MODERN BIBLE VERSIONS
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Nothing is more important in the Christian life and church than the Bible. And since we do not have the original writings of the Prophets and Apostles, and since very few of us are fluent in Hebrew and Greek, we are dependent upon translations. Of these, one biographer of the King James translators said, “For while a good translation is the best commentary on the original Scriptures, the originals themselves are the best commentary on the translation” (Alexander McClure, Translators Revived, p. 65). The following information about Bible versions should be understood by every Christian. If a man is not confident in the words of his Bible, he does not have an infallible authority for his life.
Be Cautious
I would urge our readers to be wary, because there are many lies promoted as truth on the side of the critical text. The detractors charge the KJV defenders with carelessness and error. Admittedly, there is some carelessness and sloppy research on the KJV side, but I have found many outright lies on the critical text side. I was somewhat amazed by this when I first began my studies into the subject, but it is a fact, and I have since learned that this has been the case from the beginning of the textual criticism phenomenon.
As a case in point, we quote Dr. Alex Roberts, a Presbyterian scholar who defended the Westcott-Hort Text in the late 1800s. Regarding the Greek word “Theos” (translated “God”) in 1 Timothy 3:16, which is removed from the modern texts, Dr. Roberts wrote to defend the marginal note in the 1881 English Revised Version which states: “The word GOD, in place of He who, rests on NO sufficient ancient evidence.” Roberts claimed, “NOT ONE of the early Fathers can be certainly quoted for it [the Greek word for “God” in 1 Tim. 3:16]. NONE of the very ancient versions support it. NO uncial [manuscripts with all capital letters] witnesses to it, with the doubtful exception of A ... far more evidence can be produced in support of ‘who’” (John Burgon, Revision Revised, p. 98).
The learned John Burgon (whose qualifications we will note further into these studies), Roberts’ contemporary, produced seven pages of textual witness which ABSOLUTELY and without question put the lie to Dr. Roberts’ claim. Burgon noted that the word Theos (God) “is the reading of ALL the uncial copies extant but two ... of ALL the cursives but one. The universal consent of the Lectionaries proves that Theos has been read in all the assemblies of the faithful from the 4th or 5th century of our era” (Ibid., p. 101). Burgon then cited 24 very ancient Fathers who quoted GOD in 1 Tim. 3:16, and concluded, “Against this array of Testimony, the only evidence which the unwearied industry of 150 years [of critical textual theorizing] has succeeded in eliciting is as follows...” Burgon then lists a mere six doubtful quotations of early church Fathers which might support the critical reading. Do you see what I am saying? Was Dr. Roberts ignorant of the textual facts Burgon produces, or was he lying? He was one of the men who produced the English Revised Version, and one would think that he would have been acquainted with the facts. Only the Lord knows the man’s heart, but the effect is the same.
When one is searching out issues pertaining to the Bible, he must never lose sight of the FACT that there is a Devil, and that this Devil has been actively resisting the pure Word of God from the beginning. He is the adversary of God and of God’s Truth. We do not make these studies in a climate of spiritual neutrality. It was Dr. Devil in the Garden of Eden who first hissed, “Hath God said?” and instructed and encouraged Eve in twisting, adding to, denying, and changing the words of God.
We say, then, be careful, and be wise. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Th. 5:21). We must follow the pattern of the Bereans who “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11).
David Otis Fuller
Before we delve into the fascinating study at hand I want to pay tribute to Dr. David Otis Fuller (1903-1988). Many have vilified his name, but I praise God for the man. It was in his edited works that I first read many of the following facts--and these ARE facts. Dr. Fuller edited Which Bible? (1970), True or False? (1973), and Counterfeit or Genuine? (1975)--all of which defend the Textus Receptus as the pure, holy, preserved Word of God. Dr. Fuller obtained his Bachelor of Arts at Wheaton College, majoring in English literature. He obtained the Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, studying under men such as Robert Dick Wilson who was a master of 45 ancient languages and could repeat from memory a Hebrew translation of the entire N.T. without missing a single syllable. Dallas Theological Seminary awarded Fuller the Doctor of Divinity degree. He pastored the Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 40 years. While there, he founded the Grand Rapids Baptist Institute that later became the Grand Rapids Baptist Bible College. Fuller co-founded the Children’s Bible Hour radio program in 1942 and for 33 years was its chairman. The Children’s Bible Hour is on nearly 600 radio stations. For 52 years Fuller was on the board of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism; he was a trustee of Wheaton College for 40 years. Fuller’s published books totaled fifteen to twenty. Fuller’s 350-page Which Bible?, first published in 1970, has gone through more than a dozen printings, and more than 100,000 copies have been distributed of this title, together with the two others he edited on the subject. Countless Christians today who have confidence in their Bibles and who have been delivered from the fog of critical textual theorizing have David Otis Fuller to thank.
THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN VERSIONS
THE PROBLEM OF CORRUPTION. The following is from Jack Moorman’s Modern Bibles--the Dark Secret, published in 1992 by the Fundamental Evangelistic Association, Los Osos, California. Moorman was a missionary to South Africa for many years; today he preaches in London, England. He has written many books in defense of the Received Text and the KJV. His book Forever Settled is used as a textbook in some Bible colleges.
“Would it make a difference if you knew that the N.T. of your modern Bible did not have First and Second Peter? Yet if the total number of missing words were added up, this is how much shorter the modern translations are than the King James Version. Is it a cause for concern if the names of Christ are missing 175 times, or if the word ‘hell’ is not found in the O.T., or if key doctrinal passages have been diminished? And, the biggest shock of all--is it possible that the most basic and blatant of all early heresies concerning the Person of Christ has been given a ‘new lease on life’ through the modern Versions? Many have gone over to the new Bibles without realizing that much, much more is involved than the question of modern English. The entire fabric has been affected! The underlying text is substantially different. The philosophy and methodology of the translators is in marked contrast to that of the Authorized Version” (Moorman, Modern Bibles--the Dark Secret, pp. 1,2).
THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORITY. Another chief problem with the modern versions is the weakening of the authority of the Scriptures. Dr. Charles Turner, director of Baptist Bible Translators Institute in Bowie, Texas, notes this problem:
Someone has wisely said, ‘A man who owns only one watch knows what time it is, but a man who has two watches is never quite sure.’ In a similar way, this is the problem with the many different translations of the N.T. Because there are many translations of the Scriptures, all claiming to be God’s Word, people are not sure ‘what time it is.’ That is to say, people are not sure which translation is truly God’s Word.
In the past, there was one translation in the English language that was the Bible. It was the King James Version. ... When we wanted to know what God had said, we went to our King James Version and read there the words of God. But now there are many ‘Bibles,’ all claiming to be God’s Word. ...
The authority of God’s Word in the English language is being eroded by these many translations. When there are many translations, all claiming to be God’s Word, who decides whether this translation or that translation is the words of God? The answer is, You do. You choose which one you believe to be the words of God. ... God’s Word is no longer the authority over you. You have, by reason of the picking and choosing of translations, become the authority over God’s Word! When there are two authorities, there is no authority at all. man is doing that which is right in his own eyes.’ Where there is more than one authority, there is no authority at all. ... More than one authority in the home is a house divided against itself. More than one authority in the government is anarchy. More than one authority in the churches is division and chaos (Turner, Why the King James Version: The Preservation of the Word of God Through the Faithful Churches, pp. 1-3).
