Brief dialogue with a pastor on Burgon vs. W&H

Some time ago I had a brief dialogue with a pastor on this subject. I just found part of it and might as well put it up, though it was frustrating since many avenues of discussion were opened up that were abruptly closed as the conversation was so brief. I didn't answer as clearly then as I now wish I had so I'm going to answer somewhat differently here. He says:

Many of Burgon's criticisms of W and H were unfounded.

Most of this pastor's comments are of this sort -- broad general statements without evidence to support them, which are of course impossible for me to answer. I can only ask: Such as? But it was a while ago that I was in dialogue with this pastor and I didn't ask it at the time so now I don't know how he would answer. I had the impression, however, that he was not giving me the results of his own study of Burgon, which I suspect he had not done, but of received opinion.

I had mentioned to him that Burgon says that W&H's Greek is "schoolboy" level. I didn't quote Burgon and unfortunately I now can't find the exact quote that says this, though when I do I'll put it up right away, but it's quite clearly Burgon's assessment overall judging from his many discussions of their decisions on various renderings of the Greek.

[Westcott's] knowledge of patristic writings, Greek grammar and syntax is impressive even by the standards of modern scholarship.

If Burgon's judgment is right, that makes modern scholarship just as questionable as Westcott's, and I am of course very impressed with Burgon's apparent knowledge and style of argument. Burgon writes as if he considers W&H's scholarship to be decidedly inferior to the standard of his day.

He had described Burgon as promoting a conspiracy theory, so I responded that I don't see that in Burgon:

The conspiracy ideas about W and H range from them seeking to usurp, overthrow the TR, to changing the Bible (I think Burgon fits here), to the absurd (occult, etc). Although there are no pure Westcott and Hort textual advocates today, they did make some headway and are respected for their scholarship.

But isn't it a simple matter of accomplished fact that they DID usurp or overthrow the TR? It was a done deal already in the work Burgon was criticizing, the English Revised Version. It has become consolidated as an accomplished fact in all the Bibles we have that are not based on the TR, which are the great majority.

They did this by substituting their own preferred Greek Text which was largely based on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which was a violation of their agreement, which was to make the most minimal necessary changes to the English as well as the Greek -- the Greek of the TR that underlies the KJV. This is documented, not merely asserted, in Burgon's Revision Revised.

And besides the changes brought about by the substitution of a different Greek text, they made thousands of changes in the English translation, most of which can't be justified on any standard, especially considering, again, their agreement to make the most minimal changes necessary.

And how can W&H be said to have made some "headway" if what they did was substitute corrupt Greek texts for the Textus Receptus and make thousands of unnecessary-to-downright-abominable changes in the English? "Headway" toward what?

As for their involvement in the occult, I wish none of that had become part of this argument because it obscures the most important points -- but that has nothing to do with Burgon, who didn't accuse W&H of anything personal at all, only criticized their work on the revision.

Burgon may have been a pious man, but much of his scholarship has been shown to be insufficient or deficient, such as his massive work on patristic quotations.

I think I'd said that Burgon sounds like a Christian to me in a way that W&H do not -- to explain the reference to piety. Burgon does not use pious language, however, he merely sounds like a Christian in that he cares about what Christians should care about, such as preserving the flock's trust in God's word. As for Burgon's scholarship he's amazingly thorough for a mere review, and he himself admits that to do an exhaustive job would require many times the space. I don't know about his independent work on patristic quotations but he includes so many in Revision Revised it ought to be possible to confirm or refute his accuracy from that alone -- and it shouldn't be too hard to come up with at least ONE example to prove the point.

But again this is just a general statement condemning Burgon's scholarship as "insufficient or deficient" without a mention of any examples or a reference that might give some substance to the accusation. These broad general statements are really quite unfair.

I suppose I can't expect anyone to go into detail about such things with an amateur such as myself, however, so I have no idea whether there is any substance to this charge or not. As usual I also wonder, Has the pastor read all this himself or is he merely passing on the accepted judgment among today's scholars? My impression, judging from his remarks, is that he isn't at all personally familiar with Burgon.

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June 14. I've been reading some quotes by Westcott and Hort that leave no doubt of their modernist-rationalist mental set, even their own knowledge that what they were doing to the Bible was likely to be called heresy if they didn't plan its introduction very carefully. They planned so well, apparently, that graduates of many a respectable seminary since then have learned nothing but their modernist approach to textual criticism. I strongly suspect that the supposedly great improvements by modern scholarship are very much less than great, that Burgon's judgments are far better.

Also I'm puzzled by this idea that there was something wrong with his patristic quotations. What could go all that wrong with quoting what the Church Fathers actually wrote? He collected quotations from their writings that reflect readings from the Textus Receptus or the Byzantine texts on which the KJV was based. Either these readings are actually in those writings or they aren't -- how great a chance of error could there be?
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It's so easy to get off on sidetracks in discussing the scholarly questions that I sometimes have to stop and remind myself what concerns me most fundamentally about all this:

I HATE the plethora of different readings, the inability to recognize a Bible quote because it's from some other version than mine, the inability to find a verse in the Concordance because the wording is different, the frequent need to refer to the Greek or the Hebrew to read a Bible that should be trustworthy in the English in the first place without making textual critics and translators of rank and file Christians, I hate the doubts about the trustworthiness of the text that are insinuated by various footnotes, and I hate the truly inferior English of most of them. Having all these translations is not the great benefit to the church so many try to make it out to be. I think it's an unfair burden on the Christian flock that distracts us from living the life Christ wants of us, and in fact in some cases actually undermines that life.

If the TR needed some correction, it still needs it as it certainly didn't need anything to the extent of what W&H did, nor did the KJV itself. Obviously I'll have to do without the reasonable revision that should have been done in 1881. As things stand, as Douglas Wilson pointed out, it's the old KJV or the new versions, there’s nothing in between. So here I am suspended between the modern scholars and the wild and woolly fundamentalists. I guess I'll be here a while.