I'm open to the possibility of preservation happening in different languages, and I'll tell you why. When we look at the Old Testament, there are certain portions of the Masoretic Text which are unintelligible and the Septuagint had to be consulted to fill in the gaps. Some have argued that there are still corruptions in the OT critical text; an interesting example of this can be found in Genesis 5, where the Septuagint and Samaritan Penteteuch with each other against the Masoretic Text on the ages of certain men when they fathered their sons (there are also some disagreements between the LXX and SP in this chapter, and the SP has several problems of its own in other books). The idea that the NT Critical Text is restorationist is an interesting one, but I'm not sure whether it holds up. I agree that the Byzantine Text is the best, but there is no single Byzantine manuscript that is 100% error-free. The thousands of Byzantine manuscripts have been compared to identify and exclude errors, resulting in the various Greek majority texts such as Hodges & Farstad or Robinson-Pierpont. So the CT folks could accuse us of being restorationists too.
Thank you. I had never thought about the direction of corrections. That's good insight. I tend to think of resorationism more in light of a hermeneutic of skepticism. We assume that what we are told, have received, and so on is simply not true. The real truth was lost and has to be recovered. I don't think the methodology can end. If they reestablish a text, then it requires looking for another hidden secret and pulling more layers back, and it'll only take a discovery to ignite it. I don't see a means for it to shift from suspicion to preservation.
Hi Dwayne. Thank you for this video! Really insightful! I wanted to ask how did the Church consider the Byzantine manuscripts to reflect the earlier texts? What was their criteria?
It would be anachronistic to look back and see what the medieval church thought about the Byzantine manuscripts, the distinct text types were not enumerated until the early 1800s. It's more likely than not that the scribes simply copied what was infront of them, to what we have in the Byzantine text would not have been 'selected out'. the WH theory of a Lucian recension has been ruled out, so we know that the Byzantine tradition goes back to at least the 2nd century.
The autograph of the Gospel of Mark composed by Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10, was written in Latin, which accounts for what I understand is a crude Greek translation,
I am a continuist across the board and God has preserved His Word. The reason there might be a gap in the Alexandrian Text type might be the intense persecution during that time especially from 1st to the 4th century until Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Archeology had improved drastically as well in the 1800's and maybe because some manuscripts were hidden because of the intense persecution I mentioned above. Erasmus did want to use Vaticanus in his Greek New Testament but could not get access to it. I have no problem with a school at Antioch because Paul and Barnabas were there for 2 years teaching and when coming back from his missionary journeys, Paul would stop in Antioch and share what the Lord was doing in the churches. He would then proceed to Jerusalem from there on a couple of accounts in Scripture. However, the info I researched yesterday said that Paul wrote 5 letters from prison. Four letters from Corinth. Two letters from Ephesus and two letters from Macedonia. Could there have been copies of those letters by Paul when he returned to Antioch and Jerusalem? Maybe. Regarding 1 Timothy 3:16, the New Living Translation chose to go with Christ rather than God or He like the other Greek manuscripts. The NLT does not go word for word always with the Nestlé Aland UBS text. The NLT does look at other manuscripts and go with the reading the translators thought was a better reading. Since we know this verse is talking about Jesus Christ, they probably decided to just go with Christ.
There is not a translation that doesn't do some paraphrasing simply because of the language barriers from Hebrew and Greek to English. They have words and phrases we don't have and vice versa. I get a little tired of people who try to say that the NLT is a paraphrase. Simply not true. Dynamic equivalence? Yes! Paraphrase? No! Its as much of a translation as any other and a scholarly work.
This is totally off subject. But I think you mentioned before: Wayne A. Mitchell author of The Greek New Testament. It would be nice to hear his perspective.
