Julian

Yes, I will proceed to show exactly how.

I said earlier that Burgon was a stupid moron or words to that effect. I hate using language like that and I tend to shy away from it. In this case, however, the stupidity is so abject, pronounced, and overwhelming that I can think of no other term that might apply the same weight.

In order to avoid any copyright issues, I will not copy the text I will comment on but merely refer to it by link here:
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/DeanBurgon/dbs2771.htm

Let's start with some of the opening blurbs.
Right away we see where this is going. He is claiming divine inspiration for the supremacy of the KJV. This is, obviously, not an argument from reason or logic. It is an appeal to a mechanism the existence of which cannot be demonstrated, the effects cannot be shown, and no universal agreement can be found. Yeah, that's really intellectual and intelligent.
The tail wagging the dog. The conclusion is assumed, now we need to go and fix the data.

Now we come to the overuse of the word 'truth.' Apparently, we have graduated from dealing with facts and moved right on to 'truth,' whatever that may mean outside of philosophy...

Burgon postulates seven tests of truth. All of them almost equally moronic. I use double quotes below to indicate verbatim quotes.

1) "Antiguity as a Test of Truth"
He then goes on to explain, "The more ancient testimony is probably the better testimony. That it is not by any means always so is a familiar fact." In other words, the older text is better except when it isn't. How do we know when it isn't? When it disagrees with the text we prefer. Or, in his own words, "Therefore Antiquity alone affords no security that the manuscript in our hands is not infected with the corruption which sprang up largely in the first and second centuries." Notice his reasonable and scientific use of certain words, such as 'infected' here. Not at all biased, oh no...

2) "Number as a Test of Truth"
He says, "‘Number' is the most ordinary ingredient of weight, and indeed in matters of human testimony, is an element which even cannot be cast away. Ask one of Her Majesty's Judges if it be not so. Ten witnesses (suppose) are called in to give evidence: of whom one resolutely contradicts what is solemnly deposed to by the other nine. Which of the two parties do we suppose the Judge will be inclined to believe?"
'Number' is not 'the most ordinary ingredient in weight,' of course. It is a linguistic device for communicating magnitude. It certainly doesn't matter in terms of the number of testimonial accounts without a consideration of quality. In fact, quantity only becomes a factor once an acceptable level of quality has been established. We can therefore conclude that it is the quality of witnesses that matter, not their quantity. So what if ten people say they saw the murderer if they were two miles away, had no means of optical magnification, and had forgotten their glasses. How would their testimony fare against even a single witness who was within arms reach of the killer? I would hate to live in a legal system designed by Burgon where it would be quite easy, provided one could round up enough friends, to literally get away with murder. Much as Burgon has done in biblical studies.

3) "Variety as a Test of Truth"
He talks about how many copies agree even though they are unconnected and ends with, "that their unanimous decision I hold to be an absolutely irrefragable evidence of the Truth." This is too stupid to say much about. At home I have an oak tree in the backyard. I have noticed that the branches on the north side are remarkably similar to the branches on the south side, despite their never having met. It's a miracle.

4) "Respectability or Weight as a Test of Truth"
First another howler, "but its use and applicability in this department of Science" Right. Burgon has no idea what the word science means and if he ever got near anything approching science his head would explode. To sum up his argument we can say this: Only manuscripts that agree with me are respectable. Manuscripts that show variation or disagree with me, are not respectable. The world is a very simple place when one has a very simple mind. And they don't come much more simpleminded than Burgon.

5) "Continuity as a Test of Truth"
It would be a waste of my time to addess the abject insanity of his arguments here, being of a nature so childish and inane as to preclude any reasonable discourse. One observation is that they value continuity. One can show that the TR has discontinuities but I can only assume that it doesn't count whenever that happens to be the case.

I will skip number six as it is obvious and subjective.

I will also skip seven since he simply says that internal evidence is not that important. Which he has to say considering some of the nonsense he has to adopt into his beloved bible.

He then proceeds to appeal to authority, saying that 2 out of 3 church fathers agreed with the TR. Appeals to authority are quite yawn-worthy especially since the authorities he is appealing to are uncritical believers from the same mold that gave us Burgon. At least, the church fathers have some excuse since their education would have been far inferior to what many get today.

