17 February 2025

Garnishing the Sepulchres of the Righteous: Textual Criticism in the Free Church Fathers

Abstract

The continued publication of the “Textus Receptus,” for example, a new edition by Grange Press, the publishing arm of the US Presbytery of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing), provides the incentive to investigate the text-critical principles of the Free Church fathers. How did they view the Textus Receptus? Did they defend it in the face of new manuscript discoveries in their own century? The clear evidence is that they did not hold to a “Received Text” that was “fixed”, indeed, the leading figures among the Free Church Fathers explicitly disowned such a view.

Introduction

Advocates of the so-called “Textus Receptus” have a track record of claiming support from figures in church history who were far from claiming its perfection. Famously, the Anglican Dean John Burgon (1813-1888) would not be admitted to the Dean Burgon Society (founded in 1978). The society named after him exists “To Defend the Traditional Received Greek Text of the New Testament which underlies the King James Version”.[1] Yet while believing the TR to be “quite good enough for all ordinary purposes”, Burgon was “far from pinning my faith to it”. “In not a few particulars”, he wrote “the ‘Textus receptus’ does call for Revision”.[2]

Background: Scrivener and the Missing Preface

The only Textus Receptus (TR) editions in print today are republications of the 1881/1894 TR produced by another Anglican, F. H. A. Scrivener.[3] The most well-known is published by the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS), but with Scrivener’s original preface (and appendix) removed. In its place, the TBS add their own preface which claims:

In the nineteenth century, numerous scholars set out to produce Greek texts which would reflect new principles of textual criticism…and resulted in a new English Version, the English Revised Version of 1881. Late in the century, F. H. A. Scrivener went against this trend.[4]

What they fail to note, however, is that Scrivener himself was on the Revision Committee, that his work was a companion volume to the Revised Version, and that he agreed with his fellow Revisers over against the TR in many places. The TBS preface implies that Scrivener published the TR because he agreed with it or wanted to promote it. The real reason is quite different. Rather, he compiled it because the revisers had been charged to note alterations from the Authorised Version. It was decided, however, that rather than “crowd and obscure the margin of the Revised Version”, it would be best to note changes in a separate volume. To do so, Scrivener tells us in the omitted preface, the Greek text “presumed to underlie the Authorised Version” had to be produced for the first time. This was necessary as:

The Authorised Version was not a translation of any one Greek text then in existence, and no Greek text intended to reproduce in any way the original of the Authorised Version has ever been printed.[5]

His TR, therefore, is a reverse-engineered Greek text, based on the text critical choices of an English translation, the KJV. Places where the Revisers disagreed with it were marked in the text and with footnotes, though these are removed in the TBS edition. While differing in some respects from his fellow Revisers, Scrivener’s aim had not changed since 1845. He “hope[d] to purge the received text of its grosser corruptions, and to approach more nearly to the Apostolic autographs.”[6] Examples of those grosser corruptions include the “Johannine Comma”, which the TBS spends much energy trying to defend, but of which Scrivener said was “probably no longer regarded as genuine by any one who is capable of forming an independent judgment on the state of the evidence.”[7]

Grange’s Graveyard

Another edition of the Textus Receptus was issued in 2022 by the publishing arm of the US Presbytery of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing), Grange Press:

The name, Grange Press, is taken from the burial ground where many of the Free Church of Scotland Disruption fathers have been laid to rest, located south of Edinburgh’s city center.[8]

Its title page says: “As Prepared by F. H. A. Scrivener.”[9] However, just like the TBS edition, the reader is not told who Scrivener is, and his preface and textual apparatus are removed. In place of the 1881 preface, they translate the Latin preface of a TR edition published 250 years earlier – and which differs from Scrivener’s text, as we’ll see below.

The Free Church fathers would surely have been bemused (at best) by such a development. Even before the formation of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843, the “received text” had largely been discredited. John Dick (1764-1833), the Scottish Seceder pastor and professor, said in his famous Lectures on Theology (rated as the best systematic theology available in English by Archibald Alexander of Princeton): “It is evidently ignorance and prejudice which would lead any person to consider the received text as so sacred that no alteration ought to be made in it”.[10] This was also the attitude of the Free Church Fathers, as will be demonstrated below.

Thomas Chalmers

Thomas Chalmers died four years after the Disruption and was buried at the Grange Cemetery with “kingly honours”. An estimated 100,000 turned out either to witness the procession or attend the graveside service. Humanly speaking, he was the Free Church’s founder. He was its first moderator, and his reputation helped bring it international support.[11]

Chalmers’ posthumously published seminary lectures reveal his perspective on the Bible’s text. He dealt with textual criticism under the broader subject of ‘Scripture Criticism’. Its two main objects were:

The integrity of the text, and the interpretation of it. The first question is, “what did the authors of Scripture really write?” The second, “what is the sense or meaning of it?” The former has been termed corrective or emendatory criticism, its object being to substitute the true in place of the false readings.[12]

Textual criticism, then, is not an attempt to “criticise” the Bible, but to replace “false readings” with true ones. Chalmers gives the following illustration of where the Bible interpreter must begin:

He should do with the Bible what he would do with some antiquated seal, which he wanted to preserve in the very condition in which it was when originally struck by the hand of him who fashioned it…The corrosion of many ages may have somewhat obliterated, or even somewhat transformed the device and inscription. His labors to ascertain its primitive state, are precisely analogous to the labors of him who brings his erudite criticism to bear on the readings and the renderings of Scripture.[13]

Chalmers thus deals with both text and translation. Over time, false readings may have gotten mixed in with the true – and even true readings may have been translated wrongly. There is no place, therefore, for blind adherence to any printed Greek text or English translation – what counts is the “primitive state” of the Bible as God first gave it.

If any edition of the “Textus Receptus” presented Scripture in all its pure and primitive integrity, there would have been no reason for Chalmers to advocate ongoing work in this area. Indeed, he tells us that variations had “been soundly established between the original Scriptures and our present editions of the Greek New Testament” – but that people had nothing to fear from them.[14]

Chalmers was well aware of the potential for fear. John Mill had published an edition of the TR in 1707 which included an estimated 30,000 variant readings in the notes. “Many excellent Christians”, Chalmers tells us, “had the feeling that all was now fearfully unsettled, and that they were to be left without a Bible.”[15] There had been a similar reaction half a century earlier with the publication of Bishop Brian Walton’s London Polyglot in 1657.[16] The Puritan John Owen had praised “the usefulness of the work” and held it in “much esteem”.[17] He was concerned, however, that the number of various readings “nakedly exhibited, seem[ed] sufficient to beget scruples and doubts.”[18] As Chalmers summarises the debate, Owen “rashly and under a false alarm ventured himself into combat.” The Free Church founder goes as far as to say that it was “illiterate in Owen to apprehend that the integrity of the Scripture would be unsettled by the exposure, in all their magnitude and multitude, of its various readings.” Walton, for his part, “retorted contemptuously”. The whole incident was particularly tragic in Chalmers’ view, because if it had been possible to combine the philology, research and antiquarian attainments of Walton, with the faith, ardour and profound intelligence of Owen, the result would have “made up a perfect theologian”.[19]