We continue from Jack Moorman’s consideration of the problem of the modern versions:
From 1611 until recently there was really only one Bible in the English-speaking world. The AV became the Standard in that empire upon which the sun never set, and in that language which is the primary vehicle of international discourse. It penetrated the world’s continents and brought multitudes to saving faith in Christ. It became the impetus of the great missionary movements. Through it, men and women heard the call to world evangelization. It was the source of the greatest revivals since the days of the Apostles. Street preachers, colporteurs, church planters, Sunday School teachers, and tract distributors took the King James Bible into teeming cities and across country lanes. It was the high water mark in the history of the Gospel’s spread.
Sadly, though, we all have a tendency to put aside the good and substitute something of lesser quality. And so, during the last century the call for a revised Bible began to be heard. For the most part--at least in the beginning--the call did not come from fervent Bible believers, but rather from those who were leaning toward theological liberalism. These were men who often felt comfortable with German rationalism, Darwin, and the back-to-Rome movement.
The first major revision was published in 1881. After the initial excitement there was little public support. The same response greeted the American (ASV) edition in 1901. Others followed: Weymouth, Williams, Moffat, Beck, Goodspeed, Twentieth Century, but still with little impact.
Then in 1952 came the Revised Standard Version, produced with the backing of the liberal National Council of Churches in the U.S.A. The pace now quickened; public acceptance began to rise. Others followed: The New English, Amplified, Berkeley, Phillips, Wuest, Living, New American, Good News, Jerusalem, New International, New King James. Each came with the promise that it was based on the earliest manuscripts and the latest scholarship and that God’s Word would now be more easily understood.
Taking up this last point, it is interesting to see the names given to a number of twentieth century versions--The Authentic New Testament, the New Testament in Plain English, the New Testament in Basic English, the Simplified New Testament in Plain English for Today’s Reader, Inspired Letters of the New Testament in Clearest English! And then a number of the revisions have been revised: The New Revised Standard Version, the New Berkeley Version, The New Jerusalem Bible. There have been at least seventy modern Bibles published this century (Moorman, Modern Bibles--the Dark Secret).
THE PROCESS OF BIBLE PRESERVATION
Dr. Turner describes the simple process God has used in the preservation of the Scriptures:
2 Pet. 3:15-16, ‘...even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.’ In these verses Peter clearly says that the words of Paul were equated with ‘the other scriptures.’ Peter believed the words of Paul to be the inspired Word of God. Peter wrote this in a time when there were those who did ‘wrest’ the Scriptures. ... This clearly shows that the early churches were on the look out for those who would pervert their Scriptures. The early churches were aware of this problem and took great care to avoid the twisting of their Scriptures by false teachers. ...
That these Scriptures were passed from one church to another is clearly indicated in Col. 4:16 which reads, ‘And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.’ This verse shows that there was a sharing of copies of the Word of God from church to church. Because such a prominent leader as Peter considered the words of Paul as Scripture and said that he knew about those who would wrest them, is it not likely that the churches would take great care to watch over these Scriptures? This is obviously the case because the early churches, led by the Holy Spirit, rightly concluded that the words of Paul were the inspired Word of God. They took every precaution to watch over these Scriptures by comparing them with copies made for other churches. Even though false teachers deliberately changed the text in an effort to support their false teachings, it was always a simple matter to correct a text and bring it back to the original reading. The churches had only to check with several other churches and find out what the other church copies said. By doing this, the churches found out which reading agreed with the majority of the other church copies. The reading that agreed with the copies possessed by the other churches was accepted as valid. By this means, the text was preserved in its original form.
Naturally, when the first Greek New Testament was printed, the readings that varied with the majority of the other texts were disallowed and the readings that were in the majority of the texts were accepted. By this simple, but completely accurate method, the Holy Spirit watched over the Word of God. The Holy Spirit used the churches, who were faithful custodians of the Holy Scriptures they revered, to keep the Word of God from being polluted by evil men (Turner, Why the King James Version: The Preservation of the Word of God Through the Faithful Churches, pp. 6,7).
As with most matters, there are exceptions to the rule of the majority reading determining the original text, but in general, this is clearly the method God has used in preservation. The importance of the previous overview will become plain to the reader as we proceed with our subject.
HISTORY OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
The most significant differences between the modern versions and the KJV derive from the fact that the new versions are based upon a different Greek text (as well as from different translation methods, such as dynamic equivalency, which we discuss in the last chapter.). The following brief history of the Greek text is from an excellent publication by the Trinitarian Bible Society entitled The Lord Gave the Word: A Study in the History of the Biblical Text:
The apostles’ own manuscripts would almost certainly not have lasted much beyond the year 200 AD. Yet our Lord had intimated that the Christian Scriptures would be preserved. ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away,’ He said, ‘but my words shall not pass away’ (Matthew 24:35; cf. 28:20; Mark 8:38; 1 Peter 1:23-25). Their preservation was ensured, of course, by faithful and conscientious copying. … Furthermore, there is a divine factor which must not be overlooked. In His superintending and gracious providence, God evidently ensured that the authentic text of the New Testament was transmitted to future generations.
Notwithstanding all this, errors did appear in some copies and, as more copies were made, there began to appear a number of variant readings. The unintentional kind include misspelt words, confusion of letters, changes in the word-order, the use of synonyms or verbal equivalents, and the omission or repetition of letters, words, lines, and even sections. … There are, however, intentional changes, by which we mean deliberate tampering with the sacred text, usually in the interests of a particular theology or doctrine. Dionysius, a minister at Corinth, in a letter dated about AD 168-170, deplores the fact that his own letters have been altered, and then adds: ‘It is not marvellous, therefore, if some have set themselves to tamper with the Dominical Scriptures.’ An unknown author (thought by some to be Hippolytus, but by others, Gaius) writes somewhere around AD 230: ‘They (the heretics) laid hands fearlessly on the divine Scriptures, saying that they had corrected them.’ …
Orthodox teachers were fully aware of these wicked alterations, exposing them both in their teachings and in their writings. As a result, manuscripts considered faulty were not generally used for copying purposes. Only those which faithfully preserved the original became the standard of documents from which multiplied copies were made. … Early Christian leaders certainly claimed ability to evaluate the various manuscripts and decide which were the best and most accurate. For example, Irenaeus in his great work ‘Against Heresies’ refers to ‘the most approved and ancient copies.’ …
Every attempt was made to utilize their underlying text, with the result that the overwhelming majority of early Greek manuscripts were in essential agreement. We may therefore believe that the text of the majority represented the Original with impressive accuracy. …
A great number of Greek manuscripts is available to us, written from as early as the second century. Scholars who have studied them maintain that, while there are variants, certain manuscripts have a great many readings in common which suggests that there are groups or families. The major text-types are as follows: (1) the Byzantine (sometimes called the Traditional, Majority, or Antiochian text); (2) the Alexandrian text (or what some have called Neutral Text).
The Byzantine Text-type receives its name from the fact that it was early associated with the imperial capital of Constantinople, formerly called Byzantium, and also from the fact that it became the standard text of the Christian Church throughout the Byzantine period, 312-1453 AD (and actually long after that). Prior to its enthronement in the Eastern capital, however, this form of text had been preserved in Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria. [The church of Antioch was established by Paul and Barnabas, and was one of the most important churches of the first century—Acts 13]
The Byzantine text-type has overwhelming support from the Greek manuscripts, the Lectionaries, and the early Versions. … It is estimated that approximately 95% of the Uncial manuscripts have a Byzantine type of text. Even more can be claimed for the Minuscules, since nearly all of these are Byzantine in their readings. The Lectionaries thus far examined also give support to the Byzantine text-type. The early Versions also support the Byzantine text-type. This includes the Syriac (or Aramaic) and Latin Versions which go back to the mid-second century. The Peshitta, ‘Queen of Versions,’ is one of the early Syriac translations and it certainly contains Byzantine readings. This is also true of the Gothic version of the fourth century, said to be translated by Ufilas, bishop of Antioch.
