Questioning the “Original Text”: A Presuppositional Critique of Richard Simon’s Manuscript Analyses
Introduction
Few debates in church history have been as pivotal as those concerning the purity and preservation of the New Testament text. For Protestant Reformers, the concept of a divinely superintended text—one that is essentially intact and authoritative for doctrine—proved fundamental. This notion dovetailed with the principle of Sola Scriptura, whereby Scripture alone stands as the highest authority for faith and practice. Yet in the late seventeenth century, the French Catholic priest Richard Simon undertook a systematic study of biblical manuscripts, presenting a barrage of textual variants that challenged the idea of a singular, “original” text possessed uniformly by the people of God.
In his Critical History of the Text of the New Testament, Simon did more than merely record variant readings. He insisted that the proliferation of discrepancies among manuscripts effectively undermined the confidence that Protestants placed in Scripture as a self-attesting, unified authority. By casting doubt on the notion that we can truly identify a stable “original text,” Simon’s work became an essential tool in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, seeking to persuade those nurtured on the Reformation’s emphasis on Scriptural clarity and sufficiency to re-examine whether the text alone could suffice without Rome’s interpretive guidance.
This article explores the complexities of Simon’s argument, assessing how he used textual evidence to cast aspersions on the existence of a reliably preserved “original text.” We will also show how presuppositional apologetics, particularly as it is embodied in confessional bibliology, exposes the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Simon’s project. In that analysis, we find that Richard Simon’s vantage point stands in stark conflict with the way Scripture testifies about itself as God’s inspired and providentially safeguarded Word.
I. Why the “Original Text” Matters
Before delving into the specifics of Richard Simon’s critique, it is essential to clarify why the idea of an “original text” holds such importance within Christian theology—especially in Protestant circles.
Inspiration and Authority
Protestant confessions historically maintain that Scripture was “breathed out” by God (2 Timothy 3:16). If divine inspiration pertains to the very words of Scripture, it follows that the original manuscripts (the so-called “autographs”) are inerrant. While subsequent copies might contain scribal errors, the premise is that the overall text remains substantially and faithfully preserved across the manuscript tradition, allowing believers to affirm that they possess the authoritative Word of God.The Necessity of a Stable Foundation
Sola Scriptura as a principle cannot function if the text is irreparably uncertain. If no one can reliably identify what the biblical authors originally wrote, how can Scripture’s voice speak above all other authorities in determining doctrine and moral practice? For the Reformers, the notion of a single, consistent message across the centuries was theologically non-negotiable. That is not to say they insisted on mechanical perfection in every copied letter but on a fundamental trust that, via God’s providence, we have the genuine content intended by the Spirit.Rejection of an Overreaching Ecclesial Authority
In rejecting the Catholic Church’s claim to final interpretive authority, Protestants placed primary focus on the text itself. If the text is not only authoritative but also fundamentally intact, no external infallible magisterium is necessary to validate or interpret it. Instead, the Holy Spirit illuminates the faithful as they study Scripture. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, insisted that Scripture is part of a larger deposit, with ecclesial tradition needed to confirm its contents. Richard Simon’s textual arguments play directly into this latter stance—if we cannot be sure of the text, we must rely on the Church to define it.
II. Simon’s Approach to Variant Readings
In the 1600s, textual criticism existed but was generally less formalized. Scholarly editions such as those by Erasmus or Robert Estienne (Stephanus) recognized variations between manuscripts. Yet the overarching assumption, especially among Protestants, remained that these variants did not threaten the essential unity of the text. Richard Simon, however, brought a significantly more polemical agenda to his analysis.
1. Cataloging vs. Interpretation
Cataloging Variations
Simon possessed a keen eye for detail. He collected numerous examples of variant readings from ancient and medieval manuscripts. This alone was not unprecedented; earlier scholars also took note of textual differences. However, the novelty lay in Simon’s systematic manner. He arranged variants, tried to trace their historical spread, and stressed that these differences were widespread and significant—thus meriting theological concern.
