Why I use the Authorised Version, Reason .9
Dodgy Documents
I suppose the position you take on the issue of Bible versions is in a large part determined by your view of the manuscripts used to support different versions. Either you have a preference for what is what is referred to as the ‘received text’ which is largely behind the AV or the ‘Westcott and Hort text’ of the revision which is behind the vast majority of new versions.
The supporters of the ‘Westcott and Hort text’ often use language to give their preferred text an edge in people’s minds and perhaps you have heard or read these sentiments. They will refer to a verse where there is a dispute between the two texts and they will say ‘the more reliable texts support the new rendering’. The ‘more reliable’ or the ‘better’ argument comes from the fact (and it is a fact) that the manuscripts used to support the ‘Westcott and Hort text’ are older than those, which make up the ‘received text’. They have taken the fact that beacuse something is older then it must be better because it is closer to the original autograph in a chronological sense. Is this a reasonable conclusion? Is something better because it is older? I’m not sure that is a good conclusion.
I remember hearing a great illustration of people jumping to conclusions that may be wrong when at a Creation Science event hosted by Ken Hamm. Mr Hamm was talking about a fossil that had been found of an animal that had very sharp teeth, he commented on how scientist had said regarding this fossil that due to it having sharp teeth the animal had obviously been a meat eater. Mr Hamm disagreed and suggested the only thing that was obvious was the fact that the animal had very sharp teeth. He pointed out that Panda Bears and Fruit Bats both have extremely sharp teeth and yet their diet is a vegetarian one. Just because an animal has sharp teeth does not mean they eat meat and just because a Bible manuscript is really old it does not automatically mean that it is better than one that is younger. Could it be that the texts behind the modern version lasted longer was because they were rejected due to obvious corruptions and therefore did not perish due to over use!
Dr FHA Scrivener (1813-1891) himself a textual critic and who embarked upon a comparison of the ‘received text’ against the ‘Codex Sinaticus’ (a source document of Westcott & Hort) concluded that “the text (Codex Sinaticus) 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 by at least ten different revisers.”
Another 19th Century Biblical Scholar John William Burgon (1813-1888) commenting upon the treatment of the last 12 verses of Mark’s Gospel in the Vatican Codex (B) (another source document of Westcott & Hort) said the following. “To say that in the Vatican Codex (B), which is unquestionably the oldest we posses, St Mark’s Gospel ends abruptly at the 8th verse of the16th chapter, and that the customary subscription (Kata Mapkon) follows, is true; but it is far from the whole truth. It requires to be stated in addition that the scribe, whose plan is found to begin every fresh book of the Bible at the top of the next ensuing column to that which contained the concluding words of the previous book, has at the close of St Mark’s Gospel deviated from his else invariable practice. He has left in this place one column entirely vacant. It is the only vacant column in the whole manuscript – a blank space abundantly sufficient to contain the twelve verses which he nevertheless withheld. Why did he leave that column vacant? What can have induced the scribe on this solitary occasion to depart from his established rule? The phenomenon is in the highest degree significant, and admits only one interpretation. The older manuscript from which Codex b was copied must infallibly contained the twelve verses in dispute. The copyist was instructed to leave them out – and he obeyed; but he prudently left a blank space in memoriam rei. Never was a blank more intelligible! Never was silence more eloquent! By this simple expedient, strange to relate, the Vatican Codex is made to refute itself even while it seems to be bearing testimony against the concluding verses of St Mark’s Gospel, by withholding them; for it forbids the inference which, under ordinary circumstances, must have been drawn from that omission. It does more. By leaving room for the verses it omits, it brings into prominent notice at the end of fifteen centuries and a half, a more ancient witness that itself.”
Scholars too on the other side of the Atlantic stood against the new ‘Westcott & Hort Text.’ One of these, Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) a noted Southern Presbyterian commenting on the variations between the ‘received text’ and the ‘Westcott & Hort text’ said. “The significant fact to which we wish especially to call attention is this: that all the variations proposed on the faith of these manuscripts which have any doctrinal importance, should attack the one doctrine of the Trinity; nay, we may say even more specifically, the one doctrine of Christ’s Deity…Their admirers claim for them an origin in the fourth or fifth century. The Sabellian and Arian controversies raged in the third and fourth. Is there no coincidence here? Things do not happen again and again regularly without a cause…And when we remember the date of the great Trinitarian contest, and compare it with the supposed date of these exemplars of the sacred text, the ground of suspicion becomes violent…These variations are too numerable, and too significant in their effect upon the one doctrine, to be ascribed to chance. Someone has played the knave with the text…We think that (the reader) will conclude with us that the weight of probability is greatly in favour of this theory that the anti-Trinitarians, finding certain codices in which these doctrinal readings had already lost through the licentious criticism or Origen and his school, industrously diffuse them. While they also did what they dared to add to the omissions of similar readings.”
Westcott and Hort endeavoured to sell a view that the ‘received text’ and thus the AV were unreliable. Disgusted by their dishonest behaviour Charles Wordsworth Bishop of St Andrews (who worked on the revision committee with Westcott & Hort) refused to sign his name to a testimonial of thanks to the Chairman because of as he puts it, “the number of minute and unnecessary changes made in direct violation of the instruction under which the work was undertaken.”
As helpful as the views of these 19th Century scholars are these is one more compelling reason that I cannot accept the validity of the ‘Westcott & Hort Text.’That reason is the preserving hand of God. In Psalm 12 we read the following.
‘The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.’Psalm 12 v 6-7
The Lord has promised to preserve His word from generation to generation. However, if we are to believe the proponents of the ‘new bibles’the true word of God was hidden from God’s people for centuries in the Popes Library and in a Convent at Mt Sinai. Are we really to accept, the argument that for almost 300 years God’s people were running around with a corrupt and unreliable Bible? Are we to believe that the Bible that was so mightily used in the hands of Whitfield and Wesley was unreliable? Are we to swallow the notion that the Bible of the great awakenings in America and the British Isles of the 1850’s is not trustworthy? I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. To conclude I quote John Burgon again on this very theme of preservation.
“There exists no reason for supporting that the Divine Agent, who in the first instance thus gave to mankind the Scriptures of Truth, straightway abdicated His office; took no further care of His work; abandoned those precious writings to their fate. That a perpetual miracle was wrought for their preservation – that copyists were protected against the risk of error, or evil men from altering shamefully, copies of the Deposit- no one, it is presumed, is so weak as to suppose. But it is quite a different thing to claim that all down the ages the sacred writings must needs have been God’s peculiar care; that the church under Him has watched over them with intelligence and skill; has recognised which copies exhibit a fabricated, which an honestly transcribed text; has generally sanctioned the one, and generally disallowed the other. 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 trustworthy; and that the one, two, three, four or five which remain, whose contents 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 has 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 remodelled after the pattern set by a couple of copies which 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.”
I agree with John Burgon’s sentiments and that’s another reason why I am sticking with the AV.
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You are indeed correct in pointing out the fallacy behind Westcott & Hort's theory. Burgeon and Scrivener made telling criticisms of it.
ReplyDeleteThe modern versions that adopt W&H principles therefore have a less accurate Bible than the versions that don't (the AV and the NKJV).
But we must be careful not to claim our version (AV in your case, NKJV in mine) to be the Holy Bible and all the rest are 'perversions'. They NIV, NASB, ESV are all basically the Holy Bible - the difference in text is small and no doctrine is changed.
Don't take my word for it: Dr. Alan Cairns, the former Free Presbyterian minister in Greenville, South Carolina, and lecturer in Systematic Theology in the Theological Hall of the Free Presbyterian Church, has an excellent article on textual criticism of the Old and New Testaments in his 'Dictionary of Theological Terms'.
On page 390 he points out why we must not make too much, or too little, of the variants. No doctrine is not changed, so these modern Bibles are not 'perversions'. Some doctrines are given less support, so modern versions can be more comfortable for heretics.
The big problem with the W & H text is simply that it is a lot less accurate. We should not go for a less accurate text of our NT, when we can choose a better one.
See the difference? No vilification of modern versions, or the scholars behind them, is involved. An honest recognition that both the Received Text and the Hort Text are flawed, one more than the other, but neither perfect.
Dr. Cairns elsewhere in the article points out the passages where the TR, and hence the AV, is in error. The Three Heavenly Witnesses in 1 John 5 , for example. He defends the Majority Text as the true text, and so places the AV and the modern versions in proper perspective: some more accurate than others, but all the Holy Bible.
Dr. Cairns looks to the Majority Text being more fully defined in coming days (there are two editions at present).
I find the NKJV a great step towards a full Majority Text Bible: for the moment it translates the TR into modern English, but also give the textual notes where the Majority Text differs (ie, where the AV has added to or omitted from the word of God).
So when we come to, for example, 1 John 5:7, we will know not to preach on 'in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness on earth'.
Rather, we will preach on '7 For there are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.'
Of course, you can do the same with your AV - provided you know what bits are added or omitted. I find the NKJV very helpful in listing the significant ones.
How do you deal with these bits in the AV?
Look carefully at my blog series, I do not believe that I have ever claimed that the AV is perfection. I have raised many concerns about the modern versions but I do not recall reffering to them as 'perversions'.
ReplyDeleteI have tried to avoid the sensational as I have written these blogs.
Whilst there are those who would use the term "perversions" in a sensational way, using the term is not necessarily sensational. In fact, in this particular topic of discussion it has a historical connection - Church fathers such as Tertullian used such phraseology, "One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition."
ReplyDeleteNeither should we be intimidated away from calling things out for what they are, especially by folks like Wolfsbane who use straw-man arguments to suggest that because we accept that the AV is not perfect, then, necessarily, we can never state that other versions are corrupt / perverted / not sound, etc.
The fact is that not ALL translations are perversions (something that no one on this blog has claimed, by the way, despite Wolfsbane false accusations!). The AV has minor blemishes which do not undermine in any serious way doctrinal matters. Others, based primarily on less accurate, and in many cases (such as the Alexandrian texts) heavily corrupted (by heretics) texts, can justly be called corrupt / perversions etc. There is a difference between imperfections, on the one hand, and medling which seriously affects doctrinal issues, on the other. Hence the reason why each must be judged in turn.
It appears to me that Wolfsbane does not accept that anyone would ever dare venture to corrupt the Scriptures, as if Satan has no intention or desire to do so. This is impossible to accept, in the light of the facts (which some people seem willing to ignore / deny) and in light of history - the aims of Rome's Jesuits, to name but one group, there is, of course (as there always has been since the Garden of Eden) a concerted effort by the adversary to raise doubts about, twist, deny, and expunge the Word of God.
Without the original autographs, it is the most edifying for the LORD's people to hold fast to the most accurate translation of the Word in their native tongue as possible ... there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the AV is not the most accurate in the English tongue. Until that is demonstrably no longer the case, then it is best to hold fast to it. And, of course, were necessary, reject those certain translations which are seriously corrupted via source texts and/or translation methodologies which are not sound. (Which has been my argument since my earliest comments.)
Wolfsbane, you said,
ReplyDelete"I recommend the NKJV"
I do not believe that to be a sound recommendation!
The New King James Version is better than the other modern versions, yet it must also be stated firmly that it is definitely not a faithful translation. Indeed, it ought not to be recommended at all.
Instead of staying as close to the text of the Authorised Version as possible, as the guidelines originally stated, the New King James translators made many unnecessary translational changes and mostly for the worse. Contrary to what the original purpose was stated to be, the NKJV is a new translation, not a mere language update. Not only that, the translation changes impact key doctrines of the Scripture, such as the eternal punishment of the lost in hell. The doctrinal impact of the changes made by the NKJV is heightened when one considers the inclusion of the readings of the Nestle-Aland/UBS text in the NKJV margin. These marginal readings make potential doctrinal impacts upon key doctrines such as the incarnation of Christ and His eternal Godhead.
The executive editor of the Old Testament portion of the NKJV, Dr James Price has admitted that he is not committed to the Received Text and that he supports the modern critical text in general. “I am not a TR advocate.” - James Price, in a letter to David Cloud, April 30, 1996.
So there you have it. The executive editor of the Old Testament of the New King James Version does not advocate the Greek Textus Receptus at all; he is an advocate of the Nestle-Aland critical Greek text, by his own admission. Not only that, the principal editor overall of the New King James Version, Arthur L. Farstad, was also coprincipal editor, along with Zane Hodges, of the Hodges-Farstad majority text, a Greek text that makes nearly 1,900 changes to the Textus Receptus. No wonder the editors of the New King James wish to present us with their textual apparatus of alternate Greek readings; they do not believe in the Textus Receptus. Says Dr Farstad in his preface to the New King James:
“Today, scholars agree that the science of New Testament textual criticism is in a state of flux. Very few scholars still favor the Textus Receptus as such, and then often for its historical prestige as the text of Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, and the King James Version.”
ReplyDeleteThus, we see that Dr Farstad deprecates the Textus Receptus. New Testament textual criticism is in a state of flux, he tells us; the old is no longer good, he implies. Very few scholars still favour that old-fashioned Textus Receptus, which was once universally recognised by the Church as the Providentially preserved text of all ages, and which once held universal sway as the Byzantine text for 1,400 years, the last nearly five hundred years as the printed Textus Receptus. But no, we must now set aside that old-fashioned text; we must turn instead to the Greek texts favoured by the ‘real scholars’: either to the critical text, which is favoured by most, or to the new so-called Byzantine majority text which is favoured by an increasing minority of scholars. Thus, the editors of the NKJV will now do us a great ‘favour’ by setting forth to us these better readings in the margin, these better readings which they have given in English in the margin, these better readings which overthrow and undermine the authority of the translation from the Textus Receptus we see in the main body of the text.
IF, as we are told by Dr Farstad (who was co-editor of the Hodges-Farstad majority Greek text which is at major variance with the Textus Receptus in over 1,000 places), that scholars today hold for the most part to either the critical text or the majority text and therefore those texts are better than the Textus Receptus, then one of those texts and a translation made from one of those texts should be what we read. Therefore, it would follow that the Textus Receptus, and its faithful translation, the Authorised Version, should be set aside.
These ‘scholars’ are very far mistaken.
The critical text is nothing more than a recovery of the Alexandrian text of the 4th century AD, which is an Egyptian revision and corruption of the Apostolic text. It is, therefore, very wrong for the New King James Version to include text-critical notes in its margin from this very corrupt text. The Egyptian or Alexandrian text was corrupted by the following things, among others: (1) it was corrupted by the superimposition of Coptic (i.e., Egyptian) spellings, grammatical structures, and word order upon the text; (2) it was corrupted in many places by the re-editing of the Apostolic Greek text to make it match the Coptic (Egyptian) text; (3) it was corrupted by the critical work of the early Church Father Origen and his followers, who often critically amended the text according to their mystical/allegorical interpretations of passages of Scripture; and, (4) it was corrupted by heretics in Egypt who emasculated the text in key places.
ReplyDeleteThe universal rejection of the Egyptian text for the next 1,400 years is also of huge importance.
