Restoring the Original Bible - by Ernest L. Martin

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Here is the fuller quote of E.:
"1. Since we are dealing with this subject it is proper to sum up the writings of the New Testament which have been already mentioned. First then must be put the holy quaternion of the Gospels;
2 following them the Acts of the Apostles.
3. After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; 4 next in order the extant former epistle of John, 5 and likewise the epistle of Peter, 6 must be maintained. 6a After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, "

I'd like for you who read this thread to look at the above carefully, and slowly. Then go to the full quote posted by Richard.

Now, notice this. IF we follow this reasoning, then Eusebius gives us something we don't accept today. I.e. An incomplete list of the accepted canon of the NT. Following his statement we should only have:

1. Evangels
2. Acts
3. Paul
4. I John
5. I Peter
6. Apocalypse/ Revelation.

Interestingly, if you read the whole thing, E. is giving us the "accepted" books of his day by the Latin Church, NOT the list of books that existed in the various Greek text manuscripts. And, if we continue to follow the above then our Bible today should be 39 OT books and 9 NT books. We know that is not correct.

So, quoting E. here does not answer the question. The manuscripts themselves, are found in the order Dr. Martin discovered, not created on his own. And, the highest of textual "producers" Tregelles, Lachmann, Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf, show the same. The ancient order within the manuscripts places the General Epistles after Acts, not Paul's. Now, on the other hand, it they are wrong on that, we ought to dump them as sources for they must have goofed on other parts of their works. We should return to the 9 books listed by E. and be happy with that, right?

Eusebius is simply giving his understanding at the time of what the Latin Church accepted. Even Augustine states that the canonization was done in the "days of the Apostles", not in the days after that. Again, please go to the url given by Richard and read what Eusebius wrote abut what he was giving us in this section of his writings.

Hey there student,

I never said that the order presented by Eusebius was the "correct" order! I quoted him to prove that Martin was wrong when he said that Jerome introduce a "new and radical placement" when he listed Romans after Acts. It was not "new." It existed before Jerome was born.

And as for your assertion that the manuscript order was the "original" and therefore "correct" order - that too is an error. Neither you nor I nor anyone else knows which order of the NT books was "original" and for that matter, we all know there was no "original" order because the order was established over time after the books were completed. And besides that, there are VARIATIONS in the manuscript order, and no one has any evidence which one of those variations is "correct" or "proper" as Martin stated it.

Richard

[student1]

Of course Dr. Martin used the book. And, dozens of others. Including traveling to various libraries in Europe, etc. to read manuscripts that are not in print today, nor in some cases, not available to the public without traveling to the libraries, or in some cases having permission.

By the way, two things. In Moffatt's chart two of the sections include the order Dr. Martin presents.

And, I also suggest that those who think the chart is the end all be all of the debate, I suggest highly they read the text before and after the charts, and the footnotes!!! And, for those who have an interest notice which category of manuscripts have the "correct" manuscript order.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Actually, no I did not get anything from your article since it is not the source of the information we are discussing.

I have read your refutation. Bluntly, it is off the wall and is incorrect. You are trying to stand on an elephant created by you, which is not the discussion at all. You are trying to make a totally misunderstood and twisted statement into an elephant to ignore the other material. Leave Martin out of this and your absurd false criticisms of him, especially since he is now gone and cannot defend himself.

There's one little error in your comment (highlight red). You failed to support it with any evidence whatsoever. You have not shown a word of what I have written to be wrong or "off the wall." Do you realize how weak your argument looks when you make statements like that without providing any evidence?

Here are the points that you need to refute if you want to continue in your assertion that my refutation is "off the wall and incorrect."

1. Martin was wrong when he asserted that Jerome introduced a "new and radical placement" when he placed Romans as the first epistle. We know he was wrong because that order existed before Jerome was born. It also is found in many other early sources that predate Jerome.
2. Martin completely ignored the numerous VARIATIONS in the early orders of the NT, even though he cited the table listing them in his footnote. He merely ASSERTED WITHOUT EVIDENCE that the order he prefered was the "proper" order. Such assertions are the antithesis of genuine scholarship.
3. Martin also INVENTED an entirely new way of grouping the OT books when he asserted that Joshua was counted along with Judges "before the 2nd century." Check his book - he gave no EVIDENCE for that assertion as far as I could find and I searched dilligently for it because I knew that I had never read such a thing anywhere in the literature after two decades of research.

That's enough for now. If you can not refute those three points, then my refutation of Martin's book stands.

Now, as to your article of refutation, which it isn't. I started off by saying let's stick with one point because too many become confusing. Let's go back to one step at a time.

Whether or NOT you believe Dr. Martin's whole thesis falls because you falsely claim he stated he was restoring what was not in existance before, which is a diversion not a real fact against, can you disprove the first point?
Were the original number of the OT books 22 or not?

