Review of ‘Versions: Manuscripts and 19th Century Critics’ by Dr John R. Ecob
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2009.
I have received from you a copy of Versions: Manuscripts and 19th Century Critics by Dr John R. Ecob, with your request to let you have my comments on the book. My comments are as follows.
I applaud Dr Ecob's zeal for God's Word, and his insistence on its verbal inspiration and divine authority. However, the title of his book, Versions: Manuscripts and 19th Century Critics means that his book is scarcely up-to-date.
He everywhere concentrates much attention on the theories of Westcott and Hort. Those two scholars were certainly influential in their day, but their influence is by no means so dominant among modern textual critics as it was in their day. I also notice that Ecob describes modern scholars who disagree with his viewpoint as being 'deceived by Westcott and Hort'. That implies that I, too, have been deceived by Westcott and Hort. That charge is contrary to the fact, and an unnecessary insult to modern scholars who, though they disagree with Ecob, stand as equally as he does for the verbal inspiration of holy Scripture and its divine authority.
Ecob does not comment on the work of modern believers who are textual critics like, for instance, Gordon Fee and Peter Williams, and I wonder why. Ecob does not tell us how much actual work he has done on reading the manuscripts and engaging in textual criticism. But it remains very odd that he does not interact with the results of their work and does not even mention them.
He champions the Textus Receptus; but there are various things that he doesn't tell his readers about the Textus Receptus, such as why, at Acts 9:5–6, the Textus Receptus contains material that, as far as anybody knows, is not contained in any Greek manuscript whatsoever. When one examines this material, it becomes immediately evident that some scribe has taken it from the other accounts of Saul's conversion that are given in the Acts and added it here into this, the first account of Saul's conversion. Had Ecob attended to this question, he could have pointed out from it a very helpful lesson, namely that scribes have a habit of adding in various places phrases that occur in other different but similar places. The Textus Receptus is everywhere marked by this kind of addition to the original text. When modern textual critics omit these additions, it is not because they do not believe in the verbal inspiration of God's Word, nor is it because they reject some fundamental doctrine of the faith; it is because such additions are self-evidently secondary.
Ecob uses terms employed by translators of Scripture, but gives to them his own, somewhat peculiar, meaning. On page 37, he insists that verbal inspiration demands a 'word for word' translation, not a 'thought for thought' translation. On page 43, he lays it down that, with few exceptions, modern versions are untrustworthy because, in many instances, they have been translated by scholars who have adopted the principle of 'dynamic equivalence'—thought for thought translation—rather than a word for word translation.
Why does he not tell us that the KJV does the very same thing? For instance, in Romans 6:2, the KJV has the phrase 'God forbid'. In the Greek of the New Testament at this point, there is no word for 'God', and no word for 'forbid'. The KJV's translation is a dynamic equivalent of what the original Greek has. A word for word translation of the Greek would be 'May it not be'. The KJV has rightly considered that a word for word translation of the Greek would not express the emotional power that the Greek phrase expresses, and therefore it uses a dynamic equivalent to convey to the English reader the force and power of the original Greek. It is to be noticed that the NKJV at this point has done the same thing. It uses the phrase 'Certainly not!'—which is different from the dynamic equivalent that the KJV has used, but is nonetheless a dynamic equivalent, and not a word for word translation.
At Matthew 9:15, our Lord asks, 'Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?' This is a word for word translation of the original Greek. The question is, what does it mean in English? Try it out yourself on some young people who have not read the KJV: ask them, 'What are the children of the bridechamber?' This is a word for word translation, and Ecob insists that we should everywhere use a word for word translation, and those who use dynamic equivalence are untrustworthy. But even the NKJV at this point has decided that 'the children of the bridechamber' could be seriously misleading for a modern English reader; and it has asked itself what does the phrase mean? And it has translated that meaning by its modern English equivalent, which is 'the friends of the bridegroom'.
