Daniel Wallace
Certain names represent the biggest evangelical challengers to the biblical and historical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. They have written journal articles or books against preservation of scripture.
The Bible version issue starts with scriptural teaching on preservation. When you believe what God said, you come to perfect preservation. Then you have to deal with what that looks like in the real world. The teaching of the Bible presupposes the outcome.
One of the biggest names is Daniel Wallace, longtime professor of Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary. Any evangelical who takes Greek knows who Dan Wallace is. Second or third year Greek students use his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. It is a very helpful book to own and use.
Manuscript Evidence
In recent years Wallace turned his attention to The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. A major stated mission of CSNTM is the following:
To provide digital photographs of extant Greek New Testament manuscripts so that such images can be preserved, duplicated without deterioration, and accessed by scholars doing textual research.
Wallace considers their task to continue the restoration of a lost text of the New Testament.
Denial of Preservation
When anyone asks Wallace about the preservation of scripture, he sends them back to a journal article he wrote in the 1990s, entitled, “Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism.” Rather than interact on the subject, Wallace points to that article. He doesn’t need to talk about it. Wallace wrote the article and that ends the conversation. He wrote it, that settles it.
With Wallace’s demand, I acquiesced and read his article with an open mind and great interest. I didn’t assume he was wrong. I welcomed the possibility he was right. What he wrote, however, was very disappointing. It was filled with errors. Wallace and I had a brief back and forth on an evangelical blog in the comment section, since deleted. He claimed that I cherry picked the points I made about his article. I ask you to consider if that’s true with the below links to my analysis of his article.
First Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part one
Second Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part two
Third Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part three
Fourth Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part four
For a man of such renowned, his article denying the preservation of scripture is very, very poor. It’s still right there all over the internet though, remarkable multiple errors and all.
Brother Brandenburg,
Thanks for calling attention to these articles again. I appreciate the work you did on them. Too many people think that if Dan Wallace says it, it must be “gospel”. They are wrong. I noticed in a comment on part three the commenter was confused on whether Wallace actually denied the doctrine of preservation. Wallace’s point is bound to cause confusion for those who aren’t paying close attention. He thinks that the words are preserved (in a natural sense) somewhere in the manuscripts he has access to (even though he doesn’t think scholars can recover them, or would even know if they had), but he is very specifically denying that the Bible itself teaches its own preservation – denies that Bible preservation is a doctrine taught in the Scriptures. I think many of his readers may not really get that. (Or maybe many do and don’t care.)
I want to call your attention to one comment in part four: “Then he attempts to trace the preservation position back to the work of the recent Seventh Day Adventist Jasper James Ray.” That has been an assumption that has been passed on, but it is incorrect. I did a good bit of research on J. J. Ray a few years ago, trying to find out who he was. I never could nail down with which denomination he was affiliated, but it is almost certainly not the Seventh Day Adventists. He moved in what I might call evangelical circles, preaching and doing Sunday School work in different churches/denominations, such as Baptist, Bible Churches, Christian & Missionary Alliance. If you are interested, I preserved what I found on Ray here:
https://baptistsearch.blogspot.com/2021/01/in-search-of-j-j-ray.html
Brother Vaughn,
That is very helpful. Thank you.
It seems they want to create a fake history for the belief in one Bible, saying it originated from a cultist to discredit it. It shows the desperation.
It would seem to me that they did not care to find the facts of who he was, but simply used a charge that suited their purpose.
There was one other thing I intended to mention, but forgot. You wrote that you and Dan Wallace had a back and forth in a blog comment section that has since been deleted. I have not had any back and forth with Wallace, but I have used a comment several times, that made by him in a blog comment section (also at Parchment and Pen). I had reason about a week or so ago to go back and look at it — and I could not find it. The post is still there, but the comment by Wallace and the comment of the person he replied to are gone, or at the least I am incapable for finding it. I thought that was very intriguing, in light of your similar experience.
The comment for those who might be curious: “I worked on the NKJV as a proofreader (working directly for Art Farstad). The Greek text is the same as for the KJV, which is hardly a recommendation for it! None of the translators, as far as I know, thought that the Textus Receptus was the closest text to the original.” “What Bible Should I Own,” by Dan Wallace