The divine inspiration and preservation of the Bible

[Enoch111]

PART I
Divine Inspiration
Our English Bible consists of the Old Testament (OT) with 39 books (corresponding to 24 books in the Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament (NT) with 27 books, for a total of 66 canonical books. The word “canon” means authoritative sacred writings, and thus excludes the Apocrypha. The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, whereas the New Testament was written in koine (common) Greek. The original manuscripts (autographs) perished with usage long ago. However all conservative Christians believe that the Bible in its original autographs was divinely inspired – “God-breathed” – therefore every word is a word of God (Mt 4:4; Lk 4:4).

This is called plenary (complete) verbal (word by word) inspiration. Because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is inerrant, and therefore infallible. Thus for conservative Christians the Bible is the only infallible and final authority in all matters of faith and practice. It is therefore imperative that the English translation (or any other translation) be a faithful word-for-word reproduction of the original autographs, even though all we have are copies of copies of manuscripts since the original autographs were written. We should be able to confidently assert “This is the Word of God in English!”, but with rival translations showing very significant differences, there is no such confidence today, except among the few who use the KJB exclusively.

Providential Preservation through Multiple Manuscripts
The issue then becomes one of preservation – did God preserve His inerrant Word through the ages, and was this through a multitude of manuscripts? And the answer is a resounding “Yes” (Mt. 5:18; Lk. 16:17). Faithful copying of manuscripts ensured that the bulk of those extant would be almost identical to the original.

The provision then which the Divine Author of Scripture is found to have made for the preservation in its integrity of His written Word, is of a peculiarly varied and highly complex description. First, by causing that a vast multiplication of copies should be required all down the ages – beginning at the earliest period, and continuing in an ever-increasing ratio until the actual invention of printing – He provided the most effectual security imaginable against fraud. True that millions of copies so produced have long since perished; but it is nevertheless a plain fact that there survive of the Gospels alone upwards of one thousand copies to the present day... (The Revision Revised, pp. 8,9).

The Isaiah scroll which Christ read in the synagogue of Nazareth (c. 30 A.D.) was no different from the one written by Isaiah in 723 B.C., and was also no different from the one found with the Dead Sea Scrolls (100 B.C.), or the one which was printed in the Masoretic Text of 1,000 A.D. The same is true for New Testament manuscripts. Hebrew and Christian scribes played a major role in faithfully transmitting the true text. God’s Word is eternal and never changes (1 Peter 1:24,25; Isaiah 40:7,8) and therefore it has been faithfully transmitted through the ages. This is known as “providential preservation”.

Proper collation or comparison would still be necessary and legitimate. Dean Burgon (an authority in this field) provided seven criteria by which the correct reading of any Scripture may be established. He called them “The Seven Notes of Truth” consisting of (1) antiquity, (2) number, (3) variety, (4) weight, (5) continuity, (6) context, and (7) internal evidence (The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, 1896, pp. 40-67). They are discussed in detail in that book. This would have been the true methodology of textual criticism (also known as “Lower Criticism”) had believing Bible scholars prevailed. You will note that the age of a manuscript is only one criterion by which its value should be determined. Yet, it became the sole criterion because of a few unbelieving scholars, and this led to “The Great Bible Version Deception”.

The Masoretic Text of the Old Testament
The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh or Old Testament) has been preserved in four codices (major manuscripts) – The Aleppo Codex (930 A.D., almost complete), Codex Cairensis (895 A.D., prophets), The Leningrad Codex (1008 A.D., complete), and the Tanakh at Qumran (the complete Hebrew Bible found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, 3rd century B.C.). While copies of ancient Hebrew Bibles are not numerous (about 1,500), they faithfully represent the true Hebrew Bible because of the meticulous care with which Hebrew scribes (the latest being the Masoretes) copied their sacred Scriptures. All these contain the Traditional or Masoretic Hebrew Text of the Tanakh.

After the invention of printing this text was printed in part or in whole between 1477 and 1607, and all these texts were available to the translators of the Authorized Version as well as to the Reformers. It is only the later editions of the Hebrew Bible, such as Rudolph Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (BHK 1906-1913) with its footnotes recording possible “corrections” to the Hebrew text, which have impacted and corrupted modern Bible versions. The alterations are based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, and early Bible translations such as the Septuagint, Vulgate and Peshitta (most of which have been corrupted). Others are merely conjectural emendations (mere guesswork). The New American Standard Version (NASV) clearly rejected the Masoretic Text by stating “In the present translation the latest edition of Rudolph Kittel’s BIBLIA HEBRAICA has been employed together with the most recent light from lexicography, cognate languages, and the Dead Sea Scrolls”. On the surface this appears to be sound. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

 

[Enoch111]

