F.F. Bruce on 'Kept Pure in All Ages'

Yesterday, I was looking for one of F.F. Bruce's more obscure writings, and thankfully, I found that Rob Bradshaw had digitized it. While I was there, I stumbled across something more interesting though. In 1953, Bruce wrote a short overview-type article on textual criticism for The Christian Graduate [6.4 (Dec. 1953): 135-139].

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.

Cole on Preservation and the Westminster Divines’ Sermons

Zach Cole of RTS Orlando has a new article out in JETS. Actually, it was out in September issue, but I just got my hardcopy. Zach’s been working on the subject of TC in the Westminster divines for a while now and his ETS paper this year built on that. It dovetails nincely with my recent article on the topic and I’ve been enjoying following Zach’s parallel work on the subject. I recommend this one. Here is the abstract.

Providential Preservation of Scripture and Textual Criticism in the Sermons of Westminster Divines

Abstract: The men who claimed that Scripture had been “kept pure in all ages” were also regular preachers who routinely dealt with textual variations and marginal readings. By giving attention to the manner in which they addressed text-critical problems in the pulpit, we can understand more precisely what the Westminster divines believed about the manner of God’s preservation of his word. It is argued that the authorial intent of WCF 1.8 allows room for the practice of textual criticism and that it does not require adoption of one particular strand of the Greek textual tradition as “approved” in every point of variation.

And here are his concluding observations in short form:

• First and most obviously, the men who affirmed that the word of God had been “kept pure in all ages” were aware of textual criticism and its challenges.
• Second, we do not find our preachers engaging in conjectural emendation, that is, advocating a reading that lacks extant manuscript support.
• Third, beyond these similarities across our preachers, we also find a modest diversity of approaches and practices when adjudicating textual problems. 
• Fourth, several of the Westminster divines show a degree comfortability with textual variation.

You can read the whole article here, although it may be paywalled for non-ETS members. 

Richard Brash on Preservation (again)

Over at the TCI website, Richard Brash has a short argument about providence and textual preservation. Along with his careful distinctions between two methods and two modes of providence, I appreciated this part:

In the New Testament era, the picture is more complicated. The church is called to be “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) and part of this calling is surely to take care of the text of the Bible. God’s providential preservation of his people is still tied closely to the providential preservation of his written word. It is therefore reasonable to identify the process of canonization as an instance of special providence. But just as it can be spiritually dangerous to attempt to define the precise contours of special providence in our own lives, or even with respect to the preservation of the church, it is unwise to tether our doctrine of providential preservation to a particular “approved” manuscript or manuscript tradition. The Bible does not give the church today the authority to do this.

Read the entire article here.

“Guest Post” from the Grave: William G. Pierpont on E.F. Hills

With the permission of Maurice Robinson, I am making available one of Pierpont’s unpublished papers, an evaluation of E.F. Hills’ defense of the textus receptus. Some formatting may have changed a bit, but I include here both text (to make it searchable) and images of the paper itself (for transparency).

Edward F. Hills’ Views on the N.T. Text

[by William G. Pierpont]

Dr. Hills’ agenda is openly and clearly expressed in the title of the four editions of his book “THE KING JAMES VERSION DEFENDED,” of which this reviewer used the first (1956) and the second (1973), together with several items of personal correspondence (the last dated 10 June 1981, shortly before his death). During this period his basic premises and conclusions remained resolutely unaltered, although expressed in somewhat different ways.

His reverence, sincerity, integrity and scholarship are unquestioned. His presentation of facts is balanced, fair and precise, and often interestingly made. It is his interpretation and use of the facts, as well as certain presuppositions which we must examine.

Starting from the confidence that God is the God of truth, he lays out his two primary principles as:

a) the autographs of the NT were Divinely inspired, and therefore in­fallible, and that

b) because of this God must see that they were providentially preser­ved. (The logic for this step rests on Mt. 5:17+, 24:35, etc.)

Therefore, textual criticism of the Scriptures is different from that of other books. Its principles must be drawn from Scripture itself—and from creeds and other Church writings which are in agreement with Scripture—and used in constructing theories for criticism itself.

