Two posts were written during the last week about separation over faulty bibliology. The first to my attention was an essay written by David Doran, president of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary at his blog. The link to Doran’s article was tweeted by Phil Johnson at his twitter site. Then I read a comment (another more recent one) by Mike Harding, a pastor in Michigan, that at one point related to bibliology over at SharperIron. Then Jon Pratt, a professor at Central Seminary, chimed in at the Central Theological Blog.

A common criticism of the eclectic and critical text guys is the bad treatment of the KJV crowd. I think they’re mainly referring to the English inspirationists (Ruckman). I’ve often said that the eclectic/critical crowd is nearly as bad. Consider these statements made in their articles and consider whether they contribute edification on this issue.

Mike Harding: “the unending KJV only non-sense”

Jon Pratt: “The fallacies of sound logic, revisionist historicism, and bold-faced scare tactics employed by King James Only supporters are not characteristics of scholarly fundamentalism (and no, this is not an oxymoron) and are, instead, an indelible stain on the garments of modern-day fundamentalism.”

Dave Doran: “wide variety of theological and ministerial goofballs,” “the lunacy in defense of the KJVO position.”

KJVO people hold no corner on name-calling and insults, so let’s let that one rest. Please. You can’t complain about one side doing it and then do it yourself. If you’re going to do it, then you have to leave it alone.

I can’t put my finger on what fundamentalists really believe about separation. I had one tell me that it is impossible to be consistent in matters of separation. Doran laid out the DBTS terms of separation, however, in very clear fashion. This is one doctrine that he will separate over.

(1) our church and ministry will not have fellowship with any who claim for an English translation what can only be properly claimed for the autographs; and (2) we will not have fellowship with those who refuse to break fellowship from those who hold such false doctrine.

Doran lowers the gauntlet on this issue. I too believe we should separate over false bibliology and that’s what I want to talk about.

Scripture should provide our basis for separation. We are separating over a doctrine or practice that the Bible teaches. So we look to the Bible to find out what the it says about itself. That sounds simple—just study the Bible. And it is. But not as simple as some make of it. To come to the right position on an issue, I have taught five criteria to our church.

1. Conversion — The Holy Spirit illuminates those whom He indwells (1 Corinthians 2:13-14).
2. Study the Bible — This is more than looking up verses in Strong’s Concordance or checking out a commentary or systematic theology. This means understanding the Words in their context, their syntax, the usage of those Words elsewhere, comparing scripture with scripture, etc. (2 Timothy 2:15).
3. Historic Confirmation — Since no doctrine is new, we look to see whether people believed it in history. If we can’t find historic confirmation, we better have a lot of scriptural support to overturn what we do see in history. History doesn’t have authority, but we would expect a perpetuity for the truth—no total apostasy (2 Peter 1:20-21; 1 Timothy 4:1).
4. Church Agreement — The New Testament church should agree with the position. The Holy Spirit authenticates truth through those He indwells (1 Corinthians 3:16; John 16:13).
5. Courage — If the Bible tells us something different than what we believe and practice, we must be willing to change (Hebrews 11).

Having my above stated criteria in mind, what are some of the main points that we see about Scripture in Scripture?

Inspiration

Pas graphe theopneustos kai ophelimos. 2 Timothy 3:16. Every writing is God breathed and is profitable. Graphe is an anarthrous (no definite article, “the”) noun and the general rule is that an anarthrous adjective (theopneustos) related to an anarthrous noun (pas graphe) is normally predicate. Even though the graphe is anarthrous, the pas makes the noun graphe as definite as the article, so the adjective, theopneustos must be predicate. A copula is lacking, so it is supplied in the English. The natural place the copula goes is between the subject (pas graphe) and the first word that follows it (theopneustos). It is normal for the copula to be left out when it is obvious to the audience where it should be. It is obvious here.

We know that God breathed every writing in the past, but the assumption here is that what He breathed out continues to be that which He has breathed out, because it “is” breathed out by Him. The adjective theopneustos makes an assertion about the subject pas graphe. Writings that were breathed out continue to be breathed out. Like a child that is born continues to be born, the Words that God breathed continued to be His Words, continue to be breathed out by Him after He first breathed them.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 teach the sufficiency of Scripture. But what is sufficient? It is pas graphe that is sufficient. The assumption again is that we will have all of the Words. If being throughly furnished unto every good work is dependent upon pas graphe (every writing), then we would assume that we would have every writing. This is a logical conclusion that we get from these two verses when we are attempting to get our doctrine from the actual verses of scripture. We’ll come back to this later, because it doesn’t fit so much under the doctrine of inspiration.

The writings that God breathed out were Hebrew and Greek. Those were what He inspired. To say that English words are breathed out would be to say that God breathed out new Words after the completion of the canon (in contradiction to Revelation 22:18-19). That is false bibliology. Scripture doesn’t say that.

So what about an English translation of those Hebrew and Greek writings? Is it inspired? That is where we have to come up with some new bibliological words to describe inspiration as it relates to a translation. I have no problem using the terminology “derivative inspiration.” An accurate translation that properly represents the Hebrew and Greek writings is derived from those writings. With that in mind, we can call an English translation inspired.

God’s Words, which He breathed out, are different with Him having breathed them. The Words have the breath of God in them. How do we know this? By what Scripture says about them. At least two verses come to my mind:

John 6:63, 68, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. . . . [T]hou hast the words of eternal life.”

Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Psalm 19:7-10 also validate that the Words that God breathed out are significantly extraordinary.

How do men go astray on inspiration? They believe in natural inspiration or conceptual inspiration. They deny inspiration. They don’t believe every writing was inspired. In certain cases men have taken a new position of “double inspiration,” that is, that God had inspired the Hebrew and Greek writings, but He has done it again in an English translation, the King James Version. All of these go astray from a scriptural position. If we are going to protect the doctrine of inspiration and honor what God has said, we must separate over it. I think that is what Dave Doran is saying that he believes, that we separate over this scriptural doctrine.

Canonicity

More to Come!

God “cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4). We should not expect contradictions. This is not the nature of God. Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). There isn’t more than one truth.

From this perfect unity of God’s attributes and revelation of Himself and His will through Scripture, we expect the same lack of contradiction in our own doctrine and practice. Recently, however, two such contradictions have caught my attention. I wrote about a first in part one, entitled: “Contradiction Number One: The Eruption over the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Sermon.”

