An Essay by New Versions Apologist Daniel B. Wallace: "Why So Many Versions?"

Got caught up in this essay by new versions defender Daniel B. Wallace and thought maybe I could make some useful comments here and there from the opposing point of view. There's not much in it that I haven't already encountered, it's the standard defense of the new versions, covering much the same territory as James White for instance.

Why So Many Versions?
By: Daniel B. Wallace , Th.M., Ph.D.
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=663

"Breaking up is hard to do," as the song goes. Ma Bell did it--creating a glut of long distance companies almost as numerous as brands of deodorant.

The Bible did it, too. Before the year 1881 you could read any version you wanted--as long as it was the King James Version. But since 1881, scores of new translations have been printed.

So, he wants to frame the discussion by comparing the proliferation of Bible versions with the deregulation of a business monopoly which was supposed to increase productivity by competition? So competition is a good thing with God's word too? God's word should be open to human invention and variation? We should all make our own judgment as to what form of God's word we want? God's word is just a commodity? God's people are just consumers presumed to be able (and to have the right) to make their own judgment as to what constitutes God's word for themselves?

It certainly does seem to fit what has actually happened. Perhaps he should be applauded for his honesty.

Well, let me see if I can anticipate where this is going and explain it properly before it gets there. Ma Bell was deregulated by the government for better or for worse, and perhaps a bit of both, but the reason we have so many Bible versions is that a couple of questionably qualified and questionably motivated textual critics persuaded the Anglican Church of their day (the producer and owner of the King James Bible) to accept their judgment about the content of the Bible, which basically involved changing the King James almost beyond recognition without authorization and without any other kind of justification. To put it mildly. They had been commissioned to make minor changes; they produced a completely new and inferior Bible. That this is what happened was patently clear to their contemporary Dean J W Burgon who described what they did in many essays and one massive study, The Revision Revised. But of course this is precisely what is in dispute, since the new versions defenders will claim the revised Bible was superior, and apparently they couldn't care less that its producers violated their trust in producing it or that the manuscripts they used were regarded as corrupt by other experts in Westcott and Hort's day.

How did the King James get dethroned? Which translation is best today? Are any of the modern translations really faithful to the original? These are some of the questions we'll be looking at in this essay. But initially, we'd just like to get a bird's eye view. We simply want an answer to the question, "Why are there so many versions of the Bible?"

It got dethroned as described above. It remains the best translation today, even conceding that it may yet need some improvements. No, none of the modern translations are really faithful to the original. We don't have the originals so we have to decide which tradition of Greek texts is faithful and which isn't -- both traditions can't be faithful because they are different. The Greek texts the KJV was based on are appreciably different from those the new versions are all based on, which means at least one tradition of Greek texts must be corrupted. I am convinced of course that it's the modern versions that are based on corrupt texts. The versions defenders, however, although the implication of their position is that the Greek Text underlying the King James is the corrupt one, try to get away with claiming that the King James is fine too, but both traditions can't be fine because they are too different from each other.

And again, why are there so many versions? Because of the very bad Greek texts and horrifically bad Bible translation made by a couple of arrogant textual critics that got enshrined as authoritative, which led to the ensuing proliferation of versions thanks to their bad example -- well, if they could play fast and loose with God's word, anybody can -- and many have, especially over the last few decades, turning the Bible into a huge business involving as many changes to the text as they can dream up.

But since you are still waiting for Dr. Wallace's explanation, here it is:

There are three basic influences which have given birth to a multitude of translations.

First, in 1881 two British scholars published a Greek New Testament which was based on the most ancient manuscripts then available.

This is true, but to put it in perspective, this appeal to "the most ancient manuscripts" in this context is to imply that they are superior, the idea being that they are superior simply because they are older -- and "superior" of course means that it is assumed that, being older, they are most likely closest in text to the original autographs written by the apostles and inspired authors.

