Updated and enlarged July 27, 2005 (first published 1989, revised 1993) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

INTRODUCTORY POINTS

1. The Majority Text position is a new challenge to the Greek Received Text underlying the Reformation Bibles.

a. On the one hand the Received New Testament is challenged by the critical Greek text that was produced by modern textual criticism. This is represented today by the Nestles’ Greek New Testament and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament.

b. On the other hand, the Received Text has been challenged since the 1980s by the “Majority Text.” Basically this is an attempt to go back to Greek text of the Byzantine Empire that predated the 16th-century Reformation.

2. The Majority Text is vastly superior to the critical Greek text, but the difference between the Majority Text and the Textus Receptus is significant enough to force us to look at this issue carefully.

3. Let me also say at the outset of this study that while I strongly disagree with Zane Hodges, Arthur Farstad, and Wilbur Pickering in their support the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text position, I am thankful for their rejection of modern textual criticism and for the extensive research they have done in this field. They have brought important facts to light, and their writings are helpful, as long as one understands the Majority Text issue.

WHAT IS THE MAJORITY TEXT?

1. Historically, the term “Majority Text” has been used as a synonym for the Received Greek New Testament (Textus Receptus or TR) published in the 16th century during the Reformation.

a. Strictly speaking the Received Greek Text is a slightly modified form of the Byzantine Greek New Testament, which represents the majority of extant Greek manuscripts. While representing the majority of Greek manuscripts in most cases, the Received Text contains a few readings not supported by the majority but which are supported by the majority of Latin manuscripts, other versions, and quotations from ancient church leaders.

b. Following are some major places where the Received Text is not supported by the majority of extant Greek manuscripts:

Matthew 27:35 -- “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.”

Acts 8:37 -- “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” [This verse has significant minority support in the Greek manuscripts.]

Acts 9:5-6 -- “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? and the Lord said unto him.”

1 John 5:7 -- “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth”

c. The reason that the Received Text is not entirely and strictly a majority text is simple. In determining the true reading of Scripture, other witnesses must be examined in addition to the extant Greek manuscripts, in particular, Greek lectionaries, ancient versions and the quotations from the writings of “church fathers,” meaning church leaders who lived in the early centuries after the apostles. In some few cases, these witnesses point to readings more authentic than existing Greek manuscripts.

2. Since the 1980s, the term “Majority Text” has come to refer to something other than the Received Text of the Reformation. Currently there are two editions of the Majority Text, as follows:

a. In 1982 Thomas Nelson published The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text (hereafter referred to as the Hodges-Farstad Text). A second edition appeared in 1985.

This was edited by Zane Hodges (1932- ) and Arthur Farstad (1935-98) of Dallas Theological Seminary. Hodges taught New Testament Greek and Exegesis at Dallas from 1959 to 1987, though his view of the Majority Text was a minority position among the teaching staff. Hodges continues to teach a module entitled “New Testament Textual Criticism Majority Text Theory.” He was scheduled to teach this at Chafter Theological Seminary, Orange, California, May 10-28, 2004.

As its title implies, the Hodges-Farstad Text claims to be a Greek text that reflects the readings of the majority of extant Greek manuscripts.

b. In 1991 The Greek New Testament according to the Byzantine Text Form, edited by Maurice Robinson (1947- ) and William Grover Pierpont (1915-2003), was published by Original Word Publishers, Roswell, Georgia. It was revised in 2000 and 2003. (This is usually referred to as the Robinson-Pierpont Text in the remainder of this study.) The Byzantine Text Form Greek New Testament is available in many of the Bible software packages, including Online Bible, Bible Works, and Logos.

This is another attempt to challenge the Received Greek Text with a “Majority Text.” The Byzantine Greek Text was the one used in the Greek Byzantine Empire until the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. It is nearly perfect and had to be corrected in only a few places in the Reformation era.

Like the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine is built upon Hermann von Soden’s faulty and extremely insufficient textual apparatus.

Maurice Robinson is a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is very bold in his rejection of a “theological” approach to the text and is therefore no friend of faith. “The Byzantine-priority hypothesis ... does not encourage a simplistic eclectic approach nor a narrow theological outlook toward a predetermined result” (Robinson, New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority). The “narrow theological outlook,” of course, is a reference to a faith-preservation approach to the Bible.

William Pierpont (1915-2003) grew up in a Baptist church but in the 1970s he joined an Evangelical Free congregation in Wichita, Kansas, and remained a member in that denomination until his death. He attended Friends College in Wichita for two years but had to drop out because of health problems. He taught himself to read Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and other languages. He worked at Beech Aircraft (as a self taught structural engineer) for 41 years until his retirement in 1982, but he had a sideline passion for the Greek New Testament. He had been taught to follow Westcott-Hort style modern textual criticism, but in the 1960s he began to question this approach and eventually developed his Byzantine priority theory. In the late 1970s, Pierpont met Robinson and they worked together to produce a Greek New Testament after the Byzantine fashion. Pierpont died on Aug. 10, 2003, at age 88. See http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol08/Pierpont2003obit.html for a biographical sketch.

HOW INFLUENTIAL IS THE MAJORITY TEXT?

1. The New King James Version, which was also published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson, has marginal notes supporting the “majority text.”

The New King James Version (NKJV) contains approximately 500 footnotes that give what is supposedly the “majority reading” over against the Received Text reading. In fact, the New King James Version and the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text are twin productions. Arthur Farstad was the general editor of the NKJV. The eventual goal is to produce a “definitive” Majority Text and to publish an English translation of this to compete in that already crowded field.

2. The Majority Text Society was founded by the late Arthur Farstad and has an address in Dallas, Texas. Its web address is http://www.majoritytext.org/index.htm. In 2005 Zane Hodges took over the presidency from James Davis, who will be teaching New Testament Studies at the Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in the Middle East. In the announcement of his departure, Davis called Hodges a “founding father” of the MTS position (http://www.majoritytext.org/newsletter1.htm).

3. Wilbur Pickering supports the Majority Text position in his book The Identity of the New Testament Text (Thomas Nelson, 1977, 1980). Zane Hodges wrote the foreword. Following is a statement on this by Pickering: “The critical edition of the ‘Byzantine’ text being prepared by Zane C. Hodges, Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Dallas Theological Seminary, Arthur Farstad, and others, and to be published by Thomas Nelson, will differ from the Textus Receptus in over a thousand places. ... Hodges will be very happy to hear from anyone interested in furthering THE QUEST FOR THE DEFINITIVE TEXT” (Pickering, The Identity of New Testament Text, 1977, pp. 212, 232-233, capitalization not in the original). The web site is http://www.esgm.org/.

4. Jakob Van Bruggen supports the Majority Text in his book The Future of the Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1972).

5. Jay Green, editor of the Interlinear Bible and author of many books on the Bible version issue (as well as the King James II and the the Modern King James translations), promotes the Majority Text view (Sovereign Grace Publishers, Lafayette, Indiana). In the back of Green’s Interlinear Bible is a list of roughly 1,500 “majority text” readings that Green suggests should replace the Received Text. He introduces the list with these words: “If the foregoing Received Text is modified by the following notes, it will then be in the closest possible agreement with the vast majority of all manuscripts.” He says this even though he certainly knows that “the vast majority of all manuscripts” have never been collated, so that no one knows what most of them read in the various passages he cites. In fact, Green got this list of allegedly superior majority readings from William Pierpont and Maurice Robinson. They produced the list as a preliminary to the publication of their Greek New Testament according to the Byzantine Text Form (http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol08/Pierpont2003obit.html).

6. In 2002, the English Majority Text Version New Testament was published by Paul W. Esposito (Port St. Lucie, FL: Stauros Ministries). It is based on the Hodges-Farstad Text with consultation with the Robinson-Pierpont Text and the research of Wilbur Pickering.

7. Logos 21 is another English version translated from the Hodges-Farstad Majority New Testament. It appears from the web site that only the Gospel of John has been published (http://www2.livingwater.org/livingwater/about.html). The editors also worked on the New King James Version. The general editor is Arthur L. Farstad and the English editor is William H. McDowell. Zane Hodges and Wilbur N. Pickering were also involved. Curtis Vaughan (one of the seven members of the Executive Review Committee for the NKJV and general editor of The New Testament from 26 Translations) “carefully annotated this entire translation.” The textual notes were written by James F. Davis.

8. Leland Haines argues for the Byzantine Text and a revision of the King James Bible on that basis in chapter six of the book The Authority of Scripture (Biblical Viewpoints Publications, Goshen, Indiana).