With the preservation thing I wonder what are the limits for preservation, like area, centuries? A reading may be in Aleph/B and a some late Byzantine manuscripts, but not in the bulk of the Byzantine manuscripts. In this case is it not a preserved reading because it wasn’t in the bulk? Is there an area limitation which needs to have the reading in all ages, like 20 miles, 50 miles, and how do we go about determining the area? There are some readings which only appear in the 9th century so then we have to assume it was in all earlier centuries and in all the areas in which it appears, but one could also assume some things for the readings found in the earliest manuscripts, in other manuscripts which are now destroyed. I personally don’t think that it has to be preserved in all areas in all ages. For example 4th century Egypt, if the local text of Egypt be true it wouldn’t be preserved there. And you also have the versions, which although not in Greek, there are many locations who didn’t have some reading or another. It then becomes preservation specifically for the Greek speaking people of Byzantium.
Did you know that the early Church Fathers claimed some original New Testament writings were in Antioch, I believe, or a nearby city? This claim was made around the 3rd or 4th century. These Church Fathers even went so far as to encourage others to verify the manuscripts they owned by checking them against the originals that these Fathers possessed. This knowledge should help establish the Byzantine text as being on par with what was previously known as the Alexandrian text.
God bless you. Is the NKJV from the Byzantine text or is it a mixture of Byzantine and TR? I’m a little confused in regard to the NKJV. Thank you for your time.
@@Dwayne_Green thank you very much for your response, I appreciate it very much. Which Bible translations do you recommend that are based on the Byzantine text and in your opinion are they better than the NKJV? NKJV is my primary translation.
The Septuagint vs masoretic text debate makes me question the preservation in original language only position. The book of Esther is the perfect example. In the masoretic text this book is a man focused story that does not mention God once. In the LXX God, and praying to God is mentioned several times throughout.
I agree, I am a LXX primacy guy and I do believe that as it is found in the best received traditions (the Complutensian and Aldine Bibles) it is the correct or most correct Old Testament.
@@Wully02 accessibility of the LXX in English is my problem. Here’s what I’ve come up with: do I buy a Brenton’s Septuagint + separate NT like Boyd’s? Or go Orthodox Study Bible? (Alfred Rahlfs LXX + NKJV)
Yes, how I'm using the terms is this: Preservationist is someone who believes that the Word of God exists throughout the ages, a restorationist believes that something was obtained then lost for a period of time and then 'restored' later. In the send of text criticism, a restorationist view would say we had the text for a short time, it was lost, and then was reconstructed later.
at the very heart of it, to suggest that the Word of God is being 'restored' implies that it wasn't available throughout the life of the church, which for me is problematic. I understand that the Critical Text is fairly close, but to me some of the differences (like Mark 16:9-20 for example) is a fairly substantial difference.
@@Dwayne_Green It was available, but not for some parts of the world. The alexandrian text was used, but not in Byzantium. The other way round it is the same thing: The byzantine text was not available where the western text or the alexandrian text was prevalent. Do you understand my point? God bless!
The EOB New Testament is a new translation of the official Greek Orthodox text called the Patriarchal Text of 1904. It is a scholarly, fully Orthodox, and easy to read version that aims at being the text of reference for personal study, devotions, and even liturgical use within among English-speaking Orthodox Christians. This translation features: - extensive footnotes to variants from other manuscripts and alternative translations - information introductions to the books - over 80 pages of appendices that explore keys texts and theological concepts important to Orthodox readers - many illustrations and tables Unlike the OSB (Orthodox Study Bible New Testament) which is actually the New King James version, the EOB is a fresh and accessible translation created within the Orthodox community. The EOB team of contributors consisted of about 20 individuals, mostly based in the United States. EOB: The Eastern Greek Orthodox New Testament: Based on the Patriarchal Text of 1904 with extensive variants by Laurent A Cleenewerck (Author)
Wasn’t the longer reading of Marks Gospel originally in the codex sianaticus? It seems obvious that it was erased and the space present there is sufficient to include the longer reading of Mark. Since cost was a consideration I don’t believe that the original authors would leave so much space in the codex for no reason.
