Manuscripts, Translations, Etc.

Of what authoritative value are the manuscripts
when there are so many of them?

While there are thousands of scrolls or manuscripts of the Old Testament in existence, these are all copies of the manuscripts prepared from ancient sources by Jewish rabbis in the 6th century, and this is called the Massoretic text. The collateral authority is the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint translation, 274 years B. C. into Greek, so that the Old Testament writings were preserved by both Jewish and Gentile scholarship. Between the Septuagint and the Massoretic text the divisions are very slight and not of a kind to change the meaning of any passage. I may add that what gives the Septuagint its exceptional value is that it was in the hands of the apostles, and the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament are frequently made from the Septuagint version.

If the Apocryphal books were discarded from the Old Testament how can we say that we have the whole

Word of God?

No books were discarded. ‘The Hebrews also had, as have we, the books called ‘“Apocryphal,’ but did not give them the character of inspired writings.

Which are the best manuscripts extant?

Of the New Testament, the Sinaitic and Vatican. But it is to be remembered that quotations from the original manuscripts abound in the writings of the so-called ‘‘Apostolic Fathers,” and these are considered on a par with the Sinaitic and the Vatican manuscripts as text sources. As to the Old Testament, the authoritative Greek rendering is of course the Septuagint, the Greek translation made in Alexandria, 270 B. C. The Hebrew Massoretic text is everywhere accessible in print.

Which version of the Bible is preferable for use in public work, the King James, or the Revised Version?

The King James, or Authorized Version, remains the Bible of the people, and is, therefore, best for the minister’s public work. He should, of course, be acquainted with the revised renderings of all the passages in which important changes are made, and should not hesitate to call attention to the better and clearer readings.

It is, however, a mistake to make incessant reference to verbal changes, as the habit of some is, and it is a safe rule never to make public reference to the renderings of individual translators, as Rotherham, Hudson and others. In the main the A. V. is a magnificent translation of the Scriptures.

By what authority could a small body of scholars exclude the Apocryphal books from the Bible?

No book holds its place in the Bible by virtue of the authority of scholars, but by virtue of the universal consensus of the whole church. Learning has nothing (or but little) to do with it. The non-canonical books wholly lack the peculiar elevation, restraint, consistency and spiritual impression of the canonical books. Compare, for example, the Epistles of Clement, an associate of the Apostle Paul, with the writings of the latter; or the so-called “Gospel of the Infancy” with the first three chapters of Luke.

In Paul’s visit to Jerusalem (Acts 21:15) was he acting out of harmony with the leading of the Spirit, as some teachers claim, and if so what is the proof?

Acts 21:4 is conclusive that in his last journey to Jerusalem the great apostle to the Gentiles was acting rather out of his consuming love for the Jews (Rom. 9:1-8), and his yearning desire to see them saved (Rom. 10:1-3) than, as usual, in perfect subjection to the guidance of the Spirit. There is no more reason why this should shock us than to learn that Peter dissembled at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14). Paul himself set the matter in its true light after his arrest (Acts 23:17-21), when he confessed that he had long before been warned of the Lord that the Jews at Jerusalem would not receive his testimony, and that when he remonstrated with the Lord he received the command, “Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” But for the curious notion that everything Paul (why Paul more than Peter?) did was inerrant, no one would ever have tried to explain away so plain a scripture. as Acts 21:4, Let it be remembered that not the men of the Bible, but the Bible itself is inerrant. A very faulty man may write a faultless letter, and all the more is this true when it is remembered that “all Scripture is given by inpiration of God.”

Would not the fact that the New Testament quotations from the Septuagint are so often imperfect, involve the inspiration of one or the other?

