Word Magazine # 47: Gilbert and "Silly Statements" on the NT Text

That's right, back to back Word Magazines!  I have posted audio for WM # 47: Gilbert and "Silly Statements" on the NT Text.  Below are my notes:

On Monday, February 9, 2016 a blog post appeared on the Neo-Calvinistic Gospel Coalition website, titled, “Debunking Silly Statements about the Bible.”   The article is written by  Greg Gilbert, pastor of Third Avenue BC in Louisville, KY, the author of several books published by Crossway, a protégé of Mark Dever, and a regular 9 Marks ministry contributor.  A note at the end of the article explains that the post is an excerpt from Gilbert’s book Why Trust the Bible? (Crossway, 2015) and first appeared on the 9marks.org website.

The post is presented as a defense against “silly” attacks on the Bible like that which appeared in the notoriously flawed 2014 Newsweek article by Kurt Eichenwald which assailed the authenticity and authority of the text of the Bible as “copies of copies.”

It is Gilbert’s article, however, that has itself now come under fire for more than its fair share of factual problems and “silly” statements about the text and transmission of the Bible.

For some of these criticisms, see the comments (especially the post by James Snapp, a restorationist pastor well-informed on text matters and an intrepid defender of the Longer Ending of Mark) under the original posting.

Peter Head’s Evangelical Academic Critique:

More substantially, see the critique offered by Peter Head in a February 10  Evangelical Text Criticism blog-post and the comments.  Head, a Cambridge fellow whose area of study is text criticism, does not mince words in his review which begins, “Unfortunately all around (for the author, Greg Gilbert, his book, the Gospel Coalition) this post contains a number of Silly Statements about the Bible. Christians who want to defend the Bible have a responsibility to know what they are talking about.”  Head picks out seven problematic passages from only the first half of Gilbert’s article.  Here is a summary of what Head sees as problematic in Gilbert’s article and his responses:

1.  Gilbert talks about the Biblical original being written on paper.

Head:  “I think if we find a biblical manuscript on paper we can be 100 percent certain it is not the original.”

2.  Gilbert says we have 5,400 mss. going back to the third century or earlier.

Head:  Less than one per cent of the mss. we have go back “to anything like the third century” or earlier.

3.  Gilbert says there is only a gap of 45-75 years between the writing of the NT books and the mss. we have of those books.

Head:  “This is also potentially misleading. If we date P46 to around AD200 then we are looking at more like 140-150 years for the Pauline letters. For Mark we might have a gap of 200 years. For John perhaps 45-75 years works, but not for any other portion of the NT. Generalisations are not helpful.”

4.  Gilbert cites Codex Vaticanus as an example of a ms. in continuous use and suggests, “it’s well within the realm of possibility that we have in our museums today copies of the originals.”

Head:  Vaticanus is not a good example of continuous usage and:  “Nothing in this suggests that we have immediate copies of the originals in our museums, and as far as I am aware no one has ever argued such a case in any scholarly publication. Wishing doesn’t make it so.”

5.  Gilbert argues that the “gap” between the writing of NT books and the earliest mss. is not so great.  Also, the NT is better attested than other ancient works.  Gilbert says that we have only 8 copies of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War and the earliest is 1,300 years after the work’s writing.

Head:  “I really wish people wouldn’t keep saying this sort of thing. It is nonsensically ill informed. In fact there are 99 early mansucripts of Thucydides' PW, mostly papyrus, some of which go back to the third century BC, dozens from the first and second centuries (LDAB).”

6.  Gilbert discusses variants and argues they are over-counted by inclusion of versions and patristic citations.

Head:  “I’m really not sure where to start on this. It is nonsense from beginning to end.” He adds that Gilbert’s analysis “is completely vacuous. It suggests a lack of understanding of how the standard critical editions actually work, and no one who works with manuscripts would think like this.”

7.  Gilbert argues that the NT variants that do exist in the mss. are not widespread but are only found “in a few isolated places.”

Head:  “This is so wrong. I doubt this person has ever read a manuscript.”  He adds:  “The claim that textual variants within the New Testament ‘tend to cluster around the same few places in the text over and over again’ is not supported by any sort of reality.”  Head suggests opening any critical edition of the NT where one will find textual variants cited in the apparatus on every page.

Robert D. Marcello’s Evangelical Apologetic critique:

Adding to the critical pile-on to Gilbert’s article, on February 12 Robert D. Marcello, Research Director for the Center for New Testament Manuscripts, posted a critique of Gilbert’s article on Dan Wallace’s blog.

