Trevor,
I see two copies of Letis' The Ecclesiastical Text (ET) at Amazon for $50 each (
I just searched for his The Majority Text (MT) and find none available in the world! A few of months ago I had to pay $98 for a marked-up copy (through Amazon), and was fortunate to find a cheap copy of the former book on eBay. Your best bet to get MT would be to have a friend get a copy from their local Inter-library Loan system, photocopy it, and have them send it to you. It is now a rare book.
Although ET is more recent, and has some excellent stuff in it, I think MT might be the most important of the two, but not by far. Again, I refer you to the excerpts and reviews in the above-mentioned thread, for a sampling.
You bring up some good points regarding the Latin Vulgate and its long usage in the Western church. I quote from the "Authentic" thread:
Edward F. Hills:
Do we believing Bible Students "worship" the King James Version? Do we regard it as inspired, just as the ancient Jewish philosopher Philo (d. 42 A.D.) and many early Christians regarded the Septuagint as inspired? Or do we claim the same supremacy for the King James Version that Roman Catholics claim for the Latin Vulgate? Do we magnify its authority above that of the Hebrew and Greek Old and New Testament Scriptures? We have often been accused of such excessive veneration for the King James Version, but these accusations are false. In regard to Bible versions we follow the example of Christ's Apostles. We adopt the same attitude toward the King James Version that they maintained toward the Septuagint.
In their Old Testament quotations the Apostles never made any distinction between the Septuagint and the Hebrew Scriptures. They never said, "The Septuagint translates this verse thus and so, but in the original Hebrew it is this way." Why not? Why did they pass up all these opportunities to display their learning? Evidently because of their great respect for the Septuagint and the position which it occupied in the providence of God. In other words, the Apostles recognized the Septuagint as the providentially approved translation of the Old Testament into Greek. They understood that this was the version that God desired the gentile Church of their day to use as its Old Testament Scripture.
During the 4th century the Roman Empire was divided into two parts, a Greek-speaking Eastern half and a Latin-speaking Western half. In the West the knowledge of Greek died out, and only the Latin language remained. Hence for the Western Christians the Greek Bible became useless. For more than 1,000 years the Latin Vulgate was their only Bible. It was the Latin Vulgate that John Wyclif translated into English, and it was through the study of the Vulgate also that Martin Luther gained his knowledge of those Gospel truths by which he ushered in the Protestant Reformation. Hence, in spite of its errors, it is not too much to say that the Latin Vulgate was the providentially appointed Bible version for Christians of Western Europe during the medieval period.
But if the Septuagint was the providentially appointed Old Testament version during the days of the early Church and if the Latin Vulgate was the providentially appointed Bible version for Christians of medieval Europe, much more is the King James Version the providentially appointed Bible for English-speaking Christians today. In it the true text of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament has been restored, and the errors of the Septuagint and of the Latin vulgate have been corrected. (Believing Bible Study, pp. 81, 82) I think this gives us a different picture of what Dr. Hills understood to be the truth. The superiority of the providentially appointed English Bible arrived when the English language was at its height, when the translators were the best and most learned, and in time for the greatest missionary outreaches — using the restored Hebrew and Greek texts — to translate the Bible into the various languages of the nations. There was a process over time during which God guided “all things together for good” to bring the true readings of Scripture — which He had kept in their purity — together into one definitive text. Hills put it this way,
The Traditional Text, found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts, is the True Text because it represents the God-guided usage of [the] universal priesthood of believers.
…The first printed text of the Greek New Testament represents a forward step in the providential preservation of the New Testament. In it the few errors of any consequence occurring in the Traditional Greek Text were corrected by the providence of God operating through the usage of the Latin-speaking Church of Western Europe. In other words, the editors and printers who produced this first printed Greek New Testament text were providentially guided by the usage of the Latin-speaking Church to follow the Latin Vulgate in those few places in which the Latin Church usage rather than the Greek Church usage had preserved the genuine reading. [Emphasis mine –SMR]
…Through the usage of Bible-believing Protestants God placed the stamp of His approval on this first printed text, and it became the Textus Receptus (Received Text). It is the printed form of the Traditional Text found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts. (The King James Version Defended, pp. 111, 112) It seems that if one is looking to find fault, find it they will, even if it means missing the thread of cohesion that holds their opponent’s arguments together. Sin has affected our ability to reason and perceive. No doubt I suffer from this also. Please, Lord, preserve me from that here!
