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The Effect of Leaving Out Just a Couple of Words of Scripture
Proponents of.modern English versions of the Bible very often talk about the minimal or negligible effect of word differences between the received text and the modern critical text of the New Testament. These men might show a side by side of either of the two texts and their translation to show how few changes appear. They very often say that few doctrines change or no doctrine is lost. Do the differences between the Textus Receptus and the Novum Testamentum Graece matter?
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:18, Jesus says:
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
I’m not going to tell you what that means about preservation. I’ve written about it already and it’s also self-evident. Instead, I want you to go down to Matthew 5:43, really the same context of 5:18:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
Jesus here talks about what the Pharisees did and that He found from religious leaders in their tradition. In 5:44, Jesus continues: “But I say unto you.”
The “but” is a strong adversative, a strong contrast. The Pharisees did something, but Jesus did not and would not. He did not come to destroy the law like they would have done. The Pharisees did change the meaning of scripture and they also did that by changing a few words. Look back at 5:43 above. What did they change?
The Subtraction of Two Words
The Pharisees subtracted just two words. Those two words would not have stood out in the comparison of a proponent of the modern critical text. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor” quotes Leviticus 19:18, which says: “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” What two words did they subtract?
The Pharisees in their tradition left out the words, “as thyself.” Perhaps you remember what Jesus taught in Luke 10, defining neighbor. They changed the meaning of neighbor that permitted them not to love their neighbor.
The strategy or technique of the Pharisees was reduction or minimization. They reduced God’s Word to something they could keep on their own. Part of how they did that obviously was the removal of few words, like two of them from Leviticus 19:18.
Jesus promised that not even letters would pass from the law, but two words is what textual critics might call a small amount. One way to reduce what God said was leaving words out. Today modern textual critics will say something like only two percent difference between the Nestles-Aland and the Textus Receptus.
“As thyself” wasn’t teaching, “Love thyself.” No, everyone already loves himself or least knows how he wants treated. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:28, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.” No one wants reduction of the love for himself, so that descriptor maximizes love, gets it to where it is actual love. This is very similar to all the other illustrations that Jesus uses in verses 21 to 48 to explain righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees (5:20).
Two Words Do Matter
If two words don’t matter, then “Thou shalt love thy neighbor” is probably good enough. However, those two words do matter, because they bring the love to something exceeding that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees could easily reduce love to their own understanding of it without those two words.
Let’s say that we start by saying that the very Words of God are perfect Words. Subtracting words matter if the very words are perfection. Even if only “the message” matters or “all the doctrines” matter, two words will matter to God.
Supreme Court and the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights
I was listening briefly today to the Louisiana Solicitor General argue before the Supreme Court for a proper interpretation of the United States Constitution on the freedom of speech. His particular case was new. No one had argued about freedom of speech regarding censorship of social media. This Solicitor General told the nine justices he was a free speech absolutist and a free speech purist.
Freedom of speech in the United States comes down to two words really, “abridging the.” The next three words are “freedom of speech.” The government cannot abridge the freedom of speech and maybe they did that by coercing or encouraging social media companies to censor. Did that violate that right in the Bill of Rights? Not much language exists on that right, so one or two words is important.
Jesus Himself made the point of the importance and effect of two words with their subtraction in Matthew 5:43.
The Horrific Distortion of the Lord Now in Matthew 5:17-20
Related Post Number One Related Post Number Two Related Post Number Three
Perfect Preservation
You required payment from me on a certain future date and I had no money except the exact change for the payment in a large jar. You needed full payment and I had it in the way of coinage. It was all in one large jar, and I said to you:
I truly say to you, until the specified future required date of payment, one dime or one penny shall in no wise pass from this large jar, till the fulfillment of the whole amount of payment.
Anyone hearing this statement could and should acknowledge a promise of preservation of every coin in the large jar until the completion of the payment. One could call this a promise of perfect preservation of the coins. Every coin and all of them will survive or continue within the jar. Of course, the fulfillment of the promise depends on the trustworthiness and veracity of my words. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus says:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
That sounds like a guarantee to me, and a strong one. When you read the previous and following verses (17 and 19-20), they do not diminish from what Jesus guaranteed in verse 18.