Here is a summary of Marcello’s five points of critique:

1.  Likely due to attempting to write on a popular level, Gilbert says the NT was originally written on paper rather than papyrus.

2.  Gilbert’s reference to Vaticanus and continuous use is a “false analogy.”  His claim that we have copies in museums that come directly from the originals is dubious.  Less than 1% of the mss. we have are within few generations of the originals.

3.  Gilbert’s discussion of the number of variants is wrong-headed.  Even conservative scholars acknowledge myriads of variants in NT mss. (not including versions and patristic citations).

4.  Gilbert’s statement that we have c. 5,400 NT mss. is too low.  The current number is c. 5,839 (5,600 at minimum).

5.  The “most egregious error” Gilbert perpetuates a common evangelical apologetic regarding variants [traced to Neil Lightfoot’s How We Got the Bible], wrongly arguing that the variant accounts do not refer to “unique readings” when, in fact, they do.

Marcello concludes:  “There is ample evidence to support the claim that the text of the New Testament is both reliable and stable. At the same time, we don’t need to appeal to false claims of bad counting or incorrect numbers to muster that evidence. These “Silly Statements” need to end if we are ever going to provide solid evidence for the reliability of the text.”

A Confessional Critique of Gilbert:

As noted above, Head and Marcello have pointed out the factual problems with Gilbert’s article (book section).  Most importantly, they expose the problems with what we might call the “old evangelical” defense of the reliability of the text of the NT.  Evangelical apologist cannot get way with saying things like:

(1) We have thousands of early mss. of the Greek NT, when, in fact, only 1% come from the third century or earlier.

(2) Our thousands of NT mss. are superior to the  transmission of other works of antiquity.  This is true in many cases, but in some the transmission is comparable.

(3) The number of variants in the NT mss. can be dismissed or minimized.

This works in the evangelical “echo-chamber” but is less effective outside those circles.  It is not surprising perhaps that these kinds of arguments are found in a 9-Marks, neo-Calvinist author where insular and circular conversations are common (Dever endorses Gilbert, who endorses DeYoung, who endorses Dever, who endorses  Gilbert….).

Beyond the critiques offered by Snapp, Head, and Marcello, we can approach our critique of Gilbert’s article (book section) from another angle.  It fails not only due to factual problems but also and more importantly (IMHO) due to theological problems.

He is attempting to defend the reliable transmission of the Bible based on a restorationist approach rather than a confessional and preservationist approach.

Gilbert asks a good question:  “Are we left simply to give up and admit that all we have are a bunch of useless copies of copies of copies of copies, and that we’ll never have confidence what we have is what the authors actually wrote?”

But his apologetic answer is that we can have confidence (at least to a limited degree) in scholarly ability to reconstruct the original text (behind this, of course, is the modern notion of the elusive inerrant autographa).  This is why he rushes to defend gaps, variants, etc.  He does not defend the providential preservation of the autographa via the apographa, the view reflected in the Westminster CF and the 2LBCF-1689.  At core, then, Gilbert’s views on the text of Scripture reflect the weaknesses of those who are evangelical Calvinists but not confessional Calvinists.

Thus, Gilbert asserts his confidence in the restorationist approach:  “And for another thing, it turns out it’s precisely the existence of those thousands of copies, from all over the Roman Empire and with all their variations, that allows us to reconstruct with a huge degree of confidence what the originals said.” I find it striking that he puts “a huge degree of confidence” in italic.  This is one of the chief problems with the restorationist model.  It does not even see absolute certainty as a conceivable goal.

Later Gilbert compares restoration of the text as like solving a “logic puzzle.”  He adds:

That’s exactly the kind of work scholars have done for centuries on the fragments and manuscripts of the New Testament available to us. The puzzles they face, of course, are far more complicated than these simple examples, but you get the idea. By comparing the ancient copies we have, and thinking carefully about why certain changes or errors might have been made by copyists, scholars reach highly confident conclusions about what the original documents said. It’s not a matter of guesswork or magic, much less of assumption or simply “making things up,” but rather of careful deductive reasoning.

He assures the reader:

Of course you’re free to disagree with any one of the conclusions those scholars reach; Christians have fun arguing about this kind of thing all the time.

And he concludes:

And far from diminishing our ability to identify what the originals said, the vast number of existing copies actually allows us to deductively reason out, to a high degree of historical confidence, what John, Luke, Paul, and the other writers actually wrote.

Note again the emphasis on “a high degree of historical confidence.” 

