Genesis 2:9, Aesthetics, and Objective Beauty
When one reads the first few chapters of Genesis, he notices the simple economy of words in revealing foundational truth underlying a biblical worldview. Genesis 2 begins the history of mankind with the toledoth structure in Genesis 2:4.
Toledoth
Toledoth is the Hebrew word translated “generations” thirteen times in Genesis and divides up the early history of mankind from the perspective of God. It follows the record of the people, of mankind, with God recording what occurred. Genesis 1:1-2:3 record the creation of God, a unique period in history. The earth He created begins then bringing forth as an active partner in “making.” 2:4 heads a new section in the narrative with the first toledoth emphasizing what happened with the beautiful and perfect world that God had created. It connects what precedes with what follows, pushing forward the history with another account.
The first toledoth does not use the name of a person — there was no history of men yet. However, all the history that follows proceeded from God’s creation of heaven and earth. Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a record of creating not begetting. When we get to Genesis 2, earth is an active partner in making. It sprouts plants (2:5) and the dust of it begets man himself, the product of earthy dust.
In Genesis 2:10-14, Moses wrote a description of the surrounding geography of Eden from a present-tense perspective of a pre-flood observer. It gave the reader in that day a sense of the immensity of the original Garden of Eden. Based on the geographic parallels in a post-flood world, the Garden was 3,500 square miles. God had major possibilities available for a faithful, obedient Adam and Eve.
Genesis 2:9
The few words take on maximum importance in communicating what God wants the reader to know and how and where to focus. Genesis 2:9 says the following:
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The LORD God made out of the ground to grow every tree. These trees were the means by which the pre-sin world would live. After sin and then the flood, men would survive based on the sweat of his brow, operating according to tilling a soil with thorns and thistles.
Pleasant to the Sight
The first quality of the trees of Eden God says are “pleasant to the sight” and second, “good for food.” It was important to God that the trees and the Garden looked beautiful. In modern cooking shows, chefs speak of food presentation, the process of arranging food to make it look better on the plate. This started with God and is in fitting with his nature and the nature of man.
If scripture says the tree was “pleasant to the sight,” then something must also be “unpleasant to the sight.” For beauty to exist, ugliness also exists. However, right at the beginning of creation, in the nature of God is the making of something beautiful to see.
For man made in the image of God, what was beautiful for him to see was also beautiful for God to see. God created people who would have the same aesthetic standard as Him. This is the beauty of God’s holiness. Beauty conforms to the perfections of God’s attributes, His glory. This is seen in His creation in its symmetry, order, proportion, harmony, and diversity. God Himself is the standard and everything beautiful conforms to who He is.
The Garden of Eden looked good. This was a first priority and within the nature of God. It wouldn’t be trashy, unkept, disorderly, or messy. These qualities do not conform to God. Any reader should assume that he knows what was pleasant to the eyes of Adam and Eve in their sinless conditions.
The Importance of an Aesthetic Value
My major point in this was the importance of an aesthetic value. God emphasizes the beautiful. True believers should and will judge all forms of art as to its beauty and reject what contradicts the nature of God.
Beauty is a second term issue. By that, I mean that God assumes we know what pleasantness is. The syllogism would read like the following:
The Trees of the Garden Were Pleasant to the Eyes
Symmetry, Order, Proportion, Harmony, and Diversity Are Pleasant to the Eyes
Therefore, the Trees of the Garden Had Symmetry, Order, Proportion, Harmony, and Diversity
You could write a similar syllogism with the adverse qualities of ugliness. The qualities of objective pleasantness must conform to the nature of God. What doesn’t is in fact ugly. Nothing is beautiful in its own way. Everything is beautiful according to the nature of God.
God’s Perfect Preservation of the Old Testament Hebrew Text and the King James Version (Part Two)
Most talk about the text of the Bible focuses on the New Testament. The Old Testament is much larger and yet there is less variation in extant copies of the Old Testament than the New. As well, more Christian scholars know the Greek than the Hebrew, and when they know the Hebrew, they also know the Greek better.
Scripture teaches the preservation of all of scripture in the original languages, the languages in which scripture was written. Even if the conversation mainly centers on the New Testament, God preserved the Old Testament perfectly too. In recent days, some are talking more about the Old Testament again. Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, addressed the preservation of the Old Testament and the variation of a Hebrew critical text.
No Translation Above Preserved Hebrew Text
I think you would be right to detect hypocrisy in many of those who wish to alter the preserved Hebrew text of the Old Testament with a Greek, Latin, or Syriac translation. Not necessarily in this order, but, first, it flies in the face of “manuscript evidence.” It’s not because there isn’t evidence — around three hundred extant ancient handwritten copies of the Hebrew Masoretic text exist. Second, critical text advocates savagely attack those who identify preservation in a translation. I don’t believe God preserved His words in a translation, but they actually do in their underlying Old Testament text for the modern versions.
In a related issue, the same critical text supporters most often say that Jesus quoted from a Greek translation of the Old Testament, “the Septuagint.” As someone reads the references or mentions of the Old Testament by Jesus in the Gospels, he will notice that there are not exact quotations of the Hebrew Masoretic text. Even when you compare the English translation of the Hebrew in the Old Testament passage and compare it with the English translation of the Greek in the New Testament, they won’t match exactly most of the time. What was happening in these passages? Is this evidence that we don’t have an identical text to them?
View of the Septuagint
It is a popular and false notion that Christians in the first century used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, as their scriptures, so they quoted from it. All the New Testament “quotations” of the Old Testament have at least minor variants from the various editions of the Septuagint in all but one place: a quote in Matthew 21:16 is identical to a part of Psalm 8:3 in Ralf’s edition of the Septuagint.
When you read the New Testament and find the 320 or so usages or allusions to the Old Testament in it, you will see that they are not identical. Some might explain that as a translation of a translation, that is, the Old Testament, Hebrew to English, and the New Testament, Hebrew to Greek to English, differences will occur by a sheer dissipation of a third language. Online and in other locations you can compare an English translation of the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament with an English translation of one edition of the Septuagint and one of the Hebrew Masoretic to compare the latter two with the first.
I see value in the Septuagint, whichever edition, since there are several. Those various editions give larger sample sizes of Greek usage for meaning and syntax for understanding the Greek biblical language of the New Testament. They can help with the study of both the Old and New Testaments. As an example, Jewish translators translated the Old Testament Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 parthenos, which is the specific Greek word for “virgin,” not “young woman.” All of this answers the question, “How would people have understood the word, phrase, or sentence who heard it in that day?”
