What the Trinitarian Bible Society Actually Says

Part I: What Does TBS Actually Teach? · Article 2 of 3

The charge that “the Greek manuscripts do not matter to the TBS” encounters a document that should govern the controversy. In 2005 the General Committee of the Trinitarian Bible Society unanimously approved and published its Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture. The statement was signed by the committee, vice-presidents, and general secretary, distributed to the Society’s personnel, and presented as a summary of its historic position.¹

That document does not leave the relation between original languages and translations to inference.

It says that no translation can possess “absolute or definitive status.” It says that “the final appeal must always be to the original languages,” specifically the traditional Hebrew and Greek texts.² It identifies the Masoretic Hebrew and Greek Received Texts—not an English translation—as “definitive and the final point of reference” in the Society’s work.³

Whatever criticisms may be made of TBS’s textual theory or editorial practice, Stephen Steele’s description directly contradicts its published doctrine.

The Confessional Starting Point

The statement begins with Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8:

The Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.

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1. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩
2. TBS, “Statement,” 11. ↩
3. Ibid., 10. ↩

TBS declares itself in full agreement. Inspiration belongs immediately to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Preservation concerns those inspired-language texts. Translations are necessary because the people of God have a right and interest in the Scriptures, but a translation is authoritative insofar as it faithfully renders the original.⁴

This order matters. The Society does not reason:

The Authorized Version is inspired; therefore its underlying Greek must be correct.

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1. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩
2. TBS, “Statement,” 11. ↩
3. Ibid., 10. ↩
4. Ibid., 8–11; Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8, https://opc.org/wcf.html. ↩

Its formal reasoning is:

God inspired and preserved the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; faithful translations derive their authority from those Scriptures.

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1. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩
2. TBS, “Statement,” 11. ↩
3. Ibid., 10. ↩
4. Ibid., 8–11; Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8, https://opc.org/wcf.html. ↩

That is the ordinary Protestant distinction between the authentic text and its versions. A version truly communicates the Word of God, yet it remains subject to the language in which God immediately gave Scripture.

The supplied Confessional Bibliology statement makes the same point. It expressly denies that any translation, “including the King James Bible,” stands above the preserved Hebrew and Greek.⁵ One phrase in that earlier essay should be corrected: “Greek Textus Receptus manuscripts” is not a proper description. The Textus Receptus is a printed textual tradition, not a class of handwritten codices. The intended doctrine is better stated as the preserved Greek text represented by the mature Received Text tradition. That correction sharpens the claim without altering its hierarchy of authority.

What TBS Means by the Original Texts

TBS does not use “the original languages” as an empty abstraction. It specifies the textual forms it receives.

For the Old Testament, the Society names the Hebrew Masoretic text and regards the 1524–25 Bomberg edition prepared by Jacob ben Chayyim as its best printed representative.⁶ For the New Testament, it receives the Greek Received Text, which it defines as a group of printed editions beginning with Erasmus in 1516. The statement identifies Scrivener’s edition as the latest and best representation for the Society’s purposes.⁷

These judgments may be disputed. One may ask whether Ben Chayyim should be treated as the best printed Hebrew edition, whether Scrivener should have a privileged place among Received Text editions, or whether TBS’s refusal to revise its received textual standard is justified. But none of those questions turns the editions into English translations.

The distinction can be put simply:

• The Hebrew and Greek text is the authority received.
• A printed edition represents that text.
• A translation renders that text.

TBS’s doctrine gives the first place to the first item. It does not grant inspiration to Bomberg’s typography, Scrivener’s editorial labor, or the English phrasing of the Authorized Version.

“Underlying the Authorized Version”

Steele’s strongest reply concerns TBS’s own description of Scrivener. The statement says that the edition was “reconstructed from the Greek underlying” the New Testament of the Authorized Version.⁸ Does that acknowledgment reverse the hierarchy just described?

Only if historical identification and textual authority are treated as the same thing.

The AV translators did not use one printed Greek edition at every place. Scrivener therefore compared their English with Beza, Stephanus, Erasmus, the Complutensian Polyglot, and other accessible sources to determine which Greek reading best explained the translation. The resulting edition is, in one respect, tied to the AV: it collects the readings represented by the AV into a single printed Greek text.

Yet the readings Scrivener admitted were not thereby translated into Greek from English. His rule was to displace Beza where the Authorized rendering agreed with another Greek reading that could naturally have been known to the translators or their predecessors. He called it “manifestly necessary to accept only Greek authority.”⁹

This yields two facts that must be held together:

1. The AV served as historical evidence for identifying the translators’ choices.
2. Earlier Greek editions supplied the authority for the readings placed in Scrivener’s text.

One may still object that TBS has given too much providential or ecclesiastical weight to the configuration represented by the AV. Edward Hills plainly did so. When Received Text editions differed, he favored “the King James Version, or, more precisely, the Greek text underlying” it.¹⁰ TBS’s selection of Scrivener is congenial to that conclusion.

But even Hills’s formulation distinguishes the English version from its underlying Greek. More importantly, Hills’s personal providential argument is not identical with the Society’s formal statement. To prove TBS guilty of translation supremacy, Steele must show that its choice of Scrivener makes the English words authoritative over the Greek despite its express denial.

What the Statement Does Not Claim

The statement also contains qualifications that complicate both careless defenses and careless attacks.

TBS does not claim that every surviving manuscript is inerrant. It says that errors, omissions, and additions in individual copies are not part of the inspired Scripture.¹¹ Manuscripts are witnesses; no one handwritten witness is equated with the whole preserved text.