Here is the problem: What do we do if one scholar reconstructs the text in one way and another scholar reconstructs it in another way?  Which side do we choose?  Who has the competence to make this decision?  Can you make this decision without knowing Greek, studying mss., etc.?  Is it a personal and individual choice for every Christian to make individually?  A decision to be made by a committee of scholars?  An ecclesial decision?  If so, by each local church?  By a body of churches (synod, association, denomination)?  What of the catholic (universal) church?  At root here is in fact a crisis of epistemology and authority for evangelicals who have embraced the modern critical text and the restorationist method.

There is an alternative:  confessionalism.

JTR

Word Magazine # 46: Reeves on Erasmus

I have recorded a "spoken word" version of  my written critique of Ryan M. Reeves' recent Reformation 21 blog post on "Erasmus and the Greek NT" and posted it to sermonaudio.com as WM # 46:  Reeves on Erasmus.

JTR

The Vision (2.12.16): Membership in the Body of Christ

Image:  A sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci, studying the proportions of the human body.

Note:  We began a three part series on Churchmanship last Sunday in our am service.  The first message was on Membership in the Body of Christ, based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-27.  Here are some notes from the exposition of the passage.

Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Here are at least four points that might be drawn from our passage:

1.  The one body with many members has true unity through a common experience of the Lord Jesus Christ (vv. 12-13).

We share a common confession (v. 3) and a common experience of baptism (the reference to baptism here may be both to baptism in the Spirit through regeneration, repentance, and faith, and the ordinance of believer’s baptism by immersion in water).  We believe in a regenerate church membership.  There was diversity in the church at Corinth (Jews and Greeks) but unity in Christ (cf. Gal 3:27-28).

2.  Every member of the body has a distinct and necessary role (vv. 14-20).

Just as the body has a diversity of members, so does the church (vv. 14-17).

Notice the sovereignty of God over the body (v. 18).  In some sense, we can say we do not choose to join the body but He chooses to place us there.

If there was stifling uniformity the body would fail to be a body (vv. 19-20).

3.  We are not to despise the role that God has given to us whatever that may be (vv. 21-25).

Paul speaks here of some members of the body being “less honorable” and of others being “comely parts.”  Perhaps he was speaking of the fact that some (like the officers) service in public ways while others serve in private and largely unseen ways.  The point is that all are essential to the whole, and we should not despise whatever role we have been given.

4.  Each member of the body is to provide mutual care for the others (vv. 26-27).

We cannot be an anonymous gathering of people.  We cannot be indifferent to each other’s needs.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) was a writer who published nearly 40 volumes of verse in her life, most of which was dismissed by critics as airy and sentimental and is now forgotten, but her best known work, a three stanza poem titled “Solitude” continues to strike a chord with many readers.

The first stanza begins with the well known line:

            Laugh and the whole world will laugh with you

                        Weep and you weep alone….

The second:

            Rejoice, and men will seek you,

                        Grieve, and they turn and go….

And the third:

            Feast, and your halls are crowded,

                        Fast, and the world goes by….

I think the poem resonates, because it expresses an innate human desire for a community that not only rejoices with you but also weeps with you.  And Paul says that that kind of community can only truly be found in the people of God, in the body of Christ, because of the bond of faith that holds them together (v. 26).

Let us remember that we are the Body of Christ.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Response to Ryan M. Reeves: "Church History's Greatest Myths: Erasmus and the Greek NT"

Update (2.12.16):  I have posted a "spoken word" version of this critique as Word Magazine # 46:  Reeves on Erasmus.

A friend recently called my attention to an article by Ryan M. Reeves posted this month (February 2016) on the Reformation 21 blog [read the article here].  The article is titled “Church History’s Greatest Myths:  Erasmus and the Greek New Testament.” Reeves is assistant professor of historical theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

The topic sparked my interest, particularly since I’m gearing up to attend the HBU Conference marking the 500 year anniversary of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament (1516) [see Dan Wallace’s recent post on the conference here].  I was also intrigued by the mention of “myths” surrounding Erasmus, thinking the article might address some of the modern scholarly myths that continue to circulate in seminary classrooms and textbooks without documentation from reliable sources (e.g., the first edition of Erasmus’ Greek NT was an error-filled rush job attempting to beat the Complutention Polyglot to the market; when receiving criticism for omitting the CJ in the first two editions, Erasmus made a rash promise to include it if a Greek manuscript containing it could be produced and one was then custom made by his critics to force his hand; Erasmus had an inadequate number of Greek mss., so he liberally back-translated long portions; etc.).

