Logan, I appreciate that this is where you are stuck: “[It] cannot be true [that he held ‘a TR-only position’] if Owen said that those variants yet to be discovered, out of ancient and creditable manuscripts, would deserve to be considered. It commits Owen to more than he took a stand for.”
And you give this saying of his:
“Notwithstanding what hath been spoken, we grant that there are and have been various lections in the Old Testament and the New…
[listing of some] If any others can be gathered, or shall be hereafter, out of ancient copies of credit and esteem, where no
mistake can be discovered as their cause, they deserve to be considered...All that yet appears impairs not in the least the truth of our
assertion, that every letter and tittle of the word of God remains in the copies preserved by his merciful providence for the use of his church.”
This quote is from pp 358-359 in the hardcopy. In the intervening ellipsis of that quoted he says, “Let any one run them through as they are presented in this Appendix, he will find them to be so small, consisting for the most part in unnecessary accents, of no importance to the sense of any word, that they deserve not to be taken notice of.” A little further he restates Cappellus’ opinion that “they are all trivial, and not in matters of any moment. Besides these, there are no other various lections of the Old Testament.” You will note he is speaking here only of the Hebrew. And then he gives the piece you present, “
If any others can be gathered, or shall be hereafter, out of ancient copies of credit and esteem, where no mistake can be discovered as their cause, they deserve to be considered.” [emphasis added]
It will serve us to know what the word “consider” means? “To take into view in examination. . . to observe and examine” reads Webster’s 1828 Dictionary; and what is Owen’s use of it? Does he mean, “Consider for inclusion into – and possibly
displace – the common readings, if it be found worthy” ? Or does he simply mean, “observe and examine”? How may we arrive at an understanding? An hermeneutical principle in expositing Scripture is to interpret the unclear in light of the clear (not vice versa), and so may we do in this instance.
For one, this quote of his you mentioned surely militates against non-Byz / TR lections being included into the text, as he insisted “that every letter and tittle of the word of God remains in the copies preserved by his merciful providence for the use of his church”. We will look in a moment what copies these might be.
As I brought up in post #128, Owen gives us a further look at his view of the contents of the Appendix:
As, then, I shall not speak any thing to derogate from the worth of their labour who have gathered all these various readings into one body or volume, so I presume I may take liberty without offence to say, I should more esteem of theirs who would endeavour to search and trace out these pretenders to their several originals, and, rejecting the spurious brood that hath now spawned itself over the face of so much paper, that ought by no means to be brought into competition with the common reading, would reduce them to such a necessary number, whose consideration might be of some other use than merely to create a temptation to the reader that nothing is left sound and entire in the word of God (pp 363, 364).
He again emphasizes that these variants “ought by no means to be brought into competition with the common reading”. But what does he mean by a thoroughly culled number “whose consideration might be of some other use than merely to create a temptation”? If it were of the Vulgate, or sundry translations or versions, or perhaps even Codex D (Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis which Beza gave to Cambridge University and did not use himself, so corrupt did he reckon it), or Vaticanus (of which Professor Paulus Bombasius at Rome sent Erasmus many readings), think you he would have availed himself of any of these and their variants? For these were they which Rome sought to use to destroy the Reformation’s weapon against them: Sola Scriptura! This is why an understanding of the historical context in which Erasmus and the other TR editors and the later defenders of the Reformation’s Sola Scriptura is valuable. (This is why Letis’ essay, “Theodore Beza As Text Critic: A View Into the Sixteenth Century Approach to New Testament Text Criticism” is likewise of great value.) Now if there were new manuscripts discovered of the Byzantine text-type Owen may well have considered such, yet these were in the main identical with one other.
I pointed out earlier that as Owen ends the section, Chapter III, “Of various lections in the Greek copies of the New Testament”, he begins Chapter IV with these words,
Having now declared in what sense, and with what allowance as to various lections, I maintain the assertion laid down in the foregoing treatise concerning the providential preservation of the whole book of God, so that we may have full assurance that we enjoy the whole revelation of his will in the copies abiding amongst us. . . (p 367).
He was there talking of the Byzantine / TR textform editions they had in hand. You may be assured he was not talking of the copies Rome was attempting to foist upon the world!
Logan, you are correct (as you referenced Letis) to say Walton was not a papist; sorry if I said he was (if so I will have to find that and change it), but rather an Anglo-Catholic much in sympathy with Rome’s attack against the Puritans whom he felt had done him (Walton) insult and injury.