9. In 1984 Harry A. Sturz published The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Nashville: Thomas Nelson). Now professor emeritus, Sturz was for many years Professor of Greek and Chairman of the Theology Department at Biola University in southern California. He is an ordained minister in the Grace Brethren Churches. The Byzantine Text-Type is a major work that argues against modern textual criticism’s position that the traditional Greek text is a mere later recension; Sturz urges that the Byzantine Text be given its proper value. Unlike Hodges, Farstad, and some of the others already mentioned, Sturz does not argue for a pure Byzantine text.

10. For a short time the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS), under the editorial secretaryship of Andrew Brown, gave some support to the Majority Text view.

Andrew Brown was Editorial Secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) for about a decade in the 1980s (until 1991) and in this position had considerable influence in the translation projects with which Trinitarian is involved and with the materials published by the TBS.

Brown’s sympathy with the Majority Text position was evident in the following statements:

“The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text (1982) has just been published by Thomas Nelson Publishers, New York, under the editorship of Professor Zane Hodges and Dr. A.L. Farstad. This new edition, as its title implies, contains the text found in the majority of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It differs from the Received Text in those passages where the manuscripts used by 16th century editors deviated from the overall manuscript consensus. ... Although this “majority text” is not necessarily at all points identical with the original text, THE NEW EDITION IS ON THE WHOLE A RELIABLE GUIDE. It will be an indispensable tool for all who wish to study the differences between the various forms of Greek New Testament text, and between the competing translations to which the Greek variants give rise” (Quarterly Record, Trinitarian Bible Society, No. 482, pp. 14-16).

In the course of correspondence with me in regard to a new translation of the Bible in the Nepali language, Andrew made the following statements:

“We would also encourage you to refer to the ‘Majority Text’ which in certain passages is an improvement on the older Textus Receptus, where the TR does not represent the true consensus of the manuscripts. An edition of the Majority Text was published in the USA by Z. Hodges and A.L. Farstad in 1982, and is a valuable tool of reference” (Andrew Brown, letter to D.W. Cloud, April 4, 1984).

When I asked Andrew Brown for a list of passages that are “improved” in the Majority Text, he refused to provide such a list but he did give me one example, from Hebrews 12:20: “... ‘or thrust through with a dart’--is not accurate in the TR and AV, but that the Majority variant should be preferred here” (Andrew Brown, letter to D.W. Cloud, Jan. 7, 1985).

Andrew Brown was dismissed from the Trinitarian Bible Society in 1991. The present leaders have assured us that they do not support the Hodges-Farstad Text, but it is clear that Andrew Brown had considerable influence during the several years he was associated with this organization. Further, the afore-referenced issue of the Trinitarian Bible Society Quarterly Record supporting the Hodges-Farstad Text was distributed throughout the world.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RECEIVED TEXT AND THE MAJORITY TEXT

There are 1,838 differences (most fairly insignificant) between the Received Text and the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text (by Daniel Wallace’s count as reported in “Some Second Thoughts on the Majority Text,” http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=673).

To illustrate this matter, we will list some of the more significant omissions in the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text as compared to the TR. Please understand that this is not an exhaustive listing:

Matthew 27:35 -- “that might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” (19 words omitted in the Greek)

Mark 15:3 -- “but he answered nothing” (4 words omitted in Greek)

Luke 7:31 -- “And the Lord said” (4 words omitted in Greek)

Luke 9:1 -- “his disciples” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Luke 17:36 -- “Two men shall be in the field; the one shall betaken, and the other left.” (12 words omitted in Greek)

Luke 20:19 -- “the people” (2 words omitted in Greek)

John 6:70 -- “Jesus” (1 word omitted in Greek)

John 10:8 -- “before me” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 7:37 -- “him shall ye hear” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 8:37 -- “And Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (29 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 9:5,6 -- “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (20 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 9:17 -- “Jesus” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Acts 10:6 -- “he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do” (7 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 10:21 -- “which were sent unto him from Cornelius” (7 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 15:11 -- “Christ” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Acts 15:34 -- “Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still” (6 words omitted in Greek)

Acts 20:21 -- “Christ” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Acts 24:6-8 -- “and would have judged according to our law. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands, Commanding his accusers to come unto thee” (27 words omitted in Greek)

Romans 13:9 -- “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (2 words omitted in Greek)

2 Corinthians 8:4 -- “that we would receive” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Colossians 1:14 -- “through his blood” (2 words omitted in Greek)

1 Thessalonians 2:19 -- “Christ” (1 word omitted in Greek)

2 Timothy 2:19 -- -- “Christ” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Hebrews 11:13 -- “and were persuaded’ (2 words omitted in Greek)

Hebrews 12:20 -- “or thrust through with a dart’ (3 words omitted in Greek)

1 John 5:7, 8 -- “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth” (25 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 1:8 -- “the beginning and the ending” (3 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 1:11 -- “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and” (13 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 2:3 -- “hast laboured” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Revelation 5:4 -- “and to read” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 5:7 -- “the book” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 5:14 -- “four and twenty” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Revelation 5:14 -- “him that liveth forever and ever” (6 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 7:5-8 -- -- “were sealed” from 10 of the 12 references (10 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 8:7 -- “angel” (1 word omitted in Greek)

Revelation 8:13 -- “angel” changed to “eagle”

Revelation 11:1 -- “and the angel stood” (3 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 11:17 -- “and art to come” (3 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 12:12 -- “to the inhabiters” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 14:1 -- “forty and four” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 14:3 -- “forty and four” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 14:5 -- “before the throne of God” (5 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 21:24 -- “of them which are saved” (2 words omitted in Greek)

Revelation 22:19 -- “book of life” is changed to “tree of life”

REASONS WHY WE REJECT THE HODGES-FARSTAD MAJORITY TEXT

 

1. THE HODGES-FARSTAD TEXT IS A MYTHICAL TEXT.

The Hodges-Farstad Greek New Testament claims to represent a Majority of extant Greek manuscripts, but this is simply a myth.

a. First of all, the extant Greek manuscripts have never been collated and examined in such a way that a majority text could be determined with any proper degree of certainty.

“... THE MAIN PROBLEM OF NT TEXTUAL CRITICISM LIES IN THE FACT THAT LITTLE MORE THAN THEIR ACTUAL EXISTENCE IS KNOWN OF MOST OF THE MANUSCRIPTS SO FAR IDENTIFIED, and that therefore we constantly have problems with many unknowns to solve. We proceed as if the few manuscripts, which have fully, or almost fully, studied, contained all the problems in question” (Kurt Aland, “The Significance of the Papyri,” cited from Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, Conclusion).

In The Text of the New Testament, Kurt and Barbara Aland state that “MOST OF THE MINUSCULES HAVE NOT YET BEEN EXAMINED FOR THEIR TEXTUAL VALUE” (p. 128).

The Hodges-Farstad Text is based on the collations of Hermann von Soden from the early 20th century. Though this is the most extensive collation that has ever been made, it was only a very partial, insufficient one. Note the following important testimonies about von Soden’s work:

“Von Soden and his assistants collated some hundreds of manuscripts, and published the results in a massive critical edition. In his footnotes, von Soden shows the majority text by the symbol K (short for Koine, or ‘common text’). However, AT ANY GIVEN INSTANCE OF THIS SYMBOL, ONE CAN RARELY BE SURE WHETHER VON SODEN CONSULTED ALL HIS MANUSCRIPTS AT THE PASSAGE IN QUESTION, OR CONSULTED JUST A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE. And even where he does give figures, the resulting total does not constitute a majority of all the manuscripts which are now available” (TSB Quarterly Record, Number 482, page 15).

“Yet von Soden was a rationalist. HE SHOWED VERY LITTLE REGARD TOWARD THE RECEIVED TEXT and sought to rewrite it on the basis of his collations and rather novel theory of textual history. ... We will show that [Hodges and Farstad] have used von Soden very uncritically. We will also show that despite the massive scope of von Soden’s work, it is after all only a very small part of the total picture and cannot begin to be used in the way Hodges and Farstad have attempted” (Jack Moorman, When the KJV Departs from the Majority Text, p. 8).

“Now what needs to be seen here is that anyone who seeks to gather Byzantine MS evidence from the standard sources -- Alford, Tischendorf, Souter, Merk, Vogels, Nestle, Aland, or von Soden -- IS REALLY GETTING ONLY A FEW SCRAPS FROM THE TABLE. The energies of these men have been expended elsewhere. Their labours toward the great mass of Byzantine MSS is limited to those places where there is departure from the TR. ... Therefore Hodges and Farstad have based their edition upon an area of von Soden’s work where he gave the least attention” (Moorman, When the KJV Departs from the Majority Text, p. 11).

