Perhaps I should have said that the methods of modern textual criticism are unscientific. I don't know much about the methods Erasmus used or the different copies he had, although the earliest manuscripts are not necessarily the most authoritative, seeing corrupted copies of the epistles were being made while the apostles were still alive. The earliest copies were no less subject to corruption than later copies. I suspect Erasmus largely used the most common reading among the texts he had. I imagine he also sought out the writings of early Church Christians who quoted scripture and I suspect he had access to resources that are no longer available.
You're quite right - there are variants in the earliest versions as much as the later ones. But the point is - if there were differences in the earliest manuscripts from the earliest days, what makes you think then that the later ones are any better. Do you have any evidence to show those later manuscripts were copied not from the manuscripts that we can actually see from the early centuries, but other manuscripts that we have no knowledge of? And are you sure it can't easily be shown that the differences between later and early manuscripts are largely genealogical in nature (i.e the variants in later manuscripts arose for specific reasons from the earlier ones?
And Erasmus did not simply use the most common readings he had. I suggest you actually look at his critical edition, and study up on the topic. His version contains a number of marginal readings that were not the majority reading in his day, let alone compared to the MSS we have today. Valiant has already pointed out 1 John 5:7 to you, which is in an almost insignificant number of MSS of the thousands we have today. Defending it on the grounds of patristic citation is one thing. Defending it as a 'majority' reading is quite another.
Concerning modern textual criticism, I'm opposed to any method that is built on the unbiblical premise that the inspired scriptures do not endure forever. Modern textual critics deny, or at best doubt, that the original reading of the scriptures will ever be known and therefore deny the truth of 1Peter 1:23-25.
1 Peter 1:23-25 (a quote from Isaiah 14, I believe) cannot be so read as to be about the written Scriptures. It's talk about God's will, and his word and command. They endure forever even when creation itself (presumably with printed Bibles), passes away. I don't know how you get to that being a promise about printed Scriptures, unless you make it so.
And while certainly many would say it's impossible to be 100% certain what we have now is the wording of the originals, certainly all evangelical textual scholars, and even several atheistic ones, would say that what we have is undoubtedly so close it makes no real difference. What we have is a good 98% certain, and the rest is either mostly certain, or makes no difference anyway. You may not like that, but it's the reality of the textual situation, and it's certainly not something that made a great deal of difference to the early church fathers or, going by OT citation in the NT, Jesus and the apostles either.
Well no I have not read either of the versions you mentioned, however in as much as I believe it is possible to accurately translate the Bible in different ways, even the smallest change, one letter or the placement of a punctuation mark can render the passage inaccurate and have a significant affect on the scriptures meaning, So I'm quite sure that though these versions are based on the correct underlying text that they are in all probability still inaccurate.
So what you're saying is there is only one way to accurately translate an inerrant text, then? Theoretically it's possible, but you're saying in practice it cannot happen? That sounds a lot more to me as if you just have a commitment to the KJV itself, than to any question of it's accuracy as concerns the original texts.
I'm not sure how God's word could be inerrant without being preserved, that to me is an oxymoron, you will have to explain that one to me. In 1Peter 1:23-25 God very clearly through the inspired words of the apostle Peter promised to preserve his word.
Well, again, 1 Peter 1 is not a good proof text (not least because the quote by Peter doesn't verbatim match the quote from Isaiah). In any case, why do you think something inerrant must intrinsically be preserved? I could theoretically draw a perfect circle, without a single blemish, but would that mean it would therefore last forever? I just think it's a confusion of categories. You'll have to tell me why you think the two must go together in the case of the Scripture
This is interesting to me, if God did not preserve his inerrant word in a way you can simply pick up a book and read it and believe every word without doubting a single word, in what way did he preserve it? How can preservation mean anything other than that God's word has been entirely uncorrupted overtime through His divine providence.
I think it's been preserved in the totality of the manuscript tradition. This is not that different from what you believe, because you have already accepted that you do not believe there was a single genealogical line of manuscripts uncorrupted through the ages - if there were, Erasmus could simply have transcribed from that. Actually, there would have been no need for a TR at all. So, at minimum, you must also believe that for several hundred years (unless you include the Vulgate as an inerrant version - most KJVO don't, though, and there were variances even among Vulgate copies) one could only discern the 'correct' Scriptures from a plurality of differing MSS, as Erasmus did.
There is no reason to doubt that God had his hand in the preservation process even if he used human beings to do it. God also used human beings to write the inspired inerrant originals.
This is quite possible. The problem, of course, is working out which people God used to supernaturally preserve copies. In the cases of the autographs, it's easy - these were affirmed by the church as coming from eyewitnesses or associates of eyewitnesses to the resurrection itself. Centuries later, though, how do you affirm that? Leaders of the church? The fathers? Kings? If you go that route, you still end up with a multitude of possibilities, many of the more likely ones not conducive to a KJVO position.
Far better, seems to me, to actually look at the MSS and try to establish from the text itself the earliest reading, rather than going the lucky dip and relying on a fairly arbitrary decision on who centuries later copied it out correctly.
It seems to me a likely possibility that the Old Latin contained the inerrant preserved text of the New-Testament for those who can't accept that God didn't necessarily have to preserve His word before 1611, just at some point in history. It does not have to be intrinsically testable it just has to be possible. There are short term prophecies of scripture where no fulfilment is recorded yet we accept that those prophecies were fulfilled based on our faith in God's foreknowledge.
So wait. Are you suggesting that God must have preserved his word, but need not necessarily have done so before 1611? Am I just misunderstanding you, or have I got that right?
And sure, it's possible. It's also just as possible that God has not preserved the text in any given single text after the autographs.
Side note: there was no single Old Latin Bible. In fact, the whole fact that there were variants in the old Latin texts (many of which don't support TR readings, but no matter) is what gave rise to the need for a unified liturgical text (the Vulgate)
Yet the originals are useless to us because they don't exist.
But we can go back to the original readings through the manuscript tradition. I'm sure we're agreed inerrancy subsists in the originals, and so the reading of the originals is what we want to know. That the original autograph MSS don't exist anymore is inconvenient (would have made life easier if God had preserved the original autographs), but it doesn't mean we can't work out what they said.
The Bible says that the scriptures are inspired by God, that God cannot lie and that the word of God endures forever. Furthermore If the Old Latin existed as the inerrant New-testament while the TR was being created, it still existed somewhere. It appears the TR became the inerrant Greek text once it was completed.
Well, the Old Latin disappears completely from the manuscript tradition centuries before the TR (because the Vulgate was essentially designed as a replacement), so it's not at all clear that it bridged straight into the TR. And, again, there was no single 'Old Latin' Bible anyway, so I'm not sure how it could be used to prove a single verbatim inerrant text in one place.