Joel Miller here on John 7:53ff., the favorite New Testament cudgel of liberals everywhere:
"[W]hat should we make of the faith of all those Christians that lived before this reconstruction [which excludes the pericope from John], including great exegetes like Augustine or Chrysostom, or pastors who led the church before even the canon (let alone this imagined reconstruction) was settled?"
Well, what should we make of the faith of all those Christians that lived with a Gospel of John without the passage, including the readers of:
Papyri 66 (c. 200) and 75 (early 3rd century); Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (4th century), also apparently Alexandrinus and Ephraemi (5th), Codices Washingtonianus and Borgianus also from the 5th century, Regius from the 8th, Athous Lavrensis (c. 800), Petropolitanus Purpureus, Macedoniensis, Sangallensis and Koridethi from the 9th century and Monacensis from the 10th; Uncials 0141 and 0211; Minuscules 3, 12, 15, 21, 22, 32, 33, 36, 39, 44, 49, 63, 72, 87, 96, 97, 106, 108, 124, 131, 134, 139, 151, 157, 169, 209, 213, 228, 297, 388, 391, 401, 416, 445, 488, 496, 499, 501, 523, 537, 542, 554, 565, 578, 584, 703, 719, 723, 730, 731, 736, 741, 742, 768, 770, 772, 773, 776, 777, 780, 799, 800, 817, 827, 828, 843, 896, 989, 1077, 1080, 1100, 1178, 1230, 1241, 1242, 1253, 1333, 2193 and 2768; the majority of lectionaries; some Old Latin, the majority of the Syriac, the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic, the Gothic, some Armenian, Georgian mss. of Adysh (9th century); Diatessaron (2nd century); apparently Clement of Alexandria (died 215), other Church Fathers namely Tertullian (died 220), Origen (died 254), Cyprian (died 258), Nonnus (died 431), Cyril of Alexandria (died 444) and Cosmas (died 550) ?
What were those Christians, chopped liver?
"Rather than a collection of texts written in and for the church and recognized as valid by that church, biblical books and even minute passages now become arbitrated by scholars."
Well, no. The above collection of texts without the pericope is arbitrated as valid by scribes, who presumably were themselves Christians. But apparently their voices don't count as the voice of the church to Joel Miller.
"If the church doesn’t validate the text, who does? In this instance, scholarly consensus is consulted to 'uncanonize' a portion of generally received scripture."
Sorry, no. The absence of the pericope suggests churchmen "uncanonized" it long before contemporary scholars did. Martin Luther did nothing different. Joel Miller just doesn't want to face it.
"Sola Scriptura becomes queer indeed when ideas from outside Scripture are determining what goes into it."
Well, if some extra-Biblical principle was at work excluding the pericope from the manuscript evidence, it pre-dated the Reformation by a thousand years and was operating in scriptoria funded by churches all over the place. What's with the anti-protestantism, Miller?
"[I]nerrancy becomes equally queer when ... Christians have been hearing a bunk passage read from the lectionary and expounded from the pulpit for centuries."
Just because there are obvious suspect passages like John 7:53ff. and the famous 1 John 5:7f. and Mark 16:9ff. based on the manuscript evidence doesn't "bunkify" the rest of John, 1 John or Mark anymore than the selectivity exercised by lectors in churches for 1,900 years has.
No one suggests Matthew 10:23 isn't original to Matthew just because it's avoided by the church like the plague.