In chapter five of his book, Ecob lists words and phrases that have been omitted from various translations. In this list he does not clearly distinguish between translations that never claim to be anything more than paraphrases—and very loose paraphrases at that—and responsible translations, such as the ESV and the NIV. But his general contention is that, even in responsible translations, the omission of certain phrases and words indicates that the translators reject fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
Now, this is a charge made against the NIV by many different people: it is grossly unfair and, in fact, libellous. Take one example: At Ephesians 1:7, Paul writes, 'in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins'. At Colossians 1:14, Paul writes, 'in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins'. Later scribes added to Colossians 1:14 the words 'through his blood', which occur in the similar phrase in Ephesians 1:7; and the Textus Receptus has accepted this addition, contrary to the evidence of many manuscripts. The NIV, by contrast, following these many manuscripts, has omitted the words 'through His blood' in Colossians 1:14, since, in its judgment, the words 'through his blood' in this context are a later addition.
Now, various authors of Ecob's persuasion have, on the basis of this omission in Colossians 1:14, publicly and in print accused the NIV of denying the blood of Christ. This is, let me say again, a seriously false charge. If the NIV did not believe in the blood of Christ, it would not have included the term in Ephesians 1:7 and in many other places. The NIV translators believe in the atoning blood of Christ every bit as much as Ecob does. For enthusiasts for KJV-only to accuse the NIV on this ground of denying the fundamental truth of the gospel is a downright scandal—only to be excused if the authors of the charge do not really understand what they are talking about.
This whole matter was dealt with in great detail by Prof. D. A. Carson in 1979, in his book The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Book House Company, tenth printing, 1992). See particularly pages 62–66.
On his page 14, Ecob complains that modern translations practise what he calls 'grouping of verses'. He apparently means that, instead of printing each individual verse separately, modern translations often group verses into paragraphs. Ecob complains that this habit of grouping verses into longer paragraphs makes it difficult for modern readers to see how much modern translations have omitted from the original text. Why does Ecob not tell his readers that this is how, for centuries, the New Testament manuscripts were written out? Not in individual verses. For centuries, the verses were not numbered or divided into chapters, but were written out in one continuous text; very often with no space between the words, and certainly no space between the sentences.
Moreover, he suggests that Origen revised the text of the New Testament, and thus
systematically corrupted it. Ecob, however, does not mention the results of the detailed analysis of the early papyri, which shows that there was no systematic revision of any sort, let alone by Origen, in the early manuscripts of the New Testament. It would be interesting to know how many actual manuscripts of the New Testament Ecob himself has collated.
In the course of his book, Ecob allows himself to make disparaging remarks about the late Professor F. F. Bruce. What a pity he didn\'t balance his criticism by F. F. Bruce's famous defence of the reliability of the New Testament documents in his book The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable?—which, as I am writing this, is now in its sixth edition. It is a magnificent setting forth of the evidence that the New Testament documents are indeed reliable, and one wonders why Ecob has failed to point out what F. F. Bruce more than once affirms: namely that, in spite of the many differences in the manuscripts of the New Testament, no fundamental doctrine is put in doubt—for the simple reason that no fundamental doctrine depends on one verse, or even one phrase within a verse.
On the other hand, Ecob quotes Erasmus with seeming admiration. Why does he not tell us that Erasmus was so keen to be the first to print the New Testament in Greek that, when he came to the final chapter of the Revelation, and the Greek manuscript he was working on did not contain that last page, he simply took the Latin translation and translated it into Greek and published that translation as part of his text of the New Testament?
Twice over in his book, Ecob refers to the Septuagint, that is, to the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. But he does not discuss with his readers what difficulties there are with the many manuscripts of the so-called Septuagint. Nor does he trouble to explain why, at times, the New Testament, when it quotes the Old Testament, quotes the Septuagint translation, even when it differs with the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
And so I might go on; but I think I have said sufficient for you to gather what my estimation of Ecob's book is. For myself, I admit I have not done any actual work on the New Testament manuscripts; but I have worked on the text of the Old Testament, and gave lectures on that topic some years ago.
May I just say that, in spite of the charge that, in disagreeing with Ecob, I have been deceived by the theory of Westcott and Hort, I do myself believe in the divine inspiration and authority of both Old and New Testaments, and that I do in fact believe in the verbal inspiration of the original text. When, on page 38, Ecob writes, 'the Westcott and Hort text, and the many versions that succumbed to their delusion, have done more damage than anything else in the history of Christendom', it seems to me that he has lost due sense of proportion, and has allowed himself to indulge in wild exaggeration.
With warmest greetings,
