Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 38:4 (Dec 1995)
Article: An Evaluation Of John W. Burgon’s Use Of Patristic Evidence
Author: Mark H. Heuer

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JETS 38:4 (December 1995) p. 519

An Evaluation Of John W. Burgon’s
Use Of Patristic Evidence

Mark H. Heuer*

Undoubtedly John W. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, was a Christian gentleman and scholar. In fact Kenneth W. Clark places Dean Burgon alongside Tischendorf as a textual scholar. 1 Burgon compiled an astounding index of Scripture quotations from the Church fathers totaling 86,589. It resides in the British Museum but unfortunately has never been published, leaving these patristic citations inaccessible for critical study. 2 Burgon held what is at least a reasonable position in that he accepted only the inspiration of the apostolic autographs and not the inerrancy of the Textus Receptus edition or any version, including the KJV. For example, he does not defend the KJV reading of Acts 8:37 and 1 John 5:7, which do not appear in any credible Greek MSS. 3 Burgon’s mission was to use his massive amount of patristic evidence to prove the inferiority of the Alexandrian and Western text types and the MSS that primarily support them, while defending the superiority and authority of the “Majority” or Byzantine text type, from which the Textus Receptus was compiled and the KJV eventually translated. Although all MS text types present all the fundamental doctrines of orthodox Christianity, Burgon unfortunately equates the debate over NT text types with the modernistic controversies that began to surface in his day. 4 Since Burgon is the source many modern Majority Text defenders look to for their methodology, it is helpful to evaluate the problems with Burgon’s use of patristic evidence more specifically.

* Michael Heuer is a United States Air Force chaplain at Buckley Air National Guard Base and lives at 18922 East Kent Circle, Aurora, CO 80013.

JETS 38:4 (December 1995) p. 520

I. A Presuppositionary Approach

1. Theological assumption: divine preservation of one text type. Throughout his works Burgon seems to labor under certain assumptions that cloud the objectivity of his arguments. First, he begins with the assumption that God has specially preserved the true NT text through the majority of manuscripts in use through the ages of the Christian Church, an assumption not supported in the NT data on inspiration and inerrancy. 5 Besides being unBiblical, this view of Burgon never faces the insurmountable problem of how the thousands of differences that exist even among Byzantine manuscripts could b...

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