I don't believe it was ever inked in it, but there is an unusually long blank space where it could fit at the end of Mark. The only explanation of the blank space that seems to make sense is that a scribe was aware of the reading and left 'memorial space' for it.
In the Byz. text in 1.Tim.3.16 it's not really "God *who* was manifested in flesh", it's just "God was manifested in flesh", there's no "who" or "he who", and that's a very important distinction... and this is part of the very point of the weakness of the CT, it is awkward grammatically to have any "who" there after "the mystery of godliness"... even if we add " *God* who "... When the text reads "God was manifested in the flesh" it fits grammatically, while the CT "who" introduces the grammatical awkwardness... besides this, there is the nonsensical nature of the CT reading when it states that the mystery of godliness = "who was manifested in the flesh", since every human being was manifested/appeared in the flesh... also, the CT reading does not at all state that *God* was manifested in the flesh, it just says that Christ was manifested in the flesh... which of course means that the reading is not stating that Deity (God) was manifested, only that the Messiah/Christ/Jesus was manifested... the Byz./TR reading is the only one that states Jesus = "God manifested....." (for Paul was referring to Jesus and not some other person, but he wrote "God" and not "Jesus" or "who"...) ... [the one Latin based reading states that the mystery was manifested..., i.e. "which".... and is more grammatically consistent than the CT reading, even though it's false....]
Thank you
Those are three great reasons! Thank you!
Im looking forward to the future of your channel. Glad a majority text channel exists. God bless you in Jesus name!
I'm open to the possibility of preservation happening in different languages, and I'll tell you why. When we look at the Old Testament, there are certain portions of the Masoretic Text which are unintelligible and the Septuagint had to be consulted to fill in the gaps. Some have argued that there are still corruptions in the OT critical text; an interesting example of this can be found in Genesis 5, where the Septuagint and Samaritan Penteteuch with each other against the Masoretic Text on the ages of certain men when they fathered their sons (there are also some disagreements between the LXX and SP in this chapter, and the SP has several problems of its own in other books).
The idea that the NT Critical Text is restorationist is an interesting one, but I'm not sure whether it holds up. I agree that the Byzantine Text is the best, but there is no single Byzantine manuscript that is 100% error-free. The thousands of Byzantine manuscripts have been compared to identify and exclude errors, resulting in the various Greek majority texts such as Hodges & Farstad or Robinson-Pierpont. So the CT folks could accuse us of being restorationists too.
Thank you. I had never thought about the direction of corrections. That's good insight.
I tend to think of resorationism more in light of a hermeneutic of skepticism. We assume that what we are told, have received, and so on is simply not true. The real truth was lost and has to be recovered. I don't think the methodology can end. If they reestablish a text, then it requires looking for another hidden secret and pulling more layers back, and it'll only take a discovery to ignite it. I don't see a means for it to shift from suspicion to preservation.
Good video and agreed.
Hi Dwayne. Thank you for this video! Really insightful!
I wanted to ask how did the Church consider the Byzantine manuscripts to reflect the earlier texts? What was their criteria?
It would be anachronistic to look back and see what the medieval church thought about the Byzantine manuscripts, the distinct text types were not enumerated until the early 1800s. It's more likely than not that the scribes simply copied what was infront of them, to what we have in the Byzantine text would not have been 'selected out'. the WH theory of a Lucian recension has been ruled out, so we know that the Byzantine tradition goes back to at least the 2nd century.
@@Dwayne_Green ah ok that makes sense. Thank you!