On the other hand, the Textus Receptus was the result of faithful men who laboured to see that the best text from the copies of the traditional text found its way into the printed editions, that many eyes were on the text to correct it, and that the Reformation fathers were right in eight passages in the Textus Receptus to follow a
Greek minority reading when that reading was backed with nearly universal Latin support; and that thereby, through consulting an overwhelming Latin witness, the true readings were restored universally on the printed page.
The so-called Byzantine majority texts of both Hodges and Farstad, and Pierpont and Robinson, are fatally flawed, in that, by their own confession, their editors relied primarily upon the work of Baron Hermann von Soden and his text of 1913. Herman Hoskier, an advocate of the traditional text, cites in his 1914 review of von Soden’s text in the Journal of Theological Studies indisputable proof that von Soden’s Greek text is, in his words, ‘honeycombed with errors’. Similarly Frederick Wisse, who is himself very sympathetic of von Soden’s aims though frank about his inaccuracies, says that ‘…von Soden’s inaccuracies cannot be tolerated for any purpose. His apparatus is useless for a reconstruction of the text of the MSS he used’. The New King James Version is seriously tarnished by the inclusion of the error-riddled readings of the so-called majority text in its margins.
There are also very serious translational flaws in the NKJV in both the Old and New Testaments. These flaws are not minor in nature, to the contrary, together with the marginal notes, they impact key doctrines of the Word of God: doctrines such as the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ, the incarnation, the eternal generation of the Person of the Son, the divinity of Christ, and the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell.
Readers ought to cling to the tried and proven Authorised Version, and, where difficulties are encountered with archaic language, simply to use good dictionaries (or even helpful commentaries like Matthew Henry’s (which is now free online)) to determine the meaning.
The corruption of the Egyptian Greek texts can be seen in many ways - by the high numbers of contradicting variations among its own texts, by the high numbers of Coptic (Egyptian) spellings, by the imposition of Egyptian word order on the text, by the Greek text being made to follow the Coptic (especially the Sahidic or Southern Coptic); and by its being deliberately altered by Origen and his followers and by outright heretics. But before we consider these material evidences, we must consider the most sure witness—the Word of God itself. What does the Word of God say of its own preservation and how this preservation would come to be? Do we not have a ‘thus saith the LORD’? We consider, then, Isaiah 59.20–21: ‘And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever’.
ReplyDeleteNotice the following from the text:
1. The Redeemer Christ the Lord is promised to come to Zion, the Church, to them that turn from transgression in Jacob. We must understand by Zion both the Church Invisible and Visible - both as the Church which is composed of true, born again believers, and also as that Zion which has an outward form, with ordinances, more or less pure: the faithful preaching of the Word, the keeping of the sacraments as instituted in the Word of God, and church discipline rightly maintained.
2. The promise that the Lord makes to Zion is that His words, which He has put in their mouth, shall not depart out of their mouth, nor out of the mouth of their seed, nor their seed’s seed, from henceforth, even for ever. Likewise, His Spirit which is upon them shall abide with them for ever.
3. The significance of the Lord’s words being in their mouth is that His Word, His inspired Word, would be confessed publicly by them, and fed upon by them, with the mouth of faith, and that in all generations. Now, we note that the above promise is not made to individual believers, considered as individual believers per se. The promise is rather made to Zion, to the Church. Thus, though there may have been individual true believers, particularly during the times of persecution, who did not have the purest text, yet the purest text remained in Zion as a whole. In time that text prevailed over the other texts, we might say, as Aaron’s rod prevailed over the rods of the magicians of Egypt. Thus it is that, though we see distinctive (and corrupted) textual readings in the papyri and uncial (similar to capital letters) texts—in what we now call the Alexandrian and Western text families—which were preserved in the sands of Egypt from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, yet by the end of the 4th century the text which we call the Byzantine text ascended and prevailed over all the others.
The Church Fathers from Chrysostom of the 4th century AD onward we find universally quoting the Byzantine text, the text that prevailed in the area we now call Asia Minor, then called the Byzantine Empire, over which Byzantium was the capital. It was this locale where most of the churches founded by the apostles themselves were - Colossae, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Philippi and Corinth. We may believe that this was the text that prevailed amongst those very churches. Indeed, this was so because, as Tertullian of Carthage tells us in the beginning of the 3rd century, faithful apographs, precise copies of the apostolic originals, were maintained in the apostolic churches as the standard for all copies.
Given that the Church Fathers even in Tertullian’s day found many variations in their texts through copyists’ errors, to whence do we think they would have looked to correct their copies? Why, of course: to the ‘authentic copies’ which were yet maintained in ‘the apostolic churches’. And where were these apostolic churches? Outside of Rome, they were all in the area of the Byzantine Empire.
ReplyDeleteFrom the writings of Tertullian we have extant, we know that he was fluent in Greek, but that, he being from Africa—from Carthage—his New Testament copies were primarily of a ‘Western’ text-type.
The Alexandrian text, with its distinctive readings, came primarily from Alexandria, Egypt, though its origin was actually from southern Egypt—near the Nag Hammadi libraries, where the Sahidic or Southern dialect of the Egyptian or Coptic language was spoken. We know this because of the affinity of the Alexandrian text for the early Sahidic Coptic translation of the Bible. In many instances, we may believe that verses were directly translated from the Sahidic Coptic back into the Greek.
The Western text was so called, not because it was from the west but rather because it is a text that also came from Alexandria, Egypt, from a different school of textual criticism within that city. But that text-type ended up being translated into the Old Latin versions and into the Latin Vulgate, which were then used by most of the churches of the Latin west after the 5th century AD. We see the early Church Father Clement of Alexandria, in the 3rd century AD, primarily quoting a Western text; hence, we know the origin of that family of text to have been from Alexandria. (The Western text may also have been influenced by the Old Latin versions that were then current in northern Africa.) But we also know that the Latin versions were subsequently all related to this text, and because the Latin versions became the Bible used by the western churches of Europe for a time, that text family came to be known as the Western text.
Tertullian had copies that primarily reflected a Western text, as were most of the copies in northern Africa where he lived. But Tertullian was very limited in his choice of text. The age in which he lived—the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries AD—saw times of great persecution. Many were martyred. Christians were not free to travel. Believers, particularly in Egypt and Africa, did not have free access to the authentic copies that were yet maintained in the apostolic churches within the Byzantine Empire.
Thus, corruptions entered the manuscripts for a time, particularly in Egypt and Africa,
through copyist errors, through outright emendations of the text, and through heretics who wilfully corrupted the Sacred Text. But always, the saints like Tertullian pointed to what standard? To the ‘authentic copies’, as he called them, which were stored in the apostolic churches in the area around Byzantium. That he did so, we see from his
own words in Prescription against Heresies.
Tertullian used a Western text primarily, and yet Tertullian also clearly pointed to the Byzantine text maintained in the apostolic churches in the authentic copies as being the true standard. Thus, it is reasonable to say that Tertullian himself, and not only Tertullian but also Irenaeus would have favoured the movement of the Church in the 4th century to restandardise all the copies to conform to the faithful apographs maintained in the apostolic churches (which were, for the most part, within the Byzantine Empire).
There were several factors that had previously prevented the standardisation of the Greek text, several of them political and ecclesiastical in nature. There were certainly the ten persecutions against the Christians carried out by the Roman emperors in the first three centuries and in the beginning of the fourth.
There was also the influence of Origen and the Origenists, which had favoured a mystical/allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, and which also had modified the texts to favour their interpretations. The Byzantine emperor Justinian also brought an end to the influence of Origenism when he called the council of Constantinople in AD 543, which condemned Origen and Origenism, particularly Origen’s heresy of universal redemption (that all souls, after a thousand years of purgatory, would be saved). Certainly, the facts that: (1) the Egyptian text differed from the apographs which had been maintained in the Byzantine apostolic churches; (2) Egypt, notwithstanding that there were champions of orthodoxy within her midst, nonetheless also had many heretics within her who were known to have tampered with the text; (3) it was well known that Origen had altered the Egyptian text, and that he with his followers had just been condemned by a Council in Byzantium in AD 543; and (4) the entire Coptic (that is, Egyptian) Church was excommunicated from the communion of the orthodox churches in the 5th century because of their monophysitism - these facts, would have caused the orthodox churches to look askance, and rightly so, at the Egyptian text. So, during the 5th century, everyone agrees that the Byzantine text gained dominance - the Church began to shelve the Egyptian text, and to promote copies after the apostolic, Byzantine standard - and that by the 9th century all remnants of the Alexandrian text in essence died out. It was no longer in the mouth of any segment of the Church at all, save the Coptic Church and her allies, who had universally been excommunicated in the 5th century for refusing to comply with the Council of Chalcedon.
ReplyDeleteThe early Church universally embraced the standard of Tertullian - namely, that the true readings of New Testament Scripture were to be found in the faithful apographs or copies of the apostolic congregations, where the apostolic pastorates were still in place. We believe that, after the persecutions ceased, and Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism and Origenism were routed, the Byzantine text rightly gained the ascendancy and that permanently, thus manifesting itself to be the text that would be the Scriptures.
The Egyptian text cannot be the Providentially preserved text, because it was not preserved in all generations nor in the Church’s mouth in all ages. The true text, the Word of God, would be that which would be in the mouth of the true Church, in the mouth of her seed and her seed’s seed, from henceforth. Thus, any text that was obliterated and forgotten for 1,400 years cannot by Scriptural standards be the Providentially preserved words of God, because it was not the text that was in the Church’s mouth, that is, in her profession and in her feeding upon it as it was being expounded from her pulpits from generation to generation. Of course, where the Alexandrian and Western texts agree with the Byzantine text, those readings were preserved, those words were preserved - but not the distinctive Alexandrian or Western readings. They were not preserved from generation to generation in the Church’s mouth, in her confession and preaching, because they simply were not the Providentially preserved words of God. Thus, the Egyptian text cannot be the Providentially preserved words of God, save where it agrees with the Byzantine text.
Accordingly, the New King James Version of the Bible is wrong for incorporating these corrupt readings into the margin of its translation of the Holy Scriptures, thus making it appear that these readings might be valid when they were rightly rejected by the historic apostolic church. The NKJV is especially wrong in including the heretical readings as footnotes, such as the ‘only begotten God’ reading of John 1.18,21.
ReplyDeleteThe use of the Nestle-Aland text based on the Egyptian text, especially upon Vaticanus (Codex B) demonstrates the unreasonableness of the editors of the New King James Version in putting variant readings from it and the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies Greek text in their margin. This is an outrageous attempt to suggestively insert a recovery of the Alexandrian text, which is an Egyptian revision and corruption of the apostolic text. It is wrong and very dangerous for the New King James Version to include text-critical notes in its margin from this very corrupt text’.
The critical text - the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies text - is essentially, with few changes, the Greek text that was prepared by Brooke Westcott and Fenton Anthony John Hort in 1881. Michael Marlowe, himself an advocate of the modern critical text, says that the Nestle-Aland text of 1979 is 85% in agreement with the Westcott-Hort text. It is likely more than that, if one excludes the insignificant spelling and grammatical differences that do not impact the meaning; he would find that the N-A/UBS text is over 90% in agreement with Westcott-Hort. Eldon Jay Epp, a noted textual critic of the modern rationalist bent, makes this comment on the similarity of the N-A/UBS text to the Westcott-Hort text:
“The conclusion is clear three most widely used Greek New Testaments of the mid-twentieth century (Nestle-Aland, Merk, and Bover) ‘show little change from Westcott-Hort and only rarely present a significant variant.’”
The influence of the Westcott Hort text upon the Nestle-Aland/UBS text is most strongly seen in the N-A/UBS text’s textcritical apparatus, in which it almost always cites Codex B (Vaticanus) as a primary authority. (Vaticanus is an uncial manuscript from the 4th century AD which is stored in the Vatican Library. The Nestle-Aland/UBS text cites Vaticanus so much, one could well deem it a corrected edition of Vaticanus.) As noted by several authors, many of them modern textual critics themselves, Vaticanus clearly has an Egyptian text and shows a strong influence from the Coptic versions. By means of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (a manuscript discovered in a monastery on Mount Sinai which is also an Egyptian manuscript), many Egyptian readings have found their way into the Nestle-Aland critical text. So much so that it may be safely said that the Westcott-Hort and the Nestle-Aland text are in substance a recreation of the 4th century Alexandrian text, as Herman Hoskier noted of the Westcott-Hort text and the Oxford text in 1914. Herman Hoskier’s work showing the Coptic/Alexandrian corruption of Codex B or Vaticanus, the Egyptian main exemplar for the Nestle-Aland/UBS Greek text Several scholars in addition to Herman Hoskier, the famed collator of all the manuscripts of Revelation, have noted Vaticanus’ Egyptian characteristics and that accordingly it is an Egyptian or Alexandrian manuscript. These include scholars Kurt Aland, Frederick Kenyon and Bruce Metzger.
Frederick Kenyon in his book The Text of the Greek Bible - a Handbook for Students
gives the following proofs for Vaticanus’s being of Egyptian origin:
“With regards to its place, Hort was inclined to assign it to Rome, and others to southern Italy or Caesarea; but the association of its text with the Coptic text, and with Origen, and the style of writing (notably the Coptic forms used in some of the titles), point rather to Egypt and to Alexandria.”
Kenyon argues that Vaticanus is necessarily of Egyptian origin because of its
ReplyDeleteaffinity for the Coptic translation of the Bible. He also says that the evidences of
Origen’s influence over it manifest it to be of Egyptian origin, because Origen himself was from Alexandria, Egypt. Note also that Kenyon points out that Vaticanus uses ‘Coptic forms in some of the titles’, and that overall ‘the style of writing’ points to its being an Egyptian or Alexandrian manuscript.
Herman Hoskier was universally recognised amongst Biblical textual scholars as ‘unsurpassed’ in the quality and quantity of his textual collation work. His work in single-handedly collating all the known manuscripts of the book of Revelation is unequalled amongst textual scholars. What does Hoskier say of Vaticanus?
“It is high time that the bubble of Codex B should be pricked”
Why does he say this? Because he had just completed an entire collation of the four Gospels that specifically compared Vaticanus and its sister manuscript, Sinaiticus, Tischendorf’s famous find (which, according to Tischendorf’s own words, he rescued from being consigned to the furnace). Hoskier not only collated Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, he also compared the readings of those two manuscripts with the other major uncial texts and with the ancient Syriac, Latin and Coptic versions. And what did he find? He found that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus contradicted each other in 3,036 places in the four Gospels alone! He cites every single variant between the two of them in volume two of his famous work, Codex B and its Allies. The high degree of these variants totally manifests the unreliability of these texts, and yet these two texts are primarily what the modern critical text is built upon. Hoskier also points out that when they agree, they often also agree with the Coptic version - following the Sahidic Coptic and the Old Bohairic (northern Egypt) Coptic, and, though the Sahidic and the Old Bohairic are often different, yet often they agree.
Vaticanus and its allies are Coptic corruptions of the Apostolic originals, not faithful apographs or copies. Accordingly, we must agree with Hoskier: “It is high time that the bubble of Codex B should be pricked.” Also we must say that it is time that we see the modern Nestle-Aland/UBS text for what it is: a faithful reproduction of the corrupt Coptic editions of the Greek text of the 4th century. It is a reproduction of an Egyptian corruption of the New Testament Greek text that rightly had been put to rest by the historic Church.
