D A Waite on the Moorman-White debate concluded

Here is the next section of Dr. Waite's notes on the Moorman-White debate. I'm going to let most of it stand without comment, since I either believe or tend to assume that Dr. Waite is correct and have nothing I want to add.

II. COMMENTS ON THE Q&A, Last 50-MINUTES

1. The first man’s question about James was foolish.

2. 1 John 5:7 was brought up. White said the early church never used this verse as proof of the Trinity. This is false. Early church writers quoted from it and used it for this purpose and other purposes.

3. If you take out the parts of 1 John 5:7 and 8, the genders do not match. White disputed this, but it is correct.

4. White lied when he said at the bottom of the page in the Nestle/Aland text “I have an exhaustive listing of every textual variant.” That is a total lie. Many, many texts are omitted. The hundreds of Traditional readings are merely grouped into the”M” symbol, but are never shown specifically. If “every textual variant” were shown in the footnotes, there would have to be over 8,000 variants shown since that is the total number of variants found by Dr. Jack Moorman. These are found in his book, 8000 Differences (BFT #3084 @ $20.00 + $7.00 S&H). This would take several volumes to contain “every reading.” How can James White be like this?

5. He said, further that “I have the textual data here.” He does not have ALL the data by any means. He said “I have the information right in front of me.” But it is only very, very partial and limited information.

6. He brings up Revelation 16:5 once again about HOSIOS to throw off the main discussion without answering Dr. Moorman’s 5500 manuscripts that all but 50 support the TR. Nor does he or the moderator let Dr. Moorman discuss the 105 places where the Gnostic Critical Text is weakly supported by very few Greek MSS.

7. The question was whether or not these differences are in minor things, or do they change the meaning of the text. White sidestepped this question and said “the vast majority of variations in the New Testament manuscripts do not in any way shape or form change the meaning. In fact, of the approximately 400,000 textual variants that exist in manuscript tradition, 99% of them you would not be able to explain what the difference is to the English speaker because it cannot be translated. So you have about 1% or about 4,000 meaningful variants which actually impact the meaning of the text. Of those, about 1500 to 2000 are viable, that is, they could be original . . . So you have about 1500 to 2000 that have to be examined and that might impact the meaning of the text. It’s very important.” The truth of the matter is that there are more than 356 doctrinal passages that change the meaning doctrinally. Almost 200 pages prove this in Dr. Moorman’s Early Manuscripts, Church Fathers, and the Authorized Version (BFT #3230 @ $20.00 + $7.00 S&H).

Too many books I'd like to have the money to buy and the time to read, sigh.

8. White lied when he pointed to the TR and the NA New Testaments and said: “If I take either of those two texts that Pastor Moorman has on the desk right there, and I apply the same translation procedure to those two books, I WILL NOT HAVE A DIFFERENT DOCTRINE OR TEACHING. I WILL NOT.” “I might have a different list of verses that support any one doctrine.” In fact, as I mentioned #7 above, there are 356 doctrinal passages that are in error on his Nestle/Aland text. This is a lie and a deception to his listeners.

9. When Dr. Moorman was answering this, White interrupted him and would not let him finish, nor give him equal time to reply. This is totally unfair for the moderator to have allowed this.

10. White lied when he said that rather than things being MISSING (as Dr. Moorman said). “You’ll never hear ADDED, and yet clearly there is added material in the expansion of titles in the Byzantine manuscripts.” This is false. It would have been impossible to have ADDED materials in these 5,500 manuscripts all over the world at different time periods and yet have the same words “added.” Yet REMOVAL was possible from the Vatican and Sinai kind of manuscripts.

You might not hear the actual word "added" but as I recall, Westcott and Hort clearly theorized that the passages that are missing from the Alexandrian texts but present in the Byzantines had to have been added at some point into the Byzantine line. What other choice is there? Either they were taken out of the Alexandrians or added into the Byzantines.

11. One questioner mentioned that in the Gnostic critical text, they “pervert the deity of Christ, take away from Him, remove the virgin birth, eliminate the Godhead, add works to salvation, support Jehovah’s Witness beliefs,” Then White interrupted and lied when he said (without letting Dr. Moorman reply), “That’s just not true.” Dr. Moorman said, “It most certainly is true!” White said, “That’s just not true.”

12. A question was asked about the dead sea scrolls. The moderator asked Dr. Moorman if he would like to comment on this. Dr. Moorman said it wasn’t an issue that we’re facing here tonight. White said “I think actually it is.”

13. Then White went on to say wrongly that the N.T. writers cited the Septuagint (LXX) rather than Hebrew Old Testament. In fact, there was no LXX in B.C. times, only in A.D. That is a serious lie that he makes. He then lies again by saying: “The dead sea scrolls demonstrate that the Septuagint translation has just as ancient moorings as the 1525 Bomberg Masoretic text that we have in Hebrew.” This is a total lie. White is exalts the Greek LXX to a par with God’s own Hebrew Old Testament Words. Shame on him! The LXX did not come into existence in B.C. but only in the 200's A.D. in Origen’s days. This putting of the LXX on an equal position (or even higher, perhaps) than the Hebrew Words which God Himself gave to us directly is serious heresy.

Now here I have to say that everything I've encountered on this subject puts Dr. Waite in the wrong. The Septuagint doesn't have to be regarded as on an equal footing with the Hebrew to be recognized as having existed before the New Testament was written, and some Septuagint writings WERE found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, clearly pre-Christian.

