A LOW REGARD FOR THE SCRIPTURES
Would you trust a preacher or a Bible scholar who said
the Bible was just a book like any other book? I hope that not a single person listening or reading this would trust him. Yet, millions of Christians, who use the modern versions of the Bible, essentially trust the judgment of those who treat the Bible as just another book. Here's proof...
Dr. Edward Hills wrote, "Westcott (picture to the right) and Hort followed an essentially naturalistic Method. Indeed they prided themselves on
treating the text of the New Testament as they would that of any other book, making little or nothing of inspiration and providence." (Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, pp. 65,66).
In other words, they treated the Bible just like they would the works of Plato, Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling or any other fallible book. In fact,
neither believed in the infallibility of the Bible.
Brooke Foss Westcott stated emphatically, ""
No one now, I suppose,
holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example,
give a literal history - I could never understand how anyone reading them with open eyes could think they did."
Further he wrote, "I never read of
the account of a miracle but
I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it." (
Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott; page 216) Again Westcott said, "
I reject the word infallibility of Holy Scriptures overwhelmingly." (The Life and Letters of Brook Foss Westcott, p.207).
Concerning Fenton John Anthony Hort (picture to the right), Dr. Wilbur Pickering writes, "
Hort did not hold to a high view of inspiration." (The Identity of the New Testament Text, p.212).
Some might protest that the low regard of the Scriptures held by Westcott and Hort has nothing to do with the modern versions of today. You are wrong.
First, the new Bible versions are built on the Greek New Testament compiled by them.
Secondly, current day New Version Potentate Princeton Theological Seminary Professor Bruce Metzger has a low regard for the Scriptures as well. He
doubts Moses alone authored the Pentateuch. As Co-editor of the
New Oxford Annoted Bible RSV he wrote or approved of notes asserting that the Pentateuch is "a matrix of myth, legend, and history" that "took shape over a long period of time" and is "not to be read as history." Job is called an "ancient folktale." And the book of Isaiah was written by as least three men. Jonah is called "popular legend." Then add to that that Metzger claims that
the Gospels are composed of material gathered from oral tradition. The problem is, he completely ignores the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Bible itself!
"And
Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel."
Jesus said, "Did not Moses give you the law, and
yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?"
Jesus said, "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Let me ask you a question.
How can you trust a Bible that has been tampered with by men who neither respect it nor hold it in any higher regard than they would the works of Shakespeare? The answer is clear,
you cannot.
Next, let's consider the manuscripts that were used. The modern versions are built on...
A FEW CORRUPT MANUSCRIPTS
For a more complete treatment of this issue, log on to
The Great? Uncials and read my article The Great? Uncials.
As you will recall, I shared with you a quote by Bruce Metzger. He tells how they developed their Greek text for the modern versions. He said, "
We took as our base at the beginning the text of Westcott and Hort and introduced changes as seemed necessary on the basis of MSS evidence."
So, what manuscripts did Westcott and Hort use to get their Greek New Testament They used primarily two old 4th century manuscripts for their work. Hort's partiality for Codex Vaticanus (B) was practically absolute. Intuitively (without evidence) he believed it to be a near perfect representation of the Greek New Testament. Whenever pages were missing in Vaticanus he would use Codex Sinaiticus (ALEPH) to fill in the gap. And there was plenty missing from Vaticanus. Barry Burtons writes in his book
Let's Weigh the Evidence -- "it omits...Matthew 3, the Pauline Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon), Hebrews 9:14 to 13:25, and all of Revelation... in the gospels alone it leaves out 237 words, 452 clauses and 748 whole sentences, which hundreds of later copies agree together as having the same words in the same places, the same clauses in the same places and the same sentences in the same places." Floyd Jones further notes that Matthew 16:2-3 and Romans 16:24 are missing.
Here is another interesting fact. "It contains the Epistle of Barnabas...which teaches that water baptism saves the soul." (Which Version is The Bible? by Floyd Jones; published by Global Evangelism of Goodyear Arizona; p. 68).
"Erasmus knew about Vaticanus B and its variant readings in 1515 AD while preparing the New Testament the New Testament Greek text. Because they read so differently from the fast majority of mss which he had seen, Erasmus considered such readings spurious." (Which Version is The Bible? by Floyd Jones; published by Global Evangelism of Goodyear Arizona; p. 68). Further, as I understand it, Vaticanus was available to the translators of the King James Bible, but they did not use it because they knew it is unreliable..." It wasn't until 1889-1890 that a complete facsimile was made. The manuscript remains in Vatican City to this day.
Here is a key fact you should know about
Codex Vaticanus (B) -- "
The entire manuscript has had the text mutilated, every letter has been run over with a pen, making exact identification of many of the characters impossible." More specifically, the manuscript is faded in places; scholars think it was overwritten letter by letter in the 10th or 11th century, with accents and breathing marks added along with corrections from the 8th, 10th and 15th centuries. Those who study manuscripts say,
All this activity makes precise paleographic analysis impossible.
