Which Version Is the Bible? by Floyd Jones

Author:Floyd Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780970032805
Publisher: GEM PUBLISHING
Published: 2006-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

But apart from divine revelation, what living man really possesses such insight? As Pickering has observed - how can such rules be applied when neither the identity nor the circumstances of the originator of a given variant is known?23

Moreover, to base a final decision as to the true text solely upon internal considerations is unreasonable, unacceptable, and wrong.24 It ignores the massive external evidence of over 5,000 Greek MSS/mss now extant as well as the testimony of the letters of the early Church "Fathers" and the witness of the early versions. As there is no actual history of the transmission of the text, the choice between variants ultimately is reduced to conjecture and guesswork: "the editing of an eclectic text rests upon conjectures".25

Yet incredulously, most scholars do not practice pure eclecticism. Despite all their disclaimers, they still work essentially within the W-H framework.0 This may be seen in that the two most popular manual editions of the Greek N.T. in use today, Nestle-Aland26 and UBS3, vary but little from the W-H text (the same is true of the recent versions, RSV etc.) - demonstrating that little "progress" has been made in textual theory since W-H.26

The result of these efforts to "restore" the readings to their pristine form has been mainly that of dismay. The project is now viewed as impossible by nearly all modern critics (though inexplicably the work continues). Typical acknowledgments to this effect by foremost textual scholars are:

Note:

1"In spite of the claims of Westcott and Hort and of von Soden, we do not know the original form of the Gospels, and it is quite likely that we never shall."

2"The primary goal of New Testament textual study remains the recovery of what the New Testament writers wrote. We have already suggested that to achieve this goal is well nigh impossible."

3"it is generally recognized that the original text of the Bible cannot be recovered."

4"Great progress has been achieved in recovering an early form of text, but it may be doubted that there is evidence of one original text to be recovered."

0"Each one of these critical texts differ quite markedly from all of the others. This fact certainly suggests that it is very difficult, if not impossible to recover the original text of the New Testament."

Thus all of these efforts over the past one hundred years have resulted in maximum uncertainty6 as to the original reading of the New Testament text. By stark contrast, that person who simply puts their faith in God’s promise to PRESERVE His Word concludes that God has so done and that it is to be found as the New Testament of the Greek Church as well as in the vast majority of extant mss. Further, its text is preserved in the English language in the King James Bible. Moreover, the person who does trust God's promise to preserve His Word is left with maximum certainty -with peace of heart and peace of mind.

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