Textual Studies

My Position

The 66 books of the Bible in their entirety are the inspired, inerrant, and infallible words of God (Psalm 119:169; John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16); about this there can be no disagreement among Bible-believing Christians.  Furthermore, it is my conviction that the text of the Bible has been providentially preserved in the Masoretic Hebrew (and Aramaic) text of the Old Testament and the Traditional (Textus Receptus) Greek text of the New Testament (Psalm 12:6-7; 119:89; Isaiah 59:20-21; Matthew 24:35; 1 Peter 1:24-25).  The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible is an accurate translation of the divinely inspired and preserved words of God into English.  I understand that these views set me at odds with the mainstream of historically liberal, and increasingly (so-called) evangelical, Christian scholarship.

After many years of personal study, I hold the conviction that the issue of the correct Biblical text (both in the original languages and in translations) is not a trivial or peripheral matter; since it involves the very words of God, it is a matter of utmost importance!  Furthermore, many (if not most) of the presuppositions of modern textual criticism are unbiblical, even anti-biblical.  By this I mean the foundational presupposition, from which modern critics reason their way to a conclusion about which reading among multiple textual variants is most likely to be authentic, is in conflict with the testimony of God in His Word.  This foundational presupposition of modern textual criticism is one of godless naturalism applied to the transmission of the text of Scripture:  “In matters of textual criticism the Bible is to be treated like any other ancient book.  No special considerations are to be made concerning its claims of inspiration and preservation (Wescott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, 1881).  This is a decidedly anti-Biblical presupposition.

For example, Fenton John Anthony Hort, the father of the modern theory, asserted that “there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes”.  This assertion flies in the face of the testimony of Scripture itself, for the Apostle Paul asserted that “many . . . corrupt the word of God” (2 Corinthians 2:17).  If “many” were corrupting the text of the New Testament in the 1st century, the presupposition that manuscripts allegedly dated to the 4th century (e.g., Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) contain readings that are closer to the original autographs solely because of their supposed antiquity is undercut.

(This page is under construction…)

Why Use the KJV? — updated on 03/04/2021

A House Built Upon Sand

Errors in Modern Bible Versions

Theological Resolution of Textual Variants

God’s Promise of Preservation (a consideration of Psalm 12:6-7)

English Bible and the Process of Purification

Greek NT Manuscripts

The Name of the LORD