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home The Greek New Testament was completed with the text of Revelation by John the Apostle in about 90 A.D. The letters and writings comprising the New Testament were copied and recopied, by hand, time and time again, and disseminated throughout the known world of the Roman Empire as the Church spread, for the next millennium and a half. As copies were made, and copies of those copies, slight changes occurred in the manuscripts. Some of these changes appear to have been made inadvertently, such as a copying error where a text was spelled differently or perhaps omitted. Most changes are extremely minor, as in the difference between "who" and "whom," or between "which" and "that." In a few places, however, the differences between the texts are much more significant and pronounced. It is suggested by some that errors occurred as copyists mistook for scripture what may have been comments scribbled into the margin of a text, incorporating these into the inspired text, supposedly inserting entire verses inappropriately. It is also claimed that deliberate additions and or deletions occurred in certain places of the New Testament and were preserved in future copies, corrupting the intent of the original text. Many of these ancient Greek manuscript copies are still in existence, and are studied and compared with great care and diligence to determine exactly what the original manuscripts, called the autographs, contained. This study is called textual criticism. The surviving manuscript witnesses containing portions or the whole of the Greek New Testament, about 15,000 unique documents in all, are classified into two broad groups. One group, containing the large majority (99%) of the manuscripts, called the Byzantine Text (sometimes loosely referred to as the Majority Text, or Received Text, though there are slight variations in the definitions of these terms and how they are used), contains a certain type of manuscript which appears to be more complete or to contain additional material not found in the other manuscripts. These Byzantine texts have much in common concerning disputed passages, were found over a very broad geographical region comprising most of the old Roman Empire, and appear to be relatively consistent with one another, as though they all spring from a single unique source. These manuscripts are generally much younger than the manuscripts in the other group, their origin being traced back to a point later in time than most all of those in the other group of texts. These younger manuscripts were primarily used in translating the Authorized King James Bible and the New King James Bible. The remaining few manuscripts form a second group, called the Alexandrian or Egyptian Text. These are older texts, found mainly in the regions surrounding the city of Alexandria in Egypt where the hot dry climate was more amenable to the preservation of manuscripts. These manuscripts are generally inconsistent with one another and with the Byzantine Text, having the appearance of omissions or implying that the autographs did not contain some of the readings in the Byzantine Text, such as Mark 16:9-20, 1 John 5:7-8, Romans 8:1b, John 5:3b-4, and others. These manuscripts also contain variations in readings where words are different from those in the Byzantine Text, such as in 1st Timothy 3:16 where the Alexandrian texts do not have the word "God" in them like the Byzantine texts do, but have the article "he" and so have, "He was manifest in the flesh," instead of, "God was manifest in the flesh." The Alexandrian manuscripts have been used in all recent Bible translation work primarily because they are older, forming the basis for basically every other English translation of the Bible available today except the Authorized King James Bible and the New King James Bible. The above facts are not generally disputed. What is disputed is the choice of the older set of manuscripts, the Alexandrian text, as the type of text which more accurately reflects the autographs. In light of the fact that most all modern textual critics prefer the Alexandrian text, one might suppose that there is some very legitimate validity to their choice. Such is not the case: proof of the inferior quality of the Alexandrian Text is relatively straightforward, needs no careful documentation, and does not take a scholar to understand. Relevant facts are given below, are undisputed, and may be readily obtained with a cursory inspection of the topic. Essentially, the proof lies in the integrity of the Byzantine Text, which is regarded as inferior by scholars primarily due to the average age of the manuscripts, which are generally much younger than the texts of the Alexandrian genre. The difficulty faced by those who wish to claim the superiority of the older Alexandrian Text, insisting that these older manuscripts are more reliable, lies is the mere existence of a highly consistent and proportionately large population of texts with a significantly different nature. These Byzantine Text manuscripts certainly do exist, and there is no rational explanation for their existence, other than that they represent the original autographs. While there is clearly a plausible explanation for the existence of the Alexandrian Text if it is actually a corruption of the original autographs, there is no such rational explanation for the Byzantine text phenomenon. The Alexandrian text, being much more sparse and internally inconsistent, may easily find its roots in the Gnostic heretics of the first and second centuries. The Gnostics centered somewhat in and about Alexandria, in Egypt, and are infamous for their editing of the Scriptures in a manner consistent with the readings of Alexandrian manuscripts, which generally omit passages found in the Byzantine text. The Gnostics did delete passages of the New Testament that did not agree with their teaching, and early church writers bore witness of this activity. Essentially, the dilemma is summarized as follows: either the Alexandrian Text has incorrect om issions and incorrect substitutions of certain words, or the Byzantine Text contains incorrect additions and incorrect substitutions of certain words. It is one or the