VIII. The Theory Behind the Shorter and Altered Text
Are words missing from the modern Bibles or have they been added to the Authorised Version? Where does responsibility lie for the many other variations between the two kinds of Greek text? This is the question that must now be asked! Have words been deleted, either intentionally or accidentally from the text underlying the modern versions, or have they been somehow added to the text of the King James Version?
The roots of the current controversy over the text of the New Testament began with the rise of modernistic theology during the 18th and 19th Centuries. Proponents of the new rationalism gained control within the universities of Europe. This was accompanied by an increasing attack upon the Authorised Version and the Received Text. The moves for revision became such that by the second half of the19th Century a formal decision was made to construct a revised Greek New Testament based primarily on two very old (and disused!) manuscripts.
The Two Old (and Disused!) Manuscripts
The “pillars” of the revised text would be the two famous mid fourth century manuscripts: Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (Aleph). These well-preserved codices contain most of the New Testament as well as the Old Testament in Greek and the Apocrypha. Vaticanus has for centuries been in the Vatican library, while Sinaiticus, was discovered in 1844 in a monastery at the foot of the traditional Mt. Sinai. It can now be seen at the British Library Museum.
Though differing among themselves, they exhibit most of the omissions listed above along with the 8000+ differences when compared with the Received Text. They are the simple reason why the text of the modern versions is shorter. They are corrupted by Adoptionism. They, with partial support from other manuscripts, constitute the basis of the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies Greek text.
Manuscripts Aleph and B are continually referred to in the footnotes of modern versions as the “oldest and best manuscripts.” They are old but certainly not the best! Their great age and good condition can only point to disuse by the early church. How else could they be in such remarkably good condition? We have no copies made from them in subsequent centuries. The comparatively few manuscripts that also exhibit the shorter text and support some of their readings will often disagree with them in other readings. And, as is well known, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus disagree between themselves over 3000 times in the four Gospels alone.
Their source is Alexandria, Egypt, and their kind of text did not spread and become an accepted text outside of that area. These two primary representatives of the Alexandrian Text remained in their places of disuse for the better part of the Christian era only to be retrieved in the 19th Century to form the basis of the modern Bibles.
Several “Home Truths” About Aleph and B
Given the hatred of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Received Text and toward the great Reformation Bibles based on that text, it would seem surprising that Rome did not in those years use their old manuscript that lay so long in their library as a weapon against what they called the Paper Pope of the Protestants. In fact they were very reluctant to let it be examined. During the decades leading up to revision, scholars only with the greatest difficulty were able to gain a complete transcript of its text.
Why? Their prized possession was a two edged sword, not only against the Received Text, but also against their own Latin Vulgate, whose text was halfway between the two. Codex B was far too radical of a text even for Rome. It was not until 1975 that Rome gave its official sanction to the Nestle-Aland Text based upon their Vaticanus.
Another surprising point – at least for defenders of the modern versions - is that Sinaiticus unlike Vaticanus contains many corrections and alterations in its margin. Research has shown that a large number of these were carried out shortly after the manuscript’s completion. And, the great majority of these revert back to the readings of the Traditional Text.
Nothing approaching an extended direct copy or exemplar of either Aleph or B has been found! The search has been “fruitless”, (See T.C. Skeat, “The Codex Sinaiticus, The Codex Vaticanus and Constantine,” Journal of Theological Studies, 50, pp. 619,20). In fact Skeat goes on to say that Aleph remained “a pile of loose leaves” for some considerable time, (perhaps as much as two centuries!), before being bound up (p. 609). Early believers wisely ignored these two manuscripts.
For this and other matters concerning early manuscripts see the author’s Early Manuscripts, Church Fathers, and the Authorized Version, (available from the Bible for Today).
Westcott and Hort: Tailoring the Theory to Aleph and B
In the second half of the 19th Century consensus was reached among those clamouring for change, that the revised Greek text should be based on Aleph and B with preference generally given to B when they disagree. To forward this, at about the time when Darwin was trying to show how there could be life without a Creator, two Cambridge professors, B.F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort built up an elaborate theory explaining why a shorter and changed text based on Aleph and B should be accepted in place of the Received Text. Their theory received almost immediate acceptance in both conservative and liberal circles. It became dominate and has dominated the field ever since. Few stood against it. The Anglican Dean of Chichester, John Burgon, was a notable exception. Nearly every new translation, both English and Foreign, were now based on the Aleph-B Text. Though the King James Version was to retain its general popularity until the second half of the 20th Century, virtually every conservative Bible College was to use the Aleph-B Text in their Greek departments. Except for Burgon, who was largely ignored, very few took the time to notice that a Trojan Horse had come into their midst, and that the differences this text now introduced where substantial. It was only when the KJV itself began to be replaced in churches that a sustained reaction began to take place.
