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 | | From: | admin | | Subject: | THE HORTIAN-ECLECTIC THEORY REFUTED #11 | | Date: | Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:23:21 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
P47 is not the best text the Book of Revelation states Kurt Aland: "... the
oldest manuscript does not necessarily have the best text. P-47 is, for
example by far the oldest of the manuscripts containing the full or almost
full text of the Apocalypse, but it is certainly not the best."
The point being demonstrated here is that the oldest is not necessarily the
best. These are all second and third century papyri, which are 100 to 200
years older than Vaticanus B or Sinaiticus A and much later than the
material used by Erasmus. Age alone cannot insure accuracy as we would still
not know how old the "parent" mss was when it "gave birth" to its offspring.
For example, an eighth century document may have been copied from a sixth
century parent mss, whereas a fourteenth century mss could have been the
offspring of a second century manuscript.
The critics Kirsopp Lake, R.P. Blake, and Silva New found mostly "orphans"
among the manuscripts which they collated. That is, the scribes of the New
Testament usually destroyed their old copies after recopying them resulting
in almost no ancient "parents" surviving unto the present. Not only are
nearly all of the extant manuscripts thus orphans, they found almost no
siblings. Each manuscript was an only child without brothers or sisters.
The significance of this can hardly be overstated. This means that the
authors were independent witnesses; that hardly any were copied from
others - thus, no collusion or wholesale fraud exists! There was no
ecclesiastical committee forcing people to copy them; therefore they deserve
to be counted as independent witnesses. Furthermore, as Pickering observed,
the findings of these three critics attests to another consideration: "the
age of a manuscript must not be confused with the age of the text it
exhibits."
TO WEIGH THE WITNESSES OR TO JUST COUNT THEM?
One may reply, "Should not witnesses be weighed rather than merely counted?"
The problem with that statement is it infers that weighing and counting are
mutually exclusive. We should do both. In a courtroom with ten witnesses
testifying, if nine say they saw the event take place and the man is guilty
whereas only one says he is not, what would be the result? The voice of the
nine would carry the day. Nevertheless, witnesses should be weighed also,
for it is possible that all nine could be persons of ill repute and the one
of impeccable character.
Actually, all text critics "count" manuscripts. The great majority of the
N.T. is absolutely completely established because there are no variants.
That is, not only the majority but in all of the manuscripts nearly every
word reads the same. Hence, even its detractors follow the "majority text"
most of the time. Furthermore, modern editors such as von Soden, Harry Sturz
and Weymouth say when two of the major families (or in Weymouth's case, two
or more printed editions) agree against one of the other families (or
editions) the majority (or two in agreement) should be followed.
As previously mentioned, Hort and others since him weighed the witnesses
based on internal evidence, habitually utilizing "intrinsic" and
"transcriptional" probability as their guides. That is, they chose the
readings which they deemed best fit the context and best explained the
origin of the other reading (of 2 or more possibilities) which had resulted
from successive stages of copying. However, these two often cancel each
other and, besides, they are far too subjective such that the word "weigh"
becomes meaningless and the concept a mockery.
It has been documented on page 30 that "the worst corruptions to which the
New Testament text has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years
after it was composed." Burgon adds "Therefore antiquity alone affords no
security that the manuscript in our hands is not infected with the
corruption which sprang up largely in the first and second centuries. That
witnesses are to be weighed - not counted - may be said to embody much
fundamental fallacy. It assumes that the witnesses we possess are capable of
being weighed and that every critic is competent to weigh them, neither of
which proposition is true".
However, the true text of the New Testament can be found easily and with
certainty - as we shall demonstrate.
HOW TO EVALUATE THE CREDIBILITY OF A WITNESS How do we evaluate the
credibility of a witness in every day life? By observing his actions, what
he says and how he says it, listening to the opinions of his neighbors and
associates and by observing the same things in his associates. Check out his
associates. In other words, does he run with a bad crowd? If it can be
demonstrated that he is a habitual liar, morally depraved or that his
critical faculties are impaired, then his testimony should be received with
skepticism.
Now let us weigh, for example, P-66 as a witness to the true text of the New
Testament. He is old, but in John's Gospel he has over nine hundred clear
errors concerning the text. He has lied to us over 900 times! Moreover,
Pickering contends that neither P-66 nor P-75 knew Greek. Is he thus a
credible witness? No! Someone protests - but he is "old". True enough, but
he is an old liar!
As we have seen P-45, according to Colwell, made numerous deliberate changes
in the text. Is he not morally impaired? He has repeatedly lied to us. Can
we still trust him?
Between them, Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus A have lied over 3,000 times in
just the Gospels alone! According to Hoskier, when compared with the true
reading of the Textus Receptus, between them there are 656 differences in
Matthew, 567 in Mark, 791 in Luke and 1,022 in John - a total of 3,036. Now
A is a bigger liar than B. Everyone agrees to that. If A is, let us say, a
two to one bigger liar than B, then a thousand of those lies belong to
Vaticanus B and 2,000 to Sinaiticus A. Are B and A reliable witnesses?
If we cannot determine objectively that a particular witness is lying, his
credibility suffers if he keeps dubious company. Examples of "bad" company
are the "five old Uncials" (A, A, B, C, D) which often read differently from
the Textus Receptus but also disagree among themselves.
And what about character witnesses? Aleph and B were not copied, to speak
of, by the church. That being true, it follows that the early church at
large must have rejected their form of text. Hence, in their day they simply
were not respected by the true believers, and that speaks ill of them.
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