other, generally speaking. Determining which is actually the case in each disputed passage is the science and philosophy embedded in the discipline of textual criticism. In resolving this mystery, scholars of the late 19th century recognized that the general consistency of the Byzantine text would not have resulted from random and haphazard copying errors occurring over hundreds of years of copying, or the infrequent and inadvertent inclusion of brief comments scribbled into the margins of certain manuscripts. These 19th century scholars involved in determining the best Greek texts to use in biblical translation work recognized that in order for general consistency to have developed in the Byzantine text that was inconsistent with the original autographs, the inconsistencies must have been introduced rapidly, purposefully, and during a relatively brief period of history. Since no such event is given even scant mention in any historical record of the Church, rather than accept the obvious conclusion that the Byzantine text is the most accurate witness to the original autographs, as scholars in the 17th century had already done when translating the AV, late 19th century scholars proposed a theory -- a mere conjecture, actually -- called the Syrian Recension. They proposed that the early Church leadership privately convened, gathered all the known copies of the letters and writings comprising the New Testament, agreed upon explicit alterations and additions to the texts, texts which these leaders regarded as inspired by God, and made new copies containing their edits. The conjecture is that the Church leaders did this in universal cooperation, for no apparent reason other than to correct writings considered by all to be sacred, and left absolutely no record of it. The Syrian Recension speculation is that the early Church leaders did this so effectively and quietly that they were able to spread the alternative readings, deletions, and additions to the inspired Word of God back into use in the churches without notice or controversy. They accomplished the feat in such a way that the vast bulk of the copies descending from these alterations, deletions, and additions supplanted the spread of the original autographs and corrupted the true representation of the original text among the majority of manuscripts which can be found today, namely the "corrupt" Byzantine Text. The early church leaders were able to cover this up completely, such that none of the saints in that day were alarmed or divided over the situation, and hence no record of the event remains. This is how 19th century biblical scholars chose to explain the existence of the Byzantine text so that they could hold to the integrity of the Alexandrian Text. This is the foundation of currently accepted and sanctioned perspectives in textual criticism. Nearly all translation work done since the late 1800's stands or falls based upon the validity of this conjecture and depends explicitly upon it. Based upon this theory, the Byzantine Text is considered inferior to the Alexandrian -- which is generally referred to among textual critics as, "the best and most reliable manuscripts." This is in spite of the fact that no Alexandrian manuscript predates the activity of the Gnostics, who frequented the geographic regions giving rise to the Alexandrian Texts, and who are noted historically as having clipped out and/or altered portions of their Bibles which did not fit nicely with their Gnostic presuppositions. The worst corruptions known to have been introduced into the texts of the New Testament manuscript witness were introduced in precisely the areas where the Alexandrian texts were generally found, and predate these texts. I am certainly not a scholar of the Greek New Testament. However, in my opinion, it does not take a scholar to see through this... any more than we need an astronomer to help us find the sun. Just open your eyes... you'll do fine. The early Church would not have convened to privately alter the text of writings they considered sacred and which contained the substance and foundation of truths for which they were willingly martyred. The saints of the early Church would not have been in universal agreement on this activity if someone had suggested it, and if anyone had actually ever attempted such a thing there would have been a violent uproar among the saints -- it would have caused a universal crisis in the Church. The Syrian Recension, if it occurred, would certainly not have gone unnoticed and unmentioned in the historical record. The complete absence of it from the whole of the historical record of the Church is reasonable proof that the Syrian Recension did not occur. Anyone familiar with the ongoing debate between evolutionists and creationists will recognize the desperation of the Syrian Recension as equivalent to the new evolutionary conjecture: Punctuated Equilibrium -- the new claim that evolution "must" have occurred in spurts, a claim which has no foundation in biology whatsoever, a conjecture which is required to retain evolutionary dogma in the face of a fossil record which does not support a continuum of change between species. The same type of blind desperation is being shown in the field of textual criticism, and such absurdity is held just as heartily and universally in institutions of higher learning as evolutionary dogma, and for no better reasons that I can determine. I do not think it is merely coincidental that the scholars who promoted the Syrian Recension were also very much intrigued with Darwin's theory of evolution. In my opinion, the fallacy of the Syrian Recension conjecture is brutally obvious and constitutes reasonable proof that all major English Bible translation work done since the midst of the 19th century is of inferior quality to that of the Authorized King James Bible due to inherent inconsistencies with the original autographs of the Greek New Testament. The practical implication of this fact is that modern Bible translation work should not be trusted where it differs in meaning from the Authorized King James Bible. For further information on this topic, feel free to visit the
Dean Burgon Society. |
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