TRUE BIBLE The Facts about the Bible manuscripts

[John]

The facts about the manuscripts on which our Bibles are based

INTRODUCTION of EXPLANATION for RETAINING THIS ARTICLE ON THIS SITE.

This ARTICLE below is one man's opinion. A man who has since died, The Founder of the Stewarton Bible School formerly linked to this article, material on which readers may find of interest.

Which can be found Online by typing in

STEWARTON BIBLE SCHOOL.

It is also largely the view of the Trinitarian Bible Society which only sells the 4th Revision of the Authorised Version of 1762 , which is the only version they are licensed to sell and they promote it because of that fact, not because it is the best, the only, or the most accurate, which it isn't.

They used to claim that only the Authorised Version of 1611 was the right Bible but that was untrue as well and has been unobtainable for a couple of centuries.

The AV is the Bible appointed by the Bishop's of the Established State Church of England to be read in their churches and was published by their clergy, including many right wing Puritan scholars who later left the Church of England to form a more rigid protestant community.

The AV was commissioned to replace the Bishop's Bible which the Church of England had previously followed and used as they did not like the Protestant English Bible, published in Genera by exile from religious persecution in England

The Geneva Bible continued to be the Protestant Bible well into the 18th century, until it was banned, after which the AV 4th Revision was the only English Bible available. And was easy to read then, and was adopted from 1804 by the new Bible Society and promoted by them until the Revised Version was published in 1881- 1885 and again revised in 1901, which in turn was revised as language changed and republished in 1952 as the Revised Standard Version

This was followed by a new translation the New English Bible produced by a committee of scholars
of a range of denominations of the Church in England

From 1762 onwards there were a lots of translations of the New Testament and the Bible as a whole by individual scholars including by John Wesley the leader of the Methodist Revival; and later John Darby the leader of the Brethren out of the Adventist Movement t in the Southern States of America. Later called the Bible Belt.

Since 1901 and since 1952 there have been a further spate of English translations of the NT and then of the Bible by individual scholars, such as J B Philips, William Barkley, etc and worldwide there are now over 110 English translations

I was brought up in Sunday School and Grammar School to regard the AV 4th Revision of 1762 as The Holy Bible and to view any other translation with caution as dodgy with the added comment that it can be useful to read a modern English version along side it to bring out a stronger understanding of the words of the AV.

Since then different methods of translation have been developed, and we have had a spate of Paraphrased Versions including by the Bible Society, pioneered through the Scottish Bible Society of the Today's English Version popularly promoted the Good News Bible

Later many Christian denominations in America pooled their resources of scholarship and funds to produce the New International Versions which now outsells all other translations world wide, although it is not the most accurate , but has a very readable style. It has since passed through 3 revisions, so was not that accurate to begin with, but the idiom and vocabulary of english is changing all the while with various versions of English language around the planet.

The newest most readable and most accurate English translation now is the English Standard Version [ ESV ] published in 2007.

But still individual scholars and other denominations and sects bring out their own versions and there are about 115 English Translations available now.

The Lighthouse Prayer Ministry[ MCCPF ] otherwise known as LHPM tends to quote from the NIV as that is the one on our computer but recommend the SEV

In practice I tend to use the RSV 1952 for accuracy, the NIV for readability and that it is in so wide use, but I have read in worship the ESV borrowing a copy.

LHPM distribute what friends donate and that has included the AV, RV, RSV, NEB, TEV, CEV,
J B Phillips, W Barclay, Living Bible, Amplified Bible, NIV, NKJV,

Our contacts in Malawi prefer the AV or local language editions. Our contacts in Nigeria prefer the AV or the NIV. Our contacts in Zambia and Ghana prefer the TEV.
We distribute Gospels of John with a Lantern on the cover, which is NKJV, from the Open Air Mission, or the PTL Bridge Builders who use the NIV

It is estimated that only 10% of the Population of Britain reads the Bible nowadays so we need to promote the most accurate modern English Versions rather than the traditional AV which is really a Tudor English Edition.


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The first Translation into English – Anglo Saxon English was by King Alfred the Great's gospels translated from Latin.

Next came John Wycliff's English translation from Latin of the whole Bible.

Later came the translation of the scholar William Tyndale into Tudor English in the 1530's from the Hebrew, and Greek languages using the Classical Greek New Testament of the Roman Catholic Satirist Erasmus . The manuscript document he use were 8 in number, all inaccurate, and disagreeing with each other. The earliest and best of these manuscripts was a copy from the10th Century AD and he made the least use of it because it differed so from the so called Common Received Text.

William Tyndale was burnt at the stake in 1536 on orders of the Pope, the evil ill advised chief minister or priest of the Roman Catholic Church, then steeped in errors and corruption, some of which it has since been reformed of, but not yet completely. William was executed before completing his Old Testament translation. This was completed by his assistant Myles Coverdale whose New Testament was published first in 1535

Tyndale's translation thus became the standard foundation for

The Coverdale Bible 1535
The Matthew Bible 1537 published in the name of Thomas Matthew which was probably a pseudonym for John Rogers
The Great Bible of 1539
The Geneva Bible 1560
The Bishop's Bible 1568

In 1582 the Roman Catholic Church published at Rheims an English translation of the New Testament from the Latin Bible.

The King James Bible commissioned in 1604, and first published in 1611 and much later called the Authorised Version, was produced by a committee of great English scholars including many Puritans. They used for the New Testament the Greek Testament edition of an Italian scholar Beza published in 1589 which closely followed that of the Dutch scholar Erasmus published in 1516 – 1535. Beza had access to 2 great manuscripts of great literary value of the 5th and 6th century
but made very little use of them because they differed much from the text published by Erasmus.
Erasmus made mistakes because of the speed with which he worked as he was in competition with another scholar to win the prestige of being the first to have the printed edition of the New Testament.

In 1853 scholars Westcott and Hort produced a new revised Greek New Testament using newly discovered Bibles from the 4th century from Egyptian origin from the old College of Philosophy in Alexandria, thought in the early 19th and 20th centuries, probably mistakenly, to have been altered by those influenced by the Arian heresy that hit the whole Church in the 4th century, including the Church at Antioch that was divided into two “camps” by it, Antoich being the source of the manuscripts commonly called the Received Test, on which Tyndale's translation was made.

Westcott and Hort who went on to become C of E Bishops, were Anglo-Catholics who did not like Evangelicals, Protestants, Non-Conformists, Tyndale or the AV and these facts immerged from their diary evidence published later.

They produced their edition out of spite and persuaded the Revising Committee of the 1870's working to produce the Revised Version of 1881 – 1885 to adopt their text instead of Erasmus and Tyndale. This was only partly true, but the 1901 text was based more on the Westcott-Hort edition.

Since 1901 many more early manuscripts have been discovered, particularly in 1931 and 1946 and since then it was discovered that the New Testament had been produced in Common everyday Greek known as Koine Greek not the earlier Classical Greek, and many non-Biblical writings, legal bills, laws, letters have been discovered throwing a light on the Greek Language.

So Biblical Scholars and translators today have much more detailed knowledge of the original New Testament manuscript copies – since 20 centuries later only a few bits of the originals exist.

Today there are over 33,000 manuscript from ancient time on which to base the accuracy of translations and modern translations are based on an Elective Text, drawn from a variety of the best sources.

They also have early first century translations into other Asian and Middle East languages they can understand. Prior to the 7th century the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages, all of which were suppressed and banned by the Roman Catholic Church in it's thirst for power over the lives of everyone else and it's thirst for riches of land, gold, regalia, prestige and everything contrary to Christ's teaching.

All this foreknowledge needs to be taken into account before reading this man's biased and prejudiced opinion but we keep his article here as a warning for caution and as a link to the Bible School he founded before he was misled into this prejudiced opinion of his later life whose other website documents may be regarded as worth reading.

Finally regarding the Name of God . The Jews in the Hebrew language dare not say the sacred name of God so they wrote it as YHWH using just consonants Their word YHWH is called The Tetragrammaton.

Later the name was spelt YAHWEH. Although there is uncertainly as to whether these vowels were use in the way we would pronounce them now. The Y being pronounced as J and the W as V
producing what other translations have used from Greek of JEHOVAH which comes from Medieval times

JEHOVAH is used by the former Watchtower Bible Society in their 20th century title by Jehovah's Witnesses.
There are other Hebrew words used for God,
:- Elohim meaning God; and Adonai meaning Lord
The ancient Greek translators rendered the name as Kyrios meaning Lord, and in Latin it was , Dominus

JEHOVAH does not accurately represent the form of the name of ever used in Hebrew

The use of any proper noun for the one and only God as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian Era began and is entirely inappropriate for the Universal Faith of the Christian Church.

So more modern versions tend to describe God as GOD or as LORD, and Jesus as Lord.

Far Easter Asian Christians speaking Arabic have tended to describe our God as Allah or El-lah
which the Moslems object to, as being the name of their God in Arabic. This would seem to make it clear that their god Allah is not the same as our God. Allah is regarded as the former pre-Moslem Moon god represented in Islamic circles by the Crescent Moon instead of as for Christians by a Cross.

JEM


WHAT IS THE TRUTH? Introduction
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According to the Scientists in front of whom we stand in awe of their knowledge and wisdom,
we inhabit a tiny colony in the UNIVERSE which we call EARTH.

EARTH is on the outer edge of one of the arms or tentacles of a spiral galaxy which we call THE MILKY WAY, and scientists tell us there are over 1,000.000,000 stars
( suns ) in our galaxy alone and over 1.000,000,000, such galaxies throughout the Universe.
That is a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

. If the scientists are right, and they are often wrong, we are part of something huge of which we can only know a little, though we may speculate a lot.

