Kiddies In On Act

By Dr. Peter S. Ruckman


     Recently scores of dead orthodox apostates in seminaries
have been awakened to the revival of interest in the Authorized
Text which has shaken up the faculty members of modern
Fundamental schools. Now these apostates wish to put in their oar
and make their "contribution" to the "discussion" although they
are unable to discuss the issues or even deal with.

     1. The first issue is the fact that the Westcott and Hort
text (as Nestle, Hort, Weiss, Aland, and Metzger) is the Roman
Catholic Greek text of the Jesuit Rheims Bible of 1582.

     2. The second issue is that not one of the critics of the AV
has yet proved a contradiction in it while beating the air about
Erasmus' text in Revelation 22, manuscript evidence for 1 John
5:7, or any number of other STRAW DUMMIES erected to hide the
ignorance of the critic.

     The latest child to enter "Wonderland" is Gordon D. Fee,
Associate Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Carefully
avoiding both the issues above, Fee shows us his dolly house with
the following:

     a. "The two diametrically opposite alternatives" are by
Kilpatrick and Elliott (Journal of the Evangelical Theological
Society, 21, March, 1978, p. 19). Neither Kilpatrick nor Elliott
ever had enough sense to get involved in either issue. Neither
man ever found one error in the AV text and neither man believed
any Book he had in his hand (in a lifetime) was the Word of God.
"Kilpatrick" and "Elliott" (with their combined life works) do
not enter the ISSUE or the ISSUES anywhere.

     b. According to Fee, the position of the Bible believer (in
this case Dr. Fuller) is that the text of Westcott and Hort is to
be rejected because of their theological position. We never for a
moment rejected the text on that basis: that is straw dummy. We
reject the Westcott and Hort text (with Aland, Weiss, Lachmann,
Griesbach, Metzger, Nestle, and Tischendorf) on the grounds that
it is a God-rejected, God-ignored, apostate corruption not worth
the time it would take to print it. The purpose of Fee's paper,
therefore, is to discuss "TEXTUAL DATA" not "theological views."

     There follows ten pages without discussing textual data (p.
20-32).

     c. Fee's first section is "THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE" (p. 21) which has nothing to do with data of any
kind, let alone TEXTUAL data. Instead, Fee goes into the old
"majority reading" and "no set of manuscripts agree everywhere-
bit," and avoids discussing ANY TEXT but Acts 8:37 and 1 John
5:7, 8--and doesn't list the DATA on either verse (p. 24).

     d. The next section deals with "THE TRANSMISSION OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS," (p. 24) where no textual data is given on
any text. The first lie comes in just like Hort told it: i.e. the
"text form" of the Receptus is completely UNKNOWN before 350 A.D.
(p. 25). That lie was proved to be a lie by Wilkerson, and
others, years ago (see Identity of the New Testament Text).
"Certain factors" (not listed) froze the many Byzantine copies so
that they became far removed from the originals" (p. 26). No
textual data is given. Fee then misrepresents the Church Fathers
position (p. 26) by saying that "A GOOD CRITICAL EDITION" of a
father's text makes it draw closer to Nestles, Hort, and Aland
and Metzger (NIV). The word "good" is undefined, the word
"critical" is undefined, and there is no discussion of data on
ANY TEXT (p. 26). Fee says we are to eliminate the Byzantine and
Syrian type texts because although hundreds of their readings are
not found before 350 A.D. (see Pickering), these don't count
because they are not a TEXT FORM. This was the approach of
Griesbach and Lachmann. You invent a family classification system
(which has been proved false, see Pickering) to get rid of THE
READINGS FOUND IN THE TEXT: you claim that since they aren't a
TEXT TYPE, or TEXT FORM, or family, they don't exist.

     This is the fundamental underlying foundation dogma by which
ALL modern Greek and English texts were constructed. It amounts
to lying. In practice it amounts to pretending a thing exists
which doesn't exist. In Fee's case, he has pretended there were
no Byzantine readings before 350 A.D., which there ARE, that a
Recension "froze or concreted" a text, which it didn't, and that
the "single-type text" of North Africa (he cites Clement and
Origen, p. 27) is the best, which it ISN'T.

