Comma Johanneum/Changing of the Bible.

[farouk]

Re: Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it

Hi,

My point was not to argue for or against the "whole doctrine of the Trinity" (of which there are many) but to show that the word of God is pure and perfect, including, and especially, the heavenly witnesses.

Going back to our poster who has left the building, he obliquely touched on this point, when discussing the idea that the historic, pure New Testament text is corrupted.

Once you surrender the purity of God's word to modernism and Hortianism, there is not any tangible, readable, pure inspired and preserved word of God. (That is why, in the modern theories, inerrancy and infallibility are only in ethereal and unknown original autographs, not in the Bible in our hand.) Each translator and textual critic remakes the Bible in their own eyes. This occurred in the earlier centuries with Marcion, and it happens today with the mistaken and errant textual philosophies taught in many seminaries.

And I find that a good segment of the Christian populace today have been cornfused and hornswaggled by the modern textual theorists, the version publishing industrial complex, the version of the month club, and simply do not know what is the pure word of God.

Scripture first, doctrine and interpretation flows from scripture.

The issues go far beyond 1 John 5:7, although the heavenly witnesses is the fulcrum verse in the battle. Here is an example.

1 Timothy 3:16 (AV)
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
received up into glory.

Along with the proper pure Bible text of Isaiah 9:6, and augmented by Colossians 2:9 and 2 Corinthians 5:19, this is the key verse for declaring "God was manifest in the flesh" in Jesus Christ. However, not in the modern Hortian corruption texts. In fact, many seminarian teachers will first tell you that the whole book to Timothy was a forgery, by somebody pretending to be Paul, and then they will tell you that the forged (they may not use the word forgery, but that is the theory) text is actually the corrupt "who/which" instead of "God". And you simply will not know the pure word of God.

A more excellent way.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Shalom,
Steven

Stephen:

You mention some very important, indeed, sublime, doctrines there, which are most definitely Scriptural.

But you don't actually address the matter of the manuscript evidence for 1 John 5.7 itself, or its paucity. And it doesn't take a recourse to the writings of Fenton John Anthony Hort for one to realize that there is a paucity of manuscript evidence for (as opposed to strongly worded opinions about) 1 John 5.7. I like (am rather amused by, even) the commentary of Calvin on the verse. He basically says (my paraphrase): "If it's genuine, then here is an exposition of the flow of the chapter, with the verse included. But if it isn't, here is an exposition of the flow of the chapter with the verse excluded."

One can of course say that whatever recension includes it, is thereby authenticized by the church that uses it. (I don't know if you are seriously arguing this.) This, of course, is what Rome did at the Council of Trent, when it 'authenticated' an edition of the Latin Vulgate (which happened to include it). Now, supposed Protestant "church authorities" could in theory stand up and say: 'We hereby 'authenticate' a recension which includes 1 John 5.7.' But it would have nothing to do with actual manuscript evidence for the verse, and would resemble authoritarian and obscurantist approaches taken at Trent.

Again, the issue is not whether there is Scriptural support for the Trinity: there is plenty, with or without 1 John 5.7.
Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

Re: Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it

Hi,

But you don't actually address the matter of the manuscript evidence for 1 John 5.7 itself, or its paucity.

Sure, I do, although I can not always write a five-page essay on every forum post.

Any sensible textual understanding accepts that some phrases and verses dropped out of the Greek line (even the Greek Orthodox has restored Acts 8:37 and the heavenly witnesses to their Greek editions, following the Reformation Bible excellence). The modern version texts consistently use variants with ultra-minority Greek support (many are absurd, granted). The difference with the heavenly witnesses is that you have the greatest depth of wide-ranging and powerful supports, Councils and early church writers (Cyprian in the 200s being ultra-clear) and Vetus Latina and thousands of manuscripts and internal evidences, including grammatical and contextual, and the proper understanding of inclusion/omission variants, all should help out anyone puzzled. There really should be no issue at all to the thinking Christian believer who has studied a bit of textual history. And they will know and understand the excellence of the Reformation Bible, the hundreds of superb Bibles throughout the world from the pure Received Text.

And it doesn't take a recourse to the writings of Fenton John Anthony Hort for one to realize that there is a paucity of manuscript evidence for (as opposed to strongly worded opinions about) 1 John 5.7.

Sure. There was lots of controversy before Hort, especially after the twisted expositions of the heavy drinker, bitter Richard Porson, in the early 1800s. (To be fair, supporters of the authenticity of this scripture made some signficant tactical and strategic errors.)

However, Hort brought in the Fog, and special techniques like Metzger deceptive word-parsing were developed, and 100 Metzger Parrots came a-chirping. That is where we are today, for many, simply trying to help brethren out of the Fog. (I conjecture that Hort picked up mesmerist techniques from his friend Augustus de Morgan, the mathematician-occultist at whose house they had the seance in Hort's Bible development, not college, years, and those techniques helped bring the Fog to the Revision panel. )

Calvin said specifically "the passage flows better when this clause is added .. I am inclined to receive it as the true reading". He did not give any exegesis of the section without the verse.

The heavenly witnesses was already fully authenticated as scripture in the Reformation era with the pure Bible. Sincere Reformation believers and Catholics agreed on the verse, even the Anabaptists and others fairly radical generally accepted the scripture. Some minor disputes arose later, in an era and error of textual apostasy, a period that led to the decrepit Revision and the 100++ alphabet soup modern versions from the Hortian text. Which should simply be discarded.

Better the pure word of God.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

 

[farouk]

Re: Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it

Hi,

Sure, I do, although I can not always write a five-page essay on every forum post.

