The general thrust of the article is about what you would expect from Bruce: a careful overview of why we can have confidence in the text of the Scriptures.
What was interesting to me was his conclusion, which I share here:
According to F.F. Bruce (and a lot of us who are little more than dust in the shadow of F.F. Bruce), textual criticism is one of the means by which God's providential preservation of Scripture works.
You can read the whole article here.
Unrelated, if you've ever wondered what Bruce sounded like, you can hear his glorious Scottish accent in this lecture from 1977.
Thanks for this! I'm at this moment preparing a research project for seminary for Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, and this will come in handy.
ReplyDeleteBruce always works
ReplyDeleteOk, that is *not* how I imagined him sounding.
ReplyDeleteDear ETC people (bloggers and their readers), I have just discovered this blog. I am a Reformed evangelical (orthodox) retired minister of what are now called the Dutch Reformed Churches (Nederlandse Gereformeerde Kerken), born and raised in the U.S. While I was at Westminster Seminary Philadelphia getting my MDiv (1969-1972), I became interested in textual criticism, and became a (tentative) supporter of the Majority Text, which I remain to this day (thus my preference for the NKJV). One argument that I liked then, and still do, was the one Bruce mentions: the "kept pure in all ages" statement in the Westminster Confession (from which, however, Bruce did not derive a preference for the Majority Text). The noble tradition of Burgon (high church) and Scrivener (evangelical), with Miller and Birks in the 19th century, and Pickering, Hodges, and Robinson, later, deserves attention. The orthodox Reformed Prof. Dr. J. Van Bruggen has written many scholarly NT commentaries (1987-2010), favoring the Majority Text, and the whole series leans clearly toward it: https://www.kokboekencentrum.nl/commentaar-op-het-nieuwe-testament/. Many of his students (such as myself) have followed his example. I am still tentative about this, but I can't believe that Mark ended his Gospel with "and they (the women) were afraid." With the high church Burgon as our great example in this matter, perhaps we should speak of "Orthodox Textual Criticism." I'm still open to all arguments, particularly from Bible-believers (including evangelicals!).
ReplyDeleteHere is ChatGPT on the Majority Text/Byzantine Text issue: “How different is the Greek NT of the "overall Byzantine Textform" (Robinson-Pierpont) from the "Majority Text” (Hodges-Farstad), the answer is:
DeleteNot very different—unless you're dealing with Hodges–Farstad's distinctive treatment of Revelation and a few other places.
Indeed, the major conceptual difference is more significant than the number of actual textual differences:
Hodges–Farstad: “What does the manuscript majority indicate?”
Robinson–Pierpont: “What is the best reconstruction of the Byzantine Textform represented through the manuscript tradition?”
And Family 35 (Pickering) goes another step further by arguing for the primacy of one particular Byzantine textual family."
Not sure what Burgon would say on this issue.