There are thousands of old Greek manuscripts available to scholars today, the vast majority of which have survived from the Middle Ages, and most of those are what the King James Bible was based on. It's called the Majority Text, and the Received Text (or Textus Receptus or Traditional Text) is made up of preferred readings from this tradition. There are a very few Greek manuscripts that have survived from the first few centuries, and the Westcott and Hort preferred texts are dated to the fourth century which make them the earliest, at least in 1881, to have survived the ravages of time. (There have been some earlier manuscripts found since then which will be addressed soon.)

These fourth century texts that were preferred by Westcott and Hort happen to have significant differences from the Majority Text manuscripts, notably the absence of many familiar passages. In 1881 when Westcott and Hort did their translation, these manuscripts that they themselves were so fond of were regarded by other Bible experts such as Burgon and Scrivener as corrupt and unworthy. The King James translators of 250 years earlier were familiar with the same type of manuscript although the particular manuscripts W&H used were found after their time. The King James translators had already rejected that type of manuscript as having been corrupted, and Westcott and Hort's contemporary Dean J W Burgon recognized the type as corrupt and emphatically denounced them as corrupt in his Revision Revised which was a thorough critique of Westcott and Hort's work.

In other words, their being older does not necessarily mean they are more trustworthy, and in this case there is evidence that they are less trustworthy. In fact there is some reason to believe they were altered in the early centuries to support an early Gnostic cult. That would take a lot of mustering of facts and discussion to prove, but suffice it to say the length of time a particular manuscript has survived is no certain evidence for its text being closer to the originals, though the new versions treat this as a foregone conclusion.

This text, by Brook Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, made several notable departures from the Greek text which King James translators used. For the most part, the Westcott-Hort text was a shorter New Testament. That's because the older manuscripts (MSS) which they used did not contain passages such as the longer ending of Mark's gospel or the story of the women caught in adultery. The Greek MSS which the King James translators followed included these and many other passages.

Yes, these are the facts. Many passages familiar to English-speaking people from the King James are not in the Westcott-Hort preferred text.

If you have a parallel Bible with the King James and the Revised English versions side by side for comparison, you will immediately see that there is space left at the bottom of almost every page below the revised version, and any other translations that were spawned from the same texts, while the KJV's longer text fills the page. The only time the revised version takes up more of a page is when it changes the format from paragraph style to verse style. The differences are that visible. [I reduced the font and lightened the color to minimize the impact of this statement because I'm wrong about this. the changes aren't necessarily visible. I was comparing a King James in separate verse format with an English Revised in paragraph format]

If you compare just about any passage word for word you should be amazed, as I was, to see how many purely niggling trivial word substitutions were made in the revised Bible for perfectly good and usually superior words in the King James. Change for change's sake. Really, anyone who makes such a comparison ought to be disgusted. There is NO excuse. But now I've gotten ahead of Dr. Wallace.

At the same time the Westcott-Hort text made its debut, the English Revised Version of the New Testament appeared. A new era was born in which translations of the New Testament now used the few ancient Greek MSS rather than the many later ones.

Completely true. They produced the English Revised Version from their preferred texts, the same ones denounced as corrupt by Burgon and others, and besides that they changed thousands of English words according to some standard of their own, against the instructions they had agreed to follow in revising the text, and produced a disaster for the English Bible. And we are certainly in this full-blown "new era" now in which there are -- how many? dozens at least? -- new English translations of the Bible based on those corrupted texts, the corrupted texts being "the few ancient ones rather than the many later ones." To be clear, again, these are the few that simply happened to survive from ancient times, a fact which, really, ought to show that they weren't in much favor with the churches or they wouldn't have survived, having disintegrated from constant use and surviving only in later copies made from them, just as we can assume the ancient precursors of the "many later ones" must have. The fact that there are "many" of the type that underlay the King James is in fact GOOD evidence for their authenticity.

Westcott and Hort's violation of their trust is also a major fact that needs to be acknowledged, but whether the result of their work is a disaster or not has become a matter of opinion, because the new versions defenders accept Westcott and Hort's viewpoint instead of Burgon's and Scrivener's and call it progress. This is what this dispute comes down to.

The strange logic of James White

In this age of uncertainty, the last thing we need is the suspicion that the Word of God is somehow faulty and misleading. Yet many, even within Christendom, have set about to undermine the authority of Scripture. This happens in places of radical higher criticism, but it also happens in places where we are least expecting.