The Veracity of Jesus
The promise of Jesus extends to heaven and earth passing away, which has still not occurred. That event will transpire, but it remains in the future. At this date in the year 2024, heaven and earth continue. With that the case, what would one expect related to the promise of Jesus in Matthew 5:18? Of course, the perfect preservation of every jot and tittle of the law. The context says the law here was (so is) all of scripture. The words “jot” and “tittle” indicate the preservation of all of scripture goes to the very letter.
In my hypothetical for illustration, I promised the perfect preservation of every coin in a large jar. I thought the illustration would enhance an understanding of what Jesus said. The major difference between the two statements, mine and Jesus’, is that what Jesus says is the truth, always. My guarantee even for one generation is not as sure as Jesus’ is. When He promises preservation, you can count on it. He always fulfills His promises.
Jesus is truth, so what He says is always true. He also can make guarantees or promises based upon His divine attributes. He has the power to fulfill what He promises. Because of His omniscience, He also knows already He will fulfill the promise. The quality of what Jesus says depends on His attributes. Since I don’t have those attributes, my promises or guarantees are of a lesser quality than that of Jesus.
Again, in my hypothetical, let’s say that I did lose a few of my coins, so I did not fulfill my promise of perfect preservation of every coin. If that happened, it does not change the meaning of what I promised. Those words continue to mean what they meant when I said them.
High View of Scripture
Perhaps you’ve heard the terminology, “a high view of scripture.” Someone has a high view of scripture when he sees scripture elevated above feelings, man’s thinking, philosophy, tradition, and all other authority. A high view fits within the Apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 3:4: “yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.” It follows that scripture is inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, perspicuous, and sufficient.
Someone with a high view of scripture will not and does not change its meaning based on circumstances. God said it, that settles it. That kind of thing. With a high view of scripture, when he reads Matthew 5:18, he takes it at face value. He explains the fulfillment based on what Jesus said and not on what he think may happen. He conforms what happened to what Jesus said and not vice versa. This also means not later changing the meaning to have it fit with how he interprets what happened.
Adapting Circumstances to What Jesus Said
John Lightfoot first wrote From the Talmud and Hebraica between 1658 and 1674. In that book, he writes about Matthew 5:18, and he already considered the repercussions of circumstances of which I speak, saying:
A second question might follow concerning Keri and Kethib: and a suspicion might also arise, that the test of the law was not preserved perfect to one jot and one tittle, when so many various readings do so frequently occur.
Do variant readings nullify what Jesus said? Instead of conforming what Jesus said to the circumstances, which is a low view of scripture, Lightfoot explained variant readings of the text to what Jesus said. John Lightfoot was not questioning or changing the meaning of Matthew 5:18. The teaching on perfect preservation was so indisputable to him, that it need no mention. That is how it reads. Bravo Lightfoot.
What we see occur today horrifically distorts what Jesus said to deprive it of its original meaning. In so doing, men eliminate a promise of preservation in lieu of textual variants. I’ve noticed they even distort much of the meaning of what Jesus said even in the entire sermon, it seems, just to eradicate a promise of perfect preservation of scripture in Matthew.
More to Come
The Shell Game Played With Words About the Bible
You know right now the concern about the gender of pronouns used to address the sexes. The controversy revolves around calling a biological male, “him,” or a biological female, “her.” People change the meaning of the words and expect us to play along. You know it’s a man, but you call him, a her. You call he, a she.
Let’s say we’re talking about the words of scripture. Inspiration applies to words. God inspired words. And then someone says, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture in the context of words. We think he means, no errors in the words. I think he even knows that we think he means words. However, he doesn’t mean words. He’s not saying that there are no errors in the words.
Someone holds up a Bible and calls it the inerrant Word of God. He doesn’t mean words. He means something different. It’s hard to say what he means, but it’s probably the following. Inerrancy means that you can trust that the teachings of the Bible are without error. He doesn’t bring up inerrancy in the context of the teachings of the Bible. He brings it up in the context of words. He’s playing a shell game, moving those shells around very quickly. You thought he meant words, but he didn’t.
You think the bead is under the shell. That’s what someone wants you to think. The bead is words, but you see a shell. Words aren’t under the shell. It’s teachings, and even that is ambiguous, because even with that, he doesn’t mean teachings.
