Ask Jack Hammer
On this page you can ask the JackHammer crew questions that are unrelated to the month’s current theme. We may answer directly, or we may use the topic of your question for a future monthly topic. So, fire away.
On this page you can ask the JackHammer crew questions that are unrelated to the month’s current theme. We may answer directly, or we may use the topic of your question for a future monthly topic. So, fire away.
Comments»
I do appriciate this section of Jackhammer, Thanks.
How would you or how do you handle supposed ‘linguistic updates.’ The ‘we-now-know’ type of points which are heard when listening to or reading an MV advocate?
For example: in 1 Kings 10:28
(cf. 2 Chronicles 1:16
)
KJV: “And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king’s merchants recieved the linen yarn at a price.”
MVO advocates would say: “The “linen yarn” of the KJV does not even seem to be a very good guess in the context of horse trading. We now know that Keveh was a place noted for horse-breeding.”(1)
Hence in the NKJV the same passage says: “And Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and Keveh; the king’s merchants bought them in Keveh at the current price.”
Here are my concerns:
1. Languages do change. Will this fact not to some degree affect the KJV-MV issue?
2. How would you verify a statement(s) made by the MVO proponent to see whether or not his point is valid?
3. What if it is valid?
4. What about/ or are there such things as valid ‘we-now-knows…’?
5. IF there are, then what should be/what is your attitude about that?
Footnote:
(1) “The New King James Version, In the Great Tradition” by Dr. Aurthur L. Farstad, published by Thomas Nelson, 1989. Section 4, page 45. The books sites other examples, but basically, the idea of ‘we-now-know’ is the point of this ‘chapter.’
Is it possible to translate from the TR directly and have a new, accurate translation? By the way, when did the Geneva and Bishops Bible become uninspired?
Billy: 1. I think so. 2. You have to look at the original text and the translation. 3. I look for what God promised, and if it doesn’t fit with that, then I reject what they say, even if I can’t give them the historical answer they want to hear. 4. Interpretationally, but not canonically. 5. n/a
The Sraw: If someone were to translate directly from any Greek text, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, when finished, he would have a new translation. God inspired every Word and all of them (2 Tim. 3:16, 17
), so where the Geneva and the Bishops translate the Words that God inspired, they too are inspired. A very high percentage of the Words of these two English translations are inspired.
i just wanted to ask, is it ok to use Rev 3:20
as a verse in illustrating that “Jesus is knocking at the door of our hearts to let him in?” Our pastor and most of our elders use this as an illustration when soul-winning. I on the other think it’s not appropriate. Please shed some light on this one. Thanks.
Will there be a reunuion next week of all the hammer heads? If so, you get together and take some pictures to post
No, Pastor B. is preaching out on the right coast and won’t be able to make it.
We like to get together to hammer each other, but not this year. My son, the rubber mallet, will be there.
Playing his trombone I suppose.
My dh has a song about trombone players.
Goes something like
Bonehead bonehead silly little bonehead.
This is a lil ditty he picked up at Purdue in the Marching band
Funny Cathy. Yes, trombone and piano and preaching.
Hey fellows I was hoping to get your insight into a verse in scriputre. I am having to deal with it in realtion to a new family from the village who has been attedning the mission work.
The verse is Matthew 18:18
. I spent time with the man on Sunday afternoon discussing this verse. He has a Charismatic background, but has just recently at church made a professin of faith. For now I will just say this verse is hindering him in his walk with Christ. (Hindering becasue of Charimatic teaching he has received concerning this verse.)
To me this verse is difficult to find the meaning. It seems every theologian has their take on it. What I told this man on Sunday, was to examine how Peter used this verse in his ministry after Jesus said this to him. I. personally, see how he did not use this verse, ie forgivng sins. But I do not know where he did use this verse and how that would apply to us today.
Can you guys help?
I should mention that I used Peter as an example because of Matthew 16:19
, where the promise is also given. In Matthew 16:19
Peter is specifically being addressed.
Let me also give more insight into my thoughts so as to not cause needless work. Gill states an example of this principal (Matthew 16:19,18
:18) would be the issue of circumcision. I can’t see his point though. What made circumcision no longer mandatory was the work of Christ, not something the apostles did. It was not that the apostles “loosed” circumcision. I understand that in Acts 15
the church at Jerusalem met concerning this issue, but the meeting took place as a result of false brethren who came in and began to teach heresy. Thus the need to straighten out the mess that was created by them.
Joab, I’m sorry no one answered your question, so here goes. I don’t think in its context you should use Rev. 3:20
as Jesus knocking on the heart’s door. First, only one verse in Scripture talks about Jesus in our hearts and no verse teaches inviting him into the heart. The door He is knocking on, figuratively, is the church at the door of Laodecia, where He is not welcome. Jesus is on the outside of an apostate church, looking in.
Bro. McGovern,
I answer Mt. 18:18 by saying that the church is heaven’s business on earth. The Holy Spirit works through the church with Christ as Head to judge men regarding their salvation. Men creep in unawares (Jude 1:2-4
) and the church looses them—they love the world, they say they have faith but have not works, they say they abide in Christ but they walk in darkness and know not the truth. When the church moves, heaven moves—the church isn’t doing an earthly work but a heavenly work, God’s work. Are some churches going to make mistakes and loose actual saved people? Maybe. I would assume an actual saved person would repent when something is brought before the church. When he doesn’t, he manifests a degree of disrespect for Christ that he shouldn’t be considered to be saved. Is he? We can only do what God told us to do. I’ll then leave it to the Lord, but I think it certainly should make people more serious about the church, which I find isn’t the case at this point in time.
If I understand you correctly, you believe the Matthew 18:18
, and 16:19, teach the local church is to remove members she deems unsaved due to actions of the individual, and the authority for this action is based on those two verses.
Now, I agree the local church is t remove any members who are found out to be false brethren. However due to the word “whatsover” being used in the verses and not “whosever” I am not sure I can see your logic in your conclusion. Why do you believe both verses use “whatsoever?”
Any chance this verse is purely apostolic in nature?
The terminology in Matthew 16
and 18 can be things or people—it is a correlative pronoun that is understood as “as many as” or “as great as.” I think the interpretation is the same either way. If it is “what,” then it is unrepentant sin or repented sin. If it is “who,” then it is unrepentant people or repentant people. Either way, heaven is involved. Since it says whatsoever, I believe that saying it is sins would be better.
If you are a sinning person in a church and somebody goes to you and you don’t repent, and two or three go to you and you don’t repent, and the whole church is pursuing you and you don’t repent, we can say that your sins are bound on you, because we have gone through the process to determine that based upon the revelation of the Word of God. When we say that, we are simply saying what the Father has already determined in heaven. The church, therefore, is merely acting on the behalf of the will of God–the Father in heaven is acting with us.
You guys should do an article on all of the IFB, separated, KJV-only, modest-dressing women that are preaching on the internet via their blogs.
Are women to be teaching and preaching doctrine via the internet or any other mode? They are, so the question would be worth considering.
What are your thoughts of a mother hosting a baby shower for her daughter(22) who has just her 2nd illiget baby? (Mom had a shower for the 1st baby a yr in a half ago). The young mom of the baby started to come to church service regulary at 7 months pregnant and the boyfriend left the apartment.
Should the ladies othe church come to the shower? What’s right?
If she is repentant, I don’t think it is a problem to go the shower. Has she received Christ?
