Post by JEM on Jul 13, 2008 6:21:49 GMT
Correspondance with David Dewey the author of WHICH BIBLE?
A Guide to English Translations published by the Inter Varsity Press in 2004. A highly recommendable book about how the Bible is translated.
From: John Maddams
To: david.dewey@virgin.net
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 2:54 AM
Subject: Your postal reply to my postal inqury about the Majority and Minority texts.
November 1st 2004
Dear David Dewey
Thank you for your letter to me on Oct 23rd
It is not so much that I am promoting my preference for the Majority Text so much that I am concerned by what I have lately read about the nature of the Revised Text and it's sources, together with the character of some of the people who worked on the the translation of the TEV, and some of those who worked on the NIV.
I prefer the Modern versions to the AV and have been actively using them for years.
Such as the RV, Phillips, Barclay, Taylor, NEB, TEV, NIV and CEV but what has alarmed me is the suggestion from Southern Baptist sources, the Stewarton Bible School and the Trinitiarian Bible Society, that the 4th century Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus that have been much used in the Revised Text and the later revisions of it, on which all modern English translations are based, have been severely flawed as copies, by the Arian lobby
in Alexandria in the 4th century
This in turn influenced the Church at Rome for a time and Constantine in his later life when he became an Arian.and the next few emperors..
I accept that the OT in the Modern Translations have been influenced by the Dead Sea Scrolls and that does not bother me as they represent a much earlier Hebrew source and the New Testament text has been influenced by the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus and the Cods Bezae, and that does not bother me.
It is the uncertainty of the 4th century codices being tampered with that bothers me never having come across that argument before.
Thank you for explaining to me that the majority text of Erasmus was in fact a majority of those few documents he used rather than of the full 5000 plus, I read somewhere that he used 5, but I did not realise that it was a majority of only 5, and that all those disagreed with each other,
I notice that Baptist Sources in America favour the New King James Version as being based on the Byzantine Text. but the Stewarton School claim that where the Byzantine is obscure the Revised Text was used and that that effected the NKJV in 100,000 places rendering it unsuitable.
The Trinitarian Bible Society, which has a vested interest in promoting only the AV objects to the NKJV on the grounds that it's translators are largely unreliable Fundementalist Baptists, where as the AV translators were all reliable Church of England Scholars. This strikes me as a rather prejuduced attitude. After all those scholars still persisted in the RC heresy of infant baptism so they were far from perfect in their theology and a lot of the early members of the Bible Society and some of the Trinitarian Bible Society, were Unitarians.
From your understanding of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus do you give any credence to the view that they were flawed in copyng by scholars in the 4th century who were Arians?
The Stewarton School make a point that Clement Bishop of Alexandria and Origen whom he taught colluded with Victor 1st the Bishop of Rome to force the churches to adopt Sunday as the day of worship instead of the Sabbath which was widely observed as instructed by the 5th commandment.
Stewarton then go on to claim that Clement declared that he would not teach Christianity if he could not also teach pagan philosophy and that this gave rise to the Scriptures being polluted by Arian thinking and that this affected the 4th century codices.
However Clement and Origen lived earlier than the 4th century, spanning the 2nd and 3rd centuries, while Arianism was of the 4th century, until outlawed in North Africa, until reintroduced from Europe later by the insurgency of the Goths and Vandels in the 5th century. Clement and Origen according to Stephen Neill's "History of Missions" were orthodox in their Christian beliefs although they sort to express them against the backround of Greek philosophy rather than the then lost Judaism. They were not Arians.
Thank you for the suggested books to read and for telling me of the new translation to be published in the coming year.
With kind regards
Yours sincerely
John E Maddams
DAVID'S REPLY
##########
To John Maddams
From David Dewey
Dear John
Thank you for your further inquiry. You will appreciate, I trust, that I am neither an expert in textual criticism nor early church history. Also, as a working minister, the time I have to give to studying the detail of these subjects is limited. Also, as I think you realise, those groups promoting the AV and the underlying textus receptus each have their own axes to grind.
