C.H. Spurgeon on the Preservation of Scripture

[Note: I originally wrote this post over a year ago during UK lockdown but didn't post it at the time.]

It’s no secret that for many years now, I’ve had an unhealthy obsession a healthy respect for the Last of the Puritans. I was recently working on a side project, and I had left a note for myself to “find a way to put Spurgeon in.” It was really just a joke to myself. [Update: I found a way!] Nothing wrong with an occasional irrelevant reference to the man, even if it’s against an editor’s wishes!

I decided to follow my note up and search his sermons for references to manuscripts again, and after sorting away all the references to sermon manuscripts, I came across something I had not seen before.

C. H. Spurgeon (1834–1892),
looking amused

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892) preached his sermon no. 3303 “on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society” on Thursday evening, 14 May 1885. (By the way, the Bible Society has an amazing library in Cambridge.) The sermon wasn’t published right away. It was one of the posthumously-published sermons that finally came to print about twenty years after he died. Spurgeon’s text for the sermon, “A Very Early Bible Society,” is 2 Chron. 34:15, 18, 19—when Hilkiah finds the lost Book of the Law.

Spurgeon has a whole sermon point on “that Peculiar Preservation which God has extended to the Scriptures which he has inspired” (somewhat ironically, in light of the fact that he was preaching this from an instance in Scripture in which God’s Word appears to have been lost to his people for a time). I have shown elsewhere that Spurgeon spoke out at times in favor of textual criticism and even occasionally mentioned textual variants from the pulpit. Once, he even preached from a phrase that is in the Revised Version but not the King James Version because homoioteluton/visual similarity caused a phrase to be omitted in the majority of manuscripts (κληθῶμεν καὶ ἐσμέν, but κλη/και and θ/ε would be very similar in some hands as well). Spurgeon drank deeply from the wells of the Puritans and carried their intense respect of Scripture with him his whole life. He vehemently defended the reliability, truthfulness, and infallibility of the Scriptures, but he also understood that our access to God’s Word is not the same as what God’s Word is ontologically. Here, I stumbled upon a section in which Spurgeon defends the preservation of Scripture, but he also affirms that copies of Scripture have errors and can be corrected by comparing them to other copies. I quote a few sections below:

Now look you along through all the ages, and if you are a reverent believer in the Word, you will be filled with grateful wonder that the Sacred Roll has been preserved to us. Through what perils it has passed, and yet, as I believe, there is not a chapter of it lost; nay, nor a verse of any chapter. The misreadings of the copies are really so inconsiderable, and are so happily corrected by other manuscripts, that our Bible is a marvel in literature for the comparative ease with which the correct text is discoverable. It seems to me that God’s divine care has extended itself to the whole text, so that, with far less care than would be needed by any classic author, the very words of the Holy Spirit may be known. As the wings of cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat, so do the wings of providence protect the Book of the Lord. As Michael guarded the body of Moses, so does a divine care secure the Books of Moses. I invite lovers of history and of famous books to look into the interesting story of the immortality of Scripture. Let us think of that special preservation with reverent gratitude.

Quickly, note here that Spurgeon does imply that the “correct text” does need to be discovered, but God’s preservation is evident in the “comparative ease with which” that is done: “with far less care than would be needed by any classical author.” In apologetics terms, Spurgeon is giving an early version of the comparison of the Bible/New Testament with classical literature, perhaps most famously made by F.F. Bruce and recently discussed by James B. Prothro.

Some notes from fun reading: Erasmus, Original Text, Shorter Reading, Spurgeon, Al Capone(!)

I’ve been trying to read a few works that have been around for a few years that, for some reason, I haven’t read until now. What follows are some thoughts that are probably old hat to everyone else. It’s a longish post with some tangents and random thoughts.

I. Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. David Alan Black

A solid little book. The essays are certainly valuable in themselves, but I wanted to point out a couple of things from Moisés Silva’s response at the end. Silva describes himself as “an unrepentant and unshaken Hortian” (p. 142), but makes the helpful observation that Hort was really not doing anything new. Silva writes (p. 142):

“Keep in mind that what Hort did—in collaboration with Westcott and, less directly, Lightfoot—was primarily to synthesize and logically articulate nineteenth-century text-critical scholarship, which was itself the culmination of intensive work tracing its lineage back to Bengel in the eighteenth century, Bentley in the seventeenth century, and Erasmus in the sixteenth century. Yes, Erasmus, because even the creator of what would later be known as the textus receptus was absolutely committed to the very principles that lie at the foundations of WH’s accomplishments.” 

Silva’s words here stuck out to me because it’s something I’ve been saying for a little while. Was Erasmus doing the exact same thing as text critics today? Well, not exactly the same thing. However, the more I read his annotations, and assuming I have at least a working understanding of how textual criticism is done today (a premise to which I am sure somebody somewhere might object), the more difficult it is for me to escape the conclusion that Erasmus was very much in the same trajectory of what we are doing today. One difference is that it is clear from Erasmus' annotations that it was not always his intention to give the original text [see note at the end of this post]. Some might claim that this is not a goal today [Warning: tangent coming], but 1. it certainly is for some of us, and 2. Even some scholars who might not affirm the importance of the original text still function as if that is something we’re after and also something that basically can be obtained. On this point, Silva points to Ehrman’s Orthodox Corruption of Scripture to demonstrate this point (p. 149):

Although [Orthodox Corruption of Scripture] is appealed to in support of blurring the notion of an original text, there is hardly a page in that book that does not in fact mention such a text or assume its accessibility. ‘Why is such-and-such a reading in Mark a later corruption and not original? Because Mark (authorial intent!) would not likely have said such a thing.’ Indeed, Ehrman’s book is unimaginable unless he can identify an initial form of the text that can be differentiated from a later alteration.

Asa or Asaph in Matthew 1: A Teaser for the THGNT Textual Commentary

Yesterday morning, I was reading a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892) titled “Concealing the Words of God.” No, the sermon is not about textual criticism, but Spurgeon made a remark that sent my mind back to the arguments surrounding Asa or Asaph in Matt. 1:7–8. Spurgeon said (emphasis mine),

Lay no embargo upon any form of truth; demand no toll for the commodities of heaven. Let your mind be an open port, carrying on a free trade in the treasures of the gospel. Believe whatever God says, because God says it, though you may not always see its why and wherefore or perceive its internal consistency. Be prepared, and even anxious, to know the whole truth as far as you can know it, and let it pervade your entire being with its holy influence. It will be a terrible thing if one of these days you shall have to say “I rejected a great truth. I had a suspicion that it was so, but I did not wish to believe it, and so I shut my ears to its evidence. I had a leaning towards the opposite view, and I felt committed to it, and so refused to alter.” —Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 25 (1879): 245.

Of course, Spurgeon is talking about theology here, but his remarks have relevance to arguments I’ve come across regarding a textual variant in Matt. 1. Since Spurgeon was not opposed to textual criticism, I’ll use his remark to leap into the Asa/Asaph variant at Matt. 1:7–8. I derive parts of what follows from the forthcoming Textual Commentary for the Tyndale House Greek New Testament that Dirk Jongkind and I are working on.

The variant in question is at Matt. 1:7–8. There are two instances of a name in Matthew’s genealogy—Ἀσά or Ἀσάφ, right at the end of v. 7 and beginning of v. 8. A sampling of the textual evidence breaks down thus, derived mostly from the UBS5 (with languages separated by commas):

Ἀσάφ· Ἀσὰφ] P1(^vid ασ̣α̣[φ ασα]φ̣) ℵ B C 700 f¹ f¹³, aur c g1 k q vg^mss, sa bo mae, arm, eth, geo, (sy^hmg) 

Ἀσά· Ἀσὰ] K L W Δ Σ 33 565 1241 892 1424 Byz, (a), f ff1 vg, sy^c sy^s sy^p sy^h sy^pal, slav

The Tyndale House edition, UBS, NA and SBL editions all go with Ἀσάφ. The earliest manuscripts support Ἀσάφ, as well as much of the Old Latin tradition, all of the Coptic tradition, and most of the ‘minor’ versions. On the other hand, the majority of Greek, Latin and Syriac manuscripts support Ἀσά, as it is supported by the Byzantine Greek text and the Vulgate, as well as some Old Latin and most Syriac versions.

