I have uploaded WM 114: James White, the TR, and Revelation 16:5 (listen here).
My notes for this episode are below:
Preface: Several folk contacted me last
Friday, pointed me in the direction of apologist James White’s recent lecture at
Covenant Baptist Seminary on “Textual Criticism and the TR,” and suggested I
offer a rejoinder.
Yes, there
is plenty in JW’s presentation with which those who affirm the “confessional text”
will be less than pleased.
On the other
hand, the very fact that JW was trying to address this issue on some level
(even if he does not really seem to understand or appreciate the confessional
defense of the TR as the standard Greek text of the NT) shows that it is an
emerging perspective that he and other Calvinistic evangelicals who have
embraced the modern critical text are having to face.
Though it is
tempting to do a complete review of the session, I want to offer ten observations:
First: The title of
JW’s lecture is misleading: “Textual Criticism and the TR.” This interesting
topic title was never really addressed. JW might have taken the opportunity to
describe the history of the printed TR beginning with Erasmus (1516), the various
Protestant printed editions (and even differences among them), how the TR
became the basis for the Protestant translations, how the TR was challenged and
eventually toppled during the nineteenth century, and how there are those who
still hold to the TR as the standard text.
Second: This lecture
actually ended up being a review of a twitter exchange between JW and an
unnamed person who happens to have a twitter handle that includes the words “text
receptus.” For some reason, JW seems to take this unnamed person as
representing the best of the pro-TR position. Better title: “JW reviews a
twitter exchange he had with an unnamed person who attempted to defend the KJV
rendering of Revelation 16:5, on the basis of some supporting textual and other
evidence.”
A long-standing critique of JW’s tendency to confuse matters
in this way was articulated by Theodore Letis in his review of the KJV Only Controversy, which appears as
Appendix B in The Ecclesiastical Text,
which begins with the caustic observation, “James White and Gail Riplinger are
both cut from the same bolt of cloth….” This lecture shows that JW apparently
has not yet profited from Letis’s critique.
Third: The lecture
came to focus on a single controversial verse in the TR tradition: Revelation
16:5. No explanation or distinction was made between the TR, the modern text,
and the Majority text (and all three have different readings here):
Modern (NA 28): dikaios ei, ho ōn
kai ho hēn, ho hosios (“you are righteous, who is and who was, the
Holy One”)
P47: dikaios ei, ho ōn kai ho hēn kai hosios (“you are
righteous, who is and who was, and holy”)
Majority
(Hodges/Farstad): dikaios ei, ho ōn kai ho hēn,
hosios (“you are righteous, who is and who
was, holy”)
TR
(as in Scrivener and Beza, 1598): dikaios, Kurie, ei, ho ōn kai ho hēn
kai ho esomenos (“righteous, Lord, are you, who is and who was
and who will be”)
TR
(as in Erasmus, 1516): dikaios Kurie ei ho ōn kai ho hēn
kai ho hosios (“righteous, Lord, are you, who is and who was and who [is] holy”)
Fourth: JW repeated
his disparagement of the TBS’ reprinting of the Scrivener Greek NT. He
called it “a Greek text based on an English translation” (c. 3:15) and “the KJV
NT in Greek” (c. 4:15). This is an outright misrepresentation of Scrivener’s
work and might mislead a neophyte to think that Scrivener “backtranslated” the
KJV into Greek!
In his preface to his original 1881 work (not the TBS reprint of it), Scrivener
explains:
….Beza’s fifth and last
text of 1598 was more likely than any other to be in the hands of King James’s
revisers, and to be accepted by them as the best standard within their reach.
It is moreover found on comparison to agree more closely with the Authorised
Version than any other Greek text; and accordingly it has been adopted by the
Cambridge Press as the primary authority….All variations from Beza’s text of
1598, in number about 190, are set down in an Appendix at the end of the
volume, together with the authorities on which they respectively rest.
(viii-ix).
Correction: In the podcast I gave the wrong date for this work (I said 1898, probably thinking of the 1598 Beza; verbal scribal error!). As best I can understand Scrivener published The New Testament in Greek According to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version Together with the Variations Adopted in the Revised Version in 1881 and it was reprinted numerous times (second printing in 1881, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1890, 1908, 1949). The preface cited above is from that edition. Another printing was apparently done of The New Testament in the Original Greek According to the Text followed in the Authorised Version, that is, without the notes on the variations adopted in the Revised Version, in 1894 and 1902 (see preface to the TBS Greek NT). As far as I can understand, the text of the TBS Greek NT is, however, the same as that in this 1881 work (again without notes on the Revised Version) and so the information in the preface applies. Namely, it follows the 1598 Beza, except for c. 190 variations.
I would hope that JW would be more careful and accurate when
he discusses this edition of the TR.
Fifth: Revelation
16:5 is admittedly a difficult text for TR advocates, as are all points where
the TR varies from the Majority/Byzantine text (as with others, like the CJ). It illustrates the need for a
critical edition of the TR. Please note: To say that it is difficult, however,
does not mean that it is incomprehensible or indefensible.
Sixth: The
difficulty is enhanced by the fact that Revelation 16:5 represents one of the
few places where there is a significant
variation in the printed TR editions of the Reformation era. The reading in
Beza diverges other TR editions (e.g., Erasmus, Stephanus) and the reading in
Beza is also followed in the KJV.
