King James Only

Christsfreeservant said:

HIM, I make it my practice to test the spirits, to pray for spiritual discernment, and to have an open mind and heart to hear from the Lord and to be taught by him and to learn from him what is truth. And over my lifetime I have changed my beliefs on several things that I realized I was taught wrong and that I learned wrongly. So this is not just about time spent teaching, but this is about being open to change beliefs if I am presented with something I had wrong, and then to correct it. This is about a long process of learning and growing in the knowledge of the Lord and in what his word teaches. And my dependency is on the Lord and not on human beings.

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Reminds me of the first 3 statements in my signature.

We can never learn if we think we are learnt. The greatest thing we can know is we don't know anything. At that point we can learn.

Many teach, but not many been taught.
YOU GOD have given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. For it is You that works in us both to will and do Your Good pleasure. LORD we believe thank you for helping our unbelief, AMEN!

HIM said:

The greatest thing we can know is we don't know anything. At that point we can learn.

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Reminds me of why I esteem myself to be a fool.

Lost Witness said:

Reminds me of why I esteem myself to be a fool.

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The fact that you might see wisdom in what was shared shows you are not

Christsfreeservant said:

FYI: To all who are on here who are “King James Bible” only people: The Scriptures did not originate with King James, who commissioned the translation to take place, and who, from what I have read, was not a man of God. The King James Bible was a translation mostly based off earlier translations. It is not the original inspired word of God. The original manuscripts, from what I understand, no longer exist. So what we have are copies of copies and multiple layers of translations by human beings who are not infallible.

Therefore, the King James Bible is not the “only” acceptable English translation of the holy Scriptures. And it is not written in American English of the 21st century. So for me, for instance, who grew up reading that translation, but who started college reading on a 4th grade level, I do not understand the King James Bible. I need something written in my language that I can understand. There are other good translations out there, as well as some that are bad. We should test them all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

So don’t judge other Christians by whether or not they read the King James Bible only. Judge them based upon what they are teaching and how they are living and whether or not they are true servants of the Lord Jesus doing his work. That is true to Scripture. Thank you!

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According to Christian Forum rules:

Promotion of King James Version Onlyism (KJVO) or King James Bible Only is not allowed. Stating one has a preference for King James Version is fine. Tying salvation to what version is used will be seen as flaming.

Since promotion of King James Bible Only isn't allowed to begin with, you're not going to find many people to argue with you on this--unless your goal is to try to win them over even if they can't argue back.

JSRG said:

According to Christian Forum rules:

Promotion of King James Version Onlyism (KJVO) or King James Bible Only is not allowed. Stating one has a preference for King James Version is fine. Tying salvation to what version is used will be seen as flaming.

Since promotion of King James Bible Only isn't allowed to begin with, you're not going to find many people to argue with you on this--unless your goal is to try to win them over even if they can't argue back.

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Yes they censor a lot here.

HIM said:

Yes they censor a lot here.

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Not really that much of a censorship with this one; it's only specifically King James Bible Onlyism that's prohibited. I think it happened because some KJBO advocates were being disruptive so they decided to just put an end to it.

JSRG said:

Not really that much of a censorship with this one; it's only specifically King James Bible Onlyism that's prohibited. I think it happened because some KJBO advocates were being disruptive so they decided to just put an end to it.

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I see it differently but that is okay. Take care

Jeff Carr said:

The real issue with Bible translations is the 'Text' from which they have been translated from.
As you may know, there are two current texts is use for translation.
The Critical Text formed in the 19th century and amended many times, comes basically from two early manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, there may be a third, I not sure.
The backers of these 'early manuscripts' maintain that as they are nearer in time to the original manuscripts, they are more accurate. Opponents say that they lasted in time because they had errors and were not used and handled as others and thus not worn out.
The other problem is that they disagree with one another hundreds of times. To many scholars this is of grave concern and casts a cloud on their veracity.
Nearly all the modern translations of the New Testament are based on this Critical Text.

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The Critical Text does not come "basically from two early manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus". It's the result of looking at a whole lot more manuscripts. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are important in that they're they're the earliest full or mostly full copies of the New Testament we have (we have earlier manuscripts, but they are much more fragmentary), but they're not the only things that the Critical Text is based on.

As for the whole "older is better", largely that seems to mostly be used as a strawman to attack the Critical Text with, as it isn't really the process the Critical Text itself goes through (in fairness, some of the less scholarly proponents of the Critical Text do often hold up older is better, but not so much the people who actually make the thing). The basic reasoning behind the Critical Text, as I have seen it explained, is that the most likely original reading is the one that best explains all the variants. Age is a definite factor in that, but it isn't the only one.

So it seems to me that the Critical Text being based on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the claim of older is better are both major oversimplifications of the Critical Text.

It is, however, true that almost all modern translations are from the Critical Text.

Jeff Carr said:

The other Text is commonly called the 'Received Text'. Erasmus put this together, several hundreds of years ago from younger manuscripts and also early translations of the New Testament.eg. Old Latin version.
Many scholars believe that this is a superior text while others would vehemently disagree.
This is the text that the KJV, NKJB, and a few others are translated from.

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I do not think many scholars think it's a superior text, unless one defines scholar very broadly. The actual scholars who have issues with the Critical Text in my experience don't hold up the Received Text as the preferable alternative, but the Majority Text instead.