Any sensible textual understanding accepts that some phrases and verses dropped out of the Greek line (even the Greek Orthodox has restored Acts 8:37 and the heavenly witnesses to their Greek editions, following the Reformation Bible excellence). The modern version texts consistently use variants with ultra-minority Greek support (many are absurd, granted). The difference with the heavenly witnesses is that you have the greatest depth of wide-ranging and powerful supports, Councils and early church writers (Cyprian in the 200s being ultra-clear) and Vetus Latina and thousands of manuscripts and internal evidences, including grammatical and contextual, and the proper understanding of inclusion/omission variants, all should help out anyone puzzled. There really should be no issue at all to the thinking Christian believer who has studied a bit of textual history. And they will know and understand the excellence of the Reformation Bible, the hundreds of superb Bibles throughout the world from the pure Received Text.

Sure. There was lots of controversy before Hort, especially after the twisted expositions of the heavy drinker, bitter Richard Porson, in the early 1800s. (To be fair, supporters of the authenticity of this scripture made some signficant tactical and strategic errors.)

However, Hort brought in the Fog, and special techniques like Metzger deceptive word-parsing were developed, and 100 Metzger Parrots came a-chirping. That is where we are today, for many, simply trying to help brethren out of the Fog. (I conjecture that Hort picked up mesmerist techniques from his friend Augustus de Morgan, the mathematician-occultist at whose house they had the seance in Hort's Bible development, not college, years, and those techniques helped bring the Fog to the Revision panel. )

Calvin said specifically "the passage flows better when this clause is added .. I am inclined to receive it as the true reading". He did not give any exegesis of the section without the verse.

The heavenly witnesses was already fully authenticated as scripture in the Reformation era with the pure Bible. Sincere Reformation believers and Catholics agreed on the verse, even the Anabaptists and others fairly radical generally accepted the scripture. Some minor disputes arose later, in an era and error of textual apostasy, a period that led to the decrepit Revision and the 100++ alphabet soup modern versions from the Hortian text. Which should simply be discarded.

Better the pure word of God.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

Steven:

Well, thank-you at least for defining a little the context of what you seem to mean by 'pure', in textual transmission and variants.

I think we would be in wholehearted agreement that since the Divine Author is holy, His words are pure; purity as a meditational theme, as in Philippians 4.8, for example, is a very heartening subject.

I do come back to the idea that that I seem to discern in your comments that somehow there is an ecclesiastical structure or paradigm that has got to be imposed onto the manuscript evidence, rather than the other way round.

You rightly mention the Reformation's great blessings, when the Word was once again asserted as the authority.

But I don't see some Reformation ecclesiastical structure that supposedly dictated what was and was not textual evidence.

What you seem to be saying, more or less, is that the text of printed New Testament editions which emerged at the Reformation should correct the manuscript evidence from which it was supposedly derived. If you're not saying this, then I have misunderstood you.

(I'm sure that I read in a 19th century edition of Calvin's commentaries (unabridged) the comments that I mentioned previously.)

When one speaks of purity in a textual sense, it refers to the demonstrable process by which a text reflects its sources in an accurate way. Renaissance scholars, from whom many of the Reformers derived their method, said: 'ad fontes': to the sources.

If on the one hand we insist that the Greet text of the New Testament is the source material, basically, but then have to go to church tradition to justify something about which we might happen to feel strongly, then it is hard to see how this is consistent.

Part of the difficulty has been that in reading John Owen's interpretation of the Westminster Confession's use of the term 'kept pure in all ages', his comments seem to have been taken by some people to imply erroneously that there is no such thing as manuscript variants. The fact that there is overwhelming manuscript evidence for the text of the New Testament is itself presumably a sign of the providence of God.

What one also has to bear in mind (I'm dispensational) is that Owen et al. did not distinguish between the church and Israel, and some of his followers have tended to confuse the nature of a largely invariant consonantal Hebrew text of the Old Testament, with the nature of the Greek New Testament text dispersed into thousands of items and parts. There is no New Testament era ark of the covenant containing some invariant Received, printed text, but rather the text has been, in providence, dispersed into thousands of fragments; and we owe a lot fo Renaissance scholars such as Erasmus and others for having tried to put them together. Interestingly, in Erasmus's 1516 edition of the Novum Instrumentum, containing his Latin and Greek text, Erasmus excluded 1 John 5.7.

Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure

Hi,

Steven: Well, thank-you at least for defining a little the context of what you seem to mean by 'pure', in textual transmission and variants. I think we would be in wholehearted agreement that since the Divine Author is holy, His words are pure; purity as a meditational theme, as in Philippians 4.8, for example, is a very heartening subject..

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report;
if there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise,
think on these things.

I do come back to the idea that that I seem to discern in your comments that somehow there is an ecclesiastical structure or paradigm that has got to be imposed onto the manuscript evidence, rather than the other way round.

The providential "structure" came to pass 400-500 years ago, when men of faith and wisdom searched the manuscripts, the early church writings, considered the internal elements and brought forth the Reformation Bible editions. Nothing had to be imposed then, nothing new has to be imposed now, we simply have to receive the pure Bible text that is to be Received.

You rightly mention the Reformation's great blessings, when the Word was once again asserted as the authority..

The word was restored in text, the word was asserted in authority.
The two are complementary.

(And I avoid a capital "W" for the scriptures as the word, as it confuses two distinct uses of word. The AV shows you this distinction.)

But I don't see some Reformation ecclesiastical structure that supposedly dictated what was and was not textual evidence.