Interpretive Spin
It was not purely a matter of documentation; Simon regularly implied that these variations undermined any simple claims to a uniform text. He pointed out places where scribes had, in his view, introduced expansions, harmonizations, or doctrinal clarifications. By emphasizing these alleged scribal motives, he painted a portrait of a text in flux, manipulated by well-meaning but fallible copyists across centuries. The effect was to stir doubt: if even well-intentioned Christians had tampered with the text, how could Protestants assert its pristine status apart from the Church?
2. Accusations of Falsification
A Tool Against Protestants
A running theme in Simon’s work was that heretics—or even unscrupulous, biased Protestants—might have edited manuscripts to align with their doctrinal stances. This accusation functioned as a rhetorical weapon, suggesting that the Reformation’s textual heritage was not just incomplete but potentially corrupt. His insinuation was that the Catholic Church, with its older, broader manuscript tradition, stood a better chance of discerning the real text from the spurious or manipulated versions used by Protestants.
Elevating Scribal Variations
While scribal changes are a recognized phenomenon, Simon’s descriptions could make them sound more drastic than they typically were. Modern textual studies show that a large proportion of variants involve minor spelling differences, word order changes, or synonyms that do not affect core doctrines. However, by underscoring any variation he found—especially in passages of doctrinal significance—Simon heightened the sense of uncertainty.
3. The “Original” as Unattainable
Moving the Goalposts
A subtle effect of Simon’s method was to move the question from “Are variants reconcilable?” to “Can we ever know exactly what the apostles wrote?” The new question put Protestants on the defensive: no longer could they claim confidence that they possessed the teachings of Paul or John in unadulterated form. Instead, they needed to rely on the ecclesiastical tradition that, according to Simon, had done the heavy lifting of preserving these writings.
Appeal to Catholic Tradition
Throughout his analyses, Simon hinted that Catholics could rely on councils, patristic testimony, and a continuous magisterium that overshadowed textual confusion. Protestants, in his telling, had “only the text” and if that text was found wanting, so was their entire theological edifice. Hence the sense of a carefully orchestrated challenge: produce enough evidence of instability, and the principle of Sola Scriptura starts to crumble.
III. Presuppositional Friction: God’s Providence vs. Human Error
1. Biblical Self-Testimony and Confessional Bibliology
At bottom, the debate over the “original text” is deeply theological. From a presuppositional angle, Scripture itself attests that God’s Word is forever “settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89). Confessional bibliology acknowledges that manuscript variances occur but insists that these do not undermine the overall reliability or accessibility of God’s revelation. The principle is that God, being sovereign, would not entrust His Word to total corruption.
- God’s Preserving Hand: Verses like Isaiah 40:8 (“The word of our God will stand forever”) are taken as promises that, in the final analysis, the text necessary for the church’s faith and practice remains intact and available.
- Providential Means: Confessional bibliology does not necessarily expect a single, uniform manuscript line. Instead, it sees a tapestry of textual witnesses that, taken collectively, preserve the apostolic deposit. Human error (typos, marginal notes, scribal expansions) is recognized, but these errors are corrigible through responsible textual comparison guided by the Holy Spirit.
2. Simon’s Contradictory Stance
Ironically, while Simon championed a method that showcased human fallibility, he was not a pure rationalist. He maintained that the Church, with its infallible magisterium, could untangle the textual snarls. A confessional Protestant critic, however, notes that Simon’s deeper presupposition—that the biblical text is so precarious that an external authority must rescue it—defies Scripture’s own testimony about itself. From a presuppositional perspective, Simon sets the Church above the Word, thereby reversing the biblical model in which the Word calls even the church to accountability (cf. Galatians 1:8–9).