However, you asK:
From your understanding of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus do you give any credence to the view that they were flawed in copying by scholars in the 4th century who were Arians?
The simple answer is that I would give little credence to such a view. To assume that just because a manuscript comes from an area in which a particular heresy flourished is flawed. There were plenty of Roman Catholics in England while the Protestants were translating the AV/KJV. To argue that therefore the AV must be tainted with RC doctrines does not follow.
The usual argument trailed out to suggest that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (V & S) are doctrinally tainted is based on the fact that certain verses which appear in later Byzantine MSS are omitted in V & S. While some are doctrinally sensitive (e.g. the Johannine comma referring to the Trinity in 1 John 5:7), it is much more likely that these verses were added to the Byzantine texts than omitted from V & S. Phrases were often added for a number of reasons: e.g. making parallel passages coincide (esp in the Gospels), bringing in a marginal comment into the main text. If V & S were deliberately doctrinally tampered with, one would expect a considerably high number of alterations. In fact, whole sections of the NT would have had to be re-written because so much of the NT goes against Arian beliefs
Also, it is not simply a case of the Byzantine texts versus V & S. We now have a large number of checks and balances available to the textual critic. There is Alexandrinus, the Washington codex, the papyrii discovered in the 1930 and 1940s which confirm the earlier work of Westcott and Hort, early translations into Syriac, Coptic, Latin and other languages. I really do think the evidence in favour of the Greek editions underlying the most recent translations in close to overwhelming.
I am glad, too, that recent translations of the OT have put greater trust in the Masoretic Text than previously. This was a great failing of the RSV and NEB. A very good translation in my opinion, and the one I now use, is the English Standard Version. It is an excellent revision of the RSV, but without the shortcomings of the RSV.
I do, by the way, have happy memories of Saffron Walden. I taught there in the International College (South Street?) from the summer of 1978 to late 1979 and occasionally attended the Baptist Church there. More often, however, I was helping out in the nearby churches of Ashdon, Radwinter and Great Sampford, during which time I heard God's call to ministry.
David Dewey
A Guide to English Translations published by the Inter Varsity Press in 2004. A highly recommendable book about how the Bible is translated.
From: John Maddams
To: david.dewey@virgin.net
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 2:54 AM
Subject: Your postal reply to my postal inqury about the Majority and Minority texts.
November 1st 2004
Dear David Dewey
Thank you for your letter to me on Oct 23rd
It is not so much that I am promoting my preference for the Majority Text so much that I am concerned by what I have lately read about the nature of the Revised Text and it's sources, together with the character of some of the people who worked on the the translation of the TEV, and some of those who worked on the NIV.
I prefer the Modern versions to the AV and have been actively using them for years.
Such as the RV, Phillips, Barclay, Taylor, NEB, TEV, NIV and CEV but what has alarmed me is the suggestion from Southern Baptist sources, the Stewarton Bible School and the Trinitiarian Bible Society, that the 4th century Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus that have been much used in the Revised Text and the later revisions of it, on which all modern English translations are based, have been severely flawed as copies, by the Arian lobby
in Alexandria in the 4th century
This in turn influenced the Church at Rome for a time and Constantine in his later life when he became an Arian.and the next few emperors..
I accept that the OT in the Modern Translations have been influenced by the Dead Sea Scrolls and that does not bother me as they represent a much earlier Hebrew source and the New Testament text has been influenced by the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus and the Cods Bezae, and that does not bother me.
It is the uncertainty of the 4th century codices being tampered with that bothers me never having come across that argument before.
Thank you for explaining to me that the majority text of Erasmus was in fact a majority of those few documents he used rather than of the full 5000 plus, I read somewhere that he used 5, but I did not realise that it was a majority of only 5, and that all those disagreed with each other,
I notice that Baptist Sources in America favour the New King James Version as being based on the Byzantine Text. but the Stewarton School claim that where the Byzantine is obscure the Revised Text was used and that that effected the NKJV in 100,000 places rendering it unsuitable.