The dynamic principally involved an amazing century of scholarship and faith. Three principle scholarly men and materials, along with feedback and scholarship from all over Europe, laboured unto the pure Bible. Desiderius Erasmus & Robert Étienne (Stephanus) & Theodore Beza. The Geneva Bible and then the Authorized Version refined and honed this scholarship into the English Holy Bible, involving more learned scholars, first in Geneva and then in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster. The knowledge of manuscripts and languages and the ECW was very strong. (In those days they were truly fluent in the Biblical languages, they were not lexicon scholars, e.g many read and studied and had devotions and discussed and even debated live in Greek.) And the common sense and insight of this era was the apex of Bible text learning and application.

What you seem to be saying, more or less, is that the text of printed New Testament editions which emerged at the Reformation should correct the manuscript evidence.

Your logic is in reverse. The manuscript evidence, along with auxiliary, supportive considerations like the early church writers (simple example, the fact that Irenaeus and Cyprian referenced Acts 8:37, demonstrating that the Latin text maintained a vital element lost in most Greek manuscripts, along with similarly probative internal analysis, which you can see by simply reading the text) and a learned and faith-consistent and sensible approach to the scriptures, brought forth the New Testament editions which emerged with the Reformation.

from which it was supposedly derived. If you're not saying this, then I have misunderstood you..

The supposedly is inappropriate. When you study the actual writings and applications of these men, and the evidences, the facts on the ground, everything fits perfectly.

(I'm sure that I read in a 19th century edition of Calvin's commentaries (unabridged) the comments that I mentioned previously.)

Commentaries on the catholic epistles (1849)
http://books.google.com/books?id=GKoGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA257
http://www.lectionarycentral.com/easter1/CalCommEpistle.html

When one speaks of purity in a textual sense, it refers to the demonstrable process by which a text reflects its sources in an accurate way. Renaissance scholars, from whom many of the Reformers derived their method,. said: 'ad fontes': to the sources.

Which is the phrase of Erasmus and the methodology of the gentlemen who were the giant New Testament scholars of the era.

If on the one hand we insist that the Greet text of the New Testament is the source material,

Erasmus never insisted that, nor does any savvy New Testament scholar. The Greek Byzantine manuscript tradition can be considered a fountainhead source, however it had suffered a level of corruption, most especially (and glaringly) through the occasional omission.

Thus, the superb scholarship of Erasmus, Stephanus and Bezae, which took care of both aspects. A return to the strengths of the Greek tradition. And the precise analysis which developed the Reformation Bible text. Utilizing all sources, in what would be considered today an eclectic manner. The superb, providential approach. The Greek manuscript tradition was considered. The Latin. The wide range of ECW citations. The internal evidences of many stripes, such as grammar and textual habits and style, all looked at in a faith-consistent manner.

basically, but then have to go to church tradition to justify something about which we might happen to feel strongly, then it is hard to see how this is consistent.

The consistency we already have in our hands. We simply have to open our eyes and accept the pure Bible which has been given to us.

Part of the difficulty has been that in reading John Owen's interpretation of the Westminster Confession's use of the term 'kept pure in all ages', his comments seem to have been taken by some people to imply erroneously that there is no such thing as manuscript variants.

I've never seen anybody take that position, by implication or exposition. Although I noticed that some writers used to take a position close to the idea of a singular perfect copy at all times (perhaps thinking it was implied by the WC and Psalm 12 phrase). However, I do not see anybody taking that position today.

The fact that there is overwhelming manuscript evidence for the text of the New Testament is itself presumably a sign of the providence of God.

It is nice that there are thousands of manuscripts. The Reformation Bible is built on those thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts, the modern versions are not. They are built on one corrupt manuscript, Vaticanus, with a few auxiliary other corruptions from other sources, like Sinaiticus (especially where Vaticanus is missing text, or is simply too absurd). The hand-waving that they do not really follow Hort any more does not stand up to scrutiny.

Any modern version mentality or perspective (e.g. the ramblings of James White) that talks about thousands of manuscripts is being totally hypocritical. As the NIV, NAS, ESV, RSV, NWT, Holman, Emphasized etc and the hundreds of versions that follow the Critical Text consistently (hundreds, even thousands of times) reject the great mass of manuscripts, the thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts.

When a person actually claims that the original Bible is vastly different from the great mass of manuscripts (simple example: 99.9% of the Greek, Latin and Syriac manuscripts have the resurrection appearances of the Lord Jesus at the ending of Mark, yet the modern version theorists claim that these 99.9% of the manuscripts are all wrong, and Mark ended without resurrection appearances, and the women afraid) then how could they claim that the masses of manuscripts are providential ?

The MV theorists flunk Logic 101 and Bible Sense 102.

What one also has to bear in mind (I'm dispensational) is that Owen et al. did not distinguish between the church and Israel, and some of his followers have tended to confuse the nature of a largely invariant consonantal Hebrew text of the Old Testament, with the nature of the Greek New Testament text dispersed into thousands of items and parts. There is no New Testament era ark of the covenant containing some invariant Received, printed text, but rather the text has been, in providence, dispersed into thousands of fragments; and we owe a lot to Renaissance scholars such as Erasmus and others for having tried to put them together. Interestingly, in Erasmus's 1516 edition of the Novum Instrumentum, containing his Latin and Greek text, Erasmus excluded 1 John 5.7.

The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew Bible Received Text, and the Stephanus and Bezae and AV editions give us the New Testament Received Text. There are some similarities, some differences, in the process, the result is the same, the pure and perfect word of God.

The Erasmus error on the heavenly witnesses in his editions 1 and 2 was corrected in 1522, and then in his succeeding 4th and 5th editions. And then in all the editions of Stephanus and Beza, and in the Geneva, and the primary English Received Text, the AV. As often, this makes a fascinating study.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

 

[Free]

Stephen:

In terms of the doctrinal content of 1 John 5.7, what it says is essentially supported by many other verses.

