and what we're doing right now is We are looking at the various signs and symbols that you will find the UBS 4th edition then we'll go over the Nessie Island 27th edition and How to read that information.

That information has been provided to you. In the critical editions of the Greek New Testament. And I think it's really nice to have a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. One of the points that I made in my debate with Shabir Ali is we don't have a critical edition of the Quran.

One hopefully someday will be made but We can't do that right now. And I think there is a very important point to be made at that at that juncture we want to find the earlier and earlier manuscripts of our scriptures, but not a whole lot of Roman Catholics necessarily Roman Catholics.

See, that's what happens. I start reading the channel at the same time trying to talk not too many Muslims. I want to do that.

So.

Anyway We had just gotten the point of basically starting to look at the at the variant. But then I realized well, wait a minute need to back up and we need to talk about sort of the canons of textual criticism.

And that's with the one end not with two. That is the general rules and regulations when you look at for example the the variant not in in Luke 20 23 there, but let's let's look at UBS 2 PDF. It's the one that I uploaded Just last evening or sometime around that time for you all.

It also is from the UBS 4th edition and it is pages 8 12 and 8 13. It provides you 1st John 2 22 through 1st John 3 10 and let's look at Two of the variants that are found here just to give you an idea of the practice of Textual criticism.

We're not gonna go super in-depth here. We're gonna look at a number of different variants we'll be able to pick up some of these canons as we're looking at variants, but basically what you need to try to do is to Reconstruct in your mind the process whereby Hand copying would take place this morning.

I was heading home and I couldn't help to start thinking about The fact that we even we even struggle today with my generation rich and I's generation and the next generation. For example when I talked to my kids about what it was like when I was in high school.

Writing reports that was BC before computer and My kids can't even begin to understand what it would be like to type a report on an IBM Selectric. They can't even figure out what it'd be like to try to leave room for a footnote.

To leave that spacing in there what correction tape looks like. They have no idea. They've always had computers and so for them Copying out of a book you can use a scanner to do that when I was in college you had to have the book and you had to have it where the typewriter was and you had to be sitting there typing away and What would happen if you skipped a line?

What would happen if you messed up and forgot where your footnote was gonna supposed to go? You had to start the whole page all over again. And they look at me and go wow how'd you people live before?

Computers and microwaves how'd you ever get anything done? You must have been up from morning till night and stuff like that, so I'm just demonstrating How elderly we are we are becoming but anyway? We have to try to get way farther back than my IBM Selectric.

But there was I did have an illustration there. I would have to sit there, and I would have to be very careful in Copying and I wrote some big papers when I was in high school I remember writing a 52 page paper on evolution when I was in a public high school in my sophomore year.

And so I was doing a lot of copying out of books these long Quotes and stuff like that and you had to be very very very careful while you're doing that. But I'd still make mistakes. And I remember the mistakes because it would cost me so much time it was so costly to rip the page out look where you were restart the whole thing and Today you just go up and insert put it in well the problem is this is the first generation where you've been able to do that.

And.

So the parallels it was it was actually easier years ago to talk to people about scribal errors mistakes that you make while copying from something. An open book a piece of paper whatever it was a little bit easier.

To illustrate those things back in the days when there was still more of a connection now with computers. We can just you know move the cursors stick things in if you misspelled something. It's underlined in red and it suggests what they're correct spelling is sometimes.

It'll just correct it for you, and you don't even realize you're misspelling it and it corrects it for you all the time. We have a guy who must use that a lot in channel named whistle. Actually, I think his spell corrector melted it just Commits suicide as the first word word program that ever just refused to start because he was gonna use it, but anyway.

They you know today people struggle with that, but but we still have to illustrate these things because when You were copying from another manuscript. Let's let's go back in time here. You do not have fluorescent lights.

You do not have a climate controlled environment. You do not have nice things to write on. You do not have nice things to write with. Now we're talking about the earliest period here, but even once you had scriptoriums even once you had All of that kind of stuff.

Still you didn't have you didn't have LASIK. You didn't have Glasses you didn't there were a lot of you were copying by candlelight or sunlight or whatever it might be. So there's all sorts of those issues that go in and then.

Remember you what you're copying will always have been handwritten now. I know that handwriting is almost a completely lost art today. Is it not I? Mean I my my cursive is horrible my printing is not half bad.

