If you read only the studies of men who are opposed to the Textus Receptus you would think that this is an absolute, unquestionable fact of history. Hear the dogmatic assertion of another writer who holds the views of Dr. Boice:
"Although Erasmus published a fourth and fifth edition, we need say no more
about them here. Erasmus's Greek Testament stands in line behind the King
James Version; yet it rests upon a half dozen minuscule manuscripts, none
of which is earlier than the tenth century. ... the textual basis of the TR
is a small number of haphazardly and relatively late minuscule
manuscripts."
Let's give one more example to illustrate just how common this thinking is.
Consider this quote from an article by Doug Kutilek, assistant to
evangelist Robert L. Sumner:
"In constructing and editing the text, Erasmus had the feeblest of
manuscript resources. He chiefly used one manuscript of the Gospels, dating
from the twelfth century, and one manuscript of Acts and the Epistles, also
from the twelfth century. These he edited and corrected, using one or two
additional manuscripts of each section along with his Latin Vulgate....
"Erasmus's fourth and fifth editions were all but slavishly reprinted by
Stephanus, Beza, the Elzivirs and others in their editions of the Greek New
Testament in the century that followed. All these collectively are often
referred to as the Textus Receptus, or received text. It must be observed
that these reprints merely reproduced without examination of evidence the
hastily-produced text of Erasmus. The result is that the text of Erasmus,
hurriedly assembled out of the slimmest of manuscript resources--containing
a number of readings without any Greek manuscript support--became for
nearly 300 years the only form of the Greek New Testament available in
print, and the basic text for the Protestant translations of the New 7(2
Testament made in those centuries. ...
"In short, there is no ground whatsoever for accepting the Textus Receptus
as the ultimate in precisely representing the original text of the New
Testament. Rather than being the most pristine and pure Greek New
Testament, it was in fact the most rudimentary and rustic, at best only a
provisional text that could be made to serve for the time being until
greater care, more thorough labor, and more extensive evidence could be had
so as to provide a text of greater accuracy. It is unfortunate that what
was only a meager first attempt at publishing a New Testament Greek text
became fossilized as though it were the ultimate in accuracy.
"It was not until the nineteenth century that the shackles of mere
tradition and religious inertia were thrown off and a Greek text based on a
careful and thorough examination of an extensive amount of manuscript
evidence was made available. The Greek texts of Griesbach, Tregelles,
Tischendorf, Alford, and Westcott and Hort were, individually and
collectively, a great improvement over the text of Erasmus, because they
more accurately presented the text of the New Testament in the form it came
from the pens of the apostles."
This lengthy quote was included to demonstrate the perversion of history
which has become so common among Bible scholars, and also because it so
graphically illustrates the strange hatred which prevails today among
scholars of every label toward the ancient and revered Textus Receptus and
those multitudes of versions which are based upon it.
Even stranger is the fact that after dragging the textual editors of the
Reformation and their work, the Received Text, through the mud and mire of
hateful criticism for sixteen lengthy paragraphs, Kutilek makes an about
face and contends that there actually is not a "hair's breadth in doctrinal
difference between Erasmus's text and that of, say, Westcott and Hort," (a
myth which is dealt with in another of this series--Myth #3: No Doctrinal
Differences Between Texts and Versions) and is so kind to say, "I do not
wish to be too hard on Erasmus, after all, I recognize him as a pioneer who
opened up a frontier for others to follow and laid a foundation on which
others would build."
These men have found out a marvelous thing: They seemingly have mastered
the art of facing two ways at the same time!
One further comment regarding these statements by Kutilek is in order. If
all of this is true, and only an imprecise, rudimentary, rustic, and
provisional text was produced at the dawn of the age of printing and of the
Protestant Reformation and was for four hundred years carried to the
farthest reaches of the earth during the most zealous period of missionary
Gospel work since the first century--where was God at that time and why did
He allow such a text to prevail? Why does Kutilek completely ignore the
Bible passages which promise that God will preserve His Word to every
generation? We deal with this in yet another booklet in this series (Myth
#4: Inspiration Is Perfect, but Preservation Is General), but this point is
too important to pass over lightly. Kutilek's God must have been on a long
lunch break during the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries because,
according to Kutilek, He certainly was not preserving the Scriptures.
We hasten now to offer some historical facts surrounding this matter of the
Reformation editors and translators and their textual resources which quite
contradict the popular ideas we have considered.