The concept of a total apostasy is foundational to most cults. They must prove that the doctrine and practice of the first century early church has been forsaken for an erroneous replacement. For instance, the Jehovah’s Witnesses must believe that the pure, original teaching of the Person of Christ had been lost to the conspiratorial Trinitarians. The Campbellites must accept that the pure, original teaching of salvation had been lost to the novel salvation-by-grace-through-faith alone view. The Mormons, to make room for their theological system, must show how that the right interpretation of scripture had actually been lost.

We have a scriptural basis for not believing in a total apostasy. Any belief that espouses a total apostasy of doctrine, we should reject. True doctrine will not be lost. We should assume that. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:1 writes:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.

The key here is that “some shall depart from the faith.” Not all. Some. “The faith,” which includes all of the teachings of scripture, will not be lost. Ironically, even most of those, who don’t think we have all the words of the original manuscripts of the Bible available to us, do believe that scripture promises that none of the doctrines will be lost. This is an important part of their belief in preservation, that is, that no doctrine is lost in the words of the critical text. They hope to calm the fears of those who are finding out for the first time that ‘we’re not sure what the words of the originals are.’

Jude 1:3 also rejects a total apostasy.

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

The key portion on this is “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” “Once” comes from the Greek hapax, which means, “once for all time.” It is a strong statement about the teachings of God’s Word. They were delivered to the saints once and for all time. “Delivered” is aorist, speaking of completed action. The deliverance of the faith was complete. We don’t need to be concerned that we had not yet been given doctrine that God still planned for us to receive. From this verse we believe that no doctrine would be lost.

A scriptural pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, precludes the possibility of a total apostasy in the age in which we live. Jesus made promises that ensure that every Christian can count on having all of the teachings from God’s Word.

John 16:13—Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

1 John 2:27—But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

In John 16:13, we see that the Holy Spirit “will guide [us] into all truth” and in 1 John 2:27 that the Holy Spirit “teaches [us] of all things” and “is no lie.” Biblical Christianity will last and every doctrine will survive in its midst.

Does this mean that there will never be a total apostasy? There will be a total apostasy. 2 Thessalonians 2 talks of that time and we know that this apostasy will be witnessed when the Antichrist reveals himself. Verse three informs us of that:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.

The “falling away” (apostasy) and the “son of perdition” being revealed occur at the same time period. Also the Holy Spirit, the restrainer (the one who “lets” or “restrains”), will be taken away.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The Holy Spirit will go before the apostasy occurs, explaining how it could take place. 2 Thessalonians 2 goes on to describe it in verses eight through eleven:

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

Until this occurs, there will be no total apostasy. All doctrines will remain intact.

So What Happened to the True Doctrine of the Preservation of Scripture?

Most evangelicals today say that the true doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is that God chose not to preserve the words of the original manuscripts. He preserved the doctrines of scripture, but we do not possess a perfect copy of God’s Word any more. Enough mistakes were made in copying that we do not know what the words of the original are anymore. They contend that this is the orthodox doctrine. Those who do believe in perfect preservation they will attack as heterodox and heretical.

If what these evangelicals propose, which includes many fundamentalists, were actually true, then we should find their doctrine from 1500 to 1800 among orthodox, evangelical Christianity, that is, the ones who possessed the Holy Spirit. However, when we read the doctrine of reformation era and post-reformation era saints, we don’t see this supposedly orthodox doctrine of the “preservation of all the doctrines but not the words.” They didn’t believe that. They believed that they had available to them all of the words of Scripture. You find this in the Westminster Confession (WC) and the London Baptist Confession and the Formula Consensus Helvetica. You will find this bibliology of modern evangelicalism and fundamentalism nowhere during that time period.

When we can’t find a particular doctrine in history, we should look to see if we can determine when it arose. This is actually simple. Evangelicals didn’t start holding this view until Benjamin Warfield of Princeton Seminary came along to read this view into the WC in the late 19th century. No one else had read this doctrine in the WC until that point. Many evangelicals and then fundamentalists (once the fundamentalist movement began in the early 20th century) latched ahold of this new Warfield doctrine.

Today you can read fundamentalist materials written that attempt to formulate a history to their new doctrine. As you read their books and articles, you see that they trace the teaching no further than the late 19th century. And then they claim this as a historic position. You read this in God’s Word in Our Hands: The Bible Preserved for Us and in God’s Word Preserved and God’s Word Preserved: A Defense of Historic Separatist Definitions and Beliefs. Notice how Sproul says, “Historic,” in his title. I believe that we would need to give a new definition to “historic” if “historic” refers to a doctrine that one can trace back a little over one hundred years. That is just the opposite of a genuine understanding of “historic.”

Neither of the above mentioned books does anything to show why the history of 1500-1800 could not be true. They don’t show why we shouldn’t believe what Christians believed in that time period. Both Sproul and the authors of the other book just make an assertion that they have a history, one that cannot be proven for them. They either don’t think it important to deal with historic doctrine or they’re ignorant of it. If their doctrine on preservation is true, then there was a total apostasy from 1500 to 1800 at least. They need to explain that. Not only haven’t they, but no one has. That should make their doctrine completely suspect as the actual new doctrine, the new heterodox doctrine of preservation.

When you read the materials by mainly fundamentalist authors in their multiple volumes attacking the historic doctrine of preservation and the King James Version of the Bible, what you will see is that they mainly resort to ad hominem attacks, including slanderous smears of those who hold to the scriptural and historical position. This is a major part of their strategy to make their position acceptable. They attempt to discredit those who take the historical orthodox belief. They often point out how that they are the ones that are being slandered and misrepresented, and yet, this very activity is a major technique they utilize to buttress their own position.

True believers should expect more than this theological contradiction of those who claim orthodoxy. They ought to be able to produce some history. If they can’t, then they should admit that they’re holding to a new position. To do otherwise is dishonest and manipulative. A new doctrine should not arise without scriptural and historical support.

If I had this kind of charge brought against me, that is, that I am believing a brand new doctrine without historical basis, and that by doing so, I am holding to the total apostasy of a particular doctrine, I would take it very seriously. I would go to the one(s) making the charge and give them my answer. I wouldn’t stand for it. I would want to show that it wasn’t true. I would expect to see that reaction from men, evangelical and fundamentalist, who claim to hold the truth.