Textually, if one’s preference is for early manuscripts, this decision is easy. There is a clear ‘winner’ among early witnesses in the Greek tradition. Still, the explanation for the variation has caused concern for some. The issue is that in 1 Kings 15:9, this individual is named Asa, not Asaph. Copyists were not unaware of this difference—in GA 1582 (which is close to the archetype of fam. 1), the text has Ἀσάφ, but a marginal note mentions that “Ασα” is the name according to 1 Kings (see Amy S. Anderson, The Textual Tradition of the Gospels: Family 1 in Matthew. NTTS 32. [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 62.)

The question, then, is whether copyists changed Ἀσά to Ἀσάφ, presumably because of the familiarity with the Psalmist, or did copyists see Ἀσάφ, perceive an error and ‘correct’ it, writing Ἀσά and conforming the text to 1 Kings?

Metzger writes that Ἀσάφ likely came about because “the evangelist may have derived material for the genealogy, not from the Old Testament directly, but from subsequent genealogical lists, in which the erroneous spelling occurred” (Textual Commentary, 2nd ed. [Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 1994], 1). If one believes that the original text is inerrant, one would rightly be suspicious of Metzger’s explanation here. That being said, one must not fall into the fallacy of a false dilemma and think that one must accept Metzger’s reason in order to accept the same text as Metzger.

In the current draft of the forthcoming Textual Commentary for the THGNT, we write the following to support the decision to print Ἀσάφ:

The text is adopted on the basis of its early evidence. The king’s name is given as Ἀσά thoughout 1 Kings 15, which could have led scribes to think the reading Ἀσάφ is an error, even as some modern scholars have suggested.[1] The similarity of the names Ἀσάφ (also note the Psalmist of the same name) and Ἀσά could have led to confusion as well.  

The name used in the Hebrew text of 1 Kings 15 is אָסָא (Asa), and a legitimate interpretation of this name is that it is a hypocorism (a shortened name)—an alternative form of the same name,אָסָף  (Asaph).[2] An alternative explanation for the use of Ἀσάφ might be that Matthew knows Hebrew better than his later copyists, and for the king who is called Asa in 1 Kings 15, Matthew uses the longer form of his name, Asaph.

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[1] For example, Bruce M. Metzger suggests that Matthew may have copied Ἀσάφ from “genealogical lists, in which the erroneous spelling occurred,” in Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Biblegesellschaft, 1994), 1. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison also suggest that Ἀσάφ is an error, corrected by later scribes in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Volume 1, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 175.

[2] On אָסָא as a hypocorism (a shortened form) of אסף and the divine name but אָסָף as a hypocorism of the divine name and אסף, see Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament: Gesamtausgabe, ed. Herbert Donner, 18th ed. (Heidelberg: Springer, 2013), 83, 85. We are indebted to Pete Myers for this reference.

If one wanted to push the evidence a bit further, one might conclude that having the right text (Ἀσάφ) supports traditional views about Matthean authorship better than the majority reading, Ἀσά. If the author of Matthew’s Gospel was a Hebrew-speaking Christian, wouldn’t it make sense that he knew how Hebrew names worked better than his Greek- and Latin-speaking copyists centuries later?

As Spurgeon said, Believe whatever God says, because God says it, though you may not always see its why and wherefore or perceive its internal consistency. Our priority should be for the text and what it is, trusting that it is internally consistent even if we do not always perceive it so. When I was discussing this passage with a friend, he said something helpful to me once we found the explanation of hypocorism. “The thing you’ve got to remember,” he said, “is that the text [i.e. Asaph] was already perfect and without error long before we found an explanation for why it is perfect and without error.”