When someone says the teachings of scripture are inerrant, if that’s even what he means, because that can become very ambiguous, he doesn’t mean that you can’t find errors in the Bible. You can. However, all things considered, if you take all the combined passages of the Bible to come up with those teachings, all the right teachings are available in the Bible.
Men don’t even agree on what the Bible teaches, let alone on what’s right that it does teach. Two different men can say they believe in inerrancy and then disagree on ten different doctrines of scripture. It’s a hypothetical inerrancy. Let’s just say it. It isn’t inerrancy. I can agree to an ambiguous, hypothetical inerrancy, and then agree that the Bible is inerrant. I can hold up the Bible and say, this is the inerrant Word of God.
When I say the Bible is without error, I mean that it is without error. Every Word that God inspired has been preserved in the language in which it is written. Since inerrancy relates to what God inspired, if there are missing words, then it isn’t inerrant any more. I believe that and not in a hypothetical way. I’m not going to say that we both agree the Bible is inerrant, fully realizing that when you say “inerrant” you don’t even mean “inerrant.” You mean something that allows you to believe the Bible is inerrant without believing that it is inerrant. This is like calling him, her.
If the Bible is perfect, then it can’t be given extra perfection. There are those who do not believe it is perfect. They also don’t believe that scripture says that scripture is perfect. They believe that it is inerrant, but it isn’t perfect.
I would say, don’t call the Bible perfect if you don’t believe it. Also, don’t call it inerrant, if you don’t believe it is inerrant. Don’t make perfect and inerrant mean something different than what they obviously mean in light of what the Bible says about itself.
I can go through my Bible and show you a doctrine of its inerrancy and perfection. Then I ask, “Does the Bible teach that it is inerrant and perfect?” You say, “Yes.” So then I ask, “Okay, so which Bible is the inerrant and perfect one?” You say, “None are.” So is the teaching of the Bible inerrant and perfect?
I believe the Bible is perfect and inerrant because the Bible says so. Then you start peppering me with individual words, phrases, verses, and even larger passages. I explain every one of those texts based on the presupposition that I have. I can do it. Now let me get into your presuppositions, how you came to having them, or whether they are reverse engineered.
You say, I can see that there isn’t a perfect Bible. So now when you look at the passages that teach the Bible is perfect, they’ve got to mean something else. Where do those presuppositions come from? How did you get those presuppositions? How is that conservative?
I’m not playing a shell game when I say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. Many others are.
An Orthodox View of Our English Bibles? Considering Fred Butler’s KJVO Book and the Doctrine of Preservation
Whenever I read the word, “Bibles,” I get a bit of a chill down my spine. Which Bible is the right Bible if there are plural Bibles, not singular Bible? Isn’t there just one? Why are we still producing more and different Bibles? How many are there? What I’m describing is the biggest issue today with translations, not the King James Version, but now it gets little to no coverage compared to other so-called problems.
Many anti-KJVO books have been written, most often, and this continues to be the case with Butler’s book, calling KJVO (King James Version Onlyism) “dangerous.” It’s true that many KJV Onlyists do not believe a scriptural bibliology. I would contend that most are sound, but it’s true also that many are not. That would be a worthwhile criticism of KJVO, confronting those who do not believe in the preservation of scripture, who do not believe God preserved His Words in the original languages, apparently necessitating God’s correction of them in an English translation. This happens to be the same doctrinal position as Fred Butler. He just deals with the consequences of that belief in a different way.
I don’t know how “dangerous” it is to believe in a single Bible of which translation for English speaking people is the King James Version. How will that get someone in trouble? What’s the danger? Even though Butler calls the position dangerous, he doesn’t explain why anywhere in his book, which I find is most often the case with books of this kind. In general, KJVO take the general position that there is only one Bible, which there is. That is a biblical, logical, and historical position: one Bible. Several Bibles is not.
In his preface, recounting his own personal journey away from the King James Version, Butler says,
I found myself helping them [speaking of others also departing] think critically through KJVO argumentation, as well as develop an orthodox view of our English Bibles.
Why and how is it orthodox to refer to the Bible in the plural, “Bibles”? Again, there is only one Bible, and historically Christians have believed in only one. Some type of multiple-versionism, I believe, creates far more confusion and danger. Usually orthodoxy refers to doctrine. Is the doctrine behind multiple versions and textual criticism orthodox? It’s popular today, but not orthodox.