We are also told that of the 7 billion people on this planet most believe in persons, powers, forces greater than themselves whom they respect, honour, believe in with all their being. This experience we call Religious.

Many claim they are not religious By which they probably mean they don’t go to a place of worship, or they don’t believe in one Universal Authority in control of the Universe or of life, commonly called GOD. But many of them replace GOD with other ideas, rites, theories and customs of their own or invented by other people.

There are believers in over 15,000 religions, or belief systems, amongst us humans on this planet; and the one regarded as the largest with the most supporters is Christianity with over 2 billion members, but Christianity is divided into over 35,000 denominations or groups with varying beliefs.

In addition Sport has become the religion of millions and for some Politics has become to them their religion.

Only a few hundred million are atheists, believing there is no such thing as GOD.
But how can they be so sure? They cannot be sure.

This series of documents by the late Elder D. B. Loughran, founder and principal of Stewarton Bible School in Scotland written out of his experience of the discovery of truth through decades of service as a teacher, concerns one of the greatest collections of ancient writings known to humans, known as the Scriptures, and more commonly as The Bible,

For many people it has been cast aside as irrelevant to life, and flawed
They have replaced it with other ideas and speculations.

One of the most common speculations is Evolution, or more precisely the theories of evolution, which are now widely taught as Fact or Truth though largely unproven and not provable.

The Bible claims to be the record of the Universal Authority ,The LORD GOD, the maker of Heaven and Earth, who created and owns the universe and everything it contains including us.

This collection of ancient truth and wisdom has been handed down over several thousand years, translated into several hundred languages.

Only as recently as 1853 one of a series of subtle changes has taken place changing the way that the translation of the ancient manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek into English and other languages, has been carried out so that today‘s modern English Bibles are not based on the same manuscripts as those used before 1853.

The English style is modern and easy to read, but if it is based on foundations of new and different documents then it is not the same truth handed down by our ancestors to us from the earliest times

Elder D. B. Loughran left this book as his legacy and even if we don’t agree with him, or don’t want to agree with him, we ought to consider the implications of what he has discovered and taught, so that we do not fall under the widespread errors that are leading humans astray from Truth

1. INTRODUCTION
Two of the greatest deceptions ever to confront the human race came to the fore in the 19th century:

Deceptions so subtle and dangerous that between them they have destroyed the faith of multiplied billions of souls in and out of the Christian Church. The first was the unproved theory of evolution: fascinating, plausible and seized upon by the godless mind which chafes at the commandments of the Almighty God. The second was the Revised Version of the Bible posing as the "Word of God": a version as corrupt as it was potent, for it spawned a host of unholy offspring.

The first deception has, over the years, turned hundreds of millions away from the Christian church: for it taught that the very first chapter of the Bible was not really the truth, but legend. This pernicious theory is still taught, as fact, in thousands of colleges and schools the world over. The theory is really a fallacy!

The second deception, the Revised Bible is equally dangerous, for it casts doubt on the real Word of God and starves believers of the Bread of Life. Sad to say it is also taught in thousands of churches, Bible schools and religious colleges the world over.

This article deals with the second deception - Counterfeit Bibles! Read it with special care, several times over, because if you have avoided the first deception, you are most certainly the target of the second.

DIVINE INSPIRATION
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Millions of Christians believe, and rightly so, in the divine and verbal inspiration of the Bible: that the Holy Ghost motivated the minds of the prophets and apostles of old to pen every word of Scripture. Our faith in divine inspiration is based on Bible texts such as:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)
And from, 2 Peter 1:19-21
19: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
20: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION
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Millions also believe in the providential preservation of the Bible: that JEHOVAH, the Holy One of Israel has also preserved His Word down through the ages; and that His work of preservation is every bit as important as His initial work of inspiration. After all it would have been of limited value if the original inspired Scriptures were lost to posterity a few decades after being penned. Providential preservation, in other words, is as essential a work as that of divine inspiration. Our faith in providential preservation is based on Bible texts such as:
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shall keep them, O LORD, thou shall preserve them from this generation for ever. (Psalm 12: 6-7)
Psalm 119:89 For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven…111: Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever…152: Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou has founded them for ever.
I know that, whatsoever God does, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God does it, that men should fear before him. (Ecclesiastes 3:14)
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:35)
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever… The word of the Lord endures for ever. (1Peter 1:23-25)
Concerning Providential Preservation the Westminster Confession of Faith (17th century) says this on page 23:
"The Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authenticable, so as in all controversies of religion the Church is finally to appeal unto them."
In the past most Christians accepted these facts, but of late there are a growing number who have strong reservations about divine preservation. They will allow that the original autographs, which of course are no longer available, were inspired. But they have strong reservations about divine preservation. They believe that much of Scripture is in need of update, because some of the oldest manuscripts were not available to the 17th century translators of the King James Version (KJV).

That is why, they maintain, the Revised Version of 1881 and its many descendants became necessary; and how that each new English translation (well over 100 at the present count) is an improvement on the one that went before. In other words, the Bible is also evolving and each new version brings us one step nearer the original.

This is an extremely disturbing development: for when we examine modern translations, which are all based on the Revised 1853 Source We find they do not simply use modern language, which, arguably is desirable but they say things entirely different from the early English and foreign language versions of the Scriptures, which in past centuries God used to further His work. In this article you are about to learn many startling facts about the modern English translations of the Bible, that they:
All present messages conflicting with the versions published before 1881 and even with each other.
Omit many words and verses of scripture and some complete passages..
All cast doubt on the accuracy of the pre-1881 bible versions and several fundamental doctrines taught in it, such as the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, his divinity, his miracles, his bodily ascension to heaven and his second coming.
All disagree on major doctrinal points with other early European versions of the Bible which triggered the great Protestant Reformation and for which tens of thousands of true believers died during the dark ages.
Are warmly welcomed by the Roman Catholic Church which has a long history of suppression of the Truth and of the contents and teaching of the Bible ..
These discoveries are disturbing to say the least and should cause true believers around the world to ask: Is all this true? Are these allegations justified? And if so, what spirit is behind the deception and confusion caused by the modern translations? Visit any Bible study group where believers are using a variety of modern "Bibles" and comments such as these are common:

'My Bible puts it this way.'
'My Bible doesn't even have that verse.'
'Listen to this Note about ancient and more reliable manuscripts.'
'My Bible says something totally different.'
'My Bible says the very opposite.'

The question is:
Which English Bible is the real Word of God? Anyone can see that they cannot all be the Word of God if they are saying different things. After all, God doesn't contradict Himself and is certainly not the author of confusion. (1Corinthians 14:33)

Scores of conflicting translations, all claiming to be His Word, cannot possibly be the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Besides, would the Almighty flood the English-speaking world with well over 100 conflicting translations of the whole Bible and over 300 translations of the New Testament? Of course not:, the very idea is ludicrous if not blasphemous. Something is terribly wrong somewhere and it's time to find out.

The author of this book wrote “Since my conversion in 1952, when I was 21 years old, I have used a number of modern versions and translations of the Bible:

The Revised Version,
The Moffatt Bible,
The Revised Standard Version,
The Amplified Bible,
The Living Bible,
The New English Bible,
The Knox Bible,
Good News for Modern Man,
The Jerusalem Bible,
New American Standard
and the New International Version.

During all that time I also used the so called the Authorised Version. which most British people used between the mid 18th century and the mid 20th century.


But never in all those 45 years did I suspect that anything was seriously amiss with the modern Bibles: or that they are all dangerously flawed! To be sure I knew that some paraphrased publications, such as the Living Bible, could not be relied upon when deciding doctrine: and that others had several uninspired books (the Apocrypha): but never in the past 45 years did I suspect that EVERY modern English Bible cannot truthfully be called the HOLY BIBLE, the WORD OF GOD!

When and how did I find out? Let me tell you my story.
In February 1996 at the age of 65 years I suffered a massive heart attack and was forced to spend weeks in bed. I was unable to move around much, and even a short walk was an ordeal.

For months I was virtually house-bound. What did I do? I did the very best thing I could; I gave myself over to prayer and Bible study. There really was little else I could manage without pain.

With the help of several reference books and modern versions of the Bible - I possess about 20 - I began an exhaustive study of the History of the Bible: of how we got our Bible in the first place.

This article tells of my findings: of facts so stunning that they shocked me more than any truth I have ever learned; including that of the true weekly Sabbath and Festivals of the God of Israel.

I felt horrified to think that as the founder of Stewarton Bible School (SBS), with students in many countries, I had been deceived for so long and had been guilty of giving sincere students faulty advice. I determined - yea I prayed desperately - that if JEHOVAH (Yahweh) the LORD God of Hosts would allow me to recover after a triple by-pass heart operation, I would join the growing band of believers who honour the Authorised Version and tell the world.

This article is the result of my studies and I thank the Almighty for allowing me to live and place it on the Internet. The facts you are about to learn need to be studied prayerfully, several times over.

Particular attention should be given to Part Two where many Authorised Version texts are listed for comparison with the modern versions you may currently be using. I will quote extensively from the reference books on Bible History mentioned in Part Three.

If you are reading this article on the Internet, you are reminded that SBS publications do not carry a copyright clause. Feel free to download, print, photocopy and pass this article to your friends, because, believe it or not, the world is currently being starved of the real Word of God, the HOLY BIBLE! A great spiritual famine is overtaking mankind and, as I was, the Christian Church is blissfully ignorant of its danger. This article will answer the question: " Which English Bible is the real Word of God?"

Editor’s Note.
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The author if this article has since died but his article remains on the Internet and others are taking up his cudgel.

This is one man’s story so it should be handled with caution, but it is fair comment to ask why we need 115 different English Bibles, some translations, some paraphrases, and some revisions.