Good Morning, I couldn’t help but see the post about the mother hosting the Baby Shower. I too was in a similar situation…you see, our pastor had 5 children. The first to marry was a daughter…and she married pregnant…but they never told anyone…until the baby was born. Then, their second to the youngest was a son…who was sexually active with a girl in my SS class…although she never got pregnant, they remained sexually active. The youngest was a daughter, who also got pregnant…but didn’t marry…and never repented…but the church threw her a shower. My husband and I couldn’t abide with the non-challont attitude of the pastor and the church…and we sought the Lord’s wisdom and coucil as to where He would have us to go. These situations are difficult to know what to do…however, this being her second pregnancy out of wedlock…did she repent? Had she learned her lesson? Only the Lord knows the heart.
#16 Bobby Mitchell- “You guys should do an article on all of the IFB, separated, KJV-only, modest-dressing women that are preaching on the internet via their blogs.
Are women to be teaching and preaching doctrine via the internet or any other mode? They are, so the question would be worth considering.”
I just found this website, and would be very interested to hear this topic answered. Is it truly inappropriate if a woman posts a blog or participates in a forum? Would the same rules apply to a woman writing a book-IOW, if older women are to teach younger women, are we confined to one-on-one personal interaction, or would writing books and posting blogs be considered acceptable modes of women-ministering-to-women as well?
Dear Jackhammer Crew,
Not trying to be a wise guy here, but I just read your ‘about us’ page. Since I don’t know you all, I don’t know if you’re kidding or not that people other than pastors should not refer to you by your first names. Please tell me you’re kidding! If you’re not kidding, please stop by and read my post at http://allthingsnerak.blogspot.com/2007/08/man-of-god-called-to-preach.html
This blog seems really good and I tend to like the content…..so I’m assuming the call me pastor so-and-so is just a joke.
Okay, here’s a non-theological question. How can I format the quotes on my post to appear indented with the large quotation mark as some are able to do to distinguish what I am saying from what others said that I am responding to?
Thanks.
Mike, to format quotes into your comments, you should put
this < blockquote > before the text and
this < /blockquote > after the text. You will need to take the spaces out for it to work. I had to put the spaces in for you to be able to see it.
Nerak,
I’m Kent, and we don’t mind our first names. I think that Jeff (when he wrote that) didn’t want the people of the church to become informal with church authority, so he encouraged the people in the churches to address their own pastor with respect. It’s a good thing. I’m for that too. When people in my church have called me “Kent,” which is fine with me, it’s my name, I still think it is better for them to show respect to the office, whether I ever existed. This also respects God because He is the One Who gives pastoral authority.
By the way, this was the way it once was in our country. We respected authority more at one time and recognized it. We expected children to answer with respect to adults and adults modeled that by showing respect to authority. Are you one of those parents whose children call them by their first name?
Suggestion, asking, hoping for a month on church discipline.
Yes, I follow it, but always interested in any other wisdom on the subject. And if I missed it down the way somewhere, just direct me to the area where you have addressed it.
Church discipline would be a great topic - especially if it touches on what a church should do when someone comes to join but that person is under church discipline at another church, and what to do in situations where a person does a “you can’t put me under church discipline because I quit.”
Gary and Gordy,
I like the church discipline topic, but one of my fellow hammers would need to agree to hit on it as well. Good suggestion.
KB
If the fellow hammer doesn’t like it, discipline him out. Lets take a stand for blog discipline. In fact, we could start a new fellowship over the matter. Then we could put out a monthly newsletter, elect officers, and put missions money into it. I nominate Bro. Brandenburg for fellowship president, only if he will accept it behind his KFC pulpit.
Kentucky Fried Chicken has pulpits! No wonder they say Baptist preachers and fried chicken go together!!
If you don’t like fried chicken, we disfellowship, disenfranchise, and maybe even discombobulate you.
Laughing.
I was going to use the LOL, lots of laughs, but it strikes me as somewhat effeminate. It isn’t a separating issue though.
I’m separating the laughs from the lots. But that’s just me…
Au contraire, Kent. I’m actually one of those parents whose ADULT children still refer to people older than them by Mr. & Mrs., etc.
I do wish you would read the post I linked to the first time around, simply because it explains in detail how I feel about the ‘pastor’ thing. I guess where we run into a difference is that I don’t believe ‘pastor’ is an office but rather one of many giftings God has given to his people, such as ‘encourager’, ‘giver’, etc. We are all to do all those things but some, I believe, are particularly gifted by God to do these works for the edification of the body. By the way, my Dad is a retired pastor, my in-laws are retired missionaries, and both my husband and I have been walking with the Lord for about 40 years. (yeah—I’m THAT old). For years I struggled with what my spiritual gift was and once I started thinking outside of what we call “church” I discovered what it was. I believe my gifting is that of a pastor/teacher. Now before you get all panicked that I’m ready to sit down and have authority over men….that’s not what I’m talking about. I spend time discipling and teaching those women that God brings into my life. It’s generally not on a formal basis.
I guess we just see the pastoral role differently in the Word.
I’m rambling here. Sorry.
I’m wondering if there could be a little better format. I like reading the different discussions, but if I don’t get to check in for a few days I don’t know where the new comments are. Only five of those show up on the left-hand side. I don’t have time to go back and check the comments of every post and there are some I’d like to keep track of. Is there any way that you could set this up a little differently? I hate to say it, and please don’t nuke me, but something like the SI set-up would be a lot easier to follow. *ducking*
Thanks for considering
Bobby!!!
You should be checking in hourly, at the least.
No really, I think it’s a good idea. Working it out may take some time, but I will be looking into it.
I just found an easy way to follow up on the comments and posts. On the front page is the feed for the comments. Click on that, and see if you are able to add that to your RSS feeds on your Internet Explorer. I am not sure what version of Windows I have (it is the one where I can have tabs for each page, instead of opening in a separate window). On the same line as the tabs, is a button for Feeds. When you have a page or a blog you like, you can click on the Feeds and add it. Then every time you are one, view your Favourites Center (for me, it is on the left of all my tabs - the Feed button is on the right). You should now have the comments listed there. You can click to refresh them (sometimes it takes a minute) - this is even way better than continually visiting to see if anything has been added - and read what is added since your last visit. Then when you are finished, you can right-click on that Feed in your list, and Mark as read. This will bring the feed back to zero items. The next time it shows items, you know there are more comments to read.
Hope that makes sense - I only learned this by accident yesterday or the day before, but it is working great.
Dearest Diving Doctors of Divinity….. Ok, too sappy.
I have a question on Matthew 3:16
, not a rethorical one, a real one. What is the significance of the Spirit descending upon the Lord. He’s God in the flesh, so He is the spirit. Or at least He has the Spirit. Is this the anointing of His earthyl ministry??
I have had a “B” next to this verse for a long time and would really like to erase it, so if anyone has some insight on this I would appreciate it if you would share.
Jahc Hyles Testimony - it is strikingly absent. I have searched the internet, found his Bio, and so on, know that he started preaching at age 19, yada yada yada. BUT no testimony, nothing about where he was baptized either. If anyone know where to get this please let me know.
Michael Marshall,
I will attempt to answer your question on # 36 about the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism. This is only my opinion, and maybe that of others too. So this certainly isn’t the authoritative answer, but it is how I have wrestled with that question.