Unfortunately, I found Reeves’ article disappointing.

He begins promisingly by noting the “mythology” surrounding Erasmus’ Greek NT. Unfortunately, he then proceeds to further scholarly myth by noting “Erasmus’ slapdash effort to bring the text to print” and his stepping “into a quagmire of textual criticism.” He adds, with overmuch flourish, that “the tale is embellished to the point of being an overfed caricature of Reformation hagiography.”

He proceeds to note how Erasmus “cobbled together a series of Greek texts” with his supposedly “flawless” (very odd adjective used here) humanistic skill that “fueled the rise of textual, linguistic, and scholarly work on the Bible.”

Having inadvertently promoted a number of Erasmian myths, we finally get to what Reeves says is the real Erasmian myth:  a misunderstanding of the historical context in which his Greek NT appeared. The “first misstep” is “the idea that Greek had been completely lost until the sixteenth century.”  According to Reeves, there was robust interest in the Biblical languages prior to the Reformation and Catholics only staked out dogmatic commitments to the Latin Vulgate after the Reformation.  I know this is only a popular blog post and not an academic article, and certainly not an academic monograph, but at this point I wanted to say:  What?  Can Reeves please give the evidence for this?  Sure, there was some interest in the Biblical languages prior to the Reformation but was not one of the guiding slogans of the Reformers ad fontes, back to the sources?  Was this not a significant insight and commitment of the Reformers which distinguished them from the pre-Reformation RC theologians?  Was this not fueled by an array of providential circumstances, like the fall of Constantinople and the movement of Greek mss. (both pagan and Christian works) and Greek-speaking scholars into Western Europe and the rise of Renaissance humanist interest in the classical age? Even Wycliffe made his English translation from the Latin, did he not?  Yes, only after the Reformation had begun did Trent codify RC views on the Vulgate’s authority and the Westminster Confession declare that the Scriptures are only immediately inspired in the original languages, but were not these developments the result of the inherently conflicting visions of Catholics and Protestants that was at the heart of the Reformation dispute about the Bible?

Reeves then proceeds to assert that Erasmus was not a true “Greek scholar by today’s standards.”  He did not have modern 1400 page grammars.  He only spent five years learning Greek while in Cambridge from 1510-1515.  There are several things that do not seem quite right with this assessment.  First, in his celebrated biography of Erasmus [see Erasmus of Christendom, p. 59], Roland Bainton states that the Dutch humanist “learned the rudiments” of Greek before ever coming to England and had used several Greek quotations in his 1500 work Adages.  By the time he left for Paris he supposedly declared he would rather spend his money buying Greek books than clothes! More importantly, Erasmus was a peerless classical scholar and brilliant linguist.  Men of his generation had a facility with ancient languages that cannot be duplicated in the modern scene.   He was hardly held back by lacking a modern Greek grammar (even one with 1400 pages!).

Reeves also strangely suggests that Erasmus had a naïve view of the Greek manuscripts of the NT, thinking he need “only to walk into a library, find several editions [sic; rather:  manuscripts] of the Greek text, and then head off to the publisher.”  Erasmus has indeed often been faulted for the relatively few Greek mss. he used to compile his Greek NT.  Given, however, that his text was based on the Majority or Byzantine text, scores of mss. were hardly necessary.  A single Byzantine ms. would be basically the same as hundreds of others.  Nevertheless, Erasmus exercised due diligence in seeking out Greek ms. evidence as it was available to him, apparently even writing to compare readings in Codex Vaticanus in Rome.  Reeves repeats the popular anecdote about back translation of the ending of Revelation, but this assertion is not easily verifiable and Reeves provides no references (again, it is a popular blog post and not an academic article).  He throws out other anecdotes regarding Erasmus “at one point" adding a phrase at Acts 9:6 and forgetting “which verses in Revelation were his,” but, again, no hard or specific evidence is provided.  We are only left with questions:  If Erasmus merely considered options for Acts 9:6 but did not adopt them in the end, how can you fault him?  Which verses in Revelation is he talking about?

Reeves furthermore repeats the “rush to print” and the work was "error-laden" myths of Erasmus’ Greek NT.  He even has the audacity to blame Erasmus for creating “one of the great publishing catastrophes in early modern history. Errors in typesetting and transcription appeared everywhere.”  Ouch!  Oxford University Erasmian scholar M. A. Screech does not agree, however, with Reeves’ assessment of Erasmus’ work [see his “introduction” in Anne Reeve, Ed., Erasmus’ Annotations on the NT:  The Gospels, p. xii).  He describes the idea that Erasmus “hurriedly skimped” in his editing work on the Greek NT in order to beat the Spaniards to print as a “legend, repeated from book to book for a century or more.”  He also says that the Annotations “were remarkably free from misprints” and “even the Greek NT is not quite so full of them as is often alleged.”

