Autographa & Apographa

On pages 413-416 of volume 2 of his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics Richard Muller discusses the Protestant orthodox method for identifying the “original and authentic” text of Scripture. He begins by noting that,

By “original and authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions.

He then proceeds to note,

The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice and the separate arguments for a received text free from major (i.e., non-scribal) errors rests upon an examination of apographs and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographs as a prop for textual infallibility.

This leads Muller to point out in a footnote that,

A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. This issue must be raised because of the tendency in many recent essays to confuse the two views. Like virtually all exegetes and theologians before and after them, they recognised that the text of Scripture as we now have it contains contradictory and historically problematic statements. they also recognised the futility of harmonisations of the text – but they insisted that all such difficult or erroneous passages ought to be understood as the result of scribal errors. Those who claim an errant text, against the orthodox consensus to the contrary, must prove their case. To claim errors in the scribal copies, the apographa, is hardly proof: the claim must be proven true of the autographs. the point made by Hodge and Warfield is a logical trap, a rhetorical flourish, a conundrum designed to confound the critics – who can only prove their case for genuine errancy by recourse to a text they do not (and surely cannot) have.

What is interesting is his pointing out that

Turretin and other high and late orthodox writers argued that the authenticity and infallibility of Scripture must be identified in and of the apographs, not in and of lost autographa.

This leads Muller to conclude that whilst the orthodox assume that the text is free of substantive error

they mount their argument for authenticity and infallibility without recourse to a logical devise like that employed by Hodge and Warfield.