From: kroth@david.wheaton.edu (Ken Roth)
Subject: Re: TANGENT:  Interpretation
Keywords: You know, this is annoying...
Organization: Wheaton College, IL
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 05:29:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.185717.25673@newshost.unh.edu> ss1@kepler.unh.edu (The Rink) writes:
>
>This article will say everything I wish to respond to about this posting.
>I wrote it myself, researching the data from various sources.  Please give
>it some consideration, since most Christians today are not even aware, let
>alone emphasize, the points given in it.

I hate to sound skeptical, but I would almost bet that your #1 source of
information was taken from the book 'Which Bible?" By Dr. David Otis Fuller.
His book is, without a doubt, one of the WORST jobs of writing I have ever
seen.  (This is not to say your writing style is bad, or anything like that,
but what he has to say (and what you echo) is extreme hogwash...)

Can you stand and tell me that a phrase that does not exist in Biblical
manuscripts for centuries (and then mysteriously appears) should be accepted
as scripture?  I am sorry, but your assertation that the KJV is even a GREAT
translation is just plain silly.  Anyway, I know that if I keep going with
this post, I will get nasty, and I REALLy don't wanna do that.

BUT, I will repost (from about a year ago) part of a response I made to the
'Chuckmeister' when he made very similar assertations.  Funny, but he never
responded to my post.  Be warned, it is more about the book by Fuller then the
actual discussion, but hey, why not...

******************************************************************************
Well, I have finished reading 'Which Bible' By Dr. David Otis Fuller (Not to
be confused with Dr. David Fuller of Fuller Theological Seminary fame), and I
figure I might as well give you some comments about the books.

Before I start, I will inform you a bit about myself.  Been a Christian since
I was 7, but no real growth occured until I was about 13, when I was scared by
certain circumstances and decided to really learn about what I believe.  Since
then I have had good times and bad times, but during them all I was intent on
knowing the will of God for me, and also understanding the revelation of God
to all of mankind.  I am now an old twenty, feeling older because of a lot of
mistakes I have made.  I am a Senior Bible/Theology major at Wheaton college,
an institution which has been called 'The Harvard of the Midwest' and which is
widely considered one of the top, if not the top, private Xian undergrad
school.  This is not to puff myself up, but to basically inform you about the
faculty at this school.  In the department of Biblical Studies, I believe
there are exactly 2 profs who are not Dr.'s.  One should have been, but got in
an argument with his advisor while finishing up his thesis, and never
finished.  But he has been teaching here for at least 25 years, and is widely
respected.  The other is just a part-time prof.  The author whose book I
mentioned is also a part-time prof, who teaches one or two classes.  He writes
many books.

[I am now 22 and need one more class to graduate (Hebrew 402)]

Now, on to the book itself.  I borrowed it from Prof. Hoerth, the prof who
never finished his thesis (he is about 55-60 now).  He also gave me some
background on the author.  Fuller was once a Trustee at this college.  He
decided to leave when he decided that wheaton was becoming too liberal.  I
cannot remember where he went to, but he is not held in very high regard
here.  I believe Prof. Hoerth's statement described him as a 'crackpot'.  One
of the other profs was a bit nicer, but also looked down on the book.  I
decided to look up a review of the book in MANY different catalogues in the
library, but in all the places I looked (and there were many) I could find NO
reviews of the book 'Which Bible?'.  This is very important, because any text
that comes out of any importance is reviewed by many different people.  This
means that the fact that this text was not reviewed shows that it is, more or
less, universally ignored.  I did this research after I read the book, because
I wanted to form my own opinions about it.  Which I did...

Well, I figure that I might as well start with the big points, and work from
there...

1)  My greatest argument with the book is that EVERYTHING is says boils down
  to one argument..namely 'we have more manuscripts than you do'.  I could not
  escape this very basic argument.  And it is good that they keep referring to
  it, because it is the only one that they use which has any weight.  But I
  find it important to realize that everything else they say is based upon
  this fact.