The idea behind the Majority Text is fairly simple. You go with the readings that the most common in manuscripts (hence why it's called the majority text) and use those. While there are some points where the readings become arguable--in some cases there is no clear majority reading--for the most part this creates a fairly objective standard for choosing the reading. This is also sometimes called the Byzantine Text because Majority Text strongly favors the Byzantine Text because, well, those are the majority of manuscripts that have survived.

From a conceptual standpoint, the best arguments for the Received Text are basically the same arguments as one has for the Majority Text (the two are fairly similar albeit with some notable differences), but the Majority Text has a major advantage: Its arguments are consistent. One can defend a lot of the Received Text with Majority Text arguments, but then in other cases (such as when it has readings that are found in few or even zero Greek manuscripts) one has to suddenly throw all of that away in order to try to defend its readings. The only consistent way to defend Received Text readings is to say that it was literally divinely inspired and therefore completely correct in every reading--and some people have made that claim--which of course brings up its own set of major problems.

The one difficulty with the Majority Text compared to the Received Text is the general lack of translations. There's only a few of them and it looks like they were generally all done by just one translator; the one apparent exception to that is the World English Bible, which perhaps not coincidentally seems to be the most popular of the group. But it's still is a relatively minor translation. So the best argument for going with Received Text over Majority Text isn't the actual text itself, just that there are much more accessible and popular English translations of it, and that it's closer to the Majority Text than the Critical Text is, so the Received Text is the "next best thing" to the Majority Text. Though, with that attitude, one would still greatly prefer the NKJV over the KJV (which you do indicate is your preferred translation), so it doesn't end up being an actual argument for the KJV. While both KJV and NKJV have their main text based on the Received Text, the NKJV in its footnotes mentions all of the instances where it diverges from the Majority Text (or the Critical Text; Majority Text is M, Critical Text is NU) so one can see the differences there. Amonst the most popular English translations, I believe the NKJV is the closest thing to a translation of the Majority Text.

Jeff Carr said:

When comparing the two texts, I am concerned of the many verses missing or changed in the Critical Text as thus modern translations, from the Received Text and the translations that come from this text.

Anyway, one should study all the issues as best they can and decide on a translation that fits the evidence.

Confession: I am not a KJV only person. I use the NKJB.

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In regards to the question of there being verses changed or missing, that being a bad thing presupposes that the Received Text is more accurate in those. If the Critical Text omits a verse, but that verse is very poorly attested, then the Critical Text was correct to do so. The simple removal or change of a verse tells us nothing about whether that removal or change was justified or not.

Christsfreeservant said:

I am not a debater. My goal is not to argue with anyone. And I did not know about that rule. My goal was to spread this message as a means to encourage my fellow believers in Christ: "So don’t judge other Christians by whether or not they read the King James Bible only. Judge them based upon what they are teaching and how they are living and whether or not they are true servants of the Lord Jesus doing his work. That is true to Scripture." For, overall, not designated to one specific location, this is an issue in many places, which is most likely why CFS made that rule, which I agree with. And I am glad they did.

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I've read most of the posts in this thread; and I think that some background to the main issues would be helpful.

1) For centuries, in the West, Roman Catholicism kept the Bible from Christians by commanding that it must not be translated into the common languages of the people (Catholicism used their Latin Vulgate, which, ironically, is itself a translation). This meant that most Christians were very ignorant about what the Bible taught and had to rely upon the R.C. priests, which gave them great power over the common people.

2) In the late 1300s, Wycliffe (who was Roman Catholic, but a kind of proto-Reformer and a godly man) translated the Latin Vulgate into English, which gave us the first complete English Bible. This was very strongly opposed by Roman Catholicism; and Wycliffe and his evangelistic followers (the Lollards) were persecuted heavily.

3) In the early 1500s, there was a massive move of God, in which he turned multitudes away from the superstitions and pagan traditions of Roman Catholicism, back to himself and the Bible. This move of God was called The Reformation and it was at this time that the first translations of the Hebrew and Greek were produced, in many languages.

This required a reliable, trustworthy Greek New Testament from which to translate and a diligent Roman Catholic scholar, named "Erasmus", had compiled the first edition of what is now called the "Received Text". This was perfect timing; and the Reformers regarded it as God's providence, which is why it later came to be called the "Received Text" (i.e. received by God's providence).

4) The Protestant Christians in many countries now translated various editions of the Received Text into their own languages (much to the dismay of the Roman Catholic hierarchy); and it was more or less universally accepted, by Protestants, that it was a reliable, trustworthy Greek New Testament, which God had provided for them (note that I didn't say that it was perfect; indeed, there are small variations between different editions, but they are all sound doctrinally and factually).

5) In the latter half of the 1700s (the time of the so-called "enlightenment"), some sceptical scholars began to cast doubt on the Bible, e.g. J.J. Griesbach, a German professor, claimed that, "The New Testament abounds in more glosses, additions and interpolations purposely introduced than any other book.". This sceptic developed one of the "rules" later used by compilers of what is called the "Critical Text", namely, that the hard reading is to be preferred to the easy reading. He interpreted this to mean that orthodox (with a small "o") Christians had corrupted their own New Testament manuscripts.

