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Originally Posted by Grymir  Hmm. I'm a real KJV user (as opposed to the ruckman type). I take the bible as it stands. All of the questionable passages in the whole Bible would fill 1/2 of one page. I've heard all the reasons the moderns feel some passages should be taken out, but after doing a little research, they all should remain in the Bible. The stuff used against the Johnannine Comma is simmilar to the other passage arguements.
One of the best research things I do is to trace the history and go back to the begining. Modern scholars try and figure out the order in which the Gospels were written, and yet, if you read early church fathers, they spell it out clearly. I go with what they say. |
But isn't that the real question here? The Bible as it stood in 1611, or as it stood in one of the 4th century codices, or the reading of Paul's Philippian epistle as found in a second century papyrus?
What is most important to me is discerning the original reading of the passage; that is where the power is, because that is where God's word is. A traditional reading strongly held, though not of the original, is not part of God's word, and therefore is not worthy of preaching upon.
I do my textual criticism (which has always been distinguished from "higher-criticism, although it seems as if people here would like to lump the two together as far as moral culpability), because I love the Word of God's Spirit. There are a ton of variants among the thousands of mss that have been collected; the majority of the variants are superficial (changes in orthography, or a change in grammatical style to match the Greek as understood by the copyist's era), and have no real affect upon the understanding of the text, but some of them do, and it is important to me to weigh the issue as part of my ministerial responsibility before the people of God, and to make a well-studied decision.
When I see that there is a significant difference between a number of 2nd/3rd century papyri, and a reading as contained in the Received Text, what should I do? Should I ignore significant early evidence for a better reading, or should just hang with tradition on some superficial notion that there has always been one preserved Word for God's people at all times (and hope that the TR is it)? How does that doctrine of preservation fit when you look at the Christians of the 5th century and one particular codex that they may have had as their only Scripture? Did God fail to preserve his Word for them where it varies from the TR? What about a Christian village during the Medieval era, whose priest had only a 13th century miniscule from which to preach (yes, preaching went on even back then, even with priests and preaching orders) - did God fail to preserve His Word to them where that miniscule varies from the TR?
This is why textual criticism is done: not to undermine the authority of the Word of God, but to better establish it. This is especially true when faced with variant readings from hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts, especially when there is a consistent reading among earlier mss that makes better sense of the passage, and has the better testimony to being the original than the few, late mss that make up the TR.
FWIW, I think that textual criticism among NT scholars is a much more responsibly practiced endeavor than that which you will find among OT text critics. The textual notes found in the UBS 4th edition/NA 27th edition are quite helpful and clear, and contain none of the editorial speculation that is found in the 4th edition of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.