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Jimmy,
You keep searching the internet, and cut and paste views opposing the Reformation view of the received text. Okay, you are entitled to your views, and I wish you well in holding them. Though I must say that your Mr. Kenyon is overly optimistic about the outcome of his methodology. The views of a good number of 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century critics are far less positive:
“The ultimate text, if ever there was one that deserves to be so called, is for ever irrecoverable” (F.C. Conybeare, History of New Testament Criticism, 1910, p. 129)
“In spite of the claims of Westcott and Hort and of van Soden, we do not know the original form of the gospels, and it is quite likely that we never shall” (Kirsopp Lake, Family 13, The Ferrar Group, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1941, p. vii).
“…it is generally recognized that the original text of the Bible cannot be recovered” (R.M. Grant. “The Bible of Theophilus of Antioch,” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 66, 1947, p. 173).
“The textual history that the Westcott-Hort text represents is no longer tenable in the light of newer discoveries and fuller textual analysis. In the effort to construct a congruent history, our failure suggests that we have lost the way, that we have reached a dead end, and that only a new and different insight will enable us to break through (Kenneth Clark, “Today’s Problems,” New Testament Manuscript Studies, edited by Parvis and Wikgren, 1950, p. 161).
“…the optimism of the earlier editors has given way to that skepticisim which inclines towards regarding ‘the original text’ as an unattainable mirage” (G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 1953, p. 9).
“In general, the whole thing is limited to probability judgments; the original text of the New Testament, according to its nature, must remain a hypothesis” (H Greeven, Der Urtext des Neuen Testaments, 1960, p. 20, cited in Edward Hills, The King James Version Defended, p. 67.
“... so far, the twentieth century has been a period characterized by general pessimism about the possibility of recovering the original text by objective criteria” (H.H. Oliver, 1962, p. 308; cited in Eldon Epp, “Decision Points in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, 1993, p. 25).
“The primary goal of New Testament textual study remains the recovery of what the New Testament writers wrote. We have already suggested that to achieve this goal is well nigh impossible. Therefore, we must be content with what Reinhold Niebuhr and others have called, in other contexts, an ‘impossible possibility’ ” (R.M. Grant, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament, 1963, p. 51).
“…every textual critic knows that this similarity of text indicates, rather, that we have made little progress in textual theory since Westcott-Hort; that we simply do not know how to make a definitive determination as to what the best text is; that we do not have a clear picture of the transmission and alternation of the text in the first few centuries; and accordingly, that the Westcott-Hort kind of text has maintained its dominant position largely by default” (Eldon J. Epp, “The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 43, 1974, pp. 390-391).
“We face a crisis over methodology in NT textual criticism. ... Von Soden and B.H. Streeter and a host of others announced and defended their theories of the NT text, but none has stood the tests of criticism or of time. ... [F]ollowing Westcott-Hort but beginning particularly with C.H. Turner (1923ff.), M.-J. Langrange (1935), G.D. Kilpatrick (1943ff.), A.F.J. Klijn (1949), and J.K. Elliot (1972ff.), a new crisis of the criteria became prominent and is very much with us today: a duel between external and internal criteria and the widespread uncertainty as to precisely what kind of compromise ought to or can be worked out between them. The temporary ‘cease-fire’ that most—but certainly not all—textual critics have agreed upon is called a ‘moderate’ or ‘reasoned’ eclecticism ... the literature of the past two or three decades is replete with controversy over the eclectic method, or at least is abundant with evidence of the frustration that accompanies its use...” (Eldon Epp, “Decision Points in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, 1993, pp. 39-41).
“…we no longer think of Westcott-Hort’s ‘Neutral’ text as neutral; we no longer think of their ‘Western’ text as Western or as uniting the textual elements they selected; and, of course, we no longer think so simplistically or so confidently about recovering ‘the New Testament in the Original Greek.’…We remain largely in the dark as to how we might reconstruct the textual history that has left in its wake—in the form of MSS and fragments—numerous pieces of a puzzle that we seem incapable of fitting together. Westcott-Hort, von Soden, and others had sweeping theories (which we have largely rejected) to undergird their critical texts, but we seem now to have no such theories and no plausible sketches of the early history of the text that are widely accepted. What progress, then, have we made? Are we more advanced than our predecessors when, after showing their theories to be unacceptable, we offer no such theories at all to vindicate our accepted text?” (Eldon J. Epp, “A Continuing Interlude in NT Textual Criticism,” Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, (Eerdman’s, 1993), pp. 114, 115).