Especially because in England scarcely 3 million people attend church on Sundays out of a population of 56 million, and barely 16% of them read the Bible daily, about 480,000.

Less than one percent of the male population attends Church. Thousands of chapels are on the market for sale, Catholics now exceed Protestants and there are nearly as many Moslems as there are Christians.

There are less than a million communicant members of the Church of England, and that denomination, always a broad church, is hopelessly divided and even allows homosexuals to be priests and bishops, a satanic matter in itself and yet divides over having women bishops, which existed in the lst and 2nd centuries but were banned by the Anti-Church. The Roman Catholic Church.

England is in desperate need of a Spiritual Revival or it is doomed. .

Bear in mind that all the Bible quotations in this article are from the so called Authorised Version but that it is a historical fact that this Version was never authorised by anyone. It was simply “appointed to be read in churches”

The Authorised Version is often called the King James Version and it is alleged to have been published in 1611. This is incorrect. That version of which there are only a few left in libraries, has not been published for over 260 years.

During the period 1560 - 1780 the most poplar and widely spread English Bible was the GENEVA BIBLE, published in 1560 and used widely by ordinary people as a STUDY BIBLE and as A FAMILY BIBLE.

It was produced in Geneva by English exiles living there during the reign in England of Queen Mary , the first daughter of King Henry the Eighth.

She followed her mother’s religion of Roman Catholicism and persecuted followers of the new Protestant Christianity which developed from the Renaissance and Reformation in Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries AD, She and her ministers condemned over 300 such believers to be executed, many being burnt alive in public.

Such cruelty was and is inexcusable and clear proof that Roman Catholicism under the direction of the Pope in Rome is not true Christianity, the foundation of which is “Love the LORD your GOD with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbour as much as you love yourself,”

The group of exiles in Geneva who prepared the English Geneva Bible to replace the Roman Catholic Latin Bible, were led by Myles Coverdale who had worked closely with William Tyndale, the Father of the English Bible who published his English translation of the New Testament in 1525, but while he was translating the Old Testament was arrested on orders of the Pope and was imprisoned for translating the Bible into English and subsequently burnt alive and his ashes scattered upon a river.

Myles Coverdale completed translation of the Old Testament including the Apocrypha and published his Bible in 1535. As he was not as fluent in Hebrew as Tyndale was, he translated from 3rd Chronicles to the end with the help of Martin Luther‘s German translation.

The Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England objected to the Geneva Bible


THE ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS
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As most believers know, the Bible is often referred to as 'the Holy Scriptures.' It is made up of two parts, the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament is a collection of 39 books which were originally penned mostly in the Hebrew language.

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books, written originally in Greek; though some portions were probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic, a north Semitic language. The original autographs (masters) were the hand-written scrolls penned by the inspired prophets and apostles. They were written on vellum (the skins of clean animals, such as calf or antelope) or papyrus. Vellum is more durable and costly than papyrus; but an entire antelope skin would only furnish two or three pages of a manuscript.

Because of this fact the vast majority of manuscripts were written on papyrus. Papyrus is a reed-like water plant with thick fibrous stems from which a kind of paper was made in ancient times. The average papyrus scroll was about ten inches in width and about thirty feet in length. After years of constant use, being rolled and unrolled, the original autographs (master scrolls) especially those of papyrus, became worn and began to fall apart.

COPIES OF THE MASTERS
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Before the original masters completely disintegrated they were carefully copied. The Almighty, who had initially inspired their production, then moved His faithful followers, first the Aaronic Priests and later the Masorites, to make copies of the originals. Thus began the work of providential preservation. After all, it would have been short-sighted of God to infallibly inspire the Scriptures only to have them discarded after a few decades. Jehovah must needs, as promised, preserve His Word in accurate copies for the following statements to be true.
Divine Preservation
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: 6-7)
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:35)
The word of the Lord endureth for ever (1Peter 1:25)

A Divine Warning
The God of Israel anticipated Satan's intended attack on the Scriptures: and how the enemy of souls would seek to frustrate His work of preservation and cause unbelieving scribes to add to, delete and distort the sacred writings. That is why this solemn, yea frightening, warning appears at the end of the Bible. It not only addresses copyists and translators who intentionally corrupt Jehovah's Word, but also those who knowingly promote their corrupted publications.



Rev. 22:18-19
For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book

I repeat: to preserve His word, JEHOVAH the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel must needs ensure that accurate copies of the inspired masters be made, else His promise that 'the Word of the Lord abideth forever' was meaningless - if not false. Consequently the Almighty caused faithful believers to copy His Word. This is how He organised that work.

THE MASORITES
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The Masorites were Jewish scholars who, like their predecessors the Aaronic Priests, had the sacred task of copying the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. In his book Story of Our English Bible, W Scott wrote, over a hundred years ago, concerning the reliability of the copies made by these faithful priests and scribes.


It is well known that among the Jews it was the profession of the Masorites, or doctors of tradition, to transcribe the scriptures. We know to what extent these indefatigable scholars carried their respect for the letter; and when we read the rules under which their labours were carried on, we understand the use that the providence of God (who had 'confided his oracles to the Jews') made of their superstition. They reckoned the number of verses, words, and letters in each book. They tell us, for instance, that the letter A occurs forty-two thousand three hundred and seventy-seven times in the Bible; the letter B thirty-eight thousand two hundred and eighteen times; and so on to the end. They were scrupulous of changing the position even of a letter, though evidently misplaced, but limited themselves to noting in the margin, supposing some mystery was involved. They tell us which is the middle letter of the Pentateuch, as well as of each of the books of which it is composed.
They never allowed themselves to correct their manuscript; and if any mistake escaped them, they rejected the papyrus or the skin which they had blemished, and recommenced upon a fresh one; for they were equally interdicted from even correcting one of their own errors, and from retaining for their sacred volume a single parchment or skin in which an error had been made...
"These facts, we repeat it, together with the astonishing preservation of the Hebrew text (1200 years more ancient than that of the Septuagint), plainly tell us how the intervention of the mighty hand of God was needed in the destinies of the sacred book." (Ref:A1)


In his book God Wrote Only One Bible, Jasper James Ray confirms this fact about the faithfulness displayed by these ancient scribes in copying the Scriptures.


He wrote In making copies of the original manuscripts, the Jewish scribes exercised the greatest possible care. When they wrote the name of God in any form they were to reverently wipe their pen, and wash their whole body before writing "Jehovah " lest that holy name should be tainted even in writing. The new copy was examined and carefully checked with the original almost immediately, and it is said that if only one incorrect letter was discovered the whole copy was rejected . Each new copy had to be made from an approved manuscript, written with a special kind of ink, upon skins made from a 'clean' animal. The writer had to pronounce aloud each word before writing it. In no case was the written word to be written from memory." ( Ref: D1

It is a sad fact that the Gentiles who copied the New Testament Scriptures were not as diligent as the ancient Aaronic scribes and Masorites. Therefore it is in the New Testament texts where most errors are found.



MANUSCRIPTS
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A 'manuscript' is a hand-written document, not one that is typed or printed. The word 'manuscript' is often abbreviated as MS or ms (singular) and MSS or mss (plural). Currently there are between 5250 and 5309 extant (existing) manuscripts of the Scriptures or parts of it. Manuscripts fall into two categories:

Masters: These were the original autographs. There are currently no original autographs or masters in existence. They have all long since been replaced by copies.

Copies: These are hand-written copies of the masters or hand-written copies of earlier copies. Some 5000+ hand-written copies of the whole or parts of Scripture are still in existence.

Manuscripts produced by the early Christians fall into three categories:
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Copies of masters or of earlier copies.

Versions : These are translations of Scripture made directly from the original languages. For example from Hebrew or Greek into Syriac, Latin, German, English or French. A translation from Latin into English, or from English into Chinese, cannot strictly be called a 'version.' It is simply a translation of a translation: whereas a 'version' must be a translation from the original. Bear this important fact in mind.

Church Fathers: "Our third group is the early church fathers. These are the men who led the Christians in the first few centuries after the New Testament was completed. We have record of their early sermons, books and commentaries. They will be able to provide us with much information on disputed passages. Many may have seen the original autographs." ( Ref:B1)

As regards the format of ancient manuscripts, they are often described as:
Uncial or Majuscules: written in capital letters with no spaces: e.g. NOMANHATHSEENGD.

Cursives or Miniscules: written in small letters and later with spaces: e.g. No-man-hath-seen-gd.


6. THE CHURCH FATHERS
Before the art of printing was known (before AD 1450) the church fathers of the early Christian era wrote - by hand - their letters, sermon notes, commentaries and books. Their manuscripts contain many quotations from the original autographs or the earliest copies. Some fathers had actually seen the New Testament autographs or very early copies; and had personally hand-copied large portions of Scripture. The writings of these early elders help verify the original text and form a valuable source of information as to what the first apostles wrote. Scripture tells us that Satan began his attack on the New Testament Scriptures very early, even before the first apostles died.


Listen to Paul's testimony concerning this matter about corrupting of the Word of God; and of some who even wrote letters as though they were composed by the apostle himself.
Paul writes:

2 Cor.2:17

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.

2 Thess.2:2

That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.