Hoskier finds several hundred Coptic influences upon Vaticanus, and that’s just in the four Gospels. So we must ask: how can this be the Apostolic text, preserved in all generations? It cannot. A text full of Coptic readings must needs be an Egyptian revision of the Apostolic text.
It is a disgrace that the New King James Version translators opted to include these corrupt, Coptic-influenced readings in their textual apparatus. Why not stay by the proven and true, the Textus Receptus?
ReplyDeleteDr Harry Sturz makes the following statements against Herman Hoskier’s charges that Vaticanus was influenced in its text form by the Coptic and Old Latin versions:
The prospect of finding the origin of Byzantine readings in the old
Sinaitic Syriac now appears to be as unlikely as Hoskier’s attempt to derive distinctive readings of B from the Coptic and Old Latin versions. Hoskier may have
borrowed this idea from Burkitt in the first place. There appears to be no question as to the Egyptian character and locale of the Vatican MS; but Hoskier’s ‘proofs that B was influenced in its text form by the Coptic and Old Latin versions’ fall short of demonstration. In Hoskier’s work Codex B…there are numerous instances where he cites B supported by one of the Coptic versions alone, and holds this as evidence that it was the Coptic version which influenced the text of B. In many of these places one of the papyri, either p66 or p75 can be added to the same reading. This indicates that the Alexandrian recension goes back into the 2nd century. It is more reasonable to assume that it was the Coptic recensions which followed the Greek in these readings, and not vice versa; so also with the Syriac and Greek agreements at Antioch.
First of all, I very much agree with Dr Sturz that there was indeed a recension of the Egyptian Greek text to the Coptic, back in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries. I also note with approval his acknowledgment of the Egyptian character and locale of Vaticanus. However, I take issue with him as to his assertion that it was the Egyptian version of the Greek text that influenced the Coptic, and not the other way around. (p75 is a partial copy of the Gospels that was found in the sands of southern Egypt and dates back to about AD 200, during the days of Origen. It predates Vaticanus by about 150 years. This is also the case with p66. p66 is quite different from Vaticanus in many respects, but p75 is famous for its similarity to B.)
Coptic readings found their way into Vaticanus in that there are proper names spelled as they are in the Sahidic Coptic version (which is not necessarily significant of itself, but is significant when taken together with all the other affinities in Vaticanus to the Sahidic Coptic). Moreover, the Greek text in Vaticanus has been made to follow the natural order of the Coptic, citing in particular two instances in which the order of the Greek was inverted to put the genitive of possession before the noun instead of after, as is the case in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts. Hoskier lists many verses in which Vaticanus and maybe one or two other Egyptian uncials agree with the Coptic version against the vast majority of other Greek manuscripts.
But Dr Sturz also fails to realise that Coptic readings clearly found their way into p75, and we only need to cite the liberal rationalist textual critic Bruce Metzger to demonstrate this:
“Through p75, or texts like it, Coptic readings found their way into Vaticanus.”
ReplyDeleteMetzger has found distinctively Sahidic Coptic readings in p75. By the way, Metzger, a member of the committee which approved the readings for the Nestle-Aland text, versions 26 and 27, did not believe in the divine inspiration of the original autographs of Scripture.
Metzger tells us the following in his book The Text of the New Testament:
“The textual significance of this newly acquired witness [p75] is hard to overestimate, presenting, as it does a form of text very similar to that of codex Vaticanus. Occasionally, the codex is the only known Greek witness which agrees with the Sahidic version in supporting several interesting readings. Thus, at John x.7, instead of the traditional text, ‘I am the door of the sheep’, p75 replaces ‘door’ (h qura) by ‘shepherd’ (o poimhn). What is still more remarkable is the addition at Luke xvi.19, where in Jesus’ account of the Rich Man and Lazarus this new witness inserts after plousiouj the words onomati Neuhj… The Sahidic version agrees with a rather widespread tradition among ancient catechists of the Coptic Church that the name of the Rich Man was Ninevah, a name which had become the symbol of dissolute riches.
Obviously the scribe of p75 was familiar with this tradition, and by accidental haplography wrote ‘Neve’ for ‘Ninevah’ (Neuhj for Nineuhj).”
Edward Hills, in his citation of what Metzger says above, correctly notes the following:
“At a very early date the Greek New Testament was translated into Sahidic, and some of the distinctive readings of this Sahidic version are found in p75, thus supporting the contention of Hoskier (1914) that the Alexandrian text was ‘tremendously influenced’ by the Sahidic version.”
So then, the discovery of p75, far from disproving Hoskier’s contention that the Alexandrian text was heavily influenced by the Coptic, quite to the contrary proves it, as Hills rightly notes. To the contrary, p75 was itself influenced and corrupted by the Sahidic Coptic. The copyist of Vaticanus used either p75 or a manuscript much like it, along with the Coptic version (or perhaps he had a Greek/Coptic diglot), so as to reinforce in itself the recension of p75 to the Sahidic Coptic. Indeed, the other papyri do not follow the Sahidic Coptic in the way that p75 and Vaticanus do; they tend toward an Alexandrian/Western mixed text, with interspersed Byzantine readings (like p66). The evidence clearly proves that the Coptic influenced Vaticanus - both directly and by other Greek manuscripts that had also been influenced and revised by it. So we must ask ourselves again: why does the New King James Version include readings from the Nestle-Aland edition of the Egyptian text in its margin? That such a text cannot possibly be the Apostolic text is fully evinced by the obvious Egyptian influences that permeate it.
Origen’s influence corrupted the Alexandrian text unquestionably, there were many baneful influences upon the Egyptian text. Origen drafted the famous Hexapla - an attempt to correct the Septuagint, which had already grown quite corrupt. The Hexapla had six columns, with the Old Testament rendered in six different readings. The first two columns were in Hebrew and the remaining four columns presented four different Greek translations. The first Hebrew column presented the Hebrew in unpointed letters, the next column was the Hebrew transliterated into Greek letters. Next came a Greek translation by Aquila, which was rather literal; after that came a version by Symmachus, which was quite free in paraphrasing. After that came the Septuagint. We only have fragments of the work today, but it is obvious that Origen was much given to textual criticism and that accordingly he exercised a very strong influence over the New Testament Greek text in Egypt.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Origen believed that the Scriptures were inspired in all their ‘words’, his concept of what constitutes a ‘word’ was different from ours. To Origen, a ‘word’ was a logical unit of thought. A word to Origen could have been a passage in the Scriptures. Thus, Origen, if he thought he understood what a passage really meant, felt at liberty to change the individual words of the text and he took many liberties to make critical amendments to the text. Origen’s emendations found their way into the Alexandrian text. Overall the distinctive Alexandrian readings compared with Origen’s citations of Scripture passages are in accord against the traditional or Byzantine text. Origen lived during the time that p66 and p75 were written.
Edward Hills in his book The King James Version Defended gives us the following specific example of Origen’s propensities toward “the boldest sort of conjectural emendation”:
“In his comment on this passage [Matthew 19.19] Origen gives us a specimen of the New Testament textual criticism which was carried on in Alexandria about 225 A.D. Origen reasons that Jesus could not have concluded his list of God’s commandments with the comprehensive requirement, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. For the reply of the young man was, All these things have I kept from my youth up, and Jesus evidently accepted this statement as true. But if the young man had loved his neighbor as himself, he would have been perfect, for Paul says that the whole law is summed up in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But Jesus answered, If thou wilt be perfect, etc., implying that the young man was not yet perfect. Therefore, Origen argued, the commandment Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, could not have been spoken by Jesus on this occasion, and was not part of the
text of Matthew. This clause, he believed, was added by some tasteless scribe.
Thus it is clear that this renowned Father was not content to abide by the text which he had received but freely engaged in the boldest sort of conjectural emendation. And there were other critics less restrained than he who deleted many readings of the original New Testament and thus produced the abbreviated text found in the papyri and in the manuscripts Aleph and B.
Origen felt that the phrase “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” should be deleted from the passage, and Hills tells us that, at that time Origen was one of the more restrained in his views regarding altering the text. Hills points out rightly that many of the deletions and omissions we find in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which accordingly have found their way into the Nestle-Aland/UBS text, can likely be traced to the hands of Origen and his followers. Yet the New King James lists these omissions as possibly valid readings!
Add to this that Origen in many ways was quite unsound in doctrine. Origen was excommunicated from Alexandria for holding to the doctrine of universal redemption, the final salvation of all souls, including the devil’s. Origen said, in his De Principia, “We think that the goodness of God, through the mediation of Christ, will bring all creatures to one and the same end” (De princip., I, vi, 1–3). The phrase ‘will bring all creatures to one and the same end’ shows us that, apparently, Origen thought even the devil would ultimately be saved at the very last. The same article tells us about Origen’s being excommunicated from Alexandria for holding to this doctrine.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, we cannot trust the hand of a man upon the Sacred Text who held to such heterodox views as these. Origen’s followers went to even wilder excesses. Finally, at the Second Council of Constantinople in AD 543 (the Council called by the Emperor Justinian), the errors of Origenism were condemned. The three errors for which the Origenists were condemned - and all three of these errors had their seminal beginnings in Origen himself - were:
Allegorism in the interpretation of Scripture,
Subordination of the Divine Persons,
The theory of successive trials and a final restoration.
Although Origen was a Trinitarian, yet he strongly taught that there was a hierarchy of the Divine Persons, with the Son under the Father, and the Spirit under the Father and the Son. He taught this to the weakening of the equality of the three Persons. His teaching this back in the 2nd and 3rd centuries paved the way for Arius’s later errors, wherein Arius denied outright the Godhead of Christ, saying that Christ was a spirit-being created by God, the firstborn of the creation, and therefore totally subordinate to the Father in every way. Origen’s theory of successive trials and final restoration basically promoted the idea that during the Millennium, all souls that had sinned, including those of devils themselves, would be punished in purgatory. At the end of the Millennium, all would be redeemed. This is certainly an execrable heresy, and for holding to it himself Origen was rightly excommunicated from the Church.
It is clear that Origen had a contaminating effect upon Egyptian Christianity and no doubt upon the text of the Holy Scriptures - his influence was so strong over the text of Egypt that the Alexandrian text is often known as the Origenistic text. Again, we must ask ourselves: why has the New King James Version, then, chosen to revive the long-rejected, Origenistic text of Alexandria in its marginal notes? How can a text which has been subject to the extravagant critical emendations of Origen and his followers be genuine?
Egyptian heretical sects also had a profound influence in the corruption of the text. That the Egypt of the 2nd and 3rd centuries - the age of most of the papyri or parchment readings that modern textual critics delight in - was full of heretics is openly acknowledged by the noted textual critic Dr Bruce Metzger:
“Among Christian documents which during the 2nd century either originated in Egypt or circulated there among both the orthodox and Gnostics are numerous apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses… There are also fragments of exegetical and dogmatic works composed by Alexandrian Christians, chiefly Gnostics, during the 2nd century. We know, for example, of such teachers as Basilides and his son Isidore, and of Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Pantaenus. All but the last-mentioned were unorthodox in one respect or another. In fact, to judge by the comments made by Clement of Alexandria, almost every deviant Christian sect was represented in Egypt during the 2nd century; Clement mentions the Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Marcionites, the Peratae, the Encratites, the Docetists, the Maimetites, the Cainites, the Ophites, the Simonians, and the Eutychites. What proportion of Christians in Egypt during the 2nd century were orthodox is not known.
The early Church Father Tertullian, who himself was from Carthage, Africa, tells us that these early heretics willingly corrupted the copies of the Scriptures with ‘both pen and knife’. Tertullian speaks of this in his work Prescription against Heresies. (By his use of the term ‘Catholics’, of course, Tertullian means the communion of the orthodox churches of the 2nd and 3rd centuries; he is not referring to popery.) Chapter XXXVIII.-Harmony of the Church and the Scriptures.
ReplyDelete“Heretics Have Tampered with the Scriptures, and Mutilated, and Altered Them. Catholics Never Change the Scriptures, Which Always Testify for Them.
[1] Where diversity of doctrine is found, there, then, must the corruption both of the Scriptures and the expositions thereof be regarded as existing.
[2] On those whose purpose it was to teach differently, lay the necessity of differently arranging the instruments of doctrine.
[3] They could not possibly have effected their diversity of teaching in any other way than by having a difference in the means whereby they taught. As in their case, corruption in doctrine could not possibly have succeeded without a corruption also of its instruments, so to ourselves also integrity of doctrine could not have accrued, without integrity in those means by which doctrine is managed.
[4] Now, what is there in our Scriptures which is contrary to us? What of our own have we introduced, that we should have to take it away again, or else add to it, or alter it, in order to restore to its natural soundness anything which is contrary to it, and contained in the Scriptures?
[5] What we are ourselves, that also the Scriptures are (and have been) from the beginning. Of them we have our being, before there was any other way, before they were interpolated by you.
[6] Now, inasmuch as all interpolation must be believed to be a later process, for the express reason that it proceeds from rivalry which is never in any case previous to nor home-born with that which it emulates, it is as incredible to every man of sense that we should seem to have introduced any corrupt text into the Scriptures, existing, as we have been, from the very first, and being the first, as it is that they have not in fact introduced it who are both later in date and opposed (to the Scriptures).
[7] One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition.
[8] For although Valentinus seems to use the entire volume, he has none the less laid violent hands on the truth only with a more cunning mind and skill than Marcion.
[9] Marcion expressly and openly used the knife, not the pen, since he made such an excision of the Scriptures as suited his own subject-matter.
[10] Valentinus, however, abstained from such excision, because he did not invent Scriptures to square with his own subject-matter, but adapted his matter to the Scriptures; and yet he took away more, and added more, by removing the proper meaning of every particular word, and adding fantastic arrangements of things which have no real existence.”
Tertullian openly testifies (as also did Irenaeus) that Marcion cut away texts from the Scriptures that did not agree with him. He tells us also that Valentinus did not appear to have excised texts, but that he overloaded words of Scripture with new and novel meanings, as well as adding many new doctrines of his own. He also implies that other heretics whom he does not name here did indeed alter the text. However, John Burgon, the famous champion of the traditional text, shows us that Valentinus and his followers, who were from Egypt, plainly did alter key texts of Scripture, particularly John 1.18. But before we deal with Burgon’s testimony on how a very early Christian writer, the author of Excerpta Theodoti in the 2nd century, explicitly testified how the Valentinians used a corrupted form of John 1.18 to defend their heretical doctrines, we must consider a controversy from John 1.18. Does the reading monogenhj qeoj (monogenes theos) which occurs in Vaticanus mean ‘the only begotten God’, as the New King James Version renders it in its marginal note and the New American Standard Version translates it in its text? Or does it mean ‘God the one and only’, as the New International Version translates it? To come nearer to the point: is it really so bad that Vaticanus reads (as did the Valentinians) monogenhj qeoj (monogenes theos), instead of ‘the only begotten Son’? Does the NKJV mistranslate monogenhj qeoj in its marginal note on John 1.18, rendering it, as they do, ‘only begotten God’? And is saying that Christ is the only begotten God really such a bad thing? I argue that it is a bad thing, as will be shown below. I also argue that the words monogenhj qeoj can only be translated as ‘only begotten God’; it cannot be translated ‘the only and unique God’, and I offer my reasons for this below also.