What Did New Testament Authors Do?
The mentions of the Old Testament in the New are most often not verbatim quotations of the Hebrew. That’s not what the New Testament authors were doing. They were serious about the preservation of the Old Testament as seen in the regular use of the words, “it is written.” This is a perfect passive verb that says passage continues written. The writing of the passage was complete with the results of that writing ongoing. This communicates the preservation of scripture.
The New Testament authors knew the Old Testament well, so they didn’t need a Greek translation of it. The New Testament writers could do their own translation of a Hebrew text. They most often, however, did a “targum,” some quoting and some paraphrasing from memory and also deliberately using the words of the text to make their theological or practical point from the Bible. Preachers continue to do this today, sometimes quoting directly from a translation and other times making an allusion or reference to the passage.
Reliance on the Septuagint?
What I’m explaining about “targumming” is the explanation of John Owen and others through history as to the variation between the Old Testament Hebrew and the Greek or English translation. Some references to the Old Testament are closer to an edition of the Septuagint than the Hebrew Masoretic text, sometimes almost identical. Were the scriptural authors relying on a Septuagint, which predated the New Testament?
If New Testament authors relied on what we know of the Greek Septuagint today, then they depended on a corrupt edition or version of scripture. Some give this as an argument for the validation of a corrupt text. They say that God doesn’t care about the very words of the Bible, just its message. Instead, God kept the message very intact, but not the exact words. In addition, they often say that the Septuagint is evidence for the acceptance of something short of a perfect text. These approaches to the Septuagint are mere theories founded on faulty presuppositions.
John Owen also referred to this similarity between the usages of the New Testament authors with a translation of the Greek Old Testament, such as the Septuagint. He said that the likely explanation was that Christians adapted the text of the Septuagint to the New Testament quotations out of respect of Jesus and the New Testament authors. Others have echoed that down through history. Owen wasn’t alone. It is a possibility.
John Owen
In Owen’s first volume in his three thousand page Hebrews commentary, he spends a few pages speaking on the Septuagint and the concept of quotations from it. Owen writes (pp. 67-68):
Concerning these, and some other places, many confidently affirm, that the apostle waved the original, and reported the words from the translation of the LXX. . . . [T]his boldness in correcting the text, and fancying without proof, testimony, or probability, of other ancient copies of the Scripture of the Old Testament, differing in many things from them which alone remain, and which indeed were ever in the world, may quickly prove pernicious to the church of God. . . .
[I]t is highly probable, that the apostle, according to his wonted manner, which appears in almost all the citations used by him in this epistle, reporting the sense and import of the places, in words of his own, the Christian transcribers of the Greek Bible inserted his expressions into the text, either as judging them a more proper version of the original, (whereof they were ignorant) than that of the LXX., or out of a preposterous zeal to take away the appearance of a diversity between the text and the apostle’s citation of it.
And thus in those testimonies where there is a real variation from the Hebrew original, the apostle took not his words from the translation of the LXX. but his words were afterwards inserted into that translation.
Theories of Men Versus the Promises of God
Theories of men should not upend or variate the promises of God. God’s promises stand. He promised to preserve the original language text. We should believe it. No one should believe that Jesus or one of the apostles quoted from a corrupted Greek translation. That contradicts the biblical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Other answers exist.
Whatever position someone takes on the Septuagint, it should not contradict what God already said He would do. There is no authority to historical theories based on no or tenuous evidence at best. The best explanation is one that continues a high view of scripture. One should not rely on one of the editions of the Greek Septuagint for deciding what scripture is. It should not correct the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Instead, everyone should believe what God said He would do and acknowledge its fulfillment in history.
The Second Amendment Comes Right After the First Amendment
Not to insult your intelligence, but the second amendment comes right after the first amendment in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. The founding fathers believed that the right to bear arms was necessary to protect first amendment freedoms. They believed citizens possessed a right of protection of those rights from the government. Without the right to bear arms, the government could overstep its constitutional boundaries and threaten freedom of speech, religion, the press, redress of grievances, and assembly.
History
The Framers experienced tyranny firsthand and knew tyrants disarmed militias to eliminate them. They needed an armed citizen militia to resist an oppressive military if constitutional order broke down. Catholic rulers in England prohibited their Protestant subjects from owning firearms. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights corrected that injustice. In Heller v. District of Columbia (2008), the Supreme Court then ruled that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own guns, rather than the collective right of a state to have a militia. Yale Constitutional legal scholar, Akhil Reed Amar, wrote in a 2001 Utah Law Review article:
Consider once again the First Amendment. The core idea underlying the Founders’ Freedom of Speech Clause was a right to engage in political expression, especially anti-government speech. Intratextual and historical analysis confirms that this was the core idea: the phrase “freedom of speech” derives from the English Bill of Rights protecting “freedom of speech, and debates … in parliament. “Parliament,” from the French parler, “to speak,” is a parley place, a speaking spot. But Parliament is not quite a spot for any and all utterances: the core concept here is political expression.
Voting itself is a powerful individual expression. When citizens believe the government is nullifying their vote, they might protest. When they begin to think government is taking away their vote, the government might expect a forceful response.
Protection Against Tyranny
The First Amendment is often viewed as fundamental to a democratic society because it ensures that citizens can express their opinions and dissent against government actions without fear of retribution. This principle is essential for fostering a healthy political discourse. Following this foundational principle, the Second Amendment addressed concerns about self-defense and protection against tyranny. The framers believed that an armed populace could serve as a check against potential government overreach or oppression.
Philosophers like John Locke emphasized natural rights, including life, liberty, and property. These ideas influenced American thought during the founding era; thus, protecting individual rights became paramount in drafting both amendments. While both amendments protect individual rights, they do so in different realms. The First Amendment ensures that citizens can freely express their thoughts and assemble to advocate for their beliefs. The Second Amendment provides a means for individuals to defend those rights physically if necessary. In this sense, one could argue that the Second Amendment serves as a safeguard for the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Both first and second amendments emerged from a backdrop where individuals had recently fought against British rule. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware that oppressive governments could stifle individual rights through censorship (First Amendment) or disarmament (Second Amendment). When only one side of a political divide has the firearms, this quells or quenches the free expression on the other. Other threats can also stifle free speech. Without the possibility of citizens arising with arms, the police power of the government can enforce its own approved speech to the elimination of its citizens.