During the latter part of his life the apostle John strongly defended the Word of God. Being an eye-witness of many events involving the ministry of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), John was well qualified to refute written or spoken error and to put the record straight. The enemies of truth had this reliable eye-witness banished to the island of Patmos.
John writes:
Revelation 1:9
I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos , for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ



There were many church fathers who hand-copied the whole or portions of Scripture. Let me mention a few who greatly influenced the church, particularly in Europe.
In his book Story of Our English Bible W Scott wrote


"Crysostom the most eloquent of the fathers, spoke of them (the Scriptures) as The Divine Books,
Polycarp, who lived at a still earlier date, having been personally instructed by the Apostle John, spoke of the Bible as The Sacred Scriptures, as also the Oracles of the Lord.
Clement of Rome, whom Paul styles his 'fellow-labourer' (Phil.1V.3), termed the Scriptures The True Sayings of the Holy Spirit.
Irenaeus, of the second century, makes about 1200 citations or references from the New Testament;
Tertullian, also of the second century refers to or quotes from the New Testament about 2500 times;
Clement of Alexandria, another of the second century Fathers, cites from or refers to the New Testament 800 times; and
Polycarp, already referred to, in a brief epistle addressed to the Philippians, quotes from the New Testament about 50 times." (Ref: A6

Lucian of Antioch
Lucian (AD 250-312) was born in Antioch in Syria where the early believers in Jesus were first called Christians. (Acts 11) In his book Truth Triumphant Benjamin George Wilkinson Ph.D writes this about Lucian:


"Lucian founded a college at Antioch which strove to counteract the dangerous ecclesiastical alliance between Rome and Alexandria. How bitter the situation became and how it finally split West and East will be clarified by the following four facts:
First, the original founders of the ecclesiastical college at Alexandria strove to exalt tradition. Justin Martyr, as early as 150, had stood for this.

Second, Clement, most famous of the Alexandrian college faculty and a teacher of Origen, boasted that he would not teach Christianity unless it was mixed with pagan philosophy.

Third, Victor 1, bishop of Rome, entered a compact with Clement, about 190, to carry on research around the Mediterranean basin to secure support to help make Sunday the prominent day of worship in the church. Sunday was already a day exalted among the heathen, being a day on which they worshipped the sun; yet Rome and Alexandria well knew that most churches throughout the world sanctified Saturday as the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.

Fourth, when Victor 1, in lordly tones, pronounced excommunication on all the churches of the East who would not with him make Easter always come on Sunday, Alexandria supported this exhibition of spiritual tyranny by the bishop of Rome. Lucian opposed Alexandria's policies and for this has been bitterly hated and his name kept in the background." (Ref: J1)



Patrick in Ireland
Patrick belonged to the Celtic race. Tradition has it that he was born about AD 360 in the kingdom of Strathclyde in Scotland. Wilkinson writes of Patrick:

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Patrick preached the Bible. He appealed to it as the sole authority for founding the Irish Church. He gave credit to no other worldly authority; he recited no creed. Several official creeds of the church of Rome had by that time been ratified and commanded, but Patrick mentions none. In his Confession he makes a brief statement of his beliefs, but he does not refer to any church council or creed as authority. The training centres he founded, which later grew into colleges and large universities, were all Bible schools. Famous students of these schools -

Columba, who brought Scotland to Christ,

Adrian, who won pagan England to the gospel, and

Columbanus with his successors, who brought Christianity to Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy - took the Bible as their only authority, and founded renowned Bible training centres for the Christian believers. One authority, describing the hand-written Bibles produced at these schools, says, 'In delicacy of handling and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palaeography offers nothing comparable to these early Irish manuscripts… Patrick, like his example, Jesus, put the words of Scripture above the teachings of men. He differs from the papacy, which puts church tradition above the Bible. In his writings he nowhere appeals to the church of Rome for the authorisation of his mission. Whenever he speaks in defence of his mission, he refers to God alone, and declares that he received his call direct from heaven…

Patrick believed that Christianity should be founded with the home and the family as its strength. Too often the Christian organisations of that age were centred in celibacy. This was not true in the Irish church and its Celtic daughters in Great Britain, Scotland and on the continent.

The Celtic Church, as organised and developed under Patrick, permitted its clergy to marry." (Ref:J3)

Columba in Scotland

Columba, an Irishman, was born in Donegal in 521, and both his parents were of royal stock. He founded a memorable college on the small island of Iona which was a lighthouse of truth in Europe for centuries. That the Celtic, not the Latin, race populated the British Isles was a determining factor, for the Christian churches in which Patrick had been reared received their doctrine, not from Rome, but from their brethren of the same faith in Asia Minor. Here was the link which connected the faith of Patrick and Columba with primitive Christianity. The farthest lands touching the Atlantic saw the rise of a vigorous apostolic Christianity not connected with the Church of Rome, but independent of it…

Columba possessed a superior education. He was familiar with Latin and Greek, secular and ecclesiastical history, the principals of jurisprudence, the law of nations, the science of medicine, and the law of the mind. He was the greatest Irishman of the Celtic race in mental powers; and he founded in Iona the most learned school in the British Islands, and probably in Western Europe for a long period…" (Ref:J4



Comparatively few Christians know that Columba kept the seventh day of the week (Saturday) as the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Wilkinson writes about this little known fact.

The last hours of Columba are recorded as follows: Having continued his labours in Scotland thirty four years, he clearly and openly foretold his death, and on Saturday, the ninth of June, said to his disciple Diermit: 'This day is called the Sabbath, that is the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me: for it will put an end to my labours.'" (Ref:J5)

We in Scotland are greatly indebted to Columba, who founded many churches in this country. He is credited with having hand-copied the New Testament 300 times! His writings show that he used the Itala version of the Bible. In Stewarton there is a church called St Columba's Church.

7. ANCIENT VERSIONS
Bear in mind that a version is a translation made directly from the original Hebrew or Greek: i.e. from Hebrew or Greek into Syriac, Latin or English: whereas a translation of a version into yet another language is simply called a translation. Bible versions were made in several languages within a few years of the New Testament's creation. This was a rarity in the ancient world for any book.
Josh McDowell writes on pages 16-17 of his book Answers to Tough Questions.

"...Translation of a document into another language was rare in the ancient world, so this is an added plus for the New Testament. The number of copies of the versions is in excess of 18,000, with possibly as many as 25,000. This is further evidence that helps us establish the New Testament text. Even if we did not possess the 5,500 Greek manuscripts or the 18,000 copies of the versions, the text of the New Testament could still be reproduced within 250 years from its composition. How? By the writing of the early Christians. In commentaries, letters, etc., these ancient writers quote biblical text, thus giving us another witness to the text of the New Testament

John Burgon has catalogued more than 86,000 citations of the New Testament in the writings of the early church fathers who lived before A.D.325. Thus we observe that there is so much more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament text than any other comparable writings in the ancient world." (Ref: M1)
In his book Final Authority William P Grady quotes John Burgon on pages 33-34 concerning the reliability of a version over any single manuscript.

I suppose it may be laid down that an ancient Version outweighs any single Codex, ancient or modern, which can be named: the reason being, that it is scarcely credible that a Version - the Penutsto , for example, an Egyptian or the Gothic - can have been executed from a single exemplar (copy).

A second reason for the value of ancient versions is in their ability to exhibit a text which antedates the oldest Greek manuscripts.

Readings which are challenged in the Authorized Version for their non-existence in the 'two most ancient authorities' (Codex Sinaiticus or A; and Codex Vaticanus, or B, fourth century) are frequently discovered in the Syrian and Latin translations of the second century

In the course of time many versions (translations from the original language) of Scripture were made. Let us now consider a few.
The Penutsta Version (AD 150)

The Penutsta was the first Syrian translation from the original languages. Even to this day there are around 350 copies of the Penutsta (or Penutsto) version in existence. In his book Which Bible? David O Fuller writes this of the Penutsto:
It was at Antioch, capital of Syria, that the believers were first called Christians. And as time rolled on, the Syrian-speaking Christians could be numbered by the thousands. It is generally admitted that the Bible was translated from the original languages into Syrian about 150 AD. This version is known as the Penutsto (the correct or simple). This Bible even today generally follows the Received Text. One authority tells us this - 'The Penutsto in our days is found in use amongst the Nestorians, who have always kept it, by the Monophysites on the plains of Syria, the Christians of St.Thomas in Malabar, and by the Maronites on the mountain terraces of Lebanon.' " (Ref: F8)



The Old Latin Vulgate (AD157)
The word 'vulgate' is Latin for vulgar or common. The Old Latin Vulgate is a version. It was used by early believers in Europe when Latin was in popular use. It was sometimes referred to as the Itala version.
The Old Latin Vulgate must not be confused with Jerome's Vulgate, which was produced over 220 years later in AD 380. Jerome's Vulgate (also written in Latin for the Roman Church) was rejected by the early Christians for almost a millennium. The Waldenses, Gauls, Celts, Albegenses and other groups throughout Europe used the Old Latin Vulgate and rejected Jerome's Vulgate. In his book An Understandable History of the Bible Rev. Samuel Gipp Th.D confirms this fact. He writes:

The Old Latin Vulgate was used by the Christians in the churches of the Waldenses, Gauls, Celts, Albegenses and other fundamental groups throughout Europe. This Latin version became so used and beloved by orthodox Christians and was in such common use by the common people that it assumed the term 'Vulgate' as a name. Vulgate comes from 'vulgar' which is the Latin word for 'common' It was so esteemed for its faithfulness to the deity of Christ and its accurate reproductions of the originals, that these early Christians let Jerome's Roman Catholic translation 'sit on the shelf.' Jerome's translation was not used by the true Biblical Christians for almost a millennium after it was translated from corrupted manuscripts by Jerome in 380 A.D. Even then it only came into usage due to the death of Latin as a common language, and the violent, wicked persecutions waged against true believers by Pope Gregory IX during his reign from 1227 to 1242 A.D." (Ref:B2)




David Fuller confirms this fact: "It is clearly evident that the Latin Bible of early British Christianity was not the Latin Bible (Vulgate) of the Papacy." (Ref:F9)

