Where did God preserve His Word?
For an eloquent answer to this question, please feel free to visit the following site:
KJB Textual Technology
There are many 'essays' at the above site which are worthy of reading. While I am not in 100% agreement with Dr. Bednar, I do agree with him on the both the preservation and perfection of the King James Bible.
I must begin by stating that we must have a proper understanding of inspiration before we can understand preservation as a whole.
In order to understand inspiration I will share with you the wisdom of Dr. Thomas Cassidy.
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The following excerpts were taken from the above site:
Inspiration is defined as that work of the Holy Spirit of God upon the minds, souls, and bodies of the Scripture writers which makes their writings the record of a progressive divine revelation. When God determined to give to His creation the Self-revelation that we today call the Bible, He selected the Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostles of the New Testament, and through the agency of His indwelling Holy Spirit so over came the sin nature of these men that the words which He selected from the reservoir of the culture, education, experience, and personality of the man were His chosen words, and no others. This process of inspiration was two fold: Verbal, the very words that God selected were the very words that best revealed the mind and will of God to His creation. Thus, every word so inspired was in fact, the Word of God. Plenary, the collection of words that we call the Bible is, in its whole, the complete Word of God, without error or contradiction. The entire Bible, regardless of subject matter, is the infallible, unfailing, Revelation of God.
The Verbal and Formal Inspiration position believes that first of all the Holy Spirit worked in the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles of the New Testament in such a way that the very words of God were selected from the vocabulary of the man, taking into account his culture, education, and experience, and that not only the very words, but also the forms of the words, such as noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, singular, plural, etc., were written at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. This view is the only one that can give us a completely inspired, inerrant, infallible, preserved Bible, as well as account for such statements as Paul saying that the very form of a word was inspired by God for a specific purpose as in Galatians 3:16, and Christ saying in Matthew 5:18 that not only was each word inspired, but every letter of every word was inspired. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the perfect mirror of the Lord Jesus Christ, which reflects Him and leads us to Him. Authority resides in the Scriptures just as it does in Him. Just as all authority is given to Christ (Matthew 28:18), the living Word, all authority is bound up in the Scriptures, the reflection of Him, the written Word of God.
Now comes the problem we face in fundamental circles today. What exactly was it that God inspired. Was it men? Was it manuscripts? Was it languages? One of the greatest failings of fundamentalism today is this confusion concerning the doctrine of inspiration. If you were to ask every independent, fundamental Baptist Pastor what it was that God inspired, most would reply "the original manuscripts." However, you can search the scriptures forever, and never find a reference to the "original manuscripts." But you will find, over and over again references to the "words" that God has spoken. God did not inspire men or manuscripts, He inspired words! God did not concern Himself with parchment, vellum, papyrus, and ink, but with words! It was, and still is, the words of God that are inspired. It makes absolutely no difference if those inspired words are written by the hand of Moses, Samuel, David, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, or if they were carefully copied by a copyist in his own handwriting, or if they are scrawled on the rest room wall! If they are the same words, they are God's words, and if they are God's words, they are inspired words!
The reason I shared these words of Dr. Cassidy is quite simple, if we believe it was the originals that were inspired, than all is lost when the originals are lost. (I know that God has more foresight than that.) It is therefore necessary to understand that it is the 'words', and not the 'original documents' that are inspired. The next logical step then is preservation of the inspired words.
Again, I will share the words of Dr. Cassidy from the same site.
The doctrine of preservation is one that is receiving much attention today, and has become as controversial as the doctrine of inspiration was fifty years ago, and will, in all probability have the same effect on Christendom. In the near future, the lines of demarcation will be more boldly drawn, and a new separatism will develop around the proper understanding of the doctrine of Bible preservation. Those who decide on a preserved Scripture and believe that the local "church of the living God [is] the pillar and ground of the truth" will be the fundamentalists of tomorrow, and those who continue to hold to the idea of a higher "critical" text, and the authority of so-called "scholars" to determine what is, and what is not the Word of God, will go the way of Liberal and Modernistic Christendom, into decline and eclipse. We are already seeing a tendency toward this decline in many of the Christian Colleges that were great preacher training schools in the past, but are now turning out more accountants or other professionals then they are preachers.
We must first ask ourselves, does the Bible teach that God has promised to preserve His word? I contend that it does, and does so quite emphatically! I believe when God promises something, He keeps and performs that promise. In Psalm 12:6-7 God says: "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." Here is a plain and simple statement concerning the doctrine of Bible preservation. Notice that God has not just promised to preserve His word, but has promised to preserve it from "this generation (the time of David) for ever." God has promised that every generation from the time of David until the end of eternity will have a preserved authoritative Bible. In Psalm 78:5-7 God states that he has established His testimony and appointed His law for the purpose of teaching each succeeding generation. Every generation has the promise of a preserved Bible, that they "not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments." "Forever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven," says the psalmist in Psalm 119:89. God's word has been settled, kept pure, preserved, according to this verse. Some have argued that it is settled in heaven, but not on earth! How foolish! God's word is a revelation from God to man. It is man that needs God's word, mankind right here on earth, not God, or the already redeemed in heaven. God has promised to preserve His word from generation to generation. Those generations are generated right here on earth, not in heaven! In Matthew 4:4, when Jesus was tempted by the Devil, He replied, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." How can a man live by the Word of God, if he doesn't have it? In order for men and women to live by the Word of God, it must be available to them, God must have preserved it! By the way, I don't want to get too technical with you, but the word "written" is in the perfect tense, meaning that it was written in the past, and has continued right down to the time of Christ, and of course down to this present time also. In other words, God has preserved it!
Have we all lost our common sense? This is exactly why I said in Part One concerning Ignorance of the law is no excuse. God's word (as He said it), must be available to people on planet Earth. This does not mean, God's word according to the scholars, it means God's word according to God.
Moving on:
There are two 'titles' which much be understood to understand preservation. The first, The Traditional Text (of the Greek New Testament), and second, The Traditional readings (of the New Testament). The Traditional Text of the New Testament dates back to 450 AD., while the Traditional readings of the New Testament go back to at least 150 AD., with the witness of the Greek lectionaries, all of which supporting the Traditional Text.
The Traditional Text of the Greek New Testament are those Greek 'texts' which are of the Byzantine type, and are the majority of the Greek manuscripts. Bibles in other languages such as Latin, or Syrian, which date back to at least 150 AD. have the same 'type' of text (readings) as those found in the Greek Majority Text, and are therefore referred to as Traditional readings. As Dr. Bednar states in his article (given previously) the churches that remained faithful to God, God used to preserve His words; while those who were not, His word was not neither revered, not preserved. God then chose Desiderius Erasmus to compile these texts, and readings into one Greek text. He further used other men like William Tyndale, Theodore Beza, Robert Stephanus, so that when according to His time-table, He would have His men, (the King James translators), translate the Bible into the English language.
If you want a more detailed description, you'll have to read Dr. Cassidy's entire four-part article.
There are two statements made concerning the translation of the King James Bible which I will address in a later post; they are:
1) Erasmuss Greek Text was done so quickly, it was of poor quality.
2) The King James Translators only had a few manuscripts, and therefore lacked the manuscripts needed to properly translate the Bible.
That's all for now.
Jack