Kurt and Barbara Aland, while stating that von Soden’s apparatus “is a necessary tool for textual critics,” also warn that “von Soden’s apparatus is so unreliable that the reader soon comes to regard this remarkably full apparatus as little more than a collection of variant readings whose attestation needs verification elsewhere. Von Soden’s edition was distinctly a failure” (Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 23).

The largest project being conducted at present toward the collation of Greek manuscripts is the work at The Institut fur neutestamentliche Textforschung [The Institute for New Testament Research] in Munster, Germany. According to Wilbur Pickering, this institute has “a collection of microfilms of some 4,500 of the extant Greek MSS (around 80 percent of them), and scholars connected with the Institut are collating SELECTED ONES” (The Identity of the New Testament Text, 1980 edition, p. 150). (Pickering hopes that through the use of computers it will one day be possible to consider the testimony of all extant Greek manuscripts, but to our knowledge no one is in the process of actually digitizing all of the manuscripts.)

It is obvious that even this project will fall far short of the goal of producing the material necessary to determine a definitive majority text. Even though this Institute has a vast number of manuscripts on microfilm, Pickering observes that these represent only 80 percent of the total number known to be in existence.

He also observes that the scholars are collating only “selected ones” from the 80% they have at hand. One reason for this is that the theories of modern textual criticism held by those doing this work cause them to discount the Byzantine Greek manuscripts so that they do not assign to them the proper value. Jack Moorman explains why the modern textual critics are not in any hurry to examine the vast majority of surviving Greek manuscripts. “It may come as a surprise that only a relative few of the 5,300 MSS now catalogued have been collated. ... Except for a few cursory checks the vast majority has been ignored. The reason is quite simple: The overwhelming majority of manuscripts support the TR/KJV; and seeking out any further support is the last thing textual criticism is interested in. Westcott and Hort certainly were not interested in giving the majority the chance to speak. ... In the past 100 years since Hort a further 1700-1800 cursives have been found. Added to these we have a total of nearly 2,200 lectionaries. Again, apart from a cursory glance to see if there might be some readings supportive of the Aleph-B kind of text, they have been merely catalogued and ignored. Attention, instead, has centered on the comparatively few papyri fragments, and what to do when they disagree with Aleph and B. ... what this present ‘age of minuscules’ means to the editors of the critical text is the hope that they might find a little more support for the Aleph/B/Alexandrian kind of text. Despite appearances to the contrary and talk of being eclectic, Aleph, B and their few allies still dictate the modern critical text, and the feeling prevails that no purpose would be served in giving the majority of MSS a greater voice” (Moorman, When the KJV Departs from the Majority Text, pp. 4-6).

Thus, nowhere in the world is an effort being made toward the collation and examination of all or even most of the extant Greek manuscripts.

b. Further, the manuscript collation work that has been done and that the Hodges-Farstad Text was based upon is flawed and undependable. Consider these important testimonies:

In 1967 E.C. Colwell made the following statement before the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNT): “The preparation of a comprehensive textual apparatus has required attention to previous editions of the Greek NT, viz, Tischendorf, Tregelles, von Soden, Legg. CAREFUL STUDY SHOWED THAT THE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE IN THESE EDITIONS CANNOT BE USED IN THE IGNT APPARATUS, SINCE THEY FAIL TO CITE WITNESSES COMPLETELY, CONSISTENTLY, AND IN SOME CASES ACCURATELY’ (E.C. Colwell, “The International Greek New Testament Project: a Status Report,” Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXXVI, 1968, 192, note 13).

“It can only be said that the apparatus is POSITIVELY HONEYCOMBED WITH ERRORS, and many documents which should have been recollated have not been touched, others only partially, and others again have been incorrectly handled” (Herman Hoskier, Journal of Textual Studies, 15, 1914, p. 307; quoted from Moorman, When the KJV Departs from the Majority Text, p. 9).

“Once the extent of error is seen, THE WORD ‘INACCURACY’ BECOMES A EUPHEMISM. Of the 99 checked MSS, 76 were missing one or more times when they should have been cited, or were listed when they should not have been. ... von Soden’s inaccuracies cannot be tolerated for any purpose. HIS APPARATUS IS USELESS FOR A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE TEXT OF THE MSS HE USED” (Frederik Wisse, Profile Method, pp. 16, 17; quoted from Moorman, p. 11).

c. Even the men who have produced the Majority Text admit that their current work is insufficient.

Hodges and Farstad admit that von Soden’s collations are insufficient to produce their desired result: “It should be understood, therefore, that ALL DECISIONS ABOUT MAJORITY READINGS ARE PROVISIONAL AND TENTATIVE. ... As all who are familiar with von Soden’s materials will know, his presentation of the data leaves much to be desired. ... What is urgently needed is a new apparatus covering the entire manuscript tradition. It should include complete collations a very high percentage of the surviving majority text manuscripts (The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text, pp. xxii, xxiii).

Wilbur Pickering also admits that they are not in a position today to demonstrate a true majority of Greek manuscripts: “This means that not only are we PRESENTLY UNABLE TO SPECIFY THE PRECISE WORDING OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT, but it will require considerable time and effort before we can be in a position to do so. And the longer it takes us to mobilize and coordinate our efforts the longer it will be” (Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, 1980 revision, pp. 149-150). I do not agree with Pickering. I believe we are able to specify the precise wording of the original text. It is the traditional Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek text underlying the Reformation Bibles. I believe this by faith and I do not need to wait until some Institute finally collates all surviving Greek manuscripts (if they ever will, which is doubtful).

d. In light of these facts, it is evident that the claim to have a true Majority Text based on the majority of Greek manuscripts is a myth, for no such thing exists and it is not possible at this time to make such a text.

2. THE HODGES-FARSTAD TEXT IS AN INSUFFICIENT TEXT.

There are four major witnesses to the text of Scripture, as outlined by John Burgon in The Revision Revised (pp. 8-11) and the Traditional Text of the Gospels (pp. 19-39). (Sometimes these four witnesses are reduced to three, by grouping the Greek manuscripts and the Greek lectionaries into one category.)

The witness of Greek manuscripts. Divided into papyri (96), uncials (263), and minuscules (2,812), there are 3,171 Greek manuscripts extant today (by the count of Kurt and Barbara Aland in the second edition of The Text of the New Testament).

The witness of Greek lectionaries. These are Scripture readings used by churches. In contrast to the Greek manuscripts that give a “continuous text,” the lectionaries have an “interrupted text.” There are 2,280 lectionaries extant.

The witness of ancient versions. A translation into another language is an important witness to the Greek text upon which it was founded. We have copies of many ancient versions, including Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic. In some cases (e.g., Syriac Peshitta and Old Latin) these are earlier than the oldest of the Greek uncials.

The witness of quotations from “church fathers,” or the writings of ancient preachers. When they quoted the Scripture, it is possible to see what text they were using. Burgon himself collated more than 86,000 quotations from ancient Christian writings, searching for textual evidence.

Burgon emphasized that ALL of these are important and none are to be ignored. He called these four witnesses the “provision which the Divine Author of Scripture is found to have made for the preservation in its integrity of His written Word” (The Revision Revised, p. 8).

This was the method followed by the Reformation editors. While giving priority to the Greek manuscripts they also weighed the ancient versions and quotations. This is why they modified the Greek Byzantine text in a few places upon the added authority of Latin and other witnesses.

The Hodges-Farstad Majority Text (as well as the Robinson-Pierpont) is based upon only one of the four important witnesses to the original Text. In the foreword to The Majority Text, the editors make the following statement: “The present edition DOES NOT cite the testimony [1] of the ancient versions or [2] church fathers. [3] Nor are the lectionary texts considered. This is not because such sources have no value for textual criticism. Rather; it is due to the specific aims of this edition, in which the primary goal has been the presentation of the Majority Text as this appears in the regular manuscript tradition” (emphasis added) (The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text, 1982, p. xviii).

This sounds like a scholarly game to me. If the other areas of witness have value for textual criticism, why would you ignore them when attempting to reproduce the “original” New Testament? What kind of reasoning is this?

Wilbur Pickering’s position in this is contradictory.

In 1977, in The Identity of the New Testament Text, Pickering said: “So then, how are we to identify the original wording? First we must gather the available evidence--this will include [1] Greek mss. [2] (including lectionaries), [3] Fathers, and [4] versions. Then we must evaluate the evidence to ascertain which form of the text enjoys the earliest, the fullest, the widest, the most respectable, the most varied attestation”(Identity of the New Testament Text, 1977 edition, p. 137).