PART II
The Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament
There is no ancient writing in existence which compares with the New Testament in the volume of manuscript evidence. The NT was written in Koine (common) Greek, and completed in the 1st century, but the autographs perished with use. Copies of copies of copies have been preserved. The Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) as well as other centres have catalogued all the extant NT manuscripts, which are almost 25,000 in number. They can be broken down as follows (and the numbers could change in the future as other MSS are found and added):
A. Greek (2nd to 16th centuries)
127 Papyri (some mere fragments)
322 Uncials (or Majuscules written in capital letters)
2,914 Cursives (or Minuscules written in cursive letters)
2,453 Lectionaries (liturgical lesson books from the Eastern Orthodox churches)
5,816 Total
B. Latin (4th to 15th centuries)
Approximately 10,000 Latin manuscripts (about 90 Old Latin plus variations of Jerome’s Vulgate)
C. Ancient Translations (“Versions” from the 4th to 7th centuries )
Approximately 9,300 including Arabic, Armenian, Egyptian (Bohairic, Coptic, Sahidic), Ethiopic, Frankish, Georgian, Gothic, Persic, Slavic (Slavonic), and Syriac (including the Peshitta or Peshitto)
D. Patristic Quotations (1st to 5th centuries)
Approximately 38,000 quotations from about 200 ecclesiastical writers (“Early Church Fathers”)

The Received Text and the Majority Text of the New Testament
No two Greek manuscripts are exactly alike, but the majority (95-99%) represent one Traditional or Byzantine Greek Text which, for all intents and purposes, is the same Greek text (the Received Text) which underlies the NT of the AV and all Reformation Bibles. This is known as the Majority Text, which in printed form became the Textus Receptus or Received Text.

That the Traditional Text goes all the way back to the autographs was established by Burgon in his book The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, in which he proved through actual quotations in the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (before 325 A.D.) that the Traditional Text dominated in a ratio of at least 3:1 in comparison to the Minority Text. He also noted that as time progressed, the Minority Text became less and less evident, so that from the 4th century onwards, the Traditional Text became dominant. The Received Text is very much the Traditional Text. Please note carefully that it was F. J. A. Hort (the enemy of the Received Text) who stated that :

“The fundamental Text of late extant Greek MSS. generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian Text of the second half of the fourth century” (as quoted by Burgon in The Revision Revised, 1883, p. 257). Thus Dean Burgon could say in response: “The one great fact which especially troubles him and his joint editor (as well it may) is the Traditional Greek Text of the New Testament Scriptures. Call this text Erasmian or Complutensian, the text of Stephens, or of Beza, or of the Elzivirs; call it the ‘Received’ or the Traditional Greek Text, or whatever other name you please; the fact remains, that a text has come down to us which is attested by a general consensus of ancient copies, ancient Fathers, and ancient versions. This, at all events, is a point on which (happily) there exists entire conformity of opinion between Dr. Hort and ourselves. Our readers cannot have yet forgotten his virtual admission that beyond all question the Textus Receptus is the dominant Graeco-Syrian text of A.D. 350 to A.D. 400” (Ibid. p. 269).

According to objective manuscript evidence the Traditional Text is the Majority Text, and it represents the original autographs. The Received Text may therefore be regarded as the standard of comparison for all manuscripts: And what standard more reasonable and more convenient than the Text which, by the good providence of GOD, was universally employed throughout Europe for the first 300 years after the invention of printing? Being practically identical with the Text which... was in popular use at the end of three centuries from the date of the sacred autographs themselves; in other words, being more than 1500 years old [which was also thus confirmed by Bishop Ellicott, who was opposing Burgon]... The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ for the most part only in small and insignificant details from the bulk of the cursive manuscripts. 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 a remote antiquity. The first ancestor of the Received Text was at least contemporary with the oldest of our extant manuscripts, if not older than any of them. [Burgon then addressed Bp. Ellicott] By your own showing therefore, the Textus Receptus is ‘at least’ 1550 years old. (The Revision Revised, pp. 386,390).

Early printed editions of the Greek NT began with the Complutensian Polyglott (1514), and continued with Erasmus (1516), Stephens (the 1550 edition adopting the text of Erasmus’ 5th edition), Beza (1556-1611), and the Elzevir brothers (1624-1633). The variations within these texts are extremely minor (from 9 -150). The AV translators were familiar with and consulted all these printed editions as well as all the existing translations. The Latin term “Textus Receptus” is derived from the Elzivirs’ 1624 edition which stated in the Preface: “textum ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum, in quo nihil immulatum aut corruptum damus”, translated "You have therefore the text now received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupt".

Even though the term “Textus Receptus” was applied to the Elzevirs’ edition, for all practical purposes the Received Text for the New Testament in the Authorized Version is that of Stephens (Robertus Stephanus). As noted by Scrivener in his Plain Introduction (Vol. 2, pp. 188-192), “The editions of Robert Stephen(Estienne) mainly by reason of their exquisite beauty, have exercised a far wider influence than these [other texts], and Stephens’ third or folio edition of 1550 is by many regarded as the received or standard text ... the edition of 1550 was a foundation on which others might hereafter build, and was unquestionably of great use in directing the attention of students to the authorities on which alone the true text of Scripture is based...” In this present review, in order to determine the discrepancies of the critical texts, we have used Berry’s Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (1897/1978), which states that “The Greek text is that of Stephens, 1550, which has long been in common use; but as the edition of Elzivir, 1624, is the one often called the Received Text, or Textus Receptus... we give the readings of this Elzivir edition in the notes, and mark them E... In the main they are one and the same; and either of them may be referred to as the Textus Receptus.” (Introduction, p. ii).