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Jerusalem Blade · #6 (**permalink**) 09-13-2007, 02:30 PM

This is Kurschner’s 3rd reason:

(3) How did the Byzantine text-form end up having more attested Greek manuscripts than the other text-forms such as the Alexandrian and the Western? Here is a very important fact of history that KJVO advocates ignore. Given the supplanting of the Greek language for Latin in the West early on, and given the expansion of Islam into Egypt and other regions, it explains why Byzantine Greek manuscripts continued to be copied in the Byzantine corner of the empire and eventually became the majority Greek text around the ninth century onwards; and explains why the early Greek text-types such as the Alexandrian were not copied during later times in other areas of the Christian world.

If there were no Islam expansion and coupled with the West speaking Greek not Latin, certainly the Byzantine text would not have been the “majority.” The Alexandrian and Western Greek text-forms would have continued to be copied with frequent pace.

This is a peculiar argument. I do not think it does justice to the complexity of the linguistic situation during this period. Did the Latin language “supplant” the Greek in the West – which Latin had been spoken in Italy and parts of Europe, including Britannia, for centuries – or was it simply the language of all, both common and educated – in this region? After the Roman conquest of Greece (B.C. 146), an unofficial diglossy (see “diglossia”) of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became the lingua franca of the vast Roman Empire. Educated Romans read the Greek classics. It can be shown that Latin remained the primary written language of the Western empire, and was the language of the administration of its government. (In the East, eventually written Latin was replaced by the native Greek, where the Greek language remained the only spoken tongue. Yet as late as Emperor Theodosius II [408-50], Latin was used within his administration, but Greek was used in communication with his subjects.) Earlier in the West, the Roman legions carried a vernacular Latin throughout the provinces where they were stationed, and in Europe this Latin eventually mixed with the native tongues to become the Romance languages, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. Latin survived the fall of the Roman Empire (the Western Empire, as distinguished from the Eastern, the Greek or Byzantine Empire), later to be transformed into the aforementioned Romance tongues, except in the Western / Roman Church, where Latin remained its language.

In Roman Egypt, after the conquest by Alexander the Great, the native language, Demotic (which later evolved into Coptic, and even later was replaced as the national language by Arabic), slowly decreased in official spheres in lieu of the Greek, probably as a result of Roman policy. Demotic and Greek were used in Roman Egypt in the 1st century A.D. and beyond.

In Western Europe Latin did not “supplant” the Greek, but was its native tongue.

The “Byzantine corner of the empire” was no corner, but a vast territory.

The persecutions of Diocletian, 302-312 A.D., greatly diminished the copies of Greek New Testament manuscripts, as one of his laws was that all copies of them be destroyed. To conceal and keep a copy was a capital crime, which some risked nonetheless. There was a special class of informers, called traditores, apostates who came from the ranks of the church, who sought out copies of the Scripture (and those who owned them), and turned them over to the authorities for reward.*

To compensate for this scarcity of Bibles, it is historically documented that Constantine, upon his becoming emperor, ordered – and paid – Eusebius to make 50 copies of the Bible, an edition that is Alexandrian in nature (Tischendorf thought his Sinaiticus likely one of those 50, and others have thought that of Vaticanus). Copies of Scripture were few. How then, did the preponderance of the “Greek Vulgate” – that is, the Byzantine textform – come to be? It came to be the dominant text in the Greek church from the 4th century on, while the Alexandrian form of Eusebius’ official edition disappeared for the most part. Considering just this Byzantine development, how did it come to pass?

A difference needs to be made between the Old Latin Bibles of Europe – copied after the form of text that came from Palestine and Syrian Antioch (the missionary church) – and the Latin Vulgate of Jerome that came into existence centuries later. The form of text that came to be standardized in the Latin West (where the Greek was discontinued) in the increasingly power-hungry church of Rome was a corrupted text, a debased form of the Scripture that was shunned by the dissenting Christians in Milan and the mountains of Europe (the Waldenses and Albigenses).

The “if-then” fallacy that if there had been no Islamic invasion of Egypt and no alleged “supplanting of Greek for [I think AK means “by” here] Latin in the West” then “The Alexandrian and Western Greek text-forms would have continued to be copied with frequent pace”, is without merit. It is sheer conjecture, and based at that upon false premises.

Around 641 A.D. Islam began to spread into Egypt, and before that the local text of that region (which had never had any autographs of the NT Scriptures sent to them) was not accepted by the Byzantine church, which had ample time and occasion to become familiar with them through Eusebius’ bringing them in from Origen’s Alexandrian/Caesarian library. By the time Islam took Egypt the dust had settled on the issue of the quality of their NT MSS, in the eyes of the Greek church.

And in all of these historical/geographical/linguistic events, what was the hand of God doing as regards His Scripture He had promised to preserve for His people (and this matter of His preserving them is pivotal in this whole discussion!)? Did the Muslims slip by Him and thwart the dominance of the supposed “superior” Alexandrian texttype? Did the changes of languages in the Roman Empire catch Him by surprise and ruin His plan to elevate the textform Mr. Kurschner thinks ought to have been elevated?

This is not the Sovereign we know, “who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will,” for He has said, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Eph 1:11; Isa 46:10).

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* History of the Christian Church, Vol. II, by Philip Schaff (MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1910), page 69.

For the record, I would prefer to be typed a King James Version advocate, with the “Only” left off, for I do acknowledge that God does use the other versions, and that no doubt many believers who use them are as godly – or more so – than many KJV users.