Providential Preservation (PP) forms the center about which his further presentation revolves. Summarizing his "axioms", he declares that:-

1) The purpose of PP is to preserve the infallibility of the autograph­ic text, and that God must have done so in a public way, i.e., so that all may know where and what it is-- not hidden somewhere among the MSS and requiring to be searched out.

2) It is the Greek text which is thus preserved, not a translated ver­sion of it. (God never promised that a translation would be kept free of errors, great or small.) Further, there may not be competing authorities.

3) During the long centuries of hand copying, PP operated through the Greek-speaking Christian community, who understood and used the language.

4) PP operated through the testimony of the Holy Spirit: only through Bible-believing universal Christian preiesthood [sic], those who have taken a supernatural view of the text, applying to it standards of judgment di­rected by the Holy Spirit, and were thus enabled to distinguish the true from the false. This was not only through the Spirit’s testimony to the individual’s soul, but also in the collective priesthood of believers through the ages (continuing onward into the Protestant period). Thus errors entering were weeded out by Divine Providence and guidance.

5) From the very first, PP supplied a multitude of trustworthy copies which were read and recopied, while faulty and untrustworthy ones fell out of use and passed into oblivion. Thus the genuine text was kept safe in the vast majority of MSS.

6) Thus the consensus agreement of this vast majority of copies forms the Traditional Text (TT), which accurately represents the originals and is the Standard Text.

This vast majority of MSS thus contains an essentially uniform text, al­though hardly any two MSS agree exactly throughout by reason of little individual variations and errors. Their differences are often hard to detect, being rare and small. This verifies that each descended indepen­dently from its own ancient ancestor, and therefore the text itself is ancient and not medieval in origin.

Last Two Videos on NT Textual Criticism and Askeland on GJW

I’ve now uploaded the last two guest lectures from my Fall TC course. The first is from James Snapp on Mark 16 and the second is Richard Brash on whether Cornelius Van Til’s theology leads to KJV-onlyism or its kin.

By way of commentary, I should note that James and I had a good Q&A after his talk but Zoom was unfortunately a bit out of sync. Personally, I was surprised to hear James say that he does not think Mark 16.9–20 is Mark’s originally intended ending. In other words, both he and I agree that we do not have Mark’s intended ending. Where we differ is that he thinks that vv. 9–20 are still from Mark and were in the first published copy. By his definition, then, they are original. I’m guessing that if that was news to me, it may be news to some of James’s followers too. But James can chime in if he wants to clarify/correct me here.

Finally, apologies to Christian Askeland whose video on Coptic translations I forgot to download in time from Zoom and is now gone forever. As a consolation, you can go read Christian’s new article on lessons from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife at the TCI website.

Thanks to all my guests this semester!

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.

New Book on the Doctrine of Preservation by Richard Brash

Outside of certain TR or KJV-only circles, the doctrine of preservation doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention from Protestants anymore. Bill Combs and Dan Wallace have written on it, but those are the only sustained treatments I know of. Theologians seem to focus on issues of inspiration, inerrancy, clarity, and the like, but not on preservation. Maybe some of that is because of a desire to avoid being embroiled in debates with TR or KJV-only folks.

But Richard Brash has been doing some good, historical work on the doctrine of preservation in the Reformed tradition for the last few years. I’ve mentioned his ThM work before and he now has a summarized version of that in the latest issue of Westminster Theological Journal titled “Ad Fontes!—The Concept of the ‘Originals’ of Scripture in Seventeenth Century Reformed Orthodoxy.” Jeff Riddle has written a really nice summary for those without access.

Having done this historical work, Richard has now turned to the doctrine of preservation itself in a new book with Christian Focus. It’s intended for a lay audience and gives his own, positive view of divine preservation. Importantly, Richard’s account appears to be neither that of modern TR proponents nor of KJV-onlyists. As I have found Richard’s historical work on the question very helpful, I’m looking forward to this new book too. I hope I can give a report on it when I get my copy.

Here’s a video introducing it

James Ussher: Why Unsolved Variants Don’t Obscure the Faith (1649)

As time allows (and it doesn’t allow much these days), I continue to be interested in how theologians in the Reformation period and after dealt with the problems of textual criticism. Lately, that interest has taken me to historian Garnet Milne’s self-published book on the Westminster Confession and the doctrine of preservation. This book, which I may say more about another time, pointed me to a relevant portion of James Ussher’s famous Body of Divinity, a book originally published in 1649.