Jakob Van Bruggen’s,
The Ancient Text of the New Testament, is an analysis of this sorry state of affairs.
So Jimmy, what kind of Bible is it you will have to hold in your hands? Will you have to say, “Well, I am absolutely certain that the original autographs were thoroughly inspired, and what I have here in hand is the very word of God, except perhaps for this hotly contested passage, and this and this and this. . . . but I hope that some day the full true text will be recovered.”?
I prefer – and have – much more confidence in my Bible than that.
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Re Erasmus, even William Combs relates,
“Beatus Rhenanus, an employee of Froben, wrote a letter to a friend in September in which he reported: ‘Erasmus of Rotterdam, a great scholar, has arrived in Basel most recently, weighed down with good books, among which are the following: Jerome revised, the complete works of Seneca revised, copious notes on the New Testament....’ ” (Erasmus and the Textus Receptus, p 7.) [emphasis added]
From David Cloud’s article,
What About Erasmus?
DIDN’T ERASMUS USE A MERE HANDFUL OF MANUSCRIPTS?
This is the standard line that is given by textual critics and parroted by those who support textual criticism. Consider the following three examples. Kenyon was an influential textual critic, and Carson and Wallace are New Evangelicals who defend textual criticism.
Frederic Kenyon -- “Erasmus used only a handful of MSS...” (
The Text of the Greek Bible, p. 155).
D.A. Carson -- “Although Erasmus published a fourth and fifth edition, we need say no more about them here. Erasmus’s Greek Testament stands in line behind the King James Version; yet IT RESTS UPON A HALF DOZEN MINUSCULE MANUSCRIPTS, none of which is earlier than the tenth century. ... the textual basis of the TR is a small number of haphazardly and relatively late minuscule manuscripts” (D.A. Carson,
The King James Version Debate, 1979, pp. 35-36).
Daniel Wallace -- “[Erasmus] only used half a dozen, very late MSS for the whole New Testament any way” (
Why I Do Not Think the King James Bible is the Best Translation Available Today).
ANSWER:
1. Erasmus had knowledge of many manuscripts other than those he used for his first edition. Erasmus “began studying and collating NT MSS and observing thousands of variant readings in preparation for his own edition” (Eldon Jay Epp, “Decision Points in New Testament Textual Criticism,”
Studies in The Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, edited by Epp and Gordon Fee, p. 18; quoting Bentley 1983: 35, 138). “It is well known also that Erasmus looked for manuscripts everywhere during his travels and that he borrowed them from everyone he could. Hence although the Textus Receptus was based mainly on the manuscripts which Erasmus found at Basel, it also included readings taken from others to which he had access. It agreed with the common faith because it was founded on manuscripts which in the providence of God were readily available” (Edward Hills,
The King James Bible Defended, p. 198).
2. Erasmus knew about the variant readings that are known to modern textual critics.
a. As Frederick Nolan observed: “With respect to Manuscripts, it is indisputable that he [Erasmus] was acquainted with every variety which is known to us; HAVING DISTRIBUTED THEM INTO TWO PRINCIPAL CLASSES, one of which corresponds with the Complutensian edition [the Received Text], and the other with the Vatican manuscript [corresponding to the modern critical text]. And he has specified the positive grounds on which he received the one and rejected the other. The former was in the possession of the Greek church, the latter in that of the Latin; judging from the internal evidence he had as good reason to conclude the Eastern church had not corrupted their received text as he had grounds to suspect the Rhodians from whom the Western church derived their manuscripts, had accommodated them to the Latin Vulgate. One short insinuation which he has thrown out, sufficiently proves that his objections to these manuscripts lay more deep; and they do immortal credit to his sagacity. In the age in which the Vulgate was formed, the church, he was aware, was infested with Origenists and Arians; an affinity between any manuscript and that version, consequently conveyed some suspicion that its text was corrupted" (Nolan,
Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, or Received Text of the New Testament, London, 1815, pp. 413-15).
b. “For the first edition Erasmus had before him ten manuscripts, four of which he found in England, and five at Basle. ... The last codex was lent him by John Reuchlin ... (and) ‘appeared to Erasmus so old that it might have come from the apostolic age.’ He was aware of Vaticanus in the Vatican Library and had a friend by the name of Bombasius research that for him. He, however, rejected the characteristic variants of Vaticanus which distinguishes itself from the Received Text. (These variants are what would become the distinguishing characteristics of the critical text more than 350 years later.)” (Preserved Smith,
Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals, and Place in History, 1923). Erasmus was given 365 select readings from Vaticanus.