What was the basis for Chalmers’ textual confidence?[20] He quoted Walton’s assertion that the various readings found in Greek manuscripts are: “only in lesser matters, not in things of any moment or concernment; they are such whereby our faith and salvation are noway endangered.” Indeed: “not any one article of faith, any doctrine or duty, any promise or threatening, has been affected thereby, or rendered precarious by any various reading or corruption.” Chalmers pointed out that the loss of a proof text for a particular doctrine did not mean that “the doctrine itself should be expunged”. For an example, he cites Johann David Michaelis: “We are certain, for instance, that 1 John v. 7, is a spurious passage, but the doctrine contained in it [the deity of Christ] is not therefore changed, since it is delivered in other parts of the New Testament.” Indeed, as Michaelis argued, the lack of variant readings on two key passages (John 1:1; Rom 9:5) meant that “this very doctrine, instead of being shaken by the collections of Mill and Wetstein, has been rendered more certain than ever.”[21]

Chalmers approvingly quoted John Newton’s description of “Bible philologists and collectors” as “the Gibeonites of the Christian Church, the hewers of wood and drawers of water to the children of Israel”. Textual criticism, after all, must “be conducted on the same principles and by the same methods with the criticism of all other ancient authorship.” The task of determining “the genuine readings of any book in the New Testament” is conducted by the same process as trying to find “the genuine readings of Horace or Cicero.”[22] It is surely strange that the publication of critical texts of the Westminster Confession of Faith or Larger Catechism is uncontroversial (after all, we want to make sure that we have what the authors originally wrote) – while the publication of critical texts of Scripture is so opposed.

Does Chalmers ignore the role of the Holy Spirit? Not at all. Rather, it is because he believes that the Spirit works through Scripture that he cannot understand the “neglect and indifference of Christians towards the scholarship of the Bible.” “Far from superseding criticism”, the doctrine of the Spirit “gives an impulse to its labors”.[23]

Something else that should give ministers the impulse to labour in textual criticism was the need to be able to defend against heresy:

How inexcusable not to be in possession of this evidence at first hand – not to be qualified for arguing the Arian, and the Socinian, and the Pelagian controversies, in Greek… Take the divinity of Christ for an example. You should be masters of all the emendatory criticism which relates to the integrity of the various passages where this doctrine is attested; and you should be masters of all the interpretative criticism that applies to the sense of these passages.

Chalmers did not exaggerate the issues. His “oft-repeated principle” was that “the most precious articles of our creed” do not need arduous text-critical efforts in their defence:

Yet how infinitely better that you should see this for yourselves than that you should be told of it by others – that you should meet the champions of heresy on any ground which they might fix upon for their arena…to contend intelligently, as well as earnestly, for the faith once delivered to the saints.

Far from demeaning scholarship, for Chalmers: “a Scripture criticism, and that too of the most refined and scholar-like description, is indispensable to the maintenance of orthodoxy”.[24]

William Cunningham

How did the views of Thomas Chalmers and the other Free Church Fathers square with Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8?[25] One who addressed that question directly was William Cunningham.

In the years leading up to the Disruption, Chalmers had been “goaded on, some thought, by a group of zealous young evangelical clergymen led by R. S. Candlish (1806–1873) and William Cunningham (1805–1861)”.[26] Cunningham “was at the heart of the controversy” which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland, with his “intellectual power, skill in debate, and apparent relish of conflict mark[ing] him as a principal combatant”.[27] He received a DD from Princeton in 1842 and succeeded Chalmers as principal of New College, the church’s Edinburgh seminary, in 1847. Cunningham was Moderator of the denomination’s General Assembly in 1859. He died, two years later, at the age of 56 and was buried next to his mother in the Grange cemetery. “After his death his church lacked a commanding figure who combined orthodoxy with authority”.[28]

Cunningham addressed the question of the text of the New Testament in a posthumously published lecture on chapter 1, section 8 of the Westminster Confession. In it, he warned about “a priori speculations about the divine procedure” – arguments based on what we think God should have done. An example of this was the argument by opponents of the verbal inspiration of Scripture that “if God inspired the words, he would also have exercised a minute superintendence over the transcription of every copy, so as to preserve accurately and certainly the precise words originally employed”. Cunningham is clear that such a thing did not take place: “This indeed would have involved a constant miracle, and it is contradicted by actual experience”. After all, the Confession speaks not of miraculous preservation but of providential. Cunningham echoes its language as he explains:

The singular care and providence of God in watching over his word to preserve it from corruption is not then to be regarded as miraculous, but as exercised in the ordinary course of his providential government of the church and the world.[29]

In the face of Pagan and Papal opposition, “we are fully warranted in ascribing it to the singular, though not miraculous, care and providence of God that his word has not only been preserved, but preserved in purity and integrity”.

Cunningham then references the most-quoted words of WCF 1:8 in contemporary debates:

When we say that the word of God in the original languages has been kept pure in all ages, it is not meant that all the words contained in the Bible as we have it can be proved to be or are precisely those which proceeded from the inspired writers.[30]

Cunningham was neither a textual sceptic (saying that we can have no idea about the original text of the Bible) nor a textual absolutist (advocating one form of the text as beyond any doubt whatsoever). There were words, phrases, and some small passages “where it is doubtful, and the doubt cannot be fully and certainly resolved, whether one word or phrase or a different one proceeded from the original authors.” The Free Church Divine then adds: “This is certain, and in regard to the Greek New Testament has been always known and conceded.”[31]

This is significant because the twenty-first-century “Confessional Bibliology” movement allows no doubt whatsoever. Their rallying cry is that if there is uncertainty anywhere, there is uncertainty everywhere. The TR is “certain”, “settled”, “completed”, “agreed upon”. “There’s not a single place”, one of its advocates says, “where I don’t know what the text says”.[32]

Based on the writings of John Owen, Cunningham surmises that the Westminster Divines (contemporaries of Owen) would have admitted various readings in the Greek of the New Testament – but not in the Hebrew of the Old. As evidence, he quotes Owen’s denial that such a distinction is ridiculous, since “we evidently find various lections in the Greek copies which we enjoy, and so grant that which ocular inspection evinces to be true.”. He also quotes Owen’s denial that there were ever “any such various lections in the originals of the Old Testament.”. The Divines, therefore:

Would have ascribed, had they been called upon to express an opinion upon the subject, a greater degree of purity to the Hebrew of the Old than to the Greek of the New Testament.[33]

Cunningham makes the important point, however, that such a belief was not based on a priori considerations. The reason Owen believed in variant readings in the New Testament was, as he tells us himself because he refused to deny what he could see with his eyes. Yet if Owen and others had been able to examine and compare Hebrew manuscripts, it would have “established de facto the existence of various readings”.[34] (Rather confusingly – and unmentioned by Cunningham – Owen himself admits this in the same work: “There is no doubt but that in the copies we now enjoy of the Old Testament there are some diverse readings, or various lections.”[35])

Given that none denied the existence of variant readings in Greek manuscripts, Cunningham argues that the phrase “kept pure in all ages” applied “to their freedom from any material or substantial error”. Since the language of the Confession applies to Greek as well as Hebrew, “the purity here predicated of both could not have been intended to be a purity which was exclusive of various readings but merely such a purity as excluded any material or important corruption”.[36]

Was Cunningham reinterpreting the Confession by attributing only a “substantial” purity to the text of Scripture? Far from it. He was simply echoing the language of Westminster Divine John Ley who wrote in a contemporary Bible commentary: “Not one jot, or tittle of the Scriptures, in matter of substance, hath passed away.”[37] Similarly, Edward Leigh (a teller at the Westminster Assembly) wrote: “The Scripture hath no considerable corruption.”[38] Again, there is little difference between Leigh’s denial of “considerable” corruption and Cunningham’s of “important” corruption. Neither see “kept pure in all ages” as denying some level of corruption.