     Imagination is a wonderful thing.

     The papyrus he lists (P66, P75) were analyzed and checked
for 500 readings in them by Pickering and Hills where they agreed
and disagreed with the Receptus and where they contained itacisms
and nonsense readings. Fee couldn't even talk about those
researches: he ignores them (while discussing "textual DATA").

     Fee calls the manufacturing of the "inferior" Receptus Greek
text "HISTORICAL DATA" (p. 29) that is "verifiable" and
"incontrovertible." Where is the historical data for this
recession?

     Don't be silly. That was Hort's theory, and it has never
been verified by any historical evidence from anyone; it is so
controvertible that anyone who knew history would laugh at it.

     What Fee calls "the trained Christian scribe" in Alexandria
is supposed to have produced a more accurate text than the
"untrained scribe who copied the Bible for pragmatic purposes"
(p. 29). Does Fee know what the Lord said about pragmatic
purposes (Matt. 28:19, 20, Acts 1:6-8, Acts 20:20-29)? Were
Peter, James, and John "trained scribes"? Does Fee know what came
out of the work of trained scribes at Alexandria (Clement,
Origen, Sascas, etc.)? Does he know ANY HISTORY?

     The Alexandrian school at North Africa produced: infant
sprinkling, transmigration of souls, universal salvation, the
Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament, baptismal regeneration,
calling a pastor a priest, and allegorizing Genesis 1-3 (see
Newman's Church History, Vol. 1, Schaff's Church History, Vol.
II-III, LaTourette's Church History, Vol. I, Walker's Church
History, Vol. I, Orchard's History of the Baptists and Armitage's
History of the Baptists, Vol. I).

     And we are to think that these trained "scribes" did a
better job than the soul-winning, Bible-believing evangelists and
teachers (Acts 13:1-4) of Antioch (Acts 16:1-4)? Historical data
is it? Incontrovertible was it?

     Fee's final section is called "MANUSCRIPTS AND THE CONCEPT
OF THE BEST TEXT" (p. 30). Since no data is mentioned in regard
to any text but two verses, Fee resorts to the old Hort line that
collating manuscripts for analysis HAS TO BE DONE ACCORDING TO
TEXT TYPES INSTEAD OF WHAT THE MANUSCRIPTS SAY (p. 31). That is,
textual DATA is to be ignored. Two texts have finally been chosen
(Mark 13:14 and Matt. 24:15), after Burgon discussed both of them
and 140 more with complete collations of Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus. Fee's remarkable "textual data" for the passages is
there is only ONE way to explain the omission of part of the
verse in the AFRICAN manuscripts (or manuscripts subject to
Origen's work on Syrian manuscripts): you MUST believe that the
words of Matthew 25:15 were not in Mark 13:14. Why? Don't be
silly. The Alexandrian Cult decided you should believe that.

     The "evidence" for the rejection of the Gospel of John, in
many places, (he didn't list the places) as it appears in the
Received Text is his theory that later scribes "updated the
orthography" (p. 33). The cases he lists are NONE. "Indisputable"
(notice the dogmatism) features of John are "the lack of the
definite article with certain constructions and the abundance of
asyndetic sentences." We are to presume that John only knew how
to use one style of writing (see Burgon, Last Twelve Verses of
Mark).

     Readers who take their Bible studies seriously know that the
corrupt text of Nestles had the orthography changed throughout
the whole New Testament (confessed so in the Introduction) to
match the first century--whereas the orthography of Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus didn't match the first century.

     Fee closes his non-documented article on the theories of
Westcott and Hort--which have been shown to be poppycock on a
dozen occasions--by sitting in the throne of God and saying "THE
PASTOR-SCHOLAR WHO USES THESE TOOLS (Aland and Metzger's works)
WILL BE A FAITHFUL MINISTER OF THE WORD OF GOD."

     Fee has never seen the Word of God a day n his life; if you
don't believe it, write him and ask him.