On the other hand Pickering supports the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text that ignores a full three-fourths of this overall witness.

It is not possible to come to the truth on textual issues while ignoring a large part of the evidence. The Hodges-Farstad Majority Text is therefore an insufficient text.

3. THE HODGES-FARSTAD TEXT IS A PROVISIONAL TEXT.

First we should note that the King James Bible is not a provisional Bible.

Its underlying Hebrew and Greek texts were brought out of the Dark Ages by believing editors who were not tainted by the gross skepticism of our modern times. Any skepticism that was incipient in Erasmus was restrained by his commitment to the commonly-received traditional text and by the larger faith that characterized his age. The great statements of faith were developed in that age and were established upon that very Text. When the authors of the Westminster Confession spoke in 1648 of their confidence that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek were “BY HIS SINGULAR CARE AND PROVIDENCE KEPT PURE IN ALL AGES,” they were referring to the Masoretic Hebrew and the Received Greek that underlies the King James Bible. For men of God in those times, the Bible they had was anything but provisional.

It is the product of 85 years of translation work (from Tyndale in 1526, through the Coverdale, the Matthew’s, the Bishops, the Geneva, to the KJV in 1611, not to speak of the Wycliffe Bible of the late 14th century that laid an important foundation for succeeding English versions). The King James revision alone was done by roughly 50 scholars of the highest caliber and each part of the revision was examined at least 14 times in a peerless process.

It was refined in the fires of persecution. Two of the translators of versions that preceded the KJV were martyred for their faith (William Tyndale and John Rogers). Another (Wycliffe) was condemned as a heretic and his bones were burned. Hundreds of the readers of these English Bibles were imprisoned and abused; and thousands of copies were burned in the flames.

It has been tested for almost four centuries in churches throughout the world, and it has been loved by scholars and common people alike.

A massive number of Bible study tools and materials have been laboriously developed around the KJV. Consider Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. Strong did not dedicate his earthly life to produce that work because of money. He was not hired by some wealthy Bible publishing firm; he did the work as an internal compulsion before God and as a labor of love. Had he considered the KJV and its underlying text provisional, he would not have persevered for so many years (before the days of computers) to produce an exhaustive concordance.

The Majority Text, though, is only provisional, as admitted by its editors.

This is true for the Hodges-Farstad Text.

“The editors do not imagine that the text of this edition represents in all particulars the exact form of the originals. Desirable as such a text certainly is, much further work must be done before it can be produced. It should therefore be kept in mind that THE PRESENT WORK, THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT ACCORDING TO THE MAJORITY TEXT, IS BOTH PRELIMINARY AND PROVISIONAL. It represents A FIRST STEP in the direction of recognizing the value and authority of the great mass of surviving Greek documents. The use made of those documents in this edition must be subjected to scrutiny and evaluation by competent scholars. Such scrutiny, if properly carried out, can result in further progress toward a Greek New Testament which most accurately reflects the inspired autographs” (Introduction, The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text, 1982, p. x).

This is also acknowledged by Wilbur Pickering, a consulting editor for the work: “The critical edition of the ‘Byzantine’ text being prepared by Zane C. Hodges, Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Dallas Theological Seminary, Arthur Farstad, and others, and to be published by Thomas Nelson, will differ from the Textus Receptus in over a thousand places. ... Hodges ... will be very happy to hear from anyone interested in furthering THE QUEST FOR THE DEFINITIVE TEXT” (emphasis added) (Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, pp. 212, 232-233).

In the latest edition of his book Pickering says the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text is “an excellent INTERIM Greek Text to use UNTIL THE FULL AND FINAL STORY CAN BE TOLD.”

The same is true for the Robinson-Pierpont Text. Maurice Robinson’s “Byzantine priority” methodology is on a “QUEST TOWARD THE GOAL of establishing the original text of the canonical Greek New Testament,” a quest that requires diligent labor (Robinson, New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority). This is a plain testimony against divine preservation. If after 2,000 years of church history, if after the glorious Reformation, if after the grand missionary thrust of these last days, if after centuries of unprecedented worldwide Bible distribution, if after all of the biblical scholarship of the past 500 years, if after all of that we are still waiting to discover the “original text” of the New Testament, why should we believe that we would ever find it? 

Standing, as we are, at the end of the greatest period of spiritual revival and world missionary activity history has witnessed since the apostolic age, are we still searching for the definitive text of God’s Word; are we still dependent on a “provisional” text and still on a “quest” toward producing a definitive text? Was that Received Text which was carried throughout the world from 1500 to 1900 (and which continues to be carried throughout the world by the many missionaries who are committed to it) only a provisional text as we are led to believe by these quotes? I contend this is not the case. In fact, the very opposite is true.

4. THE HODGES-FARSTAD TEXT IS AN INCONSISTENT TEXT.

Following are two ways in which the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text is inconsistent:

It is inconsistent in that it does not consistently follow its own majority principle. Of the readings adopted in The Majority Text, 1240 “are shown in the footnotes as NOT having a clear overall majority of manuscripts in their favour. Further; in John 7:53--8:11 and Revelation ... the editors have on a number of occasions adopted a reading found only in a minority of manuscripts” (Quarterly Record, Trinitarian Bible Society, No. 482, p. 14). We see, then, that even in the matter of the selection of readings, the “majority principle” is abandoned quite often in the Majority Text. This is a strange inconsistency.

The Hodges-Farstad Majority Text is also inconsistent in that some Westcott-Hort principles are employed even though the editors call these principles defective.

The Westcott-Hort principle of the Genealogical Method is employed.

In the introduction to the Hodges-Farstad Greek New Testament we read: “Final decisions about readings ought to be made on the basis of a reconstruction of their history in the manuscript tradition. This means that for each New Testament book a genealogy of the manuscripts ought to be constructed. ... It is true, of course, that most modern textual critics have despaired of the possibility of using the genealogical method. Nevertheless, this method remains the only logical one” (p. xii).

John Burgon wisely observed: “High time however is it to declare that, in strictness, all this talk about ‘genealogical evidence,’ when applied to Manuscripts is--MOONSHINE. ... And perforce all talk about ‘Genealogical evidence,’ where no single step in the descent can be produced--in other words, where no Genealogical evidence exists--is absurd” (The Revision Revised, pp. 255-56). No evidence has been dug up since Burgon’s day that would require a change to his wise assessment of the “genealogical method.” 

The Westcott-Hort principle of the Intrinsic and Transcriptional Probability.

The editors of the Hodges-Farstad Greek N.T. state: “Where K itself was sharply divided within an M reading, the rival variations were weighed both in terms of their distribution within the majority tradition as a whole and with regard to intrinsic and transcriptional probabilities. Occasionally, a transcriptional consideration outweighs even a preponderance of contradictory testimony from K (p. xxii).

Hort defined intrinsic probability as having reference to the author of the text and transcriptional probability as having reference to the copyists. In applying these principles, the Greek editor asks himself, “What would the author have most likely have written in this place, and what would the copyists most likely have copied.” In spite of the claims of textual critics otherwise, IT IS A PURELY SUBJECTIVE PROCESS. It legitimizes guessing.

John Burgon dismissed intrinsic and transcriptional probabilities out of hand. “So far from thinking with Dr. Hort that ‘the value of the evidence obtained from transcriptional probability is incontestable,’--for that, ‘without its aid, textual criticism could rarely obtain a high degree of security,’ (p. 24)--we venture to declare that inasmuch as one expert’s notions of what is ‘transcriptionally probable’ prove to be the diametrical reverse of another expert’s notions, the supposed evidence to be derived from this source may, with advantage, be neglected altogether. Let the study of documentary evidence be allowed to take its place. Notions of ‘probability’ are the very pest of those departments of Science which admit of an appeal to fact” (Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 252).

Wilbur Pickering refuted the Westcott-Hort principle of intrinsic and transcriptional probabilities in The Identity of the New Testament Text. He wisely observes, “NO TWENTIETH CENTURY MAN [INCLUDING HODGES] CONFRONTING A SET OF VARIANT READINGS CAN KNOW OR PROVE WHAT ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE TO PRODUCE THE VARIANTS” (p. 78). That is the crux of the matter. Why, then, does Pickering support the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text that employs this bogus principle?

Because it borrows from the field of modern textual criticism, the Majority Text position does not have the simplicity of biblical truth. 