This all backs up Richard Muller’s contention that “The [Reformed] orthodox…assume that the text is free of substantive error and, typically, view textual problems as of scribal origin.”[39]

For Cunningham, rather than undermining the purity of the Scriptures, textual criticism confirms it:

That we have the text of the originals of the Old and New Testaments in a state of what may most justly be called purity and integrity cannot reasonably be doubted, nay, can be fully established, by the appropriate evidence applicable to the subject, the evidence of MSS., ancient versions, and statements and quotations in ancient authors.[40]

Indeed, the attribution of the phrase “kept pure in all ages” to any one particular Greek edition soon becomes self-evidently ridiculous. Scrivener’s Greek text, which Grange Press and the TBS have republished, did not exist until 1881. Should it have the subtitle: “Kept pure in all ages since 1881”? Or should that epithet be applied to Erasmus’s first edition: “Kept pure in all ages since 1516”? Since that edition and the next “omits” a confessional proof text, it seems unlikely.

Cunningham is surely right to observe:

The position that the word of God has been kept pure in all ages does not necessarily imply that it has existed in purity in any one particular MS., or that it now exists in purity in any one particular printed edition, but merely that God has preserved it in purity in his church, and has given to men sufficient materials, in due use of ordinary means, for obtaining a substantially accurate record of what he has revealed.[41]

As Muller explains, the “so-called textus receptus” was merely part of the process of “establishing a normative or definitive text of the New Testament”. There was no claim in the era of Reformed orthodoxy [1520-1725] “of a sacrosanct text in this particular edition. Nor did it…provide some sort of terminus ad quem for the editing of the text of the Bible.”[42]

Cunningham Continued: Specific Examples

While allegations had occasionally been made that the original texts of Scripture had “been to some extent depraved or corrupted”, in reality “neither Papists nor infidels have ever been able to produce anything plausible in support of their denial of the integrity and purity of the original texts”. Nothing could be shown “which in the least affects the truth or certainty of any one of the doctrines or precepts of Christianity, or the greatly superior purity of the originals to any existing translation” (such as the Septuagint or Vulgate, both of which Cunningham discusses).[43]

Cunningham addresses several verse-length (or longer) passages that are “found in most editions of the Greek Testament” as being “at least very doubtful.” What is our responsibility in such a situation? It is not simply to go with the TR/KJV tradition. Rather, we are “under the necessity of estimating on which side the greatest amount of evidence lies”.

His first examples of passages whose genuineness had been questioned – chiefly by Socinians – were the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. The Free Church professor’s response could be given to a TR defender today who suggests that at some point in the future John 3:16 could disappear from our Bibles:

There is…no rational ground for denying or doubting the genuineness of these four chapters, for they are found in all ancient MSS. and versions, and there is no more reason for omitting them than for omitting any other portion of the New Testament, which some men may not like.[44]

Cunningham proceeds to discuss the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11).[45] Given that some manuscripts and ancient versions omit both these paragraphs “we must weigh the evidence on both sides and endeavour to ascertain which preponderates”. Those who omitted either passage were trying to weigh the evidence, not remove part of the Bible – “competent judges” had come to different opinions. Cunningham himself leans towards including both, though rightly notes that the evidence in favour of the former is stronger than for the latter. He expected his students to examine the matter for themselves.[46]

Cunningham’s verdict on those passages might leave some ready to declare him a Byzantine/Majority text prioritist. (Particularly since he goes on to reject the genuineness of 1 John 5:7).[47] The next three passages he discusses (Luke 22:43-44; Matt 6:13b; John 5:3b-4) will not allow that conclusion, however. Cunningham again demonstrates that he is not a textual absolutist: “It cannot be settled with any very great certainty whether they ought to stand as part of the sacred text or not.” Nor was questioning these passages due to lack of reverence: “Men equally competent to judge of, and to estimate the critical evidence, and equally disposed to reverence the word of God, and to maintain the integrity and purity of the sacred text, have taken opposite sides upon the question of their genuineness.” Cunningham himself came to the same conclusion as the editors of the most recent critical text (The Tyndale House Greek New Testament) and the English Standard Version – namely, that there is more evidence for the first of these passages than the other two. Indeed, in questioning the inspiration of the Lord’s Prayer doxology, Cunningham was agreeing with the TR’s foremost editor, Erasmus, who condemned those who “to so heavenly a prayer did sew patches of their own”.[48] The doxology is also absent from William Tyndale’s first two editions.[49]

Like Chalmers, Cunningham was not alarmed by variant readings. After all, as Richard Bentley had pointed out, having more variant readings is simply the result of having more manuscripts – and the more manuscripts we have, the more certain we can be with regards to an ancient author that “what we have [is] in the main what he really wrote”. Furthermore, whatever plausible variant readings are chosen: “There is not one point of faith or practice, not one doctrine or precept of Scripture, that would be materially affected.”[50]

What about the divinity of Christ? It is the constant claim of TR advocates that the critical text undermines it, and, to quote from the preface to the Grange edition, “view(s) as suspect readings supportive of piety and orthodoxy”.[51] Indeed, on the question of whether 1 Timothy 3:16 should read “God was manifest in the flesh”, or “He was manifest in the flesh”, Grange Press director Robert McCurley says: “the modern critical texts, drawing on corrupt manuscripts from a region rife with Arian heresy, delete the word “God,” thus undermining the divine glory of Christ”.[52] For Cunningham, however, the divinity of Christ was not so shaky that it could be undermined by a textual variant:

Even if the reading Θεος should be rejected, and if it should farther be admitted that the rejection of Θεος deprives this passage of all force as a proof of our Lord’s divinity, that great doctrine would still stand untouched, fully established by many passages of Scripture where there is no various reading which has any plausible evidence to support it, and where there can be but one interpretation fairly put upon the words’.[53]

As John Newton once put it:

A doctrine so important, the very pillar and ground of truth…does not depend upon texts which require a nice skill in criticism, or a collation of ancient manuscripts, to settle their sense; but, like the blood in the animal economy, it pervades and enlivens the whole system of revelation.[54]

Like Chalmers, Cunningham does not overplay the importance of textual criticism. He told his students that it was incumbent on them to be familiar with “the materials for determining upon what is the true and real text of Scripture”: manuscripts, ancient versions, quotations from Scripture in ancient writers, and declarations or indications by those writers as to what existed in the manuscripts then in use. In other words, the true and real text of Scripture was determined by examining the evidence, not checking Scrivener’s TR (which did not exist until twenty years after Cunningham’s death). For Cunningham, the Textus Receptus was simply “that text of the Greek Testament which has been in most general use since the invention of printing”. The correctness of some of its readings “had been doubted and questioned” long before the publication of [Johann Jakob] Griesbach’s New Testament in 1796.[55]

Given that Griesbach is criticised in the introduction to the Grange Press TR, Cunningham’s verdict on his Greek New Testament is worth quoting in full:

Griesbach laboured to shew that the textus receptus had been derived from a very small number of MSS., and these of no great antiquity or value, and that now there were materials for producing a decidedly purer and more correct text. Most of the editions of the Greek Testament which have since been published in this country or upon the Continent have been based mainly upon Griesbach’s, or at least have in some form or other exhibited the principal of his various readings. Most of those who have examined this subject with attention have been of opinion that, upon the whole, Griesbach’s text is more pure and correct, [and] approaches nearer to the original text of the inspired authors than the textus receptus, and I am disposed to think that this opinion is correct.[56]

This did not mean, however, that preferring a critical text over the TR need make his students slaves to the decisions of its editors: “While it may be admitted that upon the whole and in general Griesbach’s text is preferable to the textus receptus, this does not hold in the case of each particular reading with respect to which they differ”.[57]

Furthermore, Cunningham refused to exaggerate the differences between the TR and the CT, which are around a 94% match, despite the fact that “Confessional Bibliology’s” leading figure has said they represent “a completely different underlying text”.[58] If Free Church divinity students wanted a dose of textual confidence, all they had to do was:

Run the eye over the inner margin of Griesbach’s New Testament. There you have at one view all the words and phrases which he has removed from the textus receptus to make room for his own emendations, and you cannot fail to be struck with their utter insignificance, both in number and importance. And you will thus be very decidedly confirmed in your convictions of the purity and integrity of the text of the New Testament.[59]

Patrick Fairbairn

Patrick Fairbairn began his ministry in Orkney, 10 miles off the north coast of mainland Scotland. He was credited with the transformation of his congregation, whose bad habits were said to include shipwrecking. By the time of the Disruption, he was ministering in Glasgow, and took most of his congregation into the new denomination. As the Free Church considered the expansion of its theological training “it became clear that Fairbairn would be at the centre of those plans”. He was professor in Aberdeen from 1853, and when the Glasgow seminary was established in 1856, he became the first professor there. He was Free Church Moderator in 1864 and is buried against the north wall of the Grange Cemetery.[60]

Fairbairn’s class lectures on the Pastoral Epistles became the basis for a commentary published in 1874. It was aimed particularly at students for the ministry and ministers not long ordained.[61] He sought to pay particular respect “to the objections which have been urged—latterly, indeed, with great boldness and persistency—against the apostolic authorship and divine inspiration of these portions of New Testament Scripture”. Fairbairn’s method began with an assessment of the correct text. As he did this, he found himself to be in almost total agreement with the critical text of Constantin von Tischendorf, whose eighth edition: “so nearly coincides with what I take to be the correct one, that I have simply adopted it—twice with a measure of hesitation, and once only with a formal dissent”.[62]

Fairbairn apparently saw his approach as utterly uncontroversial. In the preface to his first edition of Prophecy (13 years after the Disruption) he says that while he will generally note departures from the received text, there were a few cases “where the correct text or rendering is generally known”, so he thought it “unnecessary to take any particular notice of the diversity”. One example he gives of this is the TR’s “kingdoms [plural] of this world” at Rev. 11:15, which has very little Greek manuscript support.[63]

Fairbairn’s assessment of Greek manuscripts can be seen in frequent comments such as:

The received text has ἐν Χριστῷ, but it is wanting in the best mss., A, D, F, G’ (on 2 Tim. 2:7). “The καὶ of the received text between ἀρχαῖς and ἐξουσίαις is wanting in א, A, C, D, F, G, and should therefore be omitted” (on Titus 3:1). “The received text…inserts, on equally poor authority, οὖν ἐγώ after διαμαρτ.; but the best mss. omit them, א, A, C, D, F, L, also the Latin and Syriac versions” (on 2 Tim. 4:1). “The μὴ αἰσχροκερδῆ, which follows in the received text, has no support, but from some of the later, the cursive mss” (on 1 Tim. 3:3).[64]

This approach is starkly different from that of one modern promoter of the TR, who claims that for an NIV footnote to inform its readers that: “the earliest manuscripts do not have…” is “sleight of hand” that “many were fooled by”.[65]

In his earlier book on Prophecy, Fairbairn describes the Alexandrian manuscripts, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, as “the two best MSS”.[66] That was in 1856 – six years before the publication of Codex Sinaiticus. In Fairbairn’s later publications, Sinaiticus is often listed first, though he was not prepared to accept a reading based on it alone:

Tischendorf [who having discovered Sinaiticus was perhaps inclined to give it undue weight], in his eighth, follows the single authority of the Sinaitic in adopting here the easier reading προσέχεται, instead of προσέρχεται, which has the support of A, D, F, G, K, L, P, the Goth., Syr., Sah., Cop., Ethiop. versions. The received text seems clearly entitled to the preference.[67]
(On 1 Timothy 6:3 – critical texts today agree with Fairbairn and match the TR).

Sometimes Fairbairn gives us his best guess as to how TR readings originated. For example, Paul begins his first two pastoral letters with “grace, mercy and peace” (1 Tim 1:2; 2 Tim 1:2). The TR, along with the majority of manuscripts, also includes “mercy” in the introduction to Titus. Fairbairn first weighed (rather than simply counted) the manuscript evidence:

Grace and peace, the same that is found in all the other epistles of St. Paul, except the two to Timothy, has the support of א, C, D, F, Ital., Vulg., Syr., Pesh., Copt., Chrysos., etc. The latter must therefore be regarded as the preferable reading, and is now generally followed.[68]

He then explained the likely origin of the TR reading: “The other was probably adopted to assimilate the text to the other two Pastoral epistles.”

The difference today between the KJV’s “If any man or woman that believeth” and the ESV’s “If any believing woman” at 1 Timothy 5:16 is due to a textual variant. The TR reading, explains Fairbairn, “was doubtless introduced as a correction because it seemed strange that a charge of the kind given here should be connected with believing females only”. In 1 Timothy 6.7, an extra word in the TR “was in all probability inserted to soften the apparent hardness or difficulty of the connection between the two clauses.”

From Fairbairn’s perspective, the TR often added extra words to the inspired text – but sometimes it removed them. On 2 Timothy 2:13 he says: “The received text omits γὰρ, but it is found in the best copies, א, A, C, D, F, L, and is admitted by all the best critics”. Similarly, he points out in The Revelation of Law in Scripture that the word “peace” in Ephesians 2:17 should be repeated, being found in “all the better MSS., and most of the ancient versions.”[69] Likewise, in Colossians 2:13, “The better authorities (א A C K L) have here a second ὑμᾶς, repeated for the sake of emphasis, ‘you who were dead … He quickened you.’”[70]

Invariably for Fairbairn, the “best manuscripts” trump the majority. An extra nine-word clause may have made it into the majority of manuscripts at Romans 14:6, but Fairbairn was sure the Apostle Paul never said it:

These authorities [Lachmann, Mill, Griesbach, Meyer] omit the clause in ver. 6, καὶ ὁ μὴ φρονῶν τὴν ἡμέραν, κυρίῳ οὐ φρονεῖ, with all the best MSS., א A B C D E F G, the Italic, Vulgate, Aeth. Copt, versions, Jer., Aug., and other authorities. To admit a text with such evidence against it, and only one uncial MS. L. of no great antiquity for it, were to violate all the established canons of criticism; besides that, it makes no proper sense; at least not without some considerable straining.[71]

The TR reading is not always the majority one however, and at times it lacks any support at all. A significant example of this is found in Romans 7:6 where a conjectural emendation by Theodore Beza “become a stock example of the questionable quality of the Textus Receptus”.[72] Beza mistakenly thought he had support from Chrysostom: “It altogether appears that this reading was then without disagreement the received one.” He then explains how he “did not hesitate to restore it” [i.e. change the TR to include it]. As Jan Krans explains, “The change is small, only one letter, but the grammatical and exegetical consequences are great.” The result changes the meaning from: “we were freed from the law, having died [to that] in which we were held” to “we were freed from the law—bringing death—in which were held”.