3. Incompatibility with Scripture’s High View of Itself
Both Testaments point to God’s Word as inherently powerful (Hebrews 4:12), not reliant on uncertain human processes for its survival. Likewise, the early apostolic community recognized the Spirit-led reception of the New Testament writings as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15–16). For Simon, the reams of textual variations seemed to suggest that the text needed a higher authority. But confessional Christians respond that while variations exist, the overall witness remains stable and the Holy Spirit has preserved what is essential.
IV. Consequences for Biblical Authority
1. Doubting a Single “Pure Text”
One chief outcome of Simon’s project is the notion that no single “pure text” undergirds Protestant theology. As Protestants read or heard about the avalanche of variants, some inevitably became anxious: If our Bibles may contain errors, might we be missing vital truths? Simon’s rhetorical skill lies in linking a textual question—Which reading is correct?—to a theological conclusion: If you cannot be certain of your text, you cannot be certain of your doctrine.
In practice, classical Protestantism had never claimed a mechanical infallibility in each manuscript. They admitted scribal mistakes but believed these were relatively easy to detect and seldom impacted core teachings. By emphasizing more debatable changes—particularly where doctrinal phrases might be in question—Simon lent the impression that the manuscripts contained deeper rifts, giving further cause to suspect no one truly had the original words.
2. Implications for Core Doctrines
Simon did not merely mention textual changes in unimportant places. He aimed to show potential implications for, say, Christology or soteriology. For instance, if a variant reading might modify the meaning of a verse about the person of Christ or the nature of salvation, the gravity of textual criticism escalated dramatically. He highlighted the possibility that certain doctrinal controversies had shaped scribes’ choices—thus, if Protestants wanted to maintain unassailable doctrines, they needed the Church to authenticate which readings were correct.
From a confessional viewpoint, this scenario is deeply concerning. The biblical text shapes theological convictions, not vice versa. Yet Simon’s emphasis implied that theology could shape the text, effectively reversing the normal order. Further, it forced Protestants to consider the possibility that they might be clinging to a text line shaped by their confessional bias—a suspicion Simon eagerly fueled.
3. Undermining Faith in Scripture’s Sufficiency
The net effect was an erosion of confidence in Scripture’s sufficiency. For the Reformed tradition, Scripture must be sufficient for “all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life” (Westminster Confession 1.6). If one cannot trust the text, one is forced to look elsewhere for certainty. Thus, from a Catholic vantage point, Simon’s conclusion was obvious: the Church is the “elsewhere.” But from a broader historical perspective, such a methodology could also be harnessed by skeptics and rationalists who saw no reason to trust the Church, either. Their conclusion was that the text—and the entire Christian witness—might be hopelessly unreliable.
Thus, ironically, Simon’s stance opened the door to a more radical outcome: Enlightenment scholars who concluded that if even the Catholic magisterium must sort out a mass of variants, the entire foundation might be suspect. Protestants were correct, in a sense, to fear that an attack on the certainty of the text signaled a deeper existential threat to biblical faith.
V. A Presuppositional Critique of Simon’s Manuscript Analyses
1. Scripture’s Self-Attestation vs. External Adjudication
A hallmark of presuppositional thought is that Scripture stands in judgment over all human claims (Romans 3:4), not the other way around. Simon, by portraying the textual tradition as thoroughly corruptible, gave the impression that outside authorities—whether ecclesiastical or academic—were needed to rescue Scripture from confusion. This flips the biblical model on its head. If the church can only exist in light of Scripture’s truth, can it also be Scripture’s final judge?
2. The Role of Human Scholarship Under God’s Sovereignty
Confessional bibliology does not denigrate scholarship—Protestant and Catholic exegetes alike studied manuscripts meticulously—but it does subordinate that scholarship to the reality that God reveals Himself in Scripture, and He does so reliably. In such a framework, textual variants become an occasion for careful historical examination, yes, but they do not threaten the fundamental clarity or authority of God’s Word. That vantage point starkly contrasts with Simon’s frequent insinuation that the average believer or even the scholar cannot know the text’s original form apart from a powerful ecclesiastical structure.