Can you disprove Josephus? Can you disprove Eusebius? Can you disprove that the oldest canon was 22 in Hebrew until changed when translated later into Greek, LXX? If not, then we must agree with 22 as the oldest accepted order by the Jews who were placed in charge of the oldest and original "oracles". And, can you disprove the Cat. Ency. which shows 22, the Jewish Ency. 22, and on and on? Please, stick to that one point first. Then, when you "disprove" the original 22, let's go on to tackle the 27 books of the NT and their textual order, not the partial "accepted order" of Eusebius, and the expanded changed order of Jerome.

I aleady agreed that there is no need to belabor the issue about "restoring" that which has never existed. I am much more interested in the substantial errors that I have presented and that you have yet to refute.

Now as for your question: Why would I want to refute Josephus? What does that have to do with Martin's errors? And why would I want to disprove Eusebius? He supports my argument.

But here is an interesting question you asked: "Can you disprove that the oldest canon was 22 in Hebrew until changed when translated later into Greek, LXX? If not, then we must agree with 22 as the oldest accepted order by the Jews who were placed in charge of the oldest and original "oracles"."

Two points:

1) I can no more "disprove" it than you can "prove" it. The simple fact is that history has not given us that knowledge. But note, nothing I say depends on the "original order." I'm not the one saying that God's Book has been disorderd for nearly 2000 years.


2) As I have already shown in the article that I linked which you probably didn't read (The Christian OT and the Jewish Tanakh), there are reasons to believe that there was no "original order" but that there were competing orders in the OT when the LXX was translated. Here is the a snippet from that article:

These observations are confirmed by F.F. Bruce in his excellent book The Canon of Scripture , in which he noted that there were probably two canonical structures held amongst the Jews before the advent of Christ:

The order of books in copies of the Septuagint which have come down to us differs from the traditional order of the Hebrew Bible, and lies behind the conventional order of the Christian Old Testament. The law, comprising the five books of Moses, comes first in both traditions; it is followed by the historical books, poetical and wisdom books, and the books of the prophets. As with the Hebrew Bible, so with the Septuagint, the order of books is more fluid when they are copied on separate scrolls than when they are bound together in codices [see The Scroll versus the Codex]. But there is not reason to think that the Christian scribes who first copied the Septuagint into codices devised a new sequence for its contents; it is more likely that they took over the sequence along with the text itself. It has been held indeed that the Septuagint order represents an early Palestinian order of the books in the Hebrew Bible, contemporary with, and possibly even antedating, the Hebrew order which became traditional. The evidence is too scanty for any certainty to be attained on this matter.

F. W. Bush presented the general scholastic consensus as supporting the "two canon" theory in his review of the position of Ruth in the canon in his book Ruth and Esther in the Word Biblical Commentary (page 8):

The implications for our question are obvious. The testimony of the ancient authorities cited above demonstrates that both arrangements of the canon — that with Ruth among the Prophets after Judges and that with Ruth among the Writings immediately before Psalms — existed among the Jews of Palestine, dating at least earlier than the first two centuries a.d. (see Beckwith, Canon, 181–222). It is simply no longer possible to posit that Ruth was moved to the Prophets by hellenized Jews whose canon is reflected in the Septuagint. It can only be the case that these different arrangements of the Prophets and the Writings arose among different elements of the Jewish community and existed side by side at least until the time of Jerome, late fourth century A.D.. How the one arrangement later became exclusive to the rabbinic tradition as reflected in the Talmud and the other to the stream of tradition ultimately reflected in the Septuagint is simply unknown. Nor do we have any information to decide which of the two may be earlier or original.

And of course, this is but a small sample of the vast mountain of evidence that proves Martin's assertions to be false and unfounded. When I read his book, I was astounded how willing he was to just make things up without any proof whatsoever. And that's why I speak so strongly. It is a crime for biblical teachers to willfully mislead and misinform their students.

Richard

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Of course Dr. Martin used the book. And, dozens of others. Including traveling to various libraries in Europe, etc. to read manuscripts that are not in print today, nor in some cases, not available to the public without traveling to the libraries, or in some cases having permission.

By the way, two things. In Moffatt's chart two of the sections include the order Dr. Martin presents.

And, I also suggest that those who think the chart is the end all be all of the debate, I suggest highly they read the text before and after the charts, and the footnotes!!! And, for those who have an interest notice which category of manuscripts have the "correct" manuscript order.

You still have not dealt with the fact that Martin asserted that one particular order out of all those variations was the "correct" and "original" and "proper" order.

Did he provide any evidence to support that assertion? No - the only thing he did was INVENT the absurd claim that Jerome crafted the other order to "exalt Rome."

