Seminary - Textual Criticism 3

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12. I think I had Wang in my second year. He and Oswalt taught the courses that exposed us to scholarship on the New and Old Testament, respectively. I'll return to them after some more thoughts on my first year at Asbury.

I mentioned earlier that learning about different personality types and Myers-Briggs was very beneficial to me. Today everyone is into Enneagrams, but they seem much more of a pop phenomenon to me, like a horoscope. To me, they are like Star Wars and Myers-Briggs is more like Star Trek. :-)

That some people recharge by getting alone (introverts) and others by getting around people (extroverts) seems to match reality. I have found the N (intuitive) - S (sensing) distinction incredibly descriptive of me and of others who are not like me. The N is more big picture and abstract. The S is more detailed and concrete.

Thinkers (T) and feelers (F) again aptly describes people who make decisions based on what they think is logical and those who follow more their values. That some people insist on closure (J - judging) and others are more open-ended (P - perceiving) is again very descriptive.

I have found these categories immensely helpful in describing human behavior. I do not take it as absolute. These letters just give labels to the way people tend to behave.

13. I believe it was also in my first semester that I had Stan Beck as something like a psychological mentor. I don't remember what they were called but I think there was a kind of psychological assessment that was part of every student's path through the MDIV.

We used to joke about his frankness on personal matters. It was like he would bluntly say sensitive words to see how we would react. In the dorm (I was in Grice) we would imitate him. "Why do you laugh when I say ...?" I think his assessment of me was that my development was a little slower than average. Then again, he also reminded me a little of the "Stuart Smalley" skit on SNL with Michael Jordan.

I did three supervised ministries while at Asbury, I think. At least one needed to be in a church. At least one needed to be in some other sort of ministry context. I think I did the one as youth minister for my home church in Fort Lauderdale in the summer. I believe Everett Putney was still pastor, although my sister Sharon would soon take over.

As a fun side note, there were some in my church that had convictions about eating in the sanctuary. I don't remember the basis but it might have been 1 Corinthians 11. The church in Fort Lauderdale had added on its back section as an expansion. So there was actually a step-down hall way that marked the barrier between the sanctuary and the Sunday school rooms and children's church.

Growing up, we had fellowship meals in the children's church area. Since it was set apart by the hallway, that seemed to satisfy the need for separation. But some were still uncomfortable, I believe, because it was still under the same roof. In the end, a duplex was purchased behind the church. When I was youth pastor, it was still two apartments. Eventually they would make it into an ACE school and my brother-in-law Dalbert would be the principal.

14. I did another supervised ministry at Harrodsburg Nursing Home. Those were some interesting days. I remember a 104 year old woman who always sat in the hallway. I tried to ask her historical questions but she said, "Honey, I hurt all over. I don't remember anything." Incidentally, while I'm thinking of it, I rode next to a Russian woman on the Eurostar in the spring of 1995 who had been the son of an Russian ambassador to Britain in the early days of communist Russia. [2] She had memories of seeing Anastasia and the Czar's family inside the grounds before they were executed.

I remember one lady who wasn't quite all there. She asked me once if I had time for a "quicky." On another occasion, I happened to be passing by her room when I heard her talking to herself scooting across the floor. "I'm going to the bathroom. I'm going to the bathroom. Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me."

I did my case study on the question of whether one should play along with a person with dementia or if you should correct them. I decided in general to play along. I think Beck may have been my supervisor for this one.

That reminds me of a Deep Thought by Jack Handy, something like "When John told me that he was on a deserted island enjoying a beautiful sunset, it took me quite a while to convince him that, no, he was in a straight jacket in a padded room in an insane asylum." When I was a teaching fellow, Bill Patrick and I used to read deep thought after deep thought. Bill used to make fun of me because of one lunch at Ramses in Lexington when, after a deep thought I exclaimed in the despondency of my inferiority, "He's a master."

15. I took textual criticism my second semester with Bob Lyon. I believe Dave Smith was in that class with me. I would never really become part of Lyon's "LO society." By the time I decided to join, it had become popular, which wasn't really what he was going for. The idea was the British concept of "loyal opposition," those who push back against the majority. A trendy LO society was of no interest to Lyon.

I was still in the early stages of my journey out of fundamentalism. Except for Cinderella in the fifth grade, the first movie I ever attended in the cinema was in my first year at Asbury. I went with my roommate Stewart Fowler and a couple others to see Dream Team.

Lyon was quite the champion of social justice. He was pushing compassion toward gay individuals before there was much discussion. I knew a student at Asbury, by the way, that came out of a gay background and ended up marrying and having children.

There was a team Lyon had for intermurals, the NeRPs (non-recruitable players). I did basketball intramurals and was a dangerous person to have on the floor. I was very fast and I could do a lay up on a fast break, but I could also accidentally knock someone out of the air in a dangerous way. I was on the floor when someone else caused Chris Bounds to break his ankle with similar antics.

Chris, of course, should never have been playing for the NERPs. He was an incredibly good basketball player. With him on the team, they began winning games. Before, the expectation was that they would lose every game.

16. Bob was a known textual scholar. I was impressed that he was footnoted as the pre-eminent scholar of Codex Ephraemi in Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament. His course in textual criticism marked my transition from the King James Version to modern translations of the Bible.

Frankly there was a little peer pressure involved. After class one day, I asked Lyon a question once that revealed my background and he casually asked, "Are you a closet Textus Receptus man?" Like Peter, I denied it. :-) [1]

Textual criticism looks at two types of evidence. The first is external evidence based on manuscripts. The second is internal evidence that uses common sense--which original reading would best explain how other variations arose. I was not convinced in the end by external evidence. Families of manuscripts like Alexandrian, Western, Caesarian seemed like somewhat of a circular argument.

But the logic of internal evidence seems unassailable. Applying the logic of internal evidence to the variations of the manuscripts generally leads to the readings of modern versions. That is to say, using common sense tends to go against the text of the King James. The grouping of manuscripts seems to align with the results of internal evidence. The so called "Alexandrian" tradition tends to be older and to align with the cumulative results of following the internal evidence. The Byzantine tradition is later and looks like the end result of a long process of textual tidying.

Indeed, the textus receptus is a cleaner, more tidied text. It is a text fit for worship, like what results after something has been perfected for long term public consumption. This is what we would expect at the end of a process of standardization. We expect history to comb the hair of the material, not to mess it up. Thus the position of the vast majority of textual scholars fits the big picture common sense of internal evidence.

17. Take the ending of Mark. The oldest manuscripts don't have the verses after 16:8. Modern textual criticism would say that the best manuscripts do not have 16:9-20. But what convinced me was the internal evidence. The story starts over at 16:9 and it is told in a different way than before. It looks like different material.

I am acquainted with some very smart people who believe 16:9-20 was original. They have very sophisticated and ingenious arguments. But the most likely answer, the one that tries to be objective and follows the evidence to its most obvious conclusion, is that these verses were added later because 16:8 didn't seem like an appropriation conclusion. We can understand why someone would add 16:9-20. It is much harder to imagine why someone would remove it.

[1] The textus receptus refers to the "received text" that was based on the text of Greek New Testament that Erasmus put together in 1516. It is the Greek text behind the King James Version.

[2] The Eurostar is the train that goes through the chunnel back and forth between London and Paris. That particular trip, I believe, was back from Paris to London.