Wed 28 Jun 2006
I’ve added another as well, Evangelical Textual Criticism. I’m not exactly sure how textual criticism can be characterized by “Evangelical” (which I suppose is meant to disincline us from thinking it “liberal” or “neorthodox” or some other label). I’m sure that the participants there don’t simply offer evidence if it fits an evangelical agenda. That little quibble aside, do take a look as it’s a fine resource.
July 5th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Thanks for noticing ETC. We hope that it is a useful resource for anyone interested in the manuscripts and textual history of the Bible. I don’t think the “Evangelical” bit is meant to be too complicated. It has two basic elements. Firstly re the bloggers themselves: “The membership of this blog is made up of evangelicals involved in academic study of textual criticism.” Secondly in terms of the subject matters discussed on the blog: “This is a forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.”
July 11th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
I was wondering the same thing myself when I visited the blog prior to seeing your posting here. I found one of their supplementary link (http://www.evangelicaltextualcriticism.com/) helpful in defining what is meant by “historic evangelical theology,” which could certainly be defined a number of ways. On this page, they list some of the characteristics of their understanding of a distinctly evangelical approach to textual criticism:
“-It holds that Scripture consists of specific words that God has given.
-It holds that the words given by God were Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament.
-It approaches the task of identifying the words given by God with reverence and therefore caution.
-It approaches the task of identifying the words given by God with a confidence in God’s provision.”
From reading that, I understand they would consider inerrancy to be part of historic evangelical theology and that this informs their TC work. Please correct me if I’m wrong there.
Just thought I would share because it was a point I was contemplating myself.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Thanks Patrick,
Firstly, ETC is a co-operative or team blog, so I can’t really speak for all the ETC bloggers.
Secondly, the team consists of British, European, Australian, North American and Israeli bloggers; of diverse church confessional settings; so it is not our intention to be particularly doctrinaire in our approach. “Historic evangelical theology” defined by reference to reformation creeds and confessions seems perfectly adequate and not overly limiting. Thirdly, in the light of the above, if we don’t chose to use the word “inerrancy”, then it may not be a term that would be regarded as a useful one for all ETCers. The purpose of the blog is to do textual criticism, not to produce ever more precise definitions of the exact nature and implications of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. [Perhaps it might be hoped that the actual phenomena of Scripture are taken more fully into account in such discussions, but this may be a personal rather than a bloggish conviction.] Fourthly, we have discussed this sort of thing, especially in some of the early posts setting up the blog and it seems to me that there is a general consensus that our doctrine of Scripture should not control our text critical work (I doubt that you’d find much support for the NIVs treatment of John 7.8 among us).
So, if I may I would like to correct your final statement. It would be more correct that say that we/they would consider the divine inspiration of Scripture to be part of historic evangelical theology and that this belief motivates, informs, but does not control our/their TC work.
I should also note that we are not always serious, although we generally are pretty pedantic.
I hope this is helpful.
August 8th, 2006 at 10:59 am
I am happy for the correction! Thank you.