So it's not wise to allow any interpretation of discussion to be extrapolated to the effect that the whole doctrine of the Trinity somehow depends on the manuscript evidence for 1 John 5.7 being found to be weighty, when one may actually find that it is based on less weighty manuscript evidence than one might have first thought.

Many books and articles have been written on this, but their effect has often not been clarity about the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, but rather hyperbole and obscurity.

And this was the point I was getting at.

 

[farouk]

Steven:

Some of what you say I would agree with in general terms.

But you seem to be saying that somehow God settled manuscript variants in the 16th century, by some inscrutable process. You speak vaguely about faith principles by which certain scholars made editorial choices in the 16th century, but now you seem to imply that the end product can't be tested against the sources from which they are derived, especially when it comes to 1 John 5.7.

Essentially you seem to be saying that the printed Received Text (which is in general terms supported by a lot of the existing Byzantine majority of manuscripts) became the sole definition of providential preservation, and now that same text cannot even be assessed by the very same sourcing scrutiny which was used to produce it.

So with respect, if I'm reading you accurately, your thinking seems somewhat circular.

(I do actually have a lot of respect and confidence in the Received Text, in fact; and, interestingly, the New King James even uses it.)

Blessings.

 

[Free]

Hi,

No, I'm not begging any question, I am pointing out the more fundamental question.

The point is simple. Scripture comes first, doctrine is developed from scripture. If you do not know what the scripture actually says at 1 John 5:7, John 1:18, 1 Timothy 3:16, Acts 20:28, the rtesurrection appearances of Jesus in Mark's Gospel and 100 or 1000 other places, it is impossible to have a definite, sound, pure doctrine. And those who disagree with you in those 1000 places can easily cry "corruption" and "redaction" and "interpolation" ... and you will never have the definite, pure scripture in your hand.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery

The point is that you are presuming that 1 John 5:7 is Scripture.

 

[Steven Avery]

what the needle is in the mariner's compass, this verse is in the epistle

Hi,

Steven: Some of what you say I would agree with in general terms. But you seem to be saying that somehow God settled manuscript variants in the 16th century, by some inscrutable process.

providential process, in fulfillment of the promises of preservation of his word.

Psalms 12:6-7
The words of the LORD are pure words:
as silver tried in a furnace of earth,
purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD,
thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

And there is nothing particular complex or difficult in understanding this. It was easy and fun to describe to you, and since it is about the purity of God's word, I could share the same again many times and places and ways, as simply a reasonable service.

You speak vaguely about faith principles by which certain scholars made editorial choices in the 16th century, but now you seem to imply that the end product can't be tested

The principle testing took place as the word of God flourished throughout the world, as the Gospel moved forth and men and woman throughout the world believed their Bible as the pure word of God, with a renewed hunger to study and learn and understand.

against the sources from which they are derived, especially when it comes to 1 John 5.7.

The end product of the heavenly witnesses verse mirrors the antiquity days of Christianity, when Cyprian utilized the verse, when the Council of Carthage boldly proclaimed the Johannine words of the heavenly witnesses, when writer upon writer in each century declared the verse.

1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

We have a strong and clear historical trail with the heavenly witnesses. Quotes, allusions, councils, commentaries and writers, music and manuscripts. The ECW and the Latin sources declare the heavenly witnesses with clarity and strength, sound interpreters and grammarians are right there for the majestic ride.

==================================================

The Heavenly Witnesses - The Fulcrum Verse of the Battle for the Pure Bible

Those who have ears to hear .. please understand .. the battle for this verse :

1 John 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one.

Is the battle for the heart and soul of God's pure word. The complementary battles for the resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Mark, for the ringing declaration "God was manifest in the flesh", for the Pericope Adulterae, which Augustine tells us many churchmen found difficult, and for the textual sister verse to 1 John 5:7, Acts 8:37, the verse which declares our testimony with water baptism ... are all superb battles. As is the Doxology, and not having the swine marathon and avoiding blunder after blunder in the alexandrian corruption text. However, even within 100 battles, the heavenly witness,

1 John 5:7 is the fulcrum verse.

5. Who is he that overcometh the world - That is superior to all worldly care, desire, fear? Every believer, and none else. The seventh verse (usually so reckoned) is a brief recapitulation of all which has been before advanced concerning the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It is cited, in conjunction with the sixth and eighth, 1 John v, 6, 8 by Tertullian, Cyprian, and an uninterrupted train of Fathers.

And, indeed, what the sun is in the world,
what the heart is in a man,
what the needle is in the mariner's compass,
this verse is in the epistle.

By this the sixth, eighth, and ninth verses 1 John v, 6, 8, 9 are indissolubly connected; as will be evident, beyond all contradiction, when they are accurately considered. (John Wesley, with appreciation to Bengelius, Explanatory Notes, 1754)

==================================================

Essentially you seem to be saying that the printed Received Text (which is in general terms supported by a lot of the existing Byzantine majority of manuscripts) became the sole definition of providential preservation, and now that same text cannot even be assessed by the very same sourcing scrutiny which was used to produce it.

Sure it can, it is assessed with similar and greater verve and pizazz. We know the evidences and writings of the 1500s, how they thought, and how they related to the Greek and Latin sources and ECW. If anything, the evidence became far clearer as new discoveries were made. When Erasmus discussed and analyzed the verse, only one of the 3 super-evidences was considered. The Vulgate Prologue was properly discussed, however Cyprian and the Council of Carthage came forth to the discussion later. And while Erasmus was aware of the grammatical concern, only later, especially by Eugenius Bulgaris, was this seen by many with the proper import. Thus we can see that much more clearly and crisply today (if we do not get hornswaggled by the agitprop ).

So with respect, if I'm reading you accurately, your thinking seems somewhat circular.