3. The Tension Between Neutrality Claims and Underlying Presuppositions
Simon often implied his method was neutral or purely historical. Presuppositional analysis contends that no method is free from worldview commitments. Simon’s Catholic convictions informed his “neutral” scholarship, steering it toward a conclusion that validated his preference for tradition and magisterium. By the same token, Protestants reading the same data would see no cause for alarm, trusting that Scripture’s textual tradition, though diverse, is amply sufficient for maintaining doctrinal fidelity.
We thus observe that the difference is not purely factual but also philosophical. One’s starting point—Scripture as self-attesting vs. Scripture as needing official approval—necessarily colors the interpretation of manuscript variations.
4. Affirming the Reality of an “Original Text” in God’s Providence
In modern textual criticism, a similar issue arises: do we assume that a stable text can be reconstructed to a high degree of confidence, or do we declare the enterprise doomed by scribal caprice? Confessional bibliology, shaped by the Reformation, leans strongly toward the former, convinced that God has not left His people adrift. In essence, the quest for an original text is neither naive nor impossible; it is part of God’s provision that across thousands of manuscripts, the core and substance remain. While Richard Simon contended that the Protestant reliance on Scripture alone was a shaky approach, confessional bibliologists retort that Scripture repeatedly testifies to God’s hand guiding its transmission (Matthew 5:18, John 10:35).
Conclusion
Richard Simon’s critiques of the biblical manuscripts, his highlighting of variant readings, and his insinuations that the text was too fluid to serve as a sure foundation all converge to challenge the Protestant notion of a single, “original text” that believers can confidently trust. As a Roman Catholic priest, Simon intended these arguments to propel Protestants back to the Roman Church, which he believed held the key to resolving textual ambiguities.
Yet from a confessional bibliology standpoint, anchored in Scripture’s own high view of itself, Simon’s approach fell short in at least two ways. First, it underappreciated the biblical witness regarding God’s providential care of His Word—God is fully capable of using normal historical processes (the copying and circulation of manuscripts) to preserve the integrity of His revelation. Second, Simon’s arguments overemphasized the problem of variations, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of textual differences do not overturn Christian essentials or even complicate them significantly.
Thus, while Simon’s scholarship was meticulously detailed, the real conflict revolved around deeper presuppositions: does Scripture itself remain the final arbiter of truth, or does the Church stand above Scripture to define and clarify it? Simon insisted the latter, effectively denigrating Scripture’s ability to stand on its own. Confessional Protestants hold the former, trusting that God not only inspired the original autographs but also preserved their substance through the ages so that, even as we engage in textual comparisons, the essential message of salvation and God’s covenantal truth remains intact.
In many respects, Simon’s “attack by variants” reveals just how pivotal the doctrine of an accessible and reliable original text is for the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura. If the text were as hopelessly corrupt and uncertain as he suggested, the entire Protestant framework might collapse. The fact that Protestants robustly maintained their doctrinal coherence, and continued producing scholarly work on manuscripts, suggests that the cracks Simon thought he had exposed were less catastrophic than he imagined. Whether from a seventeenth-century vantage point or a modern textual-critical perspective, the confessional belief in a providentially maintained text continues to guide how believers interpret the historical data, trust that they do indeed have the “true Word of God,” and reject the demand for a final magisterial authority beyond God’s own Spirit and the self-attesting power of the Scriptures themselves.
In sum, Richard Simon’s emphasis on the difficulty of establishing an “original text” served as a strategic move to undermine Protestant confidence in Scripture alone. However, a presuppositional critique rooted in confessional bibliology highlights the biblical conviction that God has never abandoned His Word to the chaos of human error—He has ensured its essential purity. Thus, while textual variants are real and do merit study, they pose no ultimate threat to Scripture’s authority or clarity. What Simon perceived as an insurmountable problem is for many confessional Christians a testament to God’s sustaining hand, whereby He protects His Word so that it might fulfill its role in leading His people to salvation and guiding them in truth.
