In Matthew 2:11, in the passage
where the wise men visit Jesus and present their gold, frankincense, and myrrh,
there is a difference between the early English Bibles of the 1500’s and the
King James Version:
William Tyndale made his English translation from a printed Greek compilation that had
been made earlier by Desiderius Erasmus.
Since Erasmus’ Greek compilation had the word ευρον (
euron) here, Tyndale
’s English text said
that the wise men
found the child.
The Coverdale Bible, in 1535, also stated that the wise men
“found the chylde.
”
The Geneva Bible, in 1557, was also based on a Greek base-text with ευρον, so it also said
that the wise men
found the child.
Neither
reading brings the veracity of the text into question (inasmuch as the wise men
found and saw the young child Jesus), but the original form of the passage cannot consist of both
readings.
Although ευρον was printed in the
1500’s in Greek New Testaments compiled by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza (and this
reading fits the Vulgate reading, invenerunt),
it does not have strong Greek manuscript support.
In
minuscule 2 – a manuscript used
by Erasmus in his initial compilation of the Greek New Testament – a page
begins in Matthew 2:11 with the word ειδον.
It has ευρον written in the margin; the word is written in different ink
than what was used for the main text; the word ειδον appears to have been
underlined with the same ink in which the word in the margin was written.
This little difference in the Greek
base-texts and early printed English New Testaments of the Reformation era may
shine some light on how subscribers to the
Westminster Confession of Faith
should interpret their creed’s statements about the preservation of Scripture –
specifically, the part that states that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New
Testament in Greek, being inspired by God, have been, “by His singular care and
providence, kept pure in all ages.”
A form of “Confessional Bibliology”
has arisen which interprets the WCF’s reference to textual purity as a reference
not only to the message of the text but to
the
exact form of the text, as if all text-critical questions are settled. Since the Westminster Confession of Faith
affirms that the text has been kept pure in all ages, it is proposed that this
means that the
Textus Receptus must
be upheld as the authoritative New Testament text and that this renders
investigations of manuscripts and other textual evidence superfluous; the
Textus Receptus is
the text.
But this variant in Matthew 2:11 shows
that to an extent, there was no “
the”
Textus
Receptus in the 1640’s, when the Westminster Confession of Faith was
formulated. There were
multiple editions of the New
Testament, and their contents varied in small details such as here in Matthew
2:11.
How could anyone, reading editions
of the Greek New Testament prepared by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza with ευρον
in Matthew 2:11, and the Authorized Version that echoes ειδον instead, say that both forms of the verse are pure? By
understanding “pure” as a reference to the general character of the text, and
not to every little detail.
The author of the preface to the
King James Version,
The Translators to the Reader, seems to have had an idea something like that in mind when he
wrote the following (slightly modernized):
“We do not deny, nay we affirm and
avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by
men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as
yet) contains the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”
(Before continuing, I interrupt to explain
something: by “our profession,” the
author was referring to the translators’ profession of faith, as opposed to the Roman Catholicism. The Rheims New Testament, which Roman
Catholic scholars had translated from a Latin Vulgate base, had been translated
in 1582, but the complete Bible (now known as the Douay-Rheims) had not been
read by the author of the KJV’s preface at the time he wrote. This is the context in which the reference to
“profession” should be understood; it is not as if professional butchers and bakers were
creating new Bible translations; nor is it as if the author meant that anything
with the words “Holy Bible” on the cover is the Word of God; he meant that even
the least-esteemed English Bible produced by Protestants, at the time he wrote,
was the Word of God.)
A few sentences later the preface-writer continued:
“A man may be
called comely and lovely, though he has some warts upon his hand, and not only
freckles upon his face, but also scars. There is no reason therefore why the word
translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current,
notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the
setting forth of it.”
Now if a person were to say that regardless of whether
an English Bible says “found” or “saw” in Matthew 2:11, it is the Word of
God – and the preface-writer affirms this to be the case – then the speaker
would have to be referring to the general character of the text, and not its
exact form. Both forms of the text are pure
to the extent that neither one teaches an error, even though one of them must be
the textual equivalent of a scar left from an injury received from an inattentive
or undisciplined copyist.
The claims of some “Confessional Bibliologists” to the
effect that subscribers to the Westminster Confession of Faith are obligated to
use the Textus Receptus are therefore
not well-grounded. For although it is
convenient to appeal to a “settled” text, the Textus Receptus itself was not 100% settled throughout the 1500s
and early 1600s. Not only in Matthew
2:11, but in some other passages, too, there are variations in the exact form
of the Greek text used in that period.
Thus, assuming that the formulators of the Westminster
Confession wrote from a sufficiently informed position – that they knew about
differences in printed editions of the Textus
Receptus and about the differences in the English versions based upon it –
it seems precarious, presumptive, and arbitrary to assume that they intended
for their words to strictly refer to one and only one edition of the Greek text.
Adherents to the Westminster Confession
of Faith might feel obligated to refuse to accept Greek variants which convey a
meaning opposed to that of the
reading of the vast majority of Greek manuscripts – but there are not many such
variants.