There is a sense in which all beliefs that have a faith component are circular. Thus the logician skeptic can accuse all Christianity of a type of circularity, after all we look at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ first through the lens of the revelation of the New Testament. Or when we look at creation through the revelations God has given us through his word, from Genesis to Revelation. The unbeliever will always accuse .. 'circular'. And to a limited extent, they are right, all revelation truth that has an element of faith can be considered logically circular, even when consistent and true.

The same can be said of any belief that our Bible is pure and perfect. "circular" .. cries those who have no tangible, readable pure Bible. "I don't see God's word as fully pure, and I am upset that you do .. ergo, you are Mr. Circular". (This is a many-moon long term history discussion, based on many who have stridently and even arrogantly tried to use this word 'circular' as their backwash, not for your mild questioning use.)

This also should answer Free above, who also essentially took a 'circular' handwave approach.

(I do actually have a lot of respect and confidence in the Received Text, in fact; and, interestingly, the New King James even uses it.)

For me, the NKJV was a transitional enterprise, a wonderful move in the right direction. The NKJV did help me to understand and receive the pure Bible text, as I stashed and discarded a whole slew of deficient, ultra-corrupt modern versions. Later, I moved forth a bit more, as I examined a bit more the imperatives of providential preservation and the specifics of a large number of verses and some deficient aspects of the NKJV edition and history.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

 

[farouk]

Steven:

Yours is a quite an elaborate style of writing, but I do see some lines of thought running through it, in relation to 1 John 5.7 and wider issues.

By conceding that your argument about sourcing for texts is indeed circular, you maybe unwittingly lay yourself open to the suggestion that you believe in something akin to advanced revelation to certain 16th century editors: in other words, what they did you absolutely trust and concur with, yet when it comes to defining what they did and what sources they used, these are no longer open to scrutiny.

It's as if the printed text 'corrects' what underlies it. Frankly, this is not a tenable position for thinking Christians.

I think that if you look up in a good commentary Psalm 12 with its use of 'preserve them' in verse 7, it refers back to those mentioned in verse 5: the poor and needy.

Again, I think that the use of the word 'pure' in issues of textual variants and transmission needs to be recognized as one that refers to an approach which has integrity and sound sourcing: not something God fearing scholars and Bible readers need be afraid of. Arbitrarily saying that a particular printed text is identical to the original and then saying that its sourcing is beyond scrutiny, is not sound. (I still harbor the hope that you are not really saying this, but I think maybe you are.)

Blessings, Friend.

 

[Steven Avery]

Psalm 12:7 - the Promise of Preservation

Hi,

By conceding that your argument about sourcing for texts is indeed circular

Please note that this "concession" is only in the sense that all faith-consistent truth can be considered circular. Is your understanding of the resurrection of Jesus Christ weaker or less valid because some skeptics will consider it "circular" ?

And if you want to read about Psalm 12 exegesis in depth, there is a lot of historical material on a thread on the now-dormant AV1611 forum.

Psalm 12:7 - the Promise of Preservation
http://av1611.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270

Although it is spread over some pages, afaik this is the only fairly thorough and complete study of the historical exegesis (Jewish and Christian) of the preservation considerations of Psalm 12. (I have seen good articles, but none that go into specifics on Rashi, Kimchi, Michael Ayguan, Symon Patrick and many, many others. You may want to note also the early post #8 that simply looks at the chapter as a whole, with some discussion and emphasis.)

========================

The fact that you use the word "arbitrarily" in your summation us a bit astounding. Beyond that, you make up some idea that I think scrutiny is not allowed. (I discuss in a friendly manner with scrutinizers daily, and I learn a lot from such studies.) Earlier, you are repeating the canard about correcting what is underneath, which to me sounds meaningless.

Now, in the posts above I pointed out carefully the methodology of the learned men of the Reformation era, and it was anything but arbitrary. And they consistently searched out carefully the sources underneath. They did this in a sensible and intelligent manner, something that is simply not possible by the modern textual Hortian-Vaticanus-CT-NIV theorist

These types of summaries "arbitrary, scrutiny not allowed, correcting the underneath, shows that, while you are reading, you are not really listening carefully. All of those points were carefully discussed above.

Now, I have no objection at all to your disagreeing with my position. I rarely expect people to change radically on the basis of a little conversation, these issues are very deep. I would appreciate it though, if you would avoid the little pat repetitions of attempted scholastic brush-offs that do not really fit our dialog.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

 

[farouk]

Re: Psalm 12:7 - the Promise of Preservation

Hi,

Please note that this "concession" is only in the sense that all faith-consistent truth can be considered circular. Is your understanding of the resurrection of Jesus Christ weaker or less valid because some skeptics will consider it "circular" ?

And if you want to read about Psalm 12 exegesis in depth, there is a lot of historical material on a thread on the now-dormant AV1611 forum.

Psalm 12:7 - the Promise of Preservation
http://av1611.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270

Although it is spread over some pages, afaik this is the only fairly thorough and complete study of the historical exegesis (Jewish and Christian) of the preservation considerations of Psalm 12. (I have seen good articles, but none that go into specifics on Rashi, Kimchi, Michael Ayguan, Symon Patrick and many, many others. You may want to note also the early post #8 that simply looks at the chapter as a whole, with some discussion and emphasis.)

========================

The fact that you use the word "arbitrarily" in your summation us a bit astounding. Beyond that, you make up some idea that I think scrutiny is not allowed. (I discuss in a friendly manner with scrutinizers daily, and I learn a lot from such studies.) Earlier, you are repeating the canard about correcting what is underneath, which to me sounds meaningless.