But I prided myself on that when I was in school, but any more does anybody you just need the right font. You know yeah, you need the right font. Yeah, exactly you know it looks really pretty. That's just it.

There weren't fonts back then and so you would be copying. Almost always what someone else had written and very frequently. It would be someone who's no longer around. So you can't take it over to their office or to their cell of the monastery or whatever and say what is this?

I can't read your handwriting. How often do you have to go to people today in your office? What in the world did you write on this thing? I can't understand it. You get a fact or something something's handwritten on the bottom.

You can't understand a word it says I Got a letter from somebody. Beautiful cursive writing, but it was so fancy and so distinctive just got this week. I could not hardly make out a single word of it.

I mean I could only make out one or two words. Had a general idea sort of what it was about. But if you there was all sorts of I simply couldn't read it. It was too pretty. So these are just some of the things that go into the background that lead to.

The constructions of the canons of textual criticism, what does that mean. Well?

What.

Scholarship has discussed and continues to discuss to this day one of the reasons that there are differences of opinion That people will take readings in different ways. That's why we need a critical edition of the text because you know sometimes people say I don't I don't agree with committee.

I want to know what the committee rejected. I want to know what their reasoning was. I want to know what the other evidence is that's what's such a blessing about having a Critical edition of the Greek New Testament at least I'm not having to Do what Muslims have to do and think Uthman got it right the first time.

Can't tell you why he did don't know what he he was choosing from but I just have to believe he got it right the First time. I I don't want to you know put that kind of trust in somebody else doesn't even claim to be inspired.

So with that in mind scholars Look at how human beings Copy manuscripts and the kinds of errors that they make and that observation of Human nature then becomes the foundation of the general rules that you examine now obviously when you examine any variant.

You have internal evidence, and you have external evidence. What's the external evidence. The external evidence is the manuscripts. It's the hard evidence. It's what the manuscripts say now as we have discussed sometimes.

That's difficult to say sometimes the manuscript is difficult to read or sometimes You'll have a manuscripts very very healthy helpful to you, but then when you come to one particular verse There's a whole you know bugs ate through it over the over the years that page fell out or whatever.

Or sometimes it's just smudged. I mean this is leather folks and You can understand how how letters can be smudged and age over time and you know someone spilled some coffee on that page or something like that if they had coffee and Whatever scribes drank to keep them going because man copying manuscripts was not easy by the way.

There are things called colophons in. Especially the medieval manuscripts where scribes would make notes the beginning and ends of books and one of the common colophons Was the end as as a traveler rejoices at the end of his journey, so I rejoice at the end of this book.

And think about I mean you're taught you're not talking about a couple hours here folks. We we would we would start complaining just horribly if we had to spend 10 minutes handwriting something we'd put our pens down and we'd rub our poor little aching hands and Can I get a scanner or something like that you don't know OCR man optical character recognition whoo.

That's the greatest thing ever designed by man. We would these people would spend days and weeks copying these books and so you can imagine the back aches and and everything else that went along with it and When you're not feeling that good.

What is really very very amazing is.

How.

Excellent the New Testament manuscript tradition is not that there are variants in it. It's amazing that it is so pure. Given all the opportunities there were for really messing up in making and making copies of copies of copies.

So when you keep that in mind there are certain rules that in general come into play. You look at the external and the internal evidence. The external evidence is the hard evidence. It's the evidence given to you at the bottom of the page there.

It's what the manuscripts read and When the manuscripts are written and and so on and so forth and and that's the external stuff. Internal evidence would be what you are able to derive from looking at the text itself and What would be the best way.

I don't know how that happened. Oh, I know how it happened. Dell support struck again, and it's not even plugged in. Isn't that cool. Everyone now knows I'm I've got a Dell laptop in front of me. Yes anyway I've got to turn that silly thing off.

I just haven't found the way to do it. It doesn't like to turn itself off either. I assure you anyway. Let's just look at this as an example. Look at the page 813 of the UBS fourth it is the first variant noted at the bottom of the page and I am going to blow mine up just a little bit here to about 150 so it's a little bit easier to see and You will see up in verse 2.

Verse 2 says beloved now we are the children of God and it is not yet Manifest what we shall be but we know. That when he is manifest we shall be like him because we will see him as he is and this is a presentation of.

What.

