Introduction 

If you’re just coming into this, I’ve been reading the recent book Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing With the Bible? (Rutledge, 2023).

This “series” actually began with a rather long interaction with Josh Bowen’s chapter on violence in the Old Testament narrative and then a review and response to Kenneth Atkinson’s chapter on biblical inerrancy, which was primarily targeted at the New Testament. In this post, we’re going to be looking at Robert Rezetko’s chapter which is titled, “Building a House on Sand: What Do Evangelicals Do When They Do Textual Criticism of the Old Testament”.[1]

Rezetko is an independent researcher in biblical exegesis and textual criticism who is attached to the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

Rezetko states in his “introduction”, 

This chapter, however, is not about inerrancy, but what evangelicals who advocate inerrancy believe about the transmission and preservation of the biblical text, and especially the degree the surviving manuscripts faithfully represent the words originally written by the Old Testament’s (OT) authors.[2]

Okay, well enough, but what do evangelicals believe about the Old Testament text?

To demonstrate what evangelicals believe, Rezetko quotes from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerracy, what it’s authors mean by inerrancy from its expository discussion:

Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.[3]

To this I think it’s necessary to add further commentary from R.C. Sproul, who writes,

…[This] deals directly with the perennial issue of the relationship of the text of Scripture that we now have to the original documents, which have not been preserved except through the means of copies. In the first instance, inspiration applies strictly to the original autographs of Scripture, the original works of the inspired authors.[4]

Now, from how I read both of these statements, how I understand them is that, someone who has a Bible in their hand right now, wondering about whether or not the words are true—in regard to substance or application—has reasonable certainty that they are reading what God intended for them to have, right now, where they are, in their place in time.

The natural extension of this confidence is that everywhere along the road from the time that the first scribe wrote those words, the reader at the time was the intended receiver of that message. This means that from the first scribble on parchment to the reader in the present time, the divine hand guided the transmission from start to finish, accomplishing the purpose that God intended.

Here again, my preservationist understanding of inspiration takes hold as it recognizes that Divine Providence is responsible, not only for the text as its source, but its conveyance through time. That means that every copy, every variation, is a witness to this divine act and its intentions as a demonstration of God’s grace.

But that’s just me.

An Important Aside

I suddenly realize that perhaps I should explain what being a preservationist, in terms of inspiration means, even if its just for myself. I think that I’ve hinted at it, and I’ve sketched an outline, and I’ve used the term, and I’ve kinda defined it, but I’ve never really given it much thought. 

If you read the previous post, I outlined one aspect of my perspective: inspiration as the actual act of providential preservation, drawn from 2 Timothy 3:16, which entails the purpose of Scripture, which I discuss in greater detail here. Basically it entails recognizing what God wants for us to know about him, what he’s done, and what he expects. That also means that I have to recognize that, at different times, God operated in different ways and by different means to accomplish this because Scripture is not a data dump. Scripture didn’t come about by God sitting some scribe down and saying, “Write down exactly what I tell you.”

God knows what every generation needs to know to accomplish his purposes. And, in some sense, the Spirit of God, moves every individual that he intends to make a contribution, not just in inscribing the text, but ordering the text in editing it, and even to publishing and distributing. That means that inspiration is a process, not a single incident.

Now, here’s what’s especially interesting, and I would dare say, important: God knew not only who was going to write the text, but he also knew that there would be no standardized controls over the text. Shocking, right?

So, how does this fit into the issue of inerrancy?

Well, look at Islam, and especially the Quran, which is believed to have been given by direct verbal inspiration in Arabic, and cannot be separated from its original language.[5] The rigidness of this belief often struggles with the fact that the Quran, even in Arabic, has variations.

Yet Jews, and even early Christians, appeared to have no qualms with the text of their Scriptures being translated into other languages. The most obvious example is that there are books of Scripture that themselves have other languages preserved in the text. The book of a Daniel is noted for its alternation between Hebrew and Aramaic, and use of loanwords from Greek and Persian, which often lead to speculations about the dating of its composition.[6]

Add this to the fact that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures exists (the Septuagint), something that was undertaken by Jews themselves, and…well…there’s something…different… fundamentally different that was believed about the biblical text that no one seemed to have an issue with, except in certain sects. 

We can translate this even into modern terms in the sense of the differences between those in the Roman and Protestant traditions in the recognition and distinction of the canon of Scripture, or within certain Protestant traditions and English translations. The issues there seem to be in trying to muster evidence to justify certain beliefs. Moreover, within the biblical text itself, there appears to be dependence on variant readings with the most obvious example being the book of Hebrews as its author appears to drift back and forth between Greek and Hebrew readings or variations between them to make his argument.[7] 

So…What’s the Problem?