ReplyDeleteThis reading was introduced into the Egyptian text by early Gnostic heretics. It is utterly disgraceful that the New King James Version includes this reading, introduced as it was by heretics in the Egyptian text, in its marginal notes, as though it were a possibly valid reading. The New King James Version must be reproved for including other readings influenced by heretics from the Egyptian text in its notes.
The overwhelming majority of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament used monogenhj uioj (monogenes huios, meaning either “only begotten Son” or “only and unique Son”), and not monogenhj qeoj in John 1.18. According to the Nicene Fathers, monogenes huios properly means “only begotten Son”. For indeed, monogenes properly means “an only offspring”, and monogenes huios means “an only offspring son”. That concept could be communicated as either “only begotten Son” or “only Son”. However, monogenes theos is an altogether unacceptable rendering, and would mean either “only begotten God” (as both the New King James Version margin and the New American Standard Version text have rendered it), “the only and unique offspring God” or “the God who has the quality of being an only offspring”
A modern scholar, Richard Longenecker, has stated that monogenes in the Greek means “one and only of a kind”. He states this in the chapter entitled “The One and Only Son” in the book The NIV: the Making of a Contemporary Translation. Longenecker argues that monogenes is formed of two Greek words (which it is), with monos meaning ‘one’ or ‘only’ and genos ‘kind’. Thus, he says, monogenhj properly means “one of a kind” or a “unique kind”. Where we see monogenes huios, it properly means to Longenecker “the only and unique Son”, whereas, monogenes theos means to him, “the only and unique God”. Thus, according to Longenecker and men of like sentiments with him, John 1.18 should follow the Greek of Vaticanus, but translating it in this way: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only and unique God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
ReplyDeleteWhile Longenecker may be commended for seeing the impropriety of the “only begotten God” rendering, his defence of Vaticanus’s reading of monogenes theos is wrong for the following three reasons:
1. Genos (genoj) properly refers to an offspring, whether literal or figurative. Thus monogenes would mean “a unique offspring”, which also would then mean (as it always means in the New Testament) “only begotten”. The Greek word genos, from which we get the word ‘genus’, in its literal sense refers to the offspring of an ancestor; thus we see in the Greek of the New Testament, Christ is referred to as the genos of David, that is, the offspring of David. We also see Israel referred to as the ‘stock’ or offspring of Abraham in Acts 13.26: ‘Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham’, begins Paul in his address to the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The word used for ‘stock’ is our word genos. He is calling them the offspring of David. We shall list the various readings of genos from the New Testament in a moment.
Genos may also refer to an offspring of a prototype, figuratively speaking, and thus to a ‘kind’. However, whenever genos is used to mean ‘kind’, it always means that it is a figurative offspring, figuratively descended from a prototype of some sort. Our English word for ‘kind’ also follows this principle. Our word ‘kind’ comes from the Germanic word kind (pronounced kint), which means ‘a child’. Thus, our word ‘kind’ properly means a figurative child, that is, ‘a child of a prototype’.
2. But now in coming to the term monogenes, that term always means ‘only offspring’. That term always is used in the New Testament to denote an only child, as we shall shortly prove by citing all nine occurrences of the word in the New Testament. Michael Marlowe, though himself an advocate generally of the critical text, has also written a paper in which he shows that monogenes means ‘only begotten’.
3. Athanasius and the Nicene Fathers, who knew the Greek of the New Testament far better than modern scholars do, being much nearer the period when that language was spoken, regularly referred to John 1.14, John 1.18 and John 3.16 as speaking of Christ as the only begotten Son. In speaking of Christ as the monogenes huios, the Nicene Fathers referred to Christ as the only and unique offspring of the Father, and sometimes simply as the offspring of the Father.
4. This being the case, along with the fact that genos always refers to an offspring of some sort, monogenes could never refer to God, for in no sense is God the offspring of another. God is not a kind descended from some other prototype, for He is indeed the First Cause and Primary Mover of all things, as Aquinas rightly noted. Nor is the Godhead of Christ begotten. It is properly only His Person which is begotten. Thus, monogenes theos, as the Nicene Fathers rightly understood, cannot mean ‘the only and unique God’. Rather, it would mean “the only offspring God”, or “the only begotten God” and this phrase is at best a very harsh catachresis, and cannot but be offensive to orthodox ears.
The early saints in Egypt and Africa who were orthodox, but who had an inferior text and who would have encountered the “only begotten God” or “the only and unique offspring God” reading, would have interpreted it as a catachresis: they would have stated it to mean “the divine Person who is an offspring but Who also is God”. But the heretics said that it means that the very Godhead of Christ is an offspring of the Father, and that therefore Christ was not really God, but only “a god” as the modern Jehovah’s Witnesses claim. The very first reference to this “only begotten God” reading occurs in the writings of a follower of Valentinus, who was a very wicked heretic. The Valentinians believed that Monogenes, the only begotten, was a god, and that he proceeded from Bythos. But they believed that the Son was another god, yet who was formed by Monogenes. Their wicked heresies were well exposed to all eternity by the godly Irenaeus.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional text reading of John 1.18, which reads “the only begotten Son”, is an ancient landmark, one set by the Church of the 4th century when it recovered the Byzantine text from the authentic copies of the Scriptures which had been faithfully kept in the apostolic congregations. The correct reading of this verse was a powerful engine against Arius and his heretical arguments before the Nicene Council. In resurrecting the “only begotten God” reading of the corrupt Egyptian text and by citing it in its margins, the editors of the New King James Version have in essence toppled an ancient landmark set up by the Church. They have allowed a foothold for heretics to find a haven in their Bible.
In his book The King James Version Defended, Edward Hills lists a number of omissions in the Alexandrian text which were certainly the work of heretics to weaken the doctrines of Christ’s Incarnation and Divinity. The New King James puts all these omissions in its marginal notes as potentially valid. These verses include:
Luke 22.43–44: “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”.
These words are omitted from p75, Vaticanus, the Coptic Version, and five other Alexandrian uncials. They are included in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts. The Church Fathers of the 4th century onward all cited these verses. Hills is right to trace this omission to the Docetists (who denied the humanity of Christ) of the 2nd century. The Docetists primarily lived in Egypt. The UBS Greek text, both the third and fourth editions, include this text, but they bracket it as doubtful. The New King James enters this footnote on Luke 23.43–44:
“NU-Text brackets verses 43 and 44 as not in the original text.”
The inclusion of this reading from the ‘NU-Text’ shows that the editors of the NKJV are willing to give this omission some credence!
ReplyDeleteLuke 23.34: “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Again, this verse is omitted by Vaticanus and its allies. Hills believes, with others (Streeter and Rendel Harris), that this excision was made by Marcion, who was anti-Semitic and who would have opposed Christ’s praying for the Jews. Again, the New King James enters this footnote on Luke 23.34:
“NU-Text brackets the first sentence as a later addition.”
Again, with no comment on the corruptness of the Alexandrian text which the Nestle-Aland/UBS text uses. So the editors of the NKJV would have us to think that possibly Christ’s prayer on the cross for His enemies does not belong in the Holy Writ!
There is not time enough to itemise fully other verses in the Alexandrian text likely tampered with by heretics. However, Hills on pages 135–138 of The King James Version Defended lists:
John 6.68–69, Mark 1.1, Luke 23.42, John 3.13, John 9.35, John 9.38–39, John 19.5, Romans 14.10, 1 Timothy 3.16 (which is dealt with at great length by Burgon74), Mark 9.29, Acts 10.30, 1 Corinthians 7.5, and 1 Corinthians 11.24, all of which show signs of tampering and which all are footnoted as worthy of possible credence in the New King James Version.
The editors of the New King James Version are wrong for including the corrupt readings of the Egyptian text in their marginal notes, as though they were potentially valid. They are wrong in disdaining the Providentially preserved text, the Textus Receptus. They are very wrong in including heretical readings from the Alexandrian text in their marginal notes, enabling heretics to find refuge in the NKJV from these notes. The early Church was right in universally restandardising their manuscript copies, beginning in the 4th century, to conform to the apostolic Byzantine copies which were yet stored in the apostolic churches of the area within the Byzantine empire.
The New King James Version may well have translated its New Testament from the Textus Receptus, but it has done so in such a way that it has attacked that text’s purity by setting up the readings of the Alexandrian text and of the so-called majority text of Hodges-Farstad as implicitly superior. The preface to the New King James Version attacks the Textus Receptus as being not very scholarly, and then includes for us the readings that ‘most scholars hold to’, thus implying that these readings are better. In including the very corrupt readings of the resurrected Alexandrian text in the marginal notes—the text which was put to rest by the Church for fourteen centuries and that rightly so—the New King James has thrown down ancient landmarks and made their translation of the Bible a potential haven for heretics by including heretical readings from the Alexandrian text as footnoes. Had they held to the ‘good old paths’ laid down by the forefathers of the historic Church, these same heretics would have found no quarter whatsoever in their version.
The Authorised Version, is the most faithful English translation.
It should be noted that editions of the New King James Version differ from year to year and country to country without any indication that they differ.
ReplyDeleteThe NKJV’s inclusion in it’s margins of readings from the Nestle-Aland/UBS critical text (which is based upon the heavily corrupted Alexandrian / Egyptian texts) is very dangerous, and dubious to say the least. So to is it’s inclusion in the marginal notes of readings from the modern Byzantine Majority Text and to the errors in the von Soden Critical Greek Text upon which it is based.
The Textus Receptus is to be commended above all other editions of the Greek New Testament for its doctrinal fidelity to the originals, to the autographs. Despite a very few minor blemishes - a spelling error in two or so places, and one verse that some believe to be an interpolation - the Textus Receptus is nonetheless completely accurate in every point of fact and doctrine. Not only that, but all the doctrines of the autographs may be found in the Textus Receptus in their native and original power and strength. Why is this so? Because the Textus Receptus alone, above all other editions, retains the Apostolic readings in 1 John 5.7, Acts 8.37 and in many other verses. I therefore argue that the Received Text family of the Greek is a faithful, and authentic edition of the originals.
Regarding doctrinal fidelity and factual accuracy, these are all-important in a translation of the Bible as well. The Authorised Version is a reliable and faithful translation of the original language texts. The Authorised Version is in no wise given to the freewheeling extensive use of dynamic equivalence in its translation as are some of the modern translations. It gives, to the contrary, as much as is possible, a word-for-word rendering of the originals.
The New King James Version, however, does not demonstrate this same doctrinal fidelity in translating correctly the original language texts. To the contrary, it seriously diluted and obscured important doctrines of the Scriptures in key verses. Is the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell an essential doctrine of the Scriptures? And what of the doctrine of experimental religion: does the true Christian experience the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost in the midst of his tribulations? Moreover, does God save worthy or unworthy sinners? Is Christ’s salvation difficult, or is His yoke easy and His burden light? Is man good, or is God alone good? All these are foundational doctrinal matters which are impacted by the translational choices of the New King James Version translators.
A very grave, but also intentional, translational problem in the New King James Version is its rendering of the New Testament Greek words which the Authorised Version correctly renders with the English word “hell”. In ten verses of the Scripture the New King James Version has retranslated the passage to use the word hades instead of hell. Those verses are Matthew 11.23,Matthew 16.18, Luke 10.15, Luke 16.23, Acts 2.27, Acts 2.31, Revelation 1.18, Revelation 6.8, Revelation 20.13, and Revelation 20.14. The New King James, rather than translating, has instead used a direct transliteration of the Greek word a¨dhj (hade¯s), which is used in the Textus Receptus. However, the other two Greek words used for hell in the New Testament - geenna (gehenna) and tartarow (tartaroo¯) - it continues translating as hell. One must ask: why have the NKJV translators opted to transliterate only the Greek word hades and not the other words for hell? It is noteworthy that the Greek word hades, as employed in classical mythology, does not at all mean a place of eternal punishment and estrangement from God. To the contrary, it primarily means “the abode of the dead”, and therefore, figuratively, “the grave.” In this sense, if one were to fail to take into account the New Testament’s use of the word as a whole, the word could be mistaken to mean “a condition in which a person is taken out of existence”, hence, annihilationism. Moreover, the word hades is frequently employed in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) when translating the Hebrew word sheol; and sheol does often mean grave. Thus, the New King James Version’s employment of hades in the New Testament could lead English readers to think that perhaps the word grave is the one actually meant. On the other hand, if one were to argue that by capitalising the noun Hades as the NKJV translators have done they are indeed referring to a specific place, what would that place be? The classical abode of the dead, as used by the Greeks? Eternal punishment for the wicked as opposed to everlasting bliss for the righteous? Perhaps a judgment seat at which the wicked are not punished for ever but are rather annihilated? The capitalisation does not help, but only makes the whole matter darker and more ambiguous. One could be given the impression that the text is not speaking of the “lake of fire and brimstone” spoken of in Revelation 20.10 - the everlasting home of the devil, the beast and the false prophet and their worshippers, from which (14.11) “the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” One could wonder whether the use of the word hades were employed so as to give annihilationists - those who deny the eternal damnation of the wicked in hell for ever - opportunity for foisting their views on unsuspecting readers. Annihilationists say that the wicked will simply be destroyed out of existence at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Of course, this is a serious error.
ReplyDeleteIn four verses in the New Testament, hades may possibly mean the grave:
ReplyDeleteActs 2.27,31, Revelation 20.13,14. In the first two verses, Luke, himself a Greek, directly quotes Psalm 16.10 as it was translated from the Hebrew into Greek, using the word hades for sheol. These verses speak of Christ’s being in sheol for three days and three nights. Some affirm this literally to have been hell (as did Martin Luther); others, such as the Westminster divines, believed it refers to the grave (as often the Hebrew word means). In Revelation 20.13-14 hades clearly speaks of the grave, because this hades will itself be cast into the lake of fire.
However, outside these four verses, hades unquestionably always refers to eternal punishment, as is evidenced by Luke 16.23–24. This passage tells us of the eternal sad fate of the rich man who had no compassion for Lazarus, the poor beggar who had died at his gates. The Authorised Version correctly renders these verses as:
“And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.”
The Greek word for hell in the first sentence is hades; and the NKJV correspondingly translates the first part of verse 23 as:
“And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”
In this passage hades is clearly a place of eternal torment. It is clearly the abode of hellfire, as even the NKJV itself shows us in verse 24, translating that verse as does the Authorised Version: “…send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame”.
Hades here clearly is the place where the wicked suffer in flames for ever. It is the place where “their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” as the Saviour Himself tells us in Mark 9.46. If indeed the place referred to in the Greek New Testament as hades is identical to hell, why then change the word? Why confuse English readers with a new term, when the old adequately renders what is meant by the passage?
The translators of the New King James affirmed that it was their intention to provide a mere language update of the Authorised Version, so as supposedly to make the Scriptures easier for the modern English reader to understand. Why then change a word which is already easy for the English speaker to understand? Who does not know what hell is? Why introduce a new term with which many may not be familiar?