For years evangelicals and fundamentalists (of the non revivalist variety) have given the cold shoulder to supporters of the King James Version (KJS = King James Supporters). I designate King James Only men that way because of the pejorative nature of the KJVO identification. Most evangelicals and fundamentalists are not likely to listen to anything that a KJS will say in any theological or scriptural matter. If you remain KJS, you are discredited on salvation, sanctification, and almost any scriptural view you hold. I know that from experience. So I would think that I might hear a lot of testimony from other KJS, who have had a similar experience as I have. Feel free to let me know. You’re not complaining; you’re just reporting.

What is the “cold shoulder?” Don’t look it up in the Bible. You won’t find the practice there. They give no due process. It isn’t biblical separation. It isn’t loving. It doesn’t have any particular goal in mind. It’s almost sheerly political. They give KJS the “mean girl” routine either by ignoring them, talking only about them and not to them, or offering short, clipped answers as if from the start they’re already fed up with your mere presence. You’re left to figure out what it means. For any of them who are reading this, you might be thinking, “Hey, he got what was happening! That is what we do!” I really do not think that they know how to separate.

I can’t know exactly why they operate in this fashion. They might say that they long ago swept aside the easy arguments of King James Onlyism, so now they just want to get a distance from this kooky group. To them, all KJVO are English preservationists or inspirationists who probably believe you can only be converted with a King James Bible. It also can be peer pressure. If they are caught talking to a KJS, they could lose some luster in their own group. They must treat all KJS as unreasonable and stupid, one sure way to receive kudos from your evangelical and fundamentalist crowd, or at least not to suffer the censor of the people with whom they so wish to be in favor. You can be an amazing favorite with these guys if you leave the KJS position and regularly mention that you once believed “like them (KJS).”

Things Have Changed

I have noticed that recently that the rhetoric against KJS has become more about separation. Many times the threat of separation comes from fundamentalists in commentary about conservative evangelicals. Here’s how it works. Many fundamentalists think that certain conservative evangelicals are moving their direction, so the fundamentalists are talking about the kind of relationships they might be able to have with these evangelicals. A lot of the fundamentalists are already attending their conferences, fellowships, and other meetings.

Let me digress for a moment. When especially young fundamentalists blog, they generally show more love toward these evangelicals than they do fundamentalists. It has also become fashionable to quote these evangelicals, indicating that you are reading them. Most of them do write books, something that not many fundamentalists have accomplished. I see these new evangelicals as the new heroes to replace the old big names who have passed off the scene. Fundamentalism doesn’t have any heroes of similar caliber or respect that they once did, so the attention is shifting to these conservative evangelicals as the replacement. This seems to be the death knell for this brand of fundamentalism.

I continue. The fundamentalists still say that separation is the issue that mainly gets in the way with fellowshiping with these evangelicals. They’re also uncomfortable with some of the methods that many of these evangelicals use in their churches. The evangelicals answer the separation criticism by saying that the fundamentalists aren’t consistent. If they will separate from the men to the left of them, themselves, then they should also be willing to separate from those in fundamentalism erring at the right of them. In other words, if fundamentalists are going to blast the evangelicals for being indifferent about Billy Graham, then they should also stop being indifferent with some of their wacky right-winged cousins.

I digress once again. Some of the young fundamentalists are fed up with the inconsistency on separation, so they are moving over to the evangelical brand of separation, which kind of looks like no separation. The big thing really is not having someone come speak for you or for you to speak to them. This is the big dream for this new evangelical, fundamental continuum. Presently it only exists in their drooling imaginations. Others are sorting through how to be consistent. Consistency all comes to a smithering halt when you see Sexton and Paisley on the platform with Jones and Ollila.

Enter the KJS. A great target to stop being indifferent would be the KJS. The evangelicals already just roll their eyes, shake their heads, and scoff at these silly wabbits. Condescending chuckles all around. Hefty back-slapping for maximum snarkiness. The fundamentalists have to sort of like be with them, since they’re, ya know, all fundamentalists. Yuck. Ugh. The poster boys for stupid fundamentalism in their opinion are the KJS. So what to do? Prove your separation credentials by separating from the easiest target, the ones everyone loves to hate, the KJS. (The next easy target is Frank Garlock. He thinks rock music hinders plant growth. Ban him.) Some momentum is gaining on building a separation consensus with fundamentalists that goes beyond the cold shoulder that already exists.

The Radical Bibliology

I had already been hearing the calls for separation from these men with the radical bibliology, the KJS. Their bibliology is bad. It’s an attack on um, um, inspiration. Inspiration is even a major doctrine. It’s somehow stayed in that category despite love for Bruce Metzger. So they’ve got the perfect test case for consistent separation. They earn their separation chops by dividing from the KJS.

How is KJS against inspiration? Well, they, of course, all of them, believe that the King James is inspired. There we go, double inspiration. They use only the King James because it is the only Bible around that is inspired. All KJS believe this. Even if they don’t, they do. Even if they don’t, I’ll treat them all exactly the same. No one will call me on it if I do. You don’t have to. They are KJS. KJS doesn’t have to be treated as well as someone like a Bart Ehrman, a person that actually contributes to sound, scriptural bibliology. Did you hear he’s been on the NY Times bestseller list? There’s scholarship for you.

Sound Bibliology?

And what exactly is the sound bibliology of the non-KJS men? Besides not being KJS, which is the best part of their bibliology, they believe that God inspired the original manuscripts. So do most KJS. And then God preserved His Word. They believe that. It’s not taught anywhere in an explicit manner in scripture, but it is inferred in a few verses, and if those verses don’t actually teach it, it is sort of a logical conclusion that you could make since you are sitting there with an English translation in your hand. And for them, that’s the sound view. That’s the view that is orthodox. That’s the one that stays in fellowship.

I find the bibliology of these multiple version guys to be very confusing. Very jello-like. Amoebic. It’s like listening to a major league baseball player explain steroid use. The story keeps changing. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got Scripture promising preservation anyway is the thing. You can depend on comparisons of copies and mounds of textual evidence, stuff that is of much greater reliability than the preservation of, for instance, Tacitus. And no doctrines have been lost. That is part of the doctrine too. They’re all in their somewhere. And we’ve got to be careful teaching this doctrine of preservation anyway. You see what happened to Bart Ehrman when he believed in preservation, don’t you? So we’ve got to be careful being too presuppositional—it might not end well with that kind of approach. We need more bibliological ambiguity on the doctrinal side and then let the evidence lead us to the truth.