As Fairbairn notes, not only is the external evidence against the reading which “on the authority of Beza” was adopted by the received text, but “The apostle never speaks of the law as undergoing change or dying.”[73]

Another important variant Fairbairn comments upon is 1 Timothy 3:16. Significantly, Fairbairn did not conclude that Arians had deleted “God”:

The controversy so long waged about the correct text in this passage, whether after the mystery of godliness we should read Θεός, or ὅς, or ὅ may now be regarded as virtually settled in favour of ὅς’. Yet this “by no means destroys the bearing of the passage on the divinity of Christ; for this is clearly implied in what follows—is, indeed, the ground-element of the whole series of declarations”[74]

Did Fairbairn not believe that the text of the New Testament had been kept pure in all ages? “The possession of a pure text”, he told students, “is an indispensable preliminary to a thoroughly correct and trustworthy exposition”.[75] That pure text was to be found by examining all extant Greek manuscripts however, not simply pulling an edition of the TR off the shelf.

Far from opposing new English translations, Fairbairn was one of two Free Church professors who served on the Old Testament Company charged with producing the Revised Version of 1881-85. Three others worked on the New Testament.[76]

Robert Candlish

What of Robert Candlish, the other young, evangelical churchman who “goaded on” Chalmers?

Readers of his commentary on First John will look in vain for his exposition of 1 John 5:7. They will find only a note:

I acquiesce of course in the rejection of the 7th verse, and of the words “in earth” in the 8th verse, as not in the original. I need not argue the point, for it is now all but universally admitted by intelligent critics.[77]

A better awareness of manuscripts had not simply “removed” text, however. At 1 John 2:23, Candlish notes that the last part of the verse “although considered doubtful by our translators [because it was only in some TR editions], and therefore put by them in italics and within brackets, is now admitted to be genuine”.[78] This longer reading is not in the majority of manuscripts, and so Candlish was no Byzantine prioritist. Candlish also disagrees with the Majority Text in Ephesians 5:9 – concluding that it should read “the fruit of light” – “not ‘of the Spirit,’ as in the received text”.[79]

Like Fairbairn, Candlish also suggests reasons why certain TR readings originated. For example, on “hades” replacing “death” in 1 Corinthians 15:55, he says:

Two things may account for this reading having early crept into some copies of the text. The one is the association of these two;—death and hades, in the book of the Revelation…The other explanation is the notion that the apostle is quoting or referring to a prophecy of Hosea.

The TR reading here “brings in a new and somewhat distracting element”. Yet while errors in the received text needed pointing out, Candlish did so with a pastor’s heart:

The meaning, however, when this new turn is given to the verse, is essentially and identically the same as when the old form of it is retained. And therefore, being satisfied on that point, we may continue freely to use the language that has so often thrilled and stirred our hearts: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”[80]

In his book on The Two Great Commandments, based on Romans 12, Candlish remarks:

Of the various readings, two only are noticeable, not for any force of external evidence in their favour,—the weight of manuscript authority, both in quantity and in quality, being decidedly against them;—but because they illustrate the way in which alterations of the text have sometimes crept in, through the prejudice or erroneous judgment of transcribers.[81]

One (μνείαις, memories, for χρείαις, necessities in Romans 12:13) he attributes to “that undue reverence for the departed which early began to prevail in the Church, and ultimately became worship”. He attributes the second (serving the Lord vs. serving the time, καιρῷ for Κυριῷ, in Romans 12:11) to a scenario where “the copyist apparently thought that the idea of ‘serving the Lord’ was too general”. The 21^st-century textual commentary by Philip Comfort agrees that Candlish’s reasons are possible in both cases.[82] Incidentally, the second of these variants (on which TR editions differ) was discussed in the 1640s by KJV translator and Westminster Divine Daniel Featley, who wrote: “In the most ancient Copie of Tecla [ie Codex Alexandrinus], and generally in the most correct Editions, the word is not καιρω, but κυρίῳ, not the time, but the Lord.”[83]

George Smeaton

George Smeaton has been described as “the most eminent scholar of the set of young men who with M’Cheyne and the Bonars sat at the feet of Chalmers”. During his time at the University of Edinburgh, he memorised every word in a great folio Greek lexicon. When asked many years later whether this was true, he replied to a friend: “Well, there was some truth in it. I suppose you did foolish things yourself in those days.” In the late 1830s he was part of an “Exegetical Society” where he and other young ministers (including Robert Murray M’Cheyne and Andrew Bonar) committed themselves to read either Isaiah or Jeremiah in Hebrew, and a New Testament book in Greek.[84] He attached himself to the Free Church at its formation, became a professor at Aberdeen in 1854, and moved to New College in 1857. He died on Sabbath morning, 14 April 1889, and a few days later his earthly remains were laid to rest in the Grange Cemetery.

In an otherwise helpful biography, John Keddie says:

He lived in the era of the Revised Version translation and the theories of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, which every bit as much as the higher critical theories constituted a sharp departure from the previously held consensus in the Reformed churches in these areas.[85]

Presumably by “the previously held consensus in the Reformed churches”, Keddie is suggesting a consensus that the Textus Receptus was jot and tittle perfect and could not be improved upon. Presumably, this is also what he means when he says that Smeaton appears to have taken “a conservative line on matters of textual criticism”. If Keddie is suggesting that a commitment to the TR is necessary to be “conservative” then by implication Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish have departed from the Reformed consensus in regard to the text of Scripture.

But what of Smeaton? Keddie cautiously says: “Though only suggestive of his attitude, it is perhaps significant that in a comment on Luke 1:35 in his work on the Holy Spirit, he challenges the Revised Version translation.”[86] Smeaton’s own words are worth quoting:

The words of thee (ἐκ σοῦ) deleted by many in the phrase, should probably be retained in the text, for they are found in such a number of Fathers—(Justin, Irenæus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Jerome)—that the balance of authority from this source alone goes far to counterbalance the evidence of faulty manuscripts against them.[87]

It is true that the KJV contains those words and the Revised Version does not, but the story is more complex. If Smeaton “challenges the Revised Version translation”, he also challenges those of William Tyndale and many others. The words that Smeaton sees as deleted are not in the majority of manuscripts – and not even in the majority of TR editions. Erasmus included them only in his first edition, and then thought better of it his second, commenting: “It seems added by some explainer.”[88] The words are not included in any of the TR editions of Stephanus but made it into the KJV via Beza. Their presence in the KJV means they are included in Scrivener’s text, but not in the Elzevir editions. In other words, they are not in the “text received by all” – the TR edition which gives the “textus receptus” its name, and whose preface the Grange Press edition affixes to Scrivener.