ERASMUS'S TRAVEL AND CORRESPONDENCE BROUGHT HIM INTO CONTACT WITH BROAD
MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
Erasmus personally visited libraries and carried on correspondence which
brought him in touch with manuscript evidence which was vast both in number
and variety.
If we would believe the critics of the Received Text, Erasmus and other
Greek scholars of the Reformation engaged in their work while confined to
barren rooms with only a handful of resource materials. This is far from an
accurate view of history. These men were scholars of the first rank, which
even their enemies and those in disagreement with their conclusions admit.
As such, they were men engaged continually in dissertation with other
scholars; they were men of wide-ranging personal correspondence, men who
traveled, visiting libraries and centers of learning--yea, men who did all
that was necessary to discover everything possible about the beloved
projects to which they were devoted.
"He [Erasmus] was ever at work, visiting libraries, searching in every nook
and corner for the profitable. He was ever collecting, comparing, writing
and publishing. ... He classified the Greek manuscripts and read the
Fathers."
"By 1495 he [Erasmus] was studying in Paris. In 1499 he went to England
where he made the helpful friendship of John Cabot, later dean of St.
Paul's, who quickened his interest in biblical studies. He then went back
to France and the Netherlands. In 1505 he again visited England and then
passed three years in Italy. In 1509 he returned to England for the third
time and taught at Cambridge University until 1514. In 1515 he went to
Basel, where he published his New Testament in 1516, then back to the
Netherlands for a sojourn at the University of Louvain. Then he returned to
Basel in 1521 and remained there until 1529, in which year he removed to
the imperial town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. Finally, in 1535, he again
returned to Basel and died there the following year in the midst of his
Protestant friends, without relations of any sort, so far as known, with
the Roman Catholic Church.
"One might think that all this moving around would have interfered with
Erasmus' activity as a scholar and writer, but quite the reverse is true.
By his travels he was brought into contact with all the intellectual
currents of his time and stimulated to almost superhuman efforts. He became
the most famous scholar and author of his day and one of the most prolific
writers of all time, his collected works filling ten large volumes in the
Leclerc edition of 1705 (phototyped by Olms in 1963). As an editor also his
productivity was tremendous. Ten columns of the catalog of the library in
the British Museum are taken up with the bare enumeration of the works
translated, edited, or annotated by Erasmus, and their subsequent
reprints."
According to Dr. Edward F. Hills, the evidence points to the fact that
Erasmus used other manuscripts beside five:
"When Erasmus came to Basel in July 1515, to begin his work, he found five
Greek New Testament manuscripts ready for his use. ... Did Erasmus use
other manuscripts beside these five in preparing his Textus Receptus? The
indications are that he did. According to W. Schwarz (1955), Erasmus made
his own Latin translation of the New Testament at Oxford during the years
1505-6. His friend John Colet who had become Dean of St. Paul's, lent him
two Latin manuscripts for this undertaking, but nothing is known about the
Greek manuscripts which he used. He must have used some Greek manuscripts
or other, however, and taken notes on them. Presumably therefore he brought
these notes with him to Basel along with his translation and his comments
on the New Testament text. It is well known also that Erasmus looked for
manuscripts everywhere during his travels and that he borrowed them from
everyone he could. Hence although the Textus Receptus was based mainly on
the manuscripts which Erasmus found at Basel, it also included readings
taken from others to which he had access. It agreed with the common faith
because it was founded on manuscripts which in the providence of God were
readily available."
The following quotation from D'Aubigne's diligent historical research also
indicates that Erasmus had access to more textual evidence than his modern
detractors admit:
"Nothing was more important at the dawn of the Reformation than the
publication of the Testament of Jesus Christ in the original language.
Never had Erasmus worked so carefully. `If I told what sweat it cost me, no
one would believe me.' He had collated many Greek MSS. of the New
Testament, and was surrounded by all the commentaries and translations, by
the writings of Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril, Jerome,
and Augustine. ... He had investigated the texts according to the
principles of sacred criticism. When a knowledge of Hebrew was necessary,
he had consulted Capito, and more particularly Cecolampadius. Nothing
without Theseus, said he of the latter, making use of a Greek proverb."