Diocletian is to blame for why we don't have much early evidence of the TR. See, the christians would hold their bibles when they got burned. And they would only want to hold the true bible, of course. Hence only the bad bibles survived. What's that? What happened to the few TR bibles that survived? Well, you see, they were so popular that they were "thumbed to pieces." I am not making this up. I could not possibly make up stupidity this imaginative.

Why are the other texts bad? Because they are bad! Duh! Paraphrased, but accurate.

It goes on and on in a magnificent tour de force of fallacies, stupidity, tendentious and unsupported claims, outright lies, insanity, and sundry absurdities. The fact that anyone with even a couple of neurons to rub together would ever even consider Burgon and his opinions instantly mark those who bestow upon him any such respect. It is stupidity such as Burgon's that has been the cause of most of what is bad in the world while contributing in no way to anything good.

It is easy to see what data is correct and what is false when one knows the correct answer.

Julian

Steven Avery

A beautiful quote, but actually Julian is obviously fishing and totally unfamiliar with the material.

Dean John Burgon did not at all claim divine inspiration for the supremacy of the King James Bible. Anybody who does even rudimentary study of his writings and views is aware of this.

Those who really want to discuss the Dean might want to come on the WhichVersion Yahoogroups forum if you are a bible believer. If you are not, but interested, there may be other forums.

When I respond in kind to the nonsense and goading here, as in this thread against the Dean (unfair attacks are considered fine here against the deceased) it builds up a dossier from the 'moderators' so it is not worth the effort, since they will use that for a ban.

btw, even the opponents of Dean John Burgon often acknowledge his brilliance and incredible knowledge of the manuscript and patristics evidence. There is some material of his in the British Library (hmm.. can Roger see it ?) that is still hoped to be brought to the fore. There was color-coding involved so it was difficult to make it available.

Also if anyone wants to read more of his material without the Julian spin I can put together a post of his books on the web. They are incredible and you don't even have to go to Amazon and be concerned about who profits from the links.

On another day I would say that Julian could not even tie the Dean's shoelaces - but I believe even putting him the same sentence would be unfair to the Dean - so consider that stricken. Also doubly stricken because our antsy mods would likely use that for their dossier building to silence vigorous and cogent Christian viewpoints that are discomfiting to skeptic mishegas.

So yes, Julian definitely might be able to tie Dean John Burgon's textual and manuscript understanding showlaces, if he studies with an earnest and seeking heart for many years.

Shalom,
Steven

Julian

Don't take my word for anything, read for yourself:

http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/

and here

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/burgon/corruption.html

Besides my juvenile, but in this case unavoidable, name-calling I invite anyone to show any of my statements to be in error. And by error, I mean factually, scientifically, or otherwise in conflict with an approach from reason. Illogical whining and knee-jerk rejections do not count.

I am fairly sure that Steven has no objection to the links I have posted as being representative of Burgon's views and legacy.

Julian

Steven Avery

Julian, you have already shown astounding ignorance of Dean John Burgon's views, intelligence, knowledge and reputation so I stopped reading your post after the first blunder.

"He is claiming divine inspiration for the supremacy of the KJV."

If you can support that by one sentence anywhere in the Dean's books I will give you a very sincere apology and thanks for new information.

(In fact Dean John Burgon criticized some verses in the King James Bible and was not completely against the idea of revision from the Traditional Text, so don't get your hopes up too high for finding such a sentence.)

In fact the Dean John Burgon Society has been criticized by some for not following his views exactly, or close enough, and for having more of a King James Bible perspective, or a pure-TR perspective to be more exact. Not doing any substantive research or checking you blundered in your very first claim. (Dean Burgon was not actually 100% pure-TR.)

Oh, by the way, there is one quote attributed to Dean John Burgon about providential preservation that is apparently not really from him, at least not in his published, available books. It might be a quote you took, if you took from a web-page rather than his book. Or you might run into it in your 'studies'. Although it is not the "Divine Agent" quotation which is beautiful and 100% properly attributed.

The other day I wrote to the major places that have the probable misquote to ask them to make the correction and they replied that they would research, immediately having sent my email over to folks informed; and correct if what I shared checks out. If you run into a quote that has "providential preservation" in some form in the quote it is the one.