Now, in the posts above I pointed out carefully the methodology of the learned men of the Reformation era, and it was anything but arbitrary. And they consistently searched out carefully the sources underneath. They did this in a sensible and intelligent manner, something that is simply not possible by the modern textual Hortian-Vaticanus-CT-NIV theorist

These types of summaries "arbitrary, scrutiny not allowed, correcting the underneath, shows that, while you are reading, you are not really listening carefully. All of those points were carefully discussed above.

Now, I have no objection at all to your disagreeing with my position. I rarely expect people to change radically on the basis of a little conversation, these issues are very deep. I would appreciate it though, if you would avoid the little pat repetitions of attempted scholastic brush-offs that do not really fit our dialog.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

Steven:

A number of points, if I may:

From my comment about textual evidence, you changed the subject to supposed doubts about the resurrection. Turning back to the subject of textual evidence for the New Testament, textual evidence for a verse is textual evidence; it can be noted and listed, whatever skeptics may verbalize about it. So I'm not really interested in informing myself about other people's skepticism; I'm saying that we go round in circles if we say that a printed edition of the Received Text is sound because it was derived from sound textual evidence, but then apply rather different criteria for including or excluding 1 John 5.7, principally on the basis of its inclusion in some of Erasmus's editions. (And the reason why conservatives pressured Erasmus to put it in later editions is because 1 John 5.7 is in the Latin Vulgate.)

The argument goes something like: It's in the Latin Vulgate. So it 'ought' to be in the printed Greek New Testament. A TR printed Greek New Testament was used in the King James (albeit in italics), etc. So this 'proves' its authenticity.

This is what I mean about going round in circles, or whatever term.

Thus expressed, this might not be an adequate argument (I don't think it is.) But it seems a reasonable summary of what actually happened.

Re. Psalm 12.7 from Barnes Commentary:

' "Thou shalt keep them That is, the persons referred to in Psalms 12:5 - the poor and the needy who were suffering from the wrongs inflicted on them. The idea is, that God would guard and defend them. They were safe in his hands.' (from Bibletools dot org)

Far from being as you say 'repeating the canard about correcting what is underneath, which to me sounds meaningless', sourcing issues are in fact important and, indeed, meaningful.

Blessings.

​

 

[Steven Avery]

the horse of evidences pulls the cart of the pure Bible text

Hi,

From my comment about textual evidence, you changed the subject to supposed doubts about the resurrection.

This had to do with your repeated use of the "circular" argument and a supposed "concession". This is known as an analogy.

It looks like you did not understand the analogy, this type of thing happens on discussion forums, but I really tried.

apply rather different criteria for including or excluding 1 John 5.7, principally on the basis of its inclusion in some of Erasmus's editions.

If you read and understood my posts, you would have noted that the basis is the incredible historical, textual, ECW and internal evidences. Plus proper understandings of inclusion/omission and homoeoteleuton. And more. You have reversed the cart and the horse.

It looks like you did not understand the evidences, this type of thing happens on discussion forums, but I really tried..

... A TR printed Greek New Testament was used in the King James (albeit in italics)

No italics in the AV heavenly witnesses, except for the Scrivener edition, which is late 1800s and of no import.

.So this 'proves' its authenticity.

Oh, I never claim proof to those disinclined. Just as I never tell the skeptic that I can prove the resurrection, or even that Nazareth was a city in 30 AD, I never tell those unsure about the Bible purity what can be proved. And I have noticed that many of those in doubt often even prefer to be unsure, and then to pick and choose their texts and editions and even each individual variant (a common feature of our day).

What I can do, and did do above, is show you the incredible evidences that the common modern writer (ie. Metzger and the Parrots) hides from you. And help you to think through the issues. What you decide to do, is up to you, the faith you have about the purity of the Bible text, is between you and the Lord Jesus. And I claim to prove ... nothing.

Far from being as you say 'repeating the canard about correcting what is underneath, which to me sounds meaningless', sourcing issues are in fact important and, indeed, meaningful.

Of course they are, which is why I went in depth about the excellent skills and methodology of the Reformation Bible experts. I simply have no idea about what you think is being corrected 'underneath'. The Greek and the Latin differ. One was right and the other wrong. They both are 'underneath'. So any text must, by simple logic, correct one element underneath.

And I put a fair amount of effort to explain the dynamic of why the Latin and ECW referenced and preserved a majestic text that was dropped in the Greek manuscript line. I even at times go into the explanation of why this particular verse was subject to dropping, also Acts 8:37, also the Mark resurrection appearances ending, also the Pericope Adulterae. Every text that is subject to a certain amount of droppage, in any line, tends to have some interesting reasons .. underneath.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[farouk]

Steven:

So the Latin corrected the Greek at 1 John 5.7?

Blessings.

PS: It is very interesting that the purpose of the Greek text of Erasmus's 1516 Novum Instrumentum, containing both his Latin and Greek text, was to justify his emendations to the Latin Vulgate edition he wanted to be a standard, because of the corruptions that had crept in.

As if to say: "Here is the Latin text, which has a better basis than what was available, and - by the way - here is the Greek to prove it."

In other words, the Greek was there to justify the corrections to the Latin, not the other way round.

 

[Steven Avery]

the Greek and Latin relationship in the 1500s TR editions

Hi,

So the Latin corrected the Greek at 1 John 5.7?.

The extant Greek evidence is thin. The Latin evidence is wide and deep, and in many places like Acts 8:37 and 1 John 5:7, the Latin ECW inclusion evidence antedates the Greek omission evidence.

As I carefully explained earlier, there were some phrases and verses that dropped from the Greek line (the easiest type of corruption) and also some corruptions that were alternate variants.

PS: It is very interesting that the purpose of the Greek text of Erasmus's 1516 Novum Instrumentum, containing both his Latin and Greek text, was to justify his emendations to the Latin Vulgate edition he wanted to be a standard, because of the corruptions that had crept in..

