The Life Foundations
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SEMINAR ON THE “TRUE
TEXT”
LESSON 6 – THE
IDENTITY PRINCIPLE
Copyright
June 14, 2005 12:57 PM CST
By Dr.
Michael J. Bisconti
Updated
June 14, 2005 4:22 PM CST
Copyright
June 14, 2005 4:22 PM CST
By Dr. Michael J. Bisconti
Warning: This page was updated numerous times over a short period of time;
therefore, if you read this page at an earlier time, you may have read some
incorrect content.
This principle could also
have been named “The Frankenstein Identity Principle.” This is because we are addressing our
“claim” that ALL verses
are IDENTICAL in all streams of transmission ONCE THE CONCEPT OF “STREAMS OF
TRANSMISSION” HAS BEEN REMOVED, which is made on The
Frankenstein Principle page.
The word “identity” is
used in the sense of “identicalness.”
Looking at Jude 1:12, it appears that there is no identity
(identicalness) between the different streams of transmission. Specifically:
1.
There is one “A” variant. This is obviously NOT in all streams of
transmission, or is it?
2.
There is one “S”
variant. This is obviously NOT in all
streams of transmission, or is it?
3.
There is one “BA”
variant. This is obviously NOT in all
streams of transmission, or is it?
4.
There is one “TS”
variant. This is obviously NOT in all
streams of transmission, or is it?
Before we proceed, we
will address some historical and conventional thinking. Regarding the “A” variant, some would argue
that the “A” variant is automatically false because it is from the Alexandrian
stream and contradicts the true streams of transmission, the “T” stream
and the “S” stream. They would be
correct BUT THEY WOULD EFFECTIVELY BE INCORRECT (you will understand why we say
this when you read further). Regarding
the “S” variant, some would argue that the “S” variant is automatically true
because it comes from the truer stream of transmission, the Scrivener stream,
contradicting the less true stream of transmission, the “T” stream (note that
the “T” stream is not the authoritative stream of the Textus Receptus). They would be correct BUT THEY WOULD
EFFECTIVELY BE INCORRECT (you will understand why we say this when you read
further). Some might argue that the
“BA” variant and the “TS” variant are synonyms and, therefore, should be
considered the same and, therefore, not treated as variants. However, even if the “BA” variant and the
“TS” variant were synonyms, the principle of “verbal inspiration” would be
contradicted. Verbal inspiration says
that the word of God ENDURES IN LANGUAGE, not just in meaning. Therefore, you cannot have two different
words EVEN IF THEY EXPRESS THE SAME MEANING.
Now, we will explain why
there are NO VARIANTS in this verse. In
order to do so, we will now talk about two “subprinciples” of the Principle of
Identity – “irrelevance” and “edition.”
The subprinciples elaborate on the Identity Principle.
Irrelevance
NONE of the variants in
this verse AFFECT THE MEANING OF THE VERSE. The edition subprinciple below proves this. However, how in the world can there be
identity (identicalness) WHEN THE LANGUAGE IS DIFFERENT? This leads us to the edition subprinciple.
Edition
The “A” variant and the
“BA” variant DO NOT occur in the Alexandrian stream. At this point, we can hear the uproar in the Alexandrian
camp. What they do not know is that we
now have proof that the Alexandrian manuscripts WERE EDITED from their original
form. The original Alexandrian
manuscripts did not contain these variants.
Not to get ahead of ourselves but we will be talking about “The
Alexandrian Edit Principle” in a future lesson. The Alexandrian Edit Principle alone removes more than 90% of the
Alexandrian variants FROM THE ALEXANDRIAN MANUSCRIPTS.
Okay, that takes care of
“1½” variants. Now, what about the “B” part of the “BA”
variant? Very simply, the “B” variant
DOES NOT occur in the Byzantine Majority text.
While we wait for a second uproar to subside, we will tell you that the
Byzantine Majority text WAS EDITED from its original form. In a future lesson we will explain “The
Byzantine Edit Principle.”
Now, we are left with the
“S” variant. This variant is explained
by the Alexandrian Edit Principle (the “S” variant is included in the unedited
Alexandrian manuscripts), the Byzantine Edit Principle (the “S” variant is
included in the unedited Byzantine manuscript) and the “Stephens Edit
Principle,” which we are just now mentioning.