Yes, Erasmus’ work was not well received by some in his day, most especially by those committed to the RC church, who did not welcome his challenge to the Vulgate.  As Reeves rightly points out and other scholars (like H. J. de Jonge) have solidly explained, Erasmus’ first concern in the Novum Instrumentum was his own new Latin translation.  His Greek text was a supplement to the Latin.  Early Reformers (like Luther, Tyndale, and even Calvin) no doubt used Erasmus, but it was the later printed editions of the TR from Protestant scholars like Stephanus and Beza that would have wider influence.  Reeves fails to note this.

The “second misstep” which Reeves identifies is the supposed assumption that the early Reformers could learn biblical languages “without limits.”  This is another place where I’d like citations.  Who has assumed this, for example?

He notes especially the weaknesses of the early Reformers with Hebrew.  Two objections:  (1) Reeves provides no specific examples but only generalities; (2) He fails to note that the transmission of the Hebrew Bible did not depend on the Reformers but on the Masoretic scribes.

One of the main rubs I have with Reeves throughout is that he seems to assert that we know the Bible and the Biblical languages better now than the Reformers did.  We may have “a comedy of riches” (strange term) at our digital fingertips but this does not mean we have the mastery and discipline of the great men of the Reformation.   Would Luther’s access to the Dead Sea Scrolls or to the Akkadian language really have made him a better expositor of justification by faith?  Does a modern seminary graduate really finish his degree with “a stronger foundation in biblical grammar” than Erasmus had?

Yes, 2016 marks 500 years since Erasmus’ Greek NT was published.  It is a work still surrounded by myths.  I am afraid Reeves has added to this condition rather than alleviated it.

JTR

Tract Note: Thomas Boston: "Am I Really a Christian?"

A few years ago I modernized and abridged a section on assurance from Thomas Boston's classic Human Nature in Its Fourfold State.

Last year Chapel Library created a tract based on the abridgment.  Hard copies can be ordered at a low cost here and the pdf can be accessed for free here.

My prayer is that this tract might be of spiritual use to its readers.  Here is the introduction for the tract:

Though it would certainly be unkind to give false assurance of salvation to someone who has not been truly converted, it would be equally cruel to withhold comfort and assurance to a weak lamb who suffers with despair over his spiritual state. In his spiritual classic Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, Thomas Boston lists eight "cases" where a true Christian might have spiritual doubts about the authenticity of his faith. Such doubts, Boston notes, "may hinder some persons from the comfortable view of their happy state." Thus, he writes to encourage, comfort, and assure those saints who are burdened with such doubts.

JTR

Booklet Note: Joel R. Beeke's "How Should Christian Men Lead Their Families?"

I just read Joel Beeke's little booklet How Men Should Lead Their Families? (Reformation Heritage Books, 2014).  Beeke encourages Christian husbands and fathers to act as prophets, priests, and kings in their homes, following the servant leadership model of Christ.  The booklet ends with this Puritan prayer:

Let those that are united in me in tender ties be precious in Thy sight, and devoted to Thy glory. Sanctify and prosper my domestic devotion, my domestic instruction, my domestic discipline, my domestic example, that my house may be a nursery for heaven and a church as the garden of the Lord, enriched as trees of righteousness of Thy planting for Thy glory. Let not those in my family fall short of heaven at last, but grant that the promising appearances of tender consciences, of soft hearts, of the alarms and delights of Thy Word may not be blotted out, but may bring forth judgment unto victory in all those whom I love.

JTR

Christian Response to Feminism

The audio is posted for a message from our first Lord's Day afternoon Bible study from last Sunday (2.7.16) on A Christian Response to Feminism. Several folk asked afterwards for my notes, so I have also posted those as a pdf here. I spent the first 17 or so minutes in a rather rambling recap of the previous lesson on Biblical manhood and womanhood, so if you just want to hear the material covered in the notes on the audio skip ahead to the 18 minute mark.

JTR

The Vision (2.5.16): An Anchor of the Soul

Note:  Devotion taken from last Sunday morning's sermon on Hebrews 6:16-20.