The Italic Bible (AD157)
"Italy, France and Great Britain were once provinces of the old Roman Empire. Latin was then the language of the common people. So the first translations of the Bible in these countries were made from the Greek Vulgate into Latin. One of the first of these Latin Bibles was for the Waldenses in northern Italy, translated not later than 157 AD and was known as the Italic Version. The renowned scholar Beza states that the Italic Church dates from 120 AD. Allix, an outstanding scholar, testifies that enemies had corrupted many manuscripts, while the Italic Church handed them down in their apostolic purity." (Ref:D2)

The Waldensian (AD 120 & onwards)
"The Waldenses were among the first of the peoples of Europe to obtain a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the Reformation, they possessed a Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution …Here for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith…In a most wonderful manner it (the Word of Truth) was preserved uncorrupted through all the ages of darkness." (Ref:F7)
The Gallic Bible (Southern France) (AD177)
The Gothic Bible (AD 330-350)
The Old Syriac Bible (AD 400)
The Armenian Bible (AD 400) There are 1244 copies of this version still in existence.
The Palestinian Syriac (AD 450)
The French Bible of Oliveton (AD 1535)
The Czech Bible (AD 1602)
The Italian Bible of Diodati (AD 1606)
The Greek Orthodox Bible: Used from Apostolic times to the present day by the Greek Orthodox Church.
All the above mentioned Bibles and the vast majority (about 99%) of the 5200 extant New Testament MSS are in agreement with the text now known as Textus Receptus; the Text which underlies the Authorised King James Bible.
ENGLISH BIBLES
John Wycliffe's Translation (1380-82). This was the first manuscript (hand-written) Bible in the English language. Strictly speaking, it was not a version, but a translation into English from the Old Latin Vulgate. Wycliffe, often described as the 'Morning Star of the Reformation,' was an able Latin scholar. Alas! so hated was he for making Scripture available to the common man that some 44 years after his death his bones were dug up and burned, and his ashes cast into the river Swift.

William Tyndale's New Testament (1526) was the first printed Testament in the English language. Unlike Wycliffe's translation, Tyndale's New Testament was translated directly from the Greek, from the Majority Text, now known as Textus Receptus. More about this Text later. Tyndale's work, in other words, was a 'version.' The first printings of Tyndale's version were burned at St Paul's Cross (London). At that time it was a grievous offence, punishable by fine, imprisonment or death to even possess a copy of Tyndale's New Testament. It was said of William Tyndale that he was:
"A man so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and French, that which ever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue." (Reef: E4)
He it was who said to the ignorant clerics of his day that he would 'cause the boy who driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than them.'

"Before Tyndale's day the English versions of the Bible had been translations of a translation, being derived from the Vulgate or older Latin versions. Tyndale, for the first time, went back to the original Hebrew and Greek. And not only did he go back to the original languages seeking for the truth, but he embodied that truth when found in so noble a translation that it has ever since been deemed wise by scholars and revisers to make but a few changes in it; consequently every succeeding version is in reality little more than a revision of Tyndale's. It has been truly said that 'the peculiar genius which breathes through the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the grandeur - unequalled, unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern scholars - all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, and that man is William Tyndale." (Ref: E5



But alas! Tyndale was to suffer the wrath of blind ecclesiastical authority. He was burned at the stake!

The martyr was first confined in the castle of Filford, about 20 miles from Antwerp. He was taken from prison on Friday, October 6 th 1536, fastened to the stake, strangled, and his body burned to ashes. The fervent prayer of the martyr Tyndale, when bound to the stake, 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes,' was about to be answered shortly." ( Ref:A3)




David Fuller writes of Tyndale:
In the Reformation period the Church of Rome sought to maintain its dominant position by burning not only the copies of the bible, but also those who recognized the supreme authority of God's word. Tyndale was burned at the stake at Vilvorde outside Brussels in Belgium on August 6, (October according to some historians) 1536. His great offence was that he had translated the scriptures into English and was making copies available against the wishes of the Roman catholic hierarchy." (Ref:F3)


Miles Coverdale's Bible (1535). This was the first complete Bible in the English language. Coverdale was not the scholar Tyndale was, for his translation relied heavily on Tyndale and Luther's German Bible. It was printed just one year before his friend Tyndale was martyred.

Matthew's Bible (1500-1555). This was the first Bible issued with the king's license. It was mostly taken from Tyndale's and Coverdale's work which had gone before. It was printed in Hamburg by the king's printer John Rogers and was dedicated to Henry VIII by Rogers under the name Thomas Matthew, hence its name.

The Great Bible (1539). This Bible was printed in large folio (15x9 inches) hence its name. It was printed in Paris and was mostly a revision of Tyndale's and Matthew's work which went before.

The Geneva Version (1560). During the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary many Protestant believers from Britain fled to the Continent. The Scot John Knox was one. The Geneva Bible is a true 'version' having been translated from the original Hebrew and Greek throughout.

A number of these intellectual pilgrims rendezvoused in Geneva (known as the Holy City of the Alps) to form the first committee to attempt a translation of the Bible.

Such men as Theodore Beza, John Knox, William Whittingham and Miles Coverdale laboured six years to produce the celebrated Geneva Bible in 1560. Although this Bible was the first to feature numbered verses and italics, its main achievement was the Hebrew to English rendering of Ezra through Malachi, thus representing the first English Bible translated entirely out of the original languages." (Ref: E6)

The Geneva Bible was the first complete translation into English from the originals throughout. It was addressed to 'the brethren of England, Scotland, and Ireland,'…There were two Bibles at this time in general use in England. The Geneva Bible was the more popular of the two, and was generally read in the household and in private study of the Word by the people. The Cranmer or Bishops' Bible was the one, however, which obtained most favour amongst the clergy and was read in the churches." (Ref: A4)

[John]

The Bishops' Bible (1568). "Archbishop Parker was the master mind in the preparation of this new edition of the Holy Scriptures, assisted by about 15 scholarly men. He distributed the 'Cranmer Bible' into parts, assigning portions to various learned bishops, the whole being subject to his own personal supervision. The large number of the revisers being from the Episcopal bench gave the name and character to this bible. It was printed in large size, and beautifully executed. It was adorned with numerous cuts; its notes were brief, and, like the 'Geneva Bible,' was divided into verses. It was used in the Churches for about 40 years.

Various revised additions of the Bishops' Bible were published. Soon after the appearance of the Authorised Version of 1611, the Bishops' Bible - the last edition of which was published about five years before its noble successor - fell into general disuse…" (Ref:A5)

The King James Version (1611) . This is the Real Word of God for our generation. The Almighty has used it to further His work for coming on 400 years. ## See Section 10 for further details of this Bible.

[ [ ## Editors Note.
#################

Yet it has not been published for over 260 years because the edition still in circulation is the Fourth Revision of 1769 published in the reign of George the Third, 158 years later than is generally publicised.

Indeed in 2008 a new edition of the New Authorised Version was published in America correcting many of the archaic words of the 1611 version, though that version died out long before the AV edition which is still in circulation.

The Fourth Revision began with publication of the New Testament in 1759 followed by the Old Testament in 1762 and the complete Bible in 1769. It is this 1769 edition with the 1611 Preface page stuck at the front which was popularised by the British & Foreign Bible Society, now called simply the Bible Society, founded in 1804.

From it's original publication the flawed 1611 first edition had to compete with suspicion and scepticism of the general public towards the clergy, and the popularity of the Geneva Bible. which passed through 85 editions, and was the private study Bible and the Family Bible in wide use.

It is the Geneva Bible that William Shakespeare quotes from in his plays and sonnets and that John Bunyan uses in his books "Holy War", "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners", "The Pilgrims Progress" It was the Geneva Bible that the early Colonists took to America despising the King's Bible as much they despised the King.

The Geneva Bible was the true English Protestant Bible accepted by those unable from conscience to worship with the flawed Church of England, where as the so called Authorised Version is the denominational Bible of the Church of England, a communion of people who then and long afterwards despised, distrusted and persecuted other Christians meeting and worshipping outside the State Church. This State Church still adhered, and still does, to the false teaching of baptism of babies, and other Roman Catholic beliefs.

Also we should not forget that the earliest English translation of the Bible by John Wycliff was a flawed one from a flawed Latin Bible based on flawed Egyptian documents, yet the Holy Spirit brought multitudes to Christ through that flawed Bible, and the writings of John Wycliff inspired and led Jan Huss on the continent to embrace the Reformed Faith for which he died.

So perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that the Holy Spirit cannot use any translation, especially where it is the only one available. ]]



8. TEXTUS RECEPTUS…THE MAJORITY TEXT
Before we consider the King James Version (KJV) and a few of the modern translations in use today, let us first consider certain Greek texts from which all New Testament translations are derived.

Foremost amongst these is the Traditional Received Text (Textus Receptus), also called the Byzantine Text or the Majority Text because it is based on the vast majority of manuscripts still in existence.

These extant manuscripts (MSS) were brought together by various editors such as Lucian (AD 250-312), Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza and the Elzevir brothers to form the text known as Textus Receptus, the name given to the Majority Text in the 17th century.

The most notable editor of all was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) one of the greatest scholars the world has ever known. When the early Protestant Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries decided to translate the Scriptures directly from Greek into the languages of Europe, they selected Textus Receptus as their foundation Greek document. It is vitally important to understand why they did so.

Wilkinson writes in his book Truth Triumphant:


The Protestant denominations are built upon that manuscript of the Greek New Testament sometimes called Textus Receptus, or the Received Text. It is that Greek New Testament from which the writings of the apostles in Greek have been translated into English, German, Dutch and other languages.