6) Then along came the notorious "Westcott and Hort" (Roman Catholic sympathising High Anglican bishops), who wanted to replace the Received Text with one of their own devising. Hort loathed the Received Text, callling it "vile" and "villainous", before he had even studied the subject; he was also a great fan of the sceptic Griesbach.

7) Using two Greek manuscripts of dubious provenance (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), along with the sceptical theories of Griesbach, which he had developed and enlarged upon, Hort produced his replacement Greek New Testament.

8) In the late 1800s, Hort had been made the head of the translation committee of the Revised Version, which was to have been a revision of the English (not the underlying Greek and Hebrew) of the King James Version Bible; however, Hort, contrary to his mandate, secretly gave the translation committee his own Greek New Testament from which to translate, and persuaded them not to release the details until the translation was published.

9) There was an American version of the R.V. published, a few years later, called the American Standard Version, which is the basis for several modern translations based on the "Critical Text" (the R.S.V., N.A.S.B., N.R.S.V. and E.S.V. are all derived from the A.S.V.).

10) In the 20th C., the Majority Text was produced, which is based on the most common readings from hundreds of Greek manuscripts. It is much closer to the Received Text than the Critical Text, but is still based on the theories of men, rather than God's providence; and it generally discounts evidence from sources other than Greek manuscripts (e.g. 1 John 5:7 - the Johannine Comma, which is in many editions of the Received Text, is present in about 95% of the over 8,000 Latin manuscripts, and is quoted by some Early Church Fathers; but, because it is only in 9 Greek manuscripts, it is omitted from the Majority Text).

11) Nowadays, most translations are based on the sceptical "Critical Text", which is based on Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and about 50 other supporting Greek manuscripts; but, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are so corrupt that they disagree with each other, more than 3,000 times (!), in the gospels alone; and the vast majority of manuscripts are discounted as evidence, because most of them are "late" (from the 9th and 10th centuries A.D.). This ignores the fact that there was what is now called "The Great Tranliteration", in the 9th and 10th centuries, in which ancient Uncial manuscripts (these are the oldest ones, written in all capital letters) were directly copied to more modern "minuscules" (manuscripts written in small letters), so that the vast majority of manuscripts (discounted by the "Critical Text") are, in fact, direct copies of far older manuscripts that no longer exist.

12) The choice people face is, essentially, between translations based on what God provided at that great return to God and his word - the Reformation; or, what was produced to replace it, by sceptics, in the late 1800s (and what has developed from that).

David1701 said:

I've read most of the posts in this thread; and I think that some background to the main issues would be helpful.

1) For centuries, in the West, Roman Catholicism kept the Bible from Christians by commanding that it must not be translated into the common languages of the people (Catholicism used their Latin Vulgate, which, ironically, is itself a translation). This meant that most Christians were very ignorant about what the Bible taught and had to rely upon the R.C. priests, which gave them great power over the common people.

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At the time that the Catholic Church was choosing the books of the Bible, a process which spanned centuries, Latin was replacing Greek as the common tongue of the people in Europe. Since the vast majority of European Christians no longer spoke Greek but instead spoke Latin, in the late 300s the Catholic Church made the decision to translate the Bible into the common or "vulgar" language of the people, Latin, thus the Latin "Vulgate." There came a time in Europe where if you could read or write, that essentially meant you knew Latin. Eventually Latin morphed into languages such as French, Spanish, and Italian, and many many translations of Biblical text were made by Catholics into many common languages. Remember too that for most of the history of Christianity, before the time of the printing press, when a Catholic named Gutenberg printed his first book(the Bible) most people were illiterate and individual ownership was rare. A monastery might only have one Bible. Thus priests had to memorize long passages of the Bible before they could go out and preach the Bible. The time to hand-copy a Bible and the materials involved made ownership extremely expensive.
Consider England. Venerable Bede, a Catholic monk, is perhaps best known for his translation in the 700s. Catholic King Alfred the Great had not finished his translation of Psalms before he died, that would have been in the 800s. Now a lot of Biblical texts by Catholics have been destroyed, remember Protestants in England seized Catholic monasteries and gave the land to wealthy Protestants and much that was Catholic was sold off or destroyed. But some do exist, you can find some of Alfred’s translations in a manuscript dated at around 1050. These are in the English of the Saxons: The Illustrated Psalms of Alfred the Great: The Old English Paris Psalter. Anyone doubting can see for themselves by following that link. When the Normans took over the English changed, the paraphrase of Orm is dated around 1150 and is an example of a Catholic translation into Middle English. When a Catholic named Gutenberg printed the first book on the printing press, of course the first book he printed was the Bible. It is known as the Gutenberg Bible. Catholics who fled to France after the takeover of Protestantism in England were able to publish an English version of the Bible and efforts, at great peril, were made by Catholics to get an English version of that Bible, the Douay-Rheims, to the people of England. The Rheims New Testament was published in the year 1582, and the entire Bible was finished in 1609. The Protestant King James Bible, based much upon Catholic work, was published in 1611.