That is correct, however Erasmus did in fact realize that there were places where the Greek had simply lost text which was maintained in the Latin. So there was nothing exceptional from an Erasmian standpoint to this happening with 1 John 5:7. Thus, the idea that doctrinal discomfort was a contributing factor in the Erasmus edition 1 and 2 omissions is a reasonable, albeit subjective, conjecture.

As if to say: "Here is the Latin text, which has a better basis than what was available, and - by the way - here is the Greek to prove it."

The interrelationship of the Latin and Greek for Erasmus, Stephanus and Beza is quite complex. At first, the emphasis was on improving the Latin. However, as the Greek editions became published and popular, they were viewed as the fundamental text for Bible translation. Generally, the Greek and Latin were mirror images, across languages.

Much of the improvement to the Latin had to do with individual words and phrases that had gotten mangled at some point in the historical process. I'm not sure offhand if there were any full verses that had actually dropped out of the Latin line, offhand I think not, but there were many phrases and words lost and corrupted. These were corrected in the new Greek-Latin Received Text editions. And those TR-Latin editions (which continued through Beza) were far better than earlier Latin Vulgate manuscripts, and also far better than the Sixtene and Clementine Vulgate editions of the late 1500s.

There was quite a fascinating historical debate in that era, comparing the RCC Latin (eg. Clementine) to the Received Text, especially in the period from Robert Bellarmine and William Fulke up to Francis Turretin (an excellent heavenly witnesses defender), and later. William Craig Brownlee, a fine writer who is also one of the strong heavenly witnesses defenders, was involved in this debate in the 1800s. However, 1 John 5:7 was not part of the debate with the RCC, since both sides accepted this verse as pure scripture.

Keep in mind that the modern versions use a text that is far closer to the Vulgate than to the TR text. Except the modern version text has many more corruptions, tons of blunders, and is a grossly inept text even compared to the Vulgate. This closerness to the Vulgate is not something that Metzger and the Parrots like to mention (if the parrots understand this) however Dutch textual scholar Jan Krans was willing to come out and make that clearly the modern version position. That the TR was not, in the modern opinion, as good a text as the Vulgate. The reason boils down to Vaticanus and the Vulgate agreeing on many corruptions, contra the Greek Byzantine manuscripts and also frequently against the ECW, the versional evidence and common sense and logic.

Psalm 119:140
Thy word is very pure:
therefore thy servant loveth it.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

[farouk]

Steven:

You make some interesting comments.

"The interrelationship of the Latin and Greek for Erasmus, Stephanus and Beza is quite complex. At first, the emphasis was on improving the Latin. However, as the Greek editions became published and popular, they were viewed as the fundamental text for Bible translation. Generally, the Greek and Latin were mirror images, across languages."

The reason why the Latin Vulgate had been even regarded as the primary text was because the Roman Catholic Church had regarded it as its official recension. The Greek being recognized as the primary text reflected the actual historical order in which the textual transmission occurred.

It is interesting that Postmodern writers such as Jacques Derrida have debunked the very idea of textual integrity: thinking derived from Medieval notions of text fragments being promoted to slant other directions in emphasis. There would seem to be a parallel here with the way people such as Gregory Martin fought against Erasmus's attempt to recognize the historical order of textual transmission from the Greek text.

Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

RCC reactionary move at Trent in 1546 declares Latin Vulgate Bible primacy

Hi Folks,

The reason why the Latin Vulgate had been even regarded as the primary text was because the Roman Catholic Church had regarded is as its official recension. .

Actually, that occurred later, in the future from the time of Erasmus. It was an RCC reactionary move against the pure Received Text and the Reformation Bible editions that were being printed all over Europe, and it came at the Council of Trent in 1546.

In fact, the RCC supported the Complutensian Polyglot which gave a pure Greek text very similar to that of Erasmus, and also the work of Erasmus in preparing his Greek text. And even Stephanus originally had some support. By his time the reactionary tide was rising, so Stephanus moved from Paris to Geneva, in order to avoid the persecution of the doctors of the Sorbonne. At around this time the writings of Erasmus were also graduating to the Index librorum prohibitorum.

When these Reformation Bible texts became popular, and the Reformation-related elements (including Anabaptists, the issue is not the specific Reformation doctrines as much as the liberation from Catholic error and the move to sola scriptura) spoke vigorously against Catholic paganisms, the reactionary movement took over. Leading to the Trent Vulgate-Latin declaration, which led later to the Sixtene and Clementine editions. In summary, in the first half of the 1500s there were many elements in the Catholic church that were quite sympathetic to improving the Latin text by excellent use of the Greek manuscripts.

Note that the Spanish movement of Bible study with the improved texts originated by Ximenes (Cisneros) was shut down rather quickly after the Complutensian. (Ximenes had recruited top scholars, which was disbanded.) A superb study of that Spanish period is in Humanists and Protestants, 1500-1900, by Basil Hall, Chapter 1, Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros and the Complutensian Bible, p. 1-51, 1990.

=======================

So far, I have never heard of any RCC statement before Trent that gave the Latin text any official status. The closest I know has to do with the Old Testament, where the Complutensian Polyglot placed the Latin between the Greek and Hebrew. And Ximenes remarked in the second Complutensian Prologue that it was thus placed between the Synagogue and the Greek Church like Christ crucified between two thieves.

Note, though that this comment is often misunderstood, Ximenes had referred to the Hebrew text as the veritas in the first Prologue.