That whole last paragraph (with a little underlying humor from me) is very close to what I read the other side say, the non-KJS men. That is the foundation on which they stand in order to separate from the KJS. They have the orthodox bibliology. I would add that all the words are in the multiplicity of the manuscripts, but they don’t really believe that. They believe that at least a few words still haven’t been found, but you can all know that they’re still searching, still collating, and still waiting.

Who Is Brainwashed?

So have these non-KJS, multiple version, critical text men read works of bibliology that have dealt with the subject of preservation? Have they read an in depth historical bibliology with thorough analysis of what bibliology Christians have held? Do we read any of this kind of research and study in the works they have published? I haven’t seen it. Their books are full of restatements of Metzger and Aland, non-theological works.

Bart Ehrman, in Misquoting Jesus, had nine propositions that he developed in the course of the book. In his debate with Ehrman, James White could not challenge the assessment that he himself agreed with eight and a half of the propositions in Misquoting Jesus. The only thing they disagreed about was the interpretation of the evidence. And this is the kind of thing that is the source for non-KJS bibliology.

They love to reference the letter from the King James translators to the reader as a preface to the King James Translation. In that letter, the translators say that they expect that someone might be able to improve upon their translation in the future, giving men the permission to do so. They don’t relate anything on the doctrine of preservation. They don’t relate one point of bibliology in their introduction to their translation. They use that preface as an authority for correcting the King James Translation. And then the non-KJS say that they can’t find anyone who believed in the preservation of an English translation. They can’t find anyone before 1610 who believed in the preservation of the King James Translation. Sit back KJS. When they are done with such criticism of KJS, you have been slain. You are speechless. Only arrogance would now open his lips to attempt to answer such devastating bibliology.

These non-KJS men are ready to separate over bibliology, over inspiration of Scripture, from KJS men. They do so and they are either ignorant or ambivalent to the history of the doctrine of preservation. They have drunk the koolaid of textual criticism. They are content with believing that KJS started with a Seventh Day Adventist, David Otis Fuller, or maybe Donald Waite. They think that perhaps it began with Dean Burgon, who, they rush to add, wouldn’t even be KJVO if he were alive today.

Let’s go back a little bit further to the wealth of bibliology written in the 17th century, representing historic and pre-enlightenment sole scriptura. There you’ll get historic bibliology. There you’ll read what men of God have thought about this for centuries. There you’ll get a pre-brainwashing bibliology that depends on the teaching of the Bible itself for the doctrine of its own preservation.

We open the cover of our Bible and the first page is a test of faith. Why? No one was there. We have no way of knowing Genesis 1:1 was true, except for the Word of God. Should we interpret what we see in the world based upon what Scripture says or should we interpret the Bible based on what we see in the world? Do we go ahead and accept the Genesis account of origins, even if it reads against our own reasoning?

Kevin Bauder, dean of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, recently wrote in his In the Nick of Time an interesting thought experiment that I believe illustrates this paradigm:

Imagine that God comes to you with the announcement that He has just created an entirely new world, and He wants to show it to you. You agree, and in an instant you are transported into that world. At first you marvel at its beauty, but then you begin to notice phenomena that strike you as odd.

First, you notice that many of the trees in this world are already fully grown. Then you notice that they are surrounded by saplings and young trees in various stages of growth. You even notice seeds hanging on branches and, in some cases, lying on the ground. Plant life exists at every stage of development.

Then you notice that the world is populated by animals and birds. Many of these appear to be mature creatures, but you also notice their young. You find yourself surrounded by calves and foals and chicks and cubs of every sort. With a bit of investigation, you discover that there are already birds’ nests, and that some of them have eggs in them. Animal life exists at every stage of development.

As you wander, you discover a canyon with a river at the bottom. In the sides of the canyon you can plainly see the various layers of rock. You know that these geological strata are supposed to take many years to form. Geological formations exist at every stage of development.

As night falls, you cast your gaze toward the heavens. You behold a spangled expanse that is brighter and more piercing than any you’ve ever seen. But then you recall that this world is supposed to be less than a day old. Since stars are supposed to be light-years away, you wonder how you could be seeing them already. Yet you behold astral phenomena at every stage of development.

If you had no other source of information, you would assume that this world had been in existence for ages, not for mere hours. Interpreted within your normal frame of reference, the facts indicate an old world. At this point you must make a choice. You may choose to interpret the facts within your normal frame of reference and believe in an ancient world, or you may accept what the Creator said, and then search for some other interpretation of the facts.

This choice can never be made on the basis of the evidence itself. The evidence is what requires explanation. It does not explain itself. If you know that the Creator is capable of making Himself understood, and if you know that the Creator means to be understood and does not deceive, then you will believe in a young creation. If, on the other hand, you choose to interpret the evidence according to your normal assumptions, then you must conclude that perhaps the Creator is mistaken, or that He means to mislead, or perhaps that He is incapable of expressing Himself; at any rate, His words must be construed differently than He plainly intended.

Bauder ends his essay with this:

Christians must begin with an absolute commitment to the infinite-personal, faithful, apseudes God. This God can and does say exactly what He means. What He affirms is always true. Since the Bible is always His Word, it may always be trusted in anything that it asserts. The Bible is never to be interpreted by the facts of general revelation. On the contrary, the Bible itself communicates the grand context, the Truth (with a definite article and a capital T), the framework within which all facts must be interpreted.

Once we have presupposed the truth of Scripture, the facts remain interesting to us. We will certainly attempt to explain them. But our explanation never begins from some detached or neutral starting point. It certainly never begins with an assumption that facts are transparent or self-explanatory. We take God at His word.

Christians must never interpret facts from a position of autonomy. To do so is the essence of arrogance. Rather, humble submission to the Word of the Creator is the starting place for a right understanding of the world. When the Lord God speaks, His Word alters the entire frame of reference within which the facts are to be understood. A newly created world may look ancient but still be young. A divinely inspired text may look as if it had been produced like other literature, yet remain unique in its truthfulness. We can only know what a thing is if we are willing to begin by accepting what God says about it.

The approach Bauder describes for origins should be ours in any matter where we are not present to observe physical evidence. Much of what God expects for us depends on us believing what He said without any tangible proof. Jesus made this point in Luke 5 when he forgave the sins of a paralytic who was lowered before Him through the roof. He asked this question of the doubtful Pharisees and scribes (v. 23):

Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?