But, what is so remarkable is that the major tenets of the Westcott and Hort theory have been disproven or diminished by scholars and yet still appealed to by them! It is much the same as with the key theories of Darwin. In the kind of end time day in which we live, it is perversely true, that for many, despite the evidence, they seem no more likely to return to the KJV type of text than an evolutionist whose theories have also been disproven coming back to the Genesis account of creation.
Westcott and Hort and their fellow travellers today have a very big task on their hands. They must explain the dominance and uniformity of the Traditional/KJV Text. The overwhelming majority of known manuscripts fall into this category. In contrast to the Aleph-B Text they are strongly cohesive. How can this be explained? And, what process could account for this vast number of manuscripts being uniformly longer. Here then is Westcott and Hort’s attempt at an explanation.
Major Points of the Westcott and Hort Theory
ONE: "In matters of textual criticism the Bible is to be treated like any other ancient book. No special considerations are to be made concerning its claims of inspiration and preservation."
To approach the Scriptures with anything less than the greatest reverence and respect is to reproach its Author! God has committed Himself to His Book in its inspiration, preservation, and transmission. Textual scholars and translators who have not taken this into account have made a fatal error that reveals itself only too readily in the product. As we will see, God declares that His words will be preserved.
TWO: “Conflation or the combining of different text-types (usually the Western and Alexandrian) is the reason for the greater length of the Traditional Text. Rather than choose one or the other, both were used. Much of this took the form of an official revision sanctioned by the Byzantine Church probably under the leadership of Lucan, Bishop of Antioch (died 311)."
For example, if a certain passage in one group of manuscripts reads, “Peter walked by the sea”, but another "John walked by the sea"; the manuscripts which form the basis of the Received Text merely combined the two, "Peter and John walked by the sea." This has been the standard explanation for the Received Text's greater length. But, as is now known, conflation cannot begin to account for this, and today textual scholars are reticent to appeal to it.
If it were true, then most of the underlined KJV passages in our lists should be combinations of material from other existing text types. Yet a search of the Alexandrian and so-called Western texts in these passages reveals that there is rarely enough material to be combined. This explains why Westcott and Hort, who were long on theory but short on demonstration, presented only eight (not very convincing) "examples" of conflation. To make conflation the reason for the greater length of the KJV would require virtually thousands of clear instances.
Coming to the second part of the argument, that this conflating was officially carried out around the year 300, history has left not the slightest trace. This historical blank has led modern scholars to speak of the “lengthening” of the Received Text in terms of a “process that occurred over a considerable time, possibly centuries.” Yet how such a process unnoticed by history carried out by many scribes, over centuries, across a wide geographic area, could achieve the widespread uniformity so apparent in the Received Text manuscripts is beyond imagination.
THREE: "Despite its numerical advantage, the Traditional or Byzantine Text (as it is called) is merely one of three or four competing text types."
This was the great "leveller" used by textual critics when faced with the overwhelming numbers of the Traditional Text. Rather than view manuscripts on a 90 to 10 ratio (remembering that the 10% though mixed will usually give greater support to the Received Text), the Received Text was made merely one of several competing families. The others are said to be the Alexandrian, Western and possibly the Caesarean. Thus rather than nine to one, the Traditional Text was merely one of four.
For a start, to divide ten percent of the remaining and mixed manuscripts among three textual groupings shows how small each would be. Today it is admitted that because of their lack of uniformity the Western and Caesarean can no longer be regarded as distinct text types. This leaves the Traditional and Alexandrian. And, the Alexandrian is very small as the following shows:
124 Papyri Fragments (2nd-6th centuries): All but about seven are too fragmentary to show clearly which text they support. However, coming as they do from Egypt, they generally display the doctrinally defaced Aleph-B, Alexandrian Text. Nevertheless, in his important work The Byzantine Text Type and New Testament Textual Criticism, Harry A. Sturz has shown that there are many places where the papyri goes against Aleph and B and supports the Traditional Text.
280 Uncial or Large-lettered Manuscripts (4th-10th centuries): Advocates of the Alexandrian Text claim support from only about nine; most of which, excepting Aleph and B, give as much and likely greater support to the Traditional Text. That is: when tested against the 8000+ only a very few uncials will show greater overall support for the Nestle-Aland Text.
2808 Minuscule or Small-lettered Manuscripts (9th-16th centuries): Supporters of the shorter text are prepared to list about twenty-two for their side. But again, they are mixed and it is doubtful if even one with respect to the 8000+ differences would give greater support to the Nestle-Aland than to the Traditional Text.