Ussher (1581–1656) may be best known today for his dating of creation, but he was far more than a chronologist. He is said, among other things, to have been a strong influence on the Westminster divines. It is in that role that he is sometimes cited in an effort to clarify what those divines meant in the Westminster Confession when they said that the Greek and Hebrew are “authentical” because they have been “kept pure in all ages” (sec. 1.8).

It is that issue that brings me to this particular quote from Ussher’s Body of Divinity where he is answering questions on the foundation of the Christian religion, namely, the Bible. I’ve updated only the spelling from a 1702 printing (pp. 20–21):

Why must the interpretation of words be had out of the original Languages?

Because in them only the Scriptures are, for the Letter, to be held authentical. And as the Water is most pure in the Fountain or Spring thereof: so the right understanding of the words of the Holy Scriptures is most certain in the Original Tongues of Hebrew and Greek, in which they were first written and delivered to the Church, out of which Languages they must be truly translated for the understanding of them that have not the knowledge of those Tongues.

What gather you from hence?

That all Translations are to be judged, examined, and reformed according to the Text of the Ancient Hebrew and Original Chaldee, in which the Old Testament was penned, and the Greek Text, in which the New Testament was written. And consequently that the vulgar Latin Translation, approved by the Tridentine Council for the only Authentical Text, is no further to be received of true Christians, than it agreeth with the Original of the Hebrew and Greek Text.

C. S. Lewis: Why the miracle of inspiration does not require the miracle of preservation

In his little book on miracles, C. S. Lewis has a chapter explaining why miracles should not be thought of as breaking the laws of nature. Instead, he says, they should be thought of as God introducing something new to nature which nature then acts on in typical fashion. He illustrates with a series of examples, one of which touches on the question of divine preservation.

If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate [but don’t tell Baptists], miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.*

What constitutes the peculiarity of a miracle, Lewis goes on to say, is that it does not “interlock” with what comes before in the way that it does with what follows after. “And this,” he says, “is just what some people find intolerable.” They assume that nature is all there is and so they cannot tolerate anything invading it from beyond.

Related to textual criticism and inspiration, there is an unexpected agreement on this issue between Bart Ehrman and KJV-onlyists that Lewis is inadvertently touching on. The agreement lies in the belief that the miracle of inspiration must walk hand-in-hand with the miracle of preservation such that if you lose one, you end up losing both. For KJV-onlyists, this explains why they insist on the miracle of divine preservation; for Ehrman, if we are to believe what he says in Misquoting Jesus (p. 211), it explains why he came to deny the miracle of divine inspiration.

But Lewis helps us see why neither view is right. There is no reason to assume that God’s miraculous inspiration of the Bible should require him (or lead us to expect him) to miraculously preserve it from the “ordinary processes of textual corruption.” Instead, we have God, in the miracle of inspiration, introducing something from outside nature and then, in the non-miracle of transmission, letting nature take its course. (Or, as I would prefer to say it, we have God returning to his natural way of overseeing the world.)

Lewis helpfully reminds us that the inspiration and transmission of Scripture fit with the pattern of many of God’s other miracles. Just as we can expect the baby Jesus to gestate normally, so we can also expect the Bible to be transmitted normally. The miracle of origin does not require a second miracle of subsequent development.

---
*From the end of ch. 8 of Miracles: A Preliminary Study; emphasis mine

Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace on the Preservation of Scripture

Over at What is Truth, Kent Brandenburg has a series of posts on “The Erroneous Epistemology of Multiple Version Onlyism.” Inspired by a positive review of Bart Ehrman’s recent book, Jesus Interrupted in USA Today, opinion section (available here), he discusses the issue of the preservation of Scripture, and soon enters the area of textual criticism with a long discussion. Here is an extract:

With all that being said, a recent debate between James White and Bart Ehrman revealed only minutiae of differences between the two in their approach to the preservation of Scripture—they both have about the same view. They differ greatly as to the conclusions to be made, but their differences on preservation itself aren’t much. James White and Daniel Wallace are about the same too and here’s what Daniel Wallace said in an interview about textual criticism:

“I have quite a few heroes! Colwell for his method; Metzger for his learning and insights; Fee for his ability to burst bubbles with data; Tischendorf for his dogged determination in search of manuscripts; Kurt Aland for his vision for INTF; Jerome and Origen for their handling of the textual variants in the pursuit of truth; Sturz for his humility. The list is endless, frankly. I could add Michael Holmes, Bart Ehrman, . . . .”

