We have 267 Greek Uncials (text written in capital letters, also called "majuscules", designated by "MSS"), none of which is complete. Pages, chapters, and even books are missing. Of course some are in much better condition than others. Only nine of these support the Westcott-Hort critical text upon which the new radical Greek text was based (merely 3%) whereas 258 (97%) support the Greek Received Text.1
There are 2,764 Greek cursive manuscripts (written in small letters, designated by "mss"), often called "minuscules". Thus most of the Greek witnesses to the true text of the New Testament are the Greek cursives. Merely twenty-three (1%) sustain the W-H readings which are the Greek foundation of nearly all the modern translations while 2,741 (99%) uphold the Received Text.2
We also have 2,143 Greek lectionaries (from a Latin root meaning "to read", manuscripts containing Scripture lessons which were read publicly in the churches from at least A.D. 400 until the time of the invention of printing).3 All (100%) of them support the Received Text which underlies the King James Bible.4 This gives us a total of 5,262 Greek witnesses to the true text of the New Testament of which 5,217 or ninety-nine percent are in agreement. This group dates from the fifth century on. The remainder not only disagree with the 99% majority but disagree among themselves. Nevertheless, these few have controlled the camp of academia for the past one hundred years. The question, of course, is how can this be how did such come to happen? This will be answered in the following chapters, but first a proper foundation must be laid.
BASIC DEFINITIONS
It is important to understand the meaning of "lower" and "higher" textual criticism with regard to the Bible. In Biblical studies the word "criticism" is not faultfinding, but in the etymological sense it refers to distinguishing, deciding, judging or forming a judgment.
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Higher criticism is a study of the origin and character of the individual books of the Bible which seeks to determine by whom, under what circumstances, at what time, and with what design and/or purpose they were written. By a study of historical facts and the internal evidence of the various books, the higher critic seeks to find the circumstances of their origin or source. Higher criticism can readily go wrong if the critic is purely subjective or governed solely by his imagination.
- Lower criticism (or textual criticism) means that we attempt to determine the text itself from a study of the various Greek manuscripts, old versions, lectionaries etc. currently available, and their history. Because it is the foundation, it is referred to as "lower criticism". It is the first task. With the aid of these ancient manuscripts and versions, the textual critic seeks to bring the text to the highest possible level of accuracy. In sharp contrast to higher criticism, lower criticism deals with the concrete phenomena of actual readings found in manuscripts.
ERASMUS RESTORES THE RECEIVED TEXT (GREEK)
The Greek upon which the King James translation was based was first printed in A.D. 1516 at Basle, Switzerland, under the editorship of the famous Dutchman, Desiderius Erasmus. As a Scholar, Erasmus was without peer – the intellectual giant of Europe in his day. Erasmus was ever at work, visiting libraries, collecting, comparing, writing and publishing.5 Europe was rocked by his
1 D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, op. cit., p. 55.
2 Ibid.
3 John W. Burgon, The London Quarterly Review, (October): 1881.
4 Waite, Defending the King James Bible, op. cit., p. 55.
5 D.O. Fuller (ed.), Which Bible?, 3rd ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: International Pub., 1972), pp. 225-226. The material in the next two paragraphs are also derived from these same pages of Dr. Fuller's classic exposure.
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