Moreover, why does the New King James not change the word for hell in Matthew 5.22,29,30; 10.28; 18.9; 23.15, and other places where the Greek word gehenna, a place of burning in the valley of the son of Hinnom is used? Why does it not transliterate also the word tartaroo¯ in 2 Peter 2.4, where the Scripture tells us that “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell”?
When we consider that the practice of replacing the word hell in English versions with the word hades began with the translation of the Revised Version of 1881, we ought to be very concerned. The heterodoxy of several members of that translation committee, notably William Robertson Smith, a Scottish higher critic, and George Vance Smith, a Unitarian, is all too well known. The Unitarians since Vance Smith’s time have joined with the Universalists, who obviously deny the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, believing as they do that all men in the end will be saved. Hence, we would not be unwarranted in believing that some of the committee members on the translating committee for the Revised Version in 1881 also leaned toward either universal redemption or annihilationism, and that this influenced their changing the word hell to hades. Although we have no difinitive proof that any of the translators of the New King James Version at present lean toward the heterodoxy of the translators of the Revised Version, yet it would be naive to suggest that concerns are unwarranted. At the very least, they have proven too accommodating to those of such views.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the “Religious Tolerance” group:
“Annihilationism is a growing belief among Evangelicals. It is promoted by many Evangelical leaders including F.F. Bruce, Edward W. Fudge, Michael Green, Philip E. Hughes, Dale Moody, Clark H. Pinnock, W. Graham Scroggie, John R.W. Stott and John W.Wenham. These are some famous names indeed! Given the ‘slippery slope’ that many even famous evangelicals are now following with respect to the Biblical doctrine of eternal punishment, we cannot stress enough the importance of holding to a Bible version that CLEARY teaches and holds forth this essential doctrine. Seeing then that the NKJV has abandoned this standard, we should not be recommending this translation. Indeed, the New King James is foundationally deficient in blurring this essentially important truth. We must here note that this novel way of translating hades agrees with the identical practice of the New American Standard Bible, which also blurs the doctrine of eternal punishment by translating hades in the same way in the same verses. Many poor sinners have been awakened to the reality of their need to fly to Christ through the fear of hell and eternal torment, as is abundantly manifest by the many conversions that were wrought by God through Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Although a mere fear of hell with a coerced confession of Christ is surely not sufficient for eternity - there must be the revealing of Christ to the soul (cf. Galatians 1.16) and the shining of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ into the heart (cf. 2 Corinthians 4.6) transforming the heart and making a man into a willing person in the day of God’s power, a man who cannot but love Christ (cf. Psalm 110.3) if it is to be well with that man for eternity - yet many are first brought seriously to consideration of God through a sense of their very real danger. The minimising of God’s very real wrath against sin and His purpose to punish it most severely for all eternity cannot but work very great mischief and harm to the eternal souls of men. The New King James Version should be condemned for thus diluting the doctrine of eternal punishment with its setting aside the word hell in so many important verses of Holy Writ.
Also, the very important of experimental religion must be considered. By “experimental”, I do not mean the exalting of personal experience over the truth of the Word of God. Rather, I mean the putting of one’s profession of faith to the touchstone of Scripture, to see whether that profession is confirmed with the marks and evidences of those graces which true believers possess. These would include the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5.22–23, especially as it comes forth in seasons of trials and temptations. But also by the word ‘experimental’ we must refer to the Spirit’s work in manifesting such evidences of grace to the faith and consciences of true believers, to confirm to them that they are indeed in covenant with God and that God loves them, and that Christ will indeed be with them in all their temptations and trials. The Saviour tells His disciples and, in them, all His true church, that “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him” (John 14.21). Those who through a living faith in Christ endeavour to walk in Him in humble reliance upon Him at every step of the way, “leaning upon [their] beloved” (Song of Solomon 8.5), will experience manifold trials and oppositions in this life. Their own flesh will oppose them. The old man will rise up against them. But also, the world and Satan will oppose them. ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation’, the Saviour tells His people in John 16.33. For this reason, the Lord’s people are ‘an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD’ (Zephaniah 3.12). They are a people who need the confirming assurances of Christ’s love to their souls, and it is to such that Christ manifests Himself to the strengthening of their souls. By His witnessing to them of the marks of their faith that manifest themselves in the midst of their trials, along with fresh revelations of the glory of Christ in all His Person and Work, the Holy Ghost often sheds abroad in their hearts the felt sense of the love of God, helping them. It is this that the Apostle speaks of in Romans 5.1–5.
ReplyDeleteAccordingly, we see problems when we consider the NKJV’s rendering of Romans 5.1–5, which tends to undermine the doctrine of experimental religion shown in those verses.
The Authorised Version correctly renders this passage thus:
ReplyDelete“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
The word “experience” speaks of this experimental religion. However, the New King James makes a very major change in this one word and in doing so, the doctrine. It changes experience to character. Thus, the NKJV in verses 3 and 4 reads, “knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.” This change is not at all warranted by the Greek word dokimh (dokime¯) from which it is translated. (It is interesting to note, however, that the NKJV translators agree here in essence with the New American Standard of 1995, which translates dokime¯ as ‘proven character’.) Dokime¯ properly means proof arising from having survived a test or trial. The verb from which it comes properly means to put to the proof or to put to the experiment, as a chemist would submit a rock to a series of tests to determine what its chemical makeup was. The proof spoken of here in the text is twofold: it refers both to God’s proving the sincerity of the true believer before men and angels, but it also refers to God’s proving His own faithfulness to the hearts and consciences of His children by His sustaining them with the felt sense of His love shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost freely given them, as verse 5 goes on to say. Thus, the proper meaning of the text is that the Christian glories in tribulations because he knows from the proof of his own faith demonstrated to his own mind and conscience that his God loves him, and that therefore his God is perfecting him through these tests. His having had his faith put to the proof or put to the experiment is good for his soul. It demonstrates the reality of his faith to God, to the devil, to the world, and to his own conscience and soul. As these trials demonstrate the reality of his own faith to his own soul and the reality of Christ’s standing with him in his trials, these experiences in turn show him, in time, the love of God to his soul. They become as an Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7.12), a rock of memorial to God’s help and sustenance to him in time of need. They are experiences to which he often looks. Accordingly, the Authorised Version’s translation of the word dokime¯ as ‘experience’ is most appropriate. These witnessings of the Holy Ghost as to the reality of his faith are precious experiences that the child of God never forgets. By these experiences, God manifests His faithfulness and help to the poor believer when he cries out to Him, and the poor child of God finds God to be faithful to His Word, a “very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46.1).
The New King James Version in translating the passage as “and perseverance, character; and character, hope”, states a truth, but it does not at all adequately nor faithfully set forth the doctrine as espoused in the original language text. This mistranslation also robs the believer of a beautiful text with much comfort. The believer does not find tribulation joyous at first but he finds the peaceable fruits of righteousness issuing therefrom. He finds the very sensible help of God in time, at every step. Daniel finds angels with him in the lions’ den (Daniel 6). Shadrach, Meshach and Abed–nego find a fourth one ‘like the Son of God’ with them in the furnace (Daniel 3.25). Paul finds the Lord standing by him in the night while his enemies plot his murder with the Sanhedrin (Acts 23.11). Stephen, as he is about to be cruelly stoned, sees the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on God’s right hand (Acts 7.56). Job, after a long season of lacking altogether the sensible presence of his God so that he had to say ‘Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him’ (Job 23.8), yet found after a time the Lord speaking to him out of the whirlwind and that mightily for his deliverance (38.1; 40.6).
ReplyDeleteGiven these things, how can we not say that patience worketh experience, and that these experiences, by the Holy Ghost, witness God’s incomprehensible love to the soul of the poor child of God, many a time so that he is almost overwhelmed, “sick of love” (Song of Solomon 2.5; 5.8), and yet most marvellously strengthened thereby for time to come?
So then, the Greek word dokime¯ refers to the experiment to which the believer’s faith is put and to the proof that issues therefrom. But it also means “experience” as we properly understand it - the proof of God’s faithfulness to the soul and heart of the child of God.
Again, the question arises, what is so hard to understand about the word “experience”? Why have the New King James translators, without this being a problem in the Authorised Version, and without a real warrant from the word in the original language, decided to change it? The failure to note the experimental component of this verse by the NKJV translators reflects the general dearth of experimental religion in our day, whereas the Authorised Version challenges it! This is indeed a day in which mere historical, non-saving faith in the head (but not in the heart) is often taken by many to be actual, vital godliness in the soul; and even the godly of our day, we fear, have been lulled by the general lukewarmness of our time to a deadness in spiritual matters. Accordingly, the New King James Version can regarded as a fruit of this spiritually barren age. There is a deficiency, in the NKJV’s setting forth of fundamental experimental truths of the Word of God.
The Authorised Version ought to be preferred, especially with respect to its setting forth the Scripture’s teaching concerning the experimental life of grace in the soul.
ReplyDeleteThe Authorised Version correctly translates Matthew 7:14:
“Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
The New King James Version translates it as:
“Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
The Greek word translated as “narrow” in the Authorised Version and “difficult” in the New King James is the participial form of the Greek verb qlibw (thlibo¯), which properly means to narrow or constrict. In the Greek it is a perfect participle, literally meaning narrowed. While this can mean narrowed, or difficult in a figurative sense, yet in the Biblical sense here, it can only mean narrow in that salvation exclusively comes through faith in Christ only and through repentance toward God. We cannot properly say that salvation is difficult because the Saviour Himself, Who cannot lie, tells us that His “yoke is easy, and [his] burden is light” (Matthew 11.30). Salvation is impossible with man, but not because it is difficult. In Christ the intolerable yoke of the covenant of works which makes absolutely no provision for the forgiveness of sins is taken away, Christ having fulfilled that covenant for His people who believe on Him. They are but called to look to Him and to repent only through faith in Him, He enabling them by justifying them with a righteousness outside themselves and by giving them a new nature and progressive sanctification within their souls through the Holy Ghost indwelling them. The only thing which makes salvation impossible for unregenerate men is their unwillingness to come to Him, and Christ takes away this enmity in the day of His power (Psalm 110.3). By mistranslating the Greek word as difficult, the New King James would give the reader the impression that the poor sinner must work his way to God, that salvation is somehow a work of his own willpower with a little of God’s assistance helping him to overcome the heart of evil within. But no, salvation is all of grace; it is not of works, but of faith, and that faith is all God’s work (see Ephesians 2.8). Salvation is narrow because it is alone by Christ by grace through faith. Man must throw away his own righteousness and his own works to come to Christ; he must renounce confidence in his own abilities. He must forsake every other false ground of confidence and come by Christ alone. It is a narrow way because it is an exclusive way. Thus, in mistranslating this verse the New King James has cast doubts on the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone! The New King James translators have failed on this critical point and are serious deficient in their rendering of this fundamental doctrine of the Gospel.
It would be better to hold fast to the Authorised Version.
In Zechariah 9.17, the New King James translators deliberately chose to alter, purposely revising what is said in the original language. That verse is Zechariah 9.17. Looking at both verses 16 and 17 so as to get the full context of the passage. In the Authorised Version, this correctly reads as follows:
ReplyDelete“And the LORD their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land. For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.”
Repeatedly in the chapters preceding this verse, the prophet Zechariah chides with the children of Judah, expostulating with them for their sins. Such is the case in chapter 7 verse 12 where he says, “Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts.” It was not a worthy people that the Lord would save. It was a desperately wicked people who had oppressed the widow, the fatherless, the stranger and the poor, as Zechariah had witnessed against them in chapter 7.10–12. But the Lord would save them in His free and sovereign grace because He so willed, just as in His free grace He had loved their fathers (Deuteronomy 7.7–8). Accordingly, we can only say “how great is his goodness” (Zechariah 9.17). We have no goodness of our own; “there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God…there is none that doeth good, no, not one”, Scripture tells us in Romans 3.10–12. This is so with both Jew and Gentile, as Paul tells us: “…we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin” (Romans 3.9). Both the Gentile believers and the Jewish believers sought not God. Instead Christ sought them. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you”, says Christ in John 15.16. Accordingly, the Lord saved and delivered an unworthy people in the verses in Zechariah 9.16–17. They deserved nothing but eternal condemnation in hell, but God in His grace and goodness saved them. But look now at how the New King James translates Zechariah 9.17!
In its 1987 edition it has rendered this verse:
“For how great is their goodness, and how great their beauty.”
They translate it thus, even though they acknowledge in a footnote to the verse that “their” is ‘Literally his’ in the original language text: if translated literally the verse would be “For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty.” The NKJV translators opted deliberately to change the pronoun (used as an adjective in the text) so as to give glory to man instead of to God! Such a rendering of the text is not only wrong, it is heretical. It would say that the Lord saves worthy sinners, He saves those who are good! (By the way, the 1987 NKJV again agrees with the original NASB in rendering “their” for the Hebrew word for “his”; the 1995 edition of the NASB also still translates it in this way.)
In its original 1982 edition, the NKJV read, “For how great is its goodness, and great its beauty”, with a footnote again acknowledging that it could be rendered with “his”: “and great his beauty”. It appears that, in its 1982 edition, the NKJV translators may have mistakenly interpreted the pronoun/adjective (which they have rendered as “its”) to refer to Zion, instead of to the Lord Himself (who, as Christ tells us, is the only One Who is good); and thus, they have revised the verse in 1987 to read as does the New American Standard. But we cannot but view this mistranslation as an obscuring of the doctrines of free grace and of the doctrine which is itself set forth by the passage. All the deliverances of the Old Testament people of God set forth in types show the way of salvation as it would fully be revealed in the New Testament. God saved an unworthy people in both the Old Dispensation and the New. We cannot but believe that true believers, even under the shadowy dispensation of the Old Covenant, were indeed saved with New Testament grace alone through a saving view of Christ portrayed in their ceremonies and temporal deliverances. The NKJV translators are evidently shaky in their doctrinal moorings in important fundamentals of Law and Gospel. Their obscuring of the doctrine of free grace, that free grace which is clearly set forth in the original language in this passage in Zechariah 9.17, abundantly manifests the weakness of their doctrinal foundations.
ReplyDeleteThe NKJV the rendering of Matthew 20:20 presents a weakened understanding of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. The Authorised Version correctly translates the verse as:
“Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him.”
“Worshipping him”: the fact that Christ is worshipped displays His divinity, for only God may lawfully be worshipped, as the Second Commandment plainly teaches us. The second of the Ten Commandments teaches us that we may not bow down before idols because bowing down is worshipping. When Cornelius fell down to worship Peter, Peter rebuked him, telling him ‘Stand up; I myself also am a man’ (Acts 10.26). Men may not be worshipped, nor may idols or even angels. So also said the angel to John in Revelation 19.10 and 22.8–9 when John would have fallen down to worship him; the angel tells him to do it not but to “Worship God”. Thus, neither men nor angels nor idols are to be worshipped. God alone may be worshipped. But in Matthew 20.20 we find that both the mother of James and John, and the men themselves, are worshipping Christ and Christ forbids them not. Why? Because He is indeed God.
How does the NKJV translate this verse?
“Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from Him.”
“Worship” has been diluted to “kneeling down.”
