Dennis, to interact with your thoughts a bit (and thanks for what you said),
My main concern with the Majority Text position
as a final outcome of the Lord’s preservation of His word is that it remains but provisional, unsettled.
Hodges and Farstad’s,
The Greek New Testament According To The Majority Text (Nelson, 1982), has on its jacket (of the second edition):
Scholarly discipline permeates the editor’s logic and conclusions; yet Hodges and Farstad make no claims that this text in all its particulars is the exact form of the originals.
and on page x of the book we are told:
The editors do not imagine that the text of this edition represents in all particulars the exact form of the originals…it should therefore be kept in mind that the present work…is both preliminary and provisional.
If, as stated, this MT work isn’t a final and settled Bible, and (others say) the AV-Received Text isn’t, and the CT / Alexandrian isn’t either, are we left in awkward position (to put it unreasonably mildly!) of having only a tentative, provisional Bible? It was put to me recently when I asked a similar question of someone, “No, I do not have a Bible I can hold in my hand and say, ‘This is the Word of God.’ ”
Professor Robinson’s work may well be better than the aforementioned MT text, but the same applies – as demonstrated by Wisse’s research, all the heads haven’t been counted in the Byzantine MS camp. Must we wait another 50 years or more for that count to be tallied (if even then)? I realize that Professor R. will disown me as an illegitimate offspring of his and his colleagues in the Byz camp, for he does not acknowledge as valid my leap of faith to the TR / AV position. I admit, it
is a leap of faith, but if it is based soundly – that is, if my exegesis of the texts is sound – who is to dispute it on the basis of a scientific methodology? I take the same faith / exegetical stand as regards the record of God’s creation and man’s fall in Genesis over against the evolutionary “science” that tells me to stick with what can be empirically proven (not that evolution can be proven, though they allege it can!).
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”.... and by “his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness”.... “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Matt 4:4; 2 Pet 1:3; Ps 84:11)
Whether one takes the
absolute preservation stand (which has abundant merit in the world of faith), or the 99.99% preservation stand of Owen and Hills, we have the ability to say, “Yes, this Bible I hold is the sure word of God.”
I will not be subject to “the tyranny of experts” (to use Machen’s memorable phrase) if I do not concur entirely with the methods they use; I may use their work as I see fit, but am not bound by it. The MT labors are immense and of precious value; we stand on their shoulders – or to perfect the metaphor, we leap from their shoulders to a high rock, upon which we take our stand.
I know many generations have said, “We are in the time of the end”; nonetheless, there are signs that lead me to say we are very close – the Gospel having gone out into
most of the world, and a coming (so I see) persecution of Christians even in the once-Christian Western world – and can it be that we don’t have a Bible
yet we can say is the sure word of our God? I believe He gave us one almost 400 years ago, just prior to the great missionary work of Britain, and at the commencement of modern English, the trusty sword of our Reformation fathers against the bloodthirsty and persecuting harlot. Can it be modernized? It would take genius to do it well, and a love for the AV and for its Author.
Dennis, I have a Bible, and because of God’s promises – and my discernment that He fulfilled them – I trust its readings.