Buffeting History

The exchange with Kent over his view of the TR/KJV has caused me to go fetch Wilbur Pickering’s the Identity of the New Testament Text (which, incidentally, is out of print), and I have been paging through his arguments for the priority of the Byzantine text type.

Here’s the place where I couldn’t take it anymore. Between pages 129 and 134, Pickering tries to answer the question of why there is no early witness to the Byzantine text family earlier in the archeological record. Now, I kid you not, his argument is three-fold:

[1] The early Byzantine-type texts wore out, which is why you can’t find them – in the same way that you can’t really find any small churches in Europe of the medieval period but you can find cathedrals, (because the small churches fell apart and were never repaired) you can’t find any Byzantine manuscripts because they wore out with use and were destroyed after they were copied.

[2] The reason for seeing other text types is that they were abandoned and not used, therefore they were better preserved.

[3] However, the reason that the Alexandrian text type isn’t well-represented in the later texts is that it was abandoned by the churches as inferior.

Now, yeah: I know. Plenty to blog about there. Let’s remember that this is an out-of-print book which is representing what I have already called a cultic view of the text of the Greek NT. What I want to do is show you something about the history of the church here.

Look at this map:

That’s a Google map of the Mediterranean region, with drop-pin “A” as the site of actual Alexandria – the locus classicus (as they say) of the Alexandrian text type. The purple stuff is the penetration of the Christian church in this region c. 500AD, more or less. And by “more or less”, I didn’t attempt to do a city clock by city block census of the ancient world to make sure I had all the hard lines drawn.

But I provide that to show that the Christian church in 500 AD had a very broad geographic expanse in a world where there was no blogs, no radio or TV, no newspapers or moveable type, and the means of mass producing paper didn’t exist. That is to say: that’s a big world in which to communicate with quill pens and scrolls and the primary means of spreading the New Testament around. They didn’t have a 50-cent ESV to had out.

In that, it’s not surprising that the text of the NT had some variation from place to place and church to church. Unless someone is willing to say (and they are) that much of this map is actually populated with non-churches which were proliferating non-scripture in order to create non-orthodoxy, if you walked around the Christian world in 500 AD what you’d find is a certain diversity of text-types. The archeological record is clear on that.

Now, look at this map:

And think about this – this is the same region in 800 AD, only 300 years later. The blue stuff is the encroachment of Islam on the Christian world – and as you can see, Alexandria is plainly over-run by 800 AD. It’s not a massive surprise, then, that by 800AD the Alexandrian text type is almost non-existent by 800 AD: those who were using it were being, um, evangelized by Islam, and the Christian texts they had previously revered were being discarded and frankly destroyed by the religious policies of Islam.

That state of affairs was true well into the 19th century, which is when archeological research was able to recover many texts which represented what those churches had in terms of religious texts.

Now, here’s my point: whether you buy Pickering’s point [1] or [2], his point [3] is so far-fetched when compared to what historically happened as to rate as the worst kind of historical revisionism. If his view is that it is as-likely for a text type to survive under severe persecution as it is to survive under the official sanction of the government, I think he needs to thinkl about what he’s saying, and what part of history he is talking about.

On with you. History is not a buffet. You must eat your vegetables and not just the Jello and the pudding.

5000 years in 90 seconds

Many of you will have seen this before, but here's a brief history of the major religions of the world:



Now, believe it or not, thius actually has something to do with the KJV argument that's going on in and around the blog right now. Stay tuned.

Just something else to keep it spicy

This is the third anniversay of Hurricane Katrina, remeber? "K"atrina -- meaning the ABCDEFGHIJ(k)-11th tropical storm/hurricane of 2005 happened at the end of August in 2005.

We're tracking tropical storm "G"ustav today at the end of August, 2008. That means we only had ABCDEF(g)-7 tropical storm events in 2008 in the same period. Not to get all statistical and everything with you, but that means we have had 36.36% fewer tropical depressions this year, ytd.

Because the end is near, people. There's a crisis, and we have to do something about it.

Hey Russellville, AR!

Where do you go to church?

Wow.

Somehow, John McCain has the ticket which, superficially, looks like the greater change from the status quo. Will Hillary voters choose a woman Veep -- which is its own kind of historical first -- over Barack Obama?

Personally, I am looking forward to the Veep debates. It's on baby. I hate that these are the choices we have left, but it is on, and it's all going to be fought in the battle for the center.

Hey: wake up

I know many of you have already nodded off in considering the dust-up here with Kent over the TR, and for that I apologize. You come here to think about the Gospel and apply it to the things you encounter in real life, and that's good.

It turns out that Kent's view of the Bible is something you will encounter in real life, and the Gospel is ultimately the solution to that, too, so we have to spend some more bandwidth on it for a little while.

A great article on what's at stake and how we should approach that question can be found here, by Dr. Daniel Wallace.

Enjoy that while I get my self together over here.

lose/lose/lose

Just read this post.

There are no comments I can make which will add any value to that. You can read that post and ponder why such a thing is happening.

HT: Doug Wilson

ne becomes somewhat indifferent when dealing with those whom every word offends. I notice that, when I have measured my words, and weighed my sentences most carefully, I have then offended most; while some of my stronger utterances have passed unnoticed. Therefore, I am comparatively careless as to how my expressions may be received, and only anxious that they may be in themselves just and true.

-- Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, pp. 282-283

The KJV Cult

Some of you may be following the little bruhaha at TeamPyro over the origin of Scripture as it relates to God's sovereignty, which I thought was going to go one way and it has gone somewhat another.

But, of course, because Phil mentioned Scripture, Kent Brandenberg showed up to wave the flag of KJVO/TR enthusiasm, and I called his belief "cultic". He, of course, isn't pleased with that label because, by Beza, that's the confessional position -- I'm the one with bizarre beliefs because I think that the historical record shows that Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza and others all edited the TR over time so that even if we call the 3rd edition of Erasmus' TR the actual TR, we have the problem that this is not the textus we receptus today.

Why call Kent's view "cultic"? I mean: there are lots of ways to say he's got a mistaken belief -- why up the ante and say, "Kent, do you realize that your ethusiasm for one eclectic text and one specific translation has gone from preference to demand to obsession?"

You know: because there's nothing wrong with the KJV if you receive it as a flawed translation. I mean: every translation has flaws, doesn't it? The KJV translators certainly thought so -- they had a very cautious approach to saying that their work ought to be held up as the ultimate version in English. But to get to the place where the NIV and the NASB are not just flawed but devil-inspired because God must have preserved the Greek and Hebrew perfectly in the edition of the TR which the KJV translators used ... seems a little wide-eyed to me.

Here's why I called Kent's view "cultic", and you can say what you want about that opinion in the meta: Kent is willing to say things about the process which produced the TR which he is not willing to say about the same process when it produces the UBS4 or the NA27. When the same process is called "divine" in the first pass and "satanic" in the second or third or 10th pass, you know that something fishy is afoot.

Something akin to "[a] great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad [b]: the object of such devotion [c]: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion."

You see what I am saying? Be with the Lord's people in the Lord's house on the Lord's day, and try not to look too far down your nose at the ones not using the translation you're using. Worry more about whether the words of Moses are telling you about the savior both you and the other guy need equally.

¿yo no se?

Apparently, even Mexico believes that Global Warming is a past fad. Forgive that link's interesting English as it is the Google translation of the page.