The Bible claims that God wrote it word for word. God also promised to preserve it word for word in the same languages in which He wrote it. Through history, Christians believed this, even with the reality of copyist errors, what men now call textual variants. Professing Christian leaders today challenge the assertion of the perfect preservation of scripture.
Kevin Bauder wrote, Only One Bible?, the answer to which is, “Yes.” Of course there is only one Bible. His assumption though is, “No, there is more than one.” To Bauder and those like him, the answer to the title of the book is obvious “No.” In their world, within a certain percentage of variation between them, several Bibles can and do exist. Bauder wrote:
If they are willing to accept a manuscript or a text that might omit any words (even a single word) from the originals, or that might add any words (even a single word) to the originals, then their whole position is falsified. . . . If preservation does not really have to include every word, then the whole controversy is no more than a debate over percentages.
The “Which TR?” question also deals with Bauder’s point. Are any of the editions of the TR without error? If so, which one? When you say “Scrivener’s” to Bauder and others, you are admitting a type of English trajectory to the perfect Greek text. When you say, “One of the TR editions is very, very close, but not perfect,” then you surrender on the issue of perfection. That’s why they ask the question.
The TR never meant one printed edition. Even Kurt and Barbara Aland the famed textual critics, the “A” in “NA” (Nestles-Aland), wrote (“The Text of the Church?” in Trinity Journal, Fall, 1987, p.131):
[I]t is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the ‘original text.’
He also wrote in his The Text of the New Testament (p. 11):
We can appreciate better the struggle for freedom from the dominance of the Textus Receptus when we remember that in this period it was regarded even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself.
His wife Barbara writes in her book, The Text of the New Testament (pp. 6-7):
[T]he Textus Receptus remained the basic text and its authority was regarded as canonical. . . . Every theologian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and not just the exegetical scholars) worked from an edition of the Greek text of the New Testament which was regarded as the “revealed text.” This idea of verbal inspiration (i. e., of the literal and inerrant inspiration of the text) which the orthodoxy of both Protestant traditions maintained so vigorously, was applied to the Textus Receptus.
I say all that, because Aland accurately does not refer to an edition of the TR, neither does he speak of the TR like it is an edition. It isn’t. That is invented language used as a reverse engineering argument by critical text proponents, differing with the honest proposition of Aland, quoted above. They very often focus on Desiderius Erasmus and his first printed edition of the Greek New Testament. That’s not how believers viewed what the Van Kleecks call the Standard Sacred Text, others call the Ecclesiastical Text, and still others the Traditional Text.
Neither does Bruce Metzger refer to an edition of the Textus Receptus; only to the Textus Receptus (The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 106-251):
Having secured . . . preeminence, what came to be called the Textus Receptus of the New Testament resisted for 400 years all scholarly effort to displace it. . . . [The] “Textus Receptus,” or commonly received, standard text . . . makes the boast that “[the reader has] the text now received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.” . . . [This] form of Greek text . . . succeeded in establishing itself as “the only true text” of the New Testament and was slavishly reprinted in hundreds of subsequent editions. It lies at the basis of the King James Version and of all the principal Protestant translations in the languages of Europe prior to 1881. [T]he reverence accorded the Textus Receptus. . . [made] attempts to criticize or emend it . . . akin to sacrilege. . . . For almost two centuries . . . almost all of the editors of the New Testament during this period were content to reprint the time-honored . . . Textus Receptus. . . . In the early days of . . . determining textual groupings . . . the manuscript was collated against the Textus Receptus . . . . This procedure made sense to scholars, who understood the Textus Receptus as the original text of the New Testament, for then variations from it would be “agreements in error.”
The Textus Receptus does not refer to a single printed edition of the New Testament. The language of a received text proceeds from true believers in a time before the printing press in hand copies and then leading to the period of its printing. Belief in perfection of the preservation of scripture comes from promises of God in His Word. The Critical Text advocate responds: “Yes, but we see variations between hand written copies and even the printed editions.” What do they mean by this response?
