But, the King
James Bible, says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all scripture is given by
inspiration and in the only other place where inspiration is mentioned, Job
32:8, states that God’s inspiration gives men understanding. Peter, writing in
2 Peter 3:15, said that Paul wrote by the wisdom given to him, both
understanding and wisdom implying God’s revelation of Himself to the writers as
well as the wisdom to write. In Jeremiah 36:32 the originals, being burned in a
fire, are rewritten, with the addition of many words, so the question of God
inspiring only the original autographs is apparent. Which originals? Also, in 2
Timothy 3:16, “all scripture,” is not likely referring to original autographs
as it is highly unlikely Timothy had access to the original autographs of
Moses’ more than one-thousand-year-old writings but to only copies and
translations.
Added into the mix was the effort to revise
the AV completed by the Anglican
Church’s Bishops Westcott, Hort, and company in 1881, unrelated either to the
Niagara Conference or the Princeton Seminary’s thoughts on the inerrancy and
infallibility of the original autographs. New manuscript discoveries of a
non-Biblical nature that were believed to shed light on the original Bible
languages and dissatisfaction with the perceived archaic English of the Authorized Version led to the Anglican
Church’s 1881 Revision of the King James
Bible. The Revision was the first effort in two hundred and fifty years
with any Anglican Church authority behind it to revise the King James Version.[1]
Plans for a revision
of the AV were in the works since at
least 1820, when Anglican Bishop Herbert Marsh, in a lecture on the
interpretation of the Bible at Cambridge, published in 1828, called for it as
necessary.[2] This
struggle to have the idea of a revision seen through happened in fact, even
though many, such as philologist and pioneering American environmental
conservationist, George Perkins Marsh, said that a multitude of Bibles would
result from such a revision, dividing Protestantism and causing more harm than
good .[3] The
Revision committee, laboring for over a decade, published its work in 1881. The
Revision efforts consisted of an English committee headed by Anglican bishops
Westcott and Hort, and an American committee headed by Bible scholar and
historian, Philip Schaff.
The resultant Revised Version of the Bible and its
American counterpart, the American
Standard Version, were not so much revisions of the Authorized Version but new versions of the Bible based on an
entirely new background text for the New Testament and a departure from the
traditional Old Testament text. The effort did not escape criticism. John
Burgon, a noted expert on Greek language and manuscripts, panned the revision
efforts in writing in 1883. He wrote, “…’the New Greek Text,’ – which, in
defiance of their instructions, the Revisionists of the ‘Authorized English
Version’ had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating, - was a
wholly untrustworthy performance: was full of the gravest errors from beginning
to end….”[4] Philip Schaff, the head of the American
revision committee, acknowledged that one reason for the difficulty the new
text had in being favorably received was that “for the great mass of English
readers King James’ Version is virtually the inspired Word of God.” [5]
Nevertheless,
fundamentalists in America took to the new versions of the Bible quite readily.
Evangelist R.A. Torrey wrote that, in his estimation, “the Revised Version is
manifestly much more exact,” than the Authorized
Version.[6] It
was not until another contributor to The
Fundamentals, lawyer Philip Mauro, began to express serious reservations
about the Revised Version’s
background text in the early 1920s that fundamentalism began to break down into
two camps on the Bible translation issue. One camp followed the Westcott-Hort
Greek text (representing the Alexandrian line of manuscripts) and the Bibles
that flowed from it such as the Revised
Version, the American Standard
Version, and later the Revised
Standard Version, the New American
Standard Version, the New
International Version, etc., with the second camp using and uplifting the Textus Receptus, in English the Received Text. This was the traditional
textual line of manuscripts, called the Byzantine, that were the background
texts for the Authorized Version, with
that Bible version simply being considered, not inspired, but the most
trustworthy translation of an inspired Greek text. Although the Old Testament text was also
different it was not usually the subject of much argument until later. Both
parties felt that their version of the Greek text was representative of the
originals, which only were given by inspiration of God. Translations were
reliable, trustworthy, or, in the case of the Authorized Version, the best, but most definitely not inspired by
God and merely the devoted work of skilled and faithful translators. The battle
within fundamentalism was not over the authority of the Bible but over the
question, “What is the Bible?”
This is a fundamental question for you.
Remember what God has said about his words.
Psalm 138: 2 I will worship
toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy
truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.
John 17:17 ¶ Sanctify them
through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Next, Peter Ruckman throws a monkey wrench
into the wheel of fundamentalism in America with regards to the Bible.
[1]
David S. Schaff, The Life of Schaff: In
Part Autobiographical (New York: Charles Scribner & Son, 1897), 354.
[2]
Herbert S. Marsh, Lectures on the
Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible (London: J. Smith, 1828), 279.
[3]
George P. Marsh, Lectures on the English
Language (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 549.
[4]
John William Burgon, Preface to The
Revision Revised (1883 reprint, New
York: Dover
Publications, 1971), xi.
No comments:
Post a Comment