WM 370: REACTION: Byzantine Priority Conference: 1600 YEARS and COUNTING?

 

JTR

Article: "Verses with 'Zero-Support' in the Modern Critical Text of the Greek New Testament"

 

Jeffrey T. Riddle, "Verses with 'Zero-Support' in the Modern Critical Text of the Greek New Testament," Quarterly Record, No. 649 (October-December 2024): 21-26.

A PDF of the print version of the article can be found here.

An expanded online version of the article with complete End Notes can also be found here.

JTR

WM 296: Review: Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament?

 

JTR

WM 275: Supplement: White/Ross Review: Robinson on Modern Eclecticism & Sequential Variant Units

 

JTR

WM 216: Robinson on Preservation: Part One

 

Here is my brief, ex tempore review of Maurice Robinson's article, "The Letter and the Spirit." The episode ends with discussion of this stunning statement:

"Obviously, the preservational role of the Holy Spirit is neither absolute nor specifically miraculous, but occupies a passive and apparently minimalist role rather than an active or observable divine interference within the transmissional process."

JTR

Book Review: Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Byzantine Textform 2005

 

I have posted audio versions (above) of my review of Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Byzantine Textform 2005, from Evangelical Forum Newsletter, Vol. 5., No. 2 (2008): 38-39.

I have also posted the written review to my academia.edu page (read it here).

Note: Evangelical Forum Newsletter was a periodical of the Evangelical Forum, which I served as Editor from 2003-2009. I am hoping to re-post some of my book reviews that appeared in the EFN in coming months. 

Another Note: Since this review appeared, there have been two new editions of Robinson and Pierpont's The New Testament in the Original Greek. Byzantine Textform: The 2005/2010 Edition and the 2018 Edition.

JTR

WM 164: Has there been a "major shift" in the goal(s) of text criticism?

Note: I have posted WM 164: Has there been a "major shift" in the goal(s) of text criticism? to sermonaudio.com. Listen here.

Here are some notes for this episode:

I was pleased to have Pastor Dane Jöhannsson as a special guest on this episode.

This episode is a follow up to the discussion in WM 163:Follow Up: Gurry, Parker, Text & Postmodernism.

It examines the question as to whether or not there has been a “major shift” in the goals of modern academic text criticism in the twenty first century.

It has three parts:

First, it offers a survey of some of the conversation with PG that continued in the comments section on my blog on the WM 163 post:

PG doubled down on his contention that the goal of NT criticism has not undergone a significant postmodern change and that many are still pursuing the “old goal.” He wrote: I repeat: many in the guild continue to think the original text is a legitimate goal for the discipline.

In response I provided a list of quotations in chronological order for readers to consider for themselves:

Here are a few quotes readers might enjoy reviewing in making their own judgments:

Wescott and Hort, Introduction to the NT in the Original Greek (1882): “This edition is an attempt to present exactly the words of the NT, so far as they can now be determined from surviving documents.”

Bart Ehrman, “The Text as Window” (1995): “The ultimate goal of textual criticism, in the judgement of most of its practitioners, is to reconstruct the original text of the NT….No historian would deny the desirability of this objective… At the same time, many textual critics have come to recognize that an exclusive concentration on the autographs can prove to be myopic… Much more, however, is left to be done … as we move beyond a narrow concern for the autographs to an interest in the history of their transmission, a history that can serve as a window into the social world of early Christianity.”

DC Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (1997): “There is no original text. There are just different texts from different stages of production”

DC Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (1997): “…the concept of a Gospel that is fixed in shape, authoritative, and final as a piece of literature has to be abandoned.”

EJ Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in NT Textual Criticism” (1999): “Now, however, reality and maturity require that textual criticism face unsettling facts, chief among them that the term ‘original’ has exploded into a complex and highly unmanageable multivalent entity.”

Michael W. Holmes, “Introduction,” The Greek NT SBL Edition (2010): “The standard text is viewed by some of those who use it as a ‘final’ text to be passively accepted rather than a ‘working’ text subject to verification and improvement…. In circumstances such as these, the existence of an alternatively critically edited text … will help remind readers of Greek NT that the text-critical task is not finished… it may also serve to draw attention to a fuller understanding of the goal of NT textual criticism: both identifying the earliest text and also studying all the variant readings for the light they shed on how particular individuals and faith communities adopted, used, and sometimes altered the texts they read, studied, and transmitted.”