THE VATICANUS READINGS WERE KNOWN AND REJECTED BY THE PROTESTANT
TRANSLATORS
Erasmus, Stephanus, and other sixteenth century editors had access to the
manuscript from the Vatican called Codex B, the manuscript most preferred
by Westcott and Hort and the English Revised translation committee. Yet
this manuscript was rejected as corrupt by the Bible publishers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Consider the following quotation from Benjamin Wilkinson, author of Our
Authorized Bible Vindicated:
"The problems presented by these two manuscripts [the Vaticanus and the
Sinaiticus] were well known, not only to the translators of the King James,
but also to Erasmus. We are told that the Old Testament portion of the
Vaticanus has been printed since 1587. The third great edition is that
commonly known as the `Sixtine,' published at Rome in 1587 under Pope
Sixtus V ... Substantially, the `Sixtine' edition gives the text of B ...
The `Sixtine' served as the basis for most of the ordinary editions of the
LXX for just three centuries" (Ottley, Handbooks of the Septuagint, p. 64).
"We are informed by another author that, if Erasmus had desired, he could
have secured a transcript of this manuscript" (Bissell, Historic Origin of
the Bible, p. 84).
"There was no necessity, however, for Erasmus to obtain a transcript
because he was in correspondence with Professor Paulus Bombasius at Rome,
who sent him such variant readings as he wished" (S.P. Tregelles, On the
Printed Text of the Greek Testament, p. 22).
"A correspondent of Erasmus in 1533 sent that scholar a number of selected
readings from it [Codex B], as proof [or so says that correspondent] of its
superiority to the Received Text" (Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the
Ancient Manuscripts, Harper & Brothers, 1895, fourth edition 1939, p. 138).
"Erasmus, however, rejected these varying readings of the Vatican
Manuscript because he considered from the massive evidence of his day that
the Received Text was correct. ...
"We have already given authorities to show that the Sinaitic Manuscript is
a brother of the Vaticanus. Practically all of the problems of any serious
nature which are presented by the Sinaitic, are the problems of the
Vaticanus. Therefore the [editors of the 1500s and the] translators of 1611
had available all the variant readings of these manuscripts and rejected
them.
"The following words from Dr. Kenrick, Catholic Bishop of Philadelphia,
will support the conclusion that the translators of the King James knew the
readings of Codices Aleph, A, B, C, D, where they differed from the
Received Text and denounced them. Bishop Kenrick published an English
translation of the Catholic Bible in 1849. I quote from the preface:
"`Since the famous manuscripts of Rome, Alexandria, Cambridge, Paris, and
Dublin were examined ... a verdict has been obtained in favor of the
Vulgate. At the Reformation, the Greek Text, as it then stood, was taken as
a standard, in conformity to which the versions of the Reformers were
generally made; whilst the Latin Vulgate was depreciated, or despised, as a
mere version'" (H. Cotton, quoted in Rheims and Douay, p. 155).
"In other words, the readings of these much boasted manuscripts, recently
made available, are [largely] those of the Vulgate. The Reformers knew of
these readings and rejected them, as well as the Vulgate. ...
"On the other hand, if more manuscripts have been made accessible since
1611, little use has been made of what we had before and of the majority of
those made available since. The Revisers systematically ignored the whole
world of manuscripts and relied practically on only three or four. As Dean
Burgon says, "But nineteen-twentieths of those documents, for any use which
has been made of them, might just as well be still lying in the monastic
libraries from which they were obtained."
"We feel, therefore, that a mistaken picture of the case has been presented
with reference to the material at the disposition of the translators of
1611 and concerning their ability to use that material."
To this testimony I add one more quote:
"In the margin of this edition [his fourth] Stephanus entered variant
readings taken from the Complutensian edition and also 14 manuscripts, one
of which is thought to have been Codex D." If this was not actually Codex
D, at the very least it was another one of that small family of manuscripts
which presents a similar reading that contradicts the majority text."
ERASMUS KNEW OF THE VARIANT READINGS PREFERRED BY MODERN TRANSLATORS
The notes which Erasmus placed in his editions of the Greek New Testament
prove that he was completely informed of the variant readings which have
found their way into the modern translations since 1881.
Even though Erasmus did not have access to all of the manuscripts
translators can use today, there can be no doubt that he did have access to
the variant readings in other ways.
"Through his study of the writings of Jerome and other Church Fathers
Erasmus became very well informed concerning the variant readings of the
New Testament text. Indeed almost all the important variant readings known
to scholars today were already known to Erasmus more than 460 years ago and
discussed in the notes (previously prepared) which he placed after the text
in his editions of the Greek New Testament. Here, for example, Erasmus
dealt with such problem passages as the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer
(Matt. 6:13), the interview of the rich young man with Jesus (Matt. 19:17-
22), the ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the angelic song (Luke 2:14), the
angel, agony, and bloody seat omitted (Luke 22:43-44), the woman taken in
adultery (John 7:53-8:11), and the mystery of godliness (I Tim. 3:16)."
