“Lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my!”
Textus Receptus, and Modern Critical Text, and Comma Johanneum. Oh my!
The Apostate Paul, here. No sooner had I began attending a Christian church back in 2010, and declared myself an “ex-Mormon Christian” online did Latter-day Saints begin to challenge my belief in the Bible as the reliable Word of God. I quickly learned of critical Biblical scholars like Bart Ehrman, and had to bone up on terms like those above. I had to try to make sense of the many debates around text-types, and the impacts they have on English translations of the Bible. As I did so, I wondered how my former co-religionists were so knowledgeable on these topics when they were fairly new to me. Was it because I didn’t attend BYU? Is that where they learned to use such tactics to bolster the LDS claim to additional Scripture?
As I studied, I reached tentative conclusions that I discussed with others on Facebook as these issues came up. “So the Comma Johanneum isn’t in the earliest manuscripts, does that necessarily mean that it was an intentional corruption of the text? And even if it isn’t original, so what? Textual criticism can trace to where it seems to have been introduced in the transmission of the text.” When I did so, I was challenged vigorously by a KJV-only Christian.
It was a veritable mine field to try to navigate as a new Christian trying to defend his faith against volleys from Mormon online apologists. I struggled to get my mind around the breadth of the topic of textual criticism. Part of the answer for me was to attend a Christian Seminary to seek a degree in Biblical Studies. Not everyone can do that.
In this episode we welcome Dwayne Green to help listeners get the lay of the land regarding this topic. He’s very knowledgeable and has a YouTube Channel that is very helpful. Follow him if you want to dig deeper into topics related to textual criticism of the Bible.
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