The Septuagint was translated by Jewish scholars more than three hundred years B.C. This is often a very important factor in debating the authenticity of the translation of the Hebrew "almah" as "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14, with anti-Christians who seek to disparage the New Testament as false on this basis among many others. I've encountered this debate in atheist discussions, evolutionist sites and Jewish anti-messianic sites. The fact that the Greek Septuagint has "parthenos" for "almah" is strong evidence in favor of the English "virgin" in the New Testament. There are other sources of evidence in pre-Christian Jewish writings that "virgin" was understood by them all along, but the Septuagint is a particularly accessible argument.

And some of the modern versions DO "remove the virgin birth" as the questioner said, by translating "almah" as "young woman," which agrees with all the New Testament debunkers I've encountered debating this issue.

I've run across the rejection of the Septuagint in fundamentalist KJVO circles before and it's always struck me as strange. Even the differences found between the Hebrew text and the New Testament rendering of those same passages can be somewhat explained as the result of translating the Greek of the Septuagint into Latin and then into English.

The New Testament writers obviously knew Greek. Also most Jews in the time of Christ lived scattered throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean area and many had completely lost their understanding of Hebrew, so it makes perfect sense that their scriptures would have been made available to them in Greek in that Hellenized world.

14. White tossed in Revelation 16:5 again as a distraction, yet never gave time for Dr. Moorman to answer it, though he has written on this very verse. He dealt with it in his Majority Text book which he could read for them, but they didn’t give him time to do this. See Dr. Moorman’s book, When the Majority Text Departs from the Authorized Version (BFT #1617 @ $25.00 + $7.00 S&H).

15. Dr. Moorman said that White had “not traversed MOUNT IMPASSABLE.” White said, “I believe I have.” Dr. Moorman said, “No you have not.” White has only two pillars, Vatican and Sinai and a few papyri, making maybe 50 MSS in all. That is it.

16. White then read off a list of words we don’t use or understand today. He should get the Defined King James Bible (BFT #3000) to clarify all of these words. Dr. Moorman said “there is 15.”

Yes, there are surprisingly few that could really be described as archaic, and I appreciated Dr. Moorman's point that often the KJV's wording captures the original meaning better than any of today's terms anyway.

17. White lied when he said that “The text of the Byzantine manuscript tradition is not what you find in those first centuries. It is the Alexandrian manuscripts that have that most primitive text.” The TR goes back to the apostolic text as to its words, though the date of the material on which those words were written was more recent because of copying and recopying. Mark 16:9-20 defense proves this is true based on ancient versions, and early church fathers’ quotations.

18. Dr. Moorman makes an excellent point when he asked White how words could have been ADDED when the manuscripts were from many different countries and covered many different years. It would have been impossible to have ADDED these in the more than 5,500 manuscripts now in existence. The Vatican and Sinai have 2900 fewer words. How could you add these 2900 words? “That is your MOUNT IMPASSABLE” that White did not answer, nor could he answer, though he claimed he did answer.

19. White went back to 1 John 5:7-8 as a distraction and did not answer HOW 2900 words could have been ADDED rather than what actually took place. These 2900 words were subtracted in Vatican and Sinai.

Burgon has evidence for this.

20. White lied again when he said that “if the KJB translators had the Vatican and Sinai manuscripts, they would have used them.” In point of fact, the KJB translators knew of these false MSS and rejected them. They would not have used them in any way. They knew them to be false.

Certainly what I've learned. If it's in Burgon I'll find it.

21. Robert Marsh’s question was cut off and he could not finish it. He was about to ask how James White accounts for the 356 doctrinal passages in his Gnostic Critical Greek Text.

22. In his 2-minute summation, White gave an erroneous statement when he talked about the real issue here which is:. “What did the inspired apostles originally write?” The apostles were not “inspired.” This shows White’s total ignorance of what “inspiration” really means. While Job 32:8 uses this word, 2 Timothy 3:16 is the only place in the New Testament where the word, “inspiration” occurs. Here it is defined exactly. It makes “inspiration” limited to PASA GRAPHE (“every word”) in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek which were “given by inspiration of God” or “God-breathed.” It is ridiculous to have MEN GOD-BREATHED. God did not breathe out MEN, but WORDS.

OK, point taken, basically a grammatical point.

23. He brings up Revelation 16:5 again as a distraction.

24. White said that if Pastor Moorman’s position is correct on the KJB, “Christians for 1600 years could not claim to have had the full word of God. How can that be? That’s simply not a viable alternative.” (simply because of his Revelation 16:5 and a few other verses).

25. White gives a horrific lie about the Greek Words underlying the KJB when he said, the New Testament was preserved, but “It was not preserved in one particular text that had to come into existence in 1611.” In this statement he repeated his lie mentioned before, that Dr. Frederick Scrivener translated his Greek text from the King James Bible. This is false to history and fact. In truth, Dr. Scrivener used the Greek edition of Beza’s 5 edition of 1598. Scrivener did not “back-translate” from the KJV to Greek as White, James Price, and heretic Gail Riplinger have all falsely claimed.

I thought it was Erasmus who supposedly "back-translated" -- in any case the source of the information needs to be produced for whatever the claim is.

But I didn't really get what White was saying about preservation and I'm not sure Waite has understood him either. I thought he was basically just stating the idea that God's preservation has to cover all the legitimate manuscripts, not just one particular set. But of course I don't consider the Alexandrians to be "legitimate." And maybe I still haven't understood what he meant anyway.