Critical Text advocates are saying that in light of textual variants, those preservation passages must mean something other than perfect, divine preservation of scripture. They say that they can’t be used to teach perfect preservation of scripture anymore, like historically true Christians have taught them, because textual variants show that teaching can’t be true. What divinely inspired or supernatural scripture says is then not the truth, but apparent natural evidence is the truth. When they talk about the truth, they aren’t talking about scripture. They are talking about the speculation of textual criticism by textual critics, mostly unbelieving.
Bruce Metzger wrote in The Text of the New Testament (the one quoted above and here in p. 219 and p. 340): “Textual criticism is not a branch of mathematics, nor indeed an exact science at all. . . . We must acknowledge that we simply do not know what the author originally wrote.” He and Bart Ehrman say much more like that quotation, but this is why I called modern textual criticism, “speculation.” Critical text advocates should not call their speculation, “truth.”
You might ask, “So are you going to answer the question in the title of this post?” Yes. God preserved the New Testament perfectly in the Textus Receptus, not in one printed edition. This has always been my position. Here is how I (and others, like Thomas Ross) would describe this.
First, Scripture promises that God will forever preserve every one of His written words, which are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek ones (Ps 12:6-7, 33:11, 119:152, 160; Is 30:8, 40:8; 1 Pet 1:23-25; Mt 5:18, 24:35). God promised the preservation of words, not ink, paper, or particular printed editions. They were specific words, and not a generalized word.
Second, Scripture promises the general availability of every one of His Words to every generation of believers (Dt 29:29; 30:11-14; Is 34:16, 59:21; Mt 4:4; 5:18-19; 2 Pet 3:2; Jude 17). Yes, the Words are in heaven, but they are also on earth, available to believers. This does not guarantee His Words to unbelievers, just to believers. If the words were not available, those were not His Words. The Words He preserved could not be unavailable for at least several hundred years, like those in the critical text.
Third, Scripture promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the Word, all of His words, are truth (Jn 16:13, 17:8, 17). True churches of Christ would receive and guard these words (Mt 28:19-20; Jn 17:8; Acts 8:14, 11:1, 17:11; 1 Thess 2:13; 1 Cor 15:3; 1 Tim 3:15). Believers called the New Testament Greek text, the textus receptus, because the churches received it and then kept it. Churches of truly converted people with a true gospel and the indwelling Holy Spirit bore testimony to this text as perfect. Many, many quotes evince this doctrine, including this one by John Owen from His Works:
But my present considerations being not to be extended beyond the concernment of the truth which in the foregoing discourse I have pleaded for, I shall first propose a brief abstract thereof, as to that part of it which seems to be especially concerned, and then lay down what to me appears in its prejudice in the volumes now under debate, not doubting but a fuller account of the whole will by some or other be speedily tendered unto the learned and impartial readers of them. The sum of what I am pleading for, as to the particular head to be vindicated, is, That as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were immediately and entirely given out by God himself, his mind being in them represented unto us without the least interveniency of such mediums and ways as were capable of giving change or alteration to the least iota or syllable; so, by his good and merciful providential dispensation, in his love to his word and church, his whole word, as first given out by him, is preserved unto us entire in the original languages; where, shining in its own beauty and lustre (as also in all translations, so far as they faithfully represent the originals), it manifests and evidences unto the consciences of men, without other foreign help or assistance, its divine original and authority.
This reflects the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the later London Baptist Confession. Professor E. D. Morris for decades taught the Westminster Confession at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Philip Schaff consulted with him for his Creeds of Christendom. In 1893, Morris wrote for The Evangelist:
As a Professor in a Theological Seminary, it has been my duty to make a special study of the Westminster Confession of Faith, as have I done for twenty years; and I venture to affirm that no one who is qualified to give an opinion on the subject, would dare to risk his reputation on the statement that the Westminster divines ever thought the original manuscripts of the Bible were distinct from the copies in their possession.
Richard Capel represents the position well (Capel’s Remains, London, 1658, pp. 19-43):
[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.