Valletta said:

At the time that the Catholic Church was choosing the books of the Bible, a process which spanned centuries, Latin was replacing Greek as the common tongue of the people in Europe. Since the vast majority of European Christians no longer spoke Greek but instead spoke Latin, in the late 300s the Catholic Church made the decision to translate the Bible into the common or "vulgar" language of the people, Latin, thus the Latin "Vulgate." There came a time in Europe where if you could read or write, that essentially meant you knew Latin. Remember too that for most of the history of Christianity, before the time of the printing press, when a Catholic named Gutenberg printed his first book(the Bible) most people were illiterate and individual ownership was rare. A monastery might only have one Bible. Thus priests had to memorize long passages of the Bible before they could go out and preach the Bible. The time to hand-copy a Bible and the materials involved made ownership extremely expensive. Eventually Latin morphed into languages such as French, Spanish, and Italian, and many many translations of Biblical text were made by Catholics into many common languages.
Consider England. Venerable Bede, a Catholic monk, is perhaps best known for his translation in the 700s. Catholic King Alfred the Great had not finished his translation of Psalms before he died, that would have been in the 800s. Now a lot of Biblical texts by Catholics have been destroyed, remember Protestants in England seized Catholic monasteries and gave the land to wealthy Protestants and much that was Catholic was sold off or destroyed. But some do exist, you can find some of Alfred’s translations in a manuscript dated at around 1050. These are in the English of the Saxons: The Illustrated Psalms of Alfred the Great: The Old English Paris Psalter. Anyone doubting can see for themselves by following that link. When the Normans took over the English changed, the paraphrase of Orm is dated around 1150 and is an example of a Catholic translation into Middle English. When a Catholic named Gutenberg printed the first book on the printing press, of course the first book he printed was the Bible. It is known as the Gutenberg Bibles. Catholics who fled to France after the takeover of Protestantism in England were able to publish an English version of the Bible and efforts, at great peril, were made by Catholics to get an English version of that Bible, the Douay-Rheims, to the people of England. The Rheims New Testament was published in the year 1582, and the entire Bible was finished in 1609. The Protestant King James Bible, based much upon Catholic work, was published in 1611.

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Well, that's one of the most one-sided summaries I've ever seen!

When Roman Catholicism employed Jerome to create the R.C. Latin Vulgate, there was already a Latin Vulgate in existence; in fact, there was an outcry against Jerome's version, because he was accused of using corrupt manuscripts, translating poorly, and because he omitted 1 John 5:7 (it was added back in around 800 A.D.). The R.C. organisation was quite successful in destroying the Old Latin Vulgate, however, since only about 60 manuscripts remain, compared with over 8,000 of Jerome's version.

There was nothing wrong with making a Latin translation; the point is that the R.C. organisation later, and for centuries, forbade the translation of Bibles into the common languages, or the possession of such, insisting that Jerome's Vulgate was perfect (which is utter nonsense, of course).

I'm well aware that private ownership of Bibles was rare and expensive, before the invention of the printing press; however, having the Bible read in Latin only, if you spoke English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc., was very unhelpful, to put it mildly.

Yes, I know about the "Venerable Bede", etc., but I was referring to whole Bibles, not mere portions of the Bible.

The Gutenberg Bible was a Latin Vulgate, not a German language Bible. The first of those was by Martin Luther.

The "Protestant" takeover of England was merely Henry VIII being stubborn and selfish; it was not, initially, the result of the Protestant Reformation; that came later.

The Douay-Rheims translation was rushed out, as part of the R.C. Counter-Reformation, because of the success of Protestant translations like Tyndale's New Testament, the Matthews Bible and the Geneva Bible.

David1701 said:

I've read most of the posts in this thread; and I think that some background to the main issues would be helpful.

1) For centuries, in the West, Roman Catholicism kept the Bible from Christians by commanding that it must not be translated into the common languages of the people (Catholicism used their Latin Vulgate, which, ironically, is itself a translation). This meant that most Christians were very ignorant about what the Bible taught and had to rely upon the R.C. priests, which gave them great power over the common people.

2) In the late 1300s, Wycliffe (who was Roman Catholic, but a kind of proto-Reformer and a godly man) translated the Latin Vulgate into English, which gave us the first complete English Bible. This was very strongly opposed by Roman Catholicism; and Wycliffe and his evangelistic followers (the Lollards) were persecuted heavily.

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A major oversimplification of events, though also not particularly relevant to the current discussion.

David1701 said:

3) In the early 1500s, there was a massive move of God, in which he turned multitudes away from the superstitions and pagan traditions of Roman Catholicism, back to himself and the Bible. This move of God was called The Reformation and it was at this time that the first translations of the Hebrew and Greek were produced, in many languages.

This required a reliable, trustworthy Greek New Testament from which to translate and a diligent Roman Catholic scholar, named "Erasmus", had compiled the first edition of what is now called the "Received Text". This was perfect timing; and the Reformers regarded it as God's providence, which is why it later came to be called the "Received Text" (i.e. received by God's providence).

4) The Protestant Christians in many countries now translated various editions of the Received Text into their own languages (much to the dismay of the Roman Catholic hierarchy); and it was more or less universally accepted, by Protestants, that it was a reliable, trustworthy Greek New Testament, which God had provided for them (note that I didn't say that it was perfect; indeed, there are small variations between different editions, but they are all sound doctrinally and factually).

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The term Received Text appears to not have come at all from any idea that it was "received by God's providence". As far as I can tell, its first instance is in a 17th century printing, which says:

"Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum"
("the text you therefore have, has now been received by all")

The reference to it as a "Received Text" is not saying anything about "received by God's providence" but rather refers to its wide usage.