THE REFORMATION TEXT IS AS ANCIENT AS THE WESTCOTT-HORT TEXT
It is further true that the Greek text produced by Erasmus and other
Reformation editors is representative of a text demonstrably as ancient as
the modern critical text. Consider again the words of D.A. Carson in his
book on the King James Version: "... the textual basis of the TR is a small
number of haphazardly and relatively late minuscule manuscripts" (Carson,
p. 36).
While it is true that the actual Greek manuscripts Eramus had in his
possession were relatively late ones, this is not the whole story. When all
the facts are considered, we find that Carson's statement is a myth.
Consider the testimony of Bishop Ellicott, the chairman of the committee
that produced the English Revised Version, the predecessor of all modern
versions:
"The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ, for the most part only in small
and insignficant details, from the great bulk of the cursive MSS. The
general character of their text is the same. By this observation the
pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual
manuscripts used by Erasmus ... That pedigree stretches back to remote
antiquity. The first ancestor of the Received Text was at least
contemporary with the oldest of our extant MSS, if not older than any one
of them" (Ellicott, The Revisers and the Greek Text of the N.T. by two
members of the N.T. Company, pp. 11-12).
In commenting on Ellicott's statement, the Trinitarian Bible Society puts
the matter into a perspective that the KJV detractors would like to ignore:
"It must be emphasised that the argument is not between an ancient text and
a recent one, but between two ancient forms of the text, one of which was
rejected and the other adopted and preserved by the Church as a whole and
remaining in common use for more than fifteen centuries. The assumptions of
modern textual criticism are based upon the discordant testimony of a few
specimens of the rejected text recently disinterred from the oblivion to
which they had been deliberately and wisely consigned in the 4th century"
(The Divine Original, TBS article No. 13, nd, p. 7).
REFORMATION EDITORS HAD WIDE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE IN THE BIBLES AVAILABLE TO
THEM
Another matter frequently ignored by the detractors of the ReceivedText is
the fact that Erasmus and the textual editors of the Reformation had a wide
variety of Bibles which provided great help in their work. The editors and
translators of the Reformation had access to many excellent Bible versions
which attested to the textual witnesses upon which they, in turn, were
based.
It was Erasmus's knowledge both in Greek manuscripts AND of versions of the
Scripture in various languages, both contemporary with his time and
ancient, that provoked Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson to note that "the text
Erasmus chose had such an outstanding history in the Greek, the Syrian, and
the Waldensian Churches, that it constituted an irresistible argument for
and proof of God's providence."
Wilkinson gives a brief history of the important role held by the
Waldensian Bibles in preservation of the true text of Scripture:
"The Reformers held that the Waldensian Church was formed about 120 A.D.,
from which date on, they passed down from father to son the teachings they
received from the apostles (Allix, Church of Piedmont, 1690, p. 37). We are
indebted to Beza, the renowned associate of Calvin, for the statement that
the Italic Church dates from 120 A.D. From the illustrious group of
scholars which gathered round Beza, 1590 A.D., we may understand how the
Received Text was the bond of union between great historic churches.
"There are modern writers who attempt to fix the beginning of the Waldenses
from Peter Waldo, who began his work about 1175. This is a mistake. The
historical name of this people as properly derived from the valleys where
they lived, is Vaudois. Their enemies, however, ever sought to date their
origin from Waldo. ... Nevertheless the history of the Waldenses, or
Vaudois, begins centuries before the days of Waldo.
"There remains to us in the ancient Waldensian language, `The Noble Lesson'
(La Nobla Leycon), written about the year 1100 A.D., which assigns the
first opposition to the Waldenses to the Church of Rome to the days of
Constantine the Great, when Sylvester was Pope. This may be gathered from
the following extract: `All the popes, which have been from Sylvester to
the present time' (Gilly, Excursions to the Piedmont, Appendix II, p. 10).