It was easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee. It was easier to say because anyone could say those words and no one would know if they had actually occurred or not. There would be no proof that his sins were forgiven, because you couldn’t see anything. It was much more difficult to say, “Rise up and walk,” because everyone would know whether those words were credible. Of course, Jesus then heals the man, so that they would know that his sins were forgiven him. However, we’re supposed to believe Jesus did something that we couldn’t see, just because He said so. Believers don’t need the sign that followed. They can believe something Jesus said, whether they had any other proof of it or not.

The story in Luke 5 illustrates again the paradigm for accepting the preservation of Scripture. God didn’t promise that He would provide all the evidence that we need to believe. He didn’t promise that for inspiration either. We weren’t there when God inspired Scripture. We weren’t there when the men wrote the Words. Most likely none of us have seen the original manuscripts. We don’t know of anyone alive who has seen them.

What we believe must fit what we read the Bible saying about its own preservation. If our view of the evidence and our own reasoning doesn’t fit what Scripture says, then we go ahead and believe God’s Word and reject our view of evidence and our own reasoning. Not believing doesn’t please God.

I guess that brings me to the typical strawman. The Bible doesn’t say that God would preserve the King James Version. I want everyone that uses that argument right now to understand that it insults everybody’s intelligence. We all know that Scripture doesn’t say that.

The Bible does say things, however, that would have us reject the critical text. It says things that would have us expect general accessibility of God’s Words. It says things that would have us expect perfection. It says things that would have us believe that God was at work in preservation. It says things that would have us believe that God preserved every Word and all of them—not physical pages without variants, but the Words. It says things that would have us believe that the Holy Spirit would be at work to ensure that we know what those Words are. It says things that would ensure us that we would not have to restore the text of Scripture but to receive it. That is the paradigm that we should follow for our belief in the preservation of Scripture.

What do you think it is like for God to tell us exactly how He created the world and yet we don’t believe Him? Why not? Because we don’t have any physical evidence or eyewitnesses for the origin of all things. What do you think it is like for God to tell us that He would preserve every Word so that all people for every generation could obey every One of those Words, but we won’t believe Him? Why not? Because we don’t have enough physical evidence to believe that, so we “believe” in textual criticism instead.

I’ve now listened to the entire debate, every minute. I’ll probably listen to the whole thing again. My goal is to be objective with this analysis. To start, I would far prefer James White over Bart Ehrman. For me to be objective, I couldn’t have a horse in this race and be fair.

I’ve debated twice—once for one night like the Ehrman-White Debate and second for an entire week of nights. I had an online debate about a year ago. I’ve coached debate a little. I taught a class on rhetoric once and logic twice. I understand that the two men were debating the proposition: “Do the New Testament Texts Misquote Jesus?” I don’t think the NT texts do misquote Jesus. However, I wasn’t the one debating Ehrman; White was. At the end of the debate, with complete objectivity I would have to say, “Yes, based on what I just heard, the New Testament texts did misquote Jesus.” Only Ehrman was really debating that point. James White seemed to want a different debate topic—whether the degree of error in the NT text would result in denial of the inspiration of Scripture.

Some that read me here aren’t going to like what I am saying. However, I say, listen to the debate yourself and make your own decision. I know what I heard. I don’t know how anyone could conclude otherwise. As a matter of fact, I think if someone comes on here to defend a White victory, he doesn’t understand debating. He’s also letting his beliefs and his like and passion for James White get in the way.

Who Won

I would love for someone to slay Bart Ehrman. In a very small sense, James White did. Even though he plainly lost this debate, he did take some shine off of Bart Ehrman’s point. He did expose Ehrman as a deceiver with an agenda. He cleared up some matters for which a majority of evangelicals would be happy. However, that wasn’t what this debate was about. White knew it wasn’t supposed to be about inspiration. During the debate, Ehrman made it clear that he had agreed to do the debate with the provision that the inspiration issue wouldn’t be the proposition. It seems that White brought it in against his own pledge not to do that.

White didn’t have a chance to win this debate right from the very start. He shouldn’t even have debated that proposition. Why? There was no way he could refute what Ehrman was saying because he agreed with Ehrman’s position, at least as far as the debated topic goes. Ehrman said that he had nine propositions in his book, Misquoting Jesus, and that James White agreed with him on 8 1/2 of them. It was true. James White agreed with almost everything that Ehrman said in Misquoting Jesus. James White didn’t attempt to refute that. Why? Because James White too believes that the New Testament misquotes Jesus. He loses the debate right there. He’s supposed to be arguing against it.

Ehrman was not arguing for a theological position. It is true that White brought up the theology and then Ehrman addressed it. White then said that Ehrman always brings it up in debates. Ehrman swatted this aside by explaining that he always talked about it because his opponent in these debates always brought it up. White had no answer for that. At the most, all that White wanted Ehrman to admit was that Scripture was more reliable than any ancient manuscript, essentially on the same terms as those manuscripts would be considered to be reliable. That wasn’t even what this debate was about. Ehrman admitted that, but that was something that we already knew about Ehrman. True, he doesn’t go all over the country defending Scripture. True, he relishes the reason why the secular world loves him and quotes him so much. But he isn’t afraid of saying what he thinks. He wasn’t trying to hide his skepticism or his disbelief. I think he was willing not to make too much of his own particular point. He says that he doesn’t know what the originals were. That’s something White will not say, even though it is what he thinks too.

Reliance on Textual Critics

White got caught on his reliance on textual critic as authority. He quoted Aland in agreement with him on the issue of the reliability of the New Testament. He was depending on Aland’s expertise, viewing himself as not an authority, which was true. White hadn’t studied the manuscripts himself. Ehrman one-upped him by telling him that very few textual critics believe what Aland does anymore. Ehrman exposed this about White by asking him if he knew who the foremost critics were in Germany and France. White acted like this shouldn’t matter, when it was he who opened up the door of authority-by-critic. White cherry-picked his critics and then Ehrman started naming the critics that he knew. And White himself acknowledged that Ehrman himself was one of the foremost critics in the world. Ehrman manifested White’s death by a dozen critics. The critics agree with Ehrman, oh, except for the evangelical ones. They don’t. Men like Wallace don’t. Why don’t they? Not because of the evidence, says Ehrman. He made a big deal about that. Let me explain that one point, that was interesting.

