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Wallace’s Remarkable Erroneous Paper On The Doctrine Of Preservation
Daniel Wallace
Certain names represent the biggest evangelical challengers to the biblical and historical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. They have written journal articles or books against preservation of scripture.
The Bible version issue starts with scriptural teaching on preservation. When you believe what God said, you come to perfect preservation. Then you have to deal with what that looks like in the real world. The teaching of the Bible presupposes the outcome.
One of the biggest names is Daniel Wallace, longtime professor of Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary. Any evangelical who takes Greek knows who Dan Wallace is. Second or third year Greek students use his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. It is a very helpful book to own and use.
Manuscript Evidence
In recent years Wallace turned his attention to The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. A major stated mission of CSNTM is the following:
To provide digital photographs of extant Greek New Testament manuscripts so that such images can be preserved, duplicated without deterioration, and accessed by scholars doing textual research.
Wallace considers their task to continue the restoration of a lost text of the New Testament.
Denial of Preservation
When anyone asks Wallace about the preservation of scripture, he sends them back to a journal article he wrote in the 1990s, entitled, “Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism.” Rather than interact on the subject, Wallace points to that article. He doesn’t need to talk about it. Wallace wrote the article and that ends the conversation. He wrote it, that settles it.
With Wallace’s demand, I acquiesced and read his article with an open mind and great interest. I didn’t assume he was wrong. I welcomed the possibility he was right. What he wrote, however, was very disappointing. It was filled with errors. Wallace and I had a brief back and forth on an evangelical blog in the comment section, since deleted. He claimed that I cherry picked the points I made about his article. I ask you to consider if that’s true with the below links to my analysis of his article.
First Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part one
Second Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part two
Third Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part three
Fourth Post. Criticizing Professor Wallace part four
For a man of such renowned, his article denying the preservation of scripture is very, very poor. It’s still right there all over the internet though, remarkable multiple errors and all.
Ruth 3:15: “he” or “she” went into the city? 1611 & 1769 KJV
Ruth 3:15, in the widely-used 1769 revision of the King James Bible, reads:
“Also he said, Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and she went into the city.”
However, the 1611 edition of the KJV reads:
“And he said, Bring the vaile that thou hast vpon thee, and holde it. And when she helde it, he measured sixe measures of barley, and laide it on her: and he went into the citie.”
Scrivener’s 1873 edition of the KJV likewise reads: “Also he said, Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and he went into the city” (The Cambridge Paragraph Bible: Of the Authorized English Version [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873], Ru 3:15.)
The New King James Version-which is not just a new King James Version, and which here does not follow the 1611 KJV’s reading-has “she”:
Also he said, “Bring the shawl that is on you and hold it.” And when she held it, he measured six ephahs of barley, and laid it on her. Then she went into the city. (NKJV)
Other modern Bible versions are likewise divided between “he” and “she.” For example, the NIV and NRSV read “he,” while the ESV, LSB, and NASB read “she.”
Which is correct? How do we know? We have discussed various features of the Hebrew Massoretic text on this blog before, such as whether the Hebrew of the name “Jehovah” hints at the incarnation of the Son of God. What do Hebrew manuscripts and Hebrew printed texts read? What about the LXX, the various editions of the Latin Vulgate, other ancient sources, and English Bibles before the KJV? The picture below, from the Hebrew Textus Receptus, the Masoretic text edited by the Hebrew Christian Jacob ben Chayyim, gives the answer (Matthew 5:18):
While both readings in Ruth 3:15 are doubtless factually accurate, since both Boaz and Ruth actually entered the city, the inspired reading, the one dictated by the Holy Spirit to the original penman of Scripture, is “he,” not “she.” Why? Please read my analysis of the passage in this link to find out, and feel free to comment upon it here (but please read it first before commenting). Thank you.
–TDR
Textual Criticism Related to the Bible Bows to Modernity
Christianity is old. There is no new and improved version of it. It is what it started to be. Changing it isn’t a good thing. Let me expand.
Modern and Modernity
Right now as I implement the term “modern” I am using it in the way it is in the word “modernity” or “modernism.” I think modernism is a perversion of something good that occurred, which is the advancement proceeding from the printing and vastly greater distribution of the Bible after 1440. It fulfilled a cultural mandate lost with the domination of Roman Catholicism, “subdue and have dominion.” Feudalism went by the wayside. Quality of life improved.