James White, in The King James Only Controversy, deals with this sense of uncertainty in God's word promoted by those who defend the KJV as the only reliable Bible.

So opens the Foreword to James White's book, by Dr. Mike Baird. Having spent some time studying the controversy myself and having arrived at an anti-new-versions position if not quite a KJV-only position, I was horrified at this statement. There is certainly an undermining of the authority of Scripture that we are presently having to deal with, but this was first of all brought about by the Revision of 1881 which cast all kinds of doubt on the Bible that had been held as authoritative for the previous 250 years.

The undermining then continues with the current proliferation of the new versions that are based largely on that 1881 Revision, and especially by the many differences to be found among all the versions. The mere existence of so many Bibles in itself raises the question, Which is the Word of God? Yet the new versions defenders blame this effect on the KJV-only people, who have been trying to bring this problem to the attention of Christians, instead of their own camp where the blame belongs. Perhaps they think if nobody mentions it, the undermining doesn't actually exist?

Moving from the Foreword to White's Introduction, I find a rather odd confirmation of what I just said. He writes of a Christian friend's concern about the discrepancy between her own Bible and her pastor's. The pastor had preached on Matthew 18:11, quoting it as "For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost," which is how the New American Standard reads. She and her husband, however, have the New International Version, which does not have Matthew 18:11 at ALL. Not having noticed the footnote in their NIV that gave this verse, they were "puzzled and wondered why the NIV would 'delete' this verse."

Well, yeah, it's a reasonable question why the NIV would delete that verse. Of course White is insinuating by putting "delete" in quotes that the pastor's version must have added that verse instead, which is the position of the new versions defenders. (Well, it's either one or the other, isn't it? Either the verse was wrongly added at some point in the past or it was wrongly deleted. I see no other alternative myself. The NIV's putting in a footnote suggests they believe it was wrongly added in the past but they feel obliged to note that it does exist in some manuscripts).

Shouldn't it be obvious that this discrepancy between two of the modern versions these people encountered demonstrates that the different versions themselves naturally raise doubts in people's minds about which is the true word of God? But instead of acknowledging this natural confusion, White dismisses this couple's concern as just an expression of "a large measure of ignorance when it comes to the text of the Scriptures" among good Christians, and goes on to suggest that they simply need to be educated in why there are so many different translations and all will be well. He's certainly right when he says that "It is this kind of confusion that provides the perfect breeding ground for controversy." Indeed it is. The mere existence of such differences breeds doubt. He's here agreed that this is so. But all is resolved in Dr. White's view when the explanation of the situation is given the poor confused Christian. What that explanation is will have to wait, but of course it's a rationalization of the need for all these differences that in some magical way removes the natural doubt of his friends, assuring them on his authority that they are wrong to doubt.

Now, although this is obviously all about the natural confusion created by the new versions themselves, what does Dr. White then do but go on immediately to make this confusion into a problem created by the King James Only people. I could almost not believe my eyes, but right after giving this example he immediately says:

The King James Only controversy, by its very nature, brings disruption and contention right into the pews of the local Christian church.

Let me get this straight: He gives an example of people's natural confusion about the discrepancies between two of the NEW VERSIONS, but then immediately goes on to blame this confusion on the King James Only position?

Could I ask here how anyone takes this book seriously? In just these first two pages haven't we encountered a bizarre failure of reasoning and a bias that overrides all logic?

A few political videos etc.

I'm glad there are people out there who are collecting and keeping track of this information and there's a lot more of it to be found in the conservative blogs that the mainstream media ignores.

In this video actor Jon Voight has the guts to tell a CNN reporter, very nicely, that the press is biased and shouldn't be. The reporter in fact shows that very bias in his defensive attempt to shut up Voight and argue him down.

At this blog catch the "mistake" Obama made, when he spoke of "my Muslim faith" and was "corrected" by the interviewer: It's the second video in the line of five across the top. The blog is run by an avid Sarah Palin fan and the series of videos farther down are of Palin's talk in Carson, California (on Oct 4th I think). The first one is interesting, where a feminist Democrat introduces her.

