Tares Amongst the Wheat A Conspiracy Without a Goal

Thank you James, for the best and most informed post here. As one who’s actually familiar with Textual Criticism, I too can readily say that “the ‘TARES AMONG THE WHEAT’ documentary establishes this case to my satisfaction”. It is true when Greg above says “The critical text family does not all hang on Sinaiticus, and it goes way beyond Westcott & Hort”. But that is said in a way as to insinuate that there are plentiful linchpins to nail the Critical Greek Text to the wall as being the Original. In similar fashion, Mr. Putnam copies & pastes from Wiki a smathering of uncials and miniscules to make it look as though today’s CGT – with or without Codex Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph) – is plentifully confirmed.

However, it would have been nice to see Mr. Putnam also reference the same David Allen Black’s – whose first book he references above in support of the papyri – sequel, “Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism”, wherein he appraises fellow colleague Dr. Maurice Robinson’s Majority Text position as superbly informed and quite convincing. By no means is the Critical Greek Text position even settled as to the textual platform (though the same must be admitted with the Majority Text but to a drastically lower degree, and let it not be forgotten that the Textus Receptus used to be THE ‘majority text’), but the total manuscriptual evidence does actually point to the TR-MT in favor over the CGT when the unduly brushed-aside Dean Burgon’s exhaustive works are exhumed. Yes, it IS true that the world’s foremost textual critics brush Burgon to the side, but NOT because they’ve refuted him. It is because they are less informed than he was and/or they have formulated their own opinion against the TR-MT position in favor of the view that the older is the more reliable, and that the longer must be additional or conflational. But when read, each scholar decides IN HIS OWN MIND which material is authentic, which is not; which is conflationary, which is primitive (original).

For example, today’s foremost commentary on Acts starts out by seesawing the arguments on the underlying Text to the point that by end of paragraph, he’s left the reader with NO ASSURANCE that there actually IS a determinable, definitive underlying Text on the Acts. His own methodology begins with the CGT, then splices in some MT verses that HE FEELS to be original. THIS IS THE STATE OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM.

And that holds true for both New Testament AND Old Testament textual criticism. To quote Greg once again: “Remember the Dead Sea Scroll & Elephantine papyri discoveries in the last two centuries. Amazing witnesses to the preservation of the Biblical canon, & the readings & linguistics of the early manuscripts. People once thought koine Greek was some weird ‘Holy Spirit language’ until the Elephantine papyri were discovered (in pagan Egypt; gasp!) in the late 19th century, proving that koine was the lingua franca at the time of Christ’s earthly ministry”. Well, yes these discoveries ARE amazing testaments, but that’s not the same as saying that they are letter-perfect, word-perfect, chapter-perfect witnesses. Christian apologists all too often cite the Dead Sea Isaiah scrolls as though it confirms letter-for-letter today’s (Medieval) Hebrew manuscripts. But in reality, they do not. And neither do two of any Medieval Hebrew manuscripts agree with each other perfectly. And yet the apologists, arguing from their lack of investigation, foist upon believers ‘Bible Codes’ that simply cannot exist (referring namely to Hebrew codes; I noted mention above of Ivan Panin’s work, which although interesting does not take into account several linguistic criteria necessary to prove its Greek-priority case). Furthermore, Greg above is regurgitating the same fallacy that most NT scholars still do today: that Koine (vulgar) Greek was the “lingua franca”. No, what these documents prove is that the language of the NT was not exclusively used for its own composition; but the thing is, that was already known! See…..

The language style of the Greek NT is the same that had been used centuries early in translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Yes, the Greek NT employs TRANSLATIONAL Greek. And so do many ancient documents subsequently found. Even the works of Josephus are in translational Greek, as he himself informs us. So all that Koine Greek probably is, is translational Greek, at least that of the NT. One Dr. Gustaf Dahlman from the early 1900’s wrote some works arguing this case, but conveniently (as with the Textus Receptus), the evidence marshalled forth was drowned by preexisting CONSENSUS, to which had been ammunitioned one Dr. Adolf Deissmann’s works. Deissmann makes a good case for certain aspects to first century Greek, but needlessly uses the evidence to buttress an a priori cause towards the NT Greek being ‘common’. NT Greek is not common; the grammar in some books is horrid (though revealingly faithful if considered ‘translational’). So, if one wants to know how Textual Criticism REALLY works, it is by this: consensus.