Hebrews 6:19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; 20 Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

In v. 19 the inspired author describes the Christian hope as “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.”  He is not thinking of an anchor in rock climbing but of an anchor that holds a ship steadfast in a storm and keeps it from crashing onto the shore.  The same word agkyra appears three times in Acts 27 in the description of Paul’s sea voyages (vv. 29, 30, 40).

In Ephesians 4:14, Paul can speak of immature Christians as like “children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” 

In 1 Timothy 1, Paul could likewise warn Timothy not to be like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who, he said, “made shipwreck” of the faith they had once possessed (vv. 19-20).

The point here:  The people to whom Hebrews is written were literally drifting away from Christ.  They were doing so either due to persecution, hardships, trials, doubts, moral failings, or, perhaps, due to spiritual laziness (see v. 12a:  “That ye be not slothful”).  The admonition here:  We have an anchor for the soul.  We have what Peter calls “the exceeding great and precious promises” (2 Peter 1:4).  Thomas Watson observed:  “Having cast anchor in heaven, a Christian’s heart never sinks” (Divine Contentment, p. 15).

So, like Abraham, we have God’s immutable counsel and his oath (Hebrews 6:17).

We have a strong consolation (v. 18).

We have a refuge (v. 18).

We have the horns of the altar.

We have the hope set before us (v. 18).

We have the anchor of our souls, sure and steadfast (v. 19a).

But notice how the metaphor shifts in vv. 19b-20.  This anchor entered “into that within the veil” (v. 19b).  He is talking about a high priest who entered into the holy of holies to make sacrifices for the sins of the people.

He is the “forerunner” who entered “for us” (v. 20).  The anchor of our soul is a person:  “even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (v. 20).  Jesus is the anchor of our souls.  It is because of Christ that we have assurance that we might persevere to the end.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

2016 Chinese Lunar New Year Tracts

2016 Chinese Lunar New Year Tracts for "The Year of the Monkey" can be downloaded at the Gospel Highway Magazine website (look here).  Tracts are available in Chinese and in Chinese/English.

JTR

An Internal Argument for the Comma Johanneum

I re-read today the Trinitarian Bible Society article by G. W. Anderson and D. E. Anderson titled "Why 1 John 5:7-8 Is In The Bible?" (You can read it here).  The article reviews the comments of three interpreters from three different eras who defended the authenticity of the so-called Comma Johanneum or "Three Heavenly Witnesses" passage: Matthew Henry (1700s), Robert Lewis Dabney (1800s); and Edward F. Hills (1900s).

The external evidence for the CJ is admittedly weak, but Dabney and Hills both point out what, I believe, is one of the strongest arguments from internal evidence in favor of the CJ based, in particular, on gender agreement.

If the CJ is omitted the passage would read:

5:7a  For there are three which bear witness [hoti treis eisin hoi martyrountes]

5:8b  The Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one [to pneuma kai to hudor kai to haima, kai hoi treis eis to hen eisen].

The problem would be that the three neuter singular nouns in v. 8b would be preceded by the masculine adjective number three [treis] and the masculine plural article and participle [hoi martyrountes] and followed by the masculine plural article and masculine adjective number three [hoi treis]. 

If, however, the CJ were original, v. 7a would be followed instead by "in the heaven, the Father, and the Word, and the Holy Spirit [en to ourano, ho pater, ho logos, kai to hagion pneuma]," which, with two masculine singular nouns [ho pater, ho logos] and one neuter singular adjective and noun [to hagion pneuma], would appear to fit better grammatically in the context.

This point is made by Dabney and cited in the article:

First, if it be made, the masculine article, numeral, and particle…are made to agree directly with three neuters—an insuperable and very bald grammatical difficulty. But if the disputed words are allowed to stand, they agree directly with two masculines and one neuter noun…where, according to a well known rule of syntax, the masculines among the group control the gender over a neuter connected with them....

The same point is made by Hills and cited in the article:

In the third place, the omission of the Johannine comma involves a grammatical difficulty. The words spirit, water, and blood are neuter in gender, but in 1 John 5:8 they are treated as masculine. If the Johannine comma is rejected, it is hard to explain this irregularity. It is usually said that in 1 John 5.8 the spirit, the water, and the blood are personalized and that this is the reason for the adoption of the masculine gender. But it is hard to see how such personalization would involve the change from the neuter to the masculine. For in verse 6 the word Spirit plainly refers to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. Surely in this verse the word Spirit is “personalized,” and yet the neuter gender is used. Therefore, since personalization did not bring about a change of gender in verse 6, it cannot fairly be pleaded as the reason for such a change in verse 8. If, however, the Johannine comma is retained, a reason for placing the neuter nouns spirit, water, and blood in the masculine gender becomes readily apparent. It was due to the influence of the nouns Father and Word, which are masculine. Thus the hypothesis that the Johannine comma is an interpolation is full of difficulties.