It seems to me that even though Jesus was God as a member of the trinity, he doesn’t seem to possess all of the outward traits of deity during his incarnation on earth. If he did possess them, it seems as though he didn’t choose to tap into them much of the time in order to identify himself as a man. For example, even though there are times when Jesus seems to have possessed divine knowledge that a normal man wouldn’t have had such as when he saw Nathaniel sitting under the tree when he wasn’t there to see it (Jn. 1:47-51
). Yet at other times Jesus doesn’t seem to possess all knowledge such as when he said that he didn’t know the day nor the hour of the end, but that only His Heavenly Father knew these things (Mt. 24:36, 13:32). Furthermore, the NT tells us that Jesus had to grow in wisdom (Lk. 2:52
). It is my belief then that Jesus did not do miracles in his own divine power which he either left behind in heaven or which he chose not to access while on earth, and that any miracle that He did was done by the power of the Holy Spirit resting upon Him and not in His own power. This might be why the Devil waited until after this event in his life to put him to the test to use his newly gotten power for selfish purposes such as turning a rock into bread. This is certainly how men in the OT and in the NT were equipped with the ability to perform miracles. It was through the power of the Holy Spirit.
I think that there is at least one more related reason why Jesus was shown as having the Spirit come upon Him at His baptism. Most scholars refer to this event as His commission into ministry, or at least the beginning event that started His official earthly ministry. Throughout the OT, men of God who were commissioned for ministry of various types were said to have the Holy Spirit resting upon them. And so it was said of the judge Sampson that “the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him” at times when he doing a supernatural thing (Jud. 13:25, 14
:6, 14:19, 15:14). Similarly, soon after Saul was anointed king, and began to prophesy, it is said that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him (1 Sam. 10:6
& 10). In general, it seems that people understood that all men in the OT who were commissioned by God to carry out particular offices of leadership were anointed with oil which represented the anointing of the Holy Spirit on them to equip them for their service. I believe that this is why King David prayed, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me” after his adultery with Bathsheba (Psalm 51:11
). I don’t think that David was worried about losing his salvation as some understand this, but rather he was concerned that God would remove him from being king which would result in him losing his anointing of the Holy Spirit. And so I believe that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism to show to all of the people that He was in fact God’s “prophet” and even God’s “King”. By the way, you might already know this, but the Hebrew Word for ‘Messiah’ means ‘anointed one’. David is referred to as ‘God’s messiah’ because of his kingly anointing. Likewise, as the ultimate ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’, Jesus was the ‘Anointed One’, not merely of oil, but of the Holy Spirit.
Jachhammer Crew,
I am wondering if you have ever dealt with the fact that many of the NT authors seem to have quoted primarily from the Septuagint (LXX) when they quoted from the OT rather than from the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT). There are numerous examples in the NT where the author quotes from the OT in a way that doesn’t seem to align with our OT since ours is translated from the MT and not the LXX. Among those places where the NT quotation of the OT doesn’t match the OT that most of us use are: Matthew 8:17, 13
:15, 21:16; Luke 4:19
; Acts 2:28, 7
:43, 8:33, 13:35, 15:17, 28:27; Rom. 2:24, 3
:14, 9:28, 10:11, 11:27, 15:12, 15:21; 2 Cor. 4:13
; Eph. 4:26
; Heb. 1:6, 10
:7, 10:38, 12:5-6; 1 Pet. 1:25, 2
:24-25, 4:18. As you can see, this is no small list of places where the NT authors quoted from the LXX which is clear because of the way the verse differs from the quotation in the Hebrew Massoretic text. This list reveals that Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter and the author of Hebrews all used and quoted from the LXX and not the text behind the KJV’s OT (or the newer translations for that reason).
This seems to me to be a very strong argument against the KJV-only position since it shows one of two things. Either the NT authors believed that the LXX was more accurate than the MT, and hence chose to use and quote from the LXX. Or the NT authors believed both the LXX and the MT to be accurate even though they differed at various places as to their exact renderings. Either way, this seems to me to be a very strong evidence against the view that would see ONLY the MT as being an accurate and preserved and authoritative text. In fact, many scholars today believe that the LXX is a more accurate representation of the originals than is the MT for this very reason. I am not raising this question to argue that point (whether the LXX is more accurate than the MT), but only to see if there is any place on this blog where you have dealt with this issue, and if not, whether this is an issue that you might attempt to tackle in a future article, particularly as it deals with your position that the MT is the ‘preserved’ text of the OT.
Thanks,
Mike
Now, I ain’t no “original languages scholar” but I do know that one wouldn’t find jots and tittles in the LXX. Correct me if I’m wrong. Seems to me that the Lord and His apostles were relying on the Hebrew text, not the LXX.
Mike,
When I get asked these kinds of questions, I’m always hopeful that people actually want the answer. I answer question after question and repeatedly, and it is a game of gotcha. I’m going to guess that you love the truth and you want it, so you aren’t asking with that kind of intent. So if I give you an answer, and it’s true, you’re going to believe it, right? And love it?
I’m also going to guess that you would say that you have a high view of inspiration, so when the gospel accounts seem to differ you do what we call “classic harmonization.” You likely know that an attack on Scripture points out supposed conflicts with the various accounts to relegate the Bible to something only human.
When it comes to the quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament, you are actually creating a huge problem for your own view of inspiration. You are saying that Jesus is quoting an extremely flawed translation, especially textually, and so errors in Scripture are satisfactory to you. That holds a problem for your bibliology whatever point you think you are gleaning from your observations. You also are very selective in your quotations. In the New Testament there are about 263 direct quotations from the Old. However, many of these Old Testament quotations in the New are significantly different from the Septuagint. That alone should blow your theory apart.
First, there are several exegetical reasons why we should believe that Jesus quoted from the Hebrew text. The jots and tittles that Bobby mentioned is one. Jot and tittles are Hebrew letters. Jesus also refers to the OT as the law and the prophets, etc., the designations speaking of the Hebrew OT, not a Greek one. Look at Luke 24:44
on this especially. James affirmed that the Torah was the text by which preaching was done on every Sabbath in every town of Judea, and elsewhere, in the synagogue (Acts 15:21
). There is no question that Hebrew was a known and read language of the first century since Pilate required the title on the cross to be written in three known and read languages of the Greco-Roman world—“Hebrew and Greek and Latin†(Jn. 19:20
). By the way, what I’m doing right now, that is, getting a bibliology of preservation from Scripture, is something you will not see in the critical text and eclectic groups.
Second, seeing that God preserved His Words in the Hebrew and that the Septuagint is a corrupt text (even by the testimony of the conservative textual critics), what should be our understanding of the apparent differences between the OT text and its quotations in the New?
:
1. Jesus targummed, that is, He quoted and commented as a rabbi would. Jesus knew the Hebrew and the Greek, so if He wasn’t reading in Greek, He could do the translation on a fly, imparting some commentary as well, especially His being God Himself, much of this becoming Scripture based upon His own authority. Thomas Strouse writes about the Jewish practice of targumming as seen in Luke 4:16-21
Several commentators affirm Christ’s employment of the Targum, including Geldenhuys who states “As far as we know, He read in Hebrew and translated into Aramaic, the common spoken language at that time…G. Dalman finds reflections of the traditional Aramaic paraphrase (Targum) in the present passage in Luke [4:18 ff.].†Norval Geldenhuys, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ, Co., 1979), p. 167. Cf. also Robert H. Stein, The New American Commentary, Luke (Nashville, Broadman Press, 1992), p. 155; Craig A. Evans, New International Biblical Commentary, Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publ., 1990), p. 73; and William Manson, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary, The Gospel of Luke (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1955), p. 41.