If you want to support Martin, you need to do what he failed to do - present EVIDENCE for his claims.

Richard

[student1]

Hey Ram,

I see you can't let go of ignoring the sources that show there were 22 books of the OT. So far you've knocked Jerome, who said there was, Eusebius, Josephus, and a bunch of others.

I wondered how long it would be for you to bring up Judges, Ruth, etc.

I also noticed how you avoided the 22 books by saying neither you nor I could prove it. That is a blatant cop-out, for anyone who has done any studying knows the books were 22, and then expanded to 24 later. Although, that is not to say 2 new books were added, just that books already there were divided to give a count of 24.

And, Dr. Martin as you should have known if you read his book showed that the Byzantine Text still to this day has the order Dr. Martin mentions. I suppose they got it from Dr. Martin who must have created it out of whole cloth and then somehow sent it back in time a bunch of centuries. When you claim this is his order you are blatantly making a falsehood my friend. You seem to want to argue against Martin as a person. And, you saying you do that because he was a teacher you claim is wrong, and of course you are right, doesn't hold water. If Martin made it all up why is that Text in the order he presents, and if it is made up, how did the four you wish to ignore come up with it? Did they jump into the future and read Dr. Martin and then run back in time and present that? No, I don't think so. It is you at fault here.

Now, Dr. Martin was an honest man. You say otherwise. I knew him for decades, you read his book rapidly. His research, like all research in this world of fighting Christians is not accepted by everyone. Nor, I suspect is your BibleWheel.

Pope Damasus I commissioned the Greek and Latin Scholar Eusebius Hieronymus (also known as Jerome) in 383 AD to revise the Gospels of the Old Latin Bible. Jerome's major contribution to the Latin versions was his later translation of the OT directly from the Hebrew text. Scholars use Jerome's version for textual criticism, claiming it reflects the pronunciation and text of Biblical Hebrew of the late fourth century AD.

Jerome made a first revision of the Psalms (Roman Psalter) based on the LXX while living in Rome in 383 AD. Some time after Damasus' death in 385AD, Jerome completed a second revision of the Psalms titled the Gallican Psalter from Origen's Hexapla. It reflected his desire to bring the Psalms more in line with the Hebrew text. He allegedly revised the entire Old Testament from the Hexapla; only the text of Job and fragments of Proverbs, Son of Solomon and Ecclesiastes have survived. He soon found working from the Hexapla unsatisfactory and realized the Hebrew text was vastly superior (cf. Sparks, The Cambridge of the Bible, vol. 1, pp. 513-515, 518-521, 531; Würthwein, p. 96).

....The general distrust of Jerome's work by the majority of his fellow theologians, including Agugustine, might have persuaded him to consider carefully how far to deviate from the Old Latin text. In contradiction to popular belief, Jerome did not revise several of the OT apocryphal books (Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of Solomon, and Maccabees) because he believed them to be non-canonical (Würthwein, pp. 96-97,99).

I suppose that is enough for the moment. With the above in mind, and more to come, one begins to wonder then, why Jerome admitted the 22 books, and that the Hebrew text was superior, but went with 39 instead.

[student1]

'The different order of the books in the English Bible is due to the fact that when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek-between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, the Hebrew tripartate division was disregarded, and the books (including those now known as the Apocrypha) were grouped mostly by subjects,... Substantially the same order was followed in the Vulgate.....
...This threefold division of the Old Testament, it cannot reasonably be doubted, rests upon an historical basis.' Ency. Brit. 11th. Ed. p. 850, Bible

It was disregarded. Now, why might that be? Is there a Scripture somewhere that said to change it? Or, did men take it upon themselves to 'disregard' the accepted number.

Prio to this quote the Ency. lists the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures and how they were combined into 24 books, which is the later number I believe already mentioned.

And, as RAM indicates, falsely, that Martin based his info or list on the 24 books of the Medieval Jewish authorities. Prior to that it is clear from Josephus, Jerome himself, Eusebius, and the others I listed, which RAM claims I got from his 'review', and there are another 10 or more Church 'fathers' who claim the same. They say 22, Martin says 22, but none of them are right for some strange reason. They must have somehow got ahold of Martin's book and took it back with them and all said Hey, Martin says 22.

As another author mentions, which I will have to find if need be, the change was done by the 'Christian church'. And, why would the 'Christian church' change the 'Jewish' order except there was some kind of onus on them in that order at the time because they were preserved by Jews? Looking at some of the early church history I don’t think many would argue that there was a prejudice against the Jews and anything to do with them because they 'had killed the Messish', and not our personal sins which demanded a penalty.

The question is, what gave Jerome a right to change the Hebrew Scriptures, or for that matter, any former Latin or Greek translator for the 'church'?