In the Authorised Version, every occurrence of the Greek word proskunew (proskuneo¯) is translated the same, namely, as worship. Even in the New King James, most of the time it is translated thus. Indeed, the NKJV renders proskuneo¯ as worship in Acts 10.25, where Cornelius falls down to worship Peter. Yet here it has failed to translate the word properly when dealing with a far more important Person than Peter, One Who is indeed worthy of worship. We cannot say, on the mere ground of this one verse alone, that the editors of the New King James did not believe that Christ, as God, is worthy of worship; but we must say that there is a certain carelessness and indifference, at the very least, toward the significance and importance of this doctrine as it is clearly set forth in this verse. The NKJV translators’ failure to render proskuneo¯ in its true meaning of worship in this verse reveals a lack of reverence, and is totally unnacceptable. The all-importance of this doctrine - namely, Christ’s accepting worship, and this as a proof of His Godhead - merits much more reverence and diligence in preserving this doctrine in every text of the Bible where it is manifested, as it should have been in this verse.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to 1st John 5:7, the marginal notes in the New King James Version are a disgrace. The strongest witness in the Bible for the unity of the Trinity and the consubstantiality of the Three Persons - that is, their sharing the same divine Essence - is clearly found in 1 John 5.7. This text is most likely to have been excluded first by Origen, and even perhaps by his predecessors, because of their subordinationist views (that Christ and the Holy Spirit are inferior to the Father), and their views concerning the Modalist Monarchist heresy (that the Father is the Son, and the Son is the Father, and so on), which heresy was a major problem in the third century. In addition, Origen’s devotee, Eusebius of Caesarea, was Emperor Constantine’s favourite bishop and held extreme subordinationist views - indeed he was an Arian for a time, and then a Semi-Arian, even after the Council of Nicaea. Eusebius was very much involved in the textual criticism of the text, as had been his predecessor Origen. Constantine ordered fifty copies of the Scriptures from Eusebius for the churches in Constantinople, which copies certainly would have set the standard for a time for the text. Eusebius had invented a system of cross referencing the four Gospels, a system now called the Eusebian Canons, which were in most of the Greek manuscripts for many centuries, and even found their way into the early copies of the Latin Vulgate. Thus the universal sway that Eusebius held for a time over the New Testament text, particularly in the church of the east, is evident. Eusebius was opposed to the doctrine of Christ’s being of the same essence as the Father, and therefore would have been opposed to 1 John 5.7. He would have had the ecclesiastical power for a time to have excluded that text from the authorised copies.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Johannine Comma, as it is called, persisted in the Old Italic Version of the churches of Africa where Eusebius’s influence was the weakest and where the Eusebian Canons were not utilised, at least in their older copies. The verse was likely preserved then in the church of the west, where the influence of Arianism and Semi-Arianism had been the least. It is the strongest witness to the doctrine of the Trinity and to the consubstantiality and equality of the Three Persons of the Trinity that can be found anywhere in the Bible. If we delete the strongest witness for the Trinity and for the o¨moousioj (homoousios), as the early Greek Fathers called the sharing of the divine essence by the Three Persons, then we necessarily weaken those doctrines. Those doctrines no longer appear in the Scriptures with their native and original strength and force. But what do we find in the New King James Version concerning the Comma? We find the following footnote for 1 John 5.7:
“NU-Text and M-Text omit the words from in heaven (verse 7) through to on earth (verse 8). Only four or five very late Greek manuscripts contain these words.”
This means that the Nestle-Aland/UBS Critical Greek Text and the so-called Byzantine Majority Text both exclude 1 John 5.7. With the words “only four or five manuscripts” - but not taking into account at all the history of the text or the nearly universal attestation to the authenticity of the Comma in the Western Church - the NKJV translators make it appear that the text was almost surely not in the original autograph. Yet, because of overwhelming historical evidence, the masters of the eastern Byzantine text, not only included the Comma in their official version; they included it also as one of their official lectionary readings! On the grounds of overwhelming historical evidence, likely presented to them at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, they opted to re-include that verse in their copies.
Thus it must be argued that in its embracing modernist views of text critics like Bruce Metzger and Kurt Aland concerning 1 John 5.7, the New King James Version has also weakened the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead with its marginal notes.
ReplyDeleteThe NKJV alters with its translation a very important passage in Hebrews 2.16 concerning Christ’s incarnation and His taking our human nature. The Authorised Version correctly renders this verse as:
“For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.”
This means that Christ did not take to Himself an angelic nature; He took to Himself the nature of mankind, specifically, being born of the seed of Abraham. Note the italics for the words “the nature of” and “him”. The Authorised Version itself gives us the literal reading of the passage in the marginal note it appends to this verse: “Gr. taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham he taketh hold”. The Greek word for “taketh hold” is epilambanomai, which literally means to take upon, but which can also mean to lay hold of or to seize. Only in a figurative sense could it mean give aid, but this is how the New King James Version renders it, without there being any clear reason for translating it in a figurative sense here.
The context of this passage shows us clearly that Christ took to Himself flesh and blood, and not the nature of angels. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same”, verse 14 of this same chapter tells us. Accordingly, the whole context of the passage tells us that He took to Himself our human nature, body and soul. Christ, as God, is superior to all the angels, chapter 1 of this book tells us. But Christ for our sakes was made “a little lower than the angels” (2.7,9), taking to Himself our human nature, that He might be made conformable to us in all things, sin excepted.
But how does the New King James Version translate this verse?
“For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.”
In this figurative rendering of epilambanomai, the New King James follows the New American Standard which reads “For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.” Thus, the New King James here, contrary to its original purpose, does not simply update the language of the Authorised Version; it retranslates this verse, even changing the doctrine of it! The verse in the NKJV merely speaks of Christ’s giving help to the seed of Abraham; the doctrine of the incarnation is altogether overlooked.
Moreover, the translators had to employ a figurative sense of the Greek verb in order to do so. Once again, the NKJV translators betray their strong sympathies for the methodologies and philosophy behind the NASB translation, over against those of the Authorised Version. However, this is a very important text for showing the incarnation of Christ. It is a very strong verse in proof of it. However, although other verses even in this chapter and context state the incarnation of Christ, yet the NKJV’s rendering of this verse in this way weakens its testimony to this all important, fundamental doctrine, thus weakening Scripture’s testimony to the incarnation of the Saviour.
ReplyDeleteGiven that many Reformed confessions rightly cite Hebrews 2.16 in proof of the Incarnation and the Hypostatic Union, we cannot but condemn this rendering.
The New King James Version’s re-rendering of 1 Thessalonians 5.22 is also problematic. The Authorised Version correctly renders this verse as:
“Abstain from all appearance of evil.”
The New King James retranslates it as:
“Abstain from every form of evil.”
This retranslation certainly weakens the verse. As it is understood in the Authorised Version, the saint is not only to abstain from evil; he also is to abstain from all that would even have the appearance of evil. The New King James on the other hand would simply have us to abstain from every form of evil, i.e., every “kind” of evil. The Greek word for appearance bears out the Authorised Version’s rendering of it. It is the Greek word eidoj (eidos) which means, according to Thayer, “the external appearance, form, figure, shape.” Yes, the word can be understood as form or shape (e.g., see shape in Luke 3.22, John 5.37; however, most instances of the word “form” in the AV are from the word morfh [morphe¯], as in Philippians 2.6–7), but simply rendering the word in this way does not adequately convey its full significance. It means also the external appearance, and so the verse is indeed commanding the saints to abstain even from that which has the mere appearance of evil, even in regards to something which may not actually be evil. Again, it is far better to hold fast to the more accurate, Authorised Version.
The marginal note which the NKJV appends to Acts 8.37 adds further doubt to the veracity of the text. That verse, which answers the Ethiopian eunuch’s request to be baptised, reads properly in the Authorised Version:
“And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
The New King James also includes this verse in the text, but here our attention is drawn to the marginal note about the verse:
“NU-Text and M-Text omit this verse. It is found in Western texts, including the Latin tradition. The fact that Dr Arthur Farstad, the editor of the New King James Version, was also a principal editor for the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text - the “Farstad” in “Hodges-Farstad” refers to him - would lead one to think that Dr Farstad himself strongly leans toward the omission of this verse. However, we cannot but think it quite bad that modern men lack the discernment to see why this verse must needs be included.
The omission is most likely to have be an excision by Origen which was later enforced by Eusebius of Caesarea. But this text is very important doctrinally. It is the only text which specifically requires a profession of faith from a believer applying for their own baptism. Were this text not in the Bible, a Muslim still cleaving to Islam could apply for baptism in the church and there would be little Scriptural warrant for refusing him. One could appeal to other texts, but the appeal would be weakened, and this is the point.
In all, Acts 8.37 is a very important doctrinal text and its inclusion without question in the Textus Receptus and in the Authorised Version much marks the integrity and purity of both. It is therefore regrettable that the NKJV places question marks about this passage in its marginal note.
ReplyDeleteA passage in the NKJV which is very problematic, and which has grave doctrinal consequences, is its rendering of Psalm 45.13. The Authorised Version correctly renders this verse as:
“The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.”
The entire Psalm is obviously Messianic. Its title, part of the original Hebrew, tells us it is “A Song of loves”, very much patterned after and speaking of the same subject matter as the Song of Solomon. Both the Psalm and the Song of Songs speak of the mystical union of Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom, with His bride, the church of all ages, composed of believers from both the Old and New Testament eras. Verse 6 of the Psalm is clearly applied to Christ in Hebrews 1.8: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.” Paul in this verse in Hebrews, under the perfect inspiration and infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, uses this very verse in Psalm 45 to prove the Godhead and divinity of Christ.
Yet Christ is also called true man in this Psalm, as verse 7 refers to His being anointed with the “oil of gladness above thy fellows”, where we must understand His fellows or companions to be of the sons of men. Though it is not explicitly stated that Christ has companions among the sons of men because He Himself became man, yet the doctrine is clearly implied, especially when we take the verse in context with the rest of Scripture. Verse 13 of the Psalm refers to the king’s daughter, but the term “daughter” is figurative, since this daughter is clearly the king’s spouse who is being given to him in marriage, as verse 14 tells us: “She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.” The image is that of the bride being presented to the bridegroom, with her bridesmaids in attendance. Verse 13 gives us a spiritual view of the spiritual beauty of this bride: she is all glorious within.
Similarly, her clothing is of the wrought gold of the righteousness of Christ, to Whom she is espoused: she is clothed with His righteousness, having received that righteousness by faith alone. All who are truly justified are also born again and therefore sanctified, both initially and progressively. They are made holy within; they are new creatures, “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5.17). They are new men within, and hence, all glorious within. They have a beauty that is not of the outer man or of “that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but [that beauty which is of] the hidden man of the heart” (1 Peter 3.3–4). They have that which is beautiful in the Saviour’s eyes: the new heart, that heart which is holy, which is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, and which has holy desires for Him.
Thus, the Authorised Version very faithfully renders Psalm 45.13 directly from the Hebrew as “the king’s daughter is all glorious within.”
ReplyDeleteBut how does the New King James render this verse?
“The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace”
By adding the words “the palace”, which are not in the original Hebrew (nor are they even indicated), the New King James destroys the spiritual meaning of the passage.
There are numerous other passages where the NKJV’s errors are of lesser doctrinal significance, but where it does indeed incorrectly render the sense of the passage. Surely this is important! The true child of God desires to understand all of Scripture that he can. If like Job he esteems the Word of God more than his necessary food (Job 23.12), how much then should he desire a translation of the Scriptures that is as accurate as possible!
To date, the Authorised Version of the Scriptures is, by far, the most accurate in the English tongue – not without minor blemishes (it is not the original), but it is by far the most accurate and until such times as a more accurate version be furnished, then we have absolutely no call whatsoever to be using any version of lesser accuracy.
In Luke 22.31–32, it is evident how the translation of “thee” and “you” critically impacts the meaning of that verse.
ReplyDeleteThe Authorised Version says: “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
The New King James Version (1982 edition) has: “And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
In the New King James it could appear that the entire passage is speaking to Peter alone. It could appear that Peter alone was going to be sifted as wheat and fall backward for a time. It could appear that, after this time of backsliding, he would then be used to strengthen his brethren. However, this is not what the passage is saying. This is where the Authorised Version is far superior to the NKJV. In its use of the word ‘you’ as a second person plural, in exact accordance with the original Greek, the Authorised Version makes it clear that all the Apostles were going to be sifted as wheat. But then the Lord tells Peter that He is going to convert or turn Peter back, and when Peter is then converted he is to restore and strengthen his brethren.
This passage teaches us the importance of the Gospel ministry: that it pleases the Lord to use broken instruments of the dust, fallen instruments, to restore others. In this day in which often the Gospel ministry is despised, we believe a proper understanding of this verse to be all-important. But also, it is very important that the English reader of the Scriptures have in his hands a version that differentiates between the singular and plural of the second person pronouns.
These are merely a few examples of the many which could be cited.
The New King James Version (as seen in the American 1982 edition) has taken upon itself to capitalise the pronouns which refer to Deity, which initially seems good. However, there is a problem in rendering the Scriptures in this way because there are verses where it is not always clear whether the pronoun refers to man or to God. Thus, for the translator to take upon himself to capitalise pronouns necessarily entails his interpreting the passage. This can also occur if the translator is too quick to capitalise every instance of the word “spirit”. Here are some examples:
ReplyDeleteIn Psalm 37:23, the Authorised Version says: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.”
The New King James Version has: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way.”
It is obvious here that the New King James Version has interpreted this verse to make the Lord delight in the good man. However, it could be that the verse means that it is the good man who delights in the Lord. Indeed, this is what the Psalm tells us in verse 4, where the Psalmist commands his reader to “delight thyself also in the LORD.” Additionally, the verse could well mean both. It could mean both that the good man delights in the Lord, and that the Lord delights in him. Because of cases like this, it is better to follow the practice of not capitalising the pronouns for Deity, so that, in case the pronoun can be taken in two ways, the reader is free under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to make the judgment for himself as to what is intended by considering prayerfully the context.
In James 4:5, the Authorised Version reads: “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?” The New King James has: “Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously?” The question here is, does the Greek word for “spirit” (which is not capitalised in Greek) refer to the Holy Spirit, as the New King James has rendered it? Or could it instead refer to the regenerate nature of the born again man which also lusts for righteousness, in accordance with John 3.6, which tells us “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”? In other words, the new creature, the new man, is spirit, in the image of Christ, Who is a spiritual man (1 Corinthians 15); and that new nature which is spirit is born of the Holy Spirit, who lusts after righteousness. Which of the two does James 4.5 speak of? Or for that matter, and we think more probably, is the verse perhaps speaking of the sinful machinations of the old man, and his lustings after the things of the flesh? Again, it is better to follow the Authorised Version’s example in being very judicious about not capitalising the pronouns which refer to Deity and in being cautious about capitalising the word spirit.
In Titus 3:10, the Authorised Version correctly reads, “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject.” The Greek word for heretic is ai¨retikoj (hairetikos), which is indeed the very word from which we get heretic. Although in classical Greek ai¨resij (hairesis, heresy) refers to a divisively partisan spirit, yet the overall use of that word in the New Testament indeed refers specifically to one who causes division with false or heretical doctrines.
