1. The Challenge to the Biblical Text: “Has God Indeed Said?”

Introduction

Ever since Genesis 3:1, Satan has sought to place doubts into the minds of God’s people about what God has revealed. Satan’s question, “Has God indeed said?” has been repeated in many creative ways, but the end result is always the same: a loss of confidence.

When versions of the Bible disagree with each other on what God has indeed said, believers are perplexed. This book is designed to answer that question and restore a sense of confidence that the Bible does indeed “belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). A theoretical text, buried in the sands of Egypt, is not sufficient. How can we obey all the words of God’s Bible if all the words of that Bible have not been preserved?

The Egyptian Texts Are Corrupt

Dr. Pickering’s essay in chapter 3 of this book clearly shows why the manuscripts underlying the NIV, the NASB, the ESV, and most modern versions are not reliable, whereas the majority of Greek manuscripts¹ of the New Testament can be trusted. While many modern translations repeatedly appeal to the Alexandrian (Egyptian) manuscripts as being “the oldest and best manuscripts,” the truth of the matter is that many evidences show them to be the most corrupted and unreliable of the manuscripts.

An estimated 28,500 variants exist within the Egyptian manuscripts.² Since there are almost 200,000 words in the New Testament,³ this amounts to an incredible one in seven words that have been corrupted in this supposedly “oldest and best” manuscript tradition! Granted, most of those Egyptian texts tend to be ignored by textual critics in their actual practice of textual criticism, and most of the mistakes are so obvious that there is little debate about whether it is a mistake.

We are analyzing the reliability of the copyists, not whether the mistakes can be easily recognized. n this score, all of the Alexandrian manuscripts are defective. For example, if even the three most trusted manuscripts (B, א, and A) are compared to the Majority Text, then 8% of the New Testament still comes into question. Granted, half of those differences are spelling differences, word order, and other inconsequential changes that would not be reflected in an English translation. That still leaves about 4% of the New Testament text in question. Even the differences between B and א are enormous. As Wilbur Pickering has noted, in the Gospels alone, these two manuscripts disagree with each other over 3000 times! Logic tells us that one or both of them are unreliable witnesses, yet modern versions place most of their trust in those two Egyptian texts.

This should be a concern to any believer. An inspired original for Scripture does no good if God has not also preserved it. Therefore the issue that Dr. Pickering addresses is a critical one. If his conclusions are correct (and I am convinced that they are), then we can know with a high degree of confidence what the text of the New Testament is. On the other hand, if the modern fascination with the Alexandrian (Egyptian) text is correct, then (based on the evidence we currently have) we will never know what the text of at least 4% of the New Testament is.⁴

In contrast, I believe that God has preserved every jot and tittle of His word in every age and in every geographic region; and He has done it through the church, which is the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1Tim. 3:15). I also believe that he has told us how He would transmit the text providentially. The Bible’s own statements on God’s methods of preserving the text ought to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, both the eclectic position (underlying the NIV, NASB, etc.) and the Textus Receptus position (underlying the “King-James-only” faction) have ignored either some or all of the Scripture’s self-referential statements on preservation.⁵

The Two Primary Egyptian Texts

The question naturally arises that if there are so many differences among Egyptian texts, how do modern versions determine which “Egyptian” reading is correct? Though this is an oversimplification, it is generally true to say that the editors of these versions trust the expertise of five theological liberals who voted on each reading and then printed the results in the United Bible Society Greek New Testament. If all five agreed, the reading was given an A rating. If four agreed, it was given a B rating, if three agreed it was given a C rating. Though there are rules of textual criticism covering internal and external evidence, it is obvious from Bruce M. Metzger’s commentary on their proceedings⁶ that the decisions were usually based on subjective criteria. Even their use of external evidence is troubling since they usually gave primary weight to one Greek manuscript (B, known as Vaticanus) even when all other Egyptian and Byzantine manuscript supported a different reading. Though there are 5,262 Greek manuscripts currently extant, and tens of thousands of early versions, the following manuscripts carried the most weight in the UBS Text:⁷

• 90% of the time these editors based their reading on the primary weight of only one Greek manuscript: Vaticanus (B). In practical terms, this manuscript is the authority.
• Another 7% of the time their disagreement with the Majority Text is based on a reading from Sinaiticus (א). We have already seen that Sinaiticus disagrees with Vaticanus well over 3000 times in the Gospels alone. This shows that one (or both) of these manuscripts is highly unreliable.
• 2.5% of the time, their distinctive reading is based on Alexandrinus (A).
• Less than half a percent of the time the readings of modern versions are based on other Alexandrian manuscripts when one or more of them disagree with the previous three. (There are about 200 Alexandrian manuscripts.)

The following chart (from Floyd Nolen Jones’ book) illustrates the degree of conformity that four types of manuscript (papyri fragments, uncials, cursives, and lectionaries) have to either the Majority Text or to Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (the primary text underlying most modern translations).⁸

This chart shows that the Majority Text is truly majority. The Majority Text is also equally old to the supposed “oldest and best” referred to in the versions.⁹ It also represents the widest geographic distribution: across Greece, Asia Minor, Constantinople, Syria, Africa, Gaul, Southern Italy, Sicily, England, and Ireland. In contrast, the text that modern versions are based on is found in Egypt, a place that had no letters sent to it, but where most of the early heresies originated.¹⁰

Humanistic versus Biblical Presuppositions

Majority Text advocates are often criticized for bringing Biblical presuppositions into the study of texts rather than being neutral. While objectivity is important, neutrality is impossible. Evaluation of the evidence is always driven by prior presuppositions.

The presuppositions that drive modern textual criticism are thoroughly humanistic even when evangelicals use them. It is ironic that evangelicals who shrink in horror from the humanistic assumptions found in “higher criticism” have adopted the same assumptions when it comes to textual criticism. For example, Edward John Carnell rightly rejected higher criticism because “a fundamental presupposition of the higher critic is that the Bible is just another piece of human writing, a book to which the scientific method may safely be applied, not realizing that the Bible message stands pitted in judgment against that very method itself.”¹¹ However he advocated textual criticism with the same presupposition.

Warfield and all later textual critics within the evangelical camp treat it in the same way they treat the transmission of secular documents. L Harold De Wolfe, a liberal complained about the inconsistency saying,

The intimate and inseparable relation between textual and historical studies of the Bible seems not to be adequately appreciated by some conservative scholars. For example, Edward J. Carnell praises unstintingly the devotion, skill, and results of textual criticism … On the other, when the same writer considers the work of historical or ‘higher’ criticism, he has nothing to say for it.¹²

It is therefore important to see what God Himself teaches regarding the transmission of the text, and to begin by reasoning from His infallible presuppositions. In the following pages I give eleven Biblical presuppositions that should guide our analysis of the evidence. If the following presuppositions are true, then it is obvious that the Majority Text is the true text and the Alexandrian Text is false. All the evidence fits.

The job God has left to us is to recognize the correct text, not to determine it. Recognizing which text fits the Biblical presuppositions is a legitimate role of textual criticism. This prevents us from blindly following either Erasmus (like Textus Receptus fans do) or blindly following five liberal experts (like most modern evangelical translation teams do).