Christ is going to be like and in our relationship with him. And of course the variant is in the preceding verse right before that it says Because of this dia to Taha cosmos who? You know sky Hamas Hathi oak egg no out home of time and that is talking about the fact that That's This is because this the world's not know us because it did not know him.

Why is that you go back one more line and you go to the very beginning of chapter 3 verse 1? Behold what greater love The father has given to us in order that We might be called Hinnah techno say you clay Thelman in order that we might be called the children of God Chi s men and we are Because of this the world is not knowing us because it not know him.

Now right next to that's the very first line on page 8 13 you will see the little superscript letter 1 and It's after the word s men. Now this one you can track without a Greek New Testament. Why. Well if you'd like to follow along if you've got your Bible nearby if you have a King James or a new King James turn to 1st John 3 1 or If you have basically almost anything else if you have the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses repent.

If you if you have the Joseph Smith version ditto. We're not going to be worrying about Mistranslations and purposeful perversions and things like that at this particular point in time, but if you have basically Almost anything else.

I say the letter one. Okay, the number one. Sorry I'm reading off a PDF here and it was wasn't allowing me to get where I wanted to go. It just did not want did not want to load properly. Unfortunately, so we were having to play around with there.

Anyway, if if you look at that particular Passage in the ESV NASB NIV any of the translations that are modern translations You will see That the phrase and such we are is there for example. If you look at the New American Standards and see how great a love the Father's bestowed on us that we would be called children Of God and such we are ESV and so we are All of it is right there in front of us.

But if you have other translations like the New King James version, it's not there. That phrase and such we are and we are is not to be found there in that translation now, is this you know, some sort of a a Conspiracy on the part of the New King James and the King James to to hide the Doctrine of the adoption of sons and so on and so forth.

No, of course not there is a difference between the TR the textus receptus and The modern critical texts at this particular point in time and in this instance, and this is somewhat unusual in this instance.

It is the modern texts that have a phrase that is not found in the TR normally, that's the other way around because one of the Canons of textual criticism is generally scribes tend to conflate and expand not delete.

So generally the shorter reading is the better reading generally. There are exceptions to that rule obviously depending on context and other reasons and this is one of those exceptions and we'll see why.

Now.

When we look at it in a regular Greek text We might not immediately be struck by Why it is that scholars can be so very certain and I would argue honestly this is one of those texts where you can really find out if a King James only advocate is a King James only person or is a a really reasoned person because This kind of error is very easy to recognize and very easy to see.

What do I mean? Well if you go back to my website go back to the blog and If you if you go to the entry that I made yesterday called another document for today's. Actually, I guess it was this morning another document for today's textual critical DL.

Well, it was supposed to be this morning, but our clock every On the website is an hour off now ever since the time change. So I posted this about 12 30 in the morning and if I was 11 30 last night, so it's it's off one.

I it's ever since time change, but hey, the time's gonna go back pretty soon here anyways, who cares? Anyhow, two seven two thousand seven. You've got a nice pretty graphic from Codex Sinaiticus there.

And then I provided you with three lines of Greek text now if you can't read that that's because you have not installed The proper Greek font and if you go down to the bottom of the blog There is a link to Bible works and you can install the proper Greek font.

So that almost all the time unless I'm posting something that came from an old book where I'm still using the mounts font. Especially an older mounts font that's not gonna work. But most of the time you'll be able to read the Greek on my blog if you will install the proper fonts on your system.

I Gave you three lines of unsealed text and Remember as you see in the graphic the ancient manuscripts are written in unseal capital letters as we would call them today. Without spaces between them words break between lines.

Etc. Etc. And it's not nearly as easy to read as our modern text. The first line gives you what first John 3 one would look like in an unseal text and for most of us It's like okay, and then the second line what I did is I gave you the important Aspect of this text, which is the Greek term clay Thoman which means that we should be called and then the Greek term Chi which means and and then the verb s men we are and So you see clay Thoman Chi s men.

They're all run together in the darker red of the second line on the blog article. Then the third line what I gave you is the reason why we have a textual variant here the term clay Thoman ends with mu epsilon new men that would be similar to one of our words ending with an ing or a tion or an es these are common endings in The English language for various forms of words and we see Ings and tions all the time.

I mean our minds don't even see them after a while they're just they're just factored in as we read and What we're looking at here in first John 3 one is a classical error called homo a tell you ton. Homo a tell you ton, which means similar endings and Here's what happens.