The Stephens Edit Principle proves that the “S” variant was
(incorrectly) edited out of the Stephens text.
Immediately following the
passage from the book of Jude is an explanation of the conventions used in our
Greek text. The following graphic may
take a second or two to load.
This
passage from the Book of Jude is taken from a compilation of the Greek New
Testament that has variants identified and tagged for reference to source
of transmission and schools of emphasis.
Verse
Numbers
For ease
of reference, the verse numbering scheme has been made to conform closely to that
found in most standard English versions of the New Testament, following the
Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
Where considerate verse numbering differences occur, they are added to
the text in brackets.
Breathings,
Accents, And Diacritical Markings
All
breathings, accents, capitalization, punctuation, and diacritical markings have
been omitted. These are primarily a
product of modern editorship and are lacking in ancient manuscripts.
Book
Titles And Colophons
Book
titles do not appear. The Greek closing
colophons to the epistles that appear in the English of the Authorized Version
have been placed in brackets [] wherever they occur in the Stephens 1550
edition (only).
Variant
Tagging Method
The
following tags have been applied to those words peculiar to one stream of
transmission or scholarly group that emphasizes a particular variant word. Those words with no tag do not differ in the
various printings of the Greek.
T = Stephens 1550 Textus Receptus.
The text
used is George Ricker Berry's edition of "The Interlinear Literal
Translation of the Greek New Testament."
This text is virtually identical to Erasmus 1516, Beza 1598, and the
actual Textus Receptus: Elzevir 1633.
Berry states, "In the main they are one and the same; and [any] of
them may be referred to as the Textus Receptus." (Berry, p. ii)
These
early printed Greek New Testaments closely parallel the text of the English
King James Authorized Version of 1611, since that version was based closely
upon Beza 1598, which differed little from its "Textus Receptus"
predecessors. These Textus Receptus
editions follow the Byzantine Majority manuscripts, which was predominant
during the period of manual copying of Greek New Testament manuscripts.
S = Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus
The text
used is "h Kainh Diaqhkh:
The New Testament. The Greek Text
underlying the English Authorized Version of 1611" (London: Trinitarian
Bible Society, 1977). This is an
unchanged reprint of Scrivener's "The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text followed in the Authorized Version" (Cambridge:
University Press, 1894, 1902).
Scrivener attempted to reconstruct the
Greek text underlying the English 1611 KJV for comparison to the 1881 English
Revised Version. In those places where
the KJV followed the Latin Vulgate (John 10:16), Scrivener inserted the Greek
reading, as opposed to back-translating the Latin to Greek--which would have
produced a Greek word with no Greek manuscript evidence. Scrivener's work follows the Byzantine
Majority texts, and in many places matches the modern Alexandrian-based
editions.
B = Byzantine Majority
The text is that identified by Freiherr Von
Soden, "Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer altesten erreichbaren
Textgestalt" (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1911) and Herman C.
Hoskier, "Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse" (London: Bernard
Quaritch, 1929). This technique of
Byzantine identification and weighting was utilized by Hodges and Farsted in
"The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text" (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, 1982; 1985). It was
subsequently utilized by Robinson and Pierpont, resulting in 99.75 percent
agreement between the two texts.
The Byzantine Majority text is closely identified
with the Textus Receptus editions, and well it should with greater than 98%
agreement. As Maurice Robinson pointed
out in his edition of the Byzantine Majority: "George Ricker Berry
correctly noted that 'in the main they are one and the same; and [any] of them
may be referred to as the Textus Receptus' (George Ricker Berry, ed., The
Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament [New York: Hinds
& Noble, 1897], p. ii).
A = Alexandrian
(Some of the comments
that follow will be confusing to anyone learned in the “Alexandrian
dispute.” We will clear up this
confusion at a later stage in the “text building” process.) The differences are those identified by the
United Bible Society, 3rd edition, and utilized by modern translations such as
the NIV and the NASB. While these
variants come from manuscripts with less textual evidence than the Byzantine
Majority, many of the differences are exactly the same as those identified by the
Byzantine Majority and Scrivener. The
percentage of variants is quite small and occurs mainly in word placement and
spelling. Many of the variations
identified are omitted or bracketed words, which is not surprising due to a
significantly smaller base of text from this stream of transmission.