2. There was no “the Septuagint” that we know for sure of in the first century. Even today the textual scholars don’t know exactly what “the Septuagint” is. Jerome makes mention of three different versions of the Septuagint that already existed in his day:
H. St. J. Thackeray, “Septuagint,†The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume IV (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ., 1939), pp. 2724-2725, writes:
3. Why do some of the LXX translations of the Hebrew match up with the NT quotations of Jesus. If there were an LXX in the first century, rather than Jesus quoting from it, for which we have absolutely no evidence, the more likely occurrence, also giving respect to a high view of inspiration and preservation, is that Christians who did some of the translation work took the Words of Jesus and out of respect for Him used the words for translation. This is a position posited in Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, a standard work on the Septuagint.
There is a fairly brief answer. Much more could be said in support of the position that I have laid out for you. It is a view that respects Scriptural teaching on both inspiration and preservation.
Bobby,
I will give a couple specific examples of why it seems pretty clear that the Apostles were using the LXX and not the MT. In fact, a simple comparison of the quotes that I listed above in the KJV with their OT referent in the KJV will reveal that the way the NT author quotes it isn’t quite the way in which it is said in the OT that we use. Concerning the ‘jots and tittles’, I have said in other blog contributions that I believe that this was a figure of speech in light of the context and in light of the reality that the literal ‘jots and tittles’ have not been preserved today as there are textual variants of greater significance than mere letters and punctuation marks even in the Textus Receptus or the Byzantine manuscripts available today.
Here are some specific examples for comparison between the NT and the OT.
Matthew 13:14-15
says, “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias (Isaiah), which saith, ‘By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are full of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”
When you look at Isaiah 6:9-10
where this quotation is taken from, the MT represented in the KJV reads, “And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.”
The differences between Isaiah and Matthew’s quotation of it are significant. In Isaiah, the recipient of the passage is being told to make the heart of the people fat (calloused) and to shut their eyes in order to keep them from understanding and seeing the truth so as to keep them from being converted. This implies that God is trying to prevent some from hearing and being saved. However, in Matthew’s Gospel, when he quotes this, he says it in a way that puts the blame clearly on the people as though God would be more than willing to save them, but they have closed their eyes and hardened their hearts.
How could Jesus quote from Isaiah in such a way that not only doesn’t follow the precise wording from Isaiah, but changes the very meaning? The answer comes when one looks at the LXX rendering of Isaiah 6:9-10
. The LXX reads almost exactly like Matthew quotes Jesus. There seem to be two possible explanation in my mind. Either Jesus was quoting from the LXX, or He was quoting from a Hebrew text that differed significantly from the MT but agreed with the LXX. If this is the case, then He would have been quoting from the Hebrew text behind the LXX translation. Either way, Jesus’ quotation seems to say that either the MT was not the most accurate (preserved) text, or that there was not just ONE preserved text with which even Jesus Himself was comfortable using.
One other example from the list I gave above is 1 Peter 4:18
- “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”
It isn’t quite as easy to see from the context, but this is a quotation from Proverbs 11:31
which reads, “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner.”
Of particular interest here is the last line of the proverb. Peter’s quotation implies that the sinner and the ungodly will ‘appear’ somewhere, whereas the quotation from the KJV OT which represents the MT doesn’t include a verb meaning ‘to appear.’ So where did Peter come up with this extra verb? Did he simply paraphrase the MT and sort of add it for explanatory purposes? That would maybe be a possibility if it weren’t for the rendering in the LXX. The LXX translation includes the Greek word which means to bring to light, or to cause to appear. It seems pretty clear then that Peter was quoting from the LXX as did many of the other NT authors including Jesus.
Kent,
I hadn’t seen your post before I posted a response to Bobby even though you posted before I did. I am going to answer or respond to some of your comments off the cuff since I am running late and don’t have much time to think and prepare. In general, I am not proposing that the LXX is more accurate than the MT or vice versa. I know that there are certainly places where the LXX is deemed by most all scholars to be incorrect. Nor do I discount the fact that Jesus or others might have utilized the practice of the Targums in paraphrasing. However, it is not just the words of Jesus that sometimes align more with the LXX, it is the words of Peter and Paul and the author of Hebrews as well. This next statement is being made off-the-cuff, and so I might be mistaken here, but my memory seems to put a general date on the LXX of about 250 BC. I realize that it was still being amended after that date (I’m thinking that it was up to around 100 AD or so), but in general, it preceded Christ and the NT, not the other way around. Furthermore, the MT basically dates to about 1,000 AD. And so the LXX is much older than the MT. Of course this doesn’t prove that older is more accurate, but one would expect this to normally be the case. (I am digressing!)
In general, I would simply say that even if one credits the NT authors with ‘paraphrasing’ on the spot, I don’t think that this explains the example that I gave to Bobby from Mt. 13:14-15. I don’t believe that an accurate paraphrase from the MT could justify the quotation offered by Jesus. The meanings are very different between these two. Furthermore, the very fact that the NT authors and Jesus were content to paraphrase at times would seem to imply that they weren’t concerned with preserving ‘jots and tittles’ in their translations. If they were comfortable paraphrasing the OT to make their points, then how can you be completely opposed to the philosophy of paraphrasing in translation work (one of the arguments your camp raises against the NIV or the N Liv. translation) when Jesus and His disciples did it? I am not a strong proponent of paraphrasing when doing translation work myself since it becomes too subjective. However, I don’t take the position that it is wrong in part because it does seem that Jesus and the writers of the NT did this not only when quoting Scripture as you are suggesting, but also when recording other men’s speeches or when quoting the words of Jesus.
Mike,
You definitely misunderstood me (with capital letters) if you think that I was saying that NT authors paraphrased what Jesus said. I didn’t say anything close to that. That position, ipsissima vox, I reject wholeheartedly for the correct, ipsissima verba position. When the gospels record Jesus speaking, they are the very words of Christ, not the concepts. What I did say was that the Greek translators of the OT, who were professing Christians, put the Words of Jesus into their OT Greek translation. Your ‘the Septuagint is older than the MT’ point doesn’t change this. I mentioned there was no “the Septuagint,” that is, one standardized Septuagint, if there was one at all in the 1st century. The historical evidence, I believe, is weak and don’t believe that kind of weak evidence should be used to cast doubt on Scripture. Nevertheless, the “Septuagint” was an ongoing hand done process. Copies were made by hand. When they copied them, they inserted Christ’s Words, explaining why the Words match up between Christ’s targums and the Septuagint versus the Hebrew text. I don’t know the state of the copyists any more than I do of those who copied the NT by hand. What I do believe is that God promised to preserve the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT. I don’t believe he promised to preserve the Greek translation of the OT.
Regarding Peter and James also quoting the OT, I didn’t deal with that because it wasn’t an issue you brought up. You brought up the Words of Christ. This is a view that harmonizes with Scriptural promises of preservation.
Kent,
In my original post, I did bring up more than just Christ’s apparent quotations from the LXX. I listed a whole bunch of passages from the NT that appear to quote or allude to the OT from the LXX rather than the MT including passages from the Gospels which would represent Jesus’ statements as well as places from the epistles of Paul, Peter, Luke (Acts) and Hebrews.
I also wasn’t meaning to imply that you had said that the Gospel writers ‘paraphrased’ the words of Jesus; that was something I was saying. I believe that you just said that Jesus paraphrased the OT in his on-the-spot translations, and that the LXX copyists inserted his ‘paraphrase’ in place of the rendering from the MT when copying the LXX. However, I’m not sure how one could deny that the Gospel writers at times paraphrased the words of Jesus or put them in their own words when a comparison of the Gospels shows that they rarely line up word for word when recording the words of Jesus. While it is true that they are recording his words in another language, and so a strict word-for-word would probably not be expected, this still does not explain the differences noted in the Gospel writers’ quotations from Jesus. One might even suggest in a couple of places that Jesus said nearly the same thing two different times with one Gospel writer recording one incident and another recording a separate similar incident. Hence there would be similarity in his statements but not exact precision. But this happens way too much to try to assert that the apparent mirror accounts in the Gospels almost always reflect different occasions.