David1701 said:

5) In the latter half of the 1700s (the time of the so-called "enlightenment"), some sceptical scholars began to cast doubt on the Bible, e.g. J.J. Griesbach, a German professor, claimed that, "The New Testament abounds in more glosses, additions and interpolations purposely introduced than any other book.". This sceptic developed one of the "rules" later used by compilers of what is called the "Critical Text", namely, that the hard reading is to be preferred to the easy reading. He interpreted this to mean that orthodox (with a small "o") Christians had corrupted their own New Testament manuscripts.

6) Then along came the notorious "Westcott and Hort" (Roman Catholic sympathising High Anglican bishops), who wanted to replace the Received Text with one of their own devising. Hort loathed the Received Text, callling it "vile" and "villainous", before he had even studied the subject; he was also a great fan of the sceptic Griesbach.

7) Using two Greek manuscripts of dubious provenance (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), along with the sceptical theories of Griesbach, which he had developed and enlarged upon, Hort produced his replacement Greek New Testament.

8) In the late 1800s, Hort had been made the head of the translation committee of the Revised Version, which was to have been a revision of the English (not the underlying Greek and Hebrew) of the King James Version Bible; however, Hort, contrary to his mandate, secretly gave the translation committee his own Greek New Testament from which to translate, and persuaded them not to release the details until the translation was published.

9) There was an American version of the R.V. published, a few years later, called the American Standard Version, which is the basis for several modern translations based on the "Critical Text" (the R.S.V., N.A.S.B., N.R.S.V. and E.S.V. are all derived from the A.S.V.).

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The repeated reference to Griesbach as a "skeptic" seems inaccurate--as far as I can tell he was a Christian.

Westcott and Hort are of course the punching back of the King James Only or Received Text Only crowds. First, if Westcott and Hort being (allegedly, at least) "Roman Catholic sympathizing" is a knock against them, what does that say about the original creator of the Received Text, Erasmus, a bona fide Roman Catholic priest who wrote against Luther and the Reformation? KJVOs sometimes try to defend Erasmus due to him having some criticisms of the Catholic Church, but he nevertheless rejected the Protestant Reformation, and certainlly was significantly more Catholic than Westcott or Hort ever were.

This focus on Westcott and Hort also ignores the fact that the errors of the Received Text were acknowledged by even their critics. John Burgon was one of the harshest critic of the Revised Version in its day, and his arguments are often repeated by King James Version Onlyists--but Burgon also thought the Received Text had problems and needed to be corrected. The position of even this harsh critic was not that the Received Text should not be revised, but rather that the Revised Version went too far, and that if he had to choose between what he viewed as the flawed Received Text and the really flawed Revised Version, he would take the former.

David1701 said:

10) In the 20th C., the Majority Text was produced, which is based on the most common readings from hundreds of Greek manuscripts. It is much closer to the Received Text than the Critical Text, but is still based on the theories of men, rather than God's providence; and it generally discounts evidence from sources other than Greek manuscripts (e.g. 1 John 5:7 - the Johannine Comma, which is in many editions of the Received Text, is present in about 95% of the over 8,000 Latin manuscripts, and is quoted by some Early Church Fathers; but, because it is only in 9 Greek manuscripts, it is omitted from the Majority Text).

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The Received Text was put together "based on the theories of men" as well. Erasmus never, as far as I can tell, thought his edition was in any way of divine providence. If someone later thought it was based on divine providence in some capacity--well, someone can just as easily claim that for anything. If anything it would seem to me that "divine providence" would better favor the Majority Text on the simple theory that it was what, historically, the Greek verses the majority of people were actually using, unlike the Received Text which brought in minority readings and (at least in the case of Revelation, due to Erasmus lacking the end of Revelation in his Greek manuscript, so he just took the Latin and transalted it back into Greek) readings you won't find in any Greek manuscript.

The Johannine Comma is an odd one to hold up as evidence against the Majority Text, given the weakness of evidence for it. It is found in a lot of Latin manuscripts, sure--but not the earliest ones. Even if we were to write off those early ones as anomalies among the Latin, we run into the problem that as should be obvious, namely that Latin is a translation, not the original language. And in various other early language translations, it's not found at all. In fact, just about all the evidence one can cobble together for the Comma that isn't incredibly late is from Latin sources (both in terms of manuscripts and quotations).

As for the "Early Church Fathers", earliest undisputed reference to the Comma comes from the late 4th century by Priscillian, which is rather late. Sometimes Cyprian (3rd century) gets brought forward as someone who referred to it, but there are various problems with that (most notably the fact that he didn't actually quote it in the place he supposedly referred to it, and he didn't make any reference in other writings where one would expect him to do so--not to mention the lack of attestation by any other Latin writers until later). It is indeed strikingly odd that there aren't any quotations of it all in most of the fourth century when the Arian Controversy was at its height and it would have been a valuable prooftext--and when it does finally show up, it's only in the Latin. The argument that the Arians took it out in the Greek ends up failing because (1) aside from a letter attributed to Jerome that is regarded as spurious, I don't think their opponents ever accused them of this, (2) this wouldn't explain the lack of usages of it in earlier polemics against Arians before they could have plausibly done this, and (3) why and how the Arians could pull off this incredible feat but left things like John 1:10 and John 10:30 completely intact.

The evidence is pretty strong that, while it might be theologically orthodox, the Johannine Comma was an interpolation later introduced into the Latin and was not in the original epistle of John.