Critics who deny the primacy of the Byzantine text, preferring to view it as a fourth century revision, often refer to the fact no Early Church Father before Chrysostom (347-407 AD) appears even to refer to it, let alone quote from it. Now this is simply not true. Painstaking scholarly research has shown that Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), Irenaeus (130-200 AD), Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD), Tertullian (160-220 AD), Hippolytus (170-236 AD), and even Origen (185-254 AD) quote repeatedly from the Byzantine text. Edward Miller, after classifying the citations in the Greek and Latin Fathers who died before 400 AD, found that their quotations supported the Byzantine text 2,630 times (and other texts only 1,753 times). Furthermore, subjecting thirty important passages to examination, he found 530 testimonies to the Byzantine text (and only 170 in favour of its opponents). This was his conclusion: ‘The original predominance of the Traditional Text is shown in the list of the earliest Fathers. Their record proves that in their writings, and so in the Church generally, corruption had made itself felt in the earliest times, but that the pure waters generally prevailed. … The tradition is also carried on through the majority of the Fathers who succeeded them. There is no break or interval: the witness is continuous.’
The plain fact of the matter is that by the fourth century the Byzantine text was emerging as the authoritative text of the New Testament and for the next twelve hundred years (and more) it held undisputed sway over the whole of Christendom (Malcolm Watts, The Lord Gave the Word, Trinitarian Bible Society, 1998, pp. 15-22).
We complete the history of the transmission of the Greek text with the Trinitarian Bible Society publication entitled The Divine Original:
For many centuries before the Reformation, Greek scholarship was virtually non-existent in Western Europe. In 1453 Constantinople, the ancient capital of the eastern part of the Empire and the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, fell to the Moslem invaders. One far-reaching result of this calamity was that Christian scholars with a knowledge of Greek, and with Greek copies of the Holy Scriptures in their possession, fled to Western Europe where their influence gave a new impetus to the study of the Greek language. It has been said that ‘Greece rose from the grave with the New Testament in her hand.’
Among the next generation of Greek scholars was Erasmus of Rotterdam, who prepared an edition of the Greek N.T. from five manuscripts in repute at that time. [DWC: While Erasmus used only a few manuscripts for his work, he had knowledge of a considerable number of Greek texts and ancient versions, including the Vatican codex. See the author’s book Myths About the King James Bible.] This edition was printed in 1516 and was followed by four later editions. At Alcala (Complutum) University in 1502 Cardinal Ximenes gathered manuscripts and men under the direction of Stunica, who published the Complutensian Polyglot in 1522 ... Robert Stephens, relying largely upon Erasmus and Stunica, and with at least fifteen manuscripts at his disposal, produced editions of the Greek text in 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551. In 1552 he withdrew to Geneva and joined the Protestant cause. Theodore Beza produced nine editions of the Greek between 1565 and 1604. These followed Stephens fairly closely, although Beza had some ancient manuscripts not available to Stephens. The Elzevir editions printed at Leyden had much in common with those of Stephens and Beza. The Elzevir edition announced itself as the “Textus Receptus” (TR) and since that time Stephens’ 1550 edition has been known as the “Received Text” in England, while the Elzevir edition of 1633 has had this title on the Continent.
OTHER NAMES FOR THE RECEIVED TEXT. The TR is called the Traditional Text, referring to the fact that it was the text commonly used by N.T. believers through the centuries and also to contrast it with the critical text of the modern era. The TR is called the Byzantine Text because it is the text represented in manuscripts from throughout the ancient Greek-speaking world. Byzantine points to the city of Byzantium, which was taken in possession of by Constantine the Great in 330 A.D. The name was changed to Constantinople.
The Protestant versions in England and on the Continent in the 16th and 17th centuries were based on these editions of the Greek text. These early printed Greek editions, while themselves based on comparatively few manuscripts, have nevertheless proved to be representative of the Greek text embraced many centuries earlier throughout the Greek [world].
The English versions of Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthews (or Rogers), the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops’ Bible and the Authorized Version were all based upon this company of Greek documents, in which was preserved the Greek text generally received throughout the Greek churches since the Apostolic age.
THE KING JAMES VERSION
“At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 the Puritan leader Reynolds made the suggestion--which was first opposed and then adopted by the Conference with enthusiastic approval of King James I--that there should be a new translation of the Holy Scriptures in English, to replace the different versions then in common use. Fifty-four men, including High Churchmen and Puritans, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars of the age, formed six companies to undertake the task. Using their Greek sources and the best commentaries of European scholars, and referring to Bibles in Spanish, Italian, French and German, they expressed the sense of the Greek in clear, vigorous and idiomatic English. This Bible won its battles against the prejudices and criticism which greeted its first appearance and became the Bible of the English-speaking world” (The Divine Original, Trinitarian Bible Society).
The KJV was published in 1611 after almost four years of intensive revision. We must also understand that the King James Bible is not the product merely of that learned company of men in the early 1600s. It is the fruit of roughly 100 years of translations and revisions hammered out by godly men in the fires of persecution, beginning with the labors of William Tyndale. This process is unique in the history of Bible translation.
In giving a biography of the King James translators, circa 1860, Alexander McClure makes this observation: “...that all the colleges of Great Britain and America, even in this proud day of boastings, could not bring together the same number of divines equally qualified by learning and piety for the great undertaking [of Bible translation]. ... this blessed book [the KJV] is so far complete and exact, that the unlearned reader, being of ordinary intelligence, may enjoy the delightful assurance, that, if he study it in faith and prayer, and give himself up to its teachings, he shall not be confounded or misled as to any matter essential to his salvation and his spiritual good. It will as safely guide him into all the things needful for faith and practice, as would the original Scriptures, if he could read them, or if they could speak to him as erst they spake to the Hebrew in Jerusalem, or to the Greek in Corinth“ (McClure, Translators Revived, pp. 64-65).
The English of the King James Bible
It is also crucial to understand that the English of the King James Bible is not merely that of the 17th century. It is not the language of Shakespeare, but the language of the Hebrew and Greek. “Bishop Lightfoot affirmed that this version was the storehouse of the highest truth and the purest well of our native English. ‘Indeed,’ he wrote, ‘we may take courage from the fact that the language of our English Bible is not the language of the age in which the translators lived, but in its grand simplicity stands out in contrast to the ornate and often affected diction of the literature of the time’“ (The Divine Original).
Of the English language used in the KJV, George Marsh, in a lecture of 1870, notes: “It was an assemblage of the best forms of expression applicable to the communication of religious truth that then existed, or had existed, in any and all the successive stages through which England had passed in its entire history. ... Even now [in 1870, the language of the King James Bible is] scarcely further removed from the current phraseology of life and books than it was two hundred years since. The subsequent movement of the English speech has not been in a right line of recession from the Scriptural dialect. It has been rather a curve of revolution around it” (Edwin Bissell, The Historic Origin of the Bible, 1873, p. 353).
