Criticism

by Harvey Block
(2023/08/20)

In about 1979 I became involved in a church in Seattle, Washington. The meetings were very rich in teaching the Word of God from the Bible. We used the King Jame Version at that time. But reference was often made to the Greek text, and corrections were made from it. I learned a lot in those days and became more interested in the Greek text of the New Testament. We would at times look at the Hebrew of the Old Testament as well.

At that time I purchased my first "Interlinear Greek-English New Testament" by George Ricker Berry. Later I also bought the three volume set of an Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament by J. P. Green.

An "interlinear" means for each line of Greek text, there is under it a word for word English translation. Here is the first few verses of the Gospel of John in Berry's interlinear:

The column on the left is the King James Version, so you can easily compare it with the word for word translation from the Greek.

I had never before studied any Greek or Hebrew, but I was at least familiar with much of the Greek alphabet because of its use in math, science and technology. I had graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science in General Engineering with a focus in Electrical Engineering and some Computer.

My Interlinear Greek-English New Testament had at the bottom of each page giving some of the variations in the Greek manuscripts. This is called an "apparatus." That is the technical term for it.

Now if you look above at verse 4, and the first word on the second line the English word "was," and just above it is the Greek word "ην," and just to the left of it is a superscript 'l' and immediately to the right a superscript "||" double bar. What that is telling you is that there is a variation in some manuscripts for that word. Now if you look down to the 'apparatus' (the second picture) you can find a matching 'l' and the Greek word "εστιν" followed by "is LT." So what that is telling you is that some Greek manuscripts have "εστιν" (is) instead of "ην" (was). The "LT" refers to the two Greek editors who believe that this variation was what the Greek originally had, Lachmann and Tishendorf.

Criticism

Now you may be wondering about the title of this article "Criticism". Well not to worry, I am not going to go on a tirade of criticism. No I have chosen this title because it is a technical term, or actually part of two technical terms, "textual criticism" and "higher criticism".

Textual Criticism

'Textual Criticism' is the study of manuscripts in an attempt to determine what the original 'autograph' may have been. An autograph is what the original author wrote, and copies of it are called 'manuscripts' meaning 'hand-written'. So the 'apparatus' described above is the result of the study of 'textual criticism'. This kind of study is very important in gaining an accurate understanding of the Word of God given to us by His servants the prophets and the apostles. We today do not have the original autographs written by them. What we have are copies of copies of copies, ... of the original. And unfortunately copyists are human, and humans make mistakes. The result is that there are essentially no two manuscripts that are exactly alike. There are many many differences.

To give you a taste of how many differences there are, in my Greek/English Interlinear, there is an 'apparatus' section at the bottom of every single page of the New Testament with multiple differences on every page. And actually much worse those listed in Berry's interlinear are only the ones deemed significant by the seven or eight editors of the Greek text. Each variation listed only goes back to what those editors have in their Greek editions, they create from their "textual critical" work. This apparatus does not go back to the actual manuscripts. I have another Greek New Testament, not an interlinear that also has an apparatus which goes back to the manuscripts, and the entries are much longer because they give a list of what manuscripts have each certain variation. Those lists can be quite long indeed. And again even it only list the ones deemed important enough to list. And there are many listed in Berry's that are not in the other, and vise versa. And many more variations which are not listed in either.

So this state of affairs may seem a bit alarming to many people who have never heard of this before.

Well, hold on. Don't loose hope. I must describe that other term before I tell you why I am writing this article with its crazy title.

Higher Criticism

Now we come to 'Higher Criticism' this field of study, if you can call it study, is related to 'textual criticism' in that, in view of the many variations we have in all our existing manuscripts, the "Higher Critics", as they are called, seek to cast doubt that anything we have has any hope of getting back to the original, and perhaps what we have was not even written by the people that supposedly wrote them. And, oh, by the way, "we know," they say "there really is no such thing as a 'miracle'." And "perhaps" their never really was a person named "Moses," etc., etc. Oh, and "Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead, because there is no such thing."

So you see where this is all going.

I want to say again that 'textual criticism' is a very important and necessary field of study. But 'higher criticism' has a completely different motive.

So Why Am I Writing This?

I am writing this article because, as I have learned some Greek and Hebrew, and have looked at many variations in Biblical manuscripts, and have spoken and written about these things, I want to make some things very clear.

I very definitely believe in the Bible, God, Jesus and the Biblical authors, the prophets and apostles. I believe in the miracles in the Bible. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.

I absolutely do not want you to begin to doubt the Bible from anything I say or write. This is why I am writing this article.

I have learned many very interesting things over the last forty years as I have studied these things. There are many more things I hope to be able to write about. But for someone who was taught that the Bible they hold in their hand today is completely perfect and without any error, what I write or say may cause doubt in your mind.

The situation we have today with many differences in our manuscripts, is a fact. They do have errors and they do have some intentional changes. So while we must have the field of study, 'textual criticism' we need also to have the humility to admit that there are problems in our Bibles, but what we do have is more than sufficient for us to learn to trust in God and His Son Jesus.

Our problem is not that we have a Bible with errors (and we do); our problem is that we are not very good at living according to the truths that are in it even when those truths are attested by virtually all the manuscripts that exist today. The fact that we do not live by what the Bible teaches, especially Jesus and His apostles, is a much worse problem than the many variations in the manuscripts.

For me the fact of the variations in the manuscripts has become for me a field full of treasures to dig up. There are many wonderful gems you can find when you dig a little deeper.

Lost in Translation

You may have heard the line "lost in translation." Oh that is such a reality! I would judge that much more is lost in translating the Hebrew and Greek into English, or any other language, than is lost because of the variations in the manuscripts. And yes there are things lost through both. Definitely. While I know most people will never look at any Greek or Hebrew, much less an apparatus, don't be alarmed by those who do. There are many wonderful things you can learn from them.

Martin Luther once said, "Hebrew is the source, that is the spring, and Greek is the stream that flows out of the Hebrew source, and Latin is the downstream puddle." Sadly nearly all English versions of the Bible today have been influenced by things that were lost in the translation into Latin. Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic church for centuries and its influence has been very large upon all theology and translation.

There is so much more to say, but elaborating the many treasures would go way beyond the purpose of this article.

Now when I notice a variation in the manuscripts I think of it as God drawing my attention to a potential treasure to dig up. I call it "God's highlighter." It is as if God has put a yellow highlight on a word to draw my attention to it.

Don't loose heart, there are treasures in this.