Bart Ehrman is a hero to Wallace. He said it. There are some strong similarities between Ehrman and Wallace. Ehrman assumes the Bible must not be true if God promised preservation, because he’s looked at the evidence and that ruins everything about Christianity for him. Wallace has also shaped his view of inerrancy around evidence. Ehrman kept what he thought Scripture said, looked at evidence, and apostatized his beliefs completely. Wallace looked at evidence and then changed what he believed about Scripture. Both have allowed evidence to alter their beliefs.

Read the whole post here.

The interview with Dan Wallace that Brandenburg cites was made by Peter Williams for this blog. Read it in its entirety here.

Bill Combs on divine preservation

After the recent discussions on divine preservation of scripture arising from the interview with Dan Wallace I decided to ask Bill Combs of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary to give us a summary of his thoughts on divine preservation of scripture. Bill had earlier written a substantial article on this subject, in particular interacting with views of preservation presented by TR and KJV people (for article see here). I’ve asked for a presentation of his views without significant reference to such folk, and I hope that it can be discussed exclusively with reference to more serious positions.

Here are Bill’s words:

I would affirm there is a doctrine of preservation of Scripture, taught by Scripture itself, possibility directly, but certainly indirectly. I would distinguish between belief in a doctrine of preservation and, simply, belief in preservation. Most would agree that the Bible has been substantially preserved to our day because of the actual historical evidence. Those who argue for a doctrine of preservation also believe that the historical evidence demonstrates the preservation of Scripture, but add that preservation is a theological necessity—Scripture must be preserved because Scripture itself promises its own preservation. Evangelicals have, I believe, commonly affirmed belief in a doctrine of preservation.

Many ancient writings have been preserved because God is in control of the universe (my Calvinism). Any ancient document that is extant today owes its present existence to God’s preservation. So we can say that all the works of ancient authors in existence today have been “providentially preserved.” “Providential” means preservation is by secondary causation, through ordinary human means, rather than by God’s direct, miraculous intervention. The preservation of Scripture is not different in method from any other ancient book God has determined to preserve. Both Scripture and non- inspired works have been preserved providentially by secondary causation, by essentially ordinary human means. But we could also say that Origen’s Hexapla has providentially not been preserved. The doctrine of preservation of the Scriptures affirms, however, that the preservation of Scripture was always assured even though God carried out his will to preserve the Scriptures primarily through the actions of human wills.

A number of verses are commonly used to support the doctrine of preservation, including Ps 12:6-7; 119:89, 152, 160; Isa 40:8; Matt 5:17-18; 24:35; John 10:35; and 1 Pet 1:23-25. In my article on this subject, I examined these verses (see here). I concluded that some verses (e.g., Ps 12:6-7; 119:89) are not applicable to the doctrine of preservation. It is possible that Ps 119:152 and Ps 119:160 may offer a more direct promise, but, admittedly, the case is not rock solid. Isa 40:8 and Matt 24:35 offer more indirect support to the doctrine, while Matt 5:18 and John 10:35 strongly imply a doctrine of preservation with their emphasis on the continuing authority of Scripture.

The argument for preservation from the continuing authority of Scripture contends that since the Scriptures are authoritative, an authority that comes from their inspiration (2 Tim 3:16), the Scriptures can have no continuing authority unless they are preserved. Genuine Christianity is not possible apart from a dependable form of the Word of God, and all people are responsible to be Christians. The purposes for Scripture, to teach, reprove, correct, and train (2 Tim 3:16) cannot be fulfilled unless Scripture is preserved. This is where Matt 5:17–18 and John 10:35 tie into the doctrine of preservation since both passages teach a continuing authority for Scripture. But the same can be said for numerous texts that command the believer’s obedience. If these texts are essential to the believer’s sanctification, and they are, they must have been preserved.