The next one is a video collection of quotes mostly from Joe Biden but also Obama, showing odd mistakes and some interesting plagiarism. Scroll down to Say It Ain't So, Joe.

And here's a great piece of speech-writing for Sarah Palin about what needs to get said in the campaign that hasn't yet been said clearly or loudly enough.

They belittle the KJV and yet claim to respect it?

One complaint by the modern Bible versions defenders that is particularly hard to take is that the KJV is an inferior translation, and that its translators were inferior scholars. Even without knowing much about the actual historical facts, don't you have to ask how, if it were such an inferior production, it could have been regarded as the pinnacle of the English Bible translations and admired as a great work of literature as well for over two hundred and fifty years? Don't you also have to ask how on earth those who defend the modern versions nevertheless say that they respect the KJV and have nothing against anyone's depending on it? It's all the worse of course that this denigration of the translators is added to the assertion that they had inferior Greek manuscripts to work from. Is there anything at all left to respect of the KJV? Yet they say they do respect it.

There is something peculiarly painful -- I want to say wounding -- about this position. Even without being KJV-only I would think a person with the most rudimentary knowledge of the history of the English Bible would feel the hurtfulness, the injustice of such a position. It denigrates not only the KJV translators and the tradition of Greek texts they depended on, it dismisses the whole sequence of English translators that led up to the KJV (since their work was the foundation the KJV built on), it implies that Christians for centuries prior to the KJV had no trustworthy Bible to depend on, and in fact that Christians of all nations for over a millennium were deprived of the most trustworthy Greek texts, and worst of all it implies that God didn't get around to preserving His word as He had promised to do, until Westcott and Hort.

Here's a page from David Cloud's site where the contention that the KJV translators were inferior is addressed.

Westcott and Hort's (alleged) false and heretical beliefs.

Quotes that demonstrate the false beliefs of the fathers of the modern Bible versions abound in the KJV-only literature, but they are contested by the versions defenders as being taken out of context, and sometimes contested as out and out lies.

Thomas Holland gives a typical list of quotations:

From Crowned With Glory by Dr. Thomas Holland:

[Page 38]. . . should we not know something of the beliefs of Westcott and Hort [the fathers of modern textual criticism]?

• Westcott denied biblical infallibility. 76

• Hort stated that those who believed in biblical authority were perverted. 77

• Hort taught that Revelation 3:15 proclaimed Christ was the first thing created, agreeing with the Gnostic teaching that Christ was a begotten god. 78

• Westcott denied that Saint John ever claimed Christ to be God. 79

• Hort stated that the ransom for our sin was paid to Satan. 80

• Both men denied the doctrine of eternal damnation, stating hell is not a place of punishment. 81
  

Notes:

76. Arthur Westcott, The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1903), 207.

77. Hort, 400.

78. F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St. John 1-3: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes (1908; reprint, Minneapolis: James and Klock Publishing, 1976), 36.

79. B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John: The Authorized Version with Introduction and Notes (1881; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 297.

80. F. J. A. Hort, The First Epistle of St. Peter 1:1-2:17: The Greek Text with Introductory Lecture, Commentary, and Additional notes (1898; reprint, Minneapolis: James and Klock Publishing, 1976), 77.

81. B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith (London: Macmillan, 1885), 77-78. Hort, Life and Letters, 149.

Here is a site calling these quotations false, saying the quotes have been taken out of context among other things. http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes.html

He discusses the claim that Westcott denied biblical infallibility here: http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes_scripture.html This page of complete quotes and commentary does seem to show that Westcott has been misread by the KJV-onlies, as he here affirms a belief in "the absolute truth" of scripture, and is objecting to the word "infallibility," which from other quotes given here he finds to be inadequate to describe the inspiration of scripture.

As for stating that evangelicals were "perverted," what Hort actually said was: "The positive doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue," apparently not in reference to "biblical authority" and in fact without identifying which doctrines he had in mind (same page linked above.) This was said from the point of view of an Anglican.