The Trinitarian Bible Society, which has a vested interest in promoting only the AV objects to the NKJV on the grounds that it's translators are largely unreliable Fundementalist Baptists, where as the AV translators were all reliable Church of England Scholars. This strikes me as a rather prejuduced attitude. After all those scholars still persisted in the RC heresy of infant baptism so they were far from perfect in their theology and a lot of the early members of the Bible Society and some of the Trinitarian Bible Society, were Unitarians.
From your understanding of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus do you give any credence to the view that they were flawed in copyng by scholars in the 4th century who were Arians?
The Stewarton School make a point that Clement Bishop of Alexandria and Origen whom he taught colluded with Victor 1st the Bishop of Rome to force the churches to adopt Sunday as the day of worship instead of the Sabbath which was widely observed as instructed by the 5th commandment.
Stewarton then go on to claim that Clement declared that he would not teach Christianity if he could not also teach pagan philosophy and that this gave rise to the Scriptures being polluted by Arian thinking and that this affected the 4th century codices.
However Clement and Origen lived earlier than the 4th century, spanning the 2nd and 3rd centuries, while Arianism was of the 4th century, until outlawed in North Africa, until reintroduced from Europe later by the insurgency of the Goths and Vandels in the 5th century. Clement and Origen according to Stephen Neill's "History of Missions" were orthodox in their Christian beliefs although they sort to express them against the backround of Greek philosophy rather than the then lost Judaism. They were not Arians.
Thank you for the suggested books to read and for telling me of the new translation to be published in the coming year.
With kind regards
Yours sincerely
John E Maddams
DAVID'S REPLY
##########
To John Maddams
From David Dewey
Dear John
Thank you for your further inquiry. You will appreciate, I trust, that I am neither an expert in textual criticism nor early church history. Also, as a working minister, the time I have to give to studying the detail of these subjects is limited. Also, as I think you realise, those groups promoting the AV and the underlying textus receptus each have their own axes to grind.
However, you asK:
From your understanding of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus do you give any credence to the view that they were flawed in copying by scholars in the 4th century who were Arians?
The simple answer is that I would give little credence to such a view. To assume that just because a manuscript comes from an area in which a particular heresy flourished is flawed. There were plenty of Roman Catholics in England while the Protestants were translating the AV/KJV. To argue that therefore the AV must be tainted with RC doctrines does not follow.
The usual argument trailed out to suggest that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (V & S) are doctrinally tainted is based on the fact that certain verses which appear in later Byzantine MSS are omitted in V & S. While some are doctrinally sensitive (e.g. the Johannine comma referring to the Trinity in 1 John 5:7), it is much more likely that these verses were added to the Byzantine texts than omitted from V & S. Phrases were often added for a number of reasons: e.g. making parallel passages coincide (esp in the Gospels), bringing in a marginal comment into the main text. If V & S were deliberately doctrinally tampered with, one would expect a considerably high number of alterations. In fact, whole sections of the NT would have had to be re-written because so much of the NT goes against Arian beliefs
Also, it is not simply a case of the Byzantine texts versus V & S. We now have a large number of checks and balances available to the textual critic. There is Alexandrinus, the Washington codex, the papyrii discovered in the 1930 and 1940s which confirm the earlier work of Westcott and Hort, early translations into Syriac, Coptic, Latin and other languages. I really do think the evidence in favour of the Greek editions underlying the most recent translations in close to overwhelming.
I am glad, too, that recent translations of the OT have put greater trust in the Masoretic Text than previously. This was a great failing of the RSV and NEB. A very good translation in my opinion, and the one I now use, is the English Standard Version. It is an excellent revision of the RSV, but without the shortcomings of the RSV.
I do, by the way, have happy memories of Saffron Walden. I taught there in the International College (South Street?) from the summer of 1978 to late 1979 and occasionally attended the Baptist Church there. More often, however, I was helping out in the nearby churches of Ashdon, Radwinter and Great Sampford, during which time I heard God's call to ministry.
David Dewey