Consensus is a powerful thing. It could prove a TR-based Original, a MT-original, or a CGT-original (or arguably a Syriac-original, which is one of the thorniest and most lied about issues there is in NT Criticism). It all depends on who has the evidence. Or so they say. But in reality, it really depends on who dictates and controls the interpretation of the evidence, as well as the evidence itself. For instance, note how in Pinto’s video the librarian ends up lying to the camera in promising a full disclosure of the story(ies) of Tischendorf’s “discovery”. You do well to point out what you point out above, James. I have to disagree with Mr. Putnam when he states, “Pinto’s movie slanders a Christian biblical scholar Tischendorf and promotes a known con-man Simonides who claims to have forged Sinaitcus. His claims were examined and debunked in the 19th century and Pinto presents a very one sided version of the history. It seems the only reason to believe Simonides is from a misguided effort to promote KVonlyism”. I believe that Pinto does NOT slander Tischendorf; that the case of Simonides was still left up in the air but that the case moved on because CONSENSUS MOVED IT ON until Pinto grabbed the baton ; that it is in fact very one-sided to merely state “Pinto presents a very one sided version of the history” without confuting, from the same records which Pinto utilizes, where he misappropriates that written record ; and that Pinto in fact favors, along with the KJV, the Geneva Bible, because they are both based on the TR.

Hopefully some reader can see just how empty it is to claim, as did Mr. Putnam, “the majority of scholars now believe the longer ending (Mk. 16:9-20) was written later…” Well, I can say from experience that that ‘majority’ is a controlled majority, the ones most often published by the major publishing houses due to their particular theological or textual stance. Not that someone behind the curtain controls the scholars’ decisions, but that the decisions being made to popularize and thus canonize into consensus, are coming from a controlled Establishment closely guarded and ever trying to chip away at the foundations of Belief. One small example is what happened to Princeton University starting in 1929, and even to its breakaway successor Westminster which continues to battle against Compromise. It happens incrementally. Chip by chip. And not just against the traditional TR-based people such as the KJVO, but also within them; it is nteresting to note that KJV-onlyism is actually preceded by a Latin Vulgate-onlyism.

The way I see it, Mr. Putnam in filing his charges against Pinto, and then Missler who “did not deal with all of the evidence”, is that Mr. Putnam is guilty of the same. What exactly is THE New Testament to him? I can only infer that it is the CGT, based on his defense of Mark’s Ending, his “the majority of scholars now believe”, and his “Most all modern translations”, along with his one-sided excerpt in favor of the early (though provencially dubious) papyri. And yet…………..

These selfsame (consensus) modern translations STILL include in Mark 7:19 the NON-EXISTENT:
“(Thus he declared all foods clean.)”
This is quoting the same ESV that Mr. Putnam hyperlinks for us on this webpage. Except when you look it up in a print bible, the otherwise Red Letters suddenly become Black. And why is this? BECAUSE THIS STATEMENT IS NOT PART OF THE GREEK NT. Not CGT, not TR, not MT, no not a single manuscript or fragment, uncial or otherwise!!! It is only found as a marginal notation by a very late scribe in one copied manuscript, but somebody got the idea that the copying process should integrate the scribe’s interpretive thought directly into the text itself! Interestingly, the KJV lacks this (false) statement. But hey——CONSENSUS EVERYBODY! This literally IS what the majority of scholars believe should belong in our New Testaments. And sadly, the more modern they become, the less integrity they have–at least the ESV brackets it and switches from red to black font, though they are to be severely faulted for footnoting 7:19’s immediately preceding Greek with the literal rendering and yet NOTHING for the obviously intrusive & NON-EXISTENT statement “thus he declared all foods clean.

People have written books about issues revolving around Deity, literary style, literal vs. dynamic equivalence, lexicographical updatings (such as for the Greek word Monogenes), etc. etc. etc. But the fact is, that there WAS INDEED a conspiracy that crept up over time, found its way into Simonides hands (the alleged author of Codex Aleph after all, who probably added novelty to Codex Alexandrinus), then into Tischendorf’s hands, a scholar who Dean Burgon constantly has to refute for sloppy scholarship, then into Dean Alford’s hands (upon whose work the famous Expositor’s Greek Testament was based), then into the hands of the known Spiritualists Westcott & Hort (read anti-Holy Spirit, if you will), then finally into Richard Weymouth’s hands who collated all these along with Vaticanus and some other texts, and published under the dialectical title “The Resultant Greek Testament”. Yes, the consensus-result of purely subjective methodologies. But surely the method must have been refined, right?