This does indeed appear to represent a substantial internal argument in favor of the originality and authenticity of the CJ.

JTR  

HBU Erasmus Conference Schedule Update

The full conference schedule for the upcoming Erasmus Conference at Houston Baptist University (see my previous post here) has been posted (see the schedule here).  Looks like I'll be doing my "John Calvin and Text Criticism" paper in the 2:30 pm session on Friday, February 26.  My co-presenter in that session will be looking at Martin Luther's views on the text of the NT.  I look forward to hearing his paper.

JTR

Word Magazine # 45: Is Acts 8:37 in the New Testament?

Note:  I just posted WM # 45 Is Acts 8:37 in the New Testament? to sermonaudio.com.  Below are my notes:

1.  Three basic camps on the text of the NT:

a.  Modern critical text advocates: The best text is the modern eclectic text.

b.  Majority text advocates:  The best text is that found in the majority of extant mss. or the Byzantine text.

c.  Textus Receptus advocates:  The best text is that which was the consensus text at the time of the Reformation and which is represented in the standard printed text produced in this era.  We can also call this the “confessional text” position.

Of these three, positions b and c are closer to each other than either is to position a.  Both b and c agree, for example, that Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53—8:11 should be included in the NT text.

Views b and c are not, however, identical.  The Textus Receptus includes several passages that are minority readings which do not appear in the majority of Greek mss.  The best known of these is the Comma Johanneum, 1 John 5:7b-8a.  Another of the best known of these is Acts 8:37, the baptismal confession of the Ethiopian Eunuch.

2.  The texual issue with Acts 8:37:

This verse is omitted in the modern critical text and relegated to the footnotes, a practice followed by translations based on the modern critical text.

So, if you look at a translation like the Tyndale NT, the Geneva Bible, the KJV or NKJV you find v. 37.  Cf. the KJV:

KJV Acts 8:37 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

If you look at modern translations based on the modern critical text, like the RSV, NRSV, ESV, NIV, etc., however, you will find the verse is missing, moving from v. 36 to v. 38 with v. 37 in the footnote with some comment about its presence being missing.  The ESV note, for example, begins, “Some manuscripts add all or most of verse 37….”

3.  External evidence:

Inclusion of v. 37 is supported by the following Greek mss.:  E (Codex Laudianus), 36, 323, 453, 945, 1739, 1891, 2818 and others.  Among the versions, it is also included in the Old Latin, the Clementine Vulgate, some Harklean Syriac mss., and the Mesokemic [Middle] Egyptian.

Exclusion of v. 37 is supported by the following Greek mss.:  p45, p74, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, C, 33, 81, 614.  Among the versions, it is omitted in the Vulgate, the Peshitta and Harklean Syriac, the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic, the Ethiopic.

Analysis:

Exclusion is supported by two papyri (p45 and p74) and by the modern critical heavyweights Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, as well as Codex Alexandrinus.  Exclusion is the Majority text reading.

In his Textual Commentary (Third Ed.), Bruce Metzger describes v. 37 as a “Western addition.”  He concludes:  “There is no reason why scribes should have omitted the material, if it had originally stood in the text” (p. 359).

He adds that Erasmus found the verse in the margin of ms. 4, from which he inserted it into the text, having “judged that it had been omitted by the carelessness of the scribes (arbitror omissum librariorum incuria)” (p. 360).

Nevertheless, the inclusion of v. 37 is found in a minority stream of the Greek NT, though the earliest ms. in which it appears is the sixth century ms. E.

Some commentators are also keen to note that even among the manuscripts which contain it, there are some variations, but this should not be overstated.  Codex E, for example includes the name “Philip” in the opening, “And Philip said to him” and adds “in the Christ” before the confession “the Son of God.”  The similarities of the verse in the manuscripts which contain it are greater than the differences.

The most important piece of evidence in support of v. 37 is the fact that it is cited in the Church Fathers:  Irenaeus (second century; bishop of Lyon from c. 177) cites v. 37 in Against Heresies (3.12.8); Cyprian (d. September 14, 258) in The Treatises of Cyprian, Treatise 12, 3.43; and Augustine (d. 430) in Homily 49.11.

Clearly v. 37 is very ancient and it was acknowledged as part of the text at a very early stage.