The evangelical textual critics say that textual variants don’t matter. They repeat regularly that they don’t matter. Ehrman points out the obvious. If they don’t matter, then why is it that Wallace is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars running around cataloguing and photographing manuscripts? Good question. Ehrman asks in essence, “What does he tell his sponsors, those funding him? I’m doing all of this because it doesn’t matter. Of course he doesn’t tell them that, because they do matter! Why check for all the variants and look very carefully at all of them if they don’t matter?” I agreed. The textual critics don’t think that the text matter is settled. James White speculates that we’ve reached about as far as we can go in NT textual criticism, that is, unless we have another Dead Sea Scroll like find. So on the one hand, the evangelical textual critic says the variants don’t matter and then on the other hand he is saying that they really, really do matter. Ehrman succeeded in the debate at showing, if one believes that a particular variant might be a part of the originals, that it really can change the meaning of the text.

Reliability of Manuscripts

Since they were ultimately not debating the topic because White in essence conceded that point to Ehrman, then we got a discussion about other matters. A major part of the conversation was about how reliable are the manuscripts we possess in replicating the originals. Ehrman made this argument: “The early scribes weren’t very good at copying. They weren’t trained in it. So they made a lot of errors, and that’s why we see so many mistakes in the earliest manuscripts.” White agreed on this point and added his own—“they didn’t have scriptoriums” and “they were on the run from persecution.” That only played into Erhman’s hands. The earliest manuscripts, both agreed, are from around AD220, about 150 years after the book was complete. I think it was P45. Anyway, the further back we go, Ehrman argues, the worse the believers were at copying because the less trained they were. Therefore, if the oldest copies that we have, which are copies of copies, then how far off was the copy that made that copy and then the copy that made the copy from which that came from. He says that there is no way for us to know what the originals were, based upon that.

You can see how that with that theory, the more recent textual critics could reject inspiration, not even think about inspiration. You can see how that they could develop into this kind of unbelief. White’s explanation for that, said in exasperated tones in his final statement, was postmodernism. There we go. These men are a product of postmodernism and that’s why the new textual critics have a greater degree of uncertainty than the earlier textual critics, which had only a lesser degree of uncertainty. My heart couldn’t be warmed by his reassurances for why this was happening, even with the condescending exhalations.

White had a come-back for this textual theory. It was very involved. He assumed that Ehrman couldn’t understand it. As a result, he spent a great deal of time explaining it again, eating up most of his rebuttal, ripping on Ehrman for not understanding (mainly because he didn’t read White’s book, sigh, such lack of preparation). Oh, Ehrman understood. That wasn’t clear to White, but it was clear to me. Ehrman just didn’t believe in White’s textual theory. White’s theory was something like this: “You’ve got an old copy of Scripture from the fourth century. Then you’ve got a later copy that looks very much like it. It comes from a different line. You read two different lines and they both agree closely—this agreement gives evidence of what the original text is.”

White also does a computer comparison using his home pc, comparing the TR with the Nestles Aland, and between those he finds great agreement, so that too shows the tenacity of the text. The text is there. And then on top of that, Kurt Aland says that it’s there, so it must be there, because he is a renouned textual critic that knows several languages, is indeed no hick. That’s the essence of the White argument.

Ehrman has a come-back for that. He says that the agreement of the later text simply means that it was copied from the earlier text. That’s what that means. How do we know who is true on this? I don’t think we do based only on textual criticism. You’ve got to take your pick between the two if you’re going to decide based on textual criticism.

Where White Exposes Ehrman

White exposes Ehrman in at least four ways. They were all good for evangelicals who care if they know for sure that they have all the doctrines and at least 93% of the text. One was one that Ehrman has said already, but he doesn’t like to repeat it too many times in public, that is, that the NT text has more textual attestation by far than any text from antiquity. In his review of himself, White says that we should put that on t-shirts for college students, as a quote from Ehrman. I thought, “That would be funny.” Then I thought, “That would be just like a modern evangelical. Witness by t-shirt with clever statement.” I also thought, “What a weak statement. ‘Our Bible has less errors than Socrates does!! It’s God’s Word!!'” Anyway, I give that point to White.

White also made Ehrman say another thing that he has written but that you don’t normally hear from him. He made him say that we can’t conclude Scripture isn’t inspired from the evidence. It could be. God could have done it that way. Ehrman made no conclusion about inspiration except that He didn’t believe in it. He didn’t say that it wasn’t true.

Third, White did flush out from Ehrman that he quotes other ancient books as if they had been preserved, even though there is far less evidence that they have been. A humorous moment took place at that juncture when White asked Ehrman in cross examination about the length of time between the writing of the book and the earliest copy that we possess. Ehrman had said a humonguous period of time in terms of copying. And so compared to Tacitus and other ancient works, whose earliest copy is much further away in years? White asked Ehrman to give a word to describe that length of time, to which he answered that it was gi-humonguous, or something like that. Very funny. You got the sense that Ehrman really did believe in the preservation of these other books with their lesser textual evidence, indicating a theological bias coming through.

In fairness to Ehrman, even though I hate the work that he does, he has a higher standard for text that comes from God than White does. White acts like any of us should expect errors. I think it is White’s Calvinism—God wanted errors in the text because of the greater good there would be (something like that). The reason Ehrman, it seems, is willing to trust Tacitus more than the Bible, is because Tacitus doesn’t claim inspiration or preservation. The Bible does.

Last, James White showed how that the variants in the manuscripts that we possess do not really get rid of doctrine. They may change doctrine in a few places, which White concedes. But the variants don’t change the essence of the meaning of the text of the New Testament. White exposed this aspect of Ehrman.

Credentials

I do believe that Ehrman had to believe he was toying with White. White was like the boy who put together a lot of airplane models arguing against the engineer from Boeing. Ehrman is a textual critic. He has examined the actual manuscripts. Ehrman is one of the few men in the world who are called in to examine a recent archeological find. When they dig up something old and significant, Ehrman is on speed dial. White isn’t in the phone book. Ehrman got his degree from Princeton. White got his from a P. O. Box. I don’t care about those kind of things too much, but when we talk about textual criticism, these credentials are a big deal. Ehrman was on the recent discovery of the copy of the Gospel According to Judas. White doesn’t get called in on those kinds of assignments. Daniel Wallace is at least doing big boy manuscript work that even Ehrman must recognize.

