Which Version Is The Bible? Page 90

The hard fact is there is not one mention of such an ecclesiastical revision in all history. Indeed, the emphasis on this cornerstone of the W-H theory has been abandoned by most present-day scholars. Colwell acknowledged this when he wrote: "The universal and ruthless dominance of the middle ages by one texttype is now recognized as a myth. ... [the] invaluable pioneer work of von Soden greatly weakened the dogma of the dominance of a homogeneous Syrian text. But the fallacy received its death blow at the hands of Professor [Kirsopp] Lake. ... he annihilated the theory that the middle ages were ruled by a single recension which attained a high degree of uniformity."¹ Over 20 years earlier Kenyon had noted that there was no historical evidence that the Traditional Text had been created by a conference of ancient scholars: "We know the names of several revisers of the Septuagint and the Vulgate, and it would be strange if historians and Church writers had all omitted to record or mention such an event as the deliberate revision of the New Testament in its original Greek."²

With so much early Church history recorded both by Christian and by secular sources, it is difficult to believe that such an important event as a major revision of the Holy Writings could have taken place over such an extended span of time without any mention having been recorded. Furthermore, Lucian was an Arian³ - an outspoken one - and NEVER would have favored readings exalting and deifying Jesus. The reality is that the so-called "Syrian" readings are the true readings and others have subtracted from them.

The ultimate triumph of the Textus Receptus began in the fourth century as the great conflict with the Arian heresy brought orthodox Christianity to a climax.⁴ This is when and why the Textus Receptus began to overtake and dominate completely the rival erroneous manuscripts. Finally, in the middle ages in every land there was a trend toward the orthodox "Syrian" text. However, ever since the days of Griesbach, naturalistic textual critics have tried to explain away this dominion of the Textus Receptus readings by attributing its ascendancy to some monastic piety.⁵ In other words, during the middle ages the monks in the Greek monasteries invented⁶ the orthodox readings of the text and then multiplied copies of the texts until it finally achieved supremacy. Yet, as Hills pointed out, if that were true the text would not have remained orthodox because that kind of piety would have included such errors as Mary worship and the worship of the saints, images and pictures.⁷ Dr. Hills continues: "But as a matter of fact, no such heretical readings occur in the Traditional Text."⁸

1 E.C. Colwell, "The Complex Character of the Late Byzantine Text of the Gospels", Journal of Biblical Literature, LIV (1935): pp. 212-213.

2 Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 2nd ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1951; original prt. 1912), p. 302. Kenyon was Director of the British Museum & N.T. text critic.

3 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 90. Yet despite this and the former cited statements by Colwell concerning von Soden's and Lake's findings as well as Kenyon's 1912 conclusion, as late as 1968 Bruce Metzger was still incredulously continuing to perpetuate the W-H party line in affirming that the "Byzantine" text is based on a recension most probably prepared by Lucian of Antioch (The Text of the New Testament, op. cit., p. 212).

4 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 185.

5 Ibid., p. 188.

6 Or resurrected them from the Syrian readings which had resulted from the supposed "Lucian Recension".

7 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 188.

8 Ibid., p. 189.

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