Thus when Christianity, emerging from the long persecutions of pagan Rome,
was raised to imperial favor by the Emperor Constantine, the Italic Church
in northern Italy--later the Waldenses--is seen standing in opposition to
papal Rome. Their Bible was of the family of the renowned Itala. It was
that translation into Latin which represents the Received Text. Its very
name, "Itala," is derived from the Italic district, the regions of the
Vaudois. Of the purity and reliability of this version, Augustine, speaking
of different Latin Bibles (about 400 A.D.) says: `Now among translations
themselves the Italian (Itala) is to be preferred to the others, for it
keeps closer to the words without prejudice to clearness of expression'"
(Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Christian Lit. Ed., Vol. II, p. 542).
Here we can see the hand of God plainly evident in preserving the precious
Word He had given to men. Through every dark century of persecution and
apostasy, faithful and separated saints held to the Scriptures at the cost
of earthly comfort, fortune, even life. The Waldenses, or Vaudois, were but
one of these groups of faithful brethren. There were others, but the
Vaudois were especially honored of God in that their versions of Scriptures
were selected by the leaders of the Protestant Reformation as
representative of the original manuscripts of the prophets and apostles.
God promised to preserve His Word. How can we fail to see in these events
the fulfillment of this promise? The pure Word of God was preserved by pure
churches and in turn transmitted into the hands of the men who had been
prepared of God to give this pure Word to the world during the great
missionary period of the last four-and-a-half centuries.
In conclusion I quote from Which Version by Philip Mauro, outstanding trial
lawyer of the nineteenth century. The testimony of men such as Mauro, Dr.
Edward F. Hills, Dr. John Burgon, and Dr. David Otis Fuller is largely
ignored and despised by evangelical (even many fundamental) scholars today,
but their teaching is based upon the solid foundation of the biblical
doctrine of divine inspiration and preservation, combined with careful
scholarship. It is unwise and less than honest simply to ignore the
testimony of such men, and yet that is exactly what is being done.
"When we consider what the Authorized Version was to be to the world, the
incomparable influence it was to exert in shaping the course of events, and
in accomplishing those eternal purposes of God for which Christ died and
rose again and the Holy Spirit came down from heaven--when we consider that
this Version was to be, more than all others combined, `the Sword of the
Spirit,' and that all this was fully known to God beforehand, we are fully
warranted in the belief that it was not through chance, but by providential
control of the circumstances, that the translators had access to just those
Mss. which were available at that time, and to none others.
"So far in our series on Myths About the King James Bible we have seen that
it is not true that Erasmus was a humanist in the normal sense of which
this would be understood in our day. Nor is it true that Erasmus and the
Bible editors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were severely
limited in manuscript and textual evidence as compared with the late
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. If you have followed carefully with
me in these studies to this point, I trust you can see that to call these
myths is not at all an exaggeration of the term."
It is important to remind ourselves that our faith regarding the
preservation of the Scriptures is not in man, but in God. Even if the
Reformation editors had fewer resources than those of more recent times, we
know that God was in control of His Holy Word. The preserved Bible was not
hidden away in some monastic hole or in the Pope's library.
The vast majority of existing Greek manuscripts, ancient versions, and the
writings of church fathers support the Received Text. This was a fact known
by the Reformation editors. They saw the hand of God in this and believed
that the witness of the majority of textual evidence contained the
preserved Word of God. God's promise to preserve His Word has been
fulfilled in the multiplication of pure Bibles and the rejection and disuse
of corrupted Bibles. In reviewing the existing manuscript evidence, Jack
Moorman gives the following summary:
"At Marquette Manor Baptist Church in Chicago (1984), Dr. [Stewart] Custer
said that God preserved His Word `in the sands of Egypt.' No! God did not
preserve His Word in the sands of Egypt, or on a library shelf in the
Vatican library, or in a wastepaper bin in a Catholic monastery at the foot
of Mt. Sinai. God did not preserve His Word in the `disusing' but in the
`using.' He did not preserve the Word by it being stored away or buried,
but rather through its use and transmission in the hands of humble
believers. ...
"At latest count, there were 2,764 cursive manuscripts (MSS). Kenyon says,
`... An overwhelming majority contain the common ecclesiastical [Received]
text.' ... Kenyon is prepared to list only 22 that give even partial
support to the [modern critical] text. ...
"Are we to believe that in the language in which the New Testament was
originally written (Greek), that only twenty-two examples of the true Word
of God are to be found between the ninth and sixteenth centuries? How does
this fulfill God's promise to preserve His Word? ...
"We answer with a shout of triumph God has been faithful to His promise.
Yet in our day, the world has become awash with translations based on MSS
similar to the twenty-two rather than the [more than] two-and-a-half
thousand."
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