“A correspondent of Erasmus in 1533 sent that scholar a number of selected readings from it [Codex B], as proof [or so says that correspondent] of its superiority to the Received Text” (Frederic Kenyon,
Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 1895; S.P. Tregelles,
On the Printed Text of the Greek Testament; cited from Hills).
c. Erasmus discussed these variants in his notes.
“Indeed almost all the important variant readings known to scholars today were already known to Erasmus more than 460 years ago and discussed in the notes (previously prepared) which he placed after the text in his editions of the Greek New Testament. Here, for example, Erasmus dealt with such problem passages as the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13), the interview of the rich young man with Jesus (Matt. 19:17-22), the ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the angelic song (Luke 2:14), the angel, agony, and bloody seat omitted (Luke 22:43-44), the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), and the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16) (Edward Hills, pp. 198-199).
3. Erasmus also had the textual evidence from the writings of ancient church leaders and from ancient Bible translations. “Nothing was more important at the dawn of the Reformation than the publication of the Testament of Jesus Christ in the original language. Never had Erasmus worked so carefully.
‘If I told what sweat it cost me, no one would believe me.’ HE HAD COLLATED MANY GREEK MSS. of the New Testament, and WAS SURROUNDED BY ALL THE COMMENTARIES AND TRANSLATIONS, by the writings of Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril, Jerome, and Augustine. ... When a knowledge of Hebrew was necessary, he had consulted Capito, and more particularly Ecolampadius. Nothing without Theseus, said he of the latter, making use of a Greek proverb” (J.H. Merle D’Aubigne,
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, New York: Hurst & Company, 1835, Vol. 5, p. 157).
4. Erasmus knew that the manuscripts he selected reflected the reading of the common text, and he was guided by this “common faith.”
“Long before the Protestant Reformation, the God-guided usage of the Church had produced throughout Western Christendom a common faith concerning the New Testament text, namely, a general belief that the currently received New Testament text, primarily the Greek text and secondarily the Latin text, was the True New Testament Text which had been preserved by God’s special providence. It was this common faith that guided Erasmus and the other early editors of the Textus Receptus. ...
“In Erasmus’ day [the common] view occupied the middle ground between the humanistic view and the scholastic view. Those that held this view acknowledged that the Scriptures had been providentially preserved down through the ages. They did not, however, agree with the scholastic theologians in tying this providential preservation to the Latin Vulgate. On the contrary, along with Laurentius Vallas and other humanists, they asserted the superiority of the Greek New Testament text. This common view remained a faith rather than a well articulated theory. No one at that time drew the logical but unpalatable conclusion that the Greek Church rather than the Roman Church had been the providentially appointed guardian of the New Testament text. But this view, though vaguely apprehended, was widely held, so much so that it may justly be called the common view. Before the Council of Trent (1546) it was favored by some of the highest officials of the Roman Church, notably, it seems, by Leo X, who was pope from 1513-1521 and to whom Erasmus dedicated his New Testament. Erasmus’ close friends also, John Colet, for example, and Thomas More and Jacques Lefevre, all of whom like Erasmus sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within, likewise adhered to this common view. Even the scholastic theologian Martin Dorp was finally persuaded by Thomas More to adopt it. In the days of Erasmus, therefore, it was commonly believed by well informed Christians that the original New Testament text had been providentially preserved in the current New Testament text, primarily in the current Greek text and secondarily in the current Latin text. Erasmus was influenced by this common faith and probably shared it, and God used to providentially to guide Erasmus in his editorial labors on the Textus Receptus. ...
“But if Erasmus was cautious in his notes, much more was he so in his text, for this is what would strike the reader’s eye immediately. Hence in the editing of his Greek New Testament text especially Erasmus was guided by the common faith in the current text. And back of this common faith was the controlling providence of God. For this reason Erasmus’ humanistic tendencies do not appear in the Textus Receptus which he produced. Although not himself outstanding as a man of faith, in his editorial labors on this text he was providentially influenced and guided by the faith of others. In spite of his humanistic tendencies Erasmus was clearly used of God to place the Greek New Testament in print, just as Martin Luther was used of God to bring the Protestant Reformation in spite of the fact that, at least at first, he shared Erasmus’ doubts concerning Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation” (Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th edition, pp. 193, 197, 199).
