An Understandable History of the Bible (groan) Chapter 8

This week we look at the first part of Chapter 8.

It seems to me that the only things the King James Only folks seem to loathe more than the Catholic Church are two 19th century bible scholars Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1903) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892).

This chapter is basically a hate fest on the character of Westcott and Hort. At least so far in this first part of the chapter, Gipp is not taking a logical dissection of their work but rather working very hard to dissect their reputations and character.

The Hip and Thigh Blog has a great handle on this controversy and the myths associated with these two, so I will refer the reader there.
Hip and Thigh: F.J.A. Hort and Seances
Hip and Thing: Westcott and Hort

Gipp is just jaw-droppingly amateurish in how he argues against these two men. For example:

Oddly enough, neither man believed that the Bible should be treated any differently than the writings of the lost histor-ians and philosophers!

Hort wrote, “For ourselves, we dare not introduce considerations which could not reasonably be applied to other ancient texts, supposing them to have documentary attestation of equal amount, variety and antiquity.”88

He also states, “In the New Testament, as in almost all prose writings which have been much copied, corruptions by interpolation are many times more numerous than corruptions by omission.” (Emphasis mine.)89

We must consider these things for a moment. How can God use men who do not believe that His Book is any different than Shakespeare, Plato, or Dickens? It is a fundamental belief that the Bible is different from all other writings. Why did these men not believe so?

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