You can see a discussion of this here:

The Life and times of Cardinal Ximenez, or, The church in Spain in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella (1885)
Karl Joseph von Hefele
http://books.google.com/books?id=qTx8fnYsCHsC&pg=PA151

=======================

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery
Bayside, NY
http://purebible.blogspot.com/

 

[farouk]

Steven:

It is a matter of historical record that Jerome's Latin Vulgate was regarded as the standard for the Roman Catholic church for hundreds of years.

With the coming of printing, of course, the perceived paradigms shifted a little, in that there were those of Rome who wanted a standard, printed edition of Jerome's Vulgate.

But even to go about producing such, Erasmus had recourse to the Greek, and its primacy was demonstrated practically because the Greek was used to justify the emendations to the Latin.

It's not convincing in my view for Presbyterians, Lutherans etc. with their presbyteries, synods, etc., to borrow the idea of ecclesiastical oversight and definition, from the practice of the Roman Catholic Church: I do have a lot of respect for the sort of text that underlies the Textus Receptus, but, as a dispensational adherent of an independent church, I certainly don't buy the Textus Receptus for reasons of supposed Protestant ecclesiastical authority over particular recensions. For me, textual preservation has been a matter of divine sovereignty and general providence, rather than ecclesiatical or apostolic succession, or whatever.

Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

Latin standard for the Bible in European scholarship pre-Reformation

Hi,

Steven: It is a matter of historical record that Jerome's Latin Vulgate was regarded as the standard for the Roman Catholic church for hundreds of years.

Simply because Latin was the language of European scholarship in those hundreds of years. As I pointed out above, there was no official (your earlier assertion) declaration of Latin primacy until Trent. And there was a rather deep attempt within the Catholic church to accept Greek corrections, until Trent. And on the OT, note that even Ximenes spoke of the Hebrew veritas.

..(not) supposed Protestant ecclesiastical authority ... textual preservation has been a matter of divine sovereignty and general providence

And I would agree. The Reformation Bible is not the pure and preserved text because of a specific Lutheran ecclesiastical pronouncement, or the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession or any declaration of an ecclesiastical authority. (Although such pronouncements can be recognition of the divine sovereignty Received Text).

In what Bible texts do you see this preservation by divine sovereignty and general providence ?
OT and NT.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

 

[farouk]

Re: Latin standard for the Bible in European scholarship pre-Reformation

Hi,

Simply because Latin was the language of European scholarship in those hundreds of years. As I pointed out above, there was no official declaration of Latin primacy to Trent, and there was a rather deep attempt within the Catholic church to accept Greek corrections, until Trent. And on the OT, note that even Ximenes spoke of the Hebrew veritas.

And I would agree. The Reformation Bible is not the pure and preserved text because of a specific Lutheran ecclesiastical pronouncement, or the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession or any declaration of an ecclesiastical authority. (Although such pronouncements can be recognition of the divine sovereignty Received Text).

In what Bible texts do you see this preservation by divine sovereignty and general providence ?
OT and NT.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven

Steven:

As a de facto, modus vivendi, Rome's regard for the Latin Vulgate was very strong. This is evidenced by the fact that people such as Gregory Martin regarded Erasmus's attempts to correct the Latin by the underlying Greek as a threat, even.

What I do not do is draw up somewhat arbitrary paradigms in textual evidence and say that these exclusively are the supposed bearers of divine preservation sovereignty and general providence.

As opposed to the almost invariant Hebrew consonantal text of the Old Testament, the New Testament's text is dispersed into thousands of items of textual evidence: preserved within the whole.

Here, I think, would be the mistake of some people in perceiving that Owen and the framers of the Westminster Confession were supposedly legitimizing particular apographs/copies which then took on the identical aura of the autographs/originals. But with their ecclesiology which held that the church equals Israel, it is possible to see how this mindset was encouraged. This, linked with a failure to acknowledge the quite different nature of New Testament textual evidence, from that of the Old Testament.

The fact that people such as Thomas Boston also thought that the Masoretic vowel pointing, dating from several centuries AD, was directly inspired, seems to run in parallel to the fact that likewise some Protestants were pleased to deem particular printed editions of the TR as being the result of direct inspiration, and thus supposedly superseding the Greek text that underlay it.

Blessings.

 

[Steven Avery]

Gregroy Martin - example of post-Trent RCC position

Hi,

As a de facto, modus vivendi, Rome's regard for the Latin Vulgate was very strong. This is evidenced by the fact that people such as Gregory Martin regarded Erasmus's attempts to correct the Latin by the underlying Greek as a threat, even.

Again, your chronology is wrong. Gregory Martin (1542?-1592) is long after Erasmus, and Trent. Thus he only shows the reactionary post-Trent RCC position.

=============

Did you miss my question ?

In what Bible texts do you see this preservation by divine sovereignty and general providence ?
OT and NT.

Note: I am not asking you what texts you reject for various reasons, but what you affirm as come to us by divine sovereignty and general providence

If you do not know, you can simply say 'dunno'.

the fact that likewise some Protestants were pleased to deem particular printed editions of the TR

At that time, the emphasis was not on particular editions. e.g. Stephanus 1550 and Beza 1598 and the Elzevir editions could all be used in translation to Reformation Bibles, the small differences were not considered that significant to the general question of the purity of the Bible

as being the result of direct inspiration, and thus supposedly superseding the Greek text that underlay it.

These gentlemen were well aware that the Greek Received Text editions had been a synthesis of the best of all the underlying evidences, Greek, Latin, ECW, internal. What you mean by "the Greek text that underlay it" is quite unclear. They knew the strengths and weaknesses of the earlier Greek manuscript tradition, including the fact that verses had dropped out. You can see this easily when reading men like Symon Patrick or Matthew Poole or Francis Turretin or John Gill or dozens of other writers on the heavenly witnesses.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven Avery