5. This entire issue is a smokescreen.
a. First, what could it possibly matter that Erasmus used only a few select manuscripts for his Greek New Testament, when the textual critics know full well that these manuscripts represented then and still represent today the vast majority of extant Greek manuscripts and lectionaries? Charles Ellicott, the chairman of the English Revised Version committee, admitted that Erasmus’ “few” manuscripts represent the “majority.” “The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ, for the most part, only in small and insignificant details from the bulk of the cursive manuscripts. The general character of their text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual manuscripts used by Erasmus. ... That pedigree stretches back to a remote antiquity. The first ancestor of the Received Text was at least contemporary with the oldest of our extant manuscripts, if not older than any one of them” (Charles John Ellicott,
The Revisers and the Greek Text of the New Testament, by Two Members of the New Testament Company, 1882, pp. 11, 12). Obviously, therefore, the exact number of manuscripts that Erasmus used has no relevance to the issue whatsoever. Yet we continually read the following type of statement from those who defend the modern versions: “This approach to the question, however, ignores the thousands of manuscripts that Erasmus did not consider. Some of those might actually contain the words originally penned by the apostles” (Robert Milliman, “Translation Theory and Twentieth-Century Versions,”
One Bible Only? edited by Roy Beacham and Kevin Bauder, 2001, p. 135). How such a thing could be written with a straight face, I do not know. This type of thing is why we titled our first book on this subject in the 1980s “Myths about Modern Bible Versions.” By the way, Milliman’s statement is another blatant denial of preservation. If the words of God were not available to the Reformation editors and translators, that means they were hidden away from common use by the churches for at least 1,500 years. What type of “preservation” is that?
b. Second, if to base a Greek New Testament upon a few manuscripts is in actuality something that should not be done, why do the textual critics support the Critical Text when it is based largely on a mere handful of manuscripts? The United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, the latest edition of the Westcott-Hort Text, repeatedly questions and omits verses, portions of verses, and individual words with far less textual authority than the Trinitarian statement of 1 John 5:7. Most of the significant omissions are made on the authority of Aleph and B (sometimes both together and sometimes one standing alone), and a bare handful of similar manuscripts and versions. For example, the word “fasting” is removed from the Westcott-Hort Text, the Nestles’ Text, the UBS Text, and all of the modern versions on the authority of its omission in Aleph, B, two minuscules (0274, 2427), one Old Latin, and the Georgian version. The entire last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark are omitted are seriously questioned on the authority of only three Greek manuscripts, Aleph, B, and the minuscule 304 (plus some witness by various versions that were influenced by the Alexandrian Text). Sometimes, in fact, the modern textual critics don’t have even this much “authority” for their changes. For example, the UBS Greek N.T. puts Matthew 21:44 in brackets on the “authority” of only one 3 Greek manuscripts, one uncial (the terribly unreliable D) and two minuscules.
6. Concerning the preservation of the Scriptures, our faith is not in man, but in God. Even if the Reformation editors had fewer resources than those of more recent times, we know that the God who controls the times and the seasons was in control of His Holy Word (Dan. 2:21). The infallible Scriptures were not hidden away in some monastic dungeon or a dusty corner of the Pope’s library at the headquarters of Apostasy. The infallible Scriptures were being published, read, and taught by God’s people.
“At Marquette Manor Baptist Church in Chicago (1984), Dr. [Stewart] Custer said that God preserved His Word ‘in the sands of Egypt.’ No! God did not preserve His Word in the sands of Egypt, or on a shelf in the Vatican library, or in a wastepaper bin in a Catholic monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. God did not preserve His Word in the ‘disusing’ but in the ‘using.’ He did not preserve the Word by it being stored away or buried, but rather through its use and transmission in the hands of humble believers. At latest count, there were 2,764 cursive manuscripts (MSS). Kenyon says, ‘... An overwhelming majority contain the common ecclesiastical [Received] text.’ ... Kenyon is prepared to list only 22 that give even partial support to the [modern critical] text. ... Are we to believe that in the language in which the New Testament was originally written (Greek), that only twenty-two examples of the true Word of God are to be found between the ninth and sixteenth centuries? How does this fulfill God’s promise to preserve His Word? ... We answer with a shout of triumph God has been faithful to His promise. Yet in our day, the world has become awash with translations based on MSS similar to the twenty-two rather than the [more than] two-and-a-half thousand” (Jack Moorman,
Forever Settled, 1985, pp. 90-95).
For more about Erasmus and the Received Text see the book “The Bible Version Question-Answer Database,” “Should 1 John 5:7 Be in the Bible Since It Has Little Support Among the Greek Manuscripts?” This book is available from Way of Life Literature.