David1701 said:

11) Nowadays, most translations are based on the sceptical "Critical Text", which is based on Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and about 50 other supporting Greek manuscripts; but, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are so corrupt that they disagree with each other, more than 3,000 times (!), in the gospels alone; and the vast majority of manuscripts are discounted as evidence, because most of them are "late" (from the 9th and 10th centuries A.D.). This ignores the fact that there was what is now called "The Great Tranliteration", in the 9th and 10th centuries, in which ancient Uncial manuscripts (these are the oldest ones, written in all capital letters) were directly copied to more modern "minuscules" (manuscripts written in small letters), so that the vast majority of manuscripts (discounted by the "Critical Text") are, in fact, direct copies of far older manuscripts that no longer exist.

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Except as you note, it involves a bunch of manuscripts beyond just Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. This fixation on the alleged problems of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, or for that matter fixation on Westcott and Hort, is focusing inordinately on the late 19th century rather than the present day.

David1701 said:

12) The choice people face is, essentially, between translations based on what God provided at that great return to God and his word - the Reformation;

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The idea that the Received Text was "provided by God" seems a large assumption (and seems to tread extremely close to KJV Onlyism, or perhaps more accurate TR Onlyism), particularly when one considers the original instrument for that was a Roman Catholic priest working under very limited circumstances, and I do not believe either he or anyone else involved in it thought there was anything of particularly divine origin involved. But this line of thought thought also seems rather troubling. It is to say that the original Protestants got everything right in regards to this and there is no purpose or need to try to do any better than them... which is a startlingly high level of infallibility to assign to them, particularly from a Protestant perspective (it sounds far more like the Catholic ideas of infallibility that Protestants rail against, but with less foundation). And if that is the case for the Greek text of the Bible, why stop there? Why not suppose they got everything else right, and refuse to reconsider anything they thought? And if so, when is this cutoff point where things should be disregarded as no longer provided by God? After Luther? After Calvin? After the English Reformation? After Wesley?

David1701 said:

or, what was produced to replace it, by sceptics, in the late 1800s (and what has developed from that).

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Again, it's not clear how Griesebach was a skeptic, but even if we were to suppose that the people involved were outright atheists, they died over a century ago. They are not the ones making the Critical Texts now. As noted earlier, this fixation on the late 1800s, as if there has been no improvements or progress since then, is simply attacking a strawman. The response, I suppose, would be to claim that it still "developed from that" but the actual criticisms here so far have been largely ad hominem attacks (accusing them of being "skeptics") or making criticisms that are less relevant now. Even if we were to suppose that even current ones are too intertwined with the ideas of these "skeptics", this ends up not being an argument for the Received Text, but an argument against the current Critical Text, unless it is in the sense of "well they're both flawed, but this one is less flawed."

David1701 said:

Well, that's one of the most one-sided summaries I've ever seen!

When Roman Catholicism employed Jerome to create the R.C. Latin Vulgate, there was already a Latin Vulgate in existence; in fact, there was an outcry against Jerome's version, because he was accused of using corrupt manuscripts, translating poorly, and because he omitted 1 John 5:7 (it was added back in around 800 A.D.). The R.C. organisation was quite successful in destroying the Old Latin Vulgate, however, since only about 60 manuscripts remain, compared with over 8,000 of Jerome's version.

There was nothing wrong with making a Latin translation; the point is that the R.C. organisation later, and for centuries, forbade the translation of Bibles into the common languages, or the possession of such, insisting that Jerome's Vulgate was perfect (which is utter nonsense, of course).

I'm well aware that private ownership of Bibles was rare and expensive, before the invention of the printing press; however, having the Bible read in Latin only, if you spoke English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc., was very unhelpful, to put it mildly.

Yes, I know about the "Venerable Bede", etc., but I was referring to whole Bibles, not mere portions of the Bible.

The Gutenberg Bible was a Latin Vulgate, not a German language Bible. The first of those was by Martin Luther.

The "Protestant" takeover of England was merely Henry VIII being stubborn and selfish; it was not, initially, the result of the Protestant Reformation; that came later.

The Douay-Rheims translation was rushed out, as part of the R.C. Counter-Reformation, because of the success of Protestant translations like Tyndale's New Testament, the Matthews Bible and the Geneva Bible.

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My accurate statement addressed your falsehood about the Catholics supposedly keeping Christians from reading the Bible by, for centuries, commanding it not be translated into the common language of the people. Besides Latin and French and Spanish and so many English translations, there were Catholic translations of Biblical text into Bohemian, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, and Norwegian. @joymercy correctly pointed out the Church was absolutely against UNAUTHORIZED translations, translations that were inaccurate or added or subtracted text from the Bible, translations that added all kinds of commentary that not only was not part of the Bible, and so often went against the teachings of the Bible. The problems popped up in some localities, there certainly were not centuries of orders not to translate Bibles into the common languages as you claimed and is obvious from the sheer number of translations and versions in the common tongues. We all owe the Catholics who preserved and copied and preached the Bible over all of those centuries a great debt. Realize that the mediums used to create a physical Bible were for many centuries extremely poor and subject to decay. It could take years just to copy an entire Bible. And remember all of the Bibles in Europe (up until the reformation when some versions dropped books) contained the complete Bible consisting of all 73 books. It took great fortitude and faith to copy and preserve our Bible for future generations.