In Judges in the Old Testament, Israel turned away from God, which resulted in bad consequences both indirect and direct from God. Israel cried out to God. God delivered and Israel then prospered again. Prosperity led back to turning away again, the bad consequences, and the cycle begins again.
The prosperity brought by the printing, distribution, and reading of the Bible brought the modern life. With all the massive new amounts of published material to read, people saw themselves as smarter than they were. They thought they could take that to God, the church, worship, and to the Bible. In essence, “let’s take our superior knowledge and apply it now to the Bible.”
Evidentialism
Modernism included evidentialism. Something isn’t true without exposure to man’s reason and evidence. No, the Bible stands on its own. It is self-evident truth, higher than reason and evidence, at the same time not contradicting reason or evidence.
Modern textual criticism arose out of modernism. The prosperity from the fulfillment of the cultural mandate proceeding from publication and distribution of scripture brought this proud intellectualism. Like in the days of the Judges, it isn’t even true. It isn’t better.
People have cell phones today, but who right now thinks that we are superior to when men believed the transcendentals? Objective truth, objective goodness, and objective beauty? We have a 60 inch television with a thousand channels, but we lost the greater transcendence. Modernists put the Bible under their scrutiny, undermining its objective nature.
Sincere Milk
The Apostle Peter called the Word of God “the sincere milk,” which is “the pure mother’s milk.” Like James wrote and identical to God, the Word of God is pure with neither “variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). This is why true believers of the gospel message of scripture are begotten “with the word of truth” (James 1:18). God inspired His Words and He preserves His Words using His means, His churches.
Modernists came to the Bible to improve it with their humanistic theories. They would say, textual variants prove its corruption. They would restore it to near purity using modernistic means of the modern academy.
The text of true churches, they believed “God . . . by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.” They received that text. The modernist academy came along saying, that text is not the oldest, so not the best. The better text is shorter for ideological reasons. Therefore, everyone has a basis only for relative and proportional confidence, not absolute certainty in the Words of God. Scripture became subject to modern intellectual tinkering.
Proud Intellectualism
Even in an evidential way, the critical text, a product of critical theories, is not superior. It allured the proud intellect of modern academics. It shifted scripture into the laboratory of the university and outside of the God-ordained institution of preservation.
Textual critics cherry pick words and phrases, attacking the text received by the churches, saying, this is found in only one late manuscript. Meanwhile, 99% of their text comes from two manuscripts. A hundred lines of text have no manuscript evidence. They admit themselves educated guessing. They elevate the date of extant manuscripts above all criteria, including scriptural presuppositions.
Call to Consider Former Things
I ask that we reconsider the spoiled or poison fruit of modernity, arising from a corruption of the prosperity of the printing and wide distribution of the Bible. God through Isaiah in 41:21-22 says:
21 Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
“Former things” relate to the present and to the future, “the latter end of them.” To understand the present and the future, we need to look to the past. When did we go off the rails into modernism and now postmodernism? I call on churches to turn back the clock to former things in a former time. See the cycle of the Judges, repent and cry out to God. Like James wrote later in chapter one (verse 21):
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
The White-Ross Debate: Who Won?
Watch the Debate
White and Ross Arguments
White’s Presentation
In mid-February, James White debated Thomas Ross about which was better, the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) or the King James Version (KJV). White argues with an entirely naturalistic presupposition, saying that only manuscript evidence shows the underlying text of the KJV, the Textus Receptus (TR), is worse than that of the LSB, the Nestles Aland critical text (NA). Furthermore, he says the KJV uses archaic words and has less information for an accurate translation of certain technical words. He also tries to demonstrate some translation errors in the KJV, not in the LSB.
Ross’s Scriptural Presuppositions
Ross argues with a scriptural presupposition. The TR is superior to the NA based on the doctrine of preservation. The TR meets God’s promises of preservation in His Word. Ross asserts and then proves that scripture teaches verbal plenary original language preservation by means of true churches for every generation of believers. He also shows this identical teaching is the historical position clearly believed by the church, relying on the same passages. The NA is absent from its confessions or published materials. The TR only fits a scriptural and historical presupposition.
On the other hand, Ross shows that we know that the NA text was not in use for at least 1000 years. That isn’t preservation. Founders and proponents of the critical text, such as Wescott and Hort, deny the scriptural and historical doctrine of preservation. Like White, they take an only naturalistic presupposition and method. This alone is enough to say the TR/KJV is superior to the NA/LSB, because the latter does not proceed from biblical presuppositions or methods.