I will give just one of the many examples where this happens.
Mt. 19:7-8 - “They (the Pharisees) say unto him, Why did Moses then COMMAND (’eneteilato’) to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts SUFFERED (’epetrepsen’) you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Mk. 10:3-6
- “And he (Jesus) answered and said unto them, What did Moses COMMAND (’eneteilato’) you? And they said, Moses SUFFERED (’epetrepsen’) to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this PRECEPT (’entolen’). But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.”
A casual observation of merely the English translations will reveal that the two Gospel writers do not quote Jesus in exactly the same way. The same is true in the Greek. What I find even more interesting from comparing these two passages is that Matthew has Jesus using the Greek word meaning ‘to suffer’ or ‘to allow’ when describing the exception for divorce by Moses in the Law, but using the Greek word meaning ‘to command’ when reflecting on what the Pharisees said. However, Mark switches these two words around. He records Jesus as referring to Moses’ ‘command’ two times and the Pharisees referring to it as something that Moses ’suffered’ or ‘allowed’. Not only should this make Bible students cautious in assuming that the Gospel writers were quoting Jesus (or anyone) word-for-word, but it should also cause us to be careful in how much weight we put on the exact words used and their specific nuances. I would imagine that one could easily preach a sermon from Matthew’s account and draw attention to the fact that Jesus referred to this as an ‘allowance’ to correct the Pharisees who saw it as a ‘command’. However, a comparison with Mark sort of destroys such an emphasis as being intended by Matthew, unless one thinks that Matthew and Mark were at odds with each other even in minor points of which I do not, and I’m sure you do not either.
There are other reasons why I don’t think that a simple explanation like you gave, that Jesus was actually using the MT but translating on the spot, can explain Jesus’ apparent quotations from the LXX. I will refer to the book that you mentioned by Jobes and Silva who reference Robert Gundry’s work on the use of the OT in Matthew. They say, “Of particular interest are cases when the Gospel writers have Jesus quoting from the Greek version even though it differs in substance from the original Hebrew. For the point the evangelist is making, the LXX form is often more suitable than a literal translation of the Hebrew” (pp. 193-94). In other words, if Jesus had used the MT and had translated it literally according to the philosophy of translation that your camp would hold to exclusively, He wouldn’t have been able to make the same point that He made by quoting from the LXX. The example from Matthew 13:14-15
that I referenced previously is one such example.
Furthermore, while Jobes and Silva seem to list your explanation of the LXX translators accomodating their translations to fit with Jesus’ Targumic translations from the MT, they don’t seem to accept this as a way of explaining away all or even most of the examples where the NT aligns more closely with the LXX than the MT. In fact they say quite emphatically, “An additional consideration, however, brings the LXX and the NT even closer together, namely, the INDISPUTABLE FACT that the NT writers knew and used the OT in its Greek from (p. 184). And - “Although less obvious than direct quotations, allusions demonstrate how PERVASIVE has been the impact of the LXX on the authors of the NT” (p. 183). As a warning against oversimplifying the issue, they write in their conclusion, “We hope . . . that our discussion will motivate readers to pursue this rich subject on their own. More important, we hope that when they do so, they will not UNDERESTIMATE the complexities involved but rather make every effort to do justice to the character of the Greek OT and its transmission” (p. 204).
Kent,
I was reading back over your initial response and realized that I hadn’t responded to a couple of things you brought up. You allude to the fact that many of the quotations in the NT from the OT do not align with the LXX. You say that this blows my theory apart. First of all, I really don’t have a theory; it is more of an observation, and one that I didn’t make on my own, but one that has been made by numerous scholars over the past century or more. Nor do I profess that the NT writers relied exclusively on the LXX or some other Hebrew text behind the LXX. All that I am saying is that the NT writers did use the LXX at numerous places when quoting the OT. There are certainly times where a quotation in the NT from the OT aligns better with the MT. Even though this happens much less than when they align with the LXX, I would still assume that in those cases the NT author was in fact quoting from the MT, or actually the Hebrew text behind the MT. The point that I and others would make from this evidence would be to say that the NT authors relied on more than one text or translation, and that God in his providence seems to have even witnessed to the reliability and accuracy of more than simply ONE textual family. My point is simply that it seems pretty clear that the NT authors would NOT be making the same sort of issues out of using only one textual family as the right one. And if they were, the evidence is much more in favor that they would have argued for the text behind the LXX and not the MT.
You also refer to Jesus reference to the ‘Law and the Prophets’ as a reference exclusively to the Hebrew OT and not the LXX. How is that demonstrated. The LXX contained the ‘Law and the Prophets’ just like the Hebrew Bible did. Never does Jesus or the NT authors refer to the LXX or to the Aramaic Targums, though most believe that they would have had them and used them to some extent. The phrase “Law and the Prophets” is not a phrase that is particular to the Hebrew language only. Rather it is a general term similar to our term “Old Testament” or even “Pentateuch” or “Major Prophets”. This is not an evidence in favor of a Hebrew rather than a Greek one anymore than the reference to ‘Jots and Tittles’.
Similarly you reference Acts 15:21
as a reference to the Torah being read every week in the synagogues. While I would agree that it was probably the Hebrew that was read in the synagogues, I don’t agree that this proves that Jesus used the Hebrew exclusively for his own private use or even for his preaching to the crowds or to the disciples or Pharisees. Certainly the reference to ‘Torah’ is not proof either that it was the Hebrew that was being used over and against the Greek. If I am to understand your arguments here, anytime that ‘Torah’ (Law) or ‘Prophets’ is mentioned, it has to be Hebrew text. What does one expect to find in the LXX or the Syriac or any other translation of the OT except for the ‘Torah’ and the ‘Prophets’? These were not exclusive to the Hebrew and I know of no evidence to suggest that such terms were reserved for the Hebrew over and against other terms for the LXX OT. I fail to see how this is a “biblical bibliology”. You are merely presupposing that such terms refer to the Hebrew OT alone, and then conclude that Jesus’ references to them mean that this is what He used. And how is comparing the actual text of the NT in every place where it quotes from the OT not a part of a BIBLICAL BIBLIOLOGY of which you accuse the other side of NEVER developing? You paint your camp as the only one that approaches this issue using the Bible and all others as merely creating their own ideas or something, which is completely untrue. A comparison of one Gospel writer with that of another is about as BIBLICAL as one can get in that he is using only the Bible in his analysis. Similarly, a comparison of Paul’s quotations from Isaiah for example with the actual text of Isaiah is very BIBLICAL. Not only does it give us BIBLICAL information regarding the text that Paul and others used, but it also reveals some things about the mindset and the hermeneutics of the NT authors as they approached the OT in general. This is a lot more biblical in my opinion that merely taking terms such as ‘Law’ and ‘Prophets’ and assuming that they refer exclusively to the Hebrew, of which the Bible never says about them.
Mike,
I don’t mind debating and I can keep giving you continuous answers to your questions and points, but what I see is that every single point I bring, you disagree with, as if giving into one single point that I make would be some kind of concession to the position. It seems that our discussion would become fruitless if you have no intentions to hear things out here. It does seem to me that more than anything that you are ministering questions.
