God’s Proclamation: The “Word of God”

1. God’s Proclamation: The “Word of God” Concrete idea from the mind of GOD Communicated by use of human language Oral communication Old Testament: Hebrew, Aramaic New Testament: Aramaic, Koiné Greek (lingua franca of the 1st century Roman Empire) Other “tongues” Acts 2:11 Written communication Old Testament: Hebrew, Aramaic (incl. Targums—part translation, part commentary—which were OT Scriptures translated into Aramaic), Greek Septuagint New Testament: Greek

2. Product “Word of God” How are we to understand “word” (logos) of God? John 1:14—Jesus is the “Word” of God Gal. 5:14—For all of the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. II Tim. 3:16-17— “All Scripture . . . .” Recorded writings of the Old and New Testaments Autograph(a): the original writings of the Old and New Testament canon “Inspired”: infallible, inerrant [KEY NOTE: this applies ONLY to the Autographa] Verbal, plenary (II Tim. 3:16-17) Ipsisima verba (the very word) vs. ipsisima vox (the very voice) All of the autographa are, at best, missing or are, more likely, destroyed

3. Apograph(a)—copies, copies of copies, translations of copies, etc. Carefully copied and, in many cases, preserved Over 5,500 manuscripts (MSS) of various books, lengths, and dates exist from all over the ancient world dating, at least, from the mid to late 2nd century to well into the 15th century. Majority/Byzantine text type (85-90% of the extant MSS are of this text type) The TR is a subset of the Majority text type Alexandrian text type (5-15% of the MSS are of this text type) Caesarean text type (text that Origen used at Caesarea, least homogeneous of the distinguishable text types) Western text type (most textual scholars do not find this text homogenous enough to be firmly placed as a separate text type) Variants between the MSS Less than 20% of the entire NT is open to any question at all! (What is reasonable to expect?) Of the 20% that is “debated” the vast majority of the variants concern word order and spelling Where there is debate about the inclusion or exclusion of a word, phrase or passage, NONE of the variant readings in ANY of the extant MSS alters a true doctrine of christian orthodoxy! (This point CANNOT be emphasized strongly enough . . . so I will emphasize it again later!) So, what now? How do we know what the original authors, human and, of course, divine, actually said? This is where it gets challenging.

4. Process: textual citicism or “where the rubber meets the road” • Higher (literary) criticism: authorship, date etc. (primarily external to the text and addressing the book) • Lower criticism: deals with the textual issues, (i.e. spelling, word order/words and MS evidence) Textual criticism is a thoughtful attempt to restore as nearly as possible the exact wording of the autograph. • Which reading is most likely the correct reading? (There are frequently many from which we must choose.) • What evidence is there to support one reading over others? • Age/text type • Agreement with other MSS • Difficulty of reading, length of reading • Why are there variant readings anyway? • “Intentional” errors • Scribe corrects what he assumes was a mistake by a previous scribe. • Redactor “corrects” what he assumes was a mistake by the scribe who copied it

5. “Unintentional” errors • Scribe misunderstands as the words is read aloud in a scriptorium. • Scribe reads the text incorrectly—it is hard to read, he is tired, etc. • How can we be sure that any given reading is correct? • A word of caution is in order here! We simply cannot emphatically affirm that any given MS reading as a whole is an exact word for word rendition of the autograph. • Does this destroy our confidence in the MS evidence—whatever it may be? Absolutely NOT!! The sheer number of MSS that agree overall gives us cause to trust that we have an accurate facsimile of God’s Word. • In fact, the very existance of the variants themselves attests to this. • Another word of caution—not all translations are created equally. This subject has been covered earlier in this study so no further elaboration will be made here. Just a couple of caveats. • We must be very careful not to “nit pick” over the variant readings represented by some of the major english translations. (People who live in glass houses . . . .) • Remember, NONE of the contested readings found in the various MSS alters a true doctrine of Christian orthodoxy.