You're a scribe and you are.

Are.

Writing along and you are writing the word clay Thoman and. You have just written.

Mu.

Epsilon new and. Now your eye goes back.

To.

What's called the exemplar what you're copying from and. Since you just wrote mu epsilon new. Your eyes going back to look for what you just wrote to continue on from there. But there's a problem. It's very easy for your eye to find the next mu epsilon new which in this case is the last three letters of S men and.

So if you if your eye goes back and you see that mu epsilon new. And you don't even have to be overly distracted for this to happen. Especially because in this case the grammar Continues to be correct.

There's nothing it doesn't become gibberish sometimes when a scribe make an error the result would be gibberish, but sometimes a scribe can make an error and the result isn't gibberish and. Sometimes when we're copying we don't actually go back and reread What we were writing.

When we do sometimes we go what on earth did I do? But very frequently, let's face it even in today's age, we're in a hurry and we don't go back and proofread and. So if you see similar endings what happened is an early scribe writes clay Thoman his eye comes back.

And he sees the men at the end of chi s men and so he just goes on from there with diya tuta and because of this the world does not know us because it did not know him and. Two words have been deleted inadvertently there is no there's no conspiracy here.

There's nobody going. Well, I don't like this idea of adoption into the family of God, so I'm gonna get rid of it. No nothing like that at all. Instead it's just as if we were writing and we saw we wrote ing our eye goes back.

We find an ing right afterwards and we continue on and don't even notice that the error that we made. That's what happens at 1st. John 3 2. And so when you when you look at it in in UBS 2 PDF. You might not necessarily see that.

Just by looking at the text I mean you can see mu epsilon nu mu epsilon nu. But there's a comma and a space and another space and things like that. Remember that wasn't a part of the original text so when we look down at the variant listing you will know that they put in Parentheses and a which means we are the the.

The committee is certain That we have here the proper reading Chi S men and notice it says p74 vid. Next to it p74 is difficult to read at this point and so we're sometimes. What happens is if a portion of the one column is missing?

They can still go. All right, if it was there It would have taken up about this much space and they can tell by the column that's still there. Basically how many letters were in the missing portion see and so they can.

Even if it's not even if the the sides missing and you can't look the manuscripts that yes. It had it or no it didn't sometimes they'll be able to say well if it didn't then this line would have started up here.

There's too much space there that if it if it was that it had to have been there in other words and so they cite p74 and say that. You know, they can't tell but it seemed to have had it then all of ABC.

You can see a whole list of Minuscule and unseal manuscripts that contain this you also have Lectionaries and the Latin the Vulgate in the Syriac and the Coptic and Ethiopian Georgian and Slavian and and Augustine so on and so forth.

And then under the omission you have 1175 the Byzantine text including unseals KNL some lectionaries and a few manuscripts of the Vulgate.

So.

Again, if we were to just count this, you know, I didn't look at this. I'm going to get out the majority text those of you watching on the webcam. Here is the majority text right there and I have a feeling let's let's find out here.

I didn't didn't look at this beforehand, but this is live webcasting so I can go ahead and look at it. Yep. They do not have it. They they have the note in the bottom. You can see Kai S meant the bottom.

That's one of the advantages of having this but it's the Egyptian versus majority text.

So.

That's a Very clear distinction between the Byzantine text type and.

The.

Alexandrian text type in having that phrase there now. This to me is one of the texts that demonstrates the secondary nature of the Byzantine text type evidently. What happens is early on in the area around Byzantium one of the important manuscripts may be K.

Maybe L. That become the prototype of the Byzantine text platform this simple scribal error takes place and nobody notices it. It then becomes the predominant reading in that one particular area. This is why I reject the majority text type reading because it results in Enshrining what is clearly a scribal error as if it is The actual text itself you see so it's that this is called home.

We tell you tons similar endings and That's a I think hopefully an excellent example for you. Now another kind of error is an error of Pronunciation. Now there there are different areas of sight for example similar endings could also cause you to skip an entire line.

Because if you had mu epsilon nu on the next line down you could lose an entire line. But normally when that kind of error would take place that would really stick out that would almost always result in in You know a real mess.

Something really didn't make any sense anymore. And when you encounter a text doesn't make much sense. There's probably been an error though though. One of the other canons of textual criticism is the more difficult reading is more likely the original reading.