You don’t actually answer any of your own, by your own admission, but you wish for me to come to the same or lower level of doubt that you are in your position. For instance, you question apparent differences between the MT and the TR in the NT quotations of the OT, and yet, you haven’t thought about the ramifications of your own theology. The best I can get from you is that somehow you believe a bibliology is being taught through that, i.e., God puts a stamp of appoval on several “textual families,” essentially any old Bible we want to use and they can all be different and that’s absolutely fine as long as their reasonably close.
What boggles me about these types of “exegetical conclusions” is that you guys will argue till the stars fall against the meaning of the verses that teach preservation, parsing things from Dan to Beersheba, as if the plain meaning of the text wasn’t so plain, but then take something so remote as this and use it as THE basis of your view of preservation. Multiple versions preferred. Why? Because apparently, but I’m not sure, because it’s only a possibility, that Jesus may have been quoting the very corrupt Septuagint, if it actually was the Septuagint, because we don’t have enough textual evidence to prove that. Speculative theology we called it when I was in seminary.
And then you believe the vox position, which denies inerrancy. When the passage says, Jesus said, unless we are willing to change the clear meaning of words into thick clouds of ambiguity, it means that He actually did say those words. If He didn’t say those words, then, wink, wink, “Jesus said” means something different than “said,” or the text is just lying or is in error. Then, what can we trust. Classic harmonization again will work if we are willing to suspend our disbelief and accept that Jesus could have said all the words recorded in both accounts.
“Law and the prophets” is the divisions of Scripture of the Hebrew OT. It is referring to the Hebrew OT. The Septuagint gave us our modern divisions of the OT. The Hebrew OT was divided into three parts, but Septuagint reorganizes it and places it in an entirely different order. This is a clear reference, not as an idiom for the Bible, but to the Hebrew OT.
I’m going to stop here and perhaps pick up later, but it seems we have a wide gulf here in what we consider to be a basis for faith and how we define evidence.
Kent,
You say that you answer my questions, and in general that is true. However there are a handful of questions that you haven’t answered, or that you gave an answer to but didn’t seem to me to deal with the real issue(s) that I raised. You also say that I gender questions without giving any answers. I will admit that there are some fine details that I have yet to answer precisely in my own mind. I am still in process in working through everything that I believe, and I’m sure that I will be for the rest of my life to some degree. In general though, I do know what I believe about these issues. If I were to give you my answers in the same posts that I ask the questions, you and others would probably ignore the questions because you would label me as too liberal minded or as being in the wrong camp or something. I am purposefully challenging your positions that I disagree with with the questions that, when truly answered, keep me from accepting those positions. I believe that anytime that you have taken my questions and asked them back to me, that I have answered all of them as fully and completely as I am able. This is one reason why my posts tend to be so long. It’s not like I am asking you questions that I haven’t thought through myself already.
By the way, I hear your point about “Law and Prophets” being the division in the Hebrew Canon as opposed to the LXX. You hadn’t quite explained it fully, and so it didn’t register in my mind what you were alluding to. I’m still not convinced that “Law and Prophets” wasn’t a figure of speech to refer to the OT as the Jews knew it and the people at that time were familiar with. I think that it is also possible that Jesus might have referred to the Hebrew OT in general since it was accepted as the inspired OT or the one used in formal worship in the Temple, and yet still have used and quoted from the LXX in his every-day practice.
You say that it is ’speculative theology’ to assume that Jesus and the other NT authors quoted often from the LXX since their quotations line up with it against the MT much of the time. This is true. However, what you have suggested, that the LXX translators inserted the translations of Jesus into their translations, is also ’speculative theology’. Any theology that is made without all of the facts is speculative. Both of us are speculating about how such correlations came about. You imply that my version (and most conservative contemporary scholars) is based on extremely flaky evidence as opposed to yours which is based on more solid evidence. I will admit that this is an area of study that I am less familiar with than others, though it is something that I intend to pursue more thoroughly in the future. Nevertheless, I believe that most scholars date the LXX’s origin as beginning somewhere around 250 BC and being completed somewhere around 100 AD. And while the ‘the Septuagint’ that you refer to was probably not completed before the time of Jesus, it is believed by most that there were a few families of Greek translations of the OT in use that were similar yet different in some respects. The bottom line is, the evidence seems to stand in favor of the fact that there were Greek translations of various passages of the OT in use long before Jesus came on the scene. Most conservative scholars today, along with the ones who wrote the book that you referred to, believe that Jesus was using and quoting from one or more of those Greek translations of the OT rather than the MT. The main reason that I would know of is because, as I already pointed out, if Jesus had quoted from the MT and translated on the spot, there are times when the point that He intended to make could not have been made very well from the MT. (This is one of those questions that you have not actually answered yet by dealing with the argument that I put out. I specifically referred to Jesus quotation in Matthew 13:14-15
which wouldn’t work if it was quoted out of the MT.) And so I think that you are not being completely honest when you refer to my position as being based on very shaky evidence against yours which must be based on better evidence of some sort.
In closing, I will give an open invitation for you to ask me any question that you feel I haven’t answered myself, particularly those that I gave to you. I will also end with a list of those questions that I still don’t believe you have answered in a way that actually deals with the heart of the the issue(s) involved.
1. In what substantial way does the textual criticism behind the KJV differ from the tc behind the newer translations? We know that the men involved had to compare various discrepancies in the texts at their disposal and make decisions (prior to the church’s ‘acceptance’ of their choices) as to which reading was more likely in line with the original. There is no evidence that God somehow intervened and gave them divine knowledge to make these decisions, nor was the church corporately in any way, shape or form involved in that decision-making process. And so there is no reason to assume that they relied on anything other than common sense and rules similar to those used by the men who worked on the newer translations.
2. How do you defend Erasmus’ choice to include the very questionable rendering in 1 John 5:7-8
in spite of the textual evidence in the Byzantine manuscripts which argues vehemently against this? I find it interesting that you criticize my suggestion that Jesus quoted from ‘the LXX’ because you wouldn’t accept such a theory based on flaky evidence, and yet you have no problem accepting Erasmus’ and the KJV’s rendering of 1 Jn. 5:7-8
based on even shakier evidence. This is only magnified when we consider the traditional story behind this inclusion as having been based on pressure from the RC church in light of the rendering of the Latin Vulgate which differed from the Greek.
3. How can you say that the Gospel writers were ‘quoting’ Jesus when their Gospels don’t agree word-for-word when ‘quoting’ Him in almost every instance. Furthermore, how do you handle the differences in vocabulary in Mt. 19:7-8 and Mk. 10:3-6
which I alluded to above? You say that I have not thought through the ramifications of the position on inerrancy that I am opening the door to. That might be true (although I have thought a great deal about this). However, I want to see that you have actually thought about the issue at all and have legitimately wrestled with such differences. It seems to me that your theology forces you to take a certain position on the harmony of the Gospels, and you are committed to holding to that position even if the biblical evidence doesn’t allow it. This might not be true, but this is how it appears to me in the way that you have responded.
4. How can you hold to the theory that Jesus was merely translating from the Hebrew behind the MT tradition when there are times when His quotations differ significantly enough from the Hebrew Text so as to make it such that a literal translation of the Hebrew would not have made His point? Specifically, I would ask you to deal with the passage I reference above - Matthew 13:14-15
.
5. Finally, how do you defend a very literal reading of Mt. 5:18 that not one jot or tittle will pass from God’s Word in light of the fact that prior to Erasmus (the vast majority of the church age) there was no agreement as to any ‘preserved text’ to the degree of ‘jots and tittles’ having been preserved. Evey known Greek manuscript in existence prior to Erasmus differed with each other concerning jots and tittles. In essence then, there was no preserved text of the caliber that you are arguing for on the basis of this verse and according to your theory of preservation up until the time of Erasmus. In what way had God preserved ‘jots and tittles’ in the NT manuscripts prior to Erasmus and the Textus Receptus? Did He preserve a little in this text and a little in that text prior to Erasmus putting them together in one? If so, in what sense is this a preserved text at all? It is merely a bunch of corrupt texts that get it right some of the time.