Case Study of January 6
I would ask that we consider January 6, 2001 as a case study of first amendment rights. For the last seventy-five years one political party participated in political speech accompanied with violence in the United States, the Democrat Party. Hundreds of examples exist and almost every one of them come from the left, including the BLM riots of 2020 with at least 25 killed that Summer. All of this resulted in thousands of deaths and multiple billions of dollars in damage. Anyone reading here knows that violent protests and rioting are the unique domain of the Democrats, the left, and their supporters. Citizens have tolerated these for decades. Then comes January 6.
January 6 was an outlier for right wing protests. The primary motivating factor was the perception of interference in the 2020 presidential election. Conservative authors have written numerous entire books and dozens of published articles outlining and giving evidence for the interference with the 2020 election by advocates of the Democrat Party. Four Trump supporters alone died that day, one unarmed Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed. The crowd that day saw the election interference as a greater violation than the vitriol and hostility of its demonstration.
The United States government understands the threat of violence against it posed by the existence of the second amendment. Defense of liberty goes two ways.
Debate Moderators As a Paradigm for a Censorship State
Freedom of Speech
A distinguishing characteristic of American liberty from the rest of the world is the first amendment of its bill of rights and in particular the freedom of speech. The people of modern Western states, apparent allies of the United States, do not have this same right. England doesn’t and France doesn’t. As serious as any single issue in the 2024 presidential campaign season is the attack on the first amendment rights of American citizens.
The right to free speech couples with the right to the free expression of religion and the rights to freedom of assembly and the right to petition the state for the address of grievances. Long ago the state exempted the truth of the Bible from the public square. As an example, Hammurabi’s one appearance of one pillar and his one code count as history but the multiple ancient Hebrew copies of Old Testament do not. This practice is a deliberate abridgement of the free speech right.
Moderation of the Vice Presidential Debate
Last night, I watched the entire Vance-Walz Vice-Presidential debate. Like in the ABC debate, the two CBS moderators only fact-checked or moderated one candidate. Moderation of one and not the other is a form of censorship. I would ascertain that this is why Trump refuses a second Presidential debate.
Based on what he saw from the first debate, Vance challenged a “fact check” from Margaret Brennan on the true legality of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. Before the debate, the Associated Press reported that CBS agreed that the moderators would not fact-check the candidates in real-time. Instead, they left it to the candidates to fact-check each other. In the ABC debate, the moderators fact checked Trump four times and Harris zero.
The Fact Check
Vance did not need a fact check. His point was legitimate. Calling the Haitian migrants legal was an opinion, easily in dispute. It is part of a larger effort to use a fact-checking apparatus to treat a statement as misinformation. The entire exchange went like this:
JD VANCE: Margaret. The rules were that you guys were not going to fact check, and since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on. So there’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for ten years.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you, Senator.
JD VANCE: That is the facilitation of illegal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership. And Kamala Harris opened up that pathway.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process. We have so much to get to.
Point of Contention
Wikipedia accounts for the CBP One App to which Vance referred, also giving links to appropriate related information:
CBP One was launched on October 28, 2020 primarily to help commercial trucking companies schedule cargo inspections.
In January 2023, CBP One’s functionality was expanded to include unauthorized migrants seeking protection from violence, poverty, or persecution.
In May 2023, CBP One was designated by Biden administration as the only path to request asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border and book asylum appointments.
The President of the United States does not have Constitutional authority to open the border of the United States or allow anyone to enter the United States regardless of the law. The executive branch of the United States, the president, has authority to enforce the immigration laws. The president does not have power to create laws. The Constitution gives that authority to the Congress. Those laws are subject to the review of the judicial branch as to their Constitutionality.
If the president grants legal status to a migrant, that doesn’t make him legal. He is legal or illegal based on the laws of the United States, passed by Congress and signed by the president. If the president grants asylum to the Haitian migrants, that doesn’t mean they’re legal. This president has allowed tens of thousands of migrants to enter and then stay in the United States illegally. The debate was between Vance and Walz and it was up to Walz what to fact check of Vance, if necessary.
Moderation and Censorship
If the moderators of the debate wanted to save time for all their questions, as in Brennan saying, “We have so much to get to,” then don’t take time for their so-called fact checking. The fact checking is a form of censorship in which the media amplifies the power of and as a part of the administrative state as a force multiplier. It furthers one position as a party apparatus for the consolidation of power. The administrative state censors what does not agree with its position. This is a process by which it eliminates all opposition toward an authoritarian regime.
One party in this presidential race doesn’t see the need to do many interviews. It exerts the most control of societal institutions and structures in a powerful means. A relatively few elite in the United States exert a tremendous hold over the minds and imaginations of the country. Key leaders for the uniparty signal the importance of arriving at a censorship state. At the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings of the World Economic Forum, John Kerry said:
Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.
Restriction of Information
In addition he warned that “there are some people in our country who prepared to implement change by other means.” In a poll by Pew, now 55% of Americans (39% in 2018) support the federal government restricting false information. Pew also stated from its poll:
In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say that tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online has increased from 56% in 2018 to 65% in 2023.
False information, disinformation, and misinformation are all very easy to define as something that disagrees with conventional wisdom or a societal norm. For a long time, people used the words “politically correct.” That doesn’t mean it is correct, but that it is the acceptable position of an administrative state.
Punishing Unacceptable Speech
Authoritarian regimes prosecute and incarcerate unacceptable speech. They send those espousing a disagreeable position to reeducation camps. What suffers is the actual truth. It’s easy today to see the truth chilled in the public square. People are afraid to lose their jobs and livelihood because of espousing something that was a moral belief and behavior less than fifty years ago.
Satan knows the truth shall set you free (John 8:32-36). When you read the Bible, the government jailed those expressing something contradicting the favored position. When John the Baptist spoke truth to Herod, he lost his head and life. The government banished the Apostle John to the isle of Patmos and executed the other disciples. The direction of censorship and threats to the first amendment portend a return to such a day, where you will suffer and die for the truth. May we first be warned and then attempt to protect and keep these rights while we still can.
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Related video (speech by Matt Taibbi) to this subject matter and then a link to an article by Jonathan Turley, Constitutional scholar.