During the Dark Ages the Received Text was practically unknown outside the Greek Church. It was restored to Christendom by the labours of that great scholar Erasmus.

[EDITOR NOTE

This writer is so obsessed with the Textus Receptus that he overlooks the fact that it was Stephanus who first published it several years before Erasmus who revised it and Erasmus it has been said had but 8 mss, of which he used 3 consistently, such was his majority. They all disagreed with each other at various points but he found them helpful where they agreed and consulted others where they did no, The vast number of manuscript copies available now have been discovered since . ]

It is altogether too little known that the real editor of the Received Text was Lucian. None of Lucian's enemies fails to credit him with this work. Neither Lucian nor Erasmus, but rather the apostles, wrote the Greek New Testament.

However, Lucian's day was an age of apostasy when a flood of depravations was systematically attempting to devastate both the Bible manuscripts and Bible theology.

Origen, of the Alexandrian college, made his editions and commentaries of the Bible a secure retreat for all errors, and deformed them with philosophical speculations introducing casuistry and lying.

Lucian's unrivalled success in verifying, safeguarding, and transmitting those divine writings left a heritage for which all generations should be thankful." (Ref: J2

Two Bibles
In his book Which Bible? David Otis Fuller says this about Textus Receptus.

Carefully note Fuller's first point that all churches (we could now add all Bible students) fall into one of two basic study categories:

Those who use a variety of Bibles influenced by the Minority Text (the Nestle/Aland Text). For 45 years I was in this camp: but I thank God I had my eyes opened.


Those who only study Bibles based on the Received Text (Textus Receptus). I have now joined this camp.

Fuller writes :
First of all, the Textus Receptus was the Bible of early Eastern Christianity. Later it was adopted as the official text of the Greek Catholic Church. There were local reasons which contributed to this result. But, probably, far greater reasons will be found in the fact that the Received Text had authority enough to become, either in itself or by its translation, the Bible of the great Syrian Church; of the Waldensian Church of northern Italy; of the Gallic Church in southern France; and of the Celtic Church in Scotland and Ireland; as well as the official Bible of the Greek Catholic Church
.
All these churches, some earlier, some later, were in opposition to the Church of Rome and at a time when the Received Text and these Bibles of the Constantine type were rivals. They, as represented in their descendants, are rivals to this day. The Church of Rome built on the Eusebio-Origen type of Bible; these others built on the Received Text. Therefore, because they themselves believed that the Received Text was the true apostolic Bible, and further, because the Church of Rome arrogated to itself the power to choose a Bible which bore the marks of systematic depravation, we have the testimony of these five churches to the authenticity and the apostolicity of the Received Text." ( Ref: F1)

Why did the early churches of the 2nd and 3rd centuries and all the Protestant Reformers of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries choose Textus Receptus in preference to the Minority Text?

The answer is because:
Textus Receptus is based on the vast majority (90%) of the 5000+ Greek manuscripts in existence. That is why it is also called the Majority Text.
Textus Receptus is not mutilated with deletions, additions and amendments, as is the Minority Text.
Textus Receptus agrees with the earliest versions of the Bible: Penutsta (AD150) Old Latin Vulgate (AD157), the Italic Bible (AD157) etc. These Bibles were produced some 200 years before the minority Egyptian codices favoured by the Roman Church. Remember this vital point.
Textus Receptus agrees with the vast majority of the 86,000+ citations from scripture by the early church fathers.
Textus Receptus is untainted with Egyptian philosophy and unbelief.
Textus Receptus strongly upholds the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith: the creation account in Genesis, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, his miracles, his bodily resurrection and literal return.
Textus Receptus was - and still is - the enemy of the Roman Church. This is an important fact to bear in mind.
Reverend Gipp comments further:

The Majority Text has been known throughout history by several names. It has been known as the Byzantine text, the Imperial Text, the Traditional Text and the Reformation Text as well as the Majority Text. This text culminates in the TEXTUS RECEPTUS or Received Text which is the basis for the King James Bible, which we know also as the Authorised Version....We describe this text with the term "Universal," because it represents the majority of extant MSS which represent the original autographs. Professor Hodges of Dallas Theological Seminary explains, "The manuscript of an ancient book will, under any but the most exceptional conditions, multiply in a reasonable regular fashion with the result that the copies nearest the autograph will normally have the largest number of descendants." (Ref:B3)

Continuing from page 66 in Gipp's book:

Professor Hodges concludes, 'Thus the Majority text, upon which the King James Version is based, has in reality the strongest claim possible to be regarded as an authentic representation of the original text. This claim is quite independent of any shifting consensus of scholarly judgement about its readings and is based on the objective reality of its dominance in the transmissional history of the New Testament
In his book God Wrote Only One Bible, Jasper J Ray pens the following testimony about Textus Receptus:

Wonder of wonders, in the midst of all the present confusion regarding manuscripts, we still have a Bible we can trust. The writing of the word of God by inspiration is no greater miracle than the miracle of its preservation in the Textus Receptus. All criticism of this text from which was translated the King James Bible, is based upon an unproved hypothesis: i.e. that there are older and more dependable copies of the original Bible manuscripts. No one in nineteen hundred years, has been able to prove this.

In his book Final Authority, William P Grady provides further interesting details about Textus Receptus, the Received Text:

For instance, over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament exist today ranging from small fragments containing two or three verses to nearly entire Bibles. Their ages vary from the second to the sixteenth century; the manuscripts are ending with the arrival of printing. By comparison, there exist only ten quality manuscripts of Caesar's Gallic War composed between 58-50BC… "Once again, the outstanding features of the Received Text is its high percentage of agreement among so many thousands of independent witnesses. This agreement is often placed at about 90 percent; in other words, 90 percent of all existing manuscripts agree with one another so miraculously that they are able to form their own unique text…

If the critic of your King James Bible is correct in his rejection of the underlying Textus Receptus, then he is also under the greatest pressure to account for its existence. To complain of fabrication is one thing, but to account for its universal prevalence is quite another.

Whenever a large body of ancient documents are seen to be in agreement, this inexplicable harmony becomes their greatest evidence for legitimacy. Simple arithmetic confirms that the nearer a particular reading is to the original, the longer the time span will be for descendants to follow. The longer the family is, the older the original source must be." (Ref: E1)

9. THE MINORITY TEXTS
There are other extant Greek texts which are referred to as the 'Minority Texts' simply because they represent only about 5% of existing manuscripts. Another 5% are Neutral Texts: sometimes agreeing with the majority and at others with the minority. The 'Minority Texts' are also known as the Alexandrian Texts because they were produced in Alexandria in Egypt. The Minority Texts were rejected by the early Christians and also by all the Protestant Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Reformers, who were well aware of the existence of the Minority Texts, considered them unfit for translation purposes. These are very important points to bear in mind. Why did the early Christians and the Protestant Reformers reject the Minority Texts?
The answer is:
The Minority Texts were the work of unbelieving Egyptian scribes who did not accept the Bible as the Word of God or JESUS as the SON of GOD!
The Minority Texts abound with alterations, often a single manuscript being amended by several different scribes over a period of many years: something the Aaronic priests and Masorites would never have tolerated when making copies of the Scriptures.
The Minority Texts omit approximately 200 verses from the Scriptures. This is equivalent to 1st and 2nd Peter.
The Minority Texts contradict themselves in hundreds of places.
The Minority Texts are doctrinally weak and often dangerously incorrect.
Proof of these astonishing allegations will follow in Part Two where we will take a close look at some 80+ Bible verses corrupted by the Minority Text.
Yet, startling as it may sound, every modern English Bible relies on the Minority Text as its underlying New Testament text in preference to Textus Receptus! Isn't that an amazing revelation? What brought about this almost incredible switch from the reliable Textus Receptus, beloved by the early Christian church and the Protestant Reformers, to the corrupt minority text favoured by the Roman Catholic Church? It is important that you find out soon: because the modern "Bible" you may be faithfully studying every day is really nothing more than a counterfeit posing as the Word of God! If it is any consolation to you, do remember that I was equally in the dark and totally devastated by my findings.
Misleading Footnotes
Modern translations abound with misleading footnotes, which do little else but cast doubt on the King James Version. Examples are:
The Hebrew of this line is obscure.
The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain - or unknown.
Other ancient mss add …
Other ancient mss omit…
Other ancient mss read …
Other ancient mss insert…
Some early mss read…
The most ancient authorities omit John 7:53 - 8:11
The best manuscripts omit this verse. (e.g. Matt.17:21, 18:11, 23:14, Mark 7:16, John 5:4)
Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book (Mark) to a close at the end of Mark 16:8
Many mss do not contain the remainder of this verse. (e.g. Acts 8:37)
Many ancient authorities read…
Not found in most of the old mss.(e.g. John 7:53-8:11)
In this article we will not analyse these footnotes, simply because there are scores of them scattered throughout the modern translations and each has a slightly different slant.

However, one thing they all have in common: and that is, they ALL cast doubt on the accuracy of the Authorised King James Bible! By implication they all claim to be more accurate and reliable than the King James Version. In the preface of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) we read this misleading statement.

"Yet the King James Version has grave defects." Oh how subtle is Satan, how evil and how sinister! The stunning fact is: the very opposite is true. The King James Version is infinitely more accurate and reliable than ANY modern English translation on the market today. And that is why for the past nearly 240 years since the publishing of the 4th Revisions it has had - and continues to have - the blessing of the Almighty God upon it: something no modern version or translation can come anywhere near. Maybe but people are still being converted through reading the modern translations just as was so with John Wycliff’s flawed English Bible;. The Holy Spirit can also minister through our testimonies, preaching, works, our witness, through dreams and visions and through Christian art, and nature, we must remember the millions who have never had access to any copy of the Bible but have been converted . There is a danger of making a particular version an idol instead of an instrument or tool.

