Dr. White Explains Textual Transmission to Kent Hovind

Dr. White has provided a series of three video responses to some rather uninformed comments by Kent Hovind on Bible versions. Hovind's comments appear to be gleaned from the book he recommends, a book by Gail Riplinger, one of the prominent promoters of KJV-Onlyism.

The problems in Hovind's presentation are numerous, and even Dr. White's presentation is unable to snag all of them.

Part I



Part II



Part III



Ultimately, the video series demonstrates that one has to be careful in who one listens to. Hovind probably sounds like he knows what he is talking about to someone who doesn't understand the history of the transmission of the text of Scripture. In fact, however, he's wildly off the mark.

Some of his points may ring true (for example, a manuscript in constant use is less likely to survive for more than a millennium while a manuscript in disuse will last a long time). On the other hand he makes such egregious errors as to identify the Textus Receptus with the Majority Text and to imagine that the Textus Receptus was based on 5,000 or so Greek manuscripts (when, in fact, more realistic estimates are at least a couple of orders of magnitude less), as well as to confuse the manner of transmission of the Hebrew text by the Jews with the manner of transmission of the Greek text by the Christians.

All in all, I found the video series enjoyable and educational. I hope that if the transmission of the text of the New Testament interests you, you'll also find the series profitable.

-TurretinFan

P.S. As an aside, I would be very cautious about relying on Hovind's work. That's not to say that everything he says is wrong - for example he has many right things to say in other areas than the areas noted in the video series above. The problem is that Hovind doesn't appear to have a good idea of the limits of his own knowledge, as demonstrated in this video series.