2343 Lectionary Manuscripts (9th-16th Centuries): These are manuscripts that were divided into sections or lessons for services in Greek churches. With very little variation, they are overwhelmingly Traditional Text and give virtually no support to the Alexandrian Text. For this reason they are all but ignored in the apparatus of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament.
Thus the Alexandrian manuscripts comprise only a small fraction of the total number of manuscripts discovered, and there is wide variation among the few that do exist. These two facts place them in stark contrast to the great mass of cohesive manuscripts comprising the Received Text. Among manuscripts of reasonable length, we are probably being too generous in allowing them to claim as many as 40 manuscripts for the Alexandrian side. Forty would be less than 1% of the total number of manuscripts (now about 5555).
But, as editors of the Nestle-Aland Text are adept at making a lot out of little, it would be interesting to know precisely how many manuscripts they have which will give greater support with respect to the 8000+ differences. They will not be in a hurry to tell us, but it will be a lot less than 1%. We will come back shortly to this making a lot out of a little.
There is only one cohesive text type: that which underlies the King James Version. We will press the question: If the shorter Alexandrian Text used in the modern Bibles is the true text, why did the early church prepare so few and widely variant copies?
FOUR: "The numerical preponderance of the Received Text can be explained by a study of the genealogical descent of its manuscripts. If, for example, of ten manuscripts, nine agree against one, but the nine have a common original, the numerical advantage counts for nothing. It is merely one to one."
This was the classic argument Westcott and Hort used to deny the Received Text any preference on the basis of numbers. The argument implies that many of the Received Text manuscripts are but copies of each other or of near ancestors. But note! Westcott and Hort merely theorized on this; they did not present actual data of parent-to-child and ancestral relationships between manuscripts. Research since W/H has shown that the great mass of Received Text manuscripts are not "mimeographed" copies. Very few have a parent-child relationship. Instead, they are individual representatives of lines of transmission that go deep into the past.
FIVE: "The distinctive Received Text readings (i.e. those we have underlined in the lists) are not generally seen before 350 AD. For the most part they are absent from the Greek manuscripts, Versions, and Scripture quotations of the Church Fathers.
Early Manuscripts, Church Fathers, and the Authorised Version demonstrates the falsity of this argument. Our next chapter, “The Manuscript Evidence for the Traditional Text” deals with the question further.
Clearly, Christians through the centuries believed that the longer text was very old, and accurately represented the original for the simple reason that they continually multiplied copies of it. Given the labour involved in copying a manuscript, they would not have undertaken such a task had they suspected that their exemplar might be a secondary, conflated revision. Textual history demonstrates that on the one hand they consistently avoided copying the Aleph-B kind of text and on the other multiplied and widely disseminated the kind of text that underlies the KJV. This is a better demonstration of the age of the Traditional Text than that of a few 1650-year-old Alexandrian relics that knew nothing of the rigors of continual copying.
A constantly used manuscript could not be expected to last more than several centuries at the most. Given the right climate, a manuscript whose only purpose was to occupy shelf space could last indefinitely. There are old Traditional Text manuscripts, but this explains why the very oldest are Alexandrian.
But, regarding Alexandria, all was not lost even there! We mentioned above that a substantial majority of the scribal corrections in Codex Sinaiticus revert back to the Traditional Text. And, though generally doctrinally defaced, there is significant support to be found for the unique AV Text readings in the papyri.
Nearly all of the 280 uncial manuscripts, the 2808 minuscule manuscripts, the 2343 lectionary manuscripts, as well as a substantial majority of the early versions and Scripture quotations from the early Fathers move strongly to the side of the AV Text. This mass of evidence argues for age and the Original Text far more convincingly than the few, hitherto disused relics, of Alexandria.
SIX: "There are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for doctrinal purposes during the early centuries."
This allowed Hort (the primary mover of the theory) to treat the text of Scriptures as he would any other work of ancient literature (See Point One). If he admitted that there had been a significant corrupting of the Scriptures, it would have been difficult for him to introduce his other theories of genealogy, conflation, official revision, text types etc. An unpredictable variable would have been introduced which these neatly packaged theories could not have handled. Textual Criticism approaches the history of the Bible much in the same way an evolutionist does the history of the planet: No direct creation, no flood, all has been left to natural processes, no direct intervention of any kind! In the face of widespread testimony of early Church Fathers to the contrary, it is difficult to see how Westcott and Hort could be serious about this point.
Tertullian of Carthage is typical: He accused heretics of tampering with the Scriptures in order to gain support for their special views. Around the year 208 AD he urged these men to compare their copies with those in the cities where the Originals had been sent. Tertullian may actually be referring to the original autographs of the Epistles of Paul, but if not they were certainly first generation copies.