Another argument for a doctrine of preservation comes from the principle that preservation is a natural corollary of inspiration. To say that there is a corollary between inspiration and preservation does not reveal anything about the exact nature of that preservation. It is perfectly reasonable to assert a corollary between inspiration and preservation without asserting that preservation be in every way equal to inspiration—for example, that inerrant inspiration demands inerrant preservation. Basically, the corollary suggests that there is no real purpose or value in inspiring a document that is not preserved. What, we might ask, would be the purpose of producing an authoritative record (inspiration) and letting it perish? Why, for instance, let Paul write an inspired letter to the Romans and then have it perish on the way to Rome? Of course, that did not happen, but could it have happened? If one denies a corollary between inspiration and preservation, Paul’s letter could have perished before it got to Rome.The purpose of inspiration was to produce graphe (2 Tim 3:16), a written record, a deposit of divine truth for the readers, not the writer. Without preservation the purpose of inspiration would be invalidated. Since it was clearly God’s intention that Paul’s inspired letter to the Romans be read by the Romans—it could not have perished—there must have been a divine work of preservation at work for at least a few weeks or months until the letter was received by the Romans. This suggests that there is some degree of correlation between inspiration and preservation. And the letter to the Romans was not meant just for the Romans. No Scripture was intended for only the original recipient—“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction…” (Rom 15:4). Similarly, Paul says, “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction…” (1 Cor 10:11). If the OT Scriptures (“these things”) were “written,” that is, inspired for the purpose of instructing future believers (“our instruction”), that purpose for the inspired writings demands their preservation. It is important to make clear that none of these Scripture texts and arguments tell us how God would preserve his Word, only that he would preserve it. We are told neither the method nor the extent of this preservation. It is an indisputable fact, proven by the manuscript and versional evidence, that God has not perfectly preserved the Scriptures throughout their long history of transmission. God has preserved his Word to this day, but because of the means he has chosen to use to accomplish this preservation—providentially, through secondary causation—the words of the autographs have not been inerrantly preserved. Instead, God has chosen to allow for variations to occur—variants within the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek copies of the autographs. God has providentially provided all these copies in order to preserve the Scriptures. So it is proper to say that preservation has taken place in the totality of manuscripts. Because God chose this method of preservation, it was not possible to provide a perfectly pure text with no variations. This level of purity is sufficient for God’s purposes.

The evidence from manuscripts and versions suggests that, while not perfect, the Scriptures have been preserved in an essentially pure form such that we can rightfully affirm that the essential message of Scripture has not been lost or corrupted. We are justified, then, in referring to our reliable manuscripts and versions as the Word of God because they are tethered to the autographs and are sufficient representatives of them.

What does the doctrine of preservation mean for textual criticism? Since preservation is by secondary causation, through ordinary human means, only by careful examination of the preserved documents can the most accurate form of the text of Scripture be identified and ultimately preserved. The science (and art?) of textual criticism is thus essential. Textual criticism therefore becomes one of the ordinary human means God in his providence uses to preserve his Word. The doctrine of the preservation of Scripture correlates with the doctrine of Scripture’s inspiration—there was an original inerrant text of the canonical Scriptures to be preserved. Therefore, the goal of textual criticism should be the recovery of that inspired text to the degree the documents will permit. The doctrine of preservation does not, however, provide any basis for choosing between, for example, the Byzantine and Alexandrian text types since both preserve the essential message of Scripture. I am not sure how much more the doctrine of preservation impacts the actual practice of textual criticism except to say that I would think conjectural emendation would normally be avoided, certainly kept to a minimum.

Divine Preservation of Scripture

I enjoyed the Dan Wallace interview, but confess to be suspicious of the ideas that the bible doesn’t speak of its own preservation, and that the doctrine first emerged in the Westminster Confession. Isaiah 55.10-11 and (in one sense) Daniel 12 seem to me to imply preservation, and the idea is I think present in, for example, the Habakkuk pesher and Josephus’ Contra Apionem (book 2). Does anyone have any thoughts on biblical evidence for the doctrine beyond Isaiah 55, and of possible discussions of the theme by the doctores ecclesiae both before and after Westminster?