On another page, http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes_son.html the accusation that Hort believed Christ to have been created is answered. Apparently he is merely discussing the ways the Greek can be read.

This site is still under construction and I have not found the site owner's answer to the charge that Westcott denied that John claimed Christ is God, or that Hort claimed that the ransom for sin was paid to Satan. Likewise the section on Heaven and Hell is not yet on board, so the charge that both men denied that hell is eternal punishment is not yet answered there. There is a forum page where the unfinished topics may be discussed, but I haven't explored it yet.

it seems best to be cautious and say that rather than lying, most likely many KJV-onlies simply misread W&H, probably having had some trouble with Westcott and Hort's ways of expressing themselves, their Anglican frame of reference and their intellectuality.

My own observation is that they write like intellectuals, not like believers. Where they affirm belief in any particular tenet of the faith, it seems to have been arrived at intellectually, not through faith. They simply do not sound like believers. They sound most of all like 19th century liberals, who could often sound orthodox while meaning something completely different by their words. But maybe I'm also judging them unfairly from outside the Anglican tradition, and based on very few quotes after all.

I do think that it would be best to drop all the accusations of the character and beliefs of Westcott and Hort for the sake of the argument against the Bible versions, because when the KJV-onlies get their quotes wrong they make the case all the harder to prove despite their many other good arguments. Dean J W Burgon and other critics of the work of Westcott and Hort in their own generation did not accuse them of wrong beliefs, they argued strictly against the work itself, always the best policy in any dispute.

Caveat: I've done only the most cursory checking of the facts involved here and consider this subject unfinished.

Addendum: I just have to add another link to David Cloud's site, because over and over he seems to me to be the most scholarly, careful and reasonable defender of the King James Only position. http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns-index/versfbns.htm
(Disclaimer: I am not a Fundamental Baptist, I am a Calvinist, so I can't agree with everything Dr. Cloud writes.)

Both the KJV and the Modern Bible Versions cannot be God's pure word; logically, either one or the other has to be corrupt.

From Crowned With Glory, by Dr. Thomas Holland:

p. 14. One notable distinction deals with the number of verses contained in the Textus Receptus that are not contained in the Critical Text, and therefore do not appear in most modern versions based on that text.

[The Textus Receptus is the Greek text that underlies the King James Version; the Critical Text is another set of Greek manuscripts that underlie the modern Bible versions.]

This, of course, does not prove a certain translation correct and another incorrect. These verses are Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44, 46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke 17:36; 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; Romans 16:24; and 1 John 5:7. Additionally, Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are contained in the majority of Byzantine manuscripts and the Traditional Text. However, most Alexandrian manuscripts do not contain these verses, and therefore are so noted in the Critical Text.

[The Byzantine manuscripts make up the general class of Greek manuscripts the Textus Receptus is based on, that underlies the King James Bible, and the Traditional Text is another term for the Textus Receptus which is derived from the Byzantine group of manuscripts. The Alexandrian manuscripts are those the modern Bible versions are based on, and the Critical Text is the specific version of those manuscripts that is used for the translations.]

This leaves the Christian who believes the commands of Scripture in a dilemma. Three times the Bible warns against adding to or taking from the word of God (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:6; and Revelation 22:18). Either the Greek texts that remove these passages are corrupt or the Greek texts that add them are corrupt; one cannot be biblical and believe that both textual lines are pure.

Hard to dispute that, it seems to me.

The modern Bible versions are judgment on the church

Dean John William Burgon, who wrote passionately against the Bible revision of 1881, is my hero these days. Reading his Revision Revised is balm -- because it is truth. I read a bit in it every day lately. A good man, a man writing for God's honor and the good of God's people. Naturally such a man will be slandered. Naturally the devil is going to target him. What's amazing is how well the attack has succeeded. The churches pay him no attention. If anyone has heard of him, what they've heard is some kind of slanderous hearsay, such as that he wrote a conspiracy theory. He wrote no conspiracy theory. He wrote a masterful denunciation of the work of Westcott and Hort.

This too must be God's judgment, that their work has survived and come to dominate the church over the entire world, while the work of Burgon is barely heard of and treated like trash.