2 Cor. 11:3 warns that the devil complicates the truth and corrupts “the simplicity that is in Christ.” The Lord Jesus rejoiced that the Father has revealed His truth to babes and not to the wise of this world (Mat. 11:25). Paul revealed that God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise (1 Cor. 1:27). The truth can be preached in any congregation of ordinary Spirit-led believers and be understood.

Contrast this simplicity with the complexity of modern textual criticism, with it intrinsic and transcriptional probabilities, its genealogical methods, etc. Maurice Robinson, co-author of the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Majority Text, calls his textual criticism “the Byzantine-priority method” and it is as complicated as standard modern textual criticism. In fact, Robinson plainly states that his textual criticism is complicated: “The Byzantine-priority hypothesis is far more complex than it may appear; it does not encourage a simplistic eclectic approach nor a narrow theological outlook toward a predetermined result” (Robinson, New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority). The “narrow theological outlook,” of course, is a reference to a faith-preservation approach.

The Hodges-Farstad Majority Text is therefore an inconsistent work. It claims to be an attempt to follow a purely Majority principle, but this is not the case. The claim is made by the editors that Westcott-Hort principles are rejected, but the truth is that some of those very principles are employed. Such gross inconsistently in a work of this nature is inexcusable and is yet another reason why God’s people should reject The Majority Text. In no sense does it represent an improvement over the Received Text.

5. THE MAJORITY TEXT POSITION ENCOURAGES PREFERENCES RATHER THAN CONVICTIONS.

The Majority Text is preferred by some fundamentalists who also have no serious qualms against the critical text; it is more a scholarly preference than a deeply held conviction.

In this it is similar to the New King James Version. I don’t know of any man who uses the New King James who has a strong conviction about the preservation of the underlying Greek text. It is a choice, a preference, oftentimes a convenience, but not a conviction. Further, the use of the NKJV is usually a stepping-stone to the critical text based modern versions, and I believe the Majority Text position is a stepping-stone to modern textual criticism, as noted under our next point.

6. THERE IS GREAT POTENTIAL FOR THE MAJORITY TEXT METHOD TO LEAD TO (1) ENDLESS SPECULATION AND UNCERTAINTY AND (2) TO GIVE STUDENTS AN ITCH FOR MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM.

I believe that just as the New King James Bible tends to open the door to the acceptance of the modern English versions the Majority Greek Text tends to open the door to the acceptance of modern textual criticism.

Since the Majority Text position is not predicated upon faith in divine preservation, it can never result in the truth. The textual record alone can never lead us to the preserved Scripture; the record must be observed through the eyes of faith in the divine promises. I have met believers who have been confused by the Majority Text position. They can no longer hold to the Received Text or to the KJV with confidence, but the only replacement they have is a “provisional” Greek text.

Further, the Majority Text position teaches the Bible student that he needs to do textual criticism, that he needs to search for and recover the Apostolic Text to some extent, that he needs to be on a “quest” for a definitive text. I fear that the “little bit” of textual criticism that the Majority Text view encourages will not be satisfying to many scholarly students. They will be tempted to move farther out onto the uncertain seas of modern textual criticism. There is no anchor of faith to ground them.

Look what has happened to Zane Hodges. “I see in this entire regression from the Dean John Burgon methodology once espoused by Zane C. Hodges indeed a sad spectacle. I remember how Hodges for years had a paper he entitled a defense of the ‘Textus Receptus.’ Then he changed the title to the ‘Majority Text.’ I have seen him move closer and closer to the former Westcott and Hort position of textual criticism. Now we have seen him use the genealogical method of the Hortian heretics. We have seen him being quite at home with the intrinsic and transcriptional probability of these same heretics. Where will it all end? Is there no bottom? One of our DBS Vice Presidents, Dr. David Otis Fuller, uses the expression ‘scholarolatry.’ Is this what Hodges is guilty of now?” (Donald Waite, The Dean Burgon News, May-August, 1985, pp. 2-4). 

7. THE HODGES-FARSTAD TEXT FLIES IN THE FACE OF DIVINE PRESERVATION.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that the heart of this issue is faith and the doctrine of divine preservation of Scripture. Consider just a few of God’s promises. (For a more exhaustive study of this doctrine see Faith vs. the Scholars, Part I, “We Hold to the King James Bible Because of Divine Preservation.”)

Matthew 5:18 

The Lord Jesus was certain about the preservation of God’s Word. Even the smallest details will be preserved. This can only be accomplished by God’s providential intervention in the transmission of the Bible through the centuries.

Though Christ was referring to the Old Testament, the same must apply to the New, in that it is equally the infallibly inspired Word of God and in fact exceeds the Old in glory (2 Cor. 3:9).

Matthew 24:35

This is an amazing promise and it contains important doctrine about the inspiration and preservation of Scripture. Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the Author of history, promised that His words would not pass away; thus He is promising that His words will be inscripturated and preserved.

The doctrines of inspiration and preservation are intimately associated throughout Scripture. The association is not merely logical; it is scriptural; it is not merely inferred; it is plainly stated.

Christ’s promise applies, first, to the four Gospels. It teaches us that the Gospels are supernatural. The human authors did not have to fumble around in a naturalistic manner as most textbooks on the history of the Bible presume, borrowing from one another and from other documents, imperfectly and inaccurately describing things. The entire foundation of the modern field of “form or redaction criticism” is vain and heretical. It is vain because it is impossible at this point in history to know how the Gospels were written, and it is heretical because God’s Word informs us that the writing of the Gospels was supernatural and gives no emphasis to the “human element.”

Christ’s promise applies not only to the four Gospels but also to all of the words of the New Testament as given by the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet. 1:11).

Matthew 28:19-20; 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 2:2

These passages describe the process of preservation. Evangelicals and fundamentalists who defend textual criticism would have us believe that while the Bible contains a general promise of preservation (if not directly, at least by implication, they say), it does not describe the means of preservation. For example, in an e-mail written to me in December 2000, Dr. James Price, a professor at Tennessee Temple Seminary and the chairman of the Old Testament committee of the New King James Bible, said: “I know the passages that infer preservation, and I believe the doctrine. I just don’t think that the Bible explicitly states how God preserved His word.” The fact is that the Bible not only infers preservation it specifically promises it (so that it is an actual Bible doctrine) and it does tell us how it will be accomplished.

God preserves His Word among the churches as it is being obeyed and as the Great Commission is being conducted (Mat. 28:19-20). In the Old Testament it was the Jewish priests who preserved God’s Word (Deut. 17:18; Rom. 3:1-2). In the New Testament the priesthood is composed of all believers (1 Pet. 2:9) and it is the churches that keep God’s Word as they carry out the Great Commission (1 Tim. 3:15; Mat. 28:19-20).

Thus the Scriptures have been preserved in the church age not by exalted scholars but by humble believers.

Christ is foretelling the inscripturating of His words and teaching. The fulfillment of this is found in the divinely-given New Testament Scriptures, whereby the churches are able to hold fast to the “faith once delivered to the saints.”

Christ does not foresee that His Words will need to be recovered; rather, He describes a process of continual preservation that will endure until the end of the age. The Lord Jesus Christ, who knows the beginning from the end, assumed that the Word of God would be available from generation to generation through the church age. Otherwise, it would not be possible for succeeding generations to teach the “all things” of the New Testament faith (Mat. 28:20).

We see that the Scriptures are not preserved by being hidden away (such as in a remote monastery in the Sinai desert or the Vatican Library) but by being used. Dr. Stewart Custer of Bob Jones University says, “God has preserved His word in the sands of Egypt” (stated during a debate in Marquette Manor Baptist Church, Chicago, 1984). He is referring to the view held by modern textual critics that the pure New Testament manuscripts were replaced in the 4th century by corrupt ones and were not “recovered” until the 19th century when the handful of Egyptian or Alexandrian manuscripts were given prominence, but this flies in the face of the Scriptures’ own testimony. “God did not preserve His Word in the ‘disusing’ but in the ‘using.’ He did not preserve the Word by it being stored away or buried, but rather through its use and transmission in the hands of humble believers” (Jack Moorman, Forever Settled, 1985, p. 90).