DC Parker Textual Scholarship (2012): “…“the modern concept of a single authoritative ‘original’ text … a hopeless anachronism.”

Dirk Jongkind, Ed., “Introduction,” Tyndale House Greek NT (2017): “This edition aims to present in an easily readable format the best approximation to the words written by the NT authors, within the constraints of the documentary evidence that survives.”

Jennifer Knust & Tommy Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone (2019): “Our interpretation therefore begins not with the search for an original or initial text but with the available textual objects, each of which tells its own story, and with the readings of these distinctive objects by the communities that produced and interpreted them.”

Second, we discussed two other reactions to WM 163: a private email rebuke and TW’s response:

First, we discussed a couple of private emails I got from someone “in the guild”
rebuking me as an “outsider” and challenging someone who is “on the inside.”

Second, we noted Tommy Wasserman’s recent response to WM 163 in a post on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.

I plan to do a separate WM soon that will be devoted entirely to responding to TW.

Third, I shared a brief clip from a recent podcast in which Maurice Robinson, noted Byzantine Priority Advocate and Research Professor at SEBTS, addresses the current state of academic NT text criticism:

His comments were taken from episode 3 of a podcast called Hoi Polloi hosted by Pastor Abidan Paul Sha (22:27-28:01).

At one point Robinson quips, “there are a lot of strange things happening in NT textual criticism.”

Dr. Robinson’s comments seem to affirm my contention that there has, in fact, been a major postmodern shift in the goal(s) of contemporary academic text criticism.

Conclusion:

PG seems to be saying, “But there are some of us (evangelicals) in 'the guild' and even some 'gatekeepers' of the scholarly academic text who are seeking the 'original' text." But that’s not the language they use. They want the “initial text.” They do not mean by “initial text” what Wescott and Hort meant by “original text.” The most, for example, that Jongkind can say of the THGNT is that it is “the best approximation to the words written by the NT authors, within the constraints of the documentary evidence that survives.” Our concern is that this type of approach ultimately undermines any confidence in the ability to define with confidence (and accuracy) what the Word of God is.

JTR

Word Magazine # 43: Definitions and the Confessional Text

I posted Word Magazine # 43 Definitions and the Confessional Text today to sermonaudio.com.  In this episode I give some feedback related to this video from RB Pastor Robert Truelove and his challenge to James White [modern critical text proponent] to debate Dr. Maurice Robinson [Byzantine text proponent].

I provide some of the background for this discussion relating to RB apologist James White’s tendency to confuse KJV-Onlyism with Reformed confessional critiques of the modern-critical text.  Here is the excerpt from Theodore Letis’ combined review of James White and Gail Riplinger in Letis’ Ecclesiastical Text (1997) which I referenced:

JW and GR are both cut from the same bolt of cloth.  Hence, the old saying holds true:  “it takes one to know one.”  They are, in fact, “kissing cousins.” In terms of religious genus.  The very fact that White felt Riplinger’s book, New Age Versions (which will be addressed below), merited an entire book length reply indicates that he must have felt that her propositions were compelling enough to deserve such treatment [footnote:  He does, of course, treat other authors as well as the movement itself, though he provides no historical analysis or even sociological analysis of the roots of this movement and its advocates.  I believe this is because it is all rather close to his own religious point of reference].  In other words, her superficial treatment of the subject was, nevertheless, disturbing, enough for him to treat it seriously.  This speaks as much about his grasp of the subject—or lack of—as it does about Riplinger’s effort (p. 222).

I also note that in his video Truelove claims that the titles of “traditional text” and “ecclesiastical text” should be reserved for those who hold to the Majority Text/Byzantine Text position. This got me thinking about definitions. I also make reference in this episode to the Confessional Bibliology FB group where this question has also been raised (see the related website here).

In an attempt to clarify matters, I suggested there are three camps or positions regarding what the proper text of the Greek NT (none of which include KJV-Onlyists) should be:

(1)  Modern-critical text.

(2) Majority/Byzantine text.

(3) Textus Receptus.

Though I think Truelove’s claiming “traditional text” and “ecclesiastical text” exclusively for the Majority/Byzantine position is more than a little dubious, I suggested that the Textus Receptus position might be called the Reformed Confessional Text position or simply the Confessional Text position.

JTR