[The current discussion boils down to 'Look how those liberals changed these
 texts'...of course, perhaps those originals were wrong, but, NAH, the KJV is
 right, and we make all our conclusions from it...Kinda circular, no?  Ours is
 right, cause ours coincides with our specific views, which, of course, comes
 from the KJV]

2)  LARGE sections of this book are merely bios of people who agree with
  Fuller on this issue.  I refer to Chpts 4 and 7, for starters.  I have no
  way, whatsoever, to argue that either of these men were good at what they
  did.  Perhaps they were absolutely incredible (which I may have doubts
  about.  If all else fails, I am sure there were people of equal or greater
  ability on the other side of the argument.) but this does not prove a single
  thing.  Burgon must have died around 1900, which makes most of what he has
  to say on the subject more than just outdated, but simply pointless.  He
  died before most of the oldest texts of the Bible were discovered.  Yet on
  page 40 we see that he returns to the same old argument...'that at the end
  of 1800 years 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove
  untrustworthy'.  This is NOT a valid argument, at least not valid enough to
  base everything upon.  There is also a detailed life of Wilson.  At least he
  is a bit closer in time to us, but he is still a good distance away.  But
  his dismissal of the Vulgate of Jerome is laughable, and tends to discredit
  himself a bit.  I will discuss that later.  The entire end of the book is a
  reprint of a book of his (Which I could not find the date of anywhere in the
  book, but it seems o be the early 1930's).  Besides the fact that this book
  is 60 years old, so therefore is still missing important pieces to the
  puzzle that we now have, his arguments are often without either poitn or
  proof.  I don't have time to address his entire argument, but will hit on
  the basics in later points.

3)  The entire book is written by dead people.  Well, not really, but close
  to it.  Besides Fuller, all but two of the people whose works he cites are
  deceased.  Some for over 80 years!  Just because they are dead does not, of
  course, nullify what they say, but it does show that they are arguing from
  a) a point of ignorance about what we know more of now and b) a time when
  those who disagreed with them had still not made totally cohesive argumenst
  themselves.

4)  Almost every quote he makes from those who disagree with him, quotes that
  seem to make them agree with him, have the dreadful feeling of being pulled
  from some important context.  Not only that, but many of them show the point
  I tried to make above, that the theories had not been totally formulated
  yet.  'We don't know for sure' and 'We can't totally explain' are examples
  of things he quotes to show that they don't know what they were talking
  about.  But 100 years later we do know a lot of the answers, especially with
  the discovery of even earlier manuscripts.

5)  The feature of the book that annoys me and scares me the most is the
  almost vile anti-Catholicism.  A trait of some Fundamentalists (which
  Fuller almost certainly is) is an overwhelming 'us versus them' concept.  It
  first shows itself in the introduction that Fuller makes where he basically
  says that everyone against him is a flaming liberal bent on weakening the
  truth shown to us in the word of God.  And this in itself is a totally silly
  argument.  But it shows his mindset.  Hence Prof. Hoerth's statement about
  him being a 'crackpot'.  But this trait becomes even stronger when we see how
  almost all of the authors in the book treat the Catholics with scorn
  (please, the term Papists has bad connotations.  I am not a Catholic, and
  disagree in MANY ways with them, but they are to be respected for what they
  are, and ancient, albeit flawed, church.).  And Wilson is the greatest
  culprit.  I am surprised he did not jump out and screm that the Pope is the
  Anti-Christ or something like that.  He sees this great conspiracy through
  time to subtly change the Bible.  And of course he sees the RC church as the
  culprit, no doubt backed by Satan.  I really have a hard time seeing this
  happening already in the 4th century.  Which leads to point number 6.

6)   While there is no way to deny that heresy started early in the Xian
  church, the people that Wilson writes off without a second thought is indeed
  humerous,and dangerous.  Not that anybody was perfect, but you can't go
  around writing off Justin Martyr, Origen, Tatian and Clement of Alexandria,
  not to mention Jerome.  The only reason that he writes these people off as
  scheming heretics is that the texts that they quote do not agree with the
  'Textus Receptus' therefor they must have changed it.  It doesn't seem to
  show up in his mind that perhaps they (being within 100 years of the
  signatures of the texts) might just be right and the TR wrong.  Yes, Marcion
  DID change scripture, and we know how he did it.  That is the key, because
  early fathers kept track of these sort of things.  We are GREATLY indebted
  to the early church Fathers, yet Wilson (above) writes off 4 or them  (Or
  perhaps just three, for Clement of Alexandria is kinda iffy as being a full
  fledged church father) simply because they don't agree with him.  I am
  sorry, but they knew MUCH better than we can ever know.  And in some
  respects these people were not always what we now consider to be totally
  right, but to be honest, nobody back then was.  (Even Paul needed to correct
  Peter once).  Personally, I think the writing off of Justin Martyr is the
  funniest...