[student1]

I don't think Dr. Martin created this one:

http://www.christianbook.com/Christi...=2&action=Next

Give it a look if you can read the Greek. It is the order of the books which should be recognizeable.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I don't think Dr. Martin created this one:

http://www.christianbook.com/Christi...=2&action=Next

Give it a look if you can read the Greek. It is the order of the books which should be recognizeable.

Yes I can read Greek, and I recognize the order of NT books listed in that link is the same as the order that Martin prefered. But that is utterly irrelevent to this converation because I NEVER said that Martin invented the order of NT books that he used. On the contrary, I stated that he followed one of the variations amongst the early manuscript orders.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

“The different order of the books in the English Bible is due to the fact that when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek-between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, the Hebrew tripartate division was disregarded, and the books (including those now known as the Apocrypha) were grouped mostly by subjects,... Substantially the same order was followed in the Vulgate.....
...This threefold division of the Old Testament, it cannot reasonably be doubted, rests upon an historical basis.” Ency. Brit. 11th. Ed. p. 850, Bible

It was disregarded. Now, why might that be? Is there a Scripture somewhere that said to change it? Or, did men take it upon themselves to “disregard” the accepted number.

It was the Jews themselves who produced the LXX and since you claim that they had the "authority" to arrange the books, then by your own argument they had the authority to "rearrange" them.

And the article you cited is mere opinon. No one knows much about the exact history of the development of the canon. It is shrouded in much mystery because they didn't write down what they did. And that's another one of the primary errors that you will find throughout Martin's work. He continuously claimed to have knowledge that he simply did not have. For example, he claimed that the book of Joshua was counted as one with Judges, but he never produced any evidence to support that claim, and neither have you.

As it stands, I have presented a number of points in which Martin made factual errors and unsupported assertions. You have not proven a sinlge statement of mine false as yet.

And that's the status of this discussion for those interested.

Richard

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Prio to this quote the Ency. lists the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures and how they were combined into 24 books, which is the later number I believe already mentioned.

And, as RAM indicates, falsely, that Martin based his info or list on the 24 books of the Medieval Jewish authorities. Prior to that it is clear from Josephus, Jerome himself, Eusebius, and the others I listed, which RAM claims I got from his “review”, and there are another 10 or more Church “fathers” who claim the same. They say 22, Martin says 22, but none of them are right for some strange reason. They must have somehow got ahold of Martin's book and took it back with them and all said Hey, Martin says 22.

NOT ONE OF THOSE SOURCES you mention actually listed the exact sequence of the 22 books. Nobody knows the exact order or content of them, though most folks (myself included) believe it includes all the books that we now count as 39 - but apparently not in any fixed order.

My claim about Martin following the order of medieval Rabbis is supported by the fact that the order of the Tanakh was not fixed in its modern form until then. The oldest existing mss of the Tanakh is called the Leningrad Codex, and it has a number of books in a different order than the modern rabbinical version that Martin follows:

Modern Rabbinic Order:
Psalms, Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (1&2).

Leningrad Codex:
Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, The Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah.

Just look at the differences from Martin's "original order" - the differences are HUGE.

And while we are talking about the "correct order" it should be mentioned that the modern Jewish order is manifestly incorrect because it places Chronicles anachronistically after Ezra/Nehemiah! What do we need, a neon sign?

The Christian Bible is manifestly superior in all ways. Just take a look at its divine perfection as compared to the complete lack of symmetry of the Tanakh:



And that's just the Old Testament! When the New Testament is included, we arrive at the most amazing discovery - sevenfold symmetric perfection:

As another author mentions, which I will have to find if need be, the change was done by the “Christian church”. And, why would the “Christian church” change the “Jewish” order except there was some kind of onus on them in that order at the time because they were preserved by Jews? Looking at some of the early church history I don’t think many would argue that there was a prejudice against the Jews and anything to do with them because they “had killed the Messish”, and not our personal sins which demanded a penalty.

"The Christian Church" was originally entirely Jewish. And they are the ones who translated and ordered the LXX. So blame them if you wanna blame somebody for producing God's Book with the most amazing sevenfold symmetric perfection ever seen.

The question is, what gave Jerome a right to change the Hebrew Scriptures, or for that matter, any former Latin or Greek translator for the “church”?

There you go again. You have not proven that "Jerome" did anything.

Let's just stick to the facts. No more "psychic archeology," OK?

On the positive side, I admire your perseverence, and hope you continue. But it would be a lot more fun if you tried to actually deal with the specific points that I have raised. Here are a couple off the top of my head:

• Martin erred when he attributed the Christian order to Jerome.
• Martin failed to support his assertion about Joshua/Judges being counted as one book

Richard