Text and Translations – Or – The Fatal Trap
People no longer have an agreed-upon
foundation for their Christian Faith because a faithful text and translation
have become the target for mockery, deception, and greed. Seniors have watched
this develop since the 1950s, but the origins were earlier. The apostates have
this advantage, almost no one receives serious training in text issues during
seminary, so of the serious students are laymen troubled by the dubious claims
of chattering clergy.
The Biblical text is Hebrew
and Greek, but the disputed Testament is New Testament Greek. If the text is so
flexible and old, why is the newer one the toy of Biblical scholars while the
ancient Hebrew is barely touched by critics? The Jewish tradition is one of
extraordinary care in copying the text, with every letter of every book counted
to make sure the Hebrew copy is precise. Besides that we know that copies for
worship were given special care and preserved even when no longer in active use
in the synagogue.
Oddly, the history of the
largest Christian empire, the Byzantine, is hardly studied by scholars and
therefore seldom taught or described in books and magazines. For eleven
centuries, from 300 to 1453, the Eastern Roman Empire continued while the pagan
Western Roman Empire fell apart, from 400 AD onward. Constantine turned the village
of Byzantium into a Christian city nicknamed Constantinople, and later
nicknamed Istanbul by the Muslims who conquered it. For 1100 years, Byzantium
served as the cradle of Christianity and the preserver of all things Christian,
especially the Greek New Testament.
Normally, a wealth of evidence
will prove a case, but clever con-artists worked against the traditional New
Testament text with attacks based upon man’s resistance to faith and
vulnerability to liars.
The first snake oil salesman
of note was Count Von Tischendorf, who belongs to that fraternity of men who
become famous by conveniently discovering artifacts they manufactured or
mislabeled. He told a fable about leather pages of the world’s oldest New Testament
being used to keep a monastery library warm. The brave Count of Mounty Crisco
never explained how leather burned so well, why monks would burn their greatest
treasure, and how the bound book ended up in two tones – part new and modern,
part old and stained, yet bound together.
He obtained the entire book
and matched it with his Vaticanus to create the myth of the true, original,
untainted-by-orthodoxy New Testament text. Thus Codex (bound book) Sinaiticus
and Codex Vaticanus became the stars of the Greek New Testament show. The
traditional text for the King James Version was sneered at for being Byzantine
and the leaven of text manipulation began to gather momentum slowly, as it
always does in academia. Now no one would be hired as a New Testament professor
at any prestigious divinity school – or most seminaries – if he argued for the
Byzantine text and the King James translation of the Bible.
Notice that the “conservative”
synods are glad to sell the horrible NIV and the equally bad ESV Bibles, which
are the equivalent of minting money. However, the Southern Baptists voted to
keep the NIV out of their stores, not even displaying them.
Text Criticism – Lower Criticism
The magic of text criticism flourished
under the dark arts of Wescott and Hort, two clergy given the opportunity to update
the KJV and leave the text alone. Instead, they made themselves the authorities
over this field and invented the most hilarious rules for deciding whether a
reading was good or bad. An example of a variant reading would be:
1. I did not say seven times, but seventy times seven.
2. I did not say seven times, but seven times seven.
That mistake is easy to make
in English or Greek, especially if copying is done by one person reading the
original and a number of clerks copying at once. We all lose concentration and
some hear or speak better than others. If there are thousands of manuscripts
and fragments – as there are in the long Byzantine tradition – there will be
thousands of errors, but 99% of them minor, obvious, and not significant for Christian
doctrine.
So Wescott and Hort drew up
rules for judging manuscripts. Although I was an eager seminarian pursuing the
bright elusive butterfly of text, I found these rules to be self-serving,
ridiculous, and counter-intuitive.
“The shorter reading is better.”
We all know people who lengthen
their version of the story, as LBJ did with his store-bought Silver Star, but
this is not a rule that can be applied with any reliability. Some condense
their stories upon retelling them. Having only a word count, which one is
earlier and more precise?
“The more difficult reading is better.”
This rule is even more
ridiculous. How do we define the word difficult? Is it difficult for traditional
Christians? If so, why does that make it a better reading. This rule comes naturally
from the evolutionary concept of religion, that all were animists, then
polytheists, then matured into monotheists. A supposedly scientific view of Christianity
– simply rationalist – argues that the Faith was based upon a nice man, a good
teacher, who died and was buried. The Apostles and Paul thought so much of Jesus
that they made Him into the Son of God and the Savior, following pagan myths.
“When in doubt, against tradition.”
The most ridiculous rule asks
the reader to determine what the tradition is – and condemn the traditional
reading in favor of the exotic and exceptional.
Translations
The conservative” Lutherans
were anxious to observe the 400th anniversary of the KJV without hinting that the translation
was much older than 1612 and so much closer to the Reformation, which the
moderns were also eager to forget.
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| Tischendorf - the Count of Mounty Crisco |
