Of course, unlike the great whore of Rome with its Pope for final decision making, no consensus has emerged from the critics/University explaining what the Bible means as only a "religious" book. To the contrary, the text is in a state of continuous flux, vacillating between the opinions of enormous egos. In this rarefied atmosphere on the edge of Olympus, every man does "that which" is "right in his own eyes" (Jud.21:25).

It is no longer a matter of the different methods used by Church and Academy in studying the Bible; it is a matter of totally different views and goals. This has resulted in a revolt (within the Academy as well!) over the loss of sacred text and a call to recognize the Bible as a book sui generis (unique, in a class all its own).1 It is time for the Church to reclaim its God-given deposit. The Bible is the Church's book! This must begin at the grass roots – laymen to the fore if our shepherds continue to sleep, intimidated by so-called science (I Tim.6:20), respecting men's person – unwilling to humble their intellects before God and stand in faith.

Such will not be an easy matter apart from intervention from the Lord. The Academy is awake and determined to keep the theologians from quietly "stealing" their Bible back fearing that the Church will again shroud it in medieval-like canonical authority, in the name of "Biblical theology".

Thus there has been a transition from the Bible as sacred text deposited and lodged in the bosom of the Church, to the Bible as viewed as only religious text – and just as firmly centered in the University. The rejection of the Latin Vulgate, the sacred text of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, by Erasmus and Valla2 as being corrupt, gutted the Vulgate of sacred status.3 Rome countered with decrees at Trent (1546) relevant to Jerome's Vulgate in an effort to recapture its standing as sacred text. When by the nineteenth century this failed, the Trent undertaking was, in effect, replaced by the 1870 Vatican I decree which conferred infallibility to the Pope.4

As a result of this ongoing struggle which had its inception at the division of the "Christian" community into the Eastern and Western entities and the ensuing developments to which we have alluded, the war continues. It has merely shifted alignments. Rather than East versus West, it has evolved into battles between the Church and the Academy in determining what constitutes the correct New Testament text.

TEXT CRITICISM TODAY - THE AGE OF MINISCULES5

It may come as a surprise, but only a relative few of the 3,000 plus manuscripts now cataloged have been collated (to collect, compare carefully in order to verify and often to integrate).6 The same is true concerning the 2,143 extant lectionaries. Such collation has been limited to the papyri fragments, older uncials, and those cursives which give some support for the Alexandrian (A-B) text. Except for a few cursory checks, the vast majority has been ignored. The reason is that the

1 Letis, "Brevard Childs and the Protestant Dogmaticians", op. cit., p. 6.

2 Lorenzo Valla (c.1406-1457) was an ordained Italian priest, perhaps the most brilliant mind of the Renaissance. He was one of the first exponents of modern historical criticism. Utilizing those skills, he exposed the spurious character of the "Donation of Constantine" – a document that allegedly proved that Constantine had given central Italy over to papal control when he moved the Roman capital to the East. Valla demonstrated the Donation was an 8th century forgery and thus could not be used to support papal claims to temporal power. This exposé also contained a bitter attack on the temporal power of the Papacy. He undertook a critical comparison between the Latin Vulgate and the Greek N.T. Valla had a deep influence on Renaissance scholars and also on the Reformers, especially on Erasmus and Martin Luther.

3 Letis, p. 7 in a December 1988 formal correspondence to this author in which he outlined his doctoral dissertation approach.

4 Ibid.

5 Moorman, When The KJV Departs From The "Majority" Text, op. cit., pp. 4-27. Much of the data included under this subtitle has been taken from Moorman's excellent publication.

6 Ibid., p. 4.

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