As I said, feel free to send me a list of questions that you feel I have yet to answer, and I will do my best to honestly respond to them.
Thanks,
Mike
I noticed that nothing had posted for a full week, and I was just checking to see if the blog was still running and posting new comments.
We have had two posts in the last week: Do they know what they’re singing and Putting the X in Xmas.
Thanks Jeff. I was only looking at the ‘recent comments’ at the top left of the website. I’m used to seeing a couple comments post each day. I was surprised to see no new comments for a whole week. I hadn’t actually noticed the new articles which you mentioned. Thanks.
Comments are now being made in the discussion area of the site. Check out the tab at the top that says discussion. You may find some other topics to talk about there also.
Mike,
I keep forgetting about your questions that you asked. At some point, I’ll be answering them. I also have a guy asking similar questions over at my blog.
KB
I’ve answered the recent questions in a post at my blog.
http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2007/12/answers-to-questions-about-doctrine-of.html
Kent,
(One can also read my response on Kent’s blog.)
To begin with, I find it ironic that you say that “our position, according to MVO MEN, is intellectually bankrupt, laughable, and an embarrassment.†Only ONE MVO man said this, and yet you attribute this comment to ALL who disagree with the KJVO position. I have ever in our blog discussions belittled your position with demeaning words (nor has Enoch to my knowledge from what I have read of his interactions). The harshest thing that I can remember accusing you of is being academically dishonest at times. I have specifically said that I believe that you and many in your camp are sincere believers who love the Lord. I believe that we just have significant differences of opinion concerning what the Bible does and does not say about preservation as well as what the external evidence supports in regards to preservation. You take offense and say that it is unfair when people in our camp quote KJVO’s like Hyles and Ruckman and lump you into their camp in order to make some derogatory point about your position. I take similar offense.
Having said this, I will first respond to your ‘answers’ to my questions, and then I will attempt to answer all of yours. This will be a LONG post in light of all of the questions that you asked and my desire to thoroughly interact with each of your answers to my questions.
I will begin with this observation. You began by contrasting your camp with those outside of your camp by quoting Rom. 4:20-21
. The obvious implication is that your side accepts the PROMISES of God’s Word despite the evidence in contrast to our camp which rejects the PROMISES of God in light of the external evidence. This is not a true accusation in light of the fact that I and others have clearly challenged your claim that the Bible actually PROMISES to preserve words, jots or tittles. You continue to make statements as though this were a given in the debate. It is certainly fair for you to make this presupposition in light of your interpretation of a handful of verses, but I believe that it is also valid for us to challenge your interpretations to those passages, in which case your criticism doesn’t apply. I have made some strong arguments from the context of the passages you cite to make the point that the Bible makes no such promises of preservation in the manner that you define it. Therefore, from my perspective, you might have FAITH that your position is right, but it is not faith in God’s Word. It is faith in your PRESUPPOSITIONS or your TRADITIONS or your ERRONEOUS (from my perspective) INTERPRETATIONS of God’s Word. It would be like me arguing with a Charismatic on the issue of divine healing. He could continue to quote a handful of verses such as Ps. 103:2-3
which says “. . . Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases,†and 1 Pet. 2:24
which says, “. . . by whose stripes ye were healed†(Also Ps. 147:3
; Isa. 53:5
; Mal. 4:2
; Mt. 8:17; Lk. 4:18
). He could continue to use these verses as PROOF that the Bible taught healing to be a byproduct of the atonement. He could wax eloquent on the meaning of ‘healed’ and claim that he accepts this by faith even though the external evidence supports the fact that people aren’t being healed any longer today as they were in the NT times. He could claim that he has faith in spite of the evidence and that I lack such faith. I (and you) would respond by telling him that we reject his interpretations of such passages, and therefore the argument has nothing to do with whether we have or lack faith; it has to do with what interpretation is more accurate in light of the surrounding context as well as by the external extra-biblical evidence.
Concerning whether or not the external evidence should play a role in our interpretation of the Bible, I would simply say that if you and I saw people today who had godly testimonies of commitment to the Lord healing others miraculously on a regular basis in the same way that the Bible speaks about such things taking place under the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles, I can only assume that you and I would seriously reexamine our interpretations of passages such as 1 Cor. 13
where it says that “tongues will cease.†It isn’t that we would doubt that 1 Cor. 13
was true; it’s just that we would consider that maybe our interpretation of it is flawed (seeing that we are not infallible). And so despite what you seem to be implying, it IS important to consider the extrabiblical evidence along with the biblical when judging the validity of our interpretations of passages.
(By the way, this goes to show that just because someone puts together a bunch of verses that use the word ‘healing’ or ‘diseases’ together into one place is not proof that they have actually developed a BIBLICAL theology of something. Just as my list above does not equal a BIBLICAL doctrine of healing, neither in my opinion does your list of verses that mention words associated with ‘words’ or ‘jots and tittles’ or ‘Jesus spake’ etc. A true BIBLICAL theology will wrestle with ALL of the BIBLICAL evidence including a comparison of the Gospels, the OT with the NT, etc. (Scripture with Scripture). Furthermore, the verses that are used to compile one’s SYSTEMATIC theology must first have gone through the ropes of a BIBLICAL theology. That is, the surrounding context must support the meaning of the verses being used to support a particular system of thought or theology. This is what the cults fail to do when compiling their systematic theology on various issues such as the deity of Christ. This is also something that I believe almost all of the verses you claim support your view of preservation fail the test, just as the ones I listed above fail the test for the Charismatics.)
You said, “The words were available even as they were consolidated into a printed addition. You can’t prove otherwise, so why not go the direction of faith and not doubt, perfection and not errors.†Actually, I would argue that this statement is almost able to be disproven. If in fact the original words were available even as they were consolidated into a printed addition, then why didn’t Erasmus just go and look at the originals when consolidating the manuscripts into one? Why did he have to examine various differing manuscripts and make critical judgments? Furthermore, if something as SIGNIFICANT as the original manuscripts of Scripture existed for all of those years, don’t you think that one of the many church fathers and theologians throughout history would have referred to them in such terms? You say that I can’t PROVE that Erasmus didn’t have the originals. Of course I can’t PROVE it. But I can point to the evidence which says that he wasn’t consulting the ORIGINALS when consolidating, he was in fact CONSOLIDATING many differing texts into one with no mention of checking those manuscripts against the originals. This seems to speak strongly against the idea that the originals were in existence. Even if your theory is correct that the originals were in existence for almost 1500 years, which is very hard to believe in light of the fact that they would have been being handled on a regular basis for others to copy them and compare them with copies as you assert in your theory, the evidence that we have seems to point strongly in the direction that ERASMUS didn’t have them at his disposal. His TR text was put together from several IMPERFECT and FLAWED manuscripts, and not the originals. Why would he have done this if he had the originals?
