GOING TO JORDAN!

Greetings from the Majority Text Society (MTS). It will only be a few months now and our family (8 total!) will take the plunge of missionary service into the Middle Eastern country of Jordan. I will be teaching New Testament Studies at Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary. Our family is excited about this opportunity. The school has been in existence since 1995 and has government permission to operate. Its purpose is to train Arabic-speaking Christians for ministry in the Arab world. I have already been there 3 times teaching intensive courses on a short term basis.

Due to this commitment and my leaving the Dallas area, I will be stepping down from the presidency of MTS and turning the presidential position over to Zane Hodges. However, I will be moving into the Vice President position (in absentia), at least for now, to keep continuity in the MTS leadership. Most of us familiar with MTS know that Zane has been a "founding father" of the MTS position, propelling the Majority Text back into scholarly discourse. He wrote his master's thesis on the Greek text of the Apocalypse, after which he taught New Testament Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary for 27 years. He has written and published many articles in the field of textual criticism. He is co-author of The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text and a major contributor to The NKJV Greek-English Interlinear New Testament. I am glad he is willing and able to give further service to MTS issues.

I also want to thank our Treasurer, Roger Turley who did an outstanding job in keeping up with the MTS financial responsibilities for the last 4 and a half years. Due to other ministry commitments, Roger will no longer be serving as Treasurer. As a result Frank Carmical's position will change from Secretary to Secretary/Treasurer.

I am pleased to distribute our current newsletter and hope you enjoy it. The first article is written on John 1:18 by a prominent textual critic. Dr. J. K. Elliott is not a Majority Text advocate but the leading scholar associated with the view of textual criticism known as thoroughgoing or rigorous eclecticism. This approach gives priority to a consistent use of internal evidence (e.g., factors of likely scribal errors, author's style and theology, what reading best accounts for the presence of the others, etc). We are pleased he was willing to write on this issue for us. The second article is one I wrote on Acts 16:12 to point out the problem, from a MTS perspective, of what can happen if the number of manuscripts is not a factor at all in making textual decisions. Lastly, the short paper on von Soden and the Kr Byzantine text is from former MTS President, Dr. Wilbur Pickering, whom we are glad to see is active in his study of the Greek manuscripts.

To conclude, it has been a privilege to serve as President of MTS these past 4 and a half years. My email will remain the same (jfdavisfamily@msn.com) if anyone wishes to contact me.

Sincerely in Christ,

Dr. James F. Davis
President, MTS

 

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