The witness of the Latin manuscripts and other versions have significance in determining the text of Scripture, because these were even more commonly used by the churches through the Dark Ages than the Greek. Likewise, in this light the lectionaries that were read in the churches and the quotations from church leaders are important witnesses. This is why the Reformation editors looked to the Latin as an important secondary witness after the Greek. Thus in a few places there is more testimony to the preserved text in the Latin than the Greek (i.e., Acts 8:37; 1 John 5:7). Dr. Edward F. Hills observed, “...it was not trickery that was responsible for the inclusion of the Johannine Comma in the Textus Receptus [referring to the claim that a Greek manuscript was fabricated by Erasmus’ contemporaries to support this verse], but the usage of the Latin speaking Church.” This is the chief reason that we reject the Majority Text or pure Byzantine Text position. We cannot ignore the Latin and concern ourselves strictly with finding a majority of the Greek. And when we refer to the Latin, we are not talking merely about Rome’s Latin Vulgate but much more of those lovely little hand-sized ancient “dissident” versions that were based on Latin and that were used by Bible believers such as the Anabaptists and Waldenses and Lollards down through the Dark Ages, the pre-Reformation Romaunt, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Czech, English (Wycliffe 1380), etc. Most, if not all, of these contained the Johannine Comma in 1 John 5:7, and it is that type of evidence that convinced the Reformation editors of its authenticity.

The purest Bible manuscripts and translations were literally used up in the process of time so that they were replaced with new copies. This is why ancient manuscripts that are in mint condition such as the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus are deeply suspect. They weren’t used! The majority of ancient uncials extant are mere fragments because they were worn out and come down to us only in pieces. The fact that manuscripts such as the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus come down to us relatively intact from ancient times is due to their corruption and disuse. This process continues today. Though I have only been saved 31 years, I have worn out Bibles and replaced them with new ones. Ancient manuscripts would ordinarily have worn out even more quickly than modern Bibles, because they were used not only for reading and study but also for copying.

The churches are to hold to apostolic teaching (and Scripture) in every detail and they also are to pass “the same” and “all things” along from generation to generation (Mat. 28:20; 2 Tim. 2:2). The words “the same” and “all things” describe the process of the preservation of inscripturated apostolic teaching. Thus we see the role of individual churches in the task of Bible preservation.

God’s people and the churches are to be zealous for the details of the Scripture, for the “spots” (1 Tim. 6:14). The laxical attitude that characterizes the textual criticism position, that the omission of thousands of words is of little significance, is not Scriptural.

“Faithful men” play an important role in Bible preservation, because it is only such men who will care enough to guard the Word and who will have the spiritual discernment necessary for the task.

God preserves His Word by His own power (Mat. 19:20). Christ explains how the preservation of Scripture can be possible in light of human frailty and the vicious and unceasing assault of the devil. It is possible because of God’s active role in preserving it. We see this in Christ’s promise, “lo, I am with you alway...” Though men have an important part to play in the process of preservation, it is God Himself who has preserved the Scripture. Modern textual critics focus almost exclusively upon man’s role in the transmission of the text, but the Bible believer traces the hand of God.

This process has continued down to the end of the church age (Mat. 28:20).

It was in operation through the Dark Ages of Rome’s rule. This is why we know that the preserved Word of God is found in the majority of Greek and Latin manuscripts and translations thereof that were in common use among the churches during those centuries and not in the Alexandrian text that was commonly rejected.

This process was in operation during the 16th and 17th centuries when the Reformation editors and translators put the Scriptures into print. They understood that the preserved New Testament was found largely in the Greek Byzantine text that had come down from Antioch in the early centuries of the church age and secondarily in the Latin that was widely used during the Dark Ages (not so much by Rome as by “dissident” or separatist Bible believers such as the Waldenses and the Lollards who used Latin or Latin-based versions). In a few instances, such as the Trinitarian statement of 1 John 5:7, the Scripture was preserved more in Latin and in other versions such as the Waldensian Romaunt, the early German (e.g., the Tepl), and early English (the Wycliffe version). But always it was preserved in the common usage among the churches.

This process was in operation in the 19th century, when the Scripture continued to be preserved in the Bible-believing churches that resisted the tide of skepticism coming from Germany. Modern textual criticism was never popular in believing churches in that century. In fact, it was strongly resisted.

This process is still in operation today. By the late 20th century, the tide of end time apostasy was so powerful that the corrupt critical Greek text and the translations thereof had become the majority, but Bible believing churches continue, in the midst of this apostasy, to love, preach, and defend the preserved Scripture. Most of the staunchly fundamentalist churches today that are boldly resisting the ecumenical tide continue to love the King James Bible and other Received Text versions.

The plain teaching of the Scriptures on divine preservation is in conflict with the Majority Text position. Consider, for example, Wilbur Pickering, one of the influential voices in the Majority Text debate.

Pickering dismisses the faith approach to the text.

He rejects the faith approach of Edward F. Hills, saying, “I agree with Ehrman’s critique of Hill’s position, though his is not the first--Hill’s position is inconsistent and arbitrary, and does not square with the evidence” (The Identity of the New Testament Text, Appendix A “Inspiration and Preservation”). Thus Pickering sides with the skeptic Ehrman, who does not even believe there was an established apostolic orthodoxy in the first century, against the believer Hills.

Pickering speaks of those who “perversely persist in affirming that my case is based on theological presupposition.” Thus he strongly affirms that his principles of textual criticism are NOT based on the Bible and faith, are not predicated upon providential preservation.

As a result, Pickering is treated with a little more respect by the proponents of modern textual criticism, who so lightly dismiss men like John Burgon and Edward Hills. Consider, for example, the following statement by Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary: “What was new, however, with Pickering’s approach was perhaps a combination of things: his theological invectives were subdued (especially compared with those of the Textus Receptus-advocating fundamentalist pamphleteers); his theological presuppositions regarding preservation were also played down; his treatment appeared sane, reasonable, and thorough...”(Daniel Wallace, Some Second Thoughts on the Majority Text, http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=673). To the modern textual critic, sanity is rejecting the common Text of church history.

Pickering claims that the Bible merely “infers” that God would preserve the Scripture and that “nowhere does it say how He proposed to do it...”

To the contrary, the Bible’s statements on preservation are clear and unequivocal. Away with this business that preservation is merely inferred! In Faith vs. the Scholars, Part I, “We Hold to the King James Bible Because of the Doctrine of Preservation,” we examine dozens of Scriptures that explicitly teach the doctrine of preservation. In Faith vs. the Scholars, Part X, “We Hold to the KJV Because of the Evil Fruit of the Modern Versions,” we give further examples of evangelicals and fundamentalists who claim that the Bible does not explicitly teach preservation.

Further, God has told us how He would preserve the Scripture. It would be preserved in its usage by the churches. It would be passed along from generation to generation by the priesthood of believers as part of the fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20; 2 Tim. 2:2).

The New Testament text that fits that definition since the Protestant Reformation is the Received Text in Greek and the King James Bible in English. Pickering wants to go back to the Byzantine Greek New Testament, but that is a step backward not forward. The wise textual editors in the 16th century understood that the Byzantine Greek New Testament in general contained some few corruptions and they purified it and published it to the ends of the earth in the slightly modified form of the Reformation Received Text.

Only at the very end of his book does Pickering throw out a bone to faith.

After making every effort to belittle Edward Hills’ faith position, Pickering concludes his book by quoting Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

Thus Pickering CONCLUDES his position with a salute to faith, even after severely distancing himself from those like Dr. Edward Hills who PREDICATE their “textual criticism” on faith! It appears that Dr. Pickering too much yearns to be “recognized” by the scholars, and one must always compromise the faith to reach that objective. Jack Moorman wisely observes: “... if the critics misrepresent us because we present biblical truth, and if they become uncomfortable with this, what does it matter? Who are we trying to please, God or man? Must we participate in their neutrality and unbelief in order to gain a hearing from them? Must we yield to peer pressure? Must we put our good friends ahead of our good Bible?” (When the Majority Text Departs, p. 1).

The plain teaching of the Scriptures on divine preservation is also in conflict with the position of Maurice Robinson, co-author of the Robinson-Pierpoint Byzantine Text.

Robinson says: “Byzantine-priority provides no domain or shelter for those unwilling to labor diligently, or for unscholarly individuals whose goal is merely a biased theological perspective or the advocacy of a particular translation.” (Robinson, New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority).

Comment:

It is obvious that Robinson has no time for “a biased theological perspective.”

He refers to “unscholarly individuals,” pretending that those who do not practice textual criticism of some sort are ignorant. The arrogance of textual critics never ceases to amaze me. Edward Hills had every scholarly credential in this field, but since he was committed to a “theological perspective,” he is branded unscholarly.

Robinson refers to diligent labor. Where did Jesus Christ or the Apostles teach that the believer must “labor diligently” to find the Scripture? Why could it not be, Mr. Robinson, that God has preserved His Scripture in the honorable Greek Received Text and that instead of laboring to recover the Scripture through secular principles of textual criticism we should be laboring to proclaim it to the ends of the earth in obedience to His command?

