Robert Preus on Seventeenth Century Lutheran Dogmaticians & Textual Variants:

 

From X post:

Here is Robert Preus’s description of how the seventeenth century Lutheran dogmaticians handled textual variants:

"In their defense of the authority of Scripture the dogmaticians were obligated to enter upon an involved discussion on the authenticity of the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture. It was their conviction, as opposed to the Catholics and Socinians, that there had been no general corruption of the Scriptures. Not only the canonical books themselves but also the sentences and words and letters of these books are authentic. They have not been corrupted by Jews or Christians by the errors or negligence or ignorance of copyists, but by divine providence have been preserved intact and incorrupt. There are of course innumerable individual errors in the thousands of codices, just as there are in copies of other books, and these errors may even have been inserted by Jews or heretics, but there has been no general corruption of Scripture. Most of the individual errors in Scripture are variant readings of a technical nature and of little importance, such as omissions, spellings, transpositions and the like, and can be quite easily corrected. Such variations, along with diversities in pointing and accent, cannot be called corruptions. It goes without saying that the dogmaticians argue for the authenticity of only the original Greek and Hebrew texts, not for translations."

-The Inspiration of Scripture: A Study of the Theology of the 17th Century Lutheran Dogmaticians, 134-135.

At least Five Lessons:

1. The Lutheran orthodox were aware of minor textual variants in the transmission of the text of the Bible.

2. They did not see such variants (whether intentional or unintentional) as defeaters for embracing the divine preservation of Scripture without corruption, just as the English orthodox divines would say in WCF 1:8 that the Bible had been by God's singular care and providence "kept pure in all ages."

3. Canon involves not only the books but also the texts (i.e., sentences, words, and letters) of those books. 4. They held to the original Hebrew and Greek texts as authoritative and not ancient versions (Latin, LXX, etc.).

5. The Protestant view was distinct from the RCC and Socinians.