You also said that the difference between Erasmus’ methods of Textual Criticism were different from those of modern textual critics because of his PRESUPPOSITIONS about preservation. Different PRESUPPOSITIONS do not prove or argue for different METHODS. In reality, every textual critic has his own presuppositions. Some are more valid than others. Some of the presuppositions behind textual criticism could even be considered contradictory to each other at times requiring a very subjective decision by the one comparing the manuscripts to determine which presupposition to rely on for a particular case. For example, one principle in TC is to assume that the more difficult reading is more likely to be the original reading since it is assumed that scribes would have been more inclined to alter a text to make it more understandable rather than to make it less understandable. However, another criteria that is often used in TC is to assume that the reading that most aligns internally with the passage is to be preferred. In other words, if the passage doesn’t make sense with a particular reading, but it does with another reading, then the one that makes sense is to be preferred. For example, if I had two English readings and one said, “Yesterday I got my hair cut,†while the other said, “Yesterday I got my hare cut,†only the first reading would make sense. And so most textual critics would assume the first to be the original with the second being an accidental insertion of a word that sounds the same but is spelled differently and means something completely different. However, if one were to accept the first principle that I referenced in this instance, to prefer the more difficult reading, then it might be assumed by some textual critics that the second more difficult reading is to be preferred. The bottom line is, Textual Criticism is SUBJECTIVE. Every textual critic comes with his own set of presuppositions, and his determinations will depend in part on his presuppositions. And before one starts to say that this proves that God would never have us to depend on something so SUBJECTIVE as a means of truth, I would point out again that the same thing is true of INTERPRETATION. You have acknowledged throughout this article that you have various presuppositions that you bring to the text that affect the conclusions you reach from the text. And yet God has ordained that churches today rely in part on flawed and presuppositionally-biased men to disperse his truth by way of sermons and lessons. The point is, Erasmus had his presuppositions, this modern textual critic has his own presuppositions, and that modern textual critic has his own presuppositions. Each textual critic will come to his own SUBJECTIVE conclusions, and all are open to both right and wrong conclusions since nobody is infallible. (By the way, this is why it is wise to rely on translations and original texts whenever possible that were produced from or compiled by a group of learned men of various theological persuasions to keep them from allowing their personal biases to affect their judgment as much as possible.) You have said nothing in your explanation to show why Erasmus, a man whose theological persuasions were much more questionable than many of the textual critics today, was exempt from coming to false conclusions when comparing differing corrupt texts and making subjective decisions as to which was most likely the original. The fact that his first addition differed from his second seems to argue vehemently against the idea that he was infallible in his decisions as he changed his own mind on some of those decisions. In general, even if you could prove that Erasmus’ PRESUPPOSITIONS were significantly different from modern TC’s, and I don’t think you can, that still doesn’t prove that their METHODS were any different, which is what I have been arguing in previous posts.
By the way, I do NOT believe that the Critical Text is the Preserved Text. I do not believe that there is one ‘Preserved Text’ in that one text today lines up flawlessly with the original. I have equated this with the fact that there is not ONE ‘preserved’ interpretation of every passage of Scripture. Yet just because we cannot be certain of the complete accuracy of every interpretation of Scripture, and therefore we have to apply intellectual reasoning to the process of biblical interpretation, so too we cannot be certain of the ‘preserved text’ today and we thus have to apply intellectual reasoning to the process of comparing and wrestling with the various manuscript evidence at our disposal. Such was the view of Erasmus, as he too wrestled with all of the available manuscripts at his disposal, even the Latin Vulgate in passages where he didn’t even have ONE Greek manuscript, and thus demonstrated that he didn’t have the originals to refer to for validation of his decisions.
I asked you about how you defend Erasmus’ inclusion of 1 John 5:7
into his text in spite of the textual evidence against it. You quoted Gill at length and in essence made his explanation your own. In that sense then, ‘you’ were very quick to dismiss the evidence from the Syriac version which you acknowledged was the oldest and of the greatest consequence simply because it is a version (translation), and a defective one at that (as are all translations to varying degrees). But then you turned around and used a whole slew of evidence, primarily from other defective versions (translations) such as the Vulgate which, as you admitted, are of lesser consequence than the Syriac. How is this not hypocritical? If the Syriac can be quickly dismissed because it is a defective version, then why list other defective versions in support of 1 Jn. 5:7
. Concerning the fact that 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Revelation were originally lacking in the Syriac, this is not a textual issue at all, it is a canonical issue. It would be like me saying that the 1611 KJV included the Apocrypha as evidence that the TR is a corrupt text. That would be unrelated to the argument. In general, while you can list a handful of Greek manuscripts that include the 1 Jn. 5:7
rendering, none of them date prior to the 14th century. To say that the VAST majority of all ancient texts that include 1 John 5
, including those in the family behind the TR, omit verse seven as contained in the KJV is an understatement. It seems to me that you have begun with the premise that Erasmus got everything right, and then you have set out to dismiss all of the overwhelming evidence against it and accept the much less significant evidence in favor of it in spite of how far the scale tips against it. That is not biblical scholarship.
I asked you how you can defend the view that the Gospel writers were quoting Jesus rather than paraphrasing his general teaching. You were very dogmatic in saying, “When the Bible declares ‘these words spake Jesus,’ who dares conclude he did not say those words, but some ‘vox’ paraphrase of them?†In other words, because the Bible says that Jesus ‘said’ or ‘spake’ something, then this PROVES that they were quoting him. When asked to wrestle with the various places in the Gosples that appear to present parallel accounts with different wordings, you said that it makes more sense to assume that EVERY one of these were different occasions where similar things were stated by Jesus. This view is not only immensely improbable, it is impossible. I will demonstrate.
One situation where the Gospels are almost certainly describing parallel accounts is in their account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with his three disciples as he approached the cross. There are four statements made by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels in the same order. I will quote them from the KJV.
1st statement
- Sit ye here, while I shall pray.
Mt. 26:36 - Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
Mk. 14:32
2nd statement
- My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.
Mt. 26:38 - My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
Mk. 14:34
3rd statement
- Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
- Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Mt. 26:39 - O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
Mk. 14:36
Lk. 22:42
4th statement
- Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.
- Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.
Mt. 26:41 - What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Mk. 14:37-38
Lk. 22:46
While all of these statements are very similar, none of them are on the level of a quotation, even when you take into account that they were POSSIBLY translating his words from one language (Aramaic) into another (Greek). If one is to accept your explanation of such differences in wording, they would begin not with the BIBLICAL EVIDENCE, but rather with the narrow PRESUPPOSITION that simply because these passages say that Jesus ‘said’ or ‘spake’ these things, that they MUST be quotes. And so according to your theory, each of these ‘quotes’ represents a different event in Jesus’ life. That would mean that Jesus must have gone to the Garden of Gethsemane on three different occasions, each time taking the same three disciples, each one occurring shortly after Passover just prior to Jesus going to the cross in light of their respective Gospel contexts and in light of what Jesus prayed, and each separate event culminating in the disciples falling asleep in spite of Jesus’ rebuke for them to remain awake. There is only one Passover each year, and Jesus only died on the cross once, and so your view is all but impossible.
If this illustration is not sufficient to prove that your explanation that the differences in the Gospel accounts can be explained by saying that they were different events is false, how about the placard on the cross? Matthew records that the placard above Jesus’ head said, “This is Jesus the King of the Jews†(Mt. 27:37). Mark’s Gospel records the placard as only saying, “The King of the Jews†(Mk. 15:26
). Luke’s Gospel records the placard as saying, “This is the King of the Jews†(Lk. 23:38
). Finally, John’s Gospel records it as saying, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews†(John 19:19
). None of them agree on the level of a quote. According to your explanation, since the Gospel writers each say that their particular versions is what was WRITTEN on the placard, then Jesus must have hung on four different crosses on four different occasions, each time having a similar yet differently-worded placard hung above his head. Yet the Bible clearly states that Jesus died once not to be crucified again (Rom. 6:10
; Heb. 7:27, 9