A Few Leftover Scattered Notes on the Moorman-White Debate

Remembering more of the debate. I'll listen again if it's made available.

Happened to run across Burgon's reference to the finding of Sinaiticus in a waste basket in a convent, in his Revision Revised. Now I can't find where he said that although I thought I'd marked the page -- senior moment I guess. But he certainly did say it. The point of course is that James White said in the debate that this common belief is false, that no manuscript was found in a waste basket, so now it remains for someone to come along and prove it one way or the other by quoting from the writings of its finder.

FOUND IT: page 319 of Revision Revised, with a footnote to the source in Tischendorf's description of its discovery, p. 23. Don't have that document of course so it still remains to find the actual statement in it.

Another thing I remember from the debate is White's concern to answer the leaving out of references to the deity of Christ in the Alexandrian texts and the Bibles based on them, by identifying one place where they affirm His deity that the KJV doesn't. This simply obscures the fact that many such references ARE missing from the Alexandrians that are present in the KJV, not to mention whole passages that are also missing.

Then he objected to the description of any passages as "missing" at all because this implies a standard, the KJV and its Textus Receptus of course, from which they are missing. From his point of view this would be begging the question although from the other point of view his objection is an insupportable usurpation of the prior claim of the KJV to be the standard. The reasoning in support of the KJV as the standard seems to me to be irrefutable, as Moorman elucidated at the very beginning of the debate. If I get to hear it again I'll take notes.

White also said that describing them as "added" is misleading as well, but really, either they were subtracted or they were added, there are no other alternatives, and Westcott and Hort did theorize that they were added into the Byzantine line, since they take the Alexandrians as the standard. There is really no choice, you take one or the other line as the standard.

Another point I just remembered: White says he isn't in favor of all the different Bible versions, which was good to hear, and that the reason for so many is that the different publishing companies would rather produce their own than pay for another's.

He didn't mention the point I've heard and repeated here that all the gratuitous changes are due to the requirement that each version be different enough from the others to qualify for copyright.

What a horrendous mess all this is. It shouldn't be talked about casually it seems to me, but exposed as a great evil.

One more thing, White said that the KJV translators did not know anything about the Alexandrian type of manuscript. I thought Moorman said something that implied that they did but I'm not sure. White insists that if they had they'd have welcomed and used it. HIGHLY unlikely if you grasp any of Burgon's criticism of them.