James White is the little train that could. He’s actually quite a big train, but that’s beside the point. “Please give me scholarly respect” oozes out and drips all over him. You don’t have to try to see it. He constantly brings it up. I guess, to be nice, we’re supposed to ignore it. I know it’s gotta be hard for him to feel the disrespect he thinks is there. Christians should get accustomed to it. They’re not going to get accolades. But he says things like, “You didn’t even read my books. You said your book was the first book on textual criticism, but I (throat clear) was actually the first with my textual critic book, The King James Version Controversy, used at Podunk Hollar U. and School for Basket Weaving.” Ugh. That is not a text on textual criticism. Come on. He wrote his own review of his debate (which is quite revisionist in my opinion) that starts with “I was riding my bicycle up South Mountain, a 7 mile long ascent with portions hitting a 12% grade.” What did that sentence have to do with anything! Then when he gets a bad review from American Vision and he writes his own review of the review, coming across as desperate. Again, I know it’s tough, but these kinds of things don’t aid his cause.

Almost all critical text evangelicals talk and talk about how they are mistreated. In White’s commentary on the debate, he says that the people there were really surprised at how poorly Ehrman treated him. I listened to the whole thing. I didn’t hear it. I thought Ehrman treated White with great respect. He brought in the textual critics question only because White had opened the door for it with his dependence on Aland for his point on the tenacity of the text. White also presented an argument during his cross examination, slipping it in with a sarcastic tone to his voice, sounding as though he knew exactly what was doing, even though that is a no-no during the cross.

Theology

Ehrman is far more consistent in his theological expectations of Scripture than White is. Ehrman knows what verbal inspiration is. He knows how that is tied into authority even by evangelicals. He also knows about the promises of preservation. He knows what the Bible says. He assumes that if the Bible is inspired, that God could make sure that they got every Word, that God could also preserve every Word. It seems that Ehrman understands that presupposition better than White.

White has been saying that he is a presuppositionalist in his after-debate defenses. Maybe he is. I didn’t catch his presuppositions. I only heard a Scriptural argument seep through a few times. Once he mentioned that the NT writers thought that the Old Testament was inspired. He could have mentioned Peter’s reference of Paul in 2 Peter 3 if he wanted to get a little more presuppositional on inspiration (although this wasn’t what the debate was about). The one that he mentioned more, I believe, blew up in his face like the coyote with the road runner, and that was Jesus’ quoting the Old Testament. White tried to use that as a defense for mistakes in the text. He said that Jesus quoted a corrupted text of the Old Testament, so a corrupt text is obviously not that big a deal. Ehrman latched right ahold of that argument. He said, “Yah! Some of what Jesus quoted from the Old Testament wasn’t even in the Old Testament!” From that exchange, I thought that White’s main presupposition defended Ehrman’s proposition quite well, that is, it doesn’t really even matter if the New Testament misquoted Jesus. After all Jesus misquoted the Old Testament. How does that buoy your faith?

Overall I thought Ehrman had a better handle on the authority of Scripture than White. He saw how that errors in the Bible take away from its certainty and authority. That was enough for him to push the eject button on Christianity. White argued using what he saw as the best evidence. Based upon that, he leaves us with uncertainty on the text. He doesn’t care if there are errors. He even argues for errors, like that is a scriptural position. You can mainly see this from White in how he argues the issue.

White’s goal is to show that the Bible is better preserved than other ancient works. Since those works are considered reliable by scholars, then the Bible should be seen to be even more reliable, enough to believe. But what he does is this—he drags the Bible down to the level of the other books. He approaches preservation like other ancient texts, using scientific laws of textual criticism. What we see is that those laws actually change. Modern textual critics see themselves as objective. They think that the evidence leads them to conclusions. They think they are being honest with them. But they start with the multiplicity of the manuscripts as the basis of their conclusions. Hence, they reach the wrong conclusions. Christians should be reaching their conclusion from Scripture and then going to the manuscripts. But you have no textual critics starting with a scriptural bibliology. They do not begin with biblical presuppositions. This affects their outcome.

As sad as it could get in the debate, White couldn’t muster up a defense of the historic position on preservation as seen in the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession. He couldn’t explain a scriptural position on preservation, perhaps because he doesn’t even know what one is. He hasn’t given it enough thought. He has been so busy reading Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace and Bruce Metzger and Kurt and Barbra Aland that he hasn’t sorted through the passages in scripture on preservation and their historical understanding, reading Turretin and Owen and others.

I might have more to say about this later. Then again, this might be it. I’ll probably come back with something if I learn anything new that I want to share. You could listen to it yourself. It was interesting to hear, as sad as it was.

Awhile back, actually June 18 of this year, I started to critique the first resolution made by the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI) in their 2008 national meeting. What they wrote is a common position in the FBFI, even though it isn’t right. First let’s review the actual resolution again:

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Loyalty to God and His Word: Resolution Affirming the Biblical View of Inspiration, Texts, and Translation

Whereas The Bible claims that it is plenarily and verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit in its original writings;

The Bible claims that it will be preserved by God throughout the ages;

The Bible claims that its Spirit indwelt readers will be illumined by the Holy Spirit as they read;

The practice of translating the Scriptures into common languages was affirmed by the practice of Jesus Christ and the practice of the New Testament Church;

The Bible makes no claim to the specific manner by which it would be preserved, or to further inspiration or perfection through any translators in any language;

The FBFI affirms the orthodox, historic, and most importantly biblical doctrine of inspiration, affirming everything the Bible claims for itself, and rejecting, as a violation of Revelation 22:18-19, any so-called doctrine, teaching, or position concerning inspiration, preservation, or translation that goes beyond the specific claims of scripture.

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I had gotten down to the second line in my analysis, so I’ll pick up where I left off.

Line Three of the Resolution

The Bible claims that its Spirit indwelt readers will be illumined by the Holy Spirit as they read.

Shouldn’t I just agree with this part and move on? Do I actually disagree with this line in the resolution? I agree with their statement. So why not move on? I ask, “Why is this line in a resolution that claims to be about “inspiration, text, and translations”? What does Holy Spirit illumination have to do with these issues?