Naturalistic, Manuscript Evidence
Conjectural Emendations
In addition, even using naturalistic means, the sole criteria of White, Ross shows the NA is inferior to the TR. Ross gives evidence that the editors of the NA 27th edition, the underlying text for the LSB, used over 100 “explicit conjectural emendations.” He provides two examples of this in Acts 16:12 and 2 Peter 3:10. This debunks the one apparent example of conjectural emendation in the TR in Revelation 16:5.
Over 100 conjectural emendations is worse than the one example of White. Reader, do you understand the truth here? It’s a hypocritical argument that doesn’t work. Please do not give a blind eye to this out of sheer loyalty to White and his winning a debate. This is the truth. It shouldn’t matter how fast Thomas Ross said it. Speaking fast is a red herring as an argument.
No Manuscript Evidence
White asserts no manuscript evidence for one NT reading, the one in Revelation 16:5. He says there is light evidence for one word in Ephesians 3:9 and the Comma Johanneum in 1 John 5:7. Ross shows there is no manuscript evidence for at least 41 separate lines of text in the NA, evidenced by Swanson in his New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus. None of this occurs in the TR. Based on the ratio of Matthew and Mark text to the rest of the New Testament, that would result in 191 total for the NT.
How could textual critics publish a text like described? Even as a so-called science, textual critics don’t see their work as a science at all. Ross quotes this from Metzger and Ehrman in their foremost book on textual criticism. They don’t see anyone able to refer to the text as an original text. This strongly contradicts the position of the church based on biblical presuppositions. Ross quotes White himself in his debate with Douglas Wilson, that we will never have a certain text.
On the issue of the text alone, Ross blows away White. The TR is by far a superior text. When White mentions the papyri, Ross shows him the earliest, P52, a piece of the gospel of John that is identical to the TR. After praising the papyri, White changes tunes and says that it was a very small fragment, attempting to have it both ways. Relying on Pickering and Hoskier, Ross shows how that there are long sections of identical readings of the TR in the manuscripts. He includes photos of these.
White Attacks on Ross
White tries to attack the KJV by bringing up one possible conjectural emendation, one for which apparently Beza says he had a manuscript. One word in Ephesians 3:9 has limited manuscript support. He attacks the TR reading in 1 John 5:7. White doesn’t rely on scriptural presuppositions. Counting manuscripts and their age, that’s what he’s got. This is not how believers approached this issue. White himself says that the NA wasn’t available for hundreds of years. He speaks like this is a good thing. It is an obvious admittance, that Ross pointed out, that God did not preserve his text.
To be honest, White should accede to the Ross argument about no manuscript evidence for NA readings in 41 places in Matthew and Mark. Instead, he starts talking like they don’t matter for the translation. This shows a double standard. He attacks the TR in Revelation 16:5, one place, and excuses 41 places. He even apologizes for the NA27, the basis of the LSB, what he’s trying to defend in the debate. White says he doesn’t trust the editors, but he does his own textual criticism.
The Translation Issue
White spends some time on the translation issue. Ross answered him. The Granville Sharp rule doesn’t hurt the translation of the KJV in Titus 2:13. The LSB is fine there. Ross makes the point that Jude 1:4 fits the Granville Sharp in the KJV, while in the LSB, it does not. That point received crickets from White. Relating to the lexical issue of technical terms, Ross says that they’re still difficult to understand for identifying what those animals and minerals were. The lexical aids can help in understanding, but they do not resolve this issue in either the KJV and LSB.
Ross and White spent time discussing the translation of the Hebrew of Yawheh or Jehovah (or LORD) in the Old Testament. Ross referred to the pronunciation of the vowel points, a fine argument. Ross also gave a good answer on “servant” or “slave.” The Hebrew word is not always our modern understanding of “slave.”
Other Problems for White
White said he believed we have all the words in all of the manuscript evidence, and yet he contradicts himself in 1 Samuel 13:1, pointed out by Ross. White doesn’t believe there is a manuscript with the wording of that verse. I guess people don’t care about that contradiction. He doesn’t believe in preservation, we know that from his Douglas Wilson answer, exposed by Ross in the debate.
As well, White referred to a Hebrews reference to the prophet Jeremiah. He said the author quoted the Greek Septuagint, essentially arguing that the author of Hebrews and then Jesus in the Gospels used a corrupt text. Modern critical text advocates use this Septuagint argument as a kind of scriptural presupposition.