God’s Perfect Preservation of the Old Testament Hebrew Text and the King James Version (Part One)
Preservation of Old Testament in Hebrew
If someone believes in the perfect preservation of scripture, he also believes in the perfect preservation of the Hebrew Old Testament. In discussions and debate about the text of scripture and translation, almost all of it relates to the New Testament, where there is a higher percentage of variation in the extant Greek manuscripts. People don’t spend as much time quibbling over the Old Testament. Nevertheless, people have differences and questions about the Old Testament text.
Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, does address the Old Testament. It looks at changes in the Hebrew text used in the modern versions. Even though the King James Translators relied on the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament, translators for modern English versions of the Old Testament used a variation of sources from which to translate. In addition to the Hebrew Masoretic text, as an example, the translators of the English Standard Version (ESV) also used Alfred Ralf’s 1935 critical edition of the Greek Septuagint (LXX).
Modern Versions and the Original Languages of the Old Testament
The ESV translators also compared the Masoretic with the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), a text discovered almost 75 years ago in caves near the Dead Sea in Israel, and made changes based on their textual theories. They also relied on the Samaritan Pentateuch, a version of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, maintained by Samaritans. In addition, the ESV committee used the Syriac Peshitta, an early translation of the Bible into Syriac, a dialect of Middle Aramaic, and lastly the Latin Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible by Jerome in the late 4th century AD.
As I see it, a vast majority of the people who use modern versions like the ESV do not know that the Old and New Testaments come from a different text than the King James Version. Critical text and modern version advocates don’t mention this. Their own users see their versions as just updated translations in easier, more modern English, not a different underlying text.
Historical Doctrine of Preservation of Scripture
London Baptist Confession
Preservation of scripture means preservation of the original language text of scripture. The originals of the Old Testament are Hebrew and a very tiny amount of Aramaic. That’s what God promised to preserve, even with Jesus’ declaration of jots and tittles in Matthew 5:18. This also is the historic position of the church, as seen in the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689):
The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic; so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them.
Isaiah 59:21
For preservation to be preservation, it preserves something already there. What was there at the beginning was a Hebrew text and God preserved that, using Old Testament Israel to do it. God also promised perfect preservation. This includes with it availability that God declares among other places in Isaiah 59:21:
As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever.
This is called getting your bibliology, your doctrine of the Bible, from the Bible itself. What does God say He did, that He is doing, and that He will do with the Bible. That’s how you get doctrine and that’s what you believe. This pleases God (Hebrews 11:6). He wants us to believe Him.
Septuagint
Enter the Septuagint. The Septuagint isn’t Hebrew. It is an apparently Greek translation of the Hebrew. I say “apparently,” because the translation of the various iterations of the Septuagint differ greatly from the Hebrew Masoretic text.
It seems acceptable today among themselves for various critical text and modern version proponents to advocate for the superiority of the Septuagint, even though it is a translation. They are fine with correcting the Hebrew text with a Greek translation. I don’t believe there is a published ESV edition of the Hebrew text, but it seems that the committee for the ESV changed the Hebrew Masoretic 50-100 times based on the Greek Septuagint. They also seemingly altered the Masoretic 20-30 times each for both the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta. They back translated into the Hebrew from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac languages.
Psalm 22:16
At this juncture, I think it is important to stop to answer what would be a very likely argument from those who believe God preserved His Words through translations and not the Hebrew language text. In other words, jots and tittles did in fact pass away in contradiction to what God promised. They will say that Masoretic text believers will do the same thing as they in one place: Psalm 22:16. This one apparent exception says that we both think the same way on this issue. They would say that the King James Version of Psalm 22:16 proceeds from the Greek Septuagint and not the Hebrew Masoretic.
Here is a translation of Psalm 22:16 from first the King James Version, second the Brenton’s 1870 edition of the English translation of the Codex Vaticanus edition of the Septuagint, which included the Apocrypha, and third the Jewish Publication Society’s 1917 English translation of the Hebrew Masoretic:
KJV: For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
Brenton Septuagint: For many dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked doers has beset me round: they pierced my hands and my feet.
JPS: For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.
For your information, the Hebrew text of the Dead Sea Scrolls agrees with the KJV and the Brenton Septuagint. The criticism here is that the last part of the verse is different in the Hebrew Masoretic text underlying the King James Version. Critics say that the KJV translators relied on the Greek Septuagint in this one place. Is this true? The most conservative position that harmonizes with the biblical doctrine of preservation says that the KJV translators had Hebrew copies of what they translated.
William Whitaker and Disputations on Holy Scripture
William Whitaker wrote the following in 1588 (pp. 159-160) in his Disputations on Holy Scripture:
All Christians read, “They pierced my hands and my feet.” But the Hebrew MSS. have not Caru “they pierced,” but Caari, “as a Lion.” I answer, that this is the only specious indication of corruption in the Hebrew original; yet it is easy to protect this place from their [Catholics and others who are against the preservation of Scripture] reproaches. For, first, learned men testify that many Hebrew copies are found in which the reading is Caru; Andradius, Defens. Trid. Lib. IV., and Galatinus, Lib. VIII. C. 17. And John Isaac writes that he had himself seen such a copy, in his book against Lindanus, Lib. II.; and the Masorites themselves affirm that it was so written in some corrected copies.
Secondly, in those books which have this reading, the Masorites tell us that it is not to be taken in the common acceptation: whence it plainly appears that nothing was farther from their minds than a design to corrupt the passage. Thirdly, the place is no no otherwise read than it was formerly before Jerome’s time. For the Chaldee Paraphrast has conjoined both readings, and the Masorites testify that there is a twofold reading of this place. Jerome, too, in his Psalter read in the Hebrew Caari, as our books have it, though he rendered it “fixerunt.” So that it can never be proved, at least from this place, that the Hebrew originals were corrupted after the time of Jerome.
Advocates of modern textual criticism and modern versions don’t seem to care or respect the writings of men like Whitaker, who represents the historical doctrine of true believers. They never mention them or give them credit. Whitaker says there are “many Hebrew copies found in which the reading” is the same as that from which the King James Version translated.
More to Come
My Personal Observations of Israel as a Story (Part 2)
Masada
Roman Siege
The snake trail starts from the eastern entrance of Masada and ascends 1.7 miles and 1,148 feet in elevation to the fortress located at the top of the mountain. My wife and I walked up that trail and arrived as the sun rose in the East over the Dead Sea. The top of this high plateau provides stunning views to the East of this Southern part of the land of Israel and over into Jordan.
