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Having being away for a period of time it is amazing what a few well placed questions can do. My absence has clearly sparked some soul searching and the usual endless ad hominem attacks. No one I see has lept to Joseph's defense in answering any of my questions. I know Joseph is obsessed with this issue (see his numerous blog entries) and is frustrated at me for not stating my own views. However, as all will accept he was the one who held himself up as an authority on this subject and I merely tested his claims by cutting and pasting the replies of Brandenburg and his friends from DBS and FEBC. It seems he cannot answer them and has satisfied himself that ridiculing GAR and friends leads to the conclusion that he has swept away the TR/KJV movement by his paralyzing intellect.

Any substantive Systematic Theologian can see the axiom that Canonicity and Preservation must be linked. After all, the books of the Canon are made up of the Words of the Canon! Joseph agrees that the Spirit guided the Church but then tries to argue that He failed to do so for the Words. Any attempt to argue for a presuppositional framework for the canon must ergo include one for the Words. I can see that the application of this by Brandenburg to the TR could be argued about, but the presuppositional premise must be admitted. Joseph has no biblical presuppositions to counteract them and so the KJVO group win by default. All Joseph can do is whine about how Christ supposedly cited the Septuagint as Scripture (without admitting that by arguing so Joseph slips in a few explosive presuppositions on inerrancy) and then fills the rest of his posts with pejorative adjectives against the KJVO movement. Frankly his argumentation has so many holes that it brings to mind Dante's Divina Commedia "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

Joseph - put your toys back in the pram. Now, you say that Brandenburg and his friends have not shown how the Scriptures guide them to the TR. Alright, we will take you at your word. You can wear the big boys pants today and show these redneck fideistic theologians how the Bible guides us to know that the latest edition of the Critical Text contains all the Perfect Words of God today. I suspect we will wait a long time before you produce that if your past entries are a harbinger! You are correct that "Things that are different are not the same" but unfortunately for you the Canon cannot be distinguished from the Words as the Canon is a 66 Book Canon of Words! That is the whole point of Brandenburg's argument and so far you have managed to provide nothing of substance to rebut him. It is difficult to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent!

Secondly, you say that the attempt by Brandenburg and his friends to link Canonicity of the Words with Preservation of the Words is "diametrically opposed" to the "teachings n practice" of Christ and the Apostles. Now that sounds very much to me that you have a chunk of Scriptural presuppositions and evidences to back up your claim. Do you have even a single verse that shows that either Christ or the Apostles taught that the method the Church would receive the Words of Scripture would be different from the Canon? May be an Augustinian Book of Retractions is in order!

Euthymius - It is good to see that you have actually decided to interact with my points, unlike Joseph, Scott, etc. I note it was not primarily exegetical considerations that moved you to reject the perfect preservation case but as you say "the facts demonstrate." You have been driven to your conclusions not by Scripture (by your own admission), but because of the necessity to avoid, at all costs, accepting perfect preservation of the Old Testament autographs in the apograph copies through a transmission process more than a millennia since Moses and the New Testament autographs to us. Ultimately, this position begins with textual criticism restricting the doctrinal view from hindering the "evidence" to lead us into the "truth" concerning the Words. This view exemplifies the modern-day practice of taking a position because it "makes rationalistic sense" and so the advocates are willing to slight the character of Christ so they do not offend their "reason." This position typifies those who oppose perfect preservation in that they go first to history and then to Scripture to attempt to explain away passages on preservation and availability. This view of preservation is the new post-enlightenment unscriptural position that all of the doctrines of scripture have been preserved, not the Words.