Perfect preservation admitted scribal errors, but because of providential preservation, “what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.” Critical text advocates conflate this to textual criticism about which foremost historian Richard Muller wrote on p. 541 of the second volume of his Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics:
All too much discussion of the Reformers’ methods has attempted to turn them into precursors of the modern critical method, when in fact, the developments of exegesis and hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both precede and, frequently conflict with (as well as occasionally adumbrate) the methods of the modern era.
Muller wrote on p. 433:
By “original and authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. The Jews throughout history and the church in the time of Christ regarded the Hebrew of the Old Testament as authentic and for nearly six centuries after Christ, the Greek of the New Testament was viewed as authentic without dispute. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages; the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa.
These biblical presuppositions are true. For the New Testament, only the textus receptus fulfills those presuppositions. Those words were preserved in the language in which they were written, koine Greek. They were the only words available to the generations of believers from 1500 to 1881. They are also the only words that believers ever agreed, received, and testified were God’s preserved Words in the language in which they were written.
To Be Continued
You still do not “get it”. Arguing for something that God put on the shelf over 600-700 years ago and left it there only proves your ignorance of the subject matter.
All God cares about is an ENGLISH text for the whole world, and that text is the Holy King James Bible.
Why is it that you miss the obvious? A young man that is saved reading a bible that he knows is the very words of God (by those that TAUGHT him sound doctrine and told him to STUDY), using simple understanding, wisdom and knowledge “within the word of God” could easily come to that conclusion.
Educated beyond simple reason.
PS: I have a Masters in Biblical Theology (BCA) and also I know that I hurt your feelings with such plainness of speech.
GC, an Evangelist
I wanted to print George’s comment in this case, so that everyone will know that KJVO/Ruckman folk know we don’t take the same position as they. They take the same position as the critical text though, that is, God didn’t preserve His Words. They needed restoration. This is a one and only printing of his comment unless I see fit to do so again. Thanks.
I wonder at Christians who go after the Critical Text. If they’re born again, wouldn’t we have the same Spirit? Why is there such a fascination with getting away from from the TR? Reminds me of 1 Corinthians Chapter 2. “…the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Another thought, they deny the omnipotence of God, at least in practice. The god of their mind can not inspire and preserve his words for every generation. This god is not omnipotent. It’s not the God of the Bible.
That is the issue, Benjamin.
My understanding from this article is that you believe God’s word was not preserved in any one particular TR edition, but that you would say God’s pure and preserved words were found within the different TR editions. Is this a correct and fair representation of your view?
If God preserved his word, not in one singular printed text or translation in the past on what theological basis is there to claim that would ever change? Do you believe for example that the KJV is a perfect preserved word of God? Or do you just think it’s the most accurate translation based on a text that is from what you consider to be the preserved corpus?
It seems to me that most everybody believes that God’s pure word has been preserved, but the questions seems to surround, where they are found, and whether or not they can all be found in one particular location, manuscript family, etc.
It seems to me that the various TR editions, were put together in a somewhat Eclectic manner, and my understanding is that none of the TR editions were copied from any singular Greek MS, and my understanding is that none of the TR editions match each-other completely, nor do any two Greek MSS match each other 100% as well.
From my perspective, it seems both your own TR position presented here AND the modern eclectic proponents, do NOT believe that the complete and pure words of God exist in one particular physical copy, whether that be printed or hand-copied.
Where you and they seem to differ, is that you would limit the “pool” where the pure word of God is to be found to the TR editions, whereas the modern Evangelical position would seem to open that pool up to other manuscripts, ancient translations and other things. My question then is, what really is the difference in methodology here between the two positions other than different pools?
I’ve been reading the book “Has the Bible been kept pure” by Garnet Milne, and he does extensive work of quoting the reformers and other Westminster divines and what not, but from what I can tell, none of them seemed to believe that God’s pure words had been kept in one single printed copy or source, nor did they even seem to think that God’s pure words had been limited to being found in any particular manuscript tradition/family.