Most significant about Masada and why people visit is one historical event there important to Israel. After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, a group of Jewish rebels, known as the Zealots, took refuge there. Masada is situated on a high plateau overlooking the Dead Sea and surrounded by steep cliffs that make access difficult. This provided natural defenses against potential invaders and made it an ideal stronghold. The Romans, determined to crush the last pocket of resistance, laid siege in 73-74, eventually building a massive ramp to breach the walls.
Facing inevitable defeat, the last vestige of Jews left in the resistance to Rome chose to commit mass suicide rather than be captured and enslaved by the Romans. Nearly 960 men, women, and children died in an act of defiance, leaving Masada as a symbol of Jewish courage, resilience, and the determination to never be subjugated again. Israeli soldiers still visit Masada as part of their military training and initiation. They observe their swearing-in ceremony by taking an oath with the declaration, “Masada shall not fall again.”
Herod the Great
Masada started as an architectural wonder built by Herod the Great for a palace and refuge. A good question for anyone visiting, “How do they get their water?” Herod ingeniously built aqueducts to catch and channel rainwater through gutters from the nearby dry riverbeds (wadis) in the valleys west of Masada to storage cisterns at the summit and on the northwestern slope. They could hold 200,000 gallons to provide sufficient water to sustain an extended siege.
Tour guides will tell that they would not have a job if it weren’t for Herod the Great. For our trip, Masada was a reintroduction to King Herod and his renown as an engineer and builder. Scattered across Israel are multiple ancient works of Herod, most notably the Temple Mount where he built the great Second Temple.
En Gedi
Beautiful Oasis
Mid morning our entourage began its way back down the same snake trail, boarded the bus, and drove to En Gedi along the Western coast of the Dead Sea. En Gedi is another almost hour and a half trip roundabout first South and then North to halfway up the Dead Sea. En Gedi is a remarkable oasis in the midst of a barren land with lush greenery, waterfalls, and diverse wildlife.
The waters of En Gedi originate from a large spring that emerges from limestone cliffs in the Judean Desert. It provides the origin of a series of streams and waterfalls for this desert oasis and eventually reach the Dead Sea. Wild goats, the Nubian Ibex, have their habitat there, En Gedi itself meaning, “spring of the kid.” My wife and I saw a large one with its front hooves stretched high on a tree to enable its eating the low leaves. Israelis take the long horns of these animals to make their shofar, which is blown at Rosh Hashanah at the end of Yom Kippur. It’s sound acts as a call to introspection and repentance.
King David and Others
Around 1000 BC, En Gedi served as a refuge for David as he fled from King Saul. David and his men hid in its strongholds and he famously spared Saul’s life in a cave (1 Samuel 23:29, 24:1-22). The water, natural vegetation, and limestone caves provide a good hiding place. Known for its vineyards and agriculture in the days of Solomon, he compared the Shulamite woman to “a cluster of camphire (henna blossoms) in the vineyards of En Gedi” (Song of Solomon 1:14).
My wife and I took off our shoes and socks and waded in the streams emanating from the En Gedi springs. We sat on the limestone and soaked our tired feet in their cool waters before walking back and boarding the bus once again. Our next stop was a resort of sorts on the shore of the Dead Sea.
Dead Sea
The bus then continued another hour north from En Gedi and parked in the lot of Kalia Beach, the northernmost beach on the Dead Sea. A very large camel was tied there to mount for pay for a photo. It angrily chased a couple from our bus, who got too close. This was part of the tour and it meant a place to float in the salt laden water without sinking. My wife and I did that. Essentially the water is so dense, eight times saltier than other seas, that you struggle to push yourself very deep into it.
The contents of the water of the Dead Sea make it slimy. While floating, when you reach down for a handful of mud in the bottom, it comes up black. The shops sell the mud as a facial mask. The minerals apparently rub away dead skin and rejuvenate what’s left, leaving a refreshing vital feeling after you rinse it off. Literally, Dead Sea mud is a form of skin care that you can purchase. We did not buy any.
My wife and I cleaned off the Dead Sea residue, changed into dry clothes again, and looked in some of the shops there and at the camel once more before sitting down for the thirty minute ride back to the King David Hotel. It was an eight minute walk back to Apartique and we slept for a few hours before arising around Supper time for an adventurous walk in Old Jerusalem.
Old Jerusalem
Jaffa Gate
It was half a mile to Jaffa gate from our hotel, walking through what’s called the “Mamilla Mall,” a waking thoroughfare with modern shops, stores, and restaurants on each side. I stopped there to get a sim card for phone service for the rest of our trip. That leads right to the Jaffa Gate, which was a half mile from Apartique. The walls of Jerusalem are lit at night and it is nothing like you’ll see anywhere else in the world.
Bridget and I walked through the gate and walked very slowly into the Old City. Through the huge stone entrance is a large court with the Toward of David to the right. Directly in front is King David street and that’s where we went, our goal to see the Western Wall.
King David Street
King David Street is not a driving street, but a walking one with very old shops on each side. This is like shopping in an ancient city area in the MIddle East. David Street goes East and descends massive stone platforms. These shops are tourist places with food, jewelry, souvenirs, clothing, and religious mementoes. Shop owners stand at the opening and talk to you when you walk by, attempting to lure you into their places. My wife and I just looked as we moved downward and finally turned right, looking at the small signs to figure out how to get to the Western Wall.
We turned left again into another court with Orthodox Jews all around in the Jewish quarter near the Hurva Synagogue. A small falafel restaurant was at the other end of this court and we decided to get some. A falafel is a deep fried fritter made out of cooked and ground chick pea. The fritters are placed in a wrap and covered with a sauce and other toppings of your choice. We ate and kept taking passages Eastward and down stairs until we stood looking at a well lit and majestic Western Wall in the distance.
More to Come
My Personal Observations of Israel as a Story
Airport Tel Aviv
I’ve been to Israel in person. My wife and I landed at the Tel Aviv Airport, the second largest city in Israel, even though you wouldn’t know Jerusalem was largest. Tel Aviv has skyscrapers and to an American it looks like a major city. Jerusalem doesn’t. It looks like nothing you’ve ever seen except for Jerusalem, one of a kind. Tel Aviv is in the middle of the country and on the coast. It is near Jaffa, which is Joppa, which you might remember from Jonah. A little further North is Caesarea, built by Herod as the first full fledged port for Romans to arrive in Israel.