Why? Well because later scribes didn't like difficult readings later scribes like things to be smooth. If the scribe himself didn't understand it, then he might think well someone must have made an error here and so that's Factors in many times as well.

But after the piece of the church called the piece of the church when persecution against Christians ended. The the scriptures could be copied Within what was called a scriptorium now in a scriptorium it can be done a couple different ways.

But one of the ways we know it was done was you would have one person sitting up front reading the text and Then that person Is going to be going at it, you know going to be doing a small chunks of text at a time and then you have copyists sitting at desks Who are listening to him and they're writing down what he says now obviously if they have a question they can raise their hand.

They can say what's the spelling on that whatever it might be, but generally this is the way you could make more than one copy at a time. You would have to read it out and it would be have to be hand copied by one two three-ten People at the same time and then hopefully in the better scriptoriums you would then have people who would do Read throughs and cross-checking and so on so forth.

But what does that raise? That raises not just errors of sight or errors of mind now you have errors of hearing. Now you have errors of hearing. How many times have you been listening to someone and even you know Sunday morning at church.

You just have the the greatest desire to listen carefully and Frequently it's something that's been said that it's it sparks a thought in your mind and all of a sudden you basically wake up three minutes Later because you have chased that rabbit off into the woods someplace.

The pastor is now way down the road and You've been sitting there like a zombie. You've become distracted well, that's you know distracted distraction is a part of the Of the human experience shall we say and So not only that but sometimes people have accents.

Sometimes people don't speak all that clearly ever gone through a drive-thru perhaps Ever gotten to the window and when they read back your order you go. Or you have no clue what the other guys other person is saying because they don't actually speak English or something like that, you know and So there's all sorts of reasons, but it's gonna happen now when we pronounce when when I was reading for example When I look at say verse 28 of chapter 2 kynan the technia meditate and out.

Oh, you know, Ion Fondaro face Skolman Parisian, etc, etc. I am using a pronunciation called the Erasmian Pronunciation goes back to Erasmus. It is an artificial pronunciation. We well know That John would not have pronounced everything the same way.

I did a lot of it. He probably would have figured out what I was saying. But especially when it comes the vowels the Erasmian pronunciation Differentiates between each of the vowels so that when I'm saying it you can tell what the word is but we can tell mainly because of scribal errors that in the ancient world when Greek was still being spoken and obviously scriptoriums and Hearing errors would only be relevant during the period of time when people would still understand enough Greek to write it.

Which means it becomes irrelevant other areas fairly quickly, but We can tell that the differentiations that I make between certain vowels and diphthongs they did not make. So on the other page of that same Scan that I gave you UBS 2 there is a variant in verse 25 and Actually, if you go through UBS text, especially first John chapter 1 you'll find this kind of variant over and over and over and over again and that is the difference between pronouns and The pronouns you and us the first and second plurals for example, I Pronounce the Text in verse 25 as Hameen because I've been taught to pronounce the Ada as a long vowel and The iota in a certain way and Then the other variant this is down at the bottom of the page in the in the variant.

It's a verse 25. This is first John 2 25 you I would see the second variant which is found in B 1241 1292 and a few others as Hameen the difference is between hey and who I Differentiate between the pronunciation of the oops alone in the ADA.

That's how what I was taught to do that's what I'm comfortable doing and when I'm Reading to somebody else they can make the difference between between the two it seems That in the ancient world they were just both.

I mean You mean they sound the same or it could be easily confused for another or the genitive form umone and So we frequently have questions in regards to Especially pronouns is it so that my joy might be that our joy might be fulfilled or that your joy might be fulfilled.

That's not like that exactly makes a huge difference but there are common textual variants where the two could be interchanged and Many manuscripts show the difference between those two they yeah, they look alike, too.

So it could be an error of sight, but probably that one given its commonality Actually comes as an error of hearing within a scriptorium All right.

So.

Errors of sight. Errors of hearing. Errors of mind. Another of the errors of mind to keep to keep in mind that I didn't I didn't provide this. And I don't want to leave anybody completely out in the in the dark here.

But I I wanted to. I knew there was another text. I wanted I wanted to scan and now all of a sudden middle the program it hits me. My apologies, but I I think it is important enough to at least mention it and that is in well I Can I can scan it and and upload it to to the same thing when people listen the archive they can pick it up.