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 | | From: | admin | | Subject: | THE HORTIAN-ECLECTIC THEORY REFUTED #8 | | Date: | Thu, 18 Nov 2004 05:35:33 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
Does a comparison of this data really suggest "two clear textual streams"?
Many other examples could be cited, however the point has been plainly
demonstrated. The whole purpose of applying the genealogical or family tree
techniques to the Bible manuscripts was to reduce the vast majority of
witnesses of the text of the New Testament to that of only one voice. Such
in and of itself was wicked enough for us to endure, for in order to justify
applying these techniques the position had to be taken that the New
Testament could be treated like any other book, that it was not of a
supernatural origin. But now we see wickedness added to wickedness, for
under the guise of "scientific methods" a system has been imposed upon the
material; which system is now exposed as artificial, totally subjective,
contrived, and synthetic - SHAME!
Pickering has given the following estimates:
100% of the MSS/mss agree to 80% of the text
99% of the MSS/mss agree to 10% of the remaining 20%
95%+ of the MSS/mss agree to 4% of the remaining 10%
90%+ of the MSS/mss agree to 3% of the remaining 6% A perusal of the
foregoing reveals that one may reasonably say that around 90% of the extant
MSS belong to the Traditional text-type. This strongly argues that such
domination can best and most logically be explained by recognizing that this
demonstrates the text goes back to the autographs. Again, Hort correctly saw
the magnitude this problem posed against his thesis so he invented the
Lucianic revision.
As Pickering observed, Sturz apparently did not perceive the significance of
the argument presented by the vast statistical preponderance of evidence in
favor of the "Byzantine text-type". After demonstrating that the "Byzantine"
is both early and independent of the "Western" and "Alexandrian text-types",
Sturz - like von Soden - concluded that they should be treated as three
equal witnesses. This completely misses the point which is that if the three
"text-types" were equal, how could the so-called "Byzantine" type obtain a
near 90% preponderance since it has been shown (and Sturz agrees, his p. 62)
that no 4th century official revision at Antioch ever took place? Again,
since academia now generally acknowledges that the "Byzantine text-type"
must date back to at least into the 2nd-century, how could the original
"Byzantine" document have been "created" by editors using other competing
texts such that the resulting "conflated" (combined) text could gain
ascendancy when appeal to the autographs was still possible at that time.
Thus only less than 3% of the text does not agree with 90% of the MSS.
Furthermore, we are not judging between two text forms of, say 90% versus
10%. As the minority disagree among themselves (Only P-75 and B agree
closely), the percentage is more like 90% versus 1%. For example, in I Tim.
3:16 which the King James renders as:
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest
in the flesh, ...
Over 300 mss read "God was manifest", only 8 mss say something else; of
those 8, five say "who" instead of "God" and three have private
interpretations - which is 97% versus 2%. Yet, since Westcott and Hort,
critics have adopted the Alexandrian reading "who was manifest in the flesh"
as preserved in Aleph and have translated the word "who" as "He who", all
the while insisting that Paul is quoting here from a fragment of an early
Christian Hymn. Thus, according to the critics, Paul quoted an incomplete
sentence, one having a subject without a predicate and even that has been
left dangling. I think not!
According to the 500 page study by Hoskier which detailed and discussed the
errors in Codex B and another 400 on the idiosyncrasies of Codex Aleph,
Sinaiticus Aleph and Vaticanus B were found to differ from each other in
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