Even though it wasn’t as busy when my wife and I went, we stood in a very, very long line to get through customs. Even expecting it some, this necessary extra layer of security to guarantee the safety of Israel and tourists, surprised in its lengthiness. When I turned and looked at the line behind and in front of me, people came from all over the world. An American might think, I did, that Americans hold a vast majority of the interest for God’s promised land.
Before tourists started flying into Israel on Holy Land trips, for centuries convoys of Europeans took pilgrimages there. When Moslems hindered them, they fought crusades for the freedom to continue. The United States media doesn’t cover the interest. The rest of the world claims Israel too, even the Chinese, which made up a large portion of the line in which we waited.
Ben-Gurion
At the front of the line down a long wide welcome corridor in the Ben Gurion airport is an oversized replica of a Torah scroll. Jewish travelers returning to their home country would reach and touch this symbol like Jews might do on the mezuzah as they arrived at the doorway of their own homes. The name Ben Gurion itself hearkens to biblical names in the Old Testament.
“Ben” is a masculine Hebrew noun in the Old Testament meaning “son,” which occurs thousands of times. It shows how important family is in the Bible. It also reminds us of the importance of God as our Father and we as His sons. The term “Son of Man” is ben Adam in the Hebrew, just as an example of the commonality of Ben, as in Benjamin and David Ben-Gurion, the primary national founder of the State of Israel and its first Prime Minister. The Hebrew “Gurion” means “young lion” in English.
Train to Jerusalem
From customs, my wife Bridget and I boarded a train that travels with several stops from the airport to Jerusalem. Wilhelm II, the German Kaiser, landed in the Jaffa port by ship on October 28, 1898 and himself took the train to Jerusalem with his wife, Augusta Victoria, the daughter of England’s Queen Victoria. The Kaiser entered the city on horse back through two specially made ceremonial arches, one a gift of the Ottoman Empire. He came to dedicate the German Lutheran church building, the Church of the Redeemer, on Reformation Day, 1898. At the dedication, Wilhelm said:
From Jerusalem came the light in splendor from which the German nation became great and glorious; and what the Germanic peoples have become, they became under the banner of the cross, the emblem of self-sacrificing charity.
It might seem strange, considering Hitler and World War 2, but during his visit to the Ottoman Empire in 1898, Wilhelm met with Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism. This meeting was significant as it was the first public acknowledgment of Herzl as the leader of the Zionist movement by a major European power. Even though Wilhelm II did not offer substantial support for Herzl’s project, the meeting lent some political legitimacy to Herzl and Zionism.
Hotel
Bridget and I disembarked in Jerusalem at the closest station to Apartique, a self serve airbnb style lodging, which was in walking distance to both the Jaffa Gate and the King David Hotel. Instead of walking to Apartique, we caught a taxi, driven by an Arab. This is very common in Jerusalem. When we shortly arrived, I handed him a credit card and he only took cash. I had none. It was close to midnight. My wife got out at the hotel and he drove me to three different ATMs to pay my fare, failing at getting any cash at any of them. I took his business card with hopes of paying him later and never saw him again.
King David Hotel
The plan for my wife and I as we collapsed in bed was to arise in about two and half hours to catch a bus very early the next morning at the King David Hotel to Masada for a sunrise hike up the snake path to the top. We walked from our hotel to the King David and few other people already had arrived in the darkness of Jerusalem. My wife and I struck a conversation with a couple from New Jersey.
The thirty-something couple wasn’t married and she was an American Jew with interest in religion. They had been in Israel for a week and she wanted to talk mainly about the Mehane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, where they visited three times. We didn’t know yet what she was talking about, but we later would. A large bus already sat on the street David Hamelekh in front of the hotel and another smaller one arrived. A young female guide, named Yael, stepped out and we approached to see if this was our bus. It was.
Maybe Yael sounds familiar, but with a different spelling, Jael, the heroine of the Battle of Mount Tabor in Judges chapter four and five. Yael nailed Sisera with a tent peg through his skull (Judges 4:17-21). It is today one of the most common names for an Israeli female.
Bus to Masada
Upon embarking the bus, the driver went South down from Jerusalem through Hebron. It was quite a desolate route through the darkness and my wife and I drifted off until we stopped after an hour for gas in a very remote location. The station was a destitute place with a rough old gas pump and a hardscrabble convenience store. The items were regional, nothing you would see in the United States. The tour and station owners seemed in cahoots as if they operated with their own quid pro quo. This underlies commerce all over Israel, a form of bartering.
All of the riders and us boarded the bus again and continued our journey through the darkness until we finally arrived at Masada still in the darkness. We drove into the Masada National Park in front of that impressive geological formation. Very few other busses also arrived and we all began our walk upward.
More to Come
The Dovetailing of Biblical Eschatology and United States Foreign Policy
Religious Influence on Government
Virginia Baptists under the leadership of John Leland influenced James Madison and his writing of the Bill of Rights. They wouldn’t vote for ratification of the Constitution in Virginia without freedom of religion in a first amendment. This was a quid pro quo situation for the Baptists and Madison. After the consequences of the Great Awakening, Virginia had so many Baptists that they needed their support to pass legislation.
Religious folk still influence both domestic and foreign policy in the United States. In particular, the eschatology of American evangelicals affects politicians and lawmakers. Overall, Jews are no friend of evangelicals. A large majority of Jews treat evangelicals like trash. They hate and disdain them. Jews most often vote just the opposite as evangelicals and even try to ruin most of what they like. They direct caustic verbiage toward evangelicals, insulting them in a hateful manner. Nevertheless, a large number of evangelicals eagerly continue supporting Israel. Why?
Premillennialism
Many genuine, born-again Christians take the Bible literally. They approach the prophetic portions of scripture grammatically and historically. Even though prophecies contain figurative language, they interpret them according to their plain meaning. They believed like this from the first century until today. In more recent historical times, Christians established a literal method of interpretation of scripture, called dispensationalism. Dispensationalism systematized a belief already held by Christians, titled premillennialism.
Premillennialism is a theological perspective within Christian eschatology that asserts that Jesus Christ will physically return to Earth (the Second Coming) before the establishment of a literal thousand-year reign known as the Millennium. This belief corresponds to a literal interpretation of Revelation 20:1–6, which describes a period during which Christ reigns on earth following His return. The premillennial view emphasizes a literal reading of biblical texts, particularly those concerning end-time events. This approach maintains that prophecies regarding Christ’s second coming and the ensuing kingdom should be understood in their plain meaning unless context suggests otherwise.