I am having a hard time seeing what the difference is between saying that God has kept his word pure among the TR editions, vs God has kept his word pure among all extant manuscript evidence? These two viewpoints seem only to differ in possible pools of the location of preservation. From my perspective, the issue here is not,” Has God kept his word pure?”, but has God kept all of his pure words in one singular location? or one specific pool/family/tradition of manuscripts and if he has, how would we know it?
Some King James Onlyists and TR defenders attack the Ecclectic view with the tag of God keeping his word “mostly pure”, but how is believing that God preserved his word among TR editions equal to God “keeping his word pure” and not simply another variation of keeping the word “mostly pure”? How is this really philosophically different than other Evangelicals believing God preserved his words among ALL editions of extant evidence but not one singular manuscript tradition or family?
Another thing in your article “Why I’m King James and the Contrast with a Dangerous King James Version Position” you seem to imply that missionaries reaching out to your for support should answer that the Bible has been perfectly preserved in “In the underlying Hebrew and Greek text behind the King James Version.”
This seems inconsistent with the view you take here in this article “God preserved the New Testament perfectly in the Textus Receptus, not in one printed edition. This has always been my position.”
On one hand, you said it’s preserved in the Greek text (singular) underlying the KJV, but then you say on the other hand “not in one printed edition”. How is this not double speak and contradiction?
I guess I am just having a hard time seeing consistency here in more than one way. I am asking these questions from someone who has specific issues with the critical text and someone who’s conscience is currently bound to the TR editions.
Hi J,
It doesn’t seem you read part 2 in my two part series. Part 1 ended with “To Be Continued” Most blog posts won’t be read if they go on and on and on, so I made it a two parter. Please read part 2 and get back to me. It’s obvious you are commenting on part 1 like it is the whole thing, when it is a 2 part series. Thanks! While you’re at it, I think you can get to a lot more of what I am saying by reading articles from here: https://kentbrandenburg.com/2019/01/16/what-is-truth-index-by-specific-topic_3/
I will come back though sometime soon and answer some of what you said here. I guess being “J” means you’re not anonymous. Is there a reason you can’t say your name? Would that smear you in a way you could not recover to show that you’ve read here?
J wrote: “My understanding from this article is that you believe God’s word was not preserved in any one particular TR edition, but that you would say God’s pure and preserved words were found within the different TR editions. Is this a correct and fair representation of your view?”
KB answers: “Yes. I also quoted Richard Capel in his explanation, ‘As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.’ That’s how the differences in the TR editions read, and upon getting to the printed edition phase of preservation, churches settled on the text. They believed on a settled text and they settled on a text. I think we should assume that people had the same kind of perfect copies, copies that were word for word, with a few variations because of copyist errors, but that they rejected the minority manuscripts that differed, because they were corrupted and they knew it. They received what wasn’t corrupted.”
J wrote: “If God preserved his word, not in one singular printed text or translation in the past on what theological basis is there to claim that would ever change? Do you believe for example that the KJV is a perfect preserved word of God? Or do you just think it’s the most accurate translation based on a text that is from what you consider to be the preserved corpus?”
KB answers: “The first question misrepresents what actually happened. There was a received text. Each copy was liable to have a few copyist errors, small variation, but corrected in another. Meanwhile God preserved every Word to the jot and tittle. The KJV is an accurate translation of a perfectly preserved original language text. My presuppositions and really a view of history both agree with that.”
Gotta go. Will answer the rest of it later, Lord-willing.
Hello, J. I’ll only comment narrowly on a couple things here.
Referring to the reformers, Westminster Confession, London Baptist Confession, etc, you said:
“nor did they even seem to think that God’s pure words had been limited to being found in any particular manuscript tradition/family.”
The modern construct of manuscript families was not familiar to them. It’s a relatively new invention used to squelch the virtually unanimous testimony of churches down through the centuries by saying, “Well, that’s just one family of manuscripts, there are other families.”
If Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are in the same family, it’s a severely dysfunctional family, as often as they disagree with each other.