Ross gave White a good answer on the Septuagint question, referring to the theology of John Owen. Owen answered this point in his writings. He also quoted the introduction of a standard academic text on the Septuagint by Jobes and Silva, taking the same position as Owen espoused. This debunks the false view that Jesus and other NT authors would have quoted a terribly corrupted text and translation of the Old Testament.
Style Points?
In the end, White had to attack Thomas Ross for his style, reading too fast and having too many slides. Come on. Keep it to the subject at hand. Easily, someone could attack White for style. White broad brushes TR and King James supporters with inflammatory language all the time. When Ross shook his hand at the end and gave him a book, White sat there looking disdainful. White attacked his character after the debate, saying he was showing off. He almost always name-drops and mentions his debate of Bart Ehrman and his 180 debates as automatic winning credentials.
In the comment section of the videos, people attack Ross for mentioning winning the debate. They are debating. If White won, his followers would say this again and again. It’s a picky criticism. There is criteria for a debate. Ross negates the affirmative of White and puts him on the defensive. That’s the definition of winning a debate.
Answering Questions
Some people have said that Ross didn’t answer White’s questions. I ask them, which did he not answer? They are silent. White, attacking Ross for perfect preservation, something the debate wasn’t about, tries to catch Ross in a gotcha moment by asking about Revelation 16:5. Ross says that he sympathizes with Beza’s having a manuscript with the word there. That is an answer.
White asks Ross if the King James translators could have done a better job in Acts 5:30. Ross said they were both fine, but KJV wasn’t wrong. That is an answer too. Like Ross, I believe the KJV is an accurate translation. That doesn’t mean I or he wouldn’t translate it differently.
On sheer content alone, Ross crushed White in this debate. He wins because of his scriptural presuppositions. The Bible is the truth. Where the Bible speaks, that is reality. Anything that contradicts it is false. Even on the evidence, Ross won, because based on White criteria, he showed the NA had weak to no manuscript evidence. White tried to avoid this, just by saying that Ross misrepresented the evidence. Ross didn’t. White was not prepared for this argument. It’s not going to change either, because that evidence is still true.
The Error or Falsehood of Balancing the Extremes to Come to the Truth
In my lifetime, I’ve lost things. I found them by searching between two places on the extreme of where I’d been. Some call it retracing your steps. It couldn’t have been somewhere beyond the two places, so I looked in between, somewhere in the middle.
In the same way, we do not find or know the truth by searching somewhere between two extremes. Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). Scripture tells the truth. That’s how we find or know the truth, by looking at the Bible and understanding what it says.
When I was a boy, my family ate through a sheet cake until one piece was left. My brother and I both wanted the piece, so we must split it in half. We had a deal. Whoever measured, the other got the first choice of his piece. The goal was to cut the cake exactly down the middle. That was fair. It was the closest to what both sides wanted. If you wanted both sides happy, you had to look to the middle.
Men want what they want. The best way to get closest to what most people want is by looking to the middle somewhere, to moderate somewhere between the extremes. Men don’t get along because they want what they want and they clash over their desires. To find peace between men, it makes sense to get as close as possible between two contradicting opinions.
Scripture starts with the wants of God. Usually we call this the will of God, which is also the pleasure of God, what pleases Him. Very often God’s desire is one of the extremes, even more extreme than the most extreme desire of men. Not always though. Sometimes the will of God is one of greater liberty than what man will give. Because of lust, man doesn’t want what God wants. Men would want whatever extreme that they could get if possible, but to live with one another, they negotiate somewhere between each other for the greatest satisfaction between them.
As a method, is this moderation or negotiation the will of God? Is this how God operates? It isn’t. Very often the way of God is foolishness to man. He rejects objective truth, because it clashes with what he wants.
What I’ve described so far, you can see in history, and I give you three explanations that are essentially the same, known by different names.
Dialectics
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, born in Stuttgart in 1770 and died in Berlin in 1831. Hegel said that nothing was truth that could not pass a test of experience. He believed self-determination the essence of humanity. In seminary in Tubingen, Hegel disliked the strictness or narrowness and rejected orthodoxy. He viewed mystical experience instead as the reality of Christianity.
Philosophers give Hegel credit for dialectic methodology, which he considered “speculative.” Johann Gottlieb Fichte took Hegel’s method and refined it with three terms — thesis, antithesis, and synthesis — which are now called a Hegelian dialectic. The idea behind this is that truth arises from error in the course of historical development. A constant refinement occurs through moderation, which is a synthesis of thesis and antithesis. This replays again and again, forming a new synthesis, which becomes a new thesis and so on.