There are exceedingly few ipsissima verba quotations in the New Testament from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. The New Testament quotations are therefore inspired renderings into Greek of the Old Testament truths. Often (perhaps generally) the Septuagint is followed, with minute differences. This undoubtedly gives the Septuagint a unique place among versions. For two reasons the Massoretic text is to be preferred to the Septuagint where differences occur. (1) The text of the Septuagint is in a most uncertain state. Unlike the Hebrew text the Septuagint version was never ecclesiastically guarded. Origen (185-254 A. D.) endeavored to restore it, but with doubtful success. (2) On the other hand the

Hebrew text was scrupulously guarded, every letter having been numbered, and copies were revised with extraordinary care. To this work, from the Christian era, the Massora were especially devoted, and the present form of the Hebrew text is highly authoritative. That neither the Septuagint nor the Massoretic text was followed with literal exactness in New Testament quotations presents no difhiculty whatever in respect of verbal inspiration, for both in the Old Testament and the New it is one Author who speaks. Consistency require that the sense should be the same; but as it is an Author quoting Himself, He is at liberty to restate His own proposition. No merely human author is bound to quote himself ipsissima verba; and this just because it is himself. Another would have no such right over quoted words. In other words, a New Testament quotation from the Old presents the phenomena of two inspired forms of the same statement. They are equally authoritative and the sense is always the same. A striking illustration of this is the quotation in Hebrews 10:5 (“Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me’’) from Psalm 40:6 (“Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou digged’’). The reference in the Psalm is to that boring of the ear of a Hebrew servant, by which he voluntarily became the absolute property of his master. The New Testament form expresses the same central thought but in words adapted to express the self-devotedness of Christ as Servant of Jehovah in His obedience even unto death. Both forms of the one truth are verbally inspired, since both came from the same Author-Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16; 1 Cor. 2:10-18). It is noteworthy that throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews Old Testament quotations are usually attributed not to the writer, as “the prophet Esaias,”’ etc., but to the Author, as “The Holy Ghost saith” (see e. g., @:73) 9:8, etc:)

What is meant by ‘‘the Canon of Scripture’’?

1. .-The word canon means primarily what a modern mechanic calls a “straight edge.’”’ By accommodation it came to stand for authority, e. g., rules which, in the sphere of conduct or belief, keep one “straight.” In theology the word came to be used as applying to the authority of Scripture. And the question concerning any particular book, “Is it canonical?” is equivalent to asking, “Is it authoritative?’’ Hence the “canon” means the collection of books accepted as inspired and therefore authoritative in the sphere of belief and conduct.

2. The history of “the canon’ or of the process through which the writings which now compose the Bible have been accepted as “canonical” (authoritative) is full of interest and of comfort. It falls into two parts, the history of the Old Testament and the history of the New Testament canon.

(a) The Old Testament Canon. Into the detail of the formation of the Old Testament it is not necessary to enter, and that for the most satisfactory of all possible reasons. It is undisputed and indisputable that the Old Testament as we have it was in the hands of Christ — was, indeed, His Bible. It consisted then, as now, of “Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). “Moses” included the “five-fold book or Pentateuch; ‘“‘the Prophets” included the historical books as well as the predictive writings, and “‘the Psalms’ the poetical books. This canon, as every candid reader of the Gospels may see, was accepted by the Lord Jesus as absolutely binding and authoritative. He quoted from each of the great divisions, invariably giving the quotations the weight of divine authority, and in such passages as Luke 24:27, 44, 45; John 5:46, 47; 7:19; 17:17; Luke 16:31 and many other like instances, He gave to the canonicity (7. e., authority) of the entire Old Testament the stamp of His own divine approval.

(b) The New Testament Canon. It may be said that the New Testament is made up of the books which have triumphed over a two-fold opposition. (1) Every one of these books has been sifted and tested by hostile criticism, and each remains in the canon because it has vindicated its canonicity (2. e., authority) to the piety, the experience and the learning of the enormous majority of nearly seventy generations of Christians. This, needless to say, invests these writings with a vastly more impressive, venerable and unanswerable authority than could be given them by any council. It is not that the canon is destitute of conciliar authentication, for this it has, beginning with the third council of Carthage in 397, but that the agreement of the whole church, in all ages, constitutes a consensus of more majestic weight. And, (2) the New Testament canon has survived the contest which the spurious books such as the (so-called) ‘Gospel of the Infancy,” and with genuine but uninspired books such as the Epistle of Clement. In the four-fold testing of tradition, experience, spiritual intuition and learning the non-canonical books have been universally rejected — the canonical books universally received.

It will be understood, of course, that ‘universal’ refers to the judgment not alone of councils, but of the Christian consciousness of the whole church in all of the ages. That in every age a few have objected to certain books cannot impair this catholicity, since the few have never surpassed, either in learning or spirituality, the many. Such divergencies are, therefore, referable to idiosyncrasies and the mental bias of individuals.