Scripture and Preservation of Scripture
Still in episode one, Wed Huff deals with a man named Gene Kim, who uses Hebrews 10:7 to defend his position on the preservation of scripture, and Huff makes this general statement:
A lot of these people, you know, if you build your doctrine of preservation that you have on taking verses completely out of their context to ignore how they’re read within the flow of the text and the way that the author intended them then there’s probably something very fragile about how you understand preservation.
I would agree here with Huff, that doctrine should come from what scripture says, not read into the text. Saying that, he doesn’t show how that Kim does that with his application of Hebrews 10:7. Men like Huff, I’ve observed, attack the historical and biblical doctrine of preservation, usually by erecting strawmen. I noticed this same tack recently with Mark Ward in an article he wrote, titled, “Does Psalm 12:6–7 Promise Perfect Manuscript Copies of the Bible?”
Strawmen Again
Ward then proceeds to show exactly no one who believes or says that Psalm 12:6-7 promises perfect manuscript copies of the Bible. It is a classic strawman argument, when the title itself provides the strawman. What do I believe Psalm 12:6-7 promises? God will preserve every one of His words of scripture for every generation of believer. No verse in scripture, I would agree, promises that God would preserve a physical hand copy of scripture.
I don’t know what Huff means by his words, “something very fragile about how you understand preservation.” It would have been great if he could have explained that.
The main host of “Cultish” himself then goes on to do the strawman argument, saying that people had something different back then. It seems he meant that a book was actually a manuscript. What seems fragile in his statement is that the text of Hebrews 10:7 doesn’t say the word, “manuscript.” That doesn’t come from “the flow of the text,” as Huff had explained. Just because someone handwrites a book doesn’t make it something other than a book.
None of these men explored at all what Hebrews 10:7 meant when it said, “in the volume of the book it is written of me.” At that point, could that not have been the entire Old Testament completely all together? That is an understanding that does fit with the point Kim makes about preservation found in the entire book. The host’s only answer to Kim was that Paul had not written his New Testament epistles yet. That is an inane argument. When Paul wrote that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16), John had not written Revelation either.
Evidence and the Text of the New Testament
The host refers to the Nestle-Aland text in his next question to Huff. He mispronounces Nestle, like it is the Swiss candy company — think Nestle Crunch. Eberhard Nestle was a German biblical scholar, who died in 1913.
Kim makes a point about the text behind the King James Version having more evidence than the critical text. The critical text does arise from a minority of the manuscripts. The Cultish host asks Huff about this and Huff first says that the King James Version differs from the majority text in 1800 places. That’s his first point, but he doesn’t qualify that answer at all.
The Majority Text
When I started taking Greek in high school, men called The Textus Receptus, “the Majority Text.” At that time, a New Testament Greek Text known as “The Majority Text,” collated by Hodges and Farstad, did not exist. Now the Hodges/Farstad text is called “The Majority Text.” In fact, it isn’t The Majority Text because no one has yet to collate all of the New Testament manuscripts. Still today, no one really knows what “The Majority Text” is. The Textus Receptus came from the majority of the manuscript evidence, what are called the Byzantine manuscripts.
Huff goes on to explain that the later texts, which are in the majority, are a longer text. He says that scribes added words. It was, as he asserts, just natural for them to do that. For instance, instead of writing “Jesus,” they might write “Jesus Christ,” adding “Christ.” Huff does not explain his basis for this assertion. It proceeds from his naturalistic presuppositions. Naturalistic textual critics advocate for the evolution of the New Testament text, that the text evolved, becoming longer through the centuries.
Restoring a Lost Text
Wes Huff goes on to explain that the critical text doesn’t count manuscripts, but “weighs readings.” He instructs the hosts on the eclectic method of the critical text, where men choose a reading based on certain rules of textual criticism. They say, shorter and older is better, even if those manuscripts are in the minority.
If Kim makes the argument that the Textus Receptus is strictly a majority text, he is wrong. I would assume that Kim isn’t making that. He’s probably saying that the Textus Receptus is superior textually to the critical text, the text behind the modern versions. It is found far more in the majority. Truly, if the Textus Receptus represents one hundred percent preservation, the majority text us 98 percent and the critical text is 93%.
Critical Text advocates such as Huff and perhaps these men on Cultish, who interviewed him, believe men lost the text of scripture. They believe it also then is man’s job to restore that lost text. It is an ongoing, really never ending, subject exercise, which leave men with uncertainty about the text of scripture. That isn’t preservation of scripture.
The next episode of this series will start on the second part of the interview with Huff.
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