Many believe American pragmatism, as seen in John Dewey (father of Dewey decimal system), the founder of modernist American education system or philosophy. Subject matter came from intellectual pursuit, tinkering and improving, all according to human reason.
I believe man comes to these compromises with a yearning for absolute truth, while rejecting objective truth. The receipt of objective truth starts with God. Because of his rejection of God, man becomes God and formulates truth according to his reason. Since men cannot unify around one truth without God, they invent a new way to grasp truth, which they need for satisfaction. The quest and the outcome never fulfill. As Paul wrote, he ever learns but never comes to the knowledge of the truth, indicating the longtime existence of a kind of dialectic.
Triangulation
The first I remember hearing of triangulation came when President Bill Clinton reshaped his politics to win the 1996 election. He was very unpopular during the 1994 midterm election, but with the counsel of his political operatives, he employed what they called, triangulation.
I did not know that triangulation already existed as a scientific or philosophical concept. It actually started, as you might assume, as a geometric concept, used in surveying. Triangles have three points, and if you have two points already, you triangulate to get the third. You very often now hear the language, “finding the sweet spot between two points.” I use this in economics, when the economists look for the perfect sweet spot for a tax rate.
In Clintonian politics, triangulation involved incorporating the ideas of a political opponent. If you stand at 43 percent and can’t win a popular election, you try to raise your popularity by attracting more people by using their ideas. You come to the right position by triangulating between two opposing opinions. This surely sounds similar to Hegelian dialectics.
Churches now use triangulation and I have noticed they do this by stating core values. The core saws off the extremes. Someone reading the core values won’t be offended by certain specifics. Those offenses are left out. You see the brochure with the very happy family, leaving out the hard parts. The core attempts to draw together as many people as possible in a Dewey-like pragmatism.
Triage
Triage is like triangulation, but proceeds from a medical analogy. I had not considered triage before I heard Al Mohler use the metaphor to describe the balance between apparent essential and non-essential truths. What you imagine is a bad war situation where casualties arrive and are prioritized according to how serious the wounds and how close they are to death. The doctors can save this one, not this one, and they shuffle people into their various places, using the triage to save the most possible. It is a form of pragmatism or what some might call a hierarchical ethic, the ethic of doing the most good for the most people.
The triage reminds me of the tomato trucks that drive down Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley of California. As you follow one of these trucks, tomatoes are hopping off onto the road and the side of the road all over the place. The drivers don’t stop to retrieve the lost tomatoes. They are casualties of this method.
Al Mohler’s triage treats certain truths like so many tomatoes falling off the back of a tomato truck. The thought is that we can’t keep or follow everything, so we choose what is most important. This creates a coalition of the largest number of people based upon a fewer number of truths. Man need not live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, just the ones he deems important.
Maybe you with me notice the shrinking number of important truths and the growing number of less important. With this method, churches decide whether to keep their homosexual members. They relegate wokeism with the triage to non-essential. This pulls together a larger coalition, which allows for bigger offerings and a larger work. This must be what God wants to do. He wouldn’t want smaller would He?
The Text of Scripture
Today men determine what the Bible says according to two poles, radical skepticism and absolute certainty. They say those are both wrong. This is read from Dan Wallace in the introduction of a book, Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. He wrote:
These two attitudes—radical skepticism and absolute certainty—must be avoided when we examine the New Testament text. We do not have now—in our critical Greek texts or any translations—exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain. But we also do not need to be overly skeptical. Where we should land between these two extremes is what this book addresses.
This isn’t new. I heard it a lot. It reflects the above three concepts I laid out. As you read, you might think God works in absolute certainty. You would be right. This is a Christian worldview. It arises from scripture.
The goal in modern textual criticism is to fall somewhere between radical skepticism and absolute certainty. It sees “absolute certainty” as an extreme. If the text of the Bible is not certain, and men defer to that position, somewhere, however, north of radical skepticism, one would see how that the inspiration, interpretation, and application of scripture are also not certain. How does someone live by faith in something uncertain as such? This occurs when man applies his dialectic, triangulates, or forms a triage based on human reason.
Man-centered philosophies are not faith. They also put man above God. Rather than follow the truth of scripture, man judges God and comes to a better, more pragmatic position. It’s a way to preserve Christianity from itself.
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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