Smeaton himself took an evidence-based approach to textual criticism. In his book on The Holy Spirit, he says of the Johannine Comma: “All text-critics and exegetes now let go 1 John 5:7 as no longer tenable. It was probably a mere note on the margin inserted in the text by a subsequent transcriber.”[89]

In Acts 20:28, where some manuscripts describe the church as belonging to “God” and some as it belonging to “the Lord”, Smeaton says that either reading would support Christ’s divinity. He calmly discusses the options without managing to demonise manuscripts or suspect Arians:

The reading τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Κυρίου is supported by A, C¹, D, E, and preferred by Griesb., Lach., Tisch. The common reading is supported by B, א, and favourably regarded by Scholtz and Alford… It seems almost impossible to decide, if the decision is to turn solely on external grounds. Hence Paul’s phraseology elsewhere, the church of God, is thought by some to incline the balance in favour of the receptus.

Elsewhere he criticises the “faulty” translation of the KJV at Isaiah 48:16 and its insertion of a “the” in John 17:19 (against the TR tradition, though he seems to assume that the KJV translators have inserted it on the evidence of “some single MSS. and a Greek father”).[90] On Revelation 22:14 (“blessed are they that do his commandments” in the KJV), Smeaton says:

If the reading which modern editors prefer is adopted in that verse, which describes the right to the tree of life (22:14), “Blessed are they that have washed their robes,” an important doctrine is stated.[91]

Finally, on Psalm 22:16 he praises the KJV for following the LXX rather than the Masoretic vowel pointing to render the verse “They pierced my hands and feet”. (The Hebrew – as translated, for example, in the Jewish Publication Society’s 1917 version – says “like a lion they are at my hands and feet”).

Our authorised English Version has here done well in so rendering the verse, in deference to the Septuagint and authorities much older than the Masoretic punctuation, which has, either from mistake or by design, introduced a reading which cannot be vindicated.[92]

For Smeaton, unlike “Confessional Bibliologists” today, the Hebrew vowel points were not inspired and were a relatively recent addition to the text. (The only difference between Smeaton’s position and that of John Calvin was that Calvin was certain the Masoretic rendering was a deliberate change: the verse had “been fraudulently corrupted by the Jews”.)[93]

James Bannerman

James Bannerman “played a leading part in the events leading up to the Disruption in 1843”.[94] In 1849 he was appointed professor of apologetics and pastoral theology at New College. His posthumously published The Church of Christ remains the classic statement of the Presbyterian view of the church. Bannerman’s textual confidence provides a good note on which to begin drawing this survey to a close.

Bannerman’s 1865 book on Inspiration is quoted positively in a TBS booklet.[95] His defence of inspiration, however, is not one that a TR-defender could make. Bannerman was responding to the Anglican Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford who, as Nicholas Needham summarises, “entertained somewhat liberal views of on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture”.[96] Other than his conclusion, Alford’s argument was essentially that of “Confessional Bibliology”:

Another objection to the theory [of plenary verbal inspiration] is, that if it be so, the Christian world is left in uncertainty what her Scriptures are, as long as the sacred text is full of various readings. Some one manuscript must be pointed out to us, which carries the weight of verbal inspiration, or some text whose authority shall be undoubted, must be promulgated.

TR defenders would agree – and say that the text whose authority shall be undoubted is the Textus Receptus (though they are less clear on which of the varying TR editions must be chosen). For Alford, however: “neither of these things [picking one manuscript or one text and calling it perfect] can ever happen”. Indeed, as the Puritan Richard Baxter had pointed out long before, even if we had a perfect manuscript, we would not know it: “For how should we be sure of that one above all the rest?”[97]

Bannerman, like Cunningham, did not respond to such objections by claiming miraculous preservation. That would be to go beyond what God had promised: “There was no miraculous interposition afterwards vouchsafed to protect the inspired manuscript from the unintentional errors of copyists.” As with all other ancient books, a “multitude of various readings” had been introduced, “always differing from and occasionally contradicting each other”. Bannerman goes so far as to say that “the friends of the doctrine [of plenary inspiration] do not pretend to have in their possession the immaculate text which came from the inspired author”.

The advocates of inspiration denied that that they must hold to “the perpetual miracle of the preservation of the original text…as if it were impossible for God to work a miracle for man’s benefit once for all, unless He renewed it continually for the preservation of the benefit conferred”. Such a doctrine was “destitute of all Scripture warrant, and contradicted by actual fact”.[98]

At the same time, however, variant readings were confined “within very narrow limits indeed, not detracting beyond an indefinitely small amount from the integrity of the original”. Consequently:

The various readings, and the minute although appreciable differences in which they diverge from each other, have no effect at all upon the grand fact, that through means of the supernatural intervention of God his own eternal wisdom speaks to us from the page of Scripture with a truth that is infallible and an authority that is divine.[99]

Unlike magic spells, infallible truth and divine authority “are not tied to certain forms of language, and do not exclusively reside in a mysterious selection of charmed words”. In a very significant sentence, he says that the difference between viable alternative readings:

Is not a difference which makes the Bible in the one case to be the word of God, and in the other not: in either case it is to all intents and purposes the message of God to our souls; and it is the voice of the Spirit speaking to us still with infallible truth and divine authority.

James Bannerman lived at a time when various critical texts were being published, yet he did not mistake them for different Bibles: “God has put into the hands of men one Bible, and no more than one”.[100]

Are we left with hopeless uncertainty? Not at all:

By the help of the ordinary methods of historical evidence applicable to other cases, which guide us in judging of the integrity and the purity of other ancient books, a man may come to have a moral certainty that the copy or translation of the Bible in his hands, is to all practical intents and purposes an undoubted transcript and exhibition of the original text as it came from the hands of its authors.[101]

Conclusion

Based on the evidence above, the great Free Church Fathers, Chalmers, Cunningham, Candlish, Smeaton and Bannerman all had an evidence-based approach to the text of Scripture. None of them held a Majority/Byzantine text position, never mind a TR-only one. The Grange-published TR attacks Griesbach; Cunningham thought his text was the best, and Chalmers, the Free Church’s founder father, said that it would be one of the proudest literary honours of his classroom if there came “from its walls some future Griesbach of Scotland”.[102] Someone who has recently written in defence of the TR warns people that if their minister uses a “modern Bible based upon an eclectic text”, then that preacher does not believe he has “the pure, true, authentic preserved Word of God”. If such claims are to be believed, (and if we pretend for a moment that the KJV was never modern and that the TR is not an eclectic text), the Free Church fathers stand condemned along with the vast majority of Reformed ministers today. Not only did they use texts which departed from the TR, but five Free Church professors helped produce the only official revision to the KJV.

The defence of the TR as jot and tittle perfect is a more modern phenomenon than many realise. It was not the position of Scrivener and Burgon in the nineteenth century, no matter how many times their names are invoked. Indeed, the TBS, in existence since 1831, has only “since 1958 vigorously supported the TR”.[103] The ongoing effort to promote this position seems to require an attempt to mask what the TR actually is. This includes printing editions of Scrivener’s text, with his preface and textual apparatus removed. The Grange Press edition includes the introduction to a much-earlier TR, which contains a different text from Scrivener’s. Those differences may be small – but not too small to stop a Disruption father arguing against one of them.

Would those Free Church fathers considered in this article use the TR today? Given that some didn’t even use it in their own day, and none commented on it uncritically, we can confidently answer “no”. In examining the meaning of any portion of the Word of God, Cunningham told his students, “The first thing to be done is to ascertain as exactly as possible what is the true text or reading, what were the actual words that proceeded from the original author.”[104] More manuscript discoveries meant more certainty, not less. It is inconceivable that any of them would have argued for readings found in no Greek manuscripts. They uniformly reject readings with such weak attestation as the Johannine Comma.