Some modern Bibles , after a decade or two, disappear from the book shops, only to re-appear some years later with a few alterations under a new name. Just as happened to the 16th century translations

How did it happen that the Minority Text supplanted the trustworthy and respected Textus Receptus which triggered the great Protestant Reformation during which tens of thousands of true believers perished by flame, famine and torture? Who is behind this dangerous deception that has engulfed the Christian Church? Do you know? Do you care? Is it important? Does it really matter?

I most certainly didn't know. But I do believe that it is vitally important that every believer know that Satan is behind it: not any particular Church, its leaders or its members - but the great enemy of souls!

He is behind every deception ever aimed at the human race: and millions, in and out of the church, believe his lies. I for one had been living in blissful ignorance of the danger for many years: till a massive heart attack laid me flat on my back and I was moved - yea inwardly compelled - to make a deep study of the History of God's Word and how He has providentially preserved it till today.


Now let us turn our attention to the Minority Text's two most prominent manuscripts on which most modern translations of the Bible heavily rely. They are called Codex Sinaiticus (ALEPH ) and Codex Vaticanus (B). The word 'codex,' incidentally, means that the manuscript is in book form, with pages, as opposed to being a scroll. But first a little about the man whom God raised up over 150 years ago to expose the errors of the Minority Texts. His name is John Burgon.

John William Burgon
John Burgon was undoubtedly one of the greatest defenders of the Greek text of the New Testament. He exposed the hundreds of amendments, deletions and additions in the Minority Text and defended the reliability of Textus Receptus till the day of his death. Unlike most Bible students, Burgon was a Greek scholar of the highest rank who spent much of his life browsing through the museums and libraries of Europe examining the ancient Greek manuscripts. He had first hand experience examining the Vatican texts whilst he ministered to a congregation in Rome. His findings are of utmost value in these days of wilful, spiritual ignorance and sin. I will quote a few extracts about this magnificent warrior from David O Fuller's book Which Bible?


John William Burgon was born August 21, 1813. He matriculated at Oxford in 1841, taking several high honours there, and his B.A. 1845. He took his M.A. there in 1848…the thing about Burgon, however, which lifts him out of the nineteenth century English setting and endears him to the hearts of earnest Christians of other lands and other ages is his steadfast defence of the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God. He strove with all his power to arrest the modernistic currents which during his lifetime had begun to flow within the Church of England, continuing his efforts with unabated zeal up to the very day of his death. With this purpose in mind he laboured mightily in the field of New Testament textual criticism.

In 1860, while temporary chaplain of the English congregation at Rome, he made a personal examination of Codex B (Vaticanus), and in 1862 he inspected the treasures of St. Catherine's Convent on Mt. Sinai. Later he made several tours of European libraries, examining and collating New Testament manuscripts wherever he went…Of all the critics of the nineteenth century Burgon alone was consistently Christian in his vindication of the Divine inspiration and providential preservation of the text of Holy Scripture…

Burgon regarded the good state of preservation of B (Codex Vaticanus) and ALEPH (Codex Sinaiticus) in spite of their exceptional age as proof not of their goodness but of their badness. If they had been good manuscripts, they would have been read to pieces long ago. We suspect that these two manuscripts are indebted for their preservation, solely to their ascertained evil character; which has occasioned that the one eventually found its way, four centuries ago, to a forgotten shelf in the Vatican Library; while the other, after exercising the ingenuity of several generations of critical Correctors, eventually (viz. in A.D.1844) got deposited in the wastepaper basket of the Convent at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Had B (Vaticanus) and ALEPH (Sinaiticus) been copies of average purity, they must long since have shared the inevitable fate of books which are freely used and highly prized; namely, they would have fallen into decadence and disappeared from sight. Thus the fact that B and ALEPH are so old is a point against them, not something in their favour. It shows that the Church rejected them and did not read them. Otherwise they would have worn out and disappeared through much reading.

For an orthodox Christian Burgon's view is the only reasonable one. If we believe that God gave the Church guidance in regard to the New Testament books, then surely it is logical to believe that God gave the church similar guidance in regard to the text which these books contained…

Who but those with Roman Catholic sympathies could ever be pleased with the notion that God preserved the true New Testament text in secret for almost one thousand years and then finally handed it over to the Roman pontiff for safekeeping? Surely every orthodox Protestant will prefer to think with Burgon that God preserved the true text of the Greek New Testament in the usage of the Greek-speaking Church down through the centuries and then delivered it up intact to the Protestant reformers." (Ref:F11)


CODEX SINAITICUS (ALEPH)
This codex was produced in the 4th century. In his book Let's Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton writes of Codex Sinaiticus:

The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was found in 1844 in a trash pile in St.Catherine's Monastery near Mt. Sinai, by a man named Mr Tischendorf. It contains nearly all of the New Testament plus it adds the 'Shepherd of Hermes' and the 'Epistle of Barnabas' to the New Testament. The Sinaiticus is extremely unreliable, proven by examining the manuscript itself. John Burgon spent years examining every available manuscript of the New Testament. He writes about Sinaiticus...

'On many occasions 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness. Letters, words or even whole sentences are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately cancelled; while that gross blunder, whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament.

THAT'S NOT ALL!

On nearly every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions, done by 10 different people. Some of these corrections were made about the same time that it was copied, but most of them were made in the 6th and 7th century.

… Phillip Mauro, a brilliant lawyer who was admitted to the bar of the US Supreme Court in April 1892, wrote a book called "Which Version " in the early 1900s. He writes concerning the Sinaiticus… 'From these facts, therefore, we declare: first that the impurity of the Codex Sinaiticus, in every part of it, was fully recognisd by those who were best acquainted with it, and that from the very beginning until the time when it was finally cast aside as worthless for any practical purpose.' " (Ref:C1)


In his excellent book An Understandable History Of The Bible, Rev. Samuel Gipp writes of


One of the MSS is called Sinaiticus and is represented by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. This MS from all outward appearances looks very beautiful. It is written in book form (codex) on vellum. It contains 147 1/2 leaves. The pages are 15" by 13 1/2" with four columns of 48 lines per page.

It contains books not accepted in the Catholic Canon such as the 'Shepherd of Hermes,' which was used a lot in ancient times the 'Epistle of Barnabas' and even the Didache which was a volume of Christian teaching from very early days.
.
The great Greek scholar, Dr Scrivener, points this out in his historic work A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus.

He speaks of correctional alterations made to the MS: 'The Codex is covered with such alterations... brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional or limited to separated portions of the MS, many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.' " (Ref:B5

CODEX VATICANUS (B)
The second major manuscript of the Minority Text is known as Codex Vaticanus, often referred to as 'B'. This codex was also produced in the 4th century. It was found over a thousand years later in 1481 in the Vatican library in Rome, where it is currently held. It is written on expensive vellum, a fine parchment originally from the skin of calf or antelope. Some authorities claim that it was one of a batch of 50 Bibles ordered from Egypt by the Roman Emperor Constantine: hence its beautiful appearance and the expensive skins which were used for its pages. But alas! this manuscript, like its corrupt Egyptian partner Sinaiticus (Aleph) is also riddled with omissions, insertions and amendments.
Of Codex Vaticanus Samuel Gipp writes on page 72

This codex omits many portions of Scripture vital to Christian doctrine. Vaticanus omits Genesis 1.1 through Genesis 46:28; Psalms 106 through 138; Matthew 16:2,3; Romans 16:24; the Pauline Pastoral Epistles; Revelation; and everything in Hebrews after 9:14.
It seems suspicious indeed that a MS possessed by the Roman Catholic church omits the portion of the book of Hebrews which exposes the 'mass' as totally useless (Please read Hebrews 10:10-12). The 'mass' in conjunction with the false doctrine of purgatory go hand-in-hand to form a perpetual money making machine for Rome. Without one or the other, the Roman Catholic Church would go broke! It also omits portions of the Scripture telling of the creation (Genesis), the prophetic details of the crucifixion (Psalm 22), and, of course, the portion which prophesies of the destruction of Babylon (Rome), the great sleeper of Revelation chapter 17.

Vaticanus , though intact physically, is found to be in poor literary quality. Dr Martin declares, 'B' exhibits numerous places where the scribe has written the same word or phrase twice in succession. Dr J Smythe states, 'From one end to the other, the whole manuscript has been travelled over by the pen of some… scribe of about the tenth century.' If Vaticanus was considered a trustworthy text originally, the mass of corrections and scribal changes obviously render its testimony highly suspicious and questionable."




