I want to offer a brief review of
a video and an article that was recently posted to the Crossway website
(October 29, 2024) in the series titled “I’ve heard it said.”
This short video (less than two
minutes) features Dr. John D. Meade, OT professor at Phoenix Seminary, and a
recent critic of the Reformation Bible Society and its defense of the
traditional MT of the Hebrew OT.
Meade’s segment is titled “I have
heard it said that the Old Testament is full of errors,” This video (and others
in this series) are meant to address various controversial topics on theology
or apologetics from a contemporary evangelical perspective.
Let’s listen to the video and
then I’ll offer a few observations.
Meade’s video is presumably meant
to defend the authority, authenticity, and integrity of the text of the OT against
unnamed modern skeptics who argue that it cannot be trusted because it is full
of errors.
If you listen to Meade’s presentation,
however, you will find that he does not deny or refute the charge that the text
of the OT is full of errors. In fact, he agrees with and affirms this perspective.
Meade begins by noting, rightly,
that there are no longer any extant autographs or original manuscripts of the
OT books. We do not, for example, have any of the books of the Pentateuch
handwritten by Moses. We do not have autographs but only apographs,
copies of the OT books. The Puritan John Owen speculated that God did not allow
the autographs to be preserved because he knew that men would be tempted to
worship them.
Meade then adds that these copies
of the OT are riddled with human “fragility” and are filled with transmissional
errors. He says it is not a question as to whether or not there are errors, affirming
plainly, “There are errors.”
Meade then suggests, however,
that this admitted situation of an overwhelmingly corrupted OT text should not
lead to pessimism or despair. Despite this confused textual situation, Meade
says, one cannot conclude “We don’t have the Bible.” He assures his listeners,
in fact, that we have “a wealth of manuscripts” (some modern scholars are fond
of saying we have “an embarrassment of riches”).
Our saving grace (or saviors),
Meade asserts are “textual critics” who can compare manuscripts, “sift out” copyist
errors, and “actually restore the original text,” by comparing all of the
evidence.
Meade concludes by saying he is “optimistic,
that we can get back to the original books of the OT.”
Let me offer five observations on
Meade’s presentation:
First, as already noted,
Meade is NOT refuting the charge that the OT is full of errors. He is in basic
agreement with that assertion. The title of the video might well have been, “I
agree that the OT is full of errors, but I am nonetheless optimistic we can
almost fix it.”
His approach here reminds me of the
veritable cottage industry that developed among evangelical scholars a few
years ago in order supposedly to “refute” the textual criticism of Bart Ehrman.
The only problem was most of these men who lined up to “refute” Ehrman confessed
that they basically agreed with Ehrman that the text of the NT was overwhelmingly
corrupt, that traditional passages like Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53—8:11 are
spurious, and that it is the task of scholars to attempt to reconstruct it to some
semblance of what the original might have been. These evangelical scholars did
not so much disagree with Ehrman as to whether the NT text was grossly corrupt
and needed reconstruction, but only as to whether, under these circumstances, it
could still be said to be inspired and to hold authority for faith and
practice.
Meade is essentially suggesting a
similar approach with regard to the text of the OT, though he does not explicitly
cite a “Bart Ehrman” type OT scholar as a foe.
Second, Meade is promoting
in this video a modern restorationist view of textual criticism. This view
suggests that the text of the Bible is rather hopelessly corrupted, but that
modern academic scholars can examine the extant empirical evidence and use
human reasoning to at least “reconstruct” a close approximation to the original
text. Such scholars are typically clear to point out that they cannot guarantee
that the text they reconstruct is, in fact, the authorial text. It will be subject
to change based on new discoveries and methods developed by scholars.
Third, this modern reconstruction
model is a departure from the classic Protestant approach to the text of
Scripture. That view held that the Bible had been immediately inspired by God,
and it has been kept pure in all ages (see WCF/2LBCF 1:8). This view holds that
though the autographs have not been preserved, they remain accessible through faithful
copies (apographs). There were some scribal discrepancies in transmission, but these
were minor and could be easily corrected using those faithful copies and the
consensus of the rule of faith.
With respect to the OT the
Protestant fathers affirmed that these ancient “oracles of God” had been
preserved by the Jews in the traditional Masoretic Text of the Hebrew OT (cf. Romans 3:2). This
text had then providentially come into print at the dawn of the Protestant era
(first published by Daniel Bomberg in 1524-1525). These printed editions of the
Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament were used as the touchstone and
standard for all the classic Protestant translations of the Bible.
The Dutch divine Petrus Van
Mastricht declared, “Neither the Hebrew of the Old Testament, nor the Greek of
the New Testament has been corrupted” (TPT 1:164).
The English divine John Owen
suggested that to attempt to amend or alter the traditional text would be “to
make equal the wisdom, care, skill, and diligence of men, with the wisdom,
care, and providence of God himself” (Works 16:357).
Fourth, the reconstruction
method is advocating departure from the traditional Masoretic Text, affirmed by
both Jews and Protestants for centuries, in favor of a modern critical text, reconstructed
using reasoned eclecticism.
Fifth, as indicated by
Meade’s answer, and as touched on above, those who hold to this modern view do
not believe that we currently have the text of the OT rightly reconstructed in
hand. They are only “optimistic”—to used Meade’s term— that perhaps a very close
approximation of the text might be achieved sometime in the future, as a result
of the application of modern textual criticism.
Sadly, we seem to be observing the
same undermining of the stability and authority of the OT text, under the
application of modern textual criticism, as has already largely taken place among
many evangelicals and mainline Protestants with respect to the NT text. No
doubt many evangelical scholars making use of this reconstruction method would be
willing to say of the OT text what Daniel B. Wallace has already said of the NT
Text. Something like:
We do not have
now—in our critical [Hebrew] texts or any translations—exactly what the authors
of the [Old] Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it [cf. Gurry
and Hixson, Eds. Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism,
xii].
Let us, finally, return to the
topic. “I’ve heard it said that the OT is full of errors.” Is it possible that
we might still respond to this topic in the way that Van Mastricht and Owen the
Westminster divines and the Particular Baptist fathers did in their day?:
The Hebrew OT is not full of
errors. It was immediately inspired by God and has been kept pure in all ages
in faithful copies. As it did for the ancient Jews and for men of the Reformation,
the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text continues to provide for Bible-believing
Protestant Christians a clear and authoritative canonical standard for both the
sacred books and the sacred text of the OT.
JTR