The KJV reading at Revelation 16:5 thus stands out in
comparison to other Protestant versions:
Luther’s
NT (1522; from Die Bibel nach der
übersetzung Martin Luthers): “Gericht bist du, der du bist, und der du warst, du Heiliger”
Tyndale (from David Daniell’s modern spelling of 1534 ed.):
“Lord, which art and wast, thou art righteous and holy”
Károlyi
Gáspár Hungarian Bible (1590): “Igaz vagy Uram, a ki vagy és a ki valál, te
Szint”
Geneva Bible (Tolle Lege reprint of the 1599 ed.): “Lord,
thou art just, which art, and which wast: and Holy”
KJV (1611): “Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast,
and which will be”
Edward F. Hills has a valuable discussion of Beza’s ten
editions of the Greek NT in The King
James Version Defended (pp. 206-208). He suggests that Beza’s humanism was
restrained by “the common faith.” He notes two “conjectural emendations” from
Beza that entered into the KJV at Romans 7:6 and Revelation 16:5.
Those who defend the TR as the foundational Greek NT text and
respect the KJV as an English translation will necessarily have to examine
these two texts, among others.
Seventh: Beza’s
reading at Revelation 16:5 (and its usage in the KJV) requires thoughtful
analysis.
Here is Eramus’s 1516 text of Revelation 16:5:
Here is Beza’s 1598 text of Revelation 16:5 with his
commentary on the verse:
On what basis did Beza make the editorial decision to have
the text read as it does? Was it a pure conjectural emendation or did he have some
Greek or versional evidence? What does Beza mean when he writes, “Itaque ambigere non possum quin germana sit
scriptura quam ex vetusto bonae fidei manuscripto codice restitui, nempe ‘ho
esomenos.’”?
He calls attention to the parallels with Revelation 1:4, 8;
4:8; and 11:17 which speak of God as “the one who is, and was, and is to come.”
If this verse was simply a harmonization to these others, however, why then
does the final part not read ho
erchomenos (“which is to come”), but ho
esomenos (“which will be”)? Beza says the text is different because it
speaks here of Christ (quoniam ibi de
Christo).
We must also keep in mind that even if one adequately understood
Beza’s decision here, this does not necessarily mean that we understand the
decision of the KJV translators to follow Beza’s text here and not other TR
readings or versions based upon them. What, for example, did it take for them
to depart from Tyndale here? We simply have insufficient evidence to understand
the editorial decisions made by Beza or the KJV translators at Revelation 16:5.
One thing is for certain, the Beza/KJV reading at Revelation
16:5 should not be discounted from the outset but given serious and reasonable
consideration, while acknowledging that it has no extant Greek mss. support, making
it one of the more difficult readings to defend, if one accepts it.
Eighth: JW at one
point does at least acknowledge that the Greek text of Revelation is one of the
most disputed in the NT, but this was not given enough emphasis. Most of the extant
Greek mss. of Revelation are late and there are many disputed texts.
Here is some analysis from Tobias Niklas’s chapter, “The
Early Text of Revelation” in Charles E. Hill & Michael J. Kruger, Eds., The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford,
2012): 225-238:
“…compared to other New Testament writings—we have only a
very few extant traces of an ‘early text’ of the book of Revelation” (225).
“Among the more than 300 manuscripts that contain Revelation
only four can with some probability be dated earlier than (or at least around)
the year 300 CE. None of these (p18, p47, p98, p115) contains the whole text of
Revelation: p18 and p98 have only a few words or sentences” (226).
“…it is only poorly represented in the uncial manuscripts.”
He cites J. K. Elliott’s overview that only eleven uncials contain Revelation, adding,
“five of them from the eighty century or later” (226).
“No portions of Revelation can be found in extant Greek
lectionaries” (227).
His conclusion: “All of these circumstances have long made
research into the textual history of the book of Revelation an extremely
complex task” (227).
We should not, therefore, be at all surprised that there are
many passages in Revelation that are difficult for modern text critics to
reconstruct.
Ninth: This leads to a general critique of
the “reconstructionist” approach. Since the extant Greek ms. evidence only provides
limited evidence as to the earliest text of the NT in general can we ever hope
to have a reliable reconstructed text?
I found this statement intriguing from Wasserman and Gurry in
their discussion of the “limitations” of the new CGBM:
As Richard Evans
reminds us, our historical knowledge is always contingent on “the extent to
which it is possible to reconstruct the past from the remains left behind.”
What is left behind are fragments, chance survivals from the past—we are trying
to piece together the puzzle with only some of the pieces. In the case of
textual criticism, this means that we have only a selection of the manuscripts
that once existed, and sometimes incomplete manuscripts. Although New Testament
textual critics are used to straining under the number of manuscripts that we
possess, there must be an even greater number that are forever lost (Wasserman & Gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism [SBL
Press, 2017]: 112).
Tenth: Pointing to a single difficult
verse in the TR where there is a question essentially of a couple of words by
no means overthrows the confessional text position. There is no disagreement in
the TR tradition on the ending of Mark, the PA, the CJ, etc. To embrace the
modern critical text is to ensure constant epistemological uncertainty.
I found it interesting that JW in this lecture disavowed all
conjectural emendations, including the NA 28 text of 2 Peter 3:10, no doubt attempting
to anticipate the charge of “inconsistency” in criticizing the Scrivener TR
reading at Revelation 16:5 while winking at a conjectural emendation in the NA
28 at 2 Peter 3:10. JW is fond of asking TR advocates, Which TR is
authoritative? We need to ask him, “Which modern critical text is
authoritative?”
Let me close with a quote I recently ran across in Grantley
McDonald’s Biblical Criticism in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2016), regarding the CJ, another of the most
disputed texts in the TR tradition:
…it marked a fork in
the road. One path was followed by those who insisted on providential
preservation or Scripture. The other taken by those who believe that Scripture,
whatever its source, is subject to the same process of transmission as any
other text. (Suffice it to say that these two positions have rather different
claims to verifiability.) (12).
Reformed evangelicals stand at a fork in the road. Do you
take the path of providential preservation or modern critical reconstruction?
JTR
