Mounce’s “unanimous agreement”

In researching the topic of defending missing verses in modern Bibles, I ran across a brief video by Bill Mounce (a little less than 10 minutes). In it, he is defending “missing” verses in his NIV. At one point, he claims that evangelical and liberal scholarship unanimously agree on one thing: that “versions of the Bible that were written closer to the first century are by default more reliable. There’s been less chance for changes to happen. They’re going to be more faithful because they’re closer to the actual writing.” (This starts at about 3:18 in the above-linked video.)

First, though not my main point here, I do not agree with Mounce’s premise. Marcion’s truncated Bible seems to be closer in time “to the actual writing” than anything we presently have (definitely preceded Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). It is NOT by default more reliable. It is, in fact, exceedingly unreliable and unrepresentative of the autographs.

However, notice primarily Mounce’s attitude toward anyone who takes a contrary position to his “unanimously agreed” scholars. If you are not part of the unanimous agreement, then you are not a serious or credible scholar.

I realize Critical Text guys like Mounce consistently dismiss those of us who support the Received Text as rubes. But shouldn’t Majority Text proponents such as Hodges, Farstad, Pickering, Pierpont, and Robinson be considered eminent scholars? They do not accept this so-called universal proposition posited by Mounce. Or does Mounce & Company just write out of the “academia” anyone who disagrees with them?

I deny that there is such a so-called unanimous agreement. The consensus is a mirage, achieved by excluding those who disagree. Sounds a lot like the government ploy that dismissed the opinions and findings of eminent physicians and medical researchers who did not spout the “party line” during the Covid scare!

[Just for fun, be sure to watch this with the captions on, where the Closed Caption understands Mounce to say “Bruce mess cursed” instead of what most of you will hear him say.]