You will find another quote from the Dean about the issue, however it is quite nuanced, and talks, if I remember, about some of the textual complexities while speaking of God's preservation of his word.

However I stopped reading your material when I saw you were clueless about the views of Dean John Burgon, after the first blunder in your first assertion, above.

Overall your "juvenile name-calling" is compounded by your obvious ignorance of the subject matter of the views and writing of Dean John Burgon. The two make an interesting counterpoint, belligerence and accusation buttressed by lack of knowledge and perspective.

However it seems to be par-for-the-course for you as 'moderator' here to try to goad Christian posters into a 'warning' by juvenile name-calling. (The defacto effect, not necessarily a consciously-determined plan, machines of questionable fairness often have banality as the motivator or monkey-grease.)

Anyway, on the other thread I left you a nice solid reading list of the Dean's writings. Why not spend a few hours with them before embarrassing yourself more.

Shalom,
Steven

Julian

Again, let's forget about my words and hear from the man himself and his society. Here are some snippets:

Hmmm, he didn't leave and abandon the writings. Gee, it sounds like he is here and taking care of them to me. Sounds a lot like divine inspiraion, or divine providence, or whatever term you to use, it all comes down to the same, i.e. god is preserving his words. He then goes on to claim...
So they have received his peculiar care. Sounds fairly divine to me.

The textus receptus, the majority text, the byzantine text. They are all a little different. Which one is the traditional text? That's a bit hard to establish so let's quote the Dean Burgon society,

Should we assume that his society is misrepresenting him?

Julian

Steven Avery

Julian, I took a few minutes and tried to bring you up to speed above, simply reread my post, as it specifically covers the views of the Dean, the Society and more. And if you want to know the beliefs of Dean John Burgon you need to first read and then quote him, more especially if you are trapped in confusion and vitriol and arrogance as when you started this thread with the title that marks you - "Burgon is an Idiot". Anybody familiar with the topic of the scholarship and insights of Dean Burgon, even those who disagree with his overall views and conclusions, would know that it would only be an _____ that would start and name such a thread.

And remember I suggested you actually read his books for a couple of hours, I left you some URL's. Allow me to suggest this again.

It is an interesting phenomenon here, how the skeptic 'moderators' when posting themselves become completely immoderate, launching unscholarly arguments in which incorrect, false statements abound, as in the two recent threads. And while they do this blundering they are stridently chiding any sharing given by the Christian posters that really has substance. (Oh, you used the phrase 'Traditional Text' !! I'm shocked, shocked. Fallacy, fallacy.) Then you have one skeptic ready to pounce in support with a 'warning' - to help build a dossier against the Christian poster for the eventual faceless administrative apparatchik administrative ban - when the other skeptic gets in hot water.

And also notice how the folks like Julian never seem to acknowledge and learn. Even something as simple as "oops, I was wrong on how I represented Dean Burgon" or "oh, ok thanks for correcting me on the Dean's views on the KJB" or "oops, I was very wrong to make a big harumph about the proper term 'Traditional Text' ". Nope, such a simple and proper response does not come forth.

And even when they do correct themselves, as done by Toto after a fashion in his comedy of errors about the Mark Goodacre paper and early NT dating and Lukan priority and the prologue for Theophilus, they do it with a snide, brusque belligerent diversionary tude in order to undercut any real sense of responsibility for their own words.

Attack ! Warning ! Rather than simply a cordial "oops, I was wrong, I accused you incorrectly, sorry, thanks for letting me know ". Ahhhh, now that would be a breath of fresh air at IIDB.

Its almost as if they go out of their way to create a HPE (Hostile Posting Environment) towards believer sharing. Various issues are really a bit uncomfortable to be shared and discussed in a cordial level playing field - so lets be sure to jump in with strident noise, diversionary and draining harangues, goading and attacks. (To be fair, Julian actually believed his own mishegas about the Dean for awhile, although his earlier 'fallacy' post was utter nonsense of the type I am discussing.) And maybe we can get in a dossier 'Warning' to get to a ban if the responses are vibrant and dynamic and edgy. We can get the Christian poster on the grey area words and really shut him up, knowing how the 'administration' works.