ReplyDeleteYet the New King James translates the verse, “Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition.” This alteration does indeed change the doctrine of the text. The Authorised Version’s rendering, which is the correct one, limits the power of church courts to disbarring only those who are doctrinally heretical from the Lord’s Table. However, as the New King James renders it, the church could well claim power to excommunicate anyone who was simply hard to get along with.
It is true that most modern lexicons list the word hairetikos as meaning factious. However, this certainly was not the case in the past, in better days. We happily defer in this instance to the wise exegesis of this passage that John Calvin gives us:
“Avoid a heretical man. This is properly added; because there will be no end of quarrels and disputes, if we wish to conquer obstinate men by argument; for they will never want words, and they will derive fresh courage from impudence, so that they will never grow weary of fighting.”
Thus, after having given orders to Titus as to the form of doctrine he should lay down, he now forbids him to waste much time in debating with heretics.
Matthew Henry begins his discussion of Titus 3.10 with exactly the same understanding of the word, prefacing his remarks with these words:
Here is the fifth and last thing in the matter of the epistle: what Titus should avoid in teaching; how he should deal with a heretic; with some other directions. Matthew Henry goes on to prove that “heretic” is the only understanding of the term that will fit the context. Paul has just told Timothy in verse 9 to “avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.” In verse 11, Paul says of such a man that he “is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself .” Such ominous terms certainly would not be applied to a man who was merely factious or divisive. Paul is here specifically addressing those of the Ebionistic heresy, the Judaizers. He is saying that they are heretical, and that after a mere two admonitions, Titus should have nothing to do with them. Modern men, with their lexicons, have altogether overlooked the context of this passage, and as well have failed to read the sound writers of old like Calvin and Matthew Henry. Hardly men deficient in their Greek!
Thus, the modern interpreters are wrong. Hairetikos here in Titus 3.10, as seen by the context of the term, plainly refers to a heretical, and not a merely divisive, man. Thus, Paul only grants to Titus the church power to exclude heretical persons, not merely divisive people who may be hard to get along with. Having seen a number of cases of the abuse of power by church courts of some American churches in the United States, I certainly would not wish church courts to be granted the kind of unbridled, subjective power indicated by the NKJV. In many situations in church government, church members who have caused trouble for the church authorities by simply asking too many questions have been excommunicated for “contumacy” or rebellion. Of course, fomenting divisions in the church in the fashion that Korah (Numbers 16) did merits church discipline, but this does not mean that everyone who simply is hard to get along with or who asks the church elders too many difficult questions deserves to be cast out of church communion. Yet, this is what could be construed by the translation of the New King James in this passage.
The New King James’s translation is not warranted by the New Testament use of the word hairetikos. Indeed, the NKJV itself translates cognate forms of the same word as this one properly, as a form of heretic or heresy, in other passages (as in 2 Peter 2.1). It should also be pointed out that once again the New King James translators appear to have come under the influence of the New American Standard. The NASB renders the verse “Reject a factious man after a first and second warning.” Factious and divisive are synonymous. They do not mean heretic, as indeed the original word in the Greek in its New Testament context does.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a very disturbing characteristic of the New King James, namely that in certain passages it has plainly departed from the Textus Receptus and instead opted to follow the Critical Text, contrary to what it has claimed!
The NKJV departs from the Textus Receptus in the following passages: 2 Corinthians 3.14, 2 John 7, Acts 19.9, Acts 19.39, Philippians 2.9, and Revelation 6.11.
Acts 19.9
AV: “disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus.”
NKJV: “reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus”
The difference here is again in the Greek text followed. Both the Textus Receptus and the Greek Patriarchal Text include the Greek word tinoj (tinos) after the name Tyrannus, meaning literally, “a certain Tyrannu.”. Even the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text has this reading. The Nestle-Aland/UBS Critical Text omits tinos, and the New King James similarly omits the word “one” or “certain.” Again, the New King James has departed from the Textus Receptus, instead following the Critical Text, without a word of explanation anywhere.
2 Corinthians 3.14
AV: “But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.”
NKJV: “But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ.”
The word that the New King James has changed from the Textus Receptus, “which” to “because.” The difference here is caused by the Greek word, which in some editions of the Greek is o( ti (ho ti) and others o¨ti (hoti). The Textus Receptus in all editions reads the former; the Critical Text and the Greek Patriarchal Text of the Greek Orthodox Church read the latter. (The Patriarchal Text is likely the reading of the majority of extant Greek manuscripts. The Textus Receptus may be following a minority reading of the extant Byzantine manuscripts here.)
Although the difference is a subtle one, the important question arises: why has the New King James here departed from the Textus Receptus without documenting this in the marginal notes? Why indeed has it departed from the Textus Receptus at all, given its stated purpose was to follow it? According to this purpose, these alternative readings should have been noted in the marginal notes, with the reading of the Textus Receptus in the actual text.
Philippians 2.9
ReplyDeleteAV: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name”
NKJV: “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name”
Again, we have highlighted the word in question, “a” or “the.” The difference is because of the reading of the Greek text employed. Textus Receptus and the Greek Patriarchal Text have onoma, “name”, whereas the Nestle-Aland/UBS Critical Text has to onoma, “the name.” Again, the New King James has departed from the Textus Receptus with no notation of the fact whatever.
Given that the Greek Patriarchal Text follows the Textus Receptus here, it is probable that “a name” is, in fact, the majority reading; yet the New King James has here inexplicably opted to follow the Critical Text instead.
Revelation 6.11
AV: “And white robes were given unto every one of them”
NKJV: “Then a white robe was given to each of them” [1987 edition of the NKJV says ‘And’ instead of ‘Then’.]
Again, the difference here is in the Greek text employed. All editions of the Textus Receptus read “white robes”, whereas the Greek Patriarchal Text and the Nestle-Aland/UBS Critical Text read “a white robe.” It is possible that the Textus Receptus employs a minority Byzantine reading, but again it must be asked: why has the New King James departed from the Textus Receptus without a single notation of that fact?
The listing here given of departures from the Textus Receptus underlying the AV by the New King James is by no means comprehensive. Some of the readings may be taken from other editions of the Received Text, but the question arises, why?
In some instances, deviations from the Textus Receptus upon which the Authorised Version is based, where the NKJV followed Stephanus 1550 or the Critical Text instead. None of the deviations mentioned above, however, are found in Stephanus. In each of these cases, the New King James deviated from any version of the Textus Receptus. However, in the cases where the New King James varied from the Textus Receptus underlying the Authorised Version, perhaps to follow Stephanus, we must ask ourselves: why did they do this, when the NKJV was supposed to be a mere language update of the Authorised Version? Why, then, did the translators not consistently follow the Textus Receptus basis of the Authorised Version?
But, the New King James not only deviates from the Textus Receptus basis of the Authorised Version: it deviates outright from any edition of the Textus Receptus.
There are many other translational problems in the New King James could be cited.
The New King James Version originally purported to be a modern language update of the Authorised Version. However, in the end it has not proven to be this at all. In Isaiah 11.3, Zechariah 9.17, Luke 22.31–32, Romans 5.1–5, Isaiah 53.9, Psalm 45.13, and many other verses - as also in its transliteration of the word hades instead of using the word “hell” - the New King James to the contrary demonstrates itself to be a new translation and sadly an inferior one at that. The doctrinal truth and power of the originals does not come through this translation. Not only that, it also, with its marginal notes and critical apparatus, has wrongly condemned the Textus Receptus and held forth the modern versions of the Greek text to be supposedly better, when these texts are, in fact, far from better.
ReplyDeleteThe New King James is weighed in the balances and found wanting. The Authorised Version has been proven faithful: it faithfully renders the doctrinal teachings of the originals and is based primarily upon faithful renditions.
The von Soden Critical Text of 1913 was riddled with errors, and many of these errors have found their way into the Hodges-Farstad and Pierpont-Robinson Majority Texts, making both these editions unreliable. Therefore, it was not responsible of the editors of the New King James to include readings from the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text in its marginal notes. The editors of the New King James were at serious fault in attempting to draw the people of God away from the tried and best, the Textus Receptus.
'Maurice W said...
ReplyDeleteLook carefully at my blog series, I do not believe that I have ever claimed that the AV is perfection. I have raised many concerns about the modern versions but I do not recall reffering to them as 'perversions'.
I have tried to avoid the sensational as I have written these blogs.'
Yes, I appreciate your non-sensationalist approach.
'The fact is that not ALL translations are perversions (something that no one on this blog has claimed, by the way, despite Wolfsbane false accusations!). The AV has minor blemishes which do not undermine in any serious way doctrinal matters. Others, based primarily on less accurate, and in many cases (such as the Alexandrian texts) heavily corrupted (by heretics) texts, can justly be called corrupt / perversions etc. There is a difference between imperfections, on the one hand, and medling which seriously affects doctrinal issues, on the other.'
ReplyDeleteOK, care to list the versions you deem as non-perversions?
And what counts as 'medling which seriously affects doctrinal issues', as distinct from 'imperfections'.
'It appears to me that Wolfsbane does not accept that anyone would ever dare venture to corrupt the Scriptures,'
ReplyDeleteNo, I fully accept that some have wilfully tried to pervert the Scriptures. Marcion, for example. And the JWs with their NWT.
Others in the liberal camp find paraphrases helpful in slanting things their way no doubt. But even the Anglicans had their own twists in the AV, to maintain their views. I suppose you call those 'imperfections'.
As far as I can see, most of the differences in translations arise out of genuine difference of opinion on what is the best text - the oldest or the majority attested.
What constitutes 'perversion' of the Scriptures in your view?
'Without the original autographs, it is the most edifying for the LORD's people to hold fast to the most accurate translation of the Word in their native tongue as possible ... '
ReplyDeleteWe agree on that!
'there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the AV is not the most accurate in the English tongue.'
ReplyDeleteYes, it is pretty good in comparison to the versions based on the Critical Text.
But that is far from allowing you to vilify those versions as 'perversions'.
Moreover, the NKJV (not based on the Critical Text)has helpfully updated the AV and given us note of where the Received Text is in error (its Majority Text notes).
That enables one to use the NKJV either as one's prime Bible, or to use it for reference as one reads the AV, so that the errant texts can be identified - 1 John 5:7, for example.
Now, if you can get the AV printed with these textual notes, that might be one way to advance without losing your preference for Elizabethan English.
I prefer today's English, so I stick to the NKJV.
"to use the NKJV ... as one's prime Bible" is hardly advisable!
ReplyDeleteI suggest you read the rest of my comments above, CAREFULLY.
This isn't about having a preference for Elizabethan English (another straw-man argument), it is about wanting the most accurate.
All in all the NKJV fails to even come close to the level of accuracy and reliability of the AV, for the reasons I have detailed above, amongst others.
As for your other statements, I have already addressed these points both above in my comments and elsewhere throughout the commentary threads of this blog ... I get the impression that you are merely skimming over what others say, or not seriously interested in doing anything other than trying to play word games for the sake of trying to win an argument for arguments sake. You ignore / deny evidence, even in the teeth of evidence, when it is presented to you, yet complain when answers are not detailed with evidence enough when they are brief.
It really does appear that you are not genuinely interested in a serious discussion of the topic, a topic which, to be fair, you don't seem to be terribly informed about, at any rate.
'I suggest you read the rest of my comments above, CAREFULLY.'
ReplyDeleteOh, I have, Stephen, I have.
'All in all the NKJV fails to even come close to the level of accuracy and reliability of the AV, for the reasons I have detailed above, amongst others.'
I was impressed with the detail and extent of your criticism of the NKJV. I thought, This man has given much thought to the subject, and through his reasoning is poor and his conclusions invalid, he nevertheless is to be commended for the effort.
Until I checked some of your 'comments'. I found they are not really yours at all, but copied from a certain A.Hembd, from his two articles in The Trinitarian Bible Society's Quarterly Record:
http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/ahnkjv1.pdf
http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/ahnkjv2.pdf
You have plagiarized his work - presented it as your own. A very dishonest practice.
An honest man who did not know much about the subject, but felt another did, would quote his work and acknowledge the source.
Instead we get 'my comments' and 'the reasons I have detailed above'.
It confirms my original suspicions - that you are merely parroting what others tell you, without understanding the argument of either them or their opponents.
Instead of boasting of your (non-existent) skills, stick to linking us to any articles you think might refute my arguments.
I'll address A. Hembd's articles later, if Maurice likes.
Actually, Wolfsbane, you have not read my comments CAREFULLY, for if you had you would see that my comments above, whilst leaning heavily on, actually a variety of Trinitarian Bible Society articles, are, nevertheless, my comments in that I have added a lot of other stuff that was not included in those articles. I have not presented something as my own that was not my own, I posted the comments and to refer to "my comments" is to refer to those comments which I posted. I also have in previous comments posted links to other works, etc.
ReplyDeleteI am very happy to provide a full bibliography of my sources ... but this is a blog commentary thread, not an official publication.
The comments still stand.
The mix of TBS articles and your own comments will bear looking at, for any interested in assessing your abilities. Especially so, since you make no division by way of quotation marks or any other device.
ReplyDeleteBut I leave that between them and you - and the Lord.
I'll address the comments (whatever the source) in other posts.
'The editors of the New King James Version are wrong for including the corrupt readings of the Egyptian text in their marginal notes, as though they were potentially valid.'
ReplyDeleteWhen one makes the case that the Majority Text is the correct one, as the NKJV team does, any sensible reader will know that the footnotes that show the correct variant from the TR are those labelled M-Text, not those labelled NU-Text.
So why include the NU-Text notes? Because a great number of our conservative Evangelical brethren use versions based on the NU-Text. It is good to know what our brethren are using, even if they are mistaken in doing so.
Dr. Alan Cairns, Free Presbyterian minister for 38 years and a lecturer in Systematic Theology in the Free Presbyterian Theological Hall for 33 years, says this:
"Bible believers are divided over what is the best NT text. We have quoted Stewart Custer, a godly fundamentalist scholar, in favor of the Alexandrian text. Great defenders of the faith like B.B.Warfield and J.Gresham Machen took the same view. Equally great men of God have taken the opposite position,..."
Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, Greenville, Emerald house Group, Inc., 1998, 385.
"So why include the NU-Text notes? Because a great number of our conservative Evangelical brethren use versions based on the NU-Text. It is good to know what our brethren are using, even if they are mistaken in doing so."
ReplyDeleteThat's a very topsy-turvy argument, Wolfsbane!
So, for "better clarity" of translation we get the less accurate NU-Text renderings included in the marginal notes to help us better understand the mistakes of others?!! This is supposed to be about getting a clearer rendition of translation, allegedly so that we can better understand the Scriptures, not the mistakes of others! Inserting those notes only suggests that such renderings hold feasibly equal merit (which they do not).
As for Dr Cairns, he encourages folks to use the AV because the other modern versions fall far short of the supremacy of the AV.
You have quoted him out of context (if you mean to suggest that he favours the Alexandrian text based modern translations to that of the AV).
Otherwise his comments in this link contradict:
http://media.sermonaudio.com/sermons002/5821c.m3u
'You have quoted him out of context (if you mean to suggest that he favours the Alexandrian text based modern translations to that of the AV).'