4.  Internal Evidence:

As noted above, Metzger has argued that if v. 37 is original there is no good reason for it to have been omitted.  He can, however, imagine how it might have been added.  In his Textual Commentary [emphasis added], he observes that “the formula” was “doubtless used by the early church in baptismal ceremonies, and may have been written in the margin of the copy.  Its insertion into the text seems to have been due to the feeling that Philip could not have baptized the Ethiopian without securing a confession of faith, which needed to be expressed in the narrative.”

The challenge to this view comes in the fact that it appears so early in the Church Fathers.

Can we not imagine any reasons why there might have been doctrinal controversy over this verse that might have led to its omission?  Though it was common in the nineteenth century to argue that the NT text was not affected by doctrinal controversy (see Westcott and Hort), that view began to be toppled by Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (English ed., 1971).  Bauer’s influence is seen in Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture:  The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of Scripture (1993).

Surely, we can see that there might have been some controversy over the Ethiopian’s declaration:  “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

There might also have been controversy over baptism.  This is something that J. A. Alexander noted in his 1857 commentary on Acts when he defended v. 37 as genuine and suggested it was omitted by many scribes, “as unfriendly to the practice of delaying baptism, which had become common, if not prevalent, before the end of the 3^rd century” (as cited in Hills, The King James Version Defended, p. 201).

5.  Cottrel R. Carson’s arguments for Acts 8:37:

Let me add that at least one modern critic has challenged the status quo and argued for reconsideration of Acts 8:37.  Cottrel Carson, former NT Professor at Mercer University, is the author of “Acts 8:37—A Textual Reexamination” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 51:1-2 (1997):  pp. 57-78.  Again, Carson is by no means a TR advocate.  Still, among other points, he made the following observations regarding the critical text omission of Acts 8:37:

a.  The critical text reflects over-reliance on the uncial mss. and under-reliance on the Church Fathers and papyri.

b.  In the case of Acts 8:37 he notes that while p45 is dated to the third century, p74 is dated to the seventh century.

c.  He suggests that Acts 8:26-39 might have been “an independent document”  used as a source by Luke in which “the baptismal formula, including v. 37, was integral to the independent document” (p. 66).

d.  He suggests that p50 (dated to the third century) might be an example of this “independent document” though, unfortunately, the fragment of the passage only contains Acts 8:26-32 (p. 67).

e.  He suggests historical reasons why v. 37 might have been omitted in the fourth century, including an attempt to remove the practice of a direct declaration (pp. 71-72) and an effort to put the focus on Cornelius  as the first Gentile convert, rather than the Ethiopian Eunuch (pp. 72-75).  These are speculative, but they provide attempts to explains how and why v. 37 might have come under suspicion.

f.  Carson concludes that “in the final analysis, there is a strong case for verse 37’s being part of a tradition earlier than that found in the fourth-century manuscripts” (p. 75).  As to the NA and UBS Greek NTs, he says “there is not sufficient evidence to justify the certainty with which these two texts reject verse 37.  At the very least, verse 37 should be moved from the textual apparatus into the text, perhaps with brackets” (p. 76).

6.  Providential inclusion:

We would go further than Carson and argue that Acts 8:37 should be acknowledged as part of the inspired text (i.e., not in the footnotes and without brackets).  Acts 8:37 was providentially included in the first and subsequent editions of Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum.  It was then included in the Protestant printed editions of the Textus Receptus like those of Stephanus and Beza.  From this it was included in the Reformation era vernacular translations of the Bible.

Of particular significance is the fact that the framers of the great confessional statements, like the 2LBCF 1689, cited Acts 8:37 as a prooftext (see the 1689 confession, chapter 29 of Baptism, paragraph 2).  There is a confessional issue if one rejects the traditional text (MT of OT; TR of NT).

This is a problem not only for those who hold to the modern critical text but also for those who hold to the Majority/Byzantine text.  In conversation with a fellow RB pastor who is Majority/Byzantine advocate, I offered these challenges to that text:

1.  It is basically a modern development (19th-20th century).

2.  Its advocates have generally not been Reformed men (Burgon was a high Anglican; Farstand and Hodges were dispensationalists; Robinson is a broad evangelical SB).

3.  It is the basis of no standard or widely used translation in any language.

4.  It is a restorationist approach which does not exist in any standard format (whether Farstad/Hodges, Robinson/Pierpont, or Wilbur Pickering's edition based on family 35).

In the end, on a practical and pastoral level, Acts 8:37 is a very significant passage, especially for Reformed Baptists.  Our NT would be severely diminished if it were absent from the text or relegated to a footnote.

JTR