Rozetko seems to come down on the fact that, by and large, most conservative Old Testament textual critics have essentially abandoned any pursuit of discovery of the original autographs and instead focusing their energies on establishing the final form of the text.[8]

Most of Rezetko’s animus appears aimed at how various parties cite the more conservative scholars in support of their contentions, going so far as to accuse those making the citations of misrepresenting their sources.[9] This is best seen, he contends, in how OT scholars like Shemaryahu Talmon are cited, specifically in regard to his contribution to the volume, The Cambridge History of the Bible, in which he accuses conservatives of exploiting a fairly positive statement made by Talmon.[10]

The statement in question by Talmon is that he states, “It should, however, be stressed that these errors and textual divergences between the versions materially affect the intrinsic message only in relatively few instances.”[11] Rezetko insists that Talmon’s statement is being taken out of context and torn away from the author’s intent in making the statement and cites three such instances of abuse.[12]

Of course, it’s very easy to make such a claim, but can the claim stand up to examination.

Looking into the sources cited, the first being Amy Anderson and Wendy Widder’s contribution to the Lexham Methods series titled Textual Criticism of the Bible (2018). The second alleged violation can be checked, and it is found in Old Testament Textual Criticism (Baker, 2016) by Ellis Brotzman and Eric Tully. I’ll begin with the latter first.

Their alleged incident of “prooftexting” occurs early in the introduction, when they are discussing the need for textual criticism when they note that, “We cannot avoid practicing textual criticism if we are going to be serious exegetes of the biblical text.”[13] They continue noting that there are two ways to do textual criticism: the first being to work backwards with a selected text or to start from the witnesses and move forward.[14] It is at this point where Talmon is introduced and presented to give an outline to a potential resolution of any difficulties by first noting that the vast majority of textual variants are simply matters of spelling and pronunciation (especially relevant for Hebrew’s consonantal language).[15] This is where the alleged prooof-texted citation of Talmon enters into the conversation. 

The problem with the accusation of “proof-texting” is that Brotzman and Tully have already introduced a sizable quotation from Talmon where he is explaining the fact that, ““not one tradition and not one manuscript is without fault.”[16] The introduction of the offensive quotation of Talmon comes directly on the heels of that particular statement of “fault” with the manuscripts, which has me wondering if Rezetko actually understands the argument that he’s critiquing?

Now, what’s interesting is that Anderson and Widder’s use of Talmon falls along the exact same lines and usage, in fact their argument is almost a carbon copy, with some smoothing of the language, but the use is identical.

Reading Talmon though, it is difficult to say exactly where this alleged “proof-texting” is occurring other than in his (Rezetko’s) imagination. 

The context that is being appealed to is exactly the nature of the majority of variants—Talmon himself admits— are largely issues of spelling/pronunciation due to a lack of any systematic consistency in the language and Hebrew largely being a consonantal text with no established vowel system.[17] The result of this means that in the original Hebrew, a variety of interpretations could be derived depending on how one understood the word to be operating in a particular context.[18]

Rezetko seems to ignore the fact that, Anderson and Widder have an entire chapter on the history and methods of OT textual criticism, both in terms of its complexity and what goes into it.[19]  But, what’s more interesting is that while he is eager to appeal to more recent scholars, he provides nothing from them that contradicts the earlier statement of Talmon.[20] In fact, one of the very scholars that he appeals to (Emanuel Tov), is cited by Anderson and Widder some SIXTEEN times in the entirety of their book, 10 times in their discussion of OT textual criticism.[21] Moreover, Tov is cited more that SIXTY-FIVE times in Brotzman and Tully.[22]

More to come in part 2…

Notes

  1. Robert Rezetko. “Building a House on Sand: What Do Evangelicals Do When They Do Textual Criticism of the Old Testament”. Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing With the Bible? (Ed. Mark Elliot, Kenneth Atkinson, & Robert Rozetko). Rutledge. 2023. p.95-127
  2. Ibid, p.96 
  3. Ibid, p.95-6
  4. R. C. Sproul. Can I Trust the Bible?. Reformation Trust Publishing. 2009. p.31
  5. Yasir Qadhi. Ulum Al Qur’an: An Introduction to the Sciences of the Qur’an. Al-Hidaayah. 2003. p. 25
  6. Wendy L. Widder. “Critical Issues: Book of Daniel”. The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Lexham Press. 2016.
  7. James P. Sweeney. “The Book of Hebrews: The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews”. The Lexham Bible Dictionary. 2016.
  8. Rozetko, p. 103
  9. Ibid, p.106
  10. Ibid, p. 105
  11. Shemaryahu Talmon. “The Old Testament Text”. The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1, Ed by P.R. Ackroyd & C.F. Evans. Cambridge University Press. 1970. p. 162 (quoted in Rozetko, p.105)
  12. Rozetko, p.105-6
  13. Ellis R. Brotzman and Eric J. Tully. Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition. Baker Publishing. 2016. p.17 (ePub)
  14. Ibid, p.18
  15. Ibid.
  16. Talmon, p.161-2 (as quoted in Brotzman and Tully, p. 17)
  17. Talmon, p. 160
  18. Ibid.
  19. Chapter 3 of Textual Cricism of the Bible, Revised Edition (Lexham, 2018).
  20. Rezetko, p. 106
  21. Accounted for by search function hits in the text.
  22. Brotzman and Tully, “Author index”, p.258-9