Run over the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their own authentic writings are read. Achaia is very near you, in which you have Corinth. Since you are not far from Macedonia you have Philippi and the Thessalonians. Since you are able to cross to Asia, you get Ephesus. Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, you have Rome, from which there come even into our hands the very authority of the apostles themselves. (Prescription Against Heretics, 36).
When the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, returned to heaven Satan directed his fury against the Written Word. This fact is essential to understanding the history of the New Testament text. Any theory not taking this into account is totally adrift.
We are faced with the most direct question. Is the longer or the shorter text the offspring of these attempts at corruption? Did the 100-year period when deliberate alteration took place produce the text that more fully presents the Names, Person, and Work of Christ, or, the one that tends to diminish them? Which would be more likely: a believer adding to the Scriptures, or an enemy of the Faith deleting from the Scriptures? Which would be easier and less liable to immediate detection: adding words and phrases or removing them? Which could be more consistently and uniformly done? And, which of these two kinds of text did believers through the centuries feel convinced to be the right one, and demonstrate their conviction by multiplying copies? By now, you probably know the answer!
SEVEN: "The shorter reading is to be preferred. Corruption by addition is much more likely than corruption by omission."
Another classic example of tailoring the clothes to fit Vaticanus and Sinaiticus! As with the other tenets of W/H it has no real basis in fact. Regarding deliberate alteration, it is far easier to remove a word or passage and get away with it (for a while!), than to add material. When there is no particular attempt to editorialise, constant copying will result in accidental omission far more often than accidental addition. Supporters of the Nestle-Aland Text admit this:
But these figures suggest strongly that the general tendency during the early period of textual transmission was to omit…Other things being equal one should prefer the longer reading. (James R. Royse, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text”, The Text of the N.T. in Contemporary Research, Ehrman and Holmes eds., 1995, p. 246).
But apart from the omission of significant words and passages, the modern version text is shorter in another kind of way. It is terser and not as lucid as the Received Text. And, here it betrays itself that it is not the Original Text of the First Century, but rather one that is altered and secondary.
In Biblical times there were two major kinds of Greek dialect: Classical or Attic (the dialect of Athens on the Attica Peninsula), and Hellenistic or Koine. Though terse and compact, Attic was considered the more “elegant” of the two. It was the language of the golden age of Greece, and was in vogue from about 480 to 323 BC. After Alexander the Great, the more simple and explicit Koine (meaning common dialect) began to be spoken, and became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean region until the fourth century AD, when it was superseded by Byzantine Greek.
Importantly for us, Koine was the dialect of the New Testament; a fact which is a remarkable evidence of God's providence. The Attic left too much to the imagination, whereas Koine with its greater fullness could be more precise. It was simple, lucid, plain, and full; yet without the affected pretence of the Attic.
As time passed there were attempts to return to the Attic dialect. The 2nd Century AD was known as the “century of Atticism” when many did revert back to the Attic brevity. And, as it was an occasion for attack against the Scriptures that they were written in the less cultured Koine, a significant number of “Christian” scholars were caught up in this. Signs point to Alexandria being the prime mover in bringing the Scripture text into line with the Attic dialect. The manuscripts associated with that locality, certainly beyond all others, favour the Attic-like terseness.
When Westcott and Hort convinced textual scholarship to revise the New Testament away from the Received Text and toward Vaticanus and Sinaiticus; these implications were not addressed. Classical brevity was to them an attraction. Subsequent research has shown how wrong they were: the shorter, not the longer, is the altered text!
A Preconceived Malice
This then, with a few other arguments of a more secondary nature, is the Westcott and Hort theory that has resulted in the shorter and altered New Testament of our day. These are the standard arguments against the Text of the King James Version. They are not fair. They are not honest. They do not deal with the actual facts of the case. Most of the argument was tailor-made by F. J.A. Hort to support his preconceived malice against the Standard Text.
Ponder what he wrote to a friend in 1851 when only twenty-three years old:
I had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late manuscripts; it is a blessing there are such early ones (Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 211).
Even granting his misconception about “late manuscripts,” what would make a young man call the Text of the Reformation that had brought such light to the world, “villainous and vile”? Regardless, with this opening salvo he launched into a career dedicated to the overthrow of the Received Text.
Ernest Colwell wrote:
The dead hand of Fenton John Anthony Hort lies heavy upon us. In the early years of this century Kirsopp Lake described Hort's work as a failure, though a glorious one. But Hort did not fail to reach his major goal. He dethroned the Textus Receptus. (“Scribal Habits in Early Papyri”, The Bible in Modern Scholarship, Abingdon, 1965, p. 370).
To the contrary, God preserved His Words. For many, even in these last days, the King James Bible and the Received Text are well and comfortably enthroned.