A critical aspect of premillennialism is the belief that Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church are distinct entities with separate roles in God’s plan. Promises made to Israel, especially regarding land and kingdom, are viewed as not fulfilled by and in the church. Like Paul confirmed in Romans 11:26, “Israel shall be saved.”
A Voting Bloc of Premillennialists
Sixty-five percent of evangelical leaders identify as premillennial. According to various surveys, a substantial number of evangelicals hold premillennial beliefs, particularly in conservative circles. This aligns with the findings from an evangelical leaders survey, suggesting that premillennialism is indeed the dominant perspective within evangelicalism. Even among non-believers in non-evangelical churches and even non-church goers believe premillennialism.
Many evangelicals don’t identify as Baptist and many truly saved Baptists don’t identify as evangelicals. Many Charismatics do not consider themselves as evangelicals and evangelicals don’t consider themselves Charismatic. Without overlap, all evangelicals, Baptists, and Charismatics come to about 35% of the population of the United States. A higher percentage of Charismatics are premillennial than even evangelicals and Baptists.
65% of 35% is 23%. That would make twenty-three percent of Americans as premillennial. Twenty-tree percent of the 340 million Americans is 78 million premillennialists. That’s a very large and influential voting bloc and their eschatology affects their foreign policy.
Support of Israel and Opposition to Globalism
Premillennialists will support Israel. They also oppose globalism because they think this world will end with a one world government. This affects their position on borders and foreign wars. Part of the support of an American first agenda relates to opposition to the globalist perspective that involves the United States in unending foreign entanglements and wars.
I can see why a 35% voting bloc at least wants the United States to give Israel a free reign to defeat their enemies in the Middle East. Also, I understand why these same voters do not support the war in the Ukraine. This isn’t hatred of the Ukraine, but it is a distrust in an administrative state within the United States that wants globalism. These same characters villainize Russia to undermine the candidate that most champions their causes.
Opposition of the Biblical Views
A particular United States foreign policy dovetails with biblical premillennialism. The premillennial voters have an agenda which they see as within the will of God. That makes the left crazy. It wants to censor and even imprison these people as political enemies. The left sees them as complete kooks. The leftists don’t think anyone should depend on the Bible for any political decisions. I think we would find a fairly large percentage that would prefer the death of premillennialists, whom they see as a scourge of the earth.
The Bible is true. God expects us to know what it means, called the perspicuity of scripture. He wants us to believe it and live according to it. This includes all the prophetic passages. What He says will occur in the future will in fact occur in the future.
AI Friday: On Worship
I asked a different Artificial Intelligence program, Microsoft Copilot, which is a feature of Bing, about what I think about worship. It gave a shorter explanation than what AI Questions has. What I like about it is that it summarizes what I’ve written. It also reports a type of objective assessment of everything I’ve written online. I inform you that AI overuses the passive voice. Perhaps there are better AI writers than these two. Here’s what they say that I have written on worship.
Kent Brandenburg emphasizes a deeply reverent and scripturally grounded approach to worship. He believes that true worship involves two key components:
Recognition of Who God Is: Worship begins with acknowledging God’s nature and attributes. This recognition shapes how we approach and honor Him. Brandenburg stresses that worship must align with God’s character and not fall short of His greatness.
Giving God What He Wants: Worship should be based on what God has revealed in Scripture. Brandenburg supports the regulative principle of worship, which means that the elements of worship should be those explicitly found in the Bible. This principle ensures that worship is not altered by human preferences but remains faithful to God’s instructions.
Brandenburg also highlights that worship is a perpetual, spiritual, and sincere act from the heart, akin to offering spiritual sacrifices to God.
Then I asked Microsoft Copilot what I said about culture and worship, and it said this:
Kent Brandenburg has shared various thoughts on culture and worship, often emphasizing a traditional, Bible-based approach. He believes that worship should be rooted in biblical principles rather than being influenced by contemporary cultural trends. Brandenburg often critiques modern worship practices that he feels stray from scriptural teachings, advocating instead for a return to more traditional forms of worship that he believes are more aligned with biblical instructions.
I decided to ask AI Questions the same two questions to see the difference in answers — first question:
According to what I know, Kent Brandenburg emphasizes that worship should be regulated solely by Scripture. He argues that true worship recognizes who God is and gives Him what He desires, which can only be understood through the Bible. The elements of worship are prescribed in the New Testament, including reading the Word, preaching, singing, prayer, baptism, Lord’s Supper, and collection of offerings. Notably absent from this list is the “altar call” or invitation, which he contends is not a biblical element of worship.
Brandenburg asserts that the act of listening to preaching is part of worship and should be done with a proper attitude—being “swift to hear” and receiving God’s Word with meekness. He believes that any response to preaching must align with biblical principles and that churches may choose various methods for individuals to respond (such as coming forward during an invitation), but these methods are merely circumstances surrounding the element of preaching rather than elements themselves.
He critiques “blended worship,” which combines different musical styles to appeal to various congregational preferences. Brandenburg argues that this approach prioritizes human desires over divine standards and dilutes the sacred nature of worship. He warns against pragmatism in worship practices, stating that it leads to a focus on pleasing people rather than honoring God. Ultimately, he insists that genuine worship must adhere strictly to God’s prescribed ways as outlined in Scripture.
Second Question:
According to the information provided, Kent Brandenburg discusses the relationship between culture and worship by emphasizing that worship should be regulated by Scripture rather than cultural norms. He argues that true worship recognizes who God is and what He desires, which can only be found in the Bible. This means that elements of worship must align with biblical prescriptions, and any additions or deletions to these elements are not acceptable.
Brandenburg critiques the idea that cultural practices should dictate how worship is conducted. He points out that while culture influences many aspects of life, it should not define the core elements of worship. Instead, he advocates for a return to biblical principles as the foundation for worship practices. He highlights that God has specific expectations for how He wants to be worshiped, and these expectations are outlined in Scripture.
Furthermore, he addresses the notion of “the new legalism,” which refers to the pressure some feel to conform to modern standards of non-conformity regarding church practices. Brandenburg asserts that this pressure can lead to a misunderstanding of what constitutes proper worship and can detract from genuine reverence toward God.
In summary, Kent Brandenburg emphasizes that worship should be based solely on biblical instruction rather than cultural influences, ensuring that it remains true to God’s desires as revealed in Scripture.