Missing portions were supplied in the 15th century by copying other Greek manuscripts. How can you call this manuscript "the oldest and the best."
A corrector of the text had erased a word in verse 3 and substituted another word in its place. A second corrector came along, erased the correction, reinserted the original word, and wrote a note in the margin to castigate the first corrector. The note reads, "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it!"
What about
Codex Sinaiticus (ALEPH)? This is a Greek manuscript of the Old and New Testaments, found on Mount Sinai, in St. Catherine's Monastery, which was a Greek Orthodox Monastery, by Constantine Tischendorf. He was visiting there in 1844, under the patronage of Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony, when he discovered 34 leaves
in a rubbish basket forty-three leaves. He was permitted to take them, but did not get the remainder of the manuscript until 1859. Konstantin Von Tischendorf identified the handwriting of
four different scribes in the writing of that text. But that is not the end of the scribal problems! The
early corrections of the manuscript are made
from Origen's corrupt source.
As many as ten scribes tampered with the codex. Tischendorf said he "counted 14,800 alterations and corrections in Sinaiticus." Alterations, and more alterations, and more alterations were made, and in fact, most of them are believed to be made in the 6th and 7th centuries. So much for the oldest!
"
On nearly every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions, done by 10 different people." He goes on to say,
"...the New Testament...is extremely unreliable...on many occasions 10, 20, 30, 40, words are dropped...letters, words even whole sentences are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately canceled. That gross blunder, whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same word as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament."
Here are several examples of
di homoeotéleuton omissions. The word
di homoeotéleuton is Greek for "because of a similar ending." Here are some examples of the sloppy work of the scribes.
Note: In the following passages the italicized, bold words are
omitted in Sinaiticus...
. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Here the scribe had copied the verse up to the end of the
first "and have not charity," but when he looked up to his example again to continue copying, his eye fell upon the
second occurrence of the phrase, from which he continued, omitting all of those words between the two occurrences of the phrase.
Now a more complicated example:
. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 27 For he hath put all things under his feet.
Here it is not immediately clear what has happened. But when it is known that in some early manuscripts the order of clauses is as shown below, once again we see that the scribe's eye has jumped from the first occurrence of a phrase to the second occurrence:
For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. For he hath put all things under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
And in the very next verse another such omission:
. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did subject unto him all things. 28 And when there shall be subjected unto him all things, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
These
di homoeotéleuton omissions number about 300 in the New Testament of Codex Sinaiticus. They are not taken seriously as various readings by the editors of critical editions and in fact are not even mentioned in the notes of the critical editions of currently used translations. (Information
Critical use of manuscripts ).
While these manuscripts may be (or may not be) old,
it is obvious that they are corrupt.
It is these corrupt manuscripts that form the basis to the modern Bible versions.
However, that is NOT the case with our King James Version of the Bible. It is based on...
MASSIVE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
While it is true that there are about 45 to 50 Greek manuscripts that support the Westcott/Hort Greek text that underlies the modern versions of the Bible, you must realize that there are more than 5000 that support the Textus Receptus type text that underlies our King James Bible. Figure it out. 99% of all the manuscript evidence supports the text type that the King James Bible is translated from. Further, this text type is overwhelmingly supported by the early church fathers.
Christian friends, there is no doubt in my mind that underlying the King James New Testament is a superior Greek text!
While there are many more things that could be said, this will be my final point, that relating to the method of translation.
FORMAL EQUIVALENCY - A SUPERIOR METHOD OF TRANSLATION
The King James Bible translators used a superior method in translating called
formal equivalency. Formal Equivalence, sometimes called
Verbal Equivalence is a method of translation, which takes the Greek, and Hebrew words and
renders them as closely as possible into English. This is the method used by the King James translators and is certainly a superior method, seeing that our Lord is concerned about every word, even the jots and tittles (Matthew 5:18; 24:35).
The modern versions of the Bible use
dynamic equivalency, also called
concept inspiration in their translations. Dynamic Equivalence is not following a word for word translation but changing, adding, or subtracting from the original to make it flow as the translator sees fit. We are warned against this in the Bible (). The New International Version is this type of a version.
Then, there is one further step that is even worse and that is
paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is simply taking what the text says and rewriting it to what you think it says. It is more like a condensed commentary that a Bible. The most popular paraphrase is the
Living Bible. It is really not a translation at all!
I use the King James Bible because it certainly is superior in its translation. There is much more that could be said, but I will save that for another time. Therefore I will move to
the summary.
The King James Bible is built on the foundation of faith by men who had a high regard for the Bible, Massive manuscript evidence to support their work. They meticulously translated the Greek and Hebrew words, renders them as closely as possible into English.
The Modern versions are built on a foundation of doubt by men who have a low regard for the Bible. A few corrupt manuscripts were used to support their work. For the most part, they loosely translated the concepts of the Greek and Hebrew and some versions are even sloppier, not translating at all but paraphrasing.
I have to wonder. If you are not using the King James Bible, why not?