JSRG said:

A major oversimplification of events, though also not particularly relevant to the current discussion.

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Of course it's a simplification; I was writing a forum post, not a treatise.

The background is always helpful; it gives context to what follows.

The term Received Text appears to not have come at all from any idea that it was "received by God's providence". As far as I can tell, its first instance is in a 17th century printing, which says:

"Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum"
("the text you therefore have, has now been received by all")

The reference to it as a "Received Text" is not saying anything about "received by God's providence" but rather refers to its wide usage.

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This interpretation is a modern, somewhat unbelieving one, not one seen through the eyes of Bible believers at that time. The text received by all, yes; but, received from whom? The Christians commonly believed, as we should now, in God's providence, giving thanks for all things (which you can only do, if you believe that all things come from the hand of God, ultimately).

The repeated reference to Griesbach as a "skeptic" seems inaccurate--as far as I can tell he was a Christian.

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He professed to be a Christian, as do many nowadays, who do not demonstrate it by what they believe and do. I'll repeat the quote I gave previously.

"The New Testament abounds in more glosses, additions and interpolations purposely introduced than any other book." - J.J. Griesbach

These are not the words of a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's another dreadful quote from the execrable Griesbach.

"The most suspicious reading of all, is the one that yields a sense favourable to the nourishment of piety (especially monastic piety)."

and another...

"When there are many variant readings in one place, that reading which more than the others manifestly favours the dogmas of the orthodox is deservedly regarded as suspicious."

Of course, Griesbach was not alone in his scepticism regarding God's word (it was the age of Rationalism, after all), but his views were very influential in the life of Hort, which is important for what follows.

Westcott and Hort are of course the punching back of the King James Only or Received Text Only crowds.

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Ah, here comes the good old "guilt by association" fallacy.

First, if Westcott and Hort being (allegedly, at least) "Roman Catholic sympathizing" is a knock against them, what does that say about the original creator of the Received Text, Erasmus, a bona fide Roman Catholic priest who wrote against Luther and the Reformation? KJVOs sometimes try to defend Erasmus due to him having some criticisms of the Catholic Church, but he nevertheless rejected the Protestant Reformation, and certainlly was significantly more Catholic than Westcott or Hort ever were.

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And this fallacy is a red herring. Westcott and Hort were not mere compilers of the available manuscripts, trying objectively to ascertain the best readings, as Erasmus was; but, they sought to replace the Traditional Text with one based on two, cherry picked, error-strewn manuscripts, along with Hort's own theories about textual criticism.

This focus on Westcott and Hort also ignores the fact that the errors of the Received Text were acknowledged by even their critics. John Burgon was one of the harshest critic of the Revised Version in its day, and his arguments are often repeated by King James Version Onlyists--but Burgon also thought the Received Text had problems and needed to be corrected. The position of even this harsh critic was not that the Received Text should not be revised, but rather that the Revised Version went too far, and that if he had to choose between what he viewed as the flawed Received Text and the really flawed Revised Version, he would take the former.

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Here goes the guilt by association again (I've made it bold, just in case you missed it)...

I've already said that there were various editions of the Received Text and that each differed, in minor details, from the others. It's quite possible that Burgon (with whom I am familiar) was right about the need for another edition of the Received Text; but, that is not remotely close to what Hort did (and Hort's motives were also very different, rooted as they were, in a prejudiced hatred of the Received Text).

The Received Text was put together "based on the theories of men" as well. Erasmus never, as far as I can tell, thought his edition was in any way of divine providence. If someone later thought it was based on divine providence in some capacity--well, someone can just as easily claim that for anything. If anything it would seem to me that "divine providence" would better favor the Majority Text on the simple theory that it was what, historically, the Greek verses the majority of people were actually using, unlike the Received Text which brought in minority readings and (at least in the case of Revelation, due to Erasmus lacking the end of Revelation in his Greek manuscript, so he just took the Latin and transalted it back into Greek) readings you won't find in any Greek manuscript.

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What is God's character?

One of his names is "Jehovah Jireh" (The God who Sees and Provides); so, what would one expect God to provide his people, at an epochal time of return to God and his word? We would expect him to provide a sound, reliable and trustworthy edition of the Greek and Hebrew, from which his people could produce sound, trustworthy translations.

Of course, no-one can force anyone else to believe in God and his providence; but, if one thinks that God did not provide his people with a sound, reliable, trustworthy Greek New Testament, at the Reformation, then his view of God is low indeed.

Latin manuscripts, being translations of very early Greek manuscripts, are also strong evidence, to be taken into consideration, along with other early translations, lectionaries and ECF quotes (the last not so much, since there are difficulties here), not only the Greek manuscript evidence itself.

Having said that, I do believe that the Majority Text (actually, there are three, slightly different, Majority Texts) is quite good, and much better than the so-called "Critical Text".

The Johannine Comma is an odd one to hold up as evidence against the Majority Text, given the weakness of evidence for it. It is found in a lot of Latin manuscripts, sure--but not the earliest ones. Even if we were to write off those early ones as anomalies among the Latin, we run into the problem that as should be obvious, namely that Latin is a translation, not the original language. And in various other early language translations, it's not found at all. In fact, just about all the evidence one can cobble together for the Comma that isn't incredibly late is from Latin sources (both in terms of manuscripts and quotations).