When the Harvard University Press published The Literary Guide to the Bible in 1987, they selected the KJV for the literary analysis of each of the Bible books. “...our reasons for doing so must be obvious: it is the version most English readers associate with the literary qualities of the Bible, and it is still arguably the version that best preserves the literary effects of the original languages” (Theodore Letis, Foreword to Tindale’s Triumph, John Rogers’ Monument: The New Testament of the Matthew’s Bible 1537, 1989, p. ii).
We must keep this in mind when we hear the complaints about the “old antiquated King James English.” The King James Bible is written in beautiful and precise English fitted perfectly to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and it is not difficult to learn the few antiquated terms necessary to read it with understanding. If one is not willing to give diligent study to the Bible, he will not understand it no matter which translation he uses. And if your Bible reads like the morning newspaper, dear friend, you don’t have the Word of God, because the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures do not read as simply and as contemporarily as the morning newspaper! While some parts of the Greek New Testament, such as portions of John’s Gospel, are so simple a child could understand them, other parts are very complex.
The first and foremost qualification for a Bible translation is that it be an accurate, readable translation of the right Hebrew and Greek text.
In overall reading level, the KJV is within the reach of anyone with an average education. It is written on an 8th to 10th grade level. This has been proven from computer analysis made by Dr. Donald Waite (of whom we speak more particularly in Myth Five, “Biblical Scholarship Does Not Support the Received Text.”). Dr. Waite ran several books of the KJV through the Right Writer program and found that Genesis 1, Exodus 1, and Romans 8 are on the 8th grade level; Romans 1 and Jude are on the 10th grade level; and Romans 3:1-23 is on the 6th grade level. We note, further, that while Shakespeare used a vocabulary of roughly 37,000 English words, the King James Bible employs only 8,000 (John Wesley Sawyer, The Newe Testament by William Tindale, p. 10, quoting BBC TV, “The Story of English,” copyright 1986).
Dr. Waite says, “I know hundreds of people whose intelligence and educational levels have not reached as high as some of these ... people who say they can’t understand this King James Bible, yet these people do understand it. How do you figure that out? Remember 1 Cor. 2:14 which states, ‘But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.’ This verse is still true, regardless of which translation is used” (Defending the King James Bible, pp. 50,51).
Dr. Waite continues: “Some people say they like a particular version because they say it’s more readable. Now, readability is one thing, but does the readability conform to what’s in the original Greek and Hebrew language? You can have a lot of readability, but if it doesn’t match up with what God has said, it’s of no profit. In the King James Bible, the words match what God has said. You may say it’s difficult to read, but study it out. It’s hard in the Hebrew and Greek and, perhaps, even in the English in the King James Bible. But to change it around just to make it simple, or interpreting it, instead of translating it, is wrong. You’ve got lots of interpretation, but we don’t want that in a translation. We want exactly what God said in the Hebrew and Greek brought over into English” (Ibid., pp. 241,242).
The following is taken from the instruction manual of the Online Bible version 5.0--
We have now had enough experience to determine which translation is most suitable for computer word and phrase searching. If one were to rank the NIV, the NKJV and the AV on this point:
- The AV is the best
- The NKJV is good
- The NIV is fair to goodMuch to our surprise the vocabulary has increased, not decreased, with modern translations. Hence the greater inconsistency in the translation, and the greater difficulty in finding what you need through a word search. It seems consistency and readability is quite difficult to achieve using modern English. His Majesty, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, addressed the problem when he said: “Ours is an age of miraculous writing machines but not of miraculous writing. Our banalities are no improvement on the past; merely an insult to it and a source of confusion in the present. In the case of a cherished religious writing we should leave well alone, especially when it is better than well: when it is great. Otherwise we leave ourselves open to the terrible accusation once levelled by the true master of the banal, Samuel Goldwyn: ‘You’ve improved it worse.’”
The Received Text Goes to The Ends of the Earth
As we have seen, the King James Bible and its immediate predecessors were based upon the Received Text. In fact, practically all non-Catholic Bible translation and printing work from the 1500s until the late 1800s was based upon the Received Text. Hundreds of translations were produced from the TR during these centuries, including the Swedish Uppsala (1514), German Luther (1534), Danish Christian III (1550), Spanish de Reyna (1569), Icelandic (1584), Slovenian (1584), Irish (1685), French Geneva (1588), Welsh (1588), Hungarian (1590), Dutch Statenvertaling (1637), Italian Diodati (1641), Finnish (1642), Syriac (1645), Armenian (1666), Romanian (1688), Latvian (1689), Lithuanian (1735), Estonian (1739), Georgian (1743), Portuguese (1751), Gaelic (1801), Serbo-Croatian (1804), Albanian (1827), Slovak (1832), Norwegian (1834), Russian (1865), Yiddish (1821), Turkish (1827), Bulgarian (1864).
Godly missionaries from Europe, Britain, and America carried the Received Text to the ends of the earth by translating it into the languages of the people. Beginning with John Eliot, who produced the Bible in the Pequot language in 1663, missionaries were busy translating the Scriptures into the languages of the North American Indians. These included Mohawk (1787), Eskimo (1810), Delaware (1818), Seneca (1829), Cherokee (1829), Ojibway (1833), Dakota (1839), Ottawa (1841), Shawnee (1842), Pottawotomi (1844), Abenaqui (1844), Nez Perce (1845), Choctaw (1848), Yupik (1848), Micmac (1853), Plains Cree (1861), and Muskogee (1886).
Dutch Protestant missionaries translated the Received Text into the Malay language in 1734. In the 1800s, translations came fast and furious. Henry Martin translated the TR into Persian and Arabic; Adoniram Judson, into Burmese (1835); William Carey and his co-workers translated the TR into Bengali (1809), Oriya (1815), Marathi (1821), Kashmiri (1821), Nepali (1821), Sanskrit (1822), Gujarati (1823), Panjabi (1826), Bihari (1826), Kannada (1831), Assamese (1833), Hindi (1835), Urdu (1843), Telugu (1854) and 35 other languages of India.
Other missionaries during this period produced Received Text Bibles and Bible portions in Bullom of Sierra Leone (1816), Saraiki of Pakistan (1819), Faroe of the Faroe Islands (1823), Sranan of Suriname (1829), Javanese of Indonesia (1829), Aymara of Bolivia (1829), Malay of Indonesia (1835), Manchu of China (1835), Malagasy of Madagascar (1835), Mandinka of Gambia (1837), Hawaiian (1838), Mongolian (1840), Karaite of the Crimea Mountains (1842), Azerbaijani of of the U.S.S.R. (1842), Subu of Cameroon (1843), Mon of Burma (1843), Maltese (1847), Udmurt of the U.S.R. (1847), Garifuna of Belize-Nicaragua (1847), Ossete of the U.S.S.R. (1848), Bube of Equatorial Guinea (1849), Arawak of Guyana (1850), Maori of the Cook Islands (1851), Tontemboan of Indonesia (1852), Somoan (1855), Sesotho of Africa (1855), Setswana of South Africa (1857), Basque of Spain (1857), Hausa of Nigeria (1857), Nama of Africa (1866), Maori of New Zealand (1858), Dayak of Indonesia (1858), Isixhosa of South Africa (1859), Karan of Burma (1860), Nubian of Egypt (1860), Igbo of Nigeria (1860), Efik and Yoruba of Nigeria (1862), Tibetan (1862), Ga of Ghana (1866), Tongan of Africa (1862), Twi of Ghana (1863), Isizulu of Africa (1865), Niuean of Tonga (1866), Dehu of New Caledonia (1868), Benga of Africa (1871), Ewe of Africa (1877), Batak of Indonesia (1878), Thai (1883). (Some of the previous information on Bible versions is derived from Scriptures of the World, United Bible Societies, 1988, and The Bible in America, 1936.)
