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Let me start by saying the point of this is to educate. I pray we can all learn as we go through what little notes I've compiled about the Textus Receptus and why I firmly believe it, and by extension scriptures translated from it are corrupted. This post will contain a lot of quotes with my own interjections here or there. Sources provided in parentheses.
I grew up in a Baptist church that was a King James Only body. They said it was the only God authorized version of the scriptures in English and as such anything else was not of God. They also point out how other versions seemingly left out verses and/or bits of verses such as Acts 8:38, 1 John 5:7-8, etc. But is the Textus Receptus actually the unreliable script?
It was originally compiled in 1516 by Erasmus, a Dutchman.
"It would go to press in October of 1515 and would be completed by March of 1516. In fact, Erasmus was in such a hurried mode he rushed the manuscript containing the Gospels to the printer without first editing it, making such changes, as he felt was necessary on the proof sheets. Because of this great rush job, this work also contained hundreds of typographical errors. Erasmus himself admitted this in its preface that it was “rushed through rather than edited.” Bruce Metzger referred to the Erasmian text as a “debased form of the Greek Testament.” (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 103)" Who Was Desiderius Erasmus and What Is the Textus Receptus?
One of the most egregious issues was/is found at the end of Revelation. You see at the time Erasmus compiled the TR, he has access to only 5 or 6 very late Greek scripts and this meant parts were incomplete, like Revelation:
"Consequently, Erasmus had but one copy of Revelation (twelfth century). Since it was incomplete, he merely retranslated the missing last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek." Who Was Desiderius Erasmus and What Is the Textus Receptus?
And for those wondering about why the KJV (which is translated from the Textus Receptus) has some 17 verses that modern translations do not:
"Erasmus even frequently brought his Greek text in line with the Latin Vulgate; this is why there are some twenty readings in his Greek text not found in any other Greek manuscript."
Including one of the most famous passages of conflict between the KJV and modern translations, 1 John 5:7-8, aka the Comma Johanneum. You may be surprised to know that even Erasmus did not include this passage about the Trinity in his first or second edition of the Textus Receptus. Only because of pressure from the Church did he include it in later revisions. (What is the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)? | GotQuestions.org)
"The controversy over the Johannine Comma
The presence of the Johannine Comma in some editions of the Greek New Testament and Bible translations can be traced back to the work of Desiderius Erasmus, a Roman Catholic scholar who lived during the 16th century.
Erasmus embarked on a project to reconstruct the original Greek text of the New Testament by comparing the New Testament Greek manuscripts available to him. Because Erasmus’ Greek manuscripts did not contain the Johannine Comma, the first and second editions of his Greek New Testament likewise did not contain the Johannine Comma.
However, Erasmus faced a lot of criticism for not having the Johannine Comma in his Greek New Testament. This was because the Latin Vulgate, the official version of the Bible for the Roman Catholic Church, contained the Johannine Comma. In response to one of his critics, Erasmus wrote:
If I had one manuscript which had what we read [in the Latin Vulgate], I would surely have added it there, even though it was absent in the other manuscripts. Since I did not have such a manuscript, I have done the only reasonable thing: I have indicated what was missing in the Greek manuscripts. (Haec Erasmus contra Leum)
Erasmus refused to include the Johannine Comma in in his Greek New Testament because could not find a single Greek manuscript which contained it. He even wrote to a friend in Rome, asking him to check if Codex Vaticanus, a Greek manuscript from the 4th century, contained the Johannine Comma. Indeed, Codex Vaticanus does not contain the Johannine Comma. Today, the page containing 1 John 5:7–8 in Codex Vaticanus is the most ragged because of how much it had been used, and drops of candle wax can even be seen on that page because of how much it had been examined at that place." (The Story of the Johannine Comma)
At the end of it all, when the evidence is considered:
"Thus it will be conceded by all reputable scholars -- even those who favour the Byzantine text -- that the Textus Receptus, in all its various forms, has no textual authority whatsoever. Were it not for the fact that it has been in use for so long as a basis for collations, it could be mercifully forgotten." (Textus Receptus)
I grew up in a Baptist church that was a King James Only body. They said it was the only God authorized version of the scriptures in English and as such anything else was not of God. They also point out how other versions seemingly left out verses and/or bits of verses such as Acts 8:38, 1 John 5:7-8, etc. But is the Textus Receptus actually the unreliable script?
