From: Calr (credmond@usa.pipeline.com)
Date: Fri Dec 08 1995 - 14:20:36 EST
On Dec. 8, Ellen Adams wrote,
< In 1624 the Elzevir brothers also published a Greek
<Testament. As printers, not scholars, they safely chose what <seemed the
<generally accepted text at that time, Beza's 1565 edition, and did <not
<presume to significantly alter it. They explain this in their
<introduction to their second edition: "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab
<omnibus receptum: in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus." <(p. 106)
<Now my knowledge Latin isn't that great, coming only from my
<pre-ecumenical years as a Catholic, but isn't there a double <meaning
<here? Did not the whole precept of inerrancy stem from this little
<printer's blurb which has been misunderstood and misapplied?
Ellen, you are exactly right in the first part of your posting. As Donald
Carson (a fine conservative scholar) notes in his book _The King James
Version Debate: A Plea for Realism_, Baker Book House, 1979, p. 36: " 'The
text that you have is now received by all, in which we give you nothing
changed or perverted'.. (I never had Latin :-) ). The TR is not the
'received text' in the sense that it has been received by God _as over
against_(ital.) other Greek manuscripts. Rather it is the 'received text'
in the sense that it was the standard one at the time of the Elzevirs.
Nevertheless the textual basis of the TR is a small number of haphazardly
collected and relatively late miniscule manuscripts. In about a dozen
places its reading is attested by no known Greek manuscript witness." I
heartily recommend Carson's book when dealing with the "theological
blessing" (??) of the TR.
I would resist your suggestion that this advertising blurb was the
generative force in the doctrine of inerrancy, but even more would I resist
the temptation to get back into the inerrancy debate. So far what I have
said is related vaguely to Greek.
-- Cal Redmond The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary credmond@usa.pipeline.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:34 EDT