We would emphasize that this is only a partial listing. Though we cannot give the exact particulars of the textual basis for all of these translations, we do know that the vast majority of these were Received Text Scriptures. I know this from correspondence with Bible Society leaders and missionaries, as well as from my personal study of manifold sources, including personal examination of several of the translations referred to above (Slovak, Czech, Carey Nepali, Judson Burmese, German Luther, Russian, and Spanish). Some were translated from the English Authorized Version; some, from the Greek Received Text; some, from important European Received Text versions such as Spanish and German.
When we say these were Received Text Bibles, we do not mean that they were exactly like the English King James Bible in every detail, but that they were textually the same as the KJV. They included the words and verses disputed by the modern texts. They contained “God” in 1 Tim. 3:16, for example. They contained Matthew 17:21 and Mark 9:44,46 and Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53--8:11 and Acts 8:37--and the dozens of other verses which are omitted or questioned in the new Bibles.
Please note, too, that in many cases the early Received Text versions in these languages have fallen into disuse and have been replaced in the twentieth century with Westcott-Hort type versions.
During its first hundred years (1804 to 1904), the British and Foreign Bible Society alone printed more than 200 million Bibles, Testaments and portions of Scripture (Lion’s History of Christianity, p. 558). With few exceptions these were derived either from the KJV, the Received Text, or from one of the major European translations based on the Received Text. From 1816 to 1903 the American Bible Society distributed 72,670,783 volumes and portions of Scripture, while the Canstein Bible Institute issued more than 7,000,000 copies (Edwin Rice, Our Sixty-six Sacred Books, p. 192). By the end of the nineteenth century, the Bible or portions thereof had been produced in almost 900 languages (P. Marion Simms, The Bible in America, p. 177).
To this figure must be added the Scriptures printed by other Bible Societies (Scotland, Germany, Canada, etc.); by missionary organizations and societies (such as the Religious Tract Society, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; the American Sunday-school Union, and the American Tract Society); by denominational and other large publishing firms in Great Britain, America, and Europe; by mission presses in other lands; by independent groups and individuals. The Trinitarian Bible Society, for example, has published TR-based translations since 1831.
The American Sunday-School Union reported that “the total circulation of the Scriptures during the 19th century ran into the hundreds of millions of copies ... the total will exceed 520,000,000 copies of the Word of God scattered abroad for the healing of the nations” (Rice, p. 191).
The overwhelming majority of these Scriptures represented the same basic text and the same kind of versions. Most differences had to do with the difficulties of translation, not with the underlying text (and not with differing philosophies of translation methods). The two largest Bible societies, the British and the American, published English Scriptures exclusively in the King James Version and the Greek Received Text until the early twentieth century.
Some would counter that the Bible in versions based on the critical text has also gone to the ends of the earth in this century. That, though, is not the point. The point is that a certain kind of Bible, the Received Text Bible, went to the ends of the earth during the greatest period of revival and missionary activity in church history (from the 16th to the 19th centuries). Along come the critical textual editors of the late nineteenth century claiming that the Received Text is corrupt, that the purest text of the New Testament has only recently been recovered from its hiding place. We say this is impossible in light of God’s promise to preserve the Scriptures.
To put this succinctly: To reject the Received Text, as the critical textual editors and modern translators have done, is to reject the Text that was recognized through the centuries as the Word of God by the New Testament saints, and that was exalted by God as THE Bible during the greatest era of revival and missionary activity since the first century.
A DIFFERENT GREEK TEXT IS EXALTED IN AN HOUR OF APOSTASY
As the nineteenth century progressed, voices critical of the Received Text and the King James Version increased in intensity. In Europe and Britain, German rationalism, Darwinian evolutionary thought, and other heretical philosophies began to spread through most major denominations. The doctrine of the infallible inspiration of the Bible was being questioned and contested widely. Many professors and church leaders believed the Bible was filled with errors, myths, and inaccuracies; that instead of giving the infallible record of God’s revelation to man, it contained the imperfect account of the evolution of man’s religious thinking. These influences were joined in the Church of England by powerful Roman Catholic sympathies called the Tractarian or Oxford movement. The waning of the tremendous move of spiritual revival that had swept the world since the Protestant Reformation was evident on every hand. It is within this unhealthy spiritual climate that the philosophy of modern textual criticism developed.
Whereas the Reformation Bibles had been born in a climate of spiritual revival and faith, the modern Bibles were born in a climate of apostasy and unbelief.
Chief among the Greek editors who produced new texts differing from the Received Text in the 1800s were Griesbach, Hug, Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort. These are the fathers of modern textual criticism.
J.J. Griesbach (1745-1812) was a New Testament professor with a passion for textual criticism. It is important to note that Griesbach, “influenced from his undergraduate days by the rising tide of Rationalism sweeping over his country, was a foe of orthodox Christianity” (D.A. Thompson, The Controversy Concerning the Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to Mark, p. 40). He abandoned the Received Text and constructed a new text that contained many of the novelties later popularized by Westcott and Hort. Griesbach held the amazing view that “among the several readings of one place, that must deservedly be regarded as suspect, which more than the others manifestly favors the dogmas of the orthodox” (Scrivener, quoted by D.A. Thompson, p. 40). In other words, according to this principle, if there is a reading in the Received Text that plainly teaches the Godhead of Christ or some other foundational doctrine of the New Testament faith, that reading should be rejected in favor of a variant in some old manuscript that lessens or does away with the doctrine. This, my friends, is topsy-turvy thinking! The 1796 edition of Griesbach’s Greek text removed the ending to Mark 16 (vv. 9-20), based on reports that the Vaticanus manuscript, which he considered the oldest and best, did not contain these verses. Griesbach had not seen the Vaticanus, but had received reports that Mark 16:9-20 was omitted.
J.L. Hug (1765-1846) “in 1808 advanced the theory that in the 2nd century the New Testament text had become deeply degenerate and corrupt and that all the extant New Testament texts were merely editorial revisions of this corrupted text” (Hills, p. 65). This unbelieving theory totally contradicts God’s promise of the preservation of Scripture.
Karl Lachmann (1793-1851), who has been described as a German rationalist (Turner, p. 7), produced editions of the Greek New Testament in Berlin, Germany, in 1842 and 1850. He was a professor of Classical and German Philology in Berlin. He “began to apply to the New Testament Greek text the same rules that he had used in editing texts of the Greek classics, which had been radically altered over the years. ... Lachmann had set up a series of several presuppositions and rules which he used for arriving at the original text of the Greek classics ... He now began with these same presuppositions and rules to correct the New Testament which he also presupposed was hopelessly corrupted. He had made a glaring mistake. The loving and reverent care given to the copying and preservation of the Scriptures by faithful churches was not matched by a similar process in the copying of the Greek classics” (Turner, pp. 7,8). Lachmann discarded the readings of the Received Text in favor of what he considered the oldest and best text represented in the Vatican and a few other similarly corrupt manuscripts. Burgon notes that “Lachmann’s text seldom rests on more than four Greek codices, very often on three, not unfrequently on two, sometimes on only one” (Revision Revised, p. 21). In his scholarly arrogance, Lachmann was willing to overthrow centuries of godly discernment purified in the fires of persecution in favor of modern novelties.