WHY DID ERASMUS ADD THE JOHANNINE COMMA TO HIS 3RD EDITION GREEK NEW TESTAMENT?
There are two popular myths regarding Erasmus and 1 John 5:7 that are parroted by modernists, evangelicals, and even fundamentalists today who defend the modern versions against the KJV.
The first myth is that Erasmus promised to insert the verse if a Greek manuscript were produced. This is stated as follows by Bruce Metzger: “Erasmus promised that he would insert
the Comma Johanneum, as it is called, in future editions if a single Greek manuscript could be found that contained the passage. At length such a copy was found--or made to order” (Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament, 1st and 2nd editions).
The second myth is that Erasmus challenged Edward Lee to find a Greek manuscript that included 1 John 5:7. This originated with Erika Rummel in 1986 in her book
Erasmus’ Annotations and was repeated by James White in 1995 (
The Truth about the KJV-Only Controversy).
In
A History of the Debate over 1 John 5:7,8, Michael Maynard records that H.J. de Jonge, the Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Rijksuniversiteit (Leiden, Netherlands), has refuted both myths. de Jonge, a recognized specialist in Erasmian studies, refuted the myth of a promise in 1980, stating that Metzger’s view on Erasmus’ promise “has no foundation in Erasmus’ work. Consequently it is highly improbable that he included the difficult passage because he considered himself bound by any such promise.” He has also refuted the new myth of a challenge (which Rummel devised in reaction to the burial of the promise myth). In a letter of June 13, 1995, to Maynard, de Jonge wrote:
I have checked again Erasmus’ words quoted by Erika Rummel and her comments on them in her book
Erasmus’ Annotations. This is what Erasmus writes [on] in his
Liber tertius quo respondet ... Ed. Lei: Erasmus first records that Lee had reproached him with neglect of the MSS. of 1 John because Er. (according to Lee) had consulted only one MS. Erasmus replies that he had certainly
not used only one ms., but many copies, first in England, then in Brabant, and finally at Basle. He cannot accept, therefore, Lee’s reproach of negligence and impiety.
‘Is it negligence and impiety, if I did not consult manuscripts which were simply not within my reach? I have at least assembled whatever I could assemble. Let Lee produce a Greek MS. which contains what my edition does not contain and let him show that that manuscript was within my reach. Only then can he reproach me with negligence in sacred matters.’
From this passage you can see that Erasmus does
not challenge Lee to produce a manuscript etc. What Erasmus argues is that Lee may only reproach Erasmus with negligence of MSS if he demonstrates that Erasmus
could have consulted any MS. in which the
Comma Johanneum figured. Erasmus does not at all ask for a MS. containing the
Comma Johanneum. He denies Lee the right to call him negligent and impious if the latter does not prove that Erasmus neglected a manuscript to which he had access.
In short, Rummel’s interpretation is simply
wrong. The passage she quotes has nothing to do with a challenge. Also, she cuts the quotation short, so that the real sense of the passage becomes unrecognizable. She is absolutely not justified in speaking of a challenge in this case or in the case of any other passage on the subject (emphasis in original) (de Jonge, cited from Maynard, p. 383).
Jeffrey Khoo observes further: “Yale professor Roland Bainton, another Erasmian expert, agrees with de Jonge, furnishing proof from Erasmus’ own writing that Erasmus’ inclusion of 1 John 5:7f was not due to a so-called ‘promise’ but the fact that he believed ‘the verse was in the Vulgate and must therefore have been in the Greek text used by Jerome’” (Jeffrey Khoo,
Kept Pure in All Ages, 2001, p. 88).
Edward F. Hills, who had a doctorate in textual criticism from Harvard, testifies: “...it was not trickery that was responsible for the inclusion of the
Johannine Comma in the Textus Receptus, but the usage of the Latin speaking Church” (Hills,
The King James Version Defended).
In the 3rd edition of
The Text of the New Testament Bruce Metzger corrected his false assertion about Erasmus as follows: “What is said on p. 101 above about Erasmus’ promise to include the
Comma Johanneum if one Greek manuscript were found that contained it, and his subsequent suspicion that MS 61 was written expressly to force him to do so, needs to be corrected in the light of the research of H. J. DeJonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies who finds no explicit evidence that supports this frequently made assertion” (Metzger,
The Text of The New Testament, 3rd edition, p. 291, footnote 2). The problem is that this myth continues to be paraded as truth by modern version defenders.
[End David Cloud]