The autograph of the Gospel of Mark composed by Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10, was written in Latin, which accounts for what I understand is a crude Greek translation,
I am a continuist across the board and God has preserved His Word. The reason there might be a gap in the Alexandrian Text type might be the intense persecution during that time especially from 1st to the 4th century until Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Archeology had improved drastically as well in the 1800's and maybe because some manuscripts were hidden because of the intense persecution I mentioned above. Erasmus did want to use Vaticanus in his Greek New Testament but could not get access to it. I have no problem with a school at Antioch because Paul and Barnabas were there for 2 years teaching and when coming back from his missionary journeys, Paul would stop in Antioch and share what the Lord was doing in the churches. He would then proceed to Jerusalem from there on a couple of accounts in Scripture. However, the info I researched yesterday said that Paul wrote 5 letters from prison. Four letters from Corinth. Two letters from Ephesus and two letters from Macedonia. Could there have been copies of those letters by Paul when he returned to Antioch and Jerusalem? Maybe. Regarding 1 Timothy 3:16, the New Living Translation chose to go with Christ rather than God or He like the other Greek manuscripts. The NLT does not go word for word always with the Nestlé Aland UBS text. The NLT does look at other manuscripts and go with the reading the translators thought was a better reading. Since we know this verse is talking about Jesus Christ, they probably decided to just go with Christ.
I don't think we can use the NLT for that kind of comparison, it's do dynamic, once could almost consider it a paraphrase.
There is not a translation that doesn't do some paraphrasing simply because of the language barriers from Hebrew and Greek to English. They have words and phrases we don't have and vice versa. I get a little tired of people who try to say that the NLT is a paraphrase. Simply not true. Dynamic equivalence? Yes! Paraphrase? No! Its as much of a translation as any other and a scholarly work.
This is totally off subject.
But I think you mentioned before: Wayne A. Mitchell author of The Greek New Testament.
It would be nice to hear his perspective.
With the preservation thing I wonder what are the limits for preservation, like area, centuries? A reading may be in Aleph/B and a some late Byzantine manuscripts, but not in the bulk of the Byzantine manuscripts. In this case is it not a preserved reading because it wasn’t in the bulk? Is there an area limitation which needs to have the reading in all ages, like 20 miles, 50 miles, and how do we go about determining the area? There are some readings which only appear in the 9th century so then we have to assume it was in all earlier centuries and in all the areas in which it appears, but one could also assume some things for the readings found in the earliest manuscripts, in other manuscripts which are now destroyed. I personally don’t think that it has to be preserved in all areas in all ages. For example 4th century Egypt, if the local text of Egypt be true it wouldn’t be preserved there. And you also have the versions, which although not in Greek, there are many locations who didn’t have some reading or another. It then becomes preservation specifically for the Greek speaking people of Byzantium.
Did you know that the early Church Fathers claimed some original New Testament writings were in Antioch, I believe, or a nearby city? This claim was made around the 3rd or 4th century. These Church Fathers even went so far as to encourage others to verify the manuscripts they owned by checking them against the originals that these Fathers possessed. This knowledge should help establish the Byzantine text as being on par with what was previously known as the Alexandrian text.
God bless you. Is the NKJV from the Byzantine text or is it a mixture of Byzantine and TR? I’m a little confused in regard to the NKJV. Thank you for your time.
its a TR text and the marginal notes show differences with the majority and with the critical text
@@Dwayne_Green thank you very much for your response, I appreciate it very much. Which Bible translations do you recommend that are based on the Byzantine text and in your opinion are they better than the NKJV? NKJV is my primary translation.
The Septuagint vs masoretic text debate makes me question the preservation in original language only position.
The book of Esther is the perfect example. In the masoretic text this book is a man focused story that does not mention God once. In the LXX God, and praying to God is mentioned several times throughout.
I agree, I am a LXX primacy guy and I do believe that as it is found in the best received traditions (the Complutensian and Aldine Bibles) it is the correct or most correct Old Testament.
@@Wully02 accessibility of the LXX in English is my problem. Here’s what I’ve come up with: do I buy a Brenton’s Septuagint + separate NT like Boyd’s? Or go Orthodox Study Bible? (Alfred Rahlfs LXX + NKJV)
My knowledge of matter relating to OT textual criticism is rather small, so I can't really comment on Esther here.
Could you clarify your use of the terms “preservationist” and “restorationist” . . . ?