I love the illumination of the Holy Spirit, but I don’t know why it is included here. I, however, have several guesses:
1) The Holy Spirit will tell you what Scripture is saying even if the Words are not there. That would be a bogus application of this doctrine. I hope that isn’t what they meant.
2) The Holy Spirit can help you understand when it is a translation that has words that you can’t understand. I don’t know why they would mean this, because that would favor the King James translation argument. I don’t think this is what they meant.
3) The understanding of the Holy Spirit guiding a believer into truth today is found only in the illumination ministry of the Holy Spirit. This would be a subtle attempt to debunk the canonicity argument, that is, that the Holy Spirit will bring believers into agreement on what His Words are. Maybe they were trying to do something here. If they were, it doesn’t work, because the same Holy Spirit that could canonize all 66 books can also canonize all of the Words through His leading of His people.

I can’t think of any other options than these three, and of them I would guess that the resolution committee was headed toward #1, but who knows?

Line Four of the Resolution

The practice of translating the Scriptures into common languages was affirmed by the practice of Jesus Christ and the practice of the New Testament Church.

This is where they are going on the offensive with their position in more ways than one. They do this in two primary ways:
1) They are saying that the modern translations are the common languages that the KJV is not, so that the modern versions are superior based on Jesus’ example.
2) They are saying that Jesus used a translation that was available at that time and we can safely assume that it is the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. From this they can extrapolate that Jesus endorsed a corrupt translation and so can you.

Technically, I can’t criticize an update of the words of a translation, as long as they are accurately translated, because that is what we have in our hands. Many changes to letters and spelling of words were made on the KJV between 1611 and 1769 and some even since. However, the KJV is modern English. It isn’t middle or ancient English. We can barely read middle English—think Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English, what it was originally written in. A value of sticking with the King James version of modern English would be the standardization of the text. I really don’t want to argue this one, because I think it is far from what is most important.

The second one of these is where we have major problems. With all my discussions and debate with those who deny the perfect preservation of Scripture, the one Scriptural argument they offer is this one. They say that Jesus provided an example of accepting errors in Scripture. Even if Jesus did actually use the Septuagint, I believe it is quite a reach to call this an exegesis for the acceptance of an errant text. The difficulty we have here, however, is the foundational idea that Jesus was using the Septuagint.

What is the trouble with this assumption?
1) The New Testament never says that Jesus was opening a translation. Never ever. That is a complete speculation on their part and then they build a doctrine on it.
2) If the only Greek Old Testament to use was the Septuagint (LXX), we know by looking at the LXX that a large chunk of the quotes of the OT attributed to Jesus do not match up with the LXX. Many do match (which I will explain later), but they don’t explain why many do not match up. What was Jesus “using” when He wasn’t quoting the LXX? I would hope that question would matter to the modern version supporters.
3) We have many reasons from the actual text of Scripture to believe that Jesus was not using the LXX. First, when referring to the Old Testament to His audience, Jesus used the three-fold division of the OT, which the LXX does not follow (Luke 24:44). Second, “jot” and “tittle” (Matthew 5:18) refer to Hebrew letters. The Greek does not have jots or tittles. Third, when He used the word gegraptai (“it is written,” perfect tense), he was talking about exactly what was written down, not a translation. Fourth, James affirmed that the Torah was the text by which preaching was done on every Sabbath in every town of Judea, and elsewhere, in the synagogue (Acts 15:21). Fourth, Jesus was talking to a Jewish audience, who knew Hebrew. He didn’t need to translate for Jews.
4) If Jesus quoted the LXX, He would have been endorsing a corrupt text, which clashes with all of the teaching throughout Scripture on a pure and perfect Bible. If there is another legitimate or viable explanation for why the LXX and the quotes of Jesus match up, we should look for it, based on a biblical presupposition of the purity of Scripture.

Seeing that God preserved His Words in the Hebrew and that the Septuagint is a corrupt text (even by the testimony of the conservative textual critics), what should be our understanding of the apparent differences between the OT text and its quotations in the New?

1) Jesus targummed, that is, He quoted and commented as a rabbi would. Jesus knew the Hebrew and the Greek, so if He wasn’t reading in Greek, He could do the translation on a fly, imparting some commentary as well, especially His being God Himself, much of this becoming Scripture based upon His own authority. Thomas Strouse writes about the Jewish practice of targumming as seen in Luke 4:16-21:

1) The reader stood, received the scroll, and opened it (vv. 16-17). 2) The reader read the OT Scripture and then gave his running interpretation or Targum of the passage at hand (vv. 17b-19). 3) The reader rolled up the scroll, handed it back, and sat down (v. 20). 4) The reader preached his sermon or word of exhortation (cf. 21 ff.). This synopsis of these aforementioned biblical texts reveals foundation knowledge about the NT Christian’s practice of employing the OT Scriptures in the synagogue.

Several commentators affirm Christ’s employment of the Targum, including Geldenhuys who states: “As far as we know, He read in Hebrew and translated into Aramaic, the common spoken language at that time.” G. Dalman finds reflections of the traditional Aramaic paraphrase (Targum) in the present passage in Luke [4:18 ff.]. Norval Geldenhuys, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ, Co., 1979), p. 167. Cf. also Robert H. Stein, The New American Commentary, Luke (Nashville, Broadman Press, 1992), p. 155; Craig A. Evans, New International Biblical Commentary, Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publ., 1990), p. 73; and William Manson, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary, The Gospel of Luke (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1955), p. 41.

2) There was no “the Septuagint” that we know for sure of in the first century. Even today the textual scholars don’t know exactly what “the Septuagint” is. Jerome makes mention of three different versions of the Septuagint that already existed in his day:

Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint acclaim Hesychius as their authority, the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the martyr, the intermediate Palestinian provinces read the MSS which were promulgated by Eusebius and Pamphilius on the basis of Origen’s labors, and the whole world is divided among these three varieties of texts.

H. St. J. Thackeray, Septuagint, The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume IV (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ., 1939), pp. 2724-2725, writes:

The main value of the LXX is its witness to an older Hebrew text than our own. But before we can reconstruct this Hebrew text we need to have a pure Greek text before us, and this we are at present far from possessing the original text has yet to be recovered. Not a verse is without its array of variant readings.

3. Why do some of the LXX translations of the Hebrew match up with the NT quotations of Jesus. If there were an LXX in the first century, rather than Jesus quoting from it, for which we have absolutely no evidence, the more likely occurrence, also giving respect to a high view of inspiration and preservation, is that Christians who did some of the translation work took the Words of Jesus and out of respect for Him used the words for translation. This is a position posited in Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen H. Jobes and Moises Silva, a standard work on the Septuagint.

We have good reasons to reject the theory that Jesus quoted the Septuagint, ones that will allow us to fit the presuppositional truth of an inerrant Bible.