Plenary Inspiration
A common core tennat of conservative Christianity is acknowledging the Holy Bible as the Word of God. Consider the example below from a typical Statement of Faith:
"We believe in the verbal and plenary inspiration, inerrancy, and divine authority of the Holy Bible. It is the completed special revelation of God to man and is comprised of the 66 books recognized as the Protestant Canon."
The term 'Plenary' means that our faith of Scripture as the Word of God includes ALL the Scriptures, not just some of them. This prohibits readers from evaluating some passages as out of date, and denies that historic or scientific information is outside of the scope of inerrancy.
Canon - This plenary inclusion of all of Scripture must also be related to a Canon of Scripture, but this will be the same for all Protestant Canon Bibles. Canon will only vary for denominationally-specific Bibles (Intro to Apocrypha).
Inclusion / Exclusion - The importance of plenary inspiration must also relate, however, to manuscript differnences which vary by inclusion/exclusion of some New Testament passages, which Majority Text manuscripts include, but some Critical Text (CT) Bibles exclude or mark as questionable. There are three such passages:
- The last several verses of the Book of Mark (Mark 16:9-20)
- The explanation portion of the account of the healing at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:3-4)
- The account of the woman caught in adultry (John 7:53-8:11).
These three passages above should be included in the main text (not in a footnote), but may be presented in Italics or encapsulated by brackets. If marked as doubtful, they should be footnoted.
Minor Changes - There are also over a dozen passages where a few words or phrases are in question and are omitted or marked as doubtful by most CT Bibles. The majority of these words or phrases are duplicates of parallel or earlier verses and are without good manuscript support, and are also of little or no impact to the meaning of the given passage. Manuscript Comparisons TR-MT-CT (Table of 81-verses compared). For my Bible Reviews, any 'questionable' words or phrases supported by Majority Texts should be included, or at least footnoted. One exceptional distinction is 1 John 5:7-8, which has become a high-profile concern.
Johannine Comma - I do not require inclusion of the extended version of this passage in CT Bibles, and here's why.
The extended text is not found in any Greek mss (at all) before 16th C., but is found in some Old Latin and Latin Vulgate mss. The third edition of Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum Omne (TR, 1522) was supplemented by a contemporary (1520) manuscript, Codex Montfortianus (GA #61), specifically for the extended text of 1 John 5:7-8, which was not in any of his existing manuscripts, and which Erasmus himself rejected as non-authentic in his "Annotationes." Furthermore, Bruce Metzger, in his "A Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament" says, "That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain..." and goes on to detail a very solid case for the opinion. Even my old KJV Scofield Bible (Scofield notes 1909, 1917) gives the following note on the passage, "It is generally agreed that v. 7 has no real authority, and has been inserted."
On the other hand, I do require inclusion of the extended version of this passage in TR-based Bibles, because 1) it is in the TR manuscripts and because 2) Some people who hold exclusively to KJV Bibles find inclusion of the long version of this passage very important.
Therefore, when reviewing Bibles, my standards for this particular passage are thus:
- Any KJV-friendly (TR-based) Bible must include the extended text of 1 John 5:7-8,
but may note its doubtful origin.
- Any CT Bible should use the shorter text, and hopefully will include a footnote.
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