Anyway, putting that IIDB dynamic of bureaucratic banality aside, nuff said, maybe Julian will essentially start over and find a better way. His last post seemed to have a tone of realization that he was in unknown waters, looking for the straits. Although this thread will always be an embarrassment that somebody with as little background and understanding as Julian actually tries to call one of the greatest textual geniuses and giants of the age, Dean John Burgon, an "idiot".

The whole thing would be truly laughable if it weren't so sad.

Shalom,
Steven

Cheerful Charlie

It is my understanding Burgon was arguing more for the Textus Recepticus, not the KJV. More against HW theories about the original text.

CC

Julian

Well, like I said, there is some confusion about the various texts. To wit:

1) The Majority Text.
This is the text represented by the majority of manuscripts. In theory, for every reading that has variants, the one with the most representations is decided upon as the correct reading. Maurice Robinson is a proponent of this approach. Of course, such a text would have no factual counter-part, it would be an entirely theoretical construct. In reality, such a text is quite similar to a byzantine text and the Textus Receptus (abbreviated TR), the latter being what you referred to in your post, I assume.

2) The Byzantine Text
This is one of the traditional three text families, the other two being the Alexandrian (which was favored somewhat by Westcott and Hort on rational grounds) and the Western which seems somewhat useless but has a few interesting quirks to it.

3) The Textus Receptus
This is the text that originated with Erasmus and continued to evolve (although so slightly as to not really matter) through subsequent publishers (Stephanus, Elzevir, et al.) The TR was based on some rather late manuscripts of the Byzantine family. In fact, Erasmus' manuscript repository was so meager that he didn't have the last six verses of the Apocalypse and so had to create his own Greek reading by translating from the Latin. This created a variant that doesn't exist anywhere else. This text has a large number of additional problems, most of which are technical and too lengthy to get into here, although should anyone want to challenge me on this point I am willing. Provided they read Greek, of course.

This last version is what became the basis for the King James Version of the bible, still popular today. Not only is the text it is based on quite inferior, the translation has all kinds of problems, much of which stems from the organization of the effort. It was translated so that it read well, not for accuracy. To defend TR is to defend KJV. Burgon attacks WH but does so very poorly. Mostly because he doesn't understand the problems involved in textual criticism. He doesn't understand the problems because he already knows the answer. This makes his attacks and his solutions entirely useless and irrelevant, the feeble meanderings of a disfunctional mind. Disfunctional because it is not dealing with solving a scientific problem to the betterment of the field in its entirety but wholly engaged in attacking what it doesn't agree with and promoting what it needs to be true.

What many overly religious people fail to understand, and we see this in other areas like evolution as well, is that it is not enough to attack the opponents theory. A theory does not win by default.

Let me repeat that since it is a point never understood by those blinded by religion.

A theory does not win by default. You do not win even should you disprove your opponent's theory. Your theory must explain the facts on its own merits. Divine inspiration explains nothing and does not amount to a theory by any definition of the term.

Until they (the TR proponents and their ilk) come up with a theory and a methodology that surpasses that of Westcott and Hort (or, better yet, the principles employed by modern textual criticism) they need to go away and continue their research. Unfortunately, none of them are scientists. In fact, they have absolutely no notion of anything that even approaches science. They just don't understand the term at all. It is mindboggling listening to a fanatical believer trying to argue rationally for their viewpoint. It is almost cute if it didn't just jar the senses to the extent that it does. And they believe that they are making sense. When their mistakes are pointed out to them, they don't hear those points and continue on as if nothing had happened. No rational discourse is possible with such people which makes me kind of sorry to have gotten involved in this topic to begin with since it is completely pointless. Ah well, I am leaving on vacation on Saturday and will be gone for a while. That'll help.

Julian

gregor

prax
Why don't you stop whining about moderator action and post your:

1. proof of the variations in the speed of light
2. proof of the date of the flood
3. proof of the "pierced" reference in the OT
4. defense of Wyatt's accurate finding of the ark, crossing, and etc.
5. proof of synonymous usage of kingship terms

Chris Weimer

What about Robinson? Surely you don't lump him with the like of prax?

My own professor whom Prax has invoked before said the exact same thing back when Jeffrey Gibson and Praxeus were arguing about quia v. qui. That's why I put prax on ignore - it's useless to have a discussion with a brick wall.