ReplyDeleteOf course he doesn't favour them - nor do I . The point was to acknowledge those who do so may be just as fine a Christian and scholar as the rest of us.
Dr. Cairns supports the Majority Text in principle, not the Received Text, as the true text. That is, he believes several passages in the AV should not be there since they are not supported by the great majority of textual witnesses. He believes the Received Text is , however, superior to the Critical Text.
That too is my position.
I'll be posting more from him on the versions debate, DV.
"Dr. Cairns supports the Majority Text in principle, not the Received Text, as the true text."
ReplyDeleteThat would indeed appear to be his position... and he's entitled to it.
But that's where we differ.
As mentioned above:
The so-called Byzantine majority texts of both Hodges and Farstad, and Pierpont and Robinson, are fatally flawed, in that, by their own confession, their editors relied primarily upon the work of Baron Hermann von Soden and his text of 1913. Herman Hoskier, an advocate of the traditional text, cites in his 1914 review of von Soden’s text in the Journal of Theological Studies indisputable proof that von Soden’s Greek text is, in his words, ‘honeycombed with errors’. Similarly Frederick Wisse, who is himself very sympathetic of von Soden’s aims though frank about his inaccuracies, says that ‘…von Soden’s inaccuracies cannot be tolerated for any purpose. His apparatus is useless for a reconstruction of the text of the MSS he used’.
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ReplyDelete'The so-called Byzantine majority texts of both Hodges and Farstad, and Pierpont and Robinson, are fatally flawed, in that, by their own confession, their editors relied primarily upon the work of Baron Hermann von Soden and his text of 1913.'
ReplyDeleteSure, the Majority Text is a work in progress, as Dr. Cairns acknowledges. The Received Text was a work in progress, until the work stopped with the rise of the AV. Hodges and Farstad, and Pierpont and Robinson, could stop their work any time and declare it the new 'received text'. But that would not make it as accurate as possible.
What we have in the Majority texts is however an improvement on the Received Text. As creeping forward of Majority testimony. Difficulties still arise where the Majority witness is itself finely balanced.
The good news is that none of this makes the gospel unclear, or destroys any other doctrine. Dr. Cairns again puts it well:
"Does It Make Much Difference?
1. We must not overstate the scope or importance of textual variations.
...No edition of the Greek text, whether based on the Alexandrian MSS or the TT, would erase or alter a single doctrine of the Christian faith...
2. We should not understate the scope and importance of textual variations.
While it is true that no doctrine is jeopardized or removed from Scripture by following any critical edition of the text, there are variant readings that very clearly call fundamental doctrines into question..."
Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, Greenville, Emerald house Group, Inc., 1998, 390.
Had the Reformed church continued to revise the Greek text after the AV was established, a better Bible version could have been welcomed by the church without the controversy we have experienced.
But resting on our laurels - and the seduction which 'tradition' brings, we did not. We ended up in a very divided response to the need for a more accurate and modern language version.
A general comment or two on your/TBS articles above:
ReplyDelete1. You have said before you would welcome a more accurate translation, and denied you are KJV-Only. But the material above insists any version must include the texts that have little or no Greek support - Luke 17:36; Acts 8:37; 1 John 5:7, for example. And must be in Elizabethan English!
In other words, the AV, with any spelling mistakes corrected. That is pure KJV-Onlyism.
2. The self-contradiction in the whole argument is evident: The Critical Text is condemned for choosing minority texts instead of the great majority of textual witnesses - yet you depart from the majority witnesses for passages like 1 John 5:7.
You can't have it both ways!
Why not accept the TR/AV got it wrong in places, and work with other Christians to find the true text in those rare cases?
Alan Cairns points out the folly of your/TBS approach. After pointing out the two ways used to establish the NT text - the Eclectic method or the Objective method (and insisting on the latter) - he says:
" Our appeal has been to an objective, verifiable standard to decide disputed readings. We have argued against the subjective preferences of any critic, liberal or conservative. We must retain the same principle in dealing with the Textus Receptus. Personal preference and long usage cannot justify retaining any reading that does not have MS support. We cannot castigate eclecticism in the advocates of the Alexandrian MSS and then adopt it ourselves to retain one or two ill-attested readings in the Textus Receptus. We must maintain a rigorous objectivity.
If we follow this procedure, Luke 17:36 will not be in the text (though the words will not be lost, for they are retained in Matthew 24:40), and Acts 8:37 and 1 John 5:7 will also find no place."
Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, Greenville, Emerald house Group, Inc., 1998, 375, 393, 394.
"What we have in the Majority texts is however an improvement on the Received Text." ... "The good news is that none of this makes the gospel unclear, or destroys any other doctrine."
ReplyDeleteThis is not true, and no matter how much you refuse to honestly look at the evidence, it remains untrue.
"We ended up in a very divided response to the need for a more accurate and modern language version."
Indeed, because people like you refuse to accept the supremacy of the accuracy of the AV, to date, in comparison to less accurate versions. I argue for the use of the most accurate ... you argue that no matter how weak the translation, it is worthy of acceptance. Furthermore, you seem keen to promote less accurate works such as the NKJV as being an "improvement" on the AV ... which is simply a bare-faced lie. So, yes, I take a very much different position than you on this important issue!
"That is pure KJV-Onlyism."
No, it is 'the most accurate in the English tongue-ism' - to date that is the KJV. If a more accurate translation appears, then I'll gladly use it as the most accurate in the English tongue ... but if the NKJV is anything to go by ... then the AV looks set to continue as the most accurate for a very long time!
"The self-contradiction in the whole argument is evident: The Critical Text is condemned for choosing minority texts instead of the great majority of textual witnesses - yet you depart from the majority witnesses for passages like 1 John 5:7."
That sounds good, Wolfsbane ... until one examines your statement in light of what I have already said about this ... then we see that you are straw-man arguing again. This is getting boring, Wolfsbane!
"Why not accept the TR/AV got it wrong in places, and work with other Christians to find the true text in those rare cases?"
Yet another entirely new translation all because of a few, alleged, "rare cases"?!!
"Alan Cairns points out the folly of your/TBS approach"
No, Alan Cairns is mistaken on this particular issue; there is manuscript support for many of the readings which liberal higher critics like you claim against ... although, to be fair, he correctly encourages people to hold to the AV as being, by far, the most accurate in the English tongue to-date.
'No, it is 'the most accurate in the English tongue-ism' - to date that is the KJV. If a more accurate translation appears, then I'll gladly use it as the most accurate in the English tongue ...'
ReplyDeleteHow can you say that when you posted an argument that holds any translation must be in Elizabethan English and include all the disputed verses? Any version doing that IS the AV, with spelling updates. No ,Stephen, you are KJV-Only, so be honest and come out of the closet.
Ruckman and Riplinger are more honest exponents of your position. They are the logical conclusion of your arguments.
'That sounds good, Wolfsbane ... until one examines your statement in light of what I have already said about this ... then we see that you are straw-man arguing again. This is getting boring, Wolfsbane!'
ReplyDeleteNo, not boring, just too baring (revealing) for you. Come on, answer my objection: "The self-contradiction in the whole argument is evident: The Critical Text is condemned for choosing minority texts instead of the great majority of textual witnesses - yet you depart from the majority witnesses for passages like 1 John 5:7."
You have not said how your picking and choosing differs a whit from what Westcott & Hort did.
'Yet another entirely new translation all because of a few, alleged, "rare cases"?!!'
ReplyDeleteNo, if it were only those, it could be dealt with in footnotes - as the NKJV does.
But the AV has also a problem with its antiquated English. God spoke to the NT Church in Common Greek, not Classical Greek. He spoke in the language of the people, not a special religious or arty language. We must aim for that too.
'liberal higher critics like you'.
ReplyDeleteStephen, you are either very ignorant and do not know what a liberal higher critic is, or you are lying about me.
From the evidence of your previous posts, I am unable to decide which.
HELL: Part 1.
ReplyDelete'The New King James, rather than translating, has instead used a direct transliteration of the Greek word a¨dhj (hade¯s), which is used in the Textus Receptus. However, the other two Greek words used for hell in the New Testament - geenna (gehenna) and tartarow (tartaroo¯) - it continues translating as hell. One must ask: why have the NKJV translators opted to transliterate only the Greek word hades and not the other words for hell?'
I imagine it was to correct the common ERROR that takes every occurrence of 'hell' to refer to the place of eternal punishment. The AV foolishly covered 'hades', 'tartarus' and 'gehenna' in the NT with the term 'hell'.
'Gehenna' IS the place of eternal punishment, the lake of fire. But 'hades' is NOT 'gehenna'. Hades is the present place of the wicked dead, held under punishment for the Judgement. THEN will come gehenna, the place of eternal punishment.
Gehenna is what the ordinary reader thinks of when they read 'hell' - and so the NKJV renders 'gehenna' as 'hell', but not 'hades'.
Why they did not do so for the present place of punishment for fallen angels, I do not know. It would have make more sense to leave it as Tartarus. But there you go - no version is perfect!
'It is noteworthy that the Greek word hades, as employed in classical mythology, does not at all mean a place of eternal punishment and estrangement from God. To the contrary, it primarily means “the abode of the dead”, and therefore, figuratively, “the grave.” In this sense, if one were to fail to take into account the New Testament’s use of the word as a whole, the word could be mistaken to mean “a condition in which a person is taken out of existence”, hence, annihilationism. Moreover, the word hades is frequently employed in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) when translating the Hebrew word sheol; and sheol does often mean grave.'
'Sheol' can mean the grave, but often it means the the place of departed spirts, not bodies. The latter is the NT use of 'hades'. Hades never means 'the grave', as we understand 'grave' today.
'Thus, the New King James Version’s employment of hades in the New Testament could lead English readers to think that perhaps the word grave is the one actually meant.’
Only if they were schooled in classical Greek culture and entirely ignorant of NT doctrine. I know of nobody in all my Christian and non-Christian experience labouring under that burden.
HELL: Part 2.
ReplyDelete‘On the other hand, if one were to argue that by capitalising the noun Hades as the NKJV translators have done they are indeed referring to a specific place, what would that place be? The classical abode of the dead, as used by the Greeks? Eternal punishment for the wicked as opposed to everlasting bliss for the righteous? Perhaps a judgment seat at which the wicked are not punished for ever but are rather annihilated? The capitalisation does not help, but only makes the whole matter darker and more ambiguous.’
The sensible reader would ask themselves what the word meant in its NT context. None of them would come to the conclusion that it refers to annihilation. Translators cannot accommodate lazy or reckless fools.
‘One could be given the impression that the text is not speaking of the “lake of fire and brimstone” spoken of in Revelation 20.10 - the everlasting home of the devil, the beast and the false prophet and their worshippers, from which (14.11) “the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.”’
Indeed - because it is NOT speaking of the lake of fire. As discussed above, it is a different Greek word - geenna. That is why the NKJV makes the difference - because the AV has introduced the confusion, leading people like you to think ‘hell’ in Luke 16 is the same as ‘hell’ in Rev. 20.
‘However, outside these four verses, hades unquestionably always refers to eternal punishment, as is evidenced by Luke 16.23–24. This passage tells us of the eternal sad fate of the rich man who had no compassion for Lazarus, the poor beggar who had died at his gates.’
The Rich Man was NOT in the lake of fire. He was in hades, held under punishment, like the fallen angels in tartarus, awaiting the Judgement. THEN comes the lake of fire, and death and hades are thrown into it: Rev.20:14Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
‘One could wonder whether the use of the word hades were employed so as to give annihilationists - those who deny the eternal damnation of the wicked in hell for ever - opportunity for foisting their views on unsuspecting readers.’
No, just to stop those ignorant of NT Greek from confusing the temporary remand prison for the eternal one.
'The translators of the New King James affirmed that it was their intention to provide a mere language update of the Authorised Version, so as supposedly to make the Scriptures easier for the modern English reader to understand. Why then change a word which is already easy for the English speaker to understand? Who does not know what hell is? Why introduce a new term with which many may not be familiar?'
Because many - including you - are ignorant of the difference between hades and gehenna. Hopefully you have now been enlightened. We all need a more accurate understanding of the Word.
"But the AV has also a problem with its antiquated English. God ... spoke in the language of the people, not a special religious or arty language..."
ReplyDeleteThis is a classic example of your straw-man arguments and lies!
The point has already been discussed ... and ignored by you (as usual) ... nevertheless it serves well at proving my point about you.
"No, not boring, just too baring (revealing) for you."
A patronzing little man you are too. A pity your credentials dont match your mouth!
"answer my objection: "The self-contradiction in the whole argument is evident: The Critical Text is condemned for choosing minority texts instead of the great majority of textual witnesses - yet you depart from the majority witnesses for passages like 1 John 5:7." "
And, again, dishonest ... your "objection" has been addressed earlier .... and you present the case as if it has not.
"Ruckman and Riplinger are more honest exponents of your position. They are the logical conclusion of your arguments."
ReplyDeleteYou deliberately misrepresent my position ... you are a bare-faced liar, Ian [Wolfsbane] Major!
My comments, since the start of this debate, regarding this point are very clear ... and expose your lies today!
"Because many - including you - are ignorant of the difference between hades and gehenna. Hopefully you have now been enlightened. We all need a more accurate understanding of the Word."
Utter nonsense, Wolfsbane!
It is you who are ignorant beyond belief and yet you seem to fancy yourself as someone who is out to enlighten others ... ridiculous and hilarious.
If you are a light ... you are a very dark one!
"come out of the closet"
Perhaps it's time you did!
For whom do you really claim to bear light for? Perhaps the Masons? or perhaps the Jesuits?
Stephen, your personal abuse is sad to observe in one professing Christ. But I have come to expect it in my debates on the gospel - from those who have no real argument, so resort to name-calling.
ReplyDeleteYou might think such a smokescreen will distract others from seeing how empty are your arguments - but honest believers will not be deceived.
You respond to direct questions by constant evasion: 'your "objection" has been addressed earlier', for example. I read no answer - you just said that your picking and choosing was correct, and those of the Critical Text wrong. You and the Critical Text ignore the great majority of textual witnesses - yet you condemn them for doing so! Sheer hypocrisy.
Here's another evasion of my questions: 'Utter nonsense, Wolfsbane!' But you don't show how it is nonsense. The facts are there before you, and pretending they are not will not make them go away.
'For whom do you really claim to bear light for? Perhaps the Masons? or perhaps the Jesuits?'
ReplyDeleteNo, the Masons are a false religious organisation, even where true believers are among them. Likewise the Jesuits.
But since it is you who is using Roman tradition to defend spurious texts, maybe you can tell me more about the Jesuits than I already know?
'My comments, since the start of this debate, regarding this point [KJV-Onlyism] are very clear ... and expose your lies today!'
ReplyDeleteYour comments are CONTRADICTORY: your deny being KJV-Only, then make an argument for a Bible version that ONLY the AV (KJV) can fulfil.
That is, (1)it must keep all the disputed texts, the ones not confirmed by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of the NT and (2) it must keep to Elizabethan English.
Stephen, you are KJV-Only by your own argument, even though your are in denial.
Since KJV-Onlyism is a heresy - as you seem to acknowledge - you need to purge yourself of the arguments that support it.
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