Samuel Tregelles (1813-1875) was one of the few 19th-century textual critics who was not theologically modernistic, but, like Evangelical scholars today, Tregelles accepted the views of Modernists like Lachmann and Griesbach. Tregelles said, “To Lachmann must be conceded this, that he led the way in casting aside the so-called Textus Receptus, and boldly placing the New Testament wholly and entirely on the basis of actual authority” (Edward Miller, A Guide to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 1886, p. 22). Lachmann’s supposed “actual authority” was the Vatican manuscript that had lain in disuse for centuries in the Pope’s castle, and a few other similarly disreputable manuscripts.
Constantin Tischendorf (1815-1874) was a German textual editor who traveled extensively in search of ancient documents. He was instrumental in bringing to light the two manuscripts most influential in modern Bible translation work--Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. He operated under the false theory that the Bible commonly held among faithful saints had become corrupt through the centuries.
Codex Sinaiticus. “In the year 1844, whilst travelling under the patronage of Frederick Augustus King of Saxony, in quest of manuscripts, Tischendorf reached the Convent of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai. Here observing some old-looking documents in a basketful of papers ready for lighting the stove, he picked them out, and discovered that they were forty-three vellum leaves of the Septuagint Version. He was allowed to take these: but in the desire of saving the other parts of the manuscript of which he heard, he explained their value to the monks, who being now enlightened would only allow him to copy one page, and refused to sell him the rest. On his return he published in 1846 what he had succeeded in getting under the name ‘Codex Frederico-Augustanus,’ inscribed to his benefactor” (Miller, p. 24).
The complete Sinai manuscript contained portions of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, the complete New Testament, as well as the spurious Epistle of Barnabas, and a fragment of the spurious Shepherd of Hermas. On that first visit, Tischendorf was not allowed to take the full manuscript, but he returned to the monastery in 1853 and again in 1856. On the final night of the latter visit, he was shown the desired codex, and he sat up all night copying a portion of it. What portion did he lose a night’s sleep to copy, you may ask? Amazingly, and indicative of the man’s spiritual condition, we believe, it was the extra-canonical Epistle of Barnabas! Of this Epistle, 19th century textual scholar Friedrich Bleek said, “[It] is probably spurious, and its contents are paltry and frivolous, so that it is quite unworthy to be placed side by side with the New Testament writings”! Gaining a sympathetic hearing with the Superior Abbot over the monastery, Tischendorf managed to have the manuscript brought to Cairo, where he was allowed to copy it that same year. After considerable political and religious wrangling and the promise of a sum of money and honors for the monastic order, Tischendorf was allowed to take the manuscript to St. Petersburg in Russia in 1862. Soon thereafter, in Leipzig, Germany, he produced 300 copies in four volumes.
Tischendorf was so enamored with the Sinai manuscript that he altered the eighth edition of his Greek text (1869-72) in 3,369 instances, largely in compliance with the Sinaitic.
Note that this manuscript, which has so powerfully influenced the men who developed modern textual critical theories, was discovered in a wastebasket in an Orthodox monastery. Even the benighted monks dwelling in this demonically oppressed place counted it only worthy of burning! Dr. James Qurollo observes, “I don’t know which of them had the truer evaluation of its worth--Tischendorf, who wanted to buy it, or the monks, who were getting ready to burn it!”
The pure Word of God, my friends, has not been “preserved” in an obscure Orthodox monastery or on the dusty shelf of the Pope’s library, but in the Bibles and manuscripts which have been valued and used by the common believers through the centuries.
The corruptions of the Codex Sinaiticus: It is important to note that the Sinaiticus shows plain evidence of corruption. Dr. F.H.A. Scrivener, who published in 1864 “A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus,” testified: “The Codex is covered with alterations of an obviously correctional character--brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional, or limited to separate portions of the Ms., many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but for the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.”
The frightfully unholy condition of the St. Catherine monastery: It is appropriate to give a description of the monastery that housed the Codex Sinaiticus. The following is by Dr. R.L. Hymers:
I became convinced of the superiority of the Textus Receptus during a tour of the Sinai Peninsula in the summer of 1987. My wife and I were part of an expedition which climbed Mount Sinai. After descending, we toured St. Catherine’s Monastery, which is located at the foot of the mountain. I was struck by the queer and even satanic characteristics of this monastery. The skulls of monks from across the centuries are heaped in a large room. This heap of skulls is seven or eight feet high. The skeleton of one of the monks is chained to a door adjacent to this mound of skulls, left there as an ageless guard. Within the sanctuary at the monastery itself, ostrich eggs hang from the ceiling, lamps dimly illuminate the gloomy atmosphere, and strange drawings and unscriptural paintings decorate the entire edifice.
We were guided through this eerie church to the place where the Sinaiticus scroll had been kept by these monks across the centuries, until it was discovered by Tischendorf, taken to Germany, and ultimately sold to Great Britain. As I stood in front of the case where the Sinaiticus scroll had been kept prior to its being stolen by Tischendorf, I had the distinct impression that nothing in the way of spiritual light could come from this place.
This impression led me to reexamine the facts concerning the Westcott and Hort text, and to come to the conclusion that their use of the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus scrolls as a basis for the new Greek text was spurious. I have come to the conclusion that the Westcott and Hort text is a mutilation, and that the Masoretic Text and Textus Receptus, which are the basis of the King James Bible, are far superior. Therefore, I strongly defend the King James Bible as the most reliable translation of the Scriptures in the English language today (R.L. Hymers, The Ruckman Conspiracy).
Codex Vaticanus. Tischendorf was also instrumental in bringing to light the Vaticanus manuscript. The details of this endeavor are almost as fascinating as that of his search for the Sinaiticus:
As its name shows, [the Vaticanus] is in the Great Vatican Library at Rome, which has been its home since some date before 1481. to understand by those who know Rome’s perverted spirit, Editor], the authorities of the Vatican Library put continual obstacles in the way of all who wished to study it in detail. A correspondent of Erasmus in 1533 sent that scholar a number of selected readings from it, as proof of its [supposed] superiority to the received Greek text. [Editor: Erasmus subsequently rejected these readings.] ... Napoleon carried the manuscript off as a prize of victory to Paris, where it remained till 1815, when the many treasures of which he had despoiled the libraries of the Continent were returned to their respective owners. to see it for six hours. ... In 1845 the great English scholar Tregelles was allowed indeed to see it but not to copy a word. His pockets were searched before he might open it, and all writing materials were taken away. Two clerics stood beside him and snatched away the volume if he looked too long at any passage! ... In 1866 Tischendorf once more applied for permission to edit the MS., but with difficulty obtained leave to examine it for the purpose of collating difficult passages. all fourteen days of three hours each; and by making the very most of his time Tischendorf was able in 1867 to publish the most perfect edition of the manuscript which had yet appeared. An improved Roman edition appeared in 1868-81... (Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, New York: Harper & Brothers, 4th ed., 1939, pp. 138-139).
The attitude Rome displayed toward those who sought to examine the Vatican manuscript is indicative of Rome’s attitude toward the Word of God throughout most of its history. While the Baptists and the Reformers were diligently bringing the Scriptures to light “so the plough-man could understand it,” Rome was just as diligently trying to keep God’s Word from the common man. This is a historical fact, friends. We have carefully documented this sad and frightful history in our book Rome and the Bible: Tracing the History of the Roman Catholic Church and Its Persecution of the Bible and of Bible Believers (1996, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org).