I’m not going to debunk most of the arguments of Butler’s book. His book is exploring zero new territory others cover much more than he. He mainly addresses KJVO advocates of either double inspiration or English preservationism, very low hanging fruit. He barely to if-at-all distinguishes one view from another. He lumps Peter Ruckman and Gail Riplinger with Edward Hills, D. A. Waite, and David Cloud. He uses a very broad brush. I would not anticipate his persuading one person to his position.
One unique argument I had never read was that KJVO are not Calvinist. The idea here is that if you’re not a Calvinist, then you must be wrong in this position on the Bible. The biggest movement of those who exclusively use the KJV as an English translation are Calvinists. The Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession, as well as many of these Calvinist confessions, hold to the perfect preservation of scripture, which is a one Bible position.
An orthodox view should be a scriptural view. Butler doesn’t establish any kind of biblical and historical view of the preservation of scripture. Butler writes this:
It is true God calls us to have faith, but our faith is grounded upon objective truth.
What is objective truth? Is textual criticism objective truth? No way, and he doesn’t make that connection. It can’t be made. Scripture is the truth on which bibliological positions stand. Butler takes the view agreed by modern evangelicalism, not based upon scripture. He has not faced a bit of criticism from the evangelicals who interview him. He should sit down for a talk with someone who does not take his position to see how his arguments will stand up.
Most people who use the King James believe that it is an accurate translation of a preserved original language text. Obviously, the King James Version itself has changed since 1611. KJV supporters know that. This indicates that they believe that the preservation of scripture occurs in the Hebrew and Greek text. Butler writes:
The Bible never claims God’s Word is only found in one translation. KJV onlyism is unsupported by the Bible itself.
Maybe that confronts Ruckmanism, but I’ve never heard a single person attempt to defend single-translationism from the Bible. The French, Spanish, Russian, etc. can all have a translation from the same text as the King James Version. Butler knows this, but he makes this claim anyway, and it’s a strawman. It doesn’t help anyone. More than anything it gives fresh meat to evangelical friends in an evangelical bubble. On the other hand, he never lays out what the Bible does claim.
There are varied views on preservation among evangelicals. I don’t know of one modern version supporter, who believes in perfect preservation of scripture. Daniel Wallace doesn’t believe scripture teaches the preservation of scripture and he has many supporters. That is now a very common view. He believes in the preservation of the Word, but not the Words. Butler takes a view that might be the most common for evangelicals. Most evangelicals in the pew don’t know this position, but perhaps the majority of conservative evangelical leaders take the position Butler describes:
Yes, I believe God preserves His Word, but I believe it is in the totality of all the available manuscript evidence, variants and copyist errors included.
Try to find that in historical bibliological literature. You won’t find it. It really is a reactionary position to textual criticism among evangelicals. It isn’t a biblical position. Nowhere does the Bible teach it. It’s very much like what you might read on creation today. Confronted with science, professing Christians invent a day age theory for old earth creationism.
Almost all of what Butler finds are theologians, often unbelieving ones, willing to admit that there are copyist errors, which produce textual variants. He and others act like KJVO don’t know that or don’t believe it happened. The history of God’s preservation of scripture is not the same parchment and ink making its way down through time in a pristine condition. God preserved His Words. This physical copy view is not taught in the Bible and it’s only made up as a straw man to create a faux argument.
When you read Butler’s view in his above quote, look carefully at what he says. First, he says God preserves His Word, not God preserved, completed action, like Jesus said, “It is written,” in the perfect tense. He doesn’t say “Words,” because He would never say that. It’s God’s Word in a very ambiguous sense. Jesus said, my words shall not pass away (Matthew 24:35). Where does the Bible or even history present this “totality of available manuscript evidence” position?
For Butler the text isn’t settled, like the Bible speaks about itself. He doesn’t know what the Words are. He doesn’t know all of the ones by which He is to live by. I would contend he doesn’t even believe the position he espouses. How would he account for new evidence, which is still coming? What does he do with a passage like 1 Samuel 13:1? I’ve never read an evangelical, who takes his position, who believes that we possess a manuscript with the very words of that verse.