7)  The supposed 'Learned Men' did a good thing with what they had, but I know
  (You know what I mean...) that they did not have everything they could have
  had.  What we have found in the last 100 years tends to back up the B and
  Aleph texts.  But they could not know this.  And, as Prof. Hoerth said, if I
  want to know some of the antics that these men pulled off, I could do some
  research on them.  And I might, just for future reference.

8)  Also, strange, contradictory arguments are made a few times.  According to
  one author, the B and Aleph texts were so close in time and similar, that
  they must be copies, while another author tries to point out that even one
  of them must be flawed because of their many differences.  In another case,
  one person contradicts himself.  In on sentence he says that the age of the
  texts does not really matter, but a few sentences later he points out that
  old texts prove his point (referring to the Deas Sea Scrolls).  He dismisses
  an argument, then turns around and uses it.  This is against the rules...

9)  The statement made by Fuller in the introduction (speaking of a statement
  of Burgon) that the Byzantine texts were simply 'used up' or destroyed when
  they got old is untrue.  This is wrong primarily because it is a weak excuse
  for the lack of documents.  'Oh, they must have been used so much that they
  disappeared'.  And besides that, the Jews did not destory old documents, and
  there is no real evidence that the Xians would either.  And to top it all
  off, does it not seem beyond foolish to state that 'These were destroyed
  because they were used so much, but those that were incorrect we just left
  lying around?'  That is why the argument is really silly.

(Lets see, why not make it an even 10 points of disagreement.....)

10)  The point still stands, and cannot be 'explained away' that not only
  the oldest, but the most reliable manuscripts do not agree with the TR.
  There is no way to shut that argument.  Numbers do not cut it.  Gee, well,
  there are millions and millions of NIVs around, can we use that as proof. It
  sounds silly, but that is what the TR's backers tend to do.  Many of the
  manuscripts they point to are not even that old.  But the entire basis of
  modern textual criticism is not just 'older is better' but includes even
  more items like :  If you have 2 manuscripts, and they have similar
  readings, but one is harder to understand in the original language...which
  do you pick?  Well, you pick the one harder to read, because if one is going
  to change a text, one will want to help people by clarifying the language.
  There are many others that are ignored by Fuller.
  
Well, I figure that ten points should be enough.  I again state that I do not
think people who read the KJV are stupid, or ignorant.  I think some people
who read it read it for pleasure, because the language is beautiful. i.e. in
Genesis, the KJV says 'Rachel was in the way of women' while the NIV blurts
out 'I am having my period.'  I like one a little more than the other.  But if
one is to attempt to study, one cannot take a stand on the KJV.  If you
purchase the Greek NT, you will find that it tends to take into account new
manuscripts that have been found, even up to around 100 AD(from John).  I
point out that from the 3rd century we now have a basically complete set of
the epistle of Paul, minus a few, from ONE manuscripts.  No, they do not all
agree, but again I restate, NUMBERS ARE NOT THE ISSUE.  100,000 people who say
the moon is made of green cheese are still not more correct than the one who
says it is not.

I hope that this is not too long.  If I wanted to take the time I could go
through point-by-point and deal with all the issues in the book, but I hope
the above points show the grave problems with this book.  Read Comfort's book
that I mailed you about.  It will show you how modern translations use old
texts that have recently been discovered.

'Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the NT'
Philip Comfort, PhD.

[PS, I now read the NRSV.  While some of the more liberal study notes bother
  me, it is the 'best' translation of its type out there.]

>-- 
>Sam.                                             ss1@kepler.unh.edu
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>An egotist is a person of low taste--more interested in himself than in me.
>-------------------------------------------------Ambrose Bierce----------------


In Christ,
Ken
-- 
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kroth@wheaton.uucp | uunet!tellab5!wheaton!kroth || They call me Gryfalia   
"We believe, we believe, 'cause we felt it burning in our hearts"--77's
"He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose."
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