He is opposed to “the advocacy of a particular translation.” How is it that God inspired one Scripture originally but today that one Scripture must be represented by many conflicting versions?

Robinson says: “For advocates of the TR/KJV position, the ‘theological argument’ regarding the conflict between God and Satan is primary, centering upon the ‘providential preservation’ of a specific and unique text, unlike that found in any single manuscript or texttype, including the Byzantine Textform. FOR ADVOCATES OF THE BYZANTINE-PRIORITY HYPOTHESIS, THE UNDERLYING THEOLOGICAL FACTORS TAKE A SECONDARY ROLE IN THE REALM OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM. Nor can we summarily dismiss the manuscripts of competing texttypes as ‘useless’ or ‘heretical.’ Neither the Alexandrian nor the Western manuscripts in themselves present a deliberately ‘evil’ text--only a text which (under the present hypothesis) has suffered from scribal corruption and/or ‘creativity’ to an adverse degree--a situation which has lessened their overall value and authority” (Maurice Robinson, “The Case for the Byzantine Textform: A New Approach to ‘Majority Text’ Theory,” Southeastern Regional Meeting, Evangelical Theological Society, at Toccoa Falls College, March 8-9, 1991).

Comment:

Though it is true that the Greek Received Text differs from any single manuscript or texttype (a continually shifting term that was invented by modern textual criticism), it only does so very slightly. It is so slight that for more than 350 years (from 1500 to 1980) it was common for the Received Text and the Majority Text and the Byzantine Text to be used as synonyms. God has not promised that corruptions will not creep into the text, only that the text will be preserved in spite of the corruptions. We believe that some few corruptions that had come to reside in the majority of Greek manuscripts were purified in the Reformation era as the Scripture came out of the Dark Ages.

Robinson boldly but unconvincingly claims that neither the Alexandrian nor the Western manuscripts present a deliberately evil or heretical text. He has no evidence of this. He doesn’t even know the history of these manuscripts. In fact, since they contain readings of a doctrinal nature that differ from the Traditional Text, there is good reason to believe that heretics were involved. There is a wealth of historical evidence that manuscripts were tampered with on a large scale in the first centuries after the apostles. Frederick Scrivener observed: “…THE WORST CORRUPTIONS TO WHICH THE NEW TESTAMENT HAS EVER BEEN SUBJECTED, ORIGINATED WITHIN A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER IT WAS COMPOSED … Irenaeus (AD 150), and the African Fathers, and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephens thirteen centuries later, when moulding the Received Text” (Scrivener, Introduction to New Testament Criticism, 3rd edition, p. 511). And John Burgon adds: “WE KNOW THAT ORIGEN IN PALESTINE, LUCIAN AT ANTIOCH, HESCHIUS IN EGYPT, ‘REVISED’ THE TEXT OF THE N.T. Unfortunately, they did their work in an age when such fatal misapprehension prevailed on the subject, that each in turn will have inevitably imported a fresh assortment of monstra into the sacred writings. Add, the baneful influence of such spirits as Theophilus (sixth Bishop of Antioch, A.D. 168), Tatian, Ammonius, &c., of whom there must have been a vast number in the primitive age,--some of whose productions, we know for certain, were freely multiplied in every quarter of ancient Christendom:--add, the fabricated gospels which anciently abounded ... and WE HAVE SUFFICIENTLY EXPLAINED HOW IT COMES TO PASS THAT NOT A FEW OF THE CODICES OF ANCIENT CHRISTENDOM MUST HAVE EXHIBITED A TEXT WHICH WAS EVEN SCANDALOUSLY CORRUPT” (The Revision Revised, pp. 29, 30).

Robinson says: “Some authentic ‘Majority Text’ advocates have been unfairly lumped with this extreme position, even though these individuals have made it plain that they are not in sympathy with such an absurd agenda. The present writer desires to make it absolutely clear that he is not tied to such an agenda in any way” (Maurice Robinson, “The Case for the Byzantine Textform: A New Approach to ‘Majority Text’ Theory,” Southeastern Regional Meeting, Evangelical Theological Society, at Toccoa Falls College, March 8-9, 1991).

Comment: The position that God’s people held in the Reformation and that was common until the late 19th century, that God had preserved the Scriptures in the Greek Received Text, is called “absurd” by Robinson. Consider, for example, the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1648: “The Old Testament in Hebrew . . . and the New Testament in Greek . . . being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.” The Presbyterian authors of this confession were referring to the Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek Received Text. This statement on preservation was affirmed by Baptists in the London Confession of 1677 as well as the Philadelphia of 1742. Men of God in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries believed in divine preservation AS IT APPLIED TO THE SCRIPTURES THEY POSSESSED IN THE MASORETIC HEBREW AND THE GREEK RECEIVED TEXT. But to the modern textual critic, who has drank too deeply from the wells of unbelieving modern biblical scholarship, this is absurd and extreme.

The plain teaching of the Scriptures on divine preservation is also in conflict with the position of Harry Sturz, author of The Byzantine Text-Type.

Sturz argues against making the doctrine of preservation a corollary or consequence of inspiration. “It should be pointed out that providential preservation is not a necessary consequence of inspiration. Preservation of the Word of God is promised in Scripture, and inspiration and preservation are related doctrines, but they are distinct from each other, and there is a danger in making one the necessary corollary of the other. The Scriptures do not do this. God, having given the perfect revelation by verbal inspiration, was under no special or logical obligation to see that man did not corrupt it” (The Byzantine Text-Type, p. 38).

Sturz’s statement is strangely contradictory. To say that preservation is promised in the Bible and is therefore a doctrine and then to say that God is under no special obligation to preserve the Scripture is to speak nonsense. This confusing, nonsensical position is the place that every professing evangelical or fundamentalist is driven when he attempts to reconcile modern textual criticism, which is a secular and non-faith practice, with his biblical faith.

Sturz’s statement is also misguided and off target. He misrepresents the position of John Burgon and Edward Hills. They would have agreed with Sturz that inspiration and preservation are not exactly the same. The way that Sturz defines preservation as a corollary of inspiration is contrary to how Burgon and Hills defined it. It is a straw man. They defined preservation as a corollary of inspiration in the sense that it is reasonable and scriptural to assume that the God who gave an infallible Scripture would preserve it so that it was not lost, but they did not define preservation as a corollary of inspiration in the sense that every manuscript would be kept from error or any such thing.

In claiming that we should not tie inspiration and preservation together, Sturz is rejecting the godly faith held by God’s people in centuries past. The Westminster Confession of Faith of 1648, which was repeated in the London Baptist Confession of 1677 and the Philadelphia Confession of 1742, stated that the Old and New Testament Scriptures are “immediately inspired by God and “BY HIS SINGULAR CARE AND PROVIDENCE, KEPT PURE IN ALL AGES.” Francis Turretin, professor of theology at Geneva and prominent Reformed Protestant leader, said in 1674: “Nor can we readily believe that God, who dictated and inspired each and every word to these inspired men, would not take care of their entire preservation.” John Owen, English Puritan leader, said in about 1670, “But yet we affirm, that the whole Word of God, in every letter and tittle, as given from him by inspiration, is preserved without corruption.” In each case, these confessions were tied to the Greek Received Text that was in common use in those days.

Sturz bases his argument against tying together inspiration and preservation on the fact that the manuscript record has varieties, even within the Byzantine text tradition. “One danger of such a position is that the faith of some has been weakened when they have become aware of variant readings in the manuscripts precisely because they have confounded preservation with inspiration. ... He did not stipulate in the Scriptures that He would keep Christian scribes from error or that the text-type with the most copies would be the best text” (The Byzantine Text-Type, p. 38).

Faith is based strictly upon God’s promises and is the opposite of sight. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). To interpret the Bible by “the record” is the same mistake that the evolutionist commits. This is backwards. The record, whether of fossils or of biblical manuscripts, can only properly be interpreted through the eyes of faith in the Scriptures.

