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 | | From: | admin | | Subject: | THE HORTIAN-ECLECTIC THEORY REFUTED #5 | | Date: | Thu, 18 Nov 2004 05:34:43 GMT |
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 | is a continuing post from the Book "Which Version is the
Bible" by Floyd Nolen Jones. Chapter 7, pages 83-112
Which Version is the Bible?
Copyright 1995 · Floyd Jones Ministries, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. This book may be freely reproduced in any form as long
as it is not distributed for any material gain or profit
"The universal and ruthless dominance of the middle ages by one texttype is
now recognized as a myth. ... [the] invaluable pioneer work of von Soden
greatly weakened the dogma of the dominance of a homogeneous Syrian text.
But the fallacy received its death blow at the hands of Professor [Kirsopp]
Lake. ... he annihilated the theory that the middle ages were ruled by a
single recension which attained a high degree of uniformity."
Over 20 years earlier Kenyon had noted that there was no historical evidence
that the Traditional Text had been created by a conference of ancient
scholars:
"We know the names of several revisers of the Septuagint and the Vulgate,
and it would be strange if historians and Church writers had all omitted to
record or mention such an event as the deliberate revision of the New
Testament in its original Greek."
With so much early Church history recorded both by Christian and by secular
sources, it is difficult to believe that such an important event as a major
revision of the Holy Writings could have taken place over such an extended
span of time without any mention having been recorded. Furthermore, Lucian
was an Arian - an outspoken one - and NEVER would have favored readings
exalting and deifying Jesus. The reality is that the so-called "Syrian"
readings are the true readings and others have subtracted from them.
The ultimate triumph of the Textus Receptus began in the fourth century as
the great conflict with the Arian heresy brought orthodox Christianity to a
climax. This is when and why the Textus Receptus began to overtake and
dominate completely the rival erroneous manuscripts. Finally, in the middle
ages in every land there was a trend toward the orthodox "Syrian" text.
However, ever since the days of Griesbach, naturalistic textual critics have
tried to explain away this dominion of the Textus Receptus readings by
attributing its ascendancy to some monastic piety. In other words, during
the middle ages the monks in the Greek monasteries invented the orthodox
readings of the text and then multiplied copies of the texts until it
finally achieved supremacy. Yet, as Hills pointed out, if that were true the
text would not have remained orthodox because that kind of piety would have
included such errors as Mary worship and the worship of the saints, images
and pictures. Dr. Hills continues:
"But as a matter of fact, no such heretical readings occur in the
Traditional Text."
The "majority" manuscripts agree with one another closely enough to justify
the contention that they all contain essentially the same text but not so
closely as to give any grounds to the belief that this uniformity of text
was produced: (1) by the labors of editors, (2) from some decree by an
ecclesiastical leader, or (3) from mass production on the part of some
scribes at any one place at any one time. If the Traditional Text were a
late development as proposed by the W-H Theory, how could it so completely
displace an earlier and better text already in use by the church? All
explanations offered to date, as we have noted, are totally lacking in
substance and fact.
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