According to a Japanese textual critic, there are a mere 80 places of disagreement between this 1892 (1st Ed.) textual platform for John’s Gospel and the 2010 (28th Ed.) platform collated by the Alands, and a mere 54 places of disagreement from the United Bible Society’s 4th Ed. What needs to be understood by the sheeple is that Barbara & Kurt Aland monopolize the two —- yes, they produced BOTH the Nestle/Aland (now just the Aland or SBL) platform AND the UBS platform. And they’ve been at it for all 28 editions / 4 editions!!!!!!! But this is ridiculous considering that the textual platform itself has hardly changed from that which is found in the Westcott-Hort edition! Earlier than the Sinaiticus was the Lachmann and also the Tregelles textual platforms. Even earlier yet was Albert Bengel who is considered the father of modern Greek NT textual criticism. His aim was pure, but Tregelles’ is definitely questionable and Pinto rightly paints him as such within his documentary. I personally think his intentions are made transparent most in his Hebrew lexicographical work. He tried to sanitize a Rationalist’s work (like many other Hebraists of the time), riding the consensus wave while minimalizing the Spirit-filled ‘Cambridge Orientalist’s’ work (but at least utilizing it) such that that scholar’s work is STILL regarded as inferior (though Ewald did the worst damage, and still dominates Hebraist thought today).

So in essence, we have a monopolized, subjectively patched-together Critical Greek Text, really the work of two Spiritualists (anti-Holy Spirit) who worked from inspiration of the Tischendorf edition, from which in the same year of its publication the Revised Version translation that ALL modern CGT-based (which would be most) translations flow from, under the editorship of Philip Schaff (as also documented by Pinto), we have the following essentially-unchanged Tischendorf-inspired Spiritualist W/H-inspired works which dominate our modern scene (not being exhaustive here):

RV/ASV–>RSV–>NIV–>NASB–>NRSV–>ESV–>HCSB

The reason that the minor change is bad in this case has to do with the roots. Of course, lack of change is what everybody wants for chain-of-custody over time; but the CGT collators’ roots stink, and Pinto wasn’t the first to smell it. Very few people side with Dean Burgon today, but that doesn’t make him wrong. Thank God for Maurice Robinson, whose methodology is sound enough to impress if not persuade the David Allan Black that Putnam borrows from. I wouldn’t trust my opinion of Textual Criticism in Mr. Putnam’s hands. He is a theologian, not a textual critic. But he can contribute to textual criticism, as can Chris Pinto. And, I do think Mr. Pinto has contributed, immensely so. And let me be specific here: contributed to Greek New Testament textual criticism. For those who live under the delusion that the Old Testament is a settled matter, you live under a very heavy delusion indeed.

But I say these words not to defray faith, but to encourage the blinders to fall off and the stupor to be challenged to work. Without the Holy Spirit’s guidance, no one can rightly navigate the waters of Biblical Textual Criticism, and subsequently Biblical Interpretation, and THEN consequently, theology. Yes, theology dictates translation and even Text-platform choices, too. Heck, it even moved the rabbis to tinker with the grammar itself of the Hebrew Bible. These are serious, serious issues. And because it is no light matter, I do sympathize with KJVO’ers, but simply cannot side with error, no matter what side of the fence it falls on. And in this case, and after having read the source material referenced by director Chris Pinto, I do not see wherein Chris Putnam is justified in accusing the former of finding “A Conspiracy Without a Goal”. The conspiracy is there, in AND OUTSIDE OF Mr. Pinto’s documentary. And the goal is as “Scarlock” and “k.m” point it out as, above. James, I wish Mr. Putnam would have been more fair to Mr. Pinto in doing his research before accusing Mr. Pinto of doing his wrongly, especially in light of how you point out Mr. Putnam’s treatment of Dr. White. This is what moved me to write. Mr. Putnam seems to have done worse than what he accuses Chris Pinto of doing.