A truly conservative position on the text of the New Testament involves sticking to the manuscript evidence God has preserved. The Majority/Byzantine Text position does this by counting manuscripts, and the Critical Text position by weighing them. The TR-only position, on the other hand, ties its adherents to readings in no Greek manuscript, and even to the passage that its first editor, a Catholic priest, admitted to back-translating from the Latin Vulgate.[105]

For the TR-only position, what matters is not the Greek manuscripts, but an English translation, the KJV, and the reverse-engineered Greek text based on the text-critical choices of its translators. In this respect, the Free Church fathers are more conservative – and more confessional – than those who most loudly invoke their names today.

Why does this matter? Firstly, accurate reading of history is important. Those who claim the support of figures from church history for their views should have no complaints when such claims are examined. At the 2024 Free Church (Continuing) General Assembly, one of its ministers claimed that an article in a previous edition of this journal “went on to refute if not attack the Received Text”.[106] Based on the evidence above, it is impossible to conceive of a similar complaint being made in 1843 or the decades that followed. Secondly, and more importantly, the refusal of TR defenders to admit any uncertainty as to the correct text of Scripture is surely in danger of undermining trust in the Bible. If “uncertainty anywhere is uncertainty everywhere”, what will those influenced by such teaching conclude when they read great Reformed figures of the past admitting uncertainty – or saying that the TR is certainly wrong? Finally, great damage is done to Reformed unity when adherence to the TR (or to be more accurate, certain editions of it) is made a marker of faithfulness. If TR defenders really believe their own rhetoric – that the differences between themselves and mainstream Reformed evangelicals are such that we have “different Bibles” – then they will neither want nor pursue unity with us.[107] Indeed, in a recent book by “Confessional Bibliologists”, after condemning modern versions as “based on Satan’s Bible”, an appendix gives a step-by-step guide as to how to leave a church which doesn’t hold to the TR.[108] In the interests of the unity of the church, such a movement must be held up to the bar of Scripture and history. Certainly, when compared to the views of the Free Church Fathers, it is a radical departure.

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Footnotes:

[1]  [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: <https://deanburgonsociety.blog/statement-of-faith>

[2] John William Burgon, The revision revised: three articles reprinted from the ‘Quarterly Review’ (London: John Murray, 1883), 108.

[3] Cambridge University Press publish a facsimile of Scrivener’s TR: F. H. A. Scrivener, ed., The New Testament in Greek: According to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version Together with the Variations Adopted in the Revised Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

[4] Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ: New Testament in Koiné Greek (London: Trinitarian Bible Society. 2002), ii. For a detailed examination of the various misstatements in the TBS preface, see Timothy Berg, ‘The Preface To The Greek TR Of F.H.A. Scrivener’. [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: <https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener>

[5] The New Testament in Greek: according to the text followed in the authorised version together with the variations adopted in the Revised Version, ed. F. H. A. Scrivener (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), v-vii.

[6] F. H. A. Scrivener, A supplement to the authorised English version of the New Testament: being a critical illustration of its more difficult passages from the Syriac, Latin, and earlier English versions (London: William Pickering, 1845), i, 32.

[7] The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version, with the text revised by a collation of its early and other principal editions, the use of the italic type made uniform, the marginal references remodelled, and a critical introduction prefix, ed. F. H. A. Scrivener (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873), xxxvi.

[8] [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: <https://www.grangepress.com/about-grange>. The ‘Disruption’ describes the departure of over 400 ministers, and many hundreds of thousands of people, from the Church of Scotland, to form the Free Church of Scotland in 1843.

[9] Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ: The Greek New Testament, Textus Receptus, Reader’s Edition (Taylors, SC: Grange Press, 2022).

[10] John R. McIntosh, ‘Dick, John (1764–1833)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn.; Andrew Coventry Dick (ed.), Lectures on Theology by the late Rev. John Dick, D. D., (4 vols, Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Son, 1834), i, 218.

[11] Stewart J. Brown, ‘Chalmers, Thomas (1780–1847)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn, Oct 2007.

[12] Thomas Chalmers, ‘Institutes of Theology’ in William Hanna (ed.), Posthumous works of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. Volume 7 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849), 304.

[13] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 307.

[14] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 329.

[15] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 315.

[16] Walton was assisted in this endeavour by Westminster Divine John Lightfoot, Archbishop James Ussher, and others.

[17] Cited in Russel T. Fuller, ‘John Owen and the traditional Protestant view of the Hebrew Old Testament,’ Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 20.4 (2016), 83.

[18] John Owen, ‘Of the integrity and purity of the Hebrew and Greek text of the Scripture’ in The Works of John Owen Volume 16, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), 352.

[19] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 309.

[20] For an introduction to the categories of textual scepticism, textual absolutism, and textual confidence see my article ‘Textual Confidence’, [cited 18 January 2025]. Online:  <https://gentlereformation.com/2022/08/27/textual-confidence>. 

[21] Cited in Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 316-7.

[22] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 312.

[23] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 325.

[24] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 339.

[25] This says that “The Old Testament in… and the New Testament in… being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.”

[26] Brown, ‘Chalmers, Thomas (1780–1847)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn.

[27] Lionel Alexander Ritchie, ‘Cunningham, William (1805–1861)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn.

[28] Ritchie, ‘Cunningham, William’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn.

[29] William Cunningham, Theological lectures on subjects connected with Natural Theology, Evidences of Christianity, the Canon and Inspiration of Scripture, by the late William Cunningham, D. D., (ed. Thomas Smith and W. H. Goold; New York: Robert Carter, 1878), 526-7.

[30] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 527.

[31] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 548.

[32] Cited in Mark Ward, ‘Which Textus Receptus? A critique of Confessional Biblioloy’ in DBSJ25 (2020), 57, n. 28.

[33] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 527.

[34] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 528.

[35] John Owen, ‘Of the Divine Original, Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures; with an answer to that inquiry, how we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume 16, 301. See also John Owen, ‘Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scripture’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume 16, 358: ‘Notwithstanding what hath been spoken, we grant that there are and have been various lections in the Old Testament and the New’.

[36] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 528.

[37] Commenting on Luke 3:36 in [Westminster] Annotations Upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament (3rd edn, London: Evan Tyler, 1657).

[38] Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (2nd edn, London: William Lee, 1662), 17.

[39] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy (4 vols, 2nd edn, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 2:415.

[40] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 528-9.

[41] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 533.

[42] Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 2:399.

[43] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 529-530.

[44] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 531.

[45] Incidentally, Mark 16:20 contains an example of a difference between the Received Text published by Grange Press (Scrivener, 1881), and the Received Text they borrow the preface from (Elzevir, 1633). Scrivener includes an ‘Amen’ at the end of the verse. ‘The text received by all’ omits it. The presence or absence of an ‘Amen’ may not seem like a big deal – even to people claiming jot and tittle certainty – but FCC minister Brent C. Evans manages to devote a whole chapter of Why I preach from the Received Text to his claim that ‘The modern critical text omits the word “Amen” in many places in the New Testament where the Received Text retains it’. There are in fact a number of examples where TR editions differ from each other in the presence or absence of ‘Amens’.

[46] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 531-2.