Second, in regard to “limiting the pool”, if we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture (II Timothy 3:16-17) then we cannot say, as modern eclectic views say, that the Scripture is silent on this topic. So we must apply our theology rigorously to this question. If we do so, we will arrive at some “pool” limiting conclusions.
Biblical doctrine is clear on the Scriptures, preservation, the work of the Spirit, the role of the church, the fact that Jesus’ sheep hear and know His voice (and so are unlikely to be confused as to the true text, etc).
Applying those doctrines to the question of the text may not be as straightforward as we might wish, but it certainly should take us to a rejection of readings which were rejected and unused by believers for 15 centuries or more. That will always limit the “pool”.
I hope that’s a little bit helpful.
Totally agree, Jon.
To the above poster who wrote the long comment, I would say there’s two differences.
The most important one is the fact that the TR is the only example one can point to of a text that has never been lost. That isn’t so with the critical, Alexandrian text. Until the time of Tischendorf, those manuscripts were unknown. So for instance, no Bible on earth had the words “for them that trust in riches” removed from Mark 10:24. Only during the time of Westcott and Hort did anyone know to even start suggesting changing it.
That’s a huge difference, but there’s also another. None of the internal variations between the manuscripts in the TR amounts to a nullification of part of the New Testament. 7% of the Greek words to be specific. In fact, the editions of the TR released are so remarkably close, we can say there is no discernable difference and do in practice refer to it as one received text. Most of the variants (or alleged changes) in the Greek here are simply alternate spellings, they are not actually modified words in any substantial way. I know of a limited number of exceptions to this rule, and these exceptions are handled through textual criticism. Only the newly-discovered alexandrian, minority or critical text manuscripts exhibit these features, so that we can’t say that they represent a single discernable text. Also, I would offer as a third point for further consideration, that a deep study of what is changed in that 7% of the New Testament which is no longer found (or is substantially altered) in most modern versions shows that doctrines are systematically changed, in some instances in subtle ways. For a few examples, how about the divinity and eternal pre-existence of God the Son, soteriology (Mark 10:24 for example), and scriptural preservation itself. And this is in addition to the poor translation practices of dynamic equivalence, resulting in further changes in the translations regarding these doctrines. The same is simply not the case between TR editions, however much some might be tempted to play devil’s advocate. I’ve seen people try, in an attempt to justify their position, but they fail to make a case.
On this third point, Jesus Christ said that “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (John 18:37b). If the devil had taken even 1% of the New Testament and changed it, it would cease to be the voice of God. And that is simply why I believe the KJV and the original languages, where it came from, just as I don’t believe in the Alexandrian Codex Sinaiticus, the gnostic gospels, or some foreign manuscript that isn’t the Bible. That’s my third point. And we should be aware that there are those who corrupt the word of God, like Paul said with regard to corrupters in 2 Corinthians 2:17.
Agree, Andrew.
I really appreciate this discussion, and I’m learning a lot.
I have a question about the last paragraph. Why could we not say these (TR) words were available to generations of believers from the time of the early N.T. churches until 1881? Why are we saying from 1500 to 1881? I’m showing my ignorance, but I was thinking the hand-written copies (manuscripts) would have been available. Not as available because of expense. I’m wondering how were all of the churches, all those generations of believers from the N.T. times, hearing the words of God if the manuscripts were not available?
Hi Priscilla,
Between the two posts, I do say that the TR exists before the printing press. I write that in part one. However, the copies of the TR did not come in one single edition but in copies of individual books or sections. By faith I have no problem with with AD 100 to 2022. However, I can say that there was no other New Testament available for true believers between 1500-1881. The underlying text of the modern versions comes from something lost or rejected. If God ensures His Words would be available for every generation of His church, then that text cannot be the text God preserved. The text He preserved was also available.
Yes, we accept this by faith and we need to reject the story of lost text, which denies God’s promises. I can see your point that the text that is being presented as the lost text, or what we can see was rejected text because it was not circulated, could not possibly be the text that God preserved.
What books do you recommend about the history of early Baptist churches?
Thank you for answering my question. The way you explain things is very helpful.
I meant to say from N.T. times forward to 1500.