The Textual Pope Theory of Mark Ward
Hypothetical Manuscript Finds
In his last video, Mark Ward again clarifies his viewpoint of a doctrine of preservation of scripture. He makes up this position out of sheer cloth. As a case study, he imagines an ancient New Testament manuscript discovered at Pompeii that helps swing textual critics’ opinion toward one word in one verse over another. It’s the reality, he says, of willingness to still alter any verse in the New Testament based upon a further archaeological find.
Ward illuminates an important aspect of his view of preservation: every verse of the biblical text is yet to be settled. Any word could still change in the worldview of Mark Ward and others. They reject the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation.
The Argument
How does Ward argue for his position? He doesn’t rely on scripture at all. Ward claims a doctrine of preservation (which he explained in a recent video) and then rests on his experience and circumstances to formulate it. Then when he goes to explain our position, he twists it on purpose. He perverts and misrepresents it. I’m sure this is why he won’t discuss it with any legitimate critics, because it would expose him for his total strawman.
It’s very easy for Mark Ward to sit and eviscerate the biblical and historical position on preservation, when he sits unchallenged. He can much easier caricature it. He takes an utterly moron representation of what we teach, hopeful his adherents will succumb to the deceit. The resulting opposition to his ungodly practice, he labels unchristian and feigns persecution for righteousness. Whatever suffering he experiences is in fact for his own unrighteousness.
Ward speaks into his own bubble of misinformation. It bounces around that echo chamber, returning back to him as true. He can’t allow legitimate challenges because the other guys are too mean, unlike him. He’s fuzzy kind while his constant targets are harsh and injurious in their tone. Ward poses as a teddy bear and they a hard tonka truck making his cute bear into road kill.
“The Text” According to Ward
According to Ward, what is causing changes to the text? Ward says, “the text,” those words. He says, something causes changes to “the text.” What text? “The text.” Is there a “the text” in the universe of Mark Ward. He calls it “the text,” but what is it? He says that the Editio Critico Major, the coherence based genealogical method, the CBGM, causes changes to “the text.”
In the view of Ward on the text of scripture, only a Pope figure could possess the real authority to intervene and stop changes to “the text.” I couldn’t tell what “the text” was, but only a Pope could impede it from continuing to change. On the other hand, besides this fictional Pope person, science is totally free to change “the text,” that is, except for Ward’s one chosen exception: conjectural emendation. He won’t accept CBGM to cause changes to “the text” based on conjectural emendation. He won’t allow for sheer guessing the words, a bridge too far for him, but that’s it.
A Mysterious Pope-Like Figure
Ward mockingly says the following verbatim, which mirrors what he said in the video I last reviewed:
The only real alternative is for some pope-like figure to come to us with Christ’s authority and tell us to stop. A great fiery angel might come and tell Dirk Jongkind: “Your work is at an end. The current edition of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament now perfectly matches the originals — or is close enough.” Then we’d be done. No verses would be permitted to change for any reason at that point.
These statements do not represent what God says He would do with His Words according to scripture. Canonicity did not occur from a pope-like figure uttering the names of the sixty-six books in a state of trance, the channel of God’s revelation. That’s not the story. Ward should get the position right, but he continues to make these kind of representations that straw man the biblical and historical position. He won’t engage anyone in public who can state the actual position.
Ward then continues:
The real difference between me and some of the smartest defenders of the Textus Receptus is that they’ve limited the changes by deciding by fiat, that without God’s authority only printed editions of the Textus Receptus are allowed to be considered. I just have a bigger pool of Greek New Testament readings to draw from than they do, because I want to be aware of all the readings God has preserved for us.
Changes by Fiat?
Ward above flat out again annihilates the biblical and historical position on preservation. What God preserved would be available to every generation of believer. New finds are rejected, because they do not fit that presupposition. Ward will continue accepting new discoveries ad infinitum, because he both doesn’t believe in the perfection of the preservation of the text, nor in a settled text. It’s an ongoing and never ending process for him and others. That is not preservation.
The received manuscripts of the church were printed into editions of the Textus Receptus. This is the settlement or canonicity of the text. The church accepted this. Upon the end of that period in the 16th and early 17th century, they ended their continued updating. The words were available in those printed editions, one facet of the doctrine of preservation.
Inward Testimony of the Holy Spirit and Agreement of Churches
Like the church settled on the Books, evidence of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, confirming the Books, the church did the same with the text of scripture. This reflected a belief in preservation. It was not a never ending process. It was over and settled, not dependent on naturalism, but on the providence of God and the witness of the Spirit.
Believers did not look for a Pope figure. Ward purposefully spins the biblical and historical position into this transmogrification. Only one Holy Spirit works through all the true believers. Their agreement, they saw as the testimony of the Spirit. They also trusted that God would do what He said He would do. The model is there in the canonicity of the Books.
You will never hear Mark Ward represent the biblical and historical position as written by myself and others. Never. He does not represent it properly. I and others have not only written this position, but we have documented from church history, a multiplicity of statements from the historic doctrine of preservation. Churches embracing scripture as final authority believed and wrote this doctrine. This is why the Textus Receptus reigned as the text for the church for centuries.
Ward intimates in a very ambiguous way that supporters of the Textus Receptus should respect the testimony of contemporary believers in the same way they do for those in the past. I hear that from him and consider the veracity of it. Is this a matter of church vote or churches voting? The church already received what the text was. If the vote changes, a greater number support a critical apparatus rather than a settled text, should people consider the updated text as the actual text, the original one?
Problems with a Theory
There are a lot of problems with Ward’s theory concerning the most recent acceptance of professing believers. First, it doesn’t fit biblical presuppositions. It rejects availability and a perfect and settled text. The Holy Spirit won’t suddenly change His testimony. His witness is true. The change would mean it wasn’t.
Second, the recent professing believers, who choose something different than the received text, don’t believe in perfect preservation. They don’t themselves embrace the underlying text in the same manner as those in their historical and biblical doctrinal presentations for centuries.
Third, the embrace of a perfect text means continued tweaking and changing is over. The presuppositions won’t change either. An already confirmed settled text eliminates a future new or different text.
Perhaps Mark Ward finds himself toward the end of this period of his life where a primary emphasis is pushing people toward modern versions of the Bible. His focus shifts from his intelligibility argument to a textual one, explaining what he really thinks about the doctrine of preservation of scripture. Perfect preservation doesn’t require a Pope figure to declare ex cathedra the settled text of scripture. God already through the inward testimony of His Spirit led His church to those Words. I call on Ward and others to receive them by faith.
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