What motivated me to write this post was one aspect of Butler’s book and that is his attack on the teaching of preservation in scripture. Among everything that he writes, I want to deal only with Psalm 12:6-7, mainly to show how men like him deal with these preservation texts. He writes:
The one passage that nearly all KJVO advocates use for establishing the promise argument is Psalm 12:6,7. . . . The immediate antecedent for the plural pronoun them is the plural pronoun, words. Thus, it would seem to make sense that we can conclude God has promised to preserve His words in a physical text.
The Hebrew language, however, is sharply different from English in that it has grammatical gender, something not common to English. In Hebrew, the pronouns will match the antecedent nouns in both number and gender. Here in Psalm 12:6, 7, the two thems of verse 7 are masculine in gender and with the second them being singular.
The closest antecedents in our English translation, the two nouns words found in verse 6, are feminine, so they do not match the masculine thems.
Butler goes on to say that “them” refers to the poor and needy back in verse 5 because they’re feminine. Butler’s argument here has been thoroughly debunked. He’s wrong. First, however, there are many verses in the Bible that teach the perfect preservation of every Word of God. Psalm 12:6, 7 are two of many. There is a great chapter on these verses by Thomas Strouse in Thou Shalt Keep Them, our book on the preservation of scripture. I’ve also written a lot on it (here, here, and here).
Here’s the short of it. Repeatedly in the Old Testament, and as a part of Hebrew grammar, a masculine pronoun refers to a feminine Word of God. You see it again and again in Psalm 119, the psalm entirely about the Word of God (verses 111, 129, 152, 167). There are many other examples. You can find this very rule in Gesenius’s Hebrew grammar, which I used in second year Hebrew in graduate school.
The number argument doesn’t work either, which is why the KJV translators translated the pronoun, “them,” the second time. That’s also Hebrew grammar. It is very common after a plural pronoun for a singular to follow in order to particularize every individual in the group. A collective plural is suggested by the singular. This is also why the NKJV translators, who are not KJVO, translated it “them.”
The Hebrew grammar says just the opposite of what Butler writes. Critical text and modern version men continue to trot out this argument, when they should well know that it’s been answered many times. I’ve never had one of them attempt to deal with it, because it is irrefutable. It’s why many, many preachers and theologians through the centuries, including Jewish scholars, have said that “them” in verse seven refers to God’s “words” in verse six. The gender disagreement argument is a moot point. Without gender, the rule reverts back to proximity, and “words” is the closest antecedent to “them.”
Either Butler didn’t know the gender disagreement argument or he assumed that his readers wouldn’t know any better. Knowing the Hebrew grammar and reading what he wrote, it reads like he was just borrowing from the writings of other people. I’ve read this argument from Douglas Kutilek online. He’s been confronted with the Hebrew grammar and he’s never answered me or anyone else on it. He does not know what he’s talking about.
So much more could be said in review of Fred Butler’s book, but rest assured that God has preserved every one of His Words in the language in which He inspired them, and made them available for every generation of believers. The King James Version is an accurate translation of those Words.
Romans 5:1 As a Consideration for Taking a Scriptural Position on the Preservation of Scripture
The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1 shows that attack on the authority of scripture is a major explanation or reason for apostasy. The authority of scripture proceeds from the supernatural nature of the Bible. It is inspired by God and then preserved by God. When someone attacks scripture, the first wave is that it was only written by men and the second, that it isn’t preserved. Leading away from a doctrine of preservation is evacuating divine and supernatural preservation for something naturalistic.I received an advertisement for the Center of the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, written by Daniel Wallace, and it read like a bit of a cliffhanger, using a manuscript presently residing for view at the National Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, the oldest known, surviving hand copy of Romans 5:1. He writes:
Among the many ancient treasures held by The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, there is a tattered fragment of parchment containing the oldest known text of Romans 5:1. Most modern translations render the verse, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some scholars believe, however, that the underlined portion should read, “let us have peace,” because many of the best manuscripts do, indeed, bear this text.In biblical Greek, the difference comes down to a single letter within a single word. And the difference of that one letter makes all the difference.The manuscript fragment in Washington, known to scholars as GA 0220, is dated to the 3rd century (between AD 200 and 300.) Unfortunately, the critical letter in question has been obscured by a fold in the parchment and a hole in the very worst place. Nevertheless, traces of the letter appear to remain, and we believe that our high-resolution, multispectral imaging equipment can reveal the truth.
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