The Story of Two Bibles & Two Types of Greek Text
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One reason that some of the earlier Greek manuscripts (Alexandrian manuscripts) survived in such good condition is likely due to lack of handling – because they were inferior (less accurate) manuscripts. Whereas the Byzantine (majority text) manuscripts were handled much more often due to their text superiority (accuracy), and as a result did not stand up well to time.
Let me give you an example to help you understand this. The King James English translation of the Bible is the superior (most accurate) English Bible translation/version in the world today.
On the other hand, the NIV Bible is an inferior (less accurate) English translation.
I constantly use (handle) the King James Bible. But if someone were to give me a NIV Bible, I would set on it my shelf and hardly touch it (except maybe to dust). After just a few years, the KJV Bible I use falls apart and I have to get a new one. The NIV sits on the shelf remaining in good shape.
Now, if a few hundred years were to pass (which we know it will not, so don't worry about that), and some future generation were to find the ruins of my house – and there they also find an NIV Bible is outstanding condition. Along with a few fragments of my heavily used King James Bible. If these future scholars conducted themselves as our present day critical text "scholars" conduct themselves, then they would say that the full Bible version of the NIV was the one used by former generations – they would say this because they have the full NIV version – while simultaneously discounting the use of the KJV at the time because they were unable to find a full Bible version. They could only find fragments of it.
This is the error that modern textual critics make. They say the earliest manuscripts (Alexandrian – found mostly in Egypt) are what we should trust – and because the textus receptus (received text) has no earlier (full) manuscripts than the 9th century, this means that we must use the Alexandrian manuscripts and trust them over the textus receptus.
But they almost completely discount the pieces of Greek text that have been found even earlier than these Alexandrian manuscripts. They carefully choose their words and say "earliest manuscripts" while knowing that pieces or fragments (passages of the Greek text) can be shown to be the Byzantine or the majority text, have been found as early as 150 A.D. and 180 A.D. – much earlier than the Alexandrian manuscripts.
These full manuscripts were preserved in such good condition for a few reasons:
1. Climate. The climate in Egypt is much better suited to preserve ancient writings than in the west (where the Byzantine type manuscripts would be found).
2. Lack of handling – as the example above shows, lack of use tends to keep unused inferior (less accurate) versions / Greek texts in better shape than those which are used and superior versions/ Greek texts.
3. Persecution. In the early centuries, the Christians in the west under the Roman empire were persecuted heavily and included in the persecution was the burning of Christian texts:.
-Persecution under Diocletian and Galerius (303-324).
Eusebius, Church historian of the same era, recorded that many "Scriptures" were burned during the Diocletian persecution. He writes in Church History (VIII:2):
"All these things were fulfilled in us, when we saw with our own eyes the houses of prayer thrown down to the very foundations, and the Divine and Sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places, and the shepherds of the churches basely hidden here and there, and some of them captured ignominiously, and mocked by their enemies. When also, according to another prophetic word, "Contempt was poured out upon rulers, and he caused them to wander in an untrodden and pathless way."
[...]
It was in the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in the month Dystrus, called March by the Romans, when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, that royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire, and ordering that those who held places of honor be degraded, and that the household servants, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom."
The received text (textus receptus) that undergirds the King James Bible is the accurate (perfect) text watched over by God down through the centuries of the New Testament era. It can wholeheartedly be trusted to be the perfect and truly Holy Word of God.
Psalm 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.