It does not adopt mechanical majority rule. The statement emphasizes ecclesiastical transmission and observes that the Greek received by the church is represented in the overwhelming majority of surviving manuscripts. That historical appeal is not the proposition that the largest count must win at every variation unit.

It does not claim that Erasmus’s first edition was flawless. The accompanying word list acknowledges that Erasmus’s Revelation manuscript lacked its final six verses, that some early printed readings came from the Latin Vulgate, and that a few Latin-derived readings without presently extant Greek witnesses remained in later Received Text editions.¹² The admission is difficult to reconcile with Steele’s suggestion that the very existence of such readings is evidence TBS has concealed from itself.

Nor does TBS claim authority to reconstruct a new text indefinitely. The Society expressly says it will not engage in textual criticism for the purpose of altering the Masoretic and Received Texts by other Hebrew or Greek texts.¹³ This is a substantive and controversial limit. Steele may judge it indefensible. But it is a theory of a received Hebrew and Greek standard, not a confession of English inspiration.

Textual Family, Text, and Edition

The TBS statement sometimes uses language that deserves improvement.

It speaks of “textual families” where “textual traditions” or “received textual forms” would be clearer. It says the Masoretic and Received Texts are definitive while naming particular printed editions as their best representatives. Readers can therefore wonder whether the final standard is a text understood across witnesses and editions or one fixed printed form.

That tension should be acknowledged. If the Society receives a textual tradition, it must explain how minor differences among its editions are adjudicated. If it receives a fixed edition, it must explain how that edition’s authority relates to antecedent manuscripts and printings. Its declaration that minor differences among Received Text editions fall outside its constitutional remit postpones rather than solves every academic question.¹⁴

None of this, however, supports the sentence “The Greek manuscripts do not matter.” TBS’s position is precisely that manuscript evidence is ministerial to a text providentially received by the church. It refuses to make the presently surviving manuscript census the sole or continuing magistrate over that text. Steele may reject the doctrine, but rejection is not description.

Translation Authority without Translation Supremacy

Confessional Protestants have never needed to choose between treating a faithful translation as God’s Word and subjecting that translation to the original languages.

The Westminster Confession says the Scriptures must be translated into the language of every people. The authority heard in a faithful English Bible is divine because the translation communicates the inspired text. Yet controversies are finally determined by the Hebrew and Greek because those texts were immediately inspired and kept pure.¹⁵

The Authorized Version may therefore be honored as an exceptionally faithful English Bible, used as a church standard, and preferred to alternatives without being made inspired in a second act. Its public reception may be relevant evidence of providence without becoming a license to create Greek readings from English.

TBS’s doctrine occupies that ground. Its Constitution directs that English copies circulated by the Society be the Authorized Version. Its translation policy directs foreign versions toward the Masoretic and Received Texts that underlie the AV and comparable Reformation translations.¹⁶ The first provision regulates which English Bible the Society distributes. The second regulates textual basis. Neither says that the English settles the Hebrew or Greek.

Institutional preference is not the same as final authority.

The Missing Engagement

Steele’s three articles criticize TBS publications, speakers, examples, and editorial choices. They do not quote and answer the controlling sentences of its doctrinal statement.

That omission is decisive. Once TBS has said that no translation is absolute, that final appeal belongs to the original languages, and that the Hebrew and Greek texts are its final point of reference, Steele has two legitimate courses.

He may say the doctrine itself is erroneous. He could argue that TBS identifies the wrong Hebrew and Greek traditions, improperly closes textual inquiry, or fails to distinguish text from edition.

Or he may say the practice contradicts the doctrine. He could prove that at specified places TBS derives Greek from English, excuses evidence solely because the KJV requires it, or speaks as though the AV cannot err.

What he may not fairly do is suppress the formal denial and then present the opposite as the Society’s unqualified position.

The verdict at this stage is exact:

TBS formally rejects KJV inerrancy and translation supremacy. It places final appeal in the preserved Hebrew and Greek texts and treats Bomberg and Scrivener as printed representatives of those texts. Steele may attempt to prove that TBS contradicts this doctrine in practice, but his statement that Greek manuscripts do not matter cannot stand as an account of what TBS teaches.

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1. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩
2. TBS, “Statement,” 11. ↩
3. Ibid., 10. ↩
4. Ibid., 8–11; Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8, https://opc.org/wcf.html. ↩
5. Chris Thomas, “Confessional Bibliology vs. KJV-Onlyism,” Confessional Bibliology, October 24, 2024. ↩
6. TBS, “Statement,” 11. ↩
7. Ibid., 11–12. The statement names the 1894 printing; Scrivener’s text first appeared in 1881 and was subsequently reprinted. ↩
8. Ibid., 11. ↩
9. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
10. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 223–24, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
11. TBS, “Statement,” 11 n. 2. ↩
12. Ibid., 12, s.v. “Ecclesiastically transmitted.” ↩
13. Ibid., 12. ↩
14. Ibid. ↩
15. Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8. ↩
16. TBS, “Statement,” 6, 12–13. ↩

That judgment does not settle Mark 16, Scrivener, or Revelation. It establishes the authority structure within which those disputes must be tried.

Notes

Bibliography

Hills, Edward F. The King James Version Defended. 4th ed. Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984.

Scrivener, F. H. A. The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881.

Thomas, Chris. “Confessional Bibliology vs. KJV-Onlyism.” Confessional Bibliology. October 24, 2024.

Trinitarian Bible Society. “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture.” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13.

Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith. 1647.