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 | | From: | admin | | Subject: | THE HORTIAN-ECLECTIC THEORY REFUTED #7 | | Date: | Thu, 18 Nov 2004 05:35:18 GMT |
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 | This 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
GAIUS, THOUGH LONG DEAD, SPEAKS
Gaius was an orthodox "Father" writing near the end of the 2nd-century
(c.175-200 A.D.). Gaius named four heretics who altered text and had
disciples copying them. He charged that they could not deny their guilt
because the copies in question were their own handywork and that they were
unable to produce the originals from which they had made their copies. As
Pickering observed, this would have been a hollow accusation from Gaius if
he could not have produced the Originals either! Hence, it follows that the
Originals were still available at the end of the second century.
Polycarp (69 - 155 A.D.) was a pupil of John the Apostle. It is very likely
that he had originals, at least the ones which John wrote. He also would
have had some very near originals of the rest of the New Testament which he
would have obtained from his teacher, John. Moreover, Polycarp would have
had them at the time of his death in 155 A.D. Thus, around 175 to 200 Gaius
must have had access to them also. Since the papyri prove the Syrian
readings are at least second century, how could the original Syrian have
gained dominance over the other text types (Neutral, Alexandrian, Western)
if they had been corrupted when appeal to the autographs could have been
made at that date? The whole W-H Theory as well as its modern counterpart is
thereby clearly exposed and seen as vacuous and fallacious - "full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing".
The only ancient, historical, authoritative revisions were those which
occurred when Constantine commissioned Eusebius to produce fifty Bibles for
him to place in the hands of the Bishops of the larger Churches in his realm
and that of Jerome for Pope Damasus. Thus the recension spoken of by the
text critics was not in the days of Lucian but nearly 150 years earlier when
Eusebius (and later, Jerome) chose Origen's work from the library at
Caesarea as his text for both Testaments.
THE ARTIFICIAL NATURE OF TEXT FAMILIES DEMONSTRATED We are constantly being
assured by church leaders and scholars that all that is being done to
restore the original readings is being done according to well established,
and therefore trustworthy, scientific principles - the science of textual
criticism. Having examined the methods and conclusions of those of the
Westcott-Hort and the Eclectic schools of textual criticism, this author
concludes that such is not science.
For example, in Mark 5-16, Epp records that the Uncial Codex W shows a 34
percent agreement with B, 36 percent with D, 38 percent with the TR, and 40
percent with Aleph. As Pickering correctly asks: "To which 'textual stream'
should W then be assigned?" Yet Codex W has been given a family assignment.
Is not any such assignment clearly a matter of conjecture as well as a
convenience in order to support a preconceived tenet?
Furthermore, both P-66 and P-75 have been generally endorsed as belonging to
the "Alexandrian text-type." A.F.J. Klijn catalogs the results of a
comparison of A, B, P-45, P-66, and P-75 in the passages where they are all
extant (i.e., John 10:7-25, 10:32-11:10, 11:19-33 and 11:43-56). He
considered only those places where A and B disagree and where at least one
of the papyri joins either A or B. Klijn stated the result for the 43 places
as follows (to which we have added figures for the Textus Receptus as given
on p. 55 in and by Pickering.):
Is the summary assignment of P-66 and P-75 to the "Alexandrian text-type"
entirely reasonable? Is this "science", factual or truthful? Moreover,
Gordon D. Fee goes to considerable lengths in interpreting the evidence in
such a way as to support his conclusion that "P-66 is basically a member of
the Neutral tradition", but the evidence itself as he records it (for John
chapters 1-14) is:
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