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The evidence for 1 John 5:7 is not the strongest, but I do believe it to be genuine Scripture; and it's possible that it was removed from some early manuscripts, because of the strong influence of the Arians (somewhat like modern J.W.s, who don't believe in the Trinity) in the 2nd C..

As for the "Early Church Fathers", earliest undisputed reference to the Comma comes from the late 4th century by Priscillian, which is rather late. Sometimes Cyprian (3rd century) gets brought forward as someone who referred to it, but there are various problems with that (most notably the fact that he didn't actually quote it in the place he supposedly referred to it, and he didn't make any reference in other writings where one would expect him to do so--not to mention the lack of attestation by any other Latin writers until later). It is indeed strikingly odd that there aren't any quotations of it all in most of the fourth century when the Arian Controversy was at its height and it would have been a valuable prooftext--and when it does finally show up, it's only in the Latin. The argument that the Arians took it out in the Greek ends up failing because (1) aside from a letter attributed to Jerome that is regarded as spurious, I don't think their opponents ever accused them of this, (2) this wouldn't explain the lack of usages of it in earlier polemics against Arians before they could have plausibly done this, and (3) why and how the Arians could pull off this incredible feat but left things like John 1:10 and John 10:30 completely intact.

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Hold on a minute. 1 John 5:7 was quoted by several African writers, in the 5th C., to defend the Trinity against the Vandals, who were fanatically addicted to the Arian heresy.

It is not in some of the early manuscripts of Jerome's Vulgate, because he omitted it (and there was an outcry about this at the time). It was later put back in, in about 800 A.D..

The evidence is pretty strong that, while it might be theologically orthodox, the Johannine Comma was an interpolation later introduced into the Latin and was not in the original epistle of John.

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Well, I can't prove it (as is the case in much to do with textual criticism) but I firmly believe that 1 John 5:7 is genuine Scripture.

Except as you note, it involves a bunch of manuscripts beyond just Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. This fixation on the alleged problems of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, or for that matter fixation on Westcott and Hort, is focusing inordinately on the late 19th century rather than the present day.

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And here we have another fallacy - appeal to ridicule ("fixation").

The problems with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are not merely "alleged", they are objective facts, e.g. Sinaiticus is the Greek manuscript with the most attempted corrections, by about 15 different scribes, at different times. Those two manuscripts disagree with each other more than 3,000 times, in the gospels alone. Some of the errors are absolutely outrageous (like stopping in the middle of one O.T. book, then continuing part way through a different O.T. book).

Westcott and Hort (particularly Hort) were instrumental in replacing the Received Text, and in starting the focus on a small number of Greek manuscripts, of one type, from one region (Egypt) and one time period, to the exclusion of the vast majority of manuscripts. It is highly appropriate to look at the root and fruit of any school of thought; and this should be obvious.

The idea that the Received Text was "provided by God" seems a large assumption (and seems to tread extremely close to KJV Onlyism, or perhaps more accurate TR Onlyism), ...

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Guilt by association fallacy - again...

It is not a "large assumption" to believe that God was true to his character and provided what the Reformers needed, at a momentous time in history; in fact, it would be a large, and God-dishonouring, assumption to disbelieve it.

...particularly when one considers the original instrument for that was a Roman Catholic priest working under very limited circumstances, and I do not believe either he or anyone else involved in it thought there was anything of particularly divine origin involved. But this line of thought thought also seems rather troubling. It is to say that the original Protestants got everything right in regards to this ...

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This fallacy is a "straw man" (inventing an argument that your opponent has not made, which is easier to combat).

...and there is no purpose or need to try to do any better than them...

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Another straw man...

...which is a startlingly high level of infallibility to assign to them, ...

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Yet another straw man...

...particularly from a Protestant perspective (it sounds far more like the Catholic ideas of infallibility that Protestants rail against, but with less foundation).

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Guilt by association...

And if that is the case for the Greek text of the Bible, why stop there? Why not suppose they got everything else right, and refuse to reconsider anything they thought? And if so, when is this cutoff point where things should be disregarded as no longer provided by God? After Luther? After Calvin? After the English Reformation? After Wesley?

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Straw man...

Again, it's not clear how Griesebach was a skeptic, ...

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LOL! It's very clear!

...but even if we were to suppose that the people involved were outright atheists, ...

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Why would we suppose that? There is no evidence for it.

...they died over a century ago. They are not the ones making the Critical Texts now. As noted earlier, this fixation on the late 1800s, as if there has been no improvements or progress since then, is simply attacking a strawman. The response, I suppose, would be to claim that it still "developed from that" but the actual criticisms here so far have been largely ad hominem attacks (accusing them of being "skeptics") or making criticisms that are less relevant now. Even if we were to suppose that even current ones are too intertwined with the ideas of these "skeptics", this ends up not being an argument for the Received Text, but an argument against the current Critical Text, unless it is in the sense of "well they're both flawed, but this one is less flawed."

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One was God's providence, in a time of widespread return to God and his word (and blessed by God for hundreds of years subsequently); the other (the "Critical Text") arose in a time of spiritual decline, was born out of hatred for the Received Text, was based on cherry-picked manuscripts and extremely dubious theories, and has resulted in numerous arguments about omissions and altered readings, due to considerable discrepancies between Bible translations. The Critical Text has also resulted in some false teaching and the weakening of many important passages.