daveleau said:
Is this just one issue among many? The Latin Vulgate was part of KJV source list, if I am not mistaken. Why is the Greek from one area better, when they are so similar and the theological framework is the same? Or, I should ask first, what theological differences do you see between the MT and the CT? (Thanks for that explanation. I have not studied this aspect in my classes yet.)
The KJV translators translated the TR but also compared various translations, including all previous English translations, Spanish, Latin, German, etc. so that they would be as informed as possible on how to translate each verse. But to answer your question: There are many theological issues. One is in Matthew 1:25. There, the MT and TR and Latin Vulgate, and therefore all the early English translations including the Rheims (Catholic translation) have the phrase "her firstborn son." The CT, however, says "a son." Now, since the traditional Protestant text (TR) and traditional Catholic text (Vulgate) both agree, although there is theological difference between the people on this point, we must question the motives of the omission in the CT. Catholics don't believe Jesus was Mary's firstborn but rather onlyborn. Protestants (most) believe that Jesus was her firstborn, as in she had more children after him. Even so, the traditional text of both groups (although the people disagree) has the phrase "firstborn." Now the CT comes along and removes it - why? Catholic bias by the CT editors? It is a possibility. The same reasoning could be applied to Acts 8:37. Although it disproves infant baptism, both the Vulgate and TR included it. But the CT takes it out. Do the CT editors have a bias in favor of infant baptism? Possibly.
The main difference between the TR/MT and CT is constant omission. Sometimes the omission changes the meaning. Sometimes it doesn't change the
overall meaning because the original was repetitive. For example, in Acts 1:14 the TR/MT says "prayer and supplication" but the CT merely says "prayer." It is obvious that the CT is the one in error. Some scribe thought it would be OK to remove supplication because it seemed repetitive, but he forgot that it is God's word that he was fooling with. There are many errors like this in the CT.
Many of the errors of omission have made their way into the CT through the Codex Sinaiticus which is notorious for omission but held in high esteem by some editors because it is esteemed to be very old. The scribe that copied that particular manuscript did something kind of weird that shows how competent he was to be copying Greek. When he would come to the end of a line, he would split two letter words even though there was plenty of space. He would come across the words "en" or "ek," and although having enough room to write the whole word, would write "e" on the end of the line and "k" or "n" on the beginning of the next. The quote below is from
AV or RV? by Philip Mauro where he quotes F.H. Scrivener on the character of Codex Sinaiticus:
But more than that, Dr. Scrivener says: "This manuscript must have been derived from one in which the lines were similarly divided, since the writer occasionally omits just the number of letters which would suffice to fill a line, and that to the utter ruin of the sense; as if his eye had heedlessly wandered to the line immediately below." Dr. Scrivener cites instances "where complete lines are omitted," and others "where the copyist passed in the middle of a line to the corresponding portion of the line below."
So sometimes, the scribe would omit a verse where two consecutive verses ended with the same word, and his eye wondered a line below where it should have been. Now, why didn't he catch his mistakes? Well, Greek at the time was written in all capitals and there were no spaces between words. The best explanation for these mistakes then may be that the scribe didn't know Greek all that well. How would a scribe who didn't know Greek know that "en" or "ek" were one word? How would he know if "e" was the beginning of end of a word? He wouldn't, and thus he would split two letter words at the end of the line even though there was enough space, simply because he didn't know they were one word. Again, he would not be able to read over the page very easily and see that he missed a few lines if he didn't know Greek.
Now, my above suggestion may seem a bit silly, but one of the things that modern critics love about the Sinaiticus is that it is written very neatly. But perhaps it is written too neatly, as if written letter by letter rather than word by word. If you (who know English) are transcribing something in English, you will write word by word. But if you are transcribing Russian (since you don't know Russian) you will transcribe letter by letter. The Russian transcription may turn out to look neater, since you were forced to slow down, but the possibility of error (especially omission) is increased since you have no idea what you are copying.
daveleau said:
Now, while these errors are there, the fact that we have other texts and some texts that were used in the compilation of the CT allows us to have the correct text even though they are omitted in others.
I suppose you mean that although the editors of the CT may omit a certain phrase from their text they still include it in the apparatus and you can therefore resurrect it. Although that may be the case, translations based on the CT don't do that very often.
daveleau said:
My class directed us in a study of a couple of verses that showed that the NIV is a better translation in some aspects. The degree I am seeking is from a conservative seminary, so it's not like they are heretics or anything.
You are probably refering to where the NIV translated a present tense verb as continuous present rather than simple present, like where the KJV says "sinneth not" it says "does not continue to sin" in 1 John 5:18? That's not a real improvement in translation. You can tell by context that "sinneth not" is continuous, since John previously said in 1st John 2:1 "these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate..." by which we know that those who are born of God can sin. So when he says that one who is born of God "sinneth not" in 1 John 5:18, we know that what he means. This little change does not justify using the CT over the TR. The NIV has more bad points than good. (1) Based on the CT (2) Changes "flesh" to "body" (3) Omits more than 16 verses - they are blank (4) It often omits even words that are found in the CT due to its loose translation style (5) It splits Paul's long sentences into little sentences (6) It removes the word "and" from the beginning of many sentences (7) The lying footnotes: Vaticanus and Sinaiticus may be the oldest (and even that is debatable) but they are not the "best" manuscripts
