John Broadus (1827–1895) on New Testament Textual Criticism

Many years ago (when I was still in seminary), I spent some time looking into John Broadus’ approach to textual criticism. Nothing ever materialized (I became too busy), but I still think it would be a worthy endeavor. Broadus was one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Southern Seminary and its second president. He was a part of SBTS even before its move from Greenville, SC to Louisville, KY in 1877. Westcott and Hort’s New Testament came out during his years there, and as professor of both New Testament and preaching, I was very interested to know how he might approach textual variants. Interestingly, Broadus was also A.T. Robertson’s father-in-law.

John Broadus, looking suspicious of people who try to claim
that textual criticism undermines the Scriptures

I remember spending some time in the archives at SBTS and came across a series of articles Broadus wrote for the Religious Herald, a Baptist paper out of Virginia in which he reviewed the Revised New Testament from the American Bible Union (2nd ed., 1865) [not this Revised Version]. I took some photos of some of the articles and just came across them recently. The photos were, ahem, not my best work. This was several years before I worked for CSNTM, and they most certainly do not meet archival standards. Still, I have been able to read most of what I need from them.

I want to share some of Broadus’ words that were published in the Herald on Thursday, March 19, 1868. Broadus touches on some interesting topics—uncertainties of readings, “just trust the scholars”, and the sufficiency of an imperfect text “to an humble soul.” The following text is my best attempt of a transcription made from my very sub-par iPhone photo. Broadus writes:

The sources from which is to be determined the true text of the New Testament, are incomparably richer and more reliable than exist for any classical work. But it is well known that the Greek Testament as first printed (Erasmus, 1st ed., published A.D. 1516), was hurriedly taken from some late manuscripts, with no careful comparison of such others as were then accessible, and that subsequent editors, such as Robert Stephens (3rd ed., A.D. 1550), and Beza (principal edition, 1589), though they made a good many improvements, has still comparatively a very small stock of manuscripts—including scarcely a single one of those great manuscripts from early centuries which are now known—and made no very diligent use of those they had. The scholars appointed by King James to prepare a revision of the English Scriptures (published in 1611), had first to revise the Greek text, just as has to be done now. They made up a text from the editions of Stephens and Beza just mentioned, in a very few cases departing from both. Now that a great mass of additional and much of it far better material for ascertaining the true text has been slowly gathered and at least partially worked up, we look back with gratitude to see that a text prepared under such circumstances was comparatively so correct; and we need not at all wonder that it should be found to contain a great number of errors, some of them important.

Ehrman’s Definition of Textual Criticism

Following our discussion of that Dan Wallace quote about not being overly skeptical about identifying the original text of the NT, here’s a recent series Bart Ehrman has started about textual criticism on his blog. The first post introduces the subject. I draw attention to it because two things stood out to me: (1) his definition, which is quite traditional, and (2) his overall confidence in identifying the original text.

First, his definition:

Textual criticism is the technical and highly specialized discipline that works to reconstruct the original text and to figure out how, when, where, and why it got changed.

Then, his confidence, with his emphasis:

Scholars who engage in this work are not as a rule insanely pessimistic about the possibilities of getting back to a pretty close approximation of the original text in most cases. That is to say – some people reading my books have not picked up on this enough – there are good reasons for thinking that most of the time we can get back to a fair approximation of what ancient authors wrote, even if there are places (sometimes many places) (and sometimes many very important places) where there are real grounds for doubt.

We could probably reflect on why not everyone has picked up on this enough from his books, but let’s let that go for now. I suspect Bart and I would disagree a bit on how many “very important” places where variation affects the NT text (I don’t think Mark 1:1, for instance changes Mark’s Christology in any way), but that’s a matter of degree, it seems. We probably also still disagree on whether these uncertainties are defeaters for inspiration and inerrancy and that’s a significant disagreement. But it’s nice to highlight agreement with Bart on this blog when we can so that’s what this post is for.

Textual Confidence

The day before the CSNTM conference in Dallas back in May, I sat down with some good friends and we filmed seven videos on why we think we can have confidence in the Scriptures without having to fall into textual skepticism (Bart Ehrman being one of its more well-known voices) or what we call textual absolutism (which these days most often manifests itself as a strong rejection of modern textual criticism and advocacy for the King James Version or the Textus Receptus, though there are some nuances there).

The first of seven videos is now up. Watch/read more here.