It was originally compiled in 1516 by Erasmus, a Dutchman.
"It would go to press in October of 1515 and would be completed by March of 1516. In fact, Erasmus was in such a hurried mode he rushed the manuscript containing the Gospels to the printer without first editing it, making such changes, as he felt was necessary on the proof sheets. Because of this great rush job, this work also contained hundreds of typographical errors. Erasmus himself admitted this in its preface that it was “rushed through rather than edited.” Bruce Metzger referred to the Erasmian text as a “debased form of the Greek Testament.” (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 103)" Who Was Desiderius Erasmus and What Is the Textus Receptus?
One of the most egregious issues was/is found at the end of Revelation. You see at the time Erasmus compiled the TR, he has access to only 5 or 6 very late Greek scripts and this meant parts were incomplete, like Revelation:
"Consequently, Erasmus had but one copy of Revelation (twelfth century). Since it was incomplete, he merely retranslated the missing last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek." Who Was Desiderius Erasmus and What Is the Textus Receptus?
And for those wondering about why the KJV (which is translated from the Textus Receptus) has some 17 verses that modern translations do not:
"Erasmus even frequently brought his Greek text in line with the Latin Vulgate; this is why there are some twenty readings in his Greek text not found in any other Greek manuscript."
Including one of the most famous passages of conflict between the KJV and modern translations, 1 John 5:7-8, aka the Comma Johanneum. You may be surprised to know that even Erasmus did not include this passage about the Trinity in his first or second edition of the Textus Receptus. Only because of pressure from the Church did he include it in later revisions. (What is the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)? | GotQuestions.org)
"The controversy over the Johannine Comma
The presence of the Johannine Comma in some editions of the Greek New Testament and Bible translations can be traced back to the work of Desiderius Erasmus, a Roman Catholic scholar who lived during the 16th century.
Erasmus embarked on a project to reconstruct the original Greek text of the New Testament by comparing the New Testament Greek manuscripts available to him. Because Erasmus’ Greek manuscripts did not contain the Johannine Comma, the first and second editions of his Greek New Testament likewise did not contain the Johannine Comma.
However, Erasmus faced a lot of criticism for not having the Johannine Comma in his Greek New Testament. This was because the Latin Vulgate, the official version of the Bible for the Roman Catholic Church, contained the Johannine Comma. In response to one of his critics, Erasmus wrote:
If I had one manuscript which had what we read [in the Latin Vulgate], I would surely have added it there, even though it was absent in the other manuscripts. Since I did not have such a manuscript, I have done the only reasonable thing: I have indicated what was missing in the Greek manuscripts. (Haec Erasmus contra Leum)
Erasmus refused to include the Johannine Comma in in his Greek New Testament because could not find a single Greek manuscript which contained it. He even wrote to a friend in Rome, asking him to check if Codex Vaticanus, a Greek manuscript from the 4th century, contained the Johannine Comma. Indeed, Codex Vaticanus does not contain the Johannine Comma. Today, the page containing 1 John 5:7–8 in Codex Vaticanus is the most ragged because of how much it had been used, and drops of candle wax can even be seen on that page because of how much it had been examined at that place." (The Story of the Johannine Comma)
At the end of it all, when the evidence is considered:
"Thus it will be conceded by all reputable scholars -- even those who favour the Byzantine text -- that the Textus Receptus, in all its various forms, has no textual authority whatsoever. Were it not for the fact that it has been in use for so long as a basis for collations, it could be mercifully forgotten." (Textus Receptus)
