XIII. Antioch or Alexandria

There is one point upon which both sides of the current debate agree: the early history of the New Testament Text is a "tale of two cities", Antioch and Alexandria.  And, just as surely as the KJV Text was woven into the spiritual life of Antioch in Syria, so was also the modern version text among the “scholarship” of Alexandria.  Today a believer must decide whether he is more comfortable with a Bible whose roots go back to one or the other of these two cities.  The choice is a clear one, as there is very little common ground between them.

Certainly Antioch has by far the greater Biblical heritage. It became to the Gentile Christians what Jerusalem had been to the Jews, and superseded Jerusalem as the base for the spread of the Gospel.  The “disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).  It was the starting point for the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys. Mark, Barnabas, and Silas were there. Peter and probably Luke were there. The Book of Acts presents Antioch as the center of early church activity.

Egypt shares no such heritage.  Biblically it pictures the world, and the world in its opposition to the things of God.  God would not allow His Son (Mt. 2), His nation (Ex. 12), His patriarchs (Gen. 50), or even the bones of the patriarchs (Ex. 13:19) to remain there.  The Jews were warned repeatedly not to return to Egypt.  Not to rely upon it for help.  Not to even purchase horses there, etc.  Thus, in contrast to what is being claimed today, it is hard to believe that Egypt and Alexandria would have been the central place where God would preserve His Holy Word.  Frankly, it was the last place on earth that one could trust in doctrinal and Biblical matters.  It certainly wasn't safe to get a Bible there!

Even the late Bruce Metzger, a fervent supporter of the Alexandrian Text, was compelled to catalogue the vast amount of religious corruption that came from Alexandria:

Among Christians which during the second century either originated in Egypt or circulated there among both the orthodox and the Gnostics are numerous apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses.  Some of the more noteworthy are the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Kerygma of Peter, the Acts of John, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse of Peter.  There are also fragments of exegetical and dogmatic works composed by Alexandrian Christians, chiefly Gnostics during the second century.  We know, for example, of such teachers as Basilides and his son Isidore, and of Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Pantaenus.  All but the last-mentioned were unorthodox in one respect or another.  In fact, to judge by the comments made by Clement of Alexandria, almost every deviant Christian sect was represented in Egypt during the second century; Clement mentions the Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Marcionites, the Peratae, the Encratites, the Docetists, the Haimetites, the Cainites, the Ophites, the Simonians, and the Eutychites. What proportion of Christians in Egypt during the second century were orthodox is not known. (The Early Versions of the New Testament, Clarendon Press, p. 101).

Let it be said again: Alexandria was the worst possible place to go for a Bible! Yet it is precisely the place that our present-day translators have gone in gathering Aleph, B, and the papyri as sources for their modern versions.