So the phrase, “the text current among believers”, is not to be taken as an absolute, valid everywhere and for all time, but in the context of the historical steps of preservation, as Hills meant it to be taken. The crown of this process, being in English (for I have seen excellent translations from the TR in Arabic and in Dinka Padang New Testaments) the King James Bible, cannot be supplanted by inferior translations based upon inferior Greek texts, however widely used among believers, as is the case today.
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Another excerpt from the same thread:
To demonstrate briefly how Hills’ thought coheres, and how he does not contradict himself as regards his principles involved in preservation. He does not say that God’s providential preservation of the New Testament operated in the area of the Greek text exclusively, neither does he say that this “providential preservation operated within the sphere of the Greek Church” exclusively. One might try to paint Hills in a corner this way, but it is invalid to lay these thoughts at his doorstep. Please note this: Hills’ presupposition that God would successfully preserve His word down through the ages was the lens through which Hills discerned in the factual history of the New Testament text God’s hand upon it.
And consider this: the edition of the Majority Text / Textus Receptus in the English language given the world is the King James Bible; its underlying Greek text is the one God sovereignly chose to have used.
It exists, a fait accompli!
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As regards the issue of "If only the Greek Byzantine was the providentially preserved text, what about the other locations in the world that had a different texttype -- did they not have an adequate Bible?" I aver (again excerpting from an interaction with the writings of a text critic):
There is a preserving of the text, and then there is a preserving of the text—where its integrity is held even to minute readings not granted the former. That the former was nonetheless efficacious is analogous to the Bibles based upon the CT being efficacious to save and edify God’s people today, as witnessed by the multitudes regenerated through those who use the NIV and NASB. The minute preservation occurred in the primary edition (KJV/TR) which was to serve the English-speaking people and the translations created for the vast missionary work they undertook, which impacted the entire world. (It is accepted by many today that the English language is now the universal language—the second language of most other nations.) There was a progression in the purifying of the text, so as to almost (some would say completely) perfectly reconstitute the original manuscripts of the apostles, even as there has been, in the area of theology, a restoration of apostolic doctrine, which also went through phases of deterioration and eventual renewal.
Thus, even those areas of the church which were non-Greek-speaking also had a “preserved text”—as do multitudes in this present day—though their texts were not “minutely preserved.” The texts they had were efficacious unto the salvation of souls and the sustaining of the churches.
As regards the “minutely preserved” text, I observe the fait accompli of His work – Him who said, “I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Isaiah 46:9, 10) – I observe this Book produced in 1611, and I seek to understand in retrospect what He did and how He did it. I am aware you may scoff at what you may term my “unscientific and ignorant” approach, but what is that to me? I do not have faith in your “science” or in your “learning,” so your judgment of my approach is not relevant to me. You may term this (as I have heard it said) “invincible ignorance,” but if my approach to knowledge is approved by my Lord, I care not for your disapproval.
Many times the people of God have not understood how a prophecy was to be fulfilled until it was a done thing, and then they looked backward to see how He had worked. It is thus in observing how He fulfilled His promise to preserve His word.
I look at the completed act of His providential preservation, the manuscripts He brought into the possession of (despised-by-many) Erasmus, and those editors who came after him; I follow the transmission backwards, the nature of those texts – behold, in the main they are those of the Byzantine text-type, with some few readings from the Latin Vulgate – and I seek to discern and construct what Maurice Robinson and Wm. Pierpont posited in their Introduction to The New Testament in the Original Greek According to the Byzantine / Majority Textform,
A sound rational approach which accounts for all the phenomena and offers a reconstruction of the history of textual transmission is all that is demanded for any text-critical hypothesis. (p. xxxii) I am likewise aware that Messrs. Robinson and Pierpont will disown me as one of their illegitimate progeny, as they make clear on their page xli, but I want to make clear I refuse to be under bondage to “the tyranny of experts,” to use Machen’s memorable phrase. I do not need the knowledge of “experts” who proceed according to methodologies I do not subscribe to. I will consider their work (as much as I am able) and use it if I please.
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I bring these things up to indicate there is an adequate preservation as distinguished from preservation in the minutiae, and this will cast some light on the status of the Latin Vulgate, the Alexandrian texttype, etc.
Steve
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Steve Rafalsky
Elder, International Evangelical Church (Reformed)
Limassol, Cyprus
" I am set for the defense of the gospel" (Philippians 1:17)
" Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious
power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness..." (Colossians 1:11)
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