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Friday, December 10, 2021

“Critical” Admissions

Admission of uncertainty. An explicitly equivocal admission by one considered the premier evangelical  textual critic of our day, considering the uncertainty they have in getting a Bible “pretty close.” Pretty close may be fine in horseshoes and washers, but the Bible?

“So if we do not have absolute certainty about the wording of the original, what do we have? We have overwhelming probability that the wording in our printed Bibles is pretty close.” 

“Challenges in New Testament Textual Criticism for the Twenty-First Century,” Daniel B. Wallace, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Volume 52, No. 1, March 2009 (Scottsdale, Arizona: Evangelical Theological Society, 2009), p. 86.

Comma Admission. An amazing admission by a critical text proponent, that for all the lightless heat produced by them over the “Johannine Comma” in 1 John 5:7, their own reconstructed texts are littered with readings which they do not know whether they belong there.

“And yet, the textual tradition of the Greek New Testament itself – including what is printed as the Ausgangstext – is interwoven with readings which may or may not have been penned by their original authors. The current reconstructed texts are thus a concession imposed by the limits of our knowledge. As such, the difference between the Comma Johanneum and those otherwise (unknown) spurious readings within our reconstructed texts appears to be one of degree rather than kind. The Comma Johanneum may not be the only relic within the textual tradition.” 

“The Comma Johanneum: A Relic in the Textual Tradition,” Juan Hernández Jr., Early Christianity, Volume 11, 2020, (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), p. 68

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