Yes, how I'm using the terms is this: Preservationist is someone who believes that the Word of God exists throughout the ages, a restorationist believes that something was obtained then lost for a period of time and then 'restored' later. In the send of text criticism, a restorationist view would say we had the text for a short time, it was lost, and then was reconstructed later.
@@Dwayne_Green Thank you!
Dwayne, why would you say that a restoration of the text (with regards to the ct) is unbiblical?
at the very heart of it, to suggest that the Word of God is being 'restored' implies that it wasn't available throughout the life of the church, which for me is problematic. I understand that the Critical Text is fairly close, but to me some of the differences (like Mark 16:9-20 for example) is a fairly substantial difference.
@@Dwayne_Green It was available, but not for some parts of the world. The alexandrian text was used, but not in Byzantium. The other way round it is the same thing: The byzantine text was not available where the western text or the alexandrian text was prevalent. Do you understand my point?
God bless!
Why is it hard to find a Byzantine text Bible?
The EOB New Testament is a new translation of the official Greek Orthodox text called the Patriarchal Text of 1904. It is a scholarly, fully Orthodox, and easy to read version that aims at being the text of reference for personal study, devotions, and even liturgical use within among English-speaking Orthodox Christians. This translation features: - extensive footnotes to variants from other manuscripts and alternative translations - information introductions to the books - over 80 pages of appendices that explore keys texts and theological concepts important to Orthodox readers - many illustrations and tables Unlike the OSB (Orthodox Study Bible New Testament) which is actually the New King James version, the EOB is a fresh and accessible translation created within the Orthodox community. The EOB team of contributors consisted of about 20 individuals, mostly based in the United States. EOB: The Eastern Greek Orthodox New Testament: Based on the Patriarchal Text of 1904 with extensive variants by Laurent A Cleenewerck (Author)
The World English Bible (WEB) is a Byzantine Priority translation that is public domain. It uses the Robinson Pierpont BP Greek New Testament.
Wasn’t the longer reading of Marks Gospel originally in the codex sianaticus? It seems obvious that it was erased and the space present there is sufficient to include the longer reading of Mark. Since cost was a consideration I don’t believe that the original authors would leave so much space in the codex for no reason.
Interesting thought. I just know Mark 16:9-16 is in most manuscripts except vaticanus and sinaiticus
I don't believe it was ever inked in it, but there is an unusually long blank space where it could fit at the end of Mark. The only explanation of the blank space that seems to make sense is that a scribe was aware of the reading and left 'memorial space' for it.
Preservation for text on original language is a Islamic argument! The holy spirit is very capable to break through any language or any other barriers!
In the Byz. text in 1.Tim.3.16 it's not really "God *who* was manifested in flesh", it's just "God was manifested in flesh", there's no "who" or "he who", and that's a very important distinction... and this is part of the very point of the weakness of the CT, it is awkward grammatically to have any "who" there after "the mystery of godliness"... even if we add " *God* who "... When the text reads "God was manifested in the flesh" it fits grammatically, while the CT "who" introduces the grammatical awkwardness... besides this, there is the nonsensical nature of the CT reading when it states that the mystery of godliness = "who was manifested in the flesh", since every human being was manifested/appeared in the flesh... also, the CT reading does not at all state that *God* was manifested in the flesh, it just says that Christ was manifested in the flesh... which of course means that the reading is not stating that Deity (God) was manifested, only that the Messiah/Christ/Jesus was manifested... the Byz./TR reading is the only one that states Jesus = "God manifested....." (for Paul was referring to Jesus and not some other person, but he wrote "God" and not "Jesus" or "who"...) ... [the one Latin based reading states that the mystery was manifested..., i.e. "which".... and is more grammatically consistent than the CT reading, even though it's false....]
Is it me or does the video have some skips?
Ha! It's my editing... I take out long pauses and reworded phrases. I also have a form of Tourettes, so I remove those too :)
@@Dwayne_Green ah I see. No worries. Thanks for the great videos.
I will join your cult😂
😁