John William Burgon (1813-1888) was a brilliant nineteenth century textual editor and linguist. He published over 50 works plus numerous articles contributed to periodicals. He contributed considerably to Scrivener’s A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament. Burgon traveled widely in search of textual facts. He personally examined the Vaticanus manuscript in 1860 while in Rome, and in 1862, he visited St. Catherine’s monastery at Mt. Sinai to examine the contents of this library. He made several tours of European libraries, and collated more than one hundred and fifty Greek manuscripts. His research into the writings of ancient “Church Fathers” is without peer. Housed in the British Museum, it consists of sixteen thick manuscript volumes and contains 86,489 quotations.
Though the Anglican Burgon was a contemporary with Westcott and Hort, he plainly rejected the German rationalism and Romanizing influence with which these editors sympathized. Edward Hills notes, “Burgon’s days at Oxford were in the period when the Tractarian controversy was flaming. The assault upon the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God aroused him to study in the textual field. He was a deep and laborious student, and a fierce competitor” (Hills, “The Magnificent Burgon,” Which Bible?, p. 86). Burgon, who never married and who dedicated himself exclusively to research, testified that the motive of his labor was the defense of the Bible. Speaking of himself as “a neighbor” in the Preface to Revision Revised, he writes: “I trust there is nothing unreasonable in the suggestion that one who has not done this [referring to giving oneself undividedly to textual studies] should be very circumspect when he sits in judgment on a neighbour of his who, for very many years past, has given to Textual Criticism the whole of his time; has freely sacrificed health, ease, relaxation, even necessary rest, to this one object, has made it his one business to acquire such an independent mastery of the subject as shall qualify him to do battle successfully for the imperilled letter of God’s Word” (p. xvii). Such a noble consecration of one’s life cannot be slighted. Of the Vaticanus, Burgon had this to say:
“The impurity of the text exhibited by these codices [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus] is not a question of opinion but of fact. ... In the Gospels alone Codex B (Vaticanus) leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 1,491 times. It bears traces of careless transcription on every page. ... they are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant ... [exhibiting] the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with” (Burgon, True Or False? pp. 77-78).
The unholy atmosphere of the Vatican. We have noted the demonic atmosphere of St. Catherine’s monastery that housed Codex Sinaiticus. The home of Codex Vaticanus is similar. I toured the Vatican in 1992 and again in 2003 and was astounded at how pagan the place is. It reminded me of the many temples we toured during our years of missionary work in Asia. Fitting to the home of the man who claims the titles and position of Jesus Christ and who accepts adulation, the Vatican is a monument to idolatry and blasphemy and man’s shameless rebellion to God’s revelation. There are statues and paintings of all sorts of pagan gods and goddesses; there are statues of Mary and the Popes and the “saints” and angels and the infant Jesus and crucifixes. The Vatican Library contains large paintings of Isis and Mercury. The “Cathedra Petri” or “Chair of Peter” contains woodcarvings that represent the labors of Hercules. The massive obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Piazza is a pagan object from Egypt. Near the main altar of St. Peter’s is a bronze statue of Peter sitting in a chair. It is reported that this statue was originally the pagan god Jupiter that was taken from the Pantheon in Rome (when it was still a pagan temple) and moved into St. Peter’s Basilica and renamed Peter! Jupiter was one of the chief gods of ancient Rome and he was called the “pater” (father) in Latin. One foot of the statue is made of silver and a constant stream of pilgrims pass by and superstitiously touch or kiss it. In fact, the Vatican is one gigantic idol. The great altar over the supposed tomb of St. Peter is overwhelmed by massive, golden spiraling columns that look like coiling serpents. One can almost hear the sinister hiss. The Vatican is also a graveyard. Beneath “St. Peter’s” cathedral are rows and rows of marble caskets containing dead Popes! A life-sized statue of each Pope is carved in marble and reclines on the lid of his casket. Candles and incense are burning profusely. In the supposed tomb of Peter, 99 oil lamps are kept burning day and night. For those familiar with pagan religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the origin of such things is obvious. The place is as eerie and pagan as any temple in darkest Nepal or India. Pitifully deluded Catholics light their pagan candles in a vain attempt to merit God’s blessing just as do the poor benighted Hindus. There is no biblical authority for any of it. Jesus warned the Pharisees, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition” (Mark 7:9).
St. Catherine’s monastery and the Pope’s house are fitting homes for two of the most deeply corrupted manuscripts available to Bible translators today.
Of the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the textual theories that exalt these manuscripts, the brilliant John Burgon, after decades of lonely, vigilant toil in the dim corners of the libraries of Britain, Europe, and Egypt, testified:
On first seriously applying ourselves to these studies, many years ago ... turn which way we would, we were encountered by the same confident terminology: ‘the best documents,’ ‘primary manuscripts,’ ‘first-rate authorities,’ ‘primitive evidence,’ ‘ancient readings,’ and so forth: we found that thereby codices A [Sinaiticus] or B [Vaticanus], codices C or D [two similar manuscripts] were invariably and exclusively meant. It was not until we had laboriously collated these documents for ourselves, that we became aware of their true character. Long before coming to the end of our task (and it occupied us, off and on, for eight years) we had become convinced that the supposed ‘best documents’ and ‘first-rate authorities’ are in reality among the worst.
A diligent inspection of a vast number of later copies scattered throughout the principal libraries of Europe, and the exact collation of a few, further convinced us that the deference generally claimed for B, A, C, D is nothing else but a weak superstition and a vulgar error, that the date of a MS. is not of its essence, but is a mere accident of the problem, and that later copies ... on countless occasions, and as a rule, preserve those delicate lineaments and minute refinements which the ‘old uncials’ are constantly observed to obliterate. And so, rising to a systematic survey of the entire field of Evidence, we found reason to suspect more and more the soundness of the conclusions at which Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf had arrived: while we seemed led, as if by the hand, to discern plain indications of the existence for ourselves of a far ‘more excellent way’ (Revision Revised, pp. 337,338).
We suspect that these two manuscripts [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus] are indebted for their preservation, solely to their ascertained evil character; which has occasioned that the one eventually found its way, four centuries ago, to a forgotten shelf in the Vatican library; while the other, after exercising the ingenuity of several generations of critical correctors, eventually got deposited in the waste-paper basket of the convent at the foot of Mount Sinai. Had these been copies of average purity, they must long since have shared the inevitable fate of books which are freely used and highly prized; namely, they would have fallen into decadence and disappeared from sight (Burgon, Revision Revised, p. 319).
Thus we see that during the 1800s, one of the greatest missionary eras in church history, while godly men were carrying the preserved Bible to the ends of the earth, unbelieving textual critics, enamored by German rationalism, went about searching the dusty libraries of apostate institutions to rediscover the Word of God that had never been lost. Confused men, all!
WESTCOTT AND HORT AND THE REVISED VERSION OF 1881
At this point we quote Dr. Edward F. Hills (1912-1981), a respected Presbyterian textual scholar who held degrees from Yale University, Westminster Theological Seminary, Harvard, and Columbia Seminary, and who pursued further graduate studies at Chicago University and Calvin Seminary. Dr. Hills encouraged many in his defense of the Received Text and in his exposure of the unbelief of modern textual criticism.