Sturz presents a strawman when he says that God did not stipulate that He would keep scribes from error. To my knowledge, no defender of the King James Bible has made such a claim. Sturz is critiquing John Burgon and Edward Hills, and it is certain that neither of these men made this claim. We know that scribes were not kept from error. The promise of preservation is not a claim that every copier of Scripture would become infallible or that God would not allow any corruption to enter the manuscript record. Preservation does not guarantee that God would keep the Scriptures from the assault from devils and heretics but that He would keep the Scriptures through that assault, and we believe that this is exactly what we see in history. God allowed periods of great assault upon the Scripture, especially during the first two centuries after the apostles. It was during this age that the heretical Alexandrian text was created, but it did not succeed in taking over the apostolic text and was effectively put on a shelf, where it sat almost entirely unused thereafter. God also allowed Rome to dominate the world for many hundreds of years and during that dark age the free transmission of the Bible was greatly restricted and though the light was never put out, it did not shine as brightly and freely during those days. Yet in spite of the fact that the Bible had to go through that era of fierce persecution and picked up some minor corruption along the way, we believe that God brought it out of those dark times intact. He used the Reformation editors and translators to dust it off, so to speak, to perfect those few blemishes that had crept in, and to put it into print in mint condition so that it could be preached throughout the world during an amazing period of end-time missionary work, a period that has stretched to our very day. In my view, this position is in perfect conformity with the doctrine of preservation we find in Scripture.

Sturz presents another strawman when he says that God did not stipulate that the text-type with the most copies would be the best text. We agree that God did not stipulate that and we don’t know of any King James defender who has made such a claim. Certainly John Burgon and Edward Hills did not, and these are the men Sturz is critiquing. Burgon used a seven-fold test to determine the genuineness of Scripture within the manuscript record (antiquity, consent of witnesses, variety of evidence, respectability of witnesses, continuity, context, internal considerations). Hills taught that the preserved text is not a mere majority text but that the testimony of the majority of Greek manuscripts is only the starting place for determining the apostolic text. He showed that the Reformation editors, while revering the traditional or majority Greek text, also looked to the witness of ancient versions and that they understood the importance of Latin as a witness.

Sturz says the variety among the Byzantine or traditional Greek manuscripts disproves the doctrine that makes preservation the consequence of inspiration. “... the theory is on shaky ground due to the fact that even the Byzantine text with its high degree of homogeneity is composite...” (p. 39).

No one denies that such a variety exists, but this does not overthrow the doctrine of preservation as a consequence of inspiration. The doctrine of preservation is not that every Scripture manuscript would be as infallible as the original but that the infallible text would not be destroyed or lost.

The doctrine of preservation teaches us that the infallible Scripture is recoverable, discernable within the manuscript record. This was what the Reformation editors believed, and when they published the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek Received New Testament they were confident that they had recovered the infallible text from the manuscript record.

The vast majority of “varieties” within the traditional text manuscripts are of the nature of obvious scribal errors and these are not difficult to detect and correct. It is not rocket science, when comparing manuscripts, to know that a misspelled word is a misspelled word or that an accidentally omitted line is an omitted line. For example, the word “Bethesda” (Jn. 5:2) is spelled 30 different ways in various Greek manuscripts (The Revision Revised, p. 5).

Sturz makes the mistake common to textual critics in that he claims that the Bible does not tell us how God would preserve His Word. Sturz quotes Hills, “God must preserve this text, not secretly, not hidden away ... but openly before the eyes of all men through the continuous usage of His Church,” and then asks, “Where is the proof of this necessity upon God?”

The proof of Hills’ assertion is found throughout the New Testament. It is found in Christ’s Great Commission, in which He instructed the churches to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth and to establish believers in the “all things” that He has commanded until the end of the age (Mat. 28:19-20). It is found in the book of Acts and in the Epistles, wherein we see the apostles carrying out these exact instructions. This is the “how” of preservation in the church age. In the Old Testament dispensation, God used the Jews to preserve His Word (Rom. 3:1-2). In the New Testament dispensation, God uses the churches in the context of the Great Commission. This is a doctrine that is as clearly taught as anything in the Bible, but it is entirely overlooked by modern textual critics.

To claim, as modern textual criticism does, that the alleged purest New Testament text (the Alexandrian text) was rejected for 1,500 years of church history and that a corrupt recension of the Scripture (the Traditional Reformation text) was promulgated in the churches during that era and that the purest Scripture was kept locked away in a couple of strange and remote monasteries and in the Pope’s library and not “recovered” until the 19th century, is not ANY KIND OF preservation! Such a position has no practicality whatsoever. If God did promise to preserve His Word, such a position is ridiculous upon its very face. I admit that there are questions that I cannot answer in regard to the position I hold on preservation, but the problems I have are AS NOTHING when compared to those of the textual critic.

In contrast to the rationalistic position of modern textual criticism, even in its more benign Majority Text form, we commend the faith position of Edward F. Hills.

Dr. Hills followed in the footsteps of men like John Burgon but he also broke new ground in the 1950s when he began writing on the subject of the Bible’s text. He had a doctorate in textual criticism from Harvard, yet he rejected the skeptical premises of textual criticism and set out to establish his principles strictly upon the Word of God and to walk by faith even if that meant going against the entire field of modern textual criticism. And it did!

As a result he was held up in ridicule by textual critics (those few who have given him the time of day), but he was willing to bear that reproach. For a man with his intelligence and credentials, that is a rare and commendable characteristic. He was more desirous of hearing the “well done, good and faithful servant” from the lips of his Saviour than to bask in the praise of men in this world. He trembled more at the words of God than at the reprobation of the scholarly world.

Hills understood that the philosophy of modern textual criticism is antagonistic to the principle of faith and that if left unchallenged it will always overthrow faith eventually. He carefully documented the intimate association between so-called higher and lower criticism, between theological modernism and modern textual criticism. (For that groundbreaking work alone he should be commended by men like Pickering who claim to believe the Bible.)

Consider the following important statements from Hills’ pen:

“For in the realm of New Testament textual criticism as well as in other fields the presuppositions of modern thought are hostile to the historic Christian faith and will destroy it if their fatal operation is not checked. IF FAITHFUL CHRISTIANS, THEREFORE, WOULD DEFEND THEIR SACRED RELIGION AGAINST THIS DANGER, THEY MUST FORSAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF UNBELIEVING THOUGHT AND BUILD UPON THEIR FAITH, a faith that rests entirely on the solid rock of holy Scripture. And when they do this in the sphere of New Testament textual criticism, THEY WILL FIND THEMSELVES LED BACK STEP BY STEP (PERHAPS, AT FIRST, AGAINST THEIR WILLS) TO THE TEXT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, NAMELY, THAT FORM OF NEW TESTAMENT TEXT WHICH UNDERLIES THE KING JAMES VERSION and the other early Protestant translations” (Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th edition, p. 1).

“If we believe in the providential preservation of the New Testament text, then we must defend the Textus Receptus as well as the Traditional Text found in the majority of the Greek manuscripts. For the Textus Receptus is the only form in which this Traditional Text has circulated in print. TO DECLINE TO DEFEND THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS IS TO GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT GOD’S PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT CEASED WITH THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. It is to suppose that God, having preserved a pure New Testament text all during the manuscript period, unaccountably left this pure text hiding in the manuscripts and allowed an inferior text to issue from the printing press and circulate among His people for more than 450 years” (Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th edition, p. 192).

Thus Hills went farther than John Burgon or Frederick Scrivener, who “looked askance at the Textus Receptus and declined to defend it except in so far as it agreed with the Traditional Text found in the majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts.”

I could not agree with Dr. Hills more. I believe that the Greek Received Text that has been the missionary text for centuries is the infallible, preserved Scripture. If it cannot be said that God has put His stamp of approval upon the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament and the Greek Received New Testament and the King James Bible in English (and other faithful translations of those texts in various languages), I don’t see how we can ever have confidence in tracing the hand of God in the providential preservation of Scripture. I am glad that the doctrine of Preservation allows me to reject the Majority Text view. I’m glad that we are not still waiting for the Apostolic Text to be dug out of the heap of manuscripts through computer technology. I am glad that my quest is not to find the Scripture but to obey it and to fulfill its Great Commission.

CONCLUSION

1. While the Majority Text claims to be a preliminary step in the refining of the alleged imperfect Received Text, we believe it is actually a step away from the preserved Word of God.

2. The men who are leading in this are not modernists. They do not deny the infallible inspiration of Scripture or hold to heretical documentary theories (at least, to our knowledge), but this does not mean they are correct in their views. Actually, the very fact that the editors and consultants for The Majority Text are men who believe in biblical inerrancy makes their work even more dangerous. It is much more difficult to convince God’s people of the error of good men that to convince them of the error of bad ones!

3. For a more extensive study on the Majority Text see “When the KJV Departs from the ‘Majority’ Text: A New Twist in the Continuing Attack on the Authorized Version” by Jack Moorman. This 154 page book is available from Bible for Today, 900 Park Ave., Collingswood, NJ 08108, 800-564-6109, http://www.BibleForToday.org.