[47] On the Johannine Comma, he says: ‘Its genuineness has been abandoned by the great majority of those who have examined the subject with care, even though believing in the truth and divine authority of the doctrine which it teaches…There can be no reasonable doubt that there is a decided preponderance of critical evidence from MSS., ancient versions, and the testimonies of the Fathers, against the genuineness of this verse, and that therefore it is more than probable that it did not form a part of the sacred text, as it proceeded from the hand of the inspired apostle’. Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 533.

[48] Cited in Edward Leigh, Annotations upon all the the New Testament philologicall and theologicall (London: William Lee, 1650), 16.

[49] Daniel B. Wallace, David Flood, Elijah Hixson, and Denis Salgado (eds), Pen, Print & Pixels: Advances in Textual Criticism in the Digital Era (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2023), 300.

[50] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 541.

[51] Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ [Grange Press], 7.

[52] Robert McCurley, ‘Scripture Identified Scripture’ in Jeffrey T. Riddle and Christian M. McShaffrey (eds.), Why I Preach from the Received Text (Winter Springs, FL: 2022), 128.

[53] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 543.

[54] John Newton, Works, (ed. Richard Cecil; 6 vols.; London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.), 4:305.

[55] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 548.

[56] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 549.

[57] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 549.

[58] Jeffrey T. Riddle, Bible League Quarterly, no, 479 (Oct-Dec 2019), ‘Book Reviews: Authorized – The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible’, 30. The 94% figure comes from Maurice Robinson as a comparison between the Byzantine and ‘Alexandrian-priority’ texts. [cited 18 January 2025]. Online:  <http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2022/10/erasmus-letter-to-maarten-van-dorp-1515.html>.

[59] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 549.

[60] Lionel Alexander Ritchie, ‘Fairbairn, Patrick (1805–1874)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn.

[61] Patrick Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles: The Translation with Introduction, Expository Notes, and Dissertations (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1874), vi.

[62] Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles, viii.

[63] Patrick Fairbairn, Prophecy viewed in respect to its distinctive nature, its special function, and proper interpretation (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1856), vi.

[64] Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles, 119, 288, 382, 141.

[65] Trevor Kirkland, ‘Why I read and preach from the TR and the AV’, in Why I preach from the received text,108

[66] Fairbairn, Prophecy, 510.

[67] Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles, 233.

[68] Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles, 260.

[69] Patrick Fairbairn, The revelation of law in Scripture: Considered with respect both to its own nature, and to its relative place in successive dispensations (Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark, 1869), 461.

[70] Fairbairn, The Revelation of Law in Scripture, 462, n. 2.

[71] Fairbairn, The Revelation of Law in Scripture, 452, n. 1.

[72] Jan Krans, Beyond what is written: Erasmus and Beza as conjectural critics of the New Testament (Leiden and Boston, 2006), p. 274.

[73] Fairbairn, The Revelation of Law, 427.

[74] Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles, 162.

[75] Patrick Fairbairn, Hermeneutical manual: or, introduction to the exegetical study of the Scriptures of the New Testament (Philadelphia; English & Co.,1859), 13.

[76] Samuel Newth, Lectures on Bible revision: with an appendix containing the prefaces to the chief historical editions of the English Bible (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1881), 109-113.

[77] Robert Smith Candlish, The First Epistle of John, expounded in a series of lectures (3^rd edn, Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black), 459.

[78] Candlish, The First Epistle of John, 178.

[79] Robert S. Candlish, Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians: expounded in a series of discourses (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1875), 211.

[80] Robert S. Candlish, Life in a Risen Saviour (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1858), 267-9.

[81] Robert S. Candlish, The Two Great Commandments: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and they Neighbour as Thyself,”, illustrated in a series of Discourses on the 12^th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1860), x.

[82] Philip W. Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary: Commentary on the variant readings of the ancient New Testament manuscripts and how they relate to the major English translations (Carol Stream, Il; Tyndale House), 463-4.

[83] Cited in Steele, ‘The Westminster Divines and the Alexandrian Codex’ in Foundations, no. 85 (Winter 2023). [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: <https://www.affinity.org.uk/foundations/issue-85-winter-2023/the-westminster-divines-and-the-alexandrian-codex>.

[84] John W. Keddie, George Smeaton: learned theologian and biblical scholar (Brighton: Ettrick Press, 2023), 31-2.

[85] Keddie, George Smeaton, 148-9.

[86] Keddie, George Smeaton, 149.

[87] George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1882), 122, n. 1.

[88] Cited in Krans, Beyond What is Written, 36, n. 31.

[89] Smeaton, Holy Spirit, 92, n. 1.

[90] Smeaton, Holy Spirit, 32-3; George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Atonement, as taught by Christ himself (2nd edn, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1871), 250, n. 1.

[91] George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Atonement, as taught by the apostles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870), 475.

[92] Smeaton, Doctrine of the Atonement as taught by Christ, p. 85.

[93] In reaching this conclusion, Calvin was going against all Hebrew manuscripts he knew of: ‘all the Hebrew Bibles at this day, without exception, have this reading’. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms trans. James Anderson, (5 vols, Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845) 1:373.

[94] Rosemary Mitchell, ‘James Bannerman (1807–1868)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn.

[95] Malcolm H. Watts, The Lord gave the word: a study in the history of the biblical text (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1998), 2.

[96] Nicholas R. Needham, The Doctrine of Holy Scripture in the Free Church Fathers (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1991), 22.

[97] Richard Baxter, The practical works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, ed. William Orne (23 vols, London: James Duncan, 1830) 15:64.

[98] James Bannerman, Inspiration: the infallible truth and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1865), 514-6.

[99] Bannerman, Inspiration, 517-8.

[100] Bannerman, Inspiration, 521.

[101] Bannerman, Inspiration, 521-2.

[102] Chalmers, Posthumous Works, Volume 7, 337.

[103] Daniel B. Wallace, ‘The Majority-Text Theory: History, Methods and Critique’ in JETS, 37/2 (1994), 185, n. 5.

[104] Cunningham, Theological Lectures, 357.

[105] ‘To avoid leaving a lacuna in my text, I supplied the Greek out of our Latin version. I did not want to conceal this from the reader, however, and admitted in the annotations what I had done…And yet I would not have dared to do in the Gospels or even in the Epistles what I have done here’. Erasmus’ admission is cited by Jan Krans, ‘Erasmus and the Text of Revelation: A Critique of Thomas Holland’s Crowned with Glory’, in TC: A Journal of Textual Criticism, xvi (2011), p. 5.

[106] [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: https://www.youtube.com/live/xl6Mb5Sl7tc, 1 hr 59 mins. The reader can judge for themselves whether this is an accurate summary of my ‘The Westminster Divines and the Alexandrian Codex’ in Foundations, no. 85 (2023). [cited 18 January 2025]. Online: <https://www.affinity.org.uk/foundations/issue-85-winter-2023/the-westminster-divines-and-the-alexandrian-codex>.

[107] Poul de Gier, ‘The Text of the Church’ in Why I Preach from the Received Text, 50.

[108] Christopher Myers, ‘The Invincible Word’ in Why I preach from the Received Text, 163; ‘If there is no openness to change…you should begin considering your ability to remain in your church as a faithful member while holding a different opinion on this particular issue’. Jeffery T. Riddle and Christian M. McShaffrey, ‘Appendix’ in Why I preach from the Received Text.