In the 1860’s, manuscripts Aleph [the Sinaiticus manuscript] and B [the manuscript from the Vatican library in Rome] were made available to scholars through the labors of Tregelles and Tischendorf, and in 1881 B.F. Westcott (1825-1901) and F.J.A. Hort (1828-1892) [both were Anglican professors of Cambridge University; Westcott became Bishop of Durham] published their celebrated Introduction in which they endeavored to settle the New Testament text on the basis of this new information. They propounded the theory that the original New Testament text has survived in almost perfect condition in these two manuscripts, especially in the Vaticanus. This theory attained almost immediately a tremendous popularity, being accepted everywhere both by liberals and conservatives. Liberals liked it because it represented the latest thing in the science of N.T. textual criticism. Conservatives liked it because it seemed to grant them that security for which they were seeking. But since this security had no foundation in faith, it has not proved lasting. For in the working out of their theory, Westcott and Hort followed an essentially naturalistic method. Indeed, they prided themselves on treating the text of the N.T. as they would that of any other book, making little or nothing of inspiration and providence. ‘For ourselves,’ Hort wrote, ‘we dare not introduce considerations which could not reasonably be applied to other texts, supposing them to have documentary attestation of equal amount, variety, and antiquity.’ … like Griesbach they ruled out in advance any possibility of the providential preservation of the New Testament text through the usage of believers (Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, pp. 65,66).
Dr. Donald A. Waite is a Baptist scholar who has written extensively in the defense of the Received Text. He has a B.A. in classical Greek and Latin; a Th.M. with high honors in New Testament Greek Literature and Exegesis; an M.A. and Ph.D. in Speech; a Th.D. with honors in Bible Exposition; and he holds both New Jersey and Pennsylvania teacher certificates in Greek and Language Arts. He taught Greek, Hebrew, Bible, Speech, and English for more than 35 years in nine schools. He has produced more than 700 studies on the Bible and other subjects. In summarizing the problem with the Westcott-Hort Text, Dr. Waite notes: “Westcott and Hort concocted a new Greek text and changed the Received Text that had been used in the Church from the beginning of the writing of the New Testament” (Waite, Defending the King James Bible, 1992, p. 41).
The Trinitarian Bible Society, in The Divine Original, provides the rest of the sad story:
The discovery of these manuscripts (MSS) betrayed many biblical students into a lamentable infirmity of critical judgment [and] exercised a similar mesmeric influence on the minds of many 19th and 20th century scholars. The Revised Greek text underlying the modern versions has the support only of that very small minority of the available MSS which are in some respects in agreement with the unreliable text of the Sinai and Vatican codices.
Westcott and Hort devised an elaborate theory, based more on imagination and intuition than upon evidence, elevating this little group of MSS to the heights of almost infallible authority. Their treatise on the subject and their edition of the Greek N.T. exercised a powerful and far-reaching influence, not only on the next generation of students and scholars, but also indirectly upon the minds of millions who have had neither the ability, nor the time, nor the inclination to submit the theory to a searching examination.
The Sinai and Vatican manuscripts represent a small family of documents containing various readings which the churches rejected before the end of the 4th century. Under the singular care and providence of God, more reliable MSS were multiplied and copied from generation to generation, and the great majority of existing MSS exhibit a faithful reproduction of the true text which was acknowledged by the entire Greek ‘church’ in the Byzantine period A.D. 312-1453. This text was also represented by the small group of documents available to Erasmus, Stephens, the compilers of the complutensian edition and other 16th century editors. This text is represented by the Authorized Version and other Protestant translations up to the latter part of the 19th century (The Divine Original, Trinitarian Bible Society).
The Revisers of 1881 made 36,000 changes in the English of the KJV as well as almost 6,000 in the Greek text. The Sinai and Vatican manuscripts are responsible for most of the significant changes. As Canon F.C. Cook, chaplain to the Queen of England in the late 1800s and author of a critical review of the ERV, says: “By far the greatest number of innovations, including those which give the severest shocks to our minds, are adopted on the authority of two manuscripts, or even of one manuscript, against the distinct testimony of all other manuscripts, uncial and cursive. ... The Vatican Codex ... sometimes alone, generally in accord with the Sinaitic, is responsible for nine-tenths of the most striking innovations in the Revised Version” (Cook, The Revised Version of the First Three Gospels: Considered in its Bearings Upon the Record of Our Lord’s Words and of Incidents in His Life, 1882, p. 250).
Philip Mauro, a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States and one of the foremost patent lawyers of his day, noted the differences between the Received Text and the Sinai and Vatican Text: “As a sufficient illustration of the many differences between these two Codices [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus] and the great body of other MSS, we note that, in the Gospels alone, Codex Vaticanus differs from the Received Text in the following particulars: It omits at least 2,877 words; it adds 536 words; it substitutes 935 words; it transposes 2,098 words; and it modifies 1,132; making a total of 7,578 verbal divergences” (Mauro, Which Version? Authorized or Revised?).
Most modern Bible translators remain allured by the Sinaitic and Vaticanus manuscripts. The editors of the New International Version, for instance, admit that they prefer the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts: “...in most cases the readings found in older manuscripts, particularly the great Greek uncials Vaticanus and Sinaiticus of the fourth century AD, are to be preferred over those found in later manuscripts, such as those that reflect the TR [Received Text]” (Ronald Youngblood, The Making of a Contemporary Translation, p. 152). We could give dozens of pages of similar quotations from modern translators and textual critics. When the new versions say a certain word or verse is not found in the “oldest and best manuscripts,” they are referring primarily to Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, together with a handful of manuscripts that exhibit similar readings.
We conclude this section with the words of John William Burgon:
I am utterly disinclined to believe, so grossly improbable does it seem--that at the end of 1800 years 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove untrustworthy, and that the one, two, three, four, or five which remain, whose contents were till yesterday as good as unknown, will be found to have retained the secret of what the Holy Spirit originally inspired. I am utterly unable to believe, in short, that God’s promise has so entirely failed, that at the end of 1800 years, much of the text of the Gospel had in point of fact to be picked by a German critic out of a waste paper basket in the convent of St. Catherine; and that the entire text had to be remodeled after the pattern set by a couple of copies which had remained in neglect during fifteen centuries, and had probably owed their survival to that neglect; whilst hundreds of others had been thumbed to pieces, and had bequeathed their witness to copies made from them.
Happily, Western Christendom has been content to employ one and the same text for upwards of three hundred years. If the objection be made, as it probably will be, ‘Do you then mean to rest upon the five manuscripts used by Erasmus?’ I reply that the copies employed were selected because they were known to represent the accuracy of the Sacred Word; that the descent of the text was evidently guarded with jealous care, just as the human genealogy of our Lord was preserved; that it rests mainly upon much of widest testimony; and that where any part of it conflicts with the fullest evidence attainable, there I believe it calls for correction (True or False?, p. 13).
While we don’t believe the Received Text needs any correction, and in that we would take exception to Burgon’s position, we do commend his faith in the preservation of God’s Word, which is in stark contrast with the skepticism of the hour. In reviewing the witness of the centuries to the preserved Bible and the unbelieving position of 19th century textual critics, Burgon had this to say:
Call this text Erasmian or Complutensian, the text of Stephens, or of Beza, or of the Elzevirs, call it the Received or the Traditional, or by whatever name you please--the fact remains that a text has come down to us which is attested by a general consensus of ancient Copies, ancient Fathers, and ancient Versions.
Obtained from a variety of sources, this Text proves to be essentially the same in all. ... In marked contrast with this Text is that contained in a little handful of documents of which the most famous are the Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. The editors of the R.V. have systematically magnified the merits of those viciously corrupt manuscripts, while they have, at the same time, sedulously ignored their many glaring and scandalous defects and blemishes, manifestly determined, by right or by wrong, to establish their paramount authority, when it is in any way possible to do so. ... Such, for the last fifty years, has been the practice of the dominant school of textual criticism among ourselves (True or False?, p. 115).
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