Trading Truth for Certainty

P46 - one of the earliest New Testament Manuscripts dating from 175-225AD

I listen fairly regularly to James White's YouTube channel, The Dividing Line. For those who don't know, Dr White is an American Reformed Baptist best known for his apologetics ministry and his many debates with Mormons, Muslims, Roman Catholics and others. One area where White has debated many times is King James Onlyism. This is a spectrum of views prevalent in certain sections of American evangelicalism ranging from the belief that the King James Version is the only translation we should use because it is the best, through to more whacky views such as the KJV was itself inspired by God and therefore takes precedence even over the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. 

James White has argued against these views for many years and his book, The King James Only Controversy is a leading work in refuting such views. I commend that book to you if this is an area you are concerned about. White defends the scholarly eclectic Greek New Testament text that underlies most modern translations since 1881, over the Textus Receptus of the 15th century on which the King James Version was based.

In a discussion on King James Onlyism, James White used a phrase that has stuck with me since I heard it. He said that those who defend the King James Version and the Textus Receptus Greek text underlying its New Testament have traded truth for certainty. 

What an interesting concept! Trading truth for certainty. I think White is correct in pointing his finger right at this spot on KJV Onlyism. The issues are complex, but in essence, a theme emerges in most KJV-only advocates. They believe the text of Scripture is God-breathed and therefore infallible and inerrant. And these beliefs are good and true—and shared with almost all evangelicals including James White and myself. But there's a problem. 

The fact that for the first 1500 years of its existence, the text of the New Testament was copied by hand, first from the original autographs (the actual manuscripts written by the apostles) and then onwards, copies from copies, to produce thousands of copies of the New Testament used all over the churches of Africa, Asia and Europe. Indeed, it wasn't till the invention of the photocopier in 1949 that human beings had the capacity to reproduce exactly a written text from one copy to another. Each time a document, particularly a lengthy document like a book, is hand copied, even when done with great care, mistakes are made. It is unavoidable.

At the present time we have over 5000 of these ancient manuscripts still in existence and no two copies are identical. This means that the Greek text of the New Testament has many textual variants or readings in certain verses. Far from being a source of disappointment or doubt, this is actually a wonderful example of God's providential care of the text of the Bible. These 5000 Greek manuscripts, as well as thousands of manuscripts in Latin and other ancient languages, some of almost all the New Testament, some fragments of just a few verses are a tremendous witness to the true text of the New Testament. The New Testament is by far the best attested work of antiquity, but there are still textual variants that exist.

I don't want to overemphasise these differences. Most variants do not affect the meaning, especially in English translation, because most variants are things like word order, spellings, and omissions or additions of words that don't affect or even show up in translation. We can be certain of around 98-99% of the text of the New Testament. But that leaves 1-2% where the variants do reflect differences in meanings that would affect translations.

The King James Version, translated in 1611, was based on the Textus Receptus - the form of the Greek text published in the 16th century. That Greek text reflected the Greek manuscripts Erasus, Stephanus and Beza had to work with at that time. And it is in the main a Greek text reflected in the majority of Greek manuscripts in existence, but most are late in date, from around 1000-1400 AD.

In centuries after the KJV was published, many earlier manuscripts have been discovered. Though there are fewer of them, we now have manuscripts that go back to the 3rd or 4th century AD, some as early as maybe a hundred years after the apostles wrote the originals.

The questions for textual scholars is always "What did the apostles actually write?" Although I'm simplifying a bit, in general the issue is whether the correct reading in a textual variant is to be found in a smaller number of early manuscripts, written closer to the time of the apostles, or in the larger number of later manuscripts, written nearly a thousand years or more later. The scholarly decision on these issues can be difficult and complex, involving careful detective work both on external evidence—the age and quality of the manuscripts themselves—and internal evidence regarding the language itself, to decide what was the most likely original text based on many different factors.

Now, here is where the issue of trading truth for certainty comes in. The KJV-only advocates want to be absolutely certain of the content of their God-breathed, infallible text, and so they basically say that textual questions were settled in the Textus Receptus. They tend to argue that God providentially arranged that text to be the basis of the translations produced at the Reformation (including the KJV though it was a bit later) and regard other variants as deviant.

So they can have a text with certainty. But in doing so they having traded off against truth. For the truth is that the textual variants do exist, and the fact is that the earlier manuscripts though clearly bearing witness to largely the same New Testament text, does tend to be slightly shorter and contain perhaps more "difficult" readings.

Perhaps a few examples might be helpful at this point to show the kind of differences that exist. In these examples "TR/MT" means the Textus Receptus or Majority Text and "CT" means the eclectic Critical Text with the key words in bold.

Matthew 6:13 (The last part of the Lord's Prayer):

TR/MT: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen."

CT: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." (Omits the rest of the verse)

John 1.18

TR/MT: "No one has seen God at any time. The one and only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known."

CT: "No one has seen God at any time. The one and only [who is] God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known."

John 3:13

TR/MT: "No one has ascended to heaven except him who descended from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is in heaven."

CT: "No one has ascended to heaven except him who descended from heaven, even the Son of Man." (omits the last phrase)

1 Timothy 3:16

TR/MT: "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was revealed in the flesh..."

CT: "Great is the mystery of godliness: [He] who was revealed in the flesh..."

There are hundreds of similar textual variants throughout the New Testament. Most modern translations include one reading in the main text and one or more variants in footnotes, allowing the reader to see the main variants and decide which they think was the original reading. We can be reasonably certain that the original is either in the main text or the footnotes. This option essentially trades certainty for truth. The alternative, as advocated by many in the KJV-only side of the debate, is to just have the KJV text with no textual variants in footnotes, choosing an apparent certainty over the truth.

As I believe I will have made clear, I think we should favour truth over a false or apparent certainty.