If Joseph Ng (note now he is running away from his Septuagint claims) wishes to maintain that the statements of Christ were based on errant manuscripts, then the burden of theological proof lies on him. In making such a statement, one would imagine he would have explicit biblical teaching distinguishing the authority and reliability of the autographa and copies of them. One would also reasonably expect to make such a bold assertion that he would have least researched and seen extant manuscripts of any Biblical texts from the first century. However, he does not have a single Scriptural reference for this audacious claim or even a single copy of a first century manuscript. In fact what he argues explicitly contradicts what the Bible says as, for instance, God promised Isaiah, "Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever" (Isa 30:. It is interesting to note that although the Jews were accused of many things, the corruption of the Old Testament was never once suggested by either the Lord or the apostles! Believers should not try to adjust their theology to fit the exigencies of a non-biblical presupposition.

You should not keep arguing ad nauseum about the various editions of the TR. As I understand them, the position of Brandenburg, Strouse, Waite, FEBC, DBS etc is that God promised to preserve all of His Words not printed editions!! Just as the Church providentially received the Canon after 4 centuries and eventually settled on it after much debate so the parallel argument is that the Church received and settled on the Words. No other rival is in town that can demonstrate historic continuity and evidence providentially blessed spiritual fruits as the Settled Hebrew and Greek Words underlying the KJV. By contrast, the Critical Text is provisional even today and by the admission of its revisers does not reflect a historic position beyond the fourth century (at best!).

To pick up your some of your incidental myths (and it is frustrating dealing with amateurs in many of these debates), you should learn not to repeat stories by the latest James White sensational headline. The FACTS are that we do not have the notes of the KJV translators nor do we have access to all the manuscripts that were extant in their day. The FACTS are that more than 80% of the extant manuscripts we have today have never even been examined and at least 10% are estimated to have not yet even been identified! So to make outrageous claims that the KJV translators borrowed from the Latin without Hebrew/Greek support is mere mischief making. You cannot read the examination of a handful of the extant apographs today into 1611. For instance, just read how many copies of 1 John 5:7 that Stephens had in John Gill's commentary on the passage. If you want to play with FACTS your presuppositions are going to be shown to be very elastic.

Also, you need to examine your own presuppositions before shooting off in this subject. You are arguing that God was involved in preserving His Words but He did this imperfectly, as for the last 2,000 years He led us imperfectly despite promising to lead us in to all truth. Where Scriptural support do you have for this amazing revelation? Please do not keep repeating "facts of manuscripts" as you should know there are no manuscripts that bridge the first 4 centuries so do we all throw our hands up and say the "facts" lead us to conclude that there are no inspired or preserved Words? As man cannot be trusted as using himself as a reference point for truth, we are surely left with the only option but to take the Bible at face value with respect to what it teaches about God's work in the universe and His historical dealings with man. If many quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament had mistakes, how do we know what actually was the original wording? For example, if we accept that the Gospels we rely on to reveal the risen Christ has mistakes, who can determine exactly and objectively where the few mistakes are? How do textual critics expect us to believe in a true historical evaluation of these sources? Christ himself believed in the inerrancy and infallibility of His texts, and, if He was wrong in that belief, by what means can we know He was right in any other? When we survey the Scriptures themselves we find there is no precedent for the people of God living by corrupted copies (cf. Deut 17:8; 1 Kings 2:3; Prov 25:1). Francis Turretin makes the historic position clear,

If the sources had been corrupted, it must have been done before Christ or after, neither of which is true. Not before because Christ would not have passed it over in silence (for He does not censure the various departures in doctrine), nor could He bear to use corrupted books. Did He disregard the salvation of His people so far that He would neither Himself, nor through His apostles admonish us with a word that the books of Moses and the prophets had been tampered with; while in the meantime He convicts the Jews from these very books (but to what purpose, if they had been corrupted and falsified?) and invites and urges His disciples to their perusal and search? For if this had been the case, why do we find the passages which Christ and the apostles quoted from Moses and the prophets just the same now as then and in no way corrupted?..The provident wisdom of God (which will suffer not one jot or tittle to pass from the law until all be fulfilled, Mt. 5:18) has much less permitted the body of heavenly doctrine to be weakened by the Jews and so great a treasure to be taken away.