Textual Criticism and its place for Theology


koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil [Textual Criticism]; ThD [Biblical Archaeology])

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint  lecturer Avondale College

Australia


Theology is the faithful science about God as expressed in His revelation embodied in excerpted form from His acts in history, enough for us to find salvation, canonized in His selected books, written and guided and edited finally by the Holy Spirit as efficient, sufficient and self-explanatory to represent that revelation of His.


The sources of Theology in the modern sense of the word, is that it works with translations, English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Afrikaans, Dutch, Russian, and one can continue listing the languages of modern nations. The modern translations are secondary sources to the originals which are seen as the primary sources. Those primary sources are in Hebrew, Aramaic (for the Old Testament) and Greek (for the New Testament).


The primary sources of Theology is called, texts. Just as Theologians are wondering which modern translation represents the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek the best and strive to get the most literal rendering, so Textual Criticism is looking at the primary sources within a range of many manuscripts and copies that exists of those primary sources.


Is Textual Criticism necessary?

The irony is that true Textual Criticism is absolutely necessary in order to identify and correct pseudo-Textual Criticism that is of a deviant kind or an offroad science. Why is it an irony? Since the irony at the end of true Textual Criticism is that conventional Textual Criticism is not necessary. Your English NIV and KJV and other literal renderings is at least 97% close to the original and in that 97% is everything necessary for salvation, in your own language.


What is fake Textual Criticism?

There are a number of signals that we will outline how you recognize someone as operating with a fake Textual Criticism model:

1. they try to push the point that the Hebrew Bible is one among many variations

2. they try to stress that the Hebrew Bible is incomplete and that portions and sections was omitted for whatever reasons through the centuries and that Qumran can now add those sections

3. they attempt to reject a normative approach in textual criticism and try to replace it with a relative approach that uses the method of eclecticism

4. they are willing to think that (what they term as) the LXX is a better rendering than what is found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament

5. they try to enlarge the canon and in so doing are playing in the court of the Catholic Church

6. one find them trying to assign a Vorlage (older manuscript with different reading) to each variant they come across


What is true Textual Criticism?

There are some points that are cardinal in textual criticism. We must realize that just as there is a right way in science (Creationistic models) and a wrong way in science (Evolutionistic models) so there is a right way in Textual Criticism (that brings harmony in the understanding of the Bible) as opposed to the wrong way of conventional Textual Criticism represented by Emanuel Tov, Ferdinand Deist, F. M. Cross, Hermann Joseph-Stipp and others, who tries to reject any normative (one text selection theory) and work only with an eclectic (self pick and choose) model.

1. the true scholar of Textual Criticism is able to show that the Hebrew Text as embodied in the Codices Aleppo and Ben Asher of the 11th century CE, is in fact the very Word of God.

2. the true scholar of Textual Criticism considers all other versions as derivative and secondary variations of the original but not on an equal basis with the Hebrew original embodied in Codices Aleppo and Ben Asher.

3. the true scholar of Textual Criticism has a low view of the so-called Septuagint for that reason that the original Septuagint is an elusive term. John Wevers of the Göttingen edition of Genesis made it very clear in the preface (after using the eclectic model for reconstruction) that he does not live under the illusion that he has reconstructed the original Septuagint, so why must we operate under that illusion?

4. the true scholar sees the Coptic, Syriac, Greek in all its forms, Armenian, Old Latin, Vulgate, Arabic, Ethiopic all as secondary variations of the original Hebrew and that they cannot alter or modify or change the form of the original Hebrew as embodied in the Codices Aleppo and Ben Asher of the 10th century CE.

5. the true scholar of Textual Criticism sees only the consonants of the Masoretic Text as inspired and not the vowels. Therefore, some vowels may have had different renderings which could have altered a word slightly at some places.

6. for the true scholar of Textual Criticism there is no panel-beating work necessary to the consonants of the Hebrew Bible, no addition necessary, no omitting required. It is complete and original the same way the Holy Spirit completed it through Moses, Isaiah, Ezra, or any of the early prophets. No difference.

7. A developmental approach to the growth of the books of the Bible (outside the life time of the original authors of the books) [except for collections like the Psalms] is completely rejected by the true Textual Critical scholar. Ferdinand Deist title "Towards the text of the Old Testament" cannot be accepted. There is no development after the canonical fixation of those books.

8. for the true scholar of Textual Criticism the canon was not established at Jamnia in 90 CE but it was merely a confirmation of what was already established soon after the books were completed by the individual authors in the past.


What are the dangers of pseudo-Textual Criticism?

There are number of side effects that we can mention, should one employ conventional Textual Criticism:

1. the veracity of the Word of God looses its power since we do not know then in this model what the Word of God really is.

2. It throws doubt on the text of the Word of God and in so doing doubt on its contents.

3. It claims a fluid situation for the text of the Word of God and in so doing erode the foundation on which the faith of people rests.

4. A person who operates with the suspicion of conventional Textual Criticism will finally end with nihilism because if anything is true, nothing is true.


What are the advantages of True Textual Criticism?

1. The person's faith is strengthened.

2. The person realize that the scholars of the past came to a choice in their studies between two ways of describing the phenomenon but that they unfortunately took the wrong turn and subsequently all their systems and links were attached to this wrong turn.

3. The person realize that much of what the conventional scholars call "certainty" or "fact" is nothing but "assumptions" and "postulations".

4. By using the 4QDana fragment from Qumran to compare it with a text 1000 years later, Codices Aleppo and Ben-Asher, the true scholar realize that the form of Daniel has not changed in one millennium, a record achievement for the Hebrew original that no other versions, Coptic, Syriac, Greek in all its forms, Aramaic Targums, absolutely no other version can compare with.

5. Finally the true scholar of Text Criticism realize that he is back to his English Bible and that the NIV and KJV is the very Word of God since it literally represents that Word in a stable Hebrew original the best.


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