Rev. Gipp continues on page 73:
The corrupt and unreliable nature of these two MSS (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) is best summed up by one who has thoroughly examined them, John W Burgon: 'The impurity of the text exhibited by these codices is not a question of opinion but fact...In the Gospels alone, Codex B(Vatican) leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 1,491 times. It bears traces of careless transcriptions on every page…
If we are to be thorough and discriminatory in our evaluation of the true New Testament text, then we must not -- we cannot -- overlook these facts.' How did these MSS come into being? How did it happen that they should be beautiful to the eye, yet within contain such vile and devastating corruption? It seems that these uncial MSS along with the papyrus MSS included in this category all resulted from a revision of the true, or Universal Text. This revision was enacted in Egypt by Egyptian scribes! " (Ref:B6)

Rev. Gipp continues

So we see that once a pure copy of the Universal Text (Textus Receptus) had been carried down into Egypt, it was recopied. During the process of this recopying, it was revised by men who did not revere it as truly the Word of God. This text was examined by the critical eye of Greek philosophy and Egyptian morals. These men saw nothing wrong with putting the Book in subjection to their opinion instead of their opinion being in subjection to the book. This process produced a text which was local to the educational centre of Alexandria, Egypt. This text went no further than southern Italy where the Roman Catholic Church found its unstable character perfect for overthrowing the true Word of God which was being used universally by the true Christians." (Ref:B7)


The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible has this to say about Codex Vaticanus on page 624 under the article Versions. It should be noted, however, that there is no prominent Biblical MS. in which there occur such gross cases of misspelling, faulty grammar, and omission, as in B." (Ref:H2



Barry Burton comments further:
For one thing…Vaticanus and Sinaiticus disagree with each other over 3000 times in the gospels alone… Facts about the Vaticanus.
"It was written on fine vellum (tanned animal skins) and remains in excellent condition. It was found in the Vatican Library in 1481 AD. In spite of being in excellent condition, it omits Genesis 1:1-Gen.46:28, Psalm 106-138, Matt.16:2-3, the Pauline pastoral Epistles, Hebrews 9:14-13:25, and all of Revelation. These parts were probably left out on purpose."
"Besides all that - in the gospels alone it leaves out 237 words, 452 clauses and 748 whole sentences, which hundreds of later copies agree together as having the same words in the same places, the same clauses in the same places and the same sentences in the same places... The Vaticanus was available to the translators of the King James Bible, but they did not use it because they knew it is unreliable." (Ref:C2)

Dean Burgon comments on Codices Sinaiticus (Aleph) and Vaticanus (/B).

Compromise of any sort between the two conflicting parties, is impossible; for they simply contradict one another. Codd.B and Aleph are either amongst the purist of manuscripts,- or else they are among the very foulest. The Text of Drs.Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared,- or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred Autographs,- or furthest from them."… "There is no room for both opinions; and there cannot exist any middle view." (Ref: P3


Oldest and Best
Bible students are often told that Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are older and better than other manuscripts: the implication being that they must, therefore, be more accurate. But this conclusion is wrong. We have already seen how Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are corrupt beyond measure. To be sure they are 'better' in appearance, but certainly not in their content. Remember they are written on expensive vellum; so they ought to be in good shape. They are older, but older than what? They are older than other Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. But they are not older than the earliest versions of the Bible: the Penutsta, Italic, Waldensian and the Old Latin Vulgate: versions which agree with the Majority text.

These ancient versions are some 200 years older than A and B. Yes A and B are older than other Greek mss, but for anyone to suggest that they are more accurate is absurd. It is like someone saying 'You will find the greatest TRUTH being preached in the oldest and most beautiful cathedrals of the world,' or, 'the most beautiful women have the best characters.'
In his masterful book Revision Revised Dean Burgon wrote, over a hundred years ago, concerning the ages of Codices Vatican (B) and Sinai (Aleph):

Lastly, - We suspect that these two Manuscripts are indebted for their preservation, solely to their ascertained evil character, which has occasioned that the one eventually found its way, four centuries ago, to a forgotten shelf in the Vatican library; while the other, after exercising the ingenuity of several generations of critical Correctors, eventually (viz. in A.D. 1844) got deposited in the waste-paper basket of the Convent at the foot of mount Sinai. Had B and Aleph been copies of average purity, they must long since have shared the inevitable fate of books which are freely used and highly prized; namely, they would have fallen into decadence and disappeared from sight." (Ref: P1)


In short these two codices are old simply because:
First: They were written on extremely expensive and durable antelope skins.
Second: They were so full of errors, alterations, additions and deletions, that they were never used by true believers and seldom even by their own custodians. Thus they had little chance of wearing away.
Can any true believer imagine JEHOVAH, the Holy One of Israel, hiding Codex Vaticanus away for over 1000 years in the Vatican Library till 1481? Or prompting the deeply religious monks of St Catherine's Monastery to dump Sinaiticus into a waste basket? The very idea is ridiculous.
A vital fact to remember is that though codices Aleph and B (produced in the 4th century) are older than other Greek manuscript copies of the Scriptures, they are not older than the Penutsta, Italic, the Old Latin Vulgate and the Waldensian versions which were produced 200 years earlier in the 2nd century. All these versions, copies of which are still in existence, agree with Textus Receptus, the underlying text of the King James Bible. I repeat: these ancient versions are some 200 years older than Vaticanus and Sinaiticus: so the 'oldest is best' argument should not be used. All Bibles fall, basically, into one of two categories.
Those based on the Majority Text.
Those based on the Minority Text.

Which Bible you select for study each day is going to have an enormous effect on your spiritual growth and well being. Bear this vital fact in mind.
The Invention of Printing
The invention of the printing press in the 15th century was a giant step forward in the circulation of the Bible. The printing press reduced the time taken to produce a Bible from about nine or ten months to a few hours: and once proof reading had been done, every copy was as good as the master. Printing also greatly reduced the price of a Bible.

In the reign of Edward 1 of England, about 1272, the price of a complete (hand-written) Bible was from £30 to £37, and occupied a careful scribe in his scriptorium about ten months, while the days wage of a working man only averaged 1.5 pennies. When it is borne in mind that it only cost £25 to build two arches of London Bridge in 1240, while the price of a complete Latin Bible was considerably more, it will readily be allowed that only the rich and scholarly had access to the Word of God. (Ref: A7)


"While Martin Luther called the art of printing 'the last and best gift of providence' the Catholic Rowland Phillips, in a sermon preached at St.Paul's Cross, London in the year 1535, frightfully remarked:
'We must root out printing or printing will root us out.' "
(Ref:E3)

If printing, rightly used, could do so much to spread Truth, who can imagine the potential for the spread of Truth on the Internet?

THE KING JAMES VERSION (KJV)

Now that we have learned something about the majority and minority texts, let us turn our attention to the history of the King James Version (KJV) which is based on Textus Receptus. The King James Version was translated directly from the original languages: though it owes its style and biblical language to versions which went before. I now invite you to imitate the believers of Berea mentioned in the book of Acts. Acts 17 vv 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.


Archaic Language
Many maintain that the KJV uses archaic language. Is this objection justified? Pause awhile and consider this well known fact: every department of human learning uses language peculiar to that particular discipline: language which novices could easily refer to as being archaic. Biology, botany, geology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, music, medicine, law etc., all use strange sounding words, phrases and expressions which a novice will find difficult to understand. The study of the Word of God is similar in this respect. It also uses words and expressions which a new believer will find hard to comprehend. Words like sin, repentance, baptism, atonement, sanctification, justification, resurrection etc. These words often baffle a new believer: but he/she must learn them in order to progress spiritually; because they are explicit Biblical terms which uniquely express vital spiritual concepts and processes. They are not archaic words and we dare not get rid of them or simplify them to such a degree that the Word of God becomes a paraphrase, a commentary. Can you imagine a novice biology, science or law student objecting to the strange sounding words or old-fashioned expressions in his text books?
In his book The King James Version Defended Edward F Hills says this concerning the language of the KJV:


"Not only modernists but also many conservatives are now saying that the King James Version ought to be abandoned because it is not contemporary. The Apostles, they insist, used contemporary language in their preaching and writing, and we too must have a Bible in the language of today. But more and more it is being recognized that the language of the New Testament was biblical rather than contemporary. It was the Greek of the Septuagint, which in its turn was modelled after the Old Testament Hebrew. Any biblical translator, therefore, who is truly trying to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles and to produce a version which God will bless, must take care to use language which is above the level of daily speech, language which is not only intelligible but also biblical and venerable. Hence in language as well as in text the King James Version is still by far superior to any other English translation of the Bible." (Ref:G1) That is of course a matter of opinion not a matter of faith.

Thee and Thou
We also hear a lot about the words 'ye,' 'thee' and 'thou' in the King James Version: and that these should all be replaced by the word 'you'. Everyone knows that the word 'you' is a uni-plural word like 'sheep' or 'fish.' It may refer to one or many depending on the context. Believe it or not the word 'you' is used many times in the KJV - but not exclusively. Why not? The answer is because of the vital difference between 'you' (plural) and 'thee' (singular) and there are times when it is necessary to make the difference. The word 'thee' refers to a single person, church, town or nation: whereas the word 'you' is the second person plural: it refers to many persons. To understand what I mean we will need to look at a few examples.
Just before the Saviour's crucifixion he warned his disciples - particularly Peter - of Satan's intended plan to test them all. These are the Master's words:



Luke 22 v 31-32And 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

In this passage the Saviour used the word 'you' to mean all the disciples. But when he used the words 'thee' and 'thou' he meant Simon Peter alone. By replacing the 'thee' and 'thou' in this passage with 'you,' the Saviour's explicit warning to Simon Peter is considerably weakened. As for his warning to all the other disciples, that Satan wanted to sift them all, that warning is completely lost. Here are two more examples where the plural word 'you' and the singular words 'thee' or 'thou' are used.
In this example Festus speaks to king Agrippa and Bernice concerning the Apostle Paul. Here the word 'you' refers to Agrippa and Bernice: whereas the word 'thee' specifically addresses king Agrippa. Acts 25:26: Of whom I have no certain thing to write unto my lord. Wherefore I have brought him forth before you, and specially before thee, O king Agrippa, that, after examination had, I might have somewhat to write.
In the following example two towns are initially addressed individually, therefore the word 'thee' is used. But when referred to together the word 'you' is used.
Luke10:13: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
Other examples where 'you' is plural and 'thou' or 'thee' is singular are found in Deut. 4:3; 1 Kings 9:5-6; Matthew 5:39-44; 6:4-7; 11:23-24; 18:9-10; 23:37-38; Mark 14:37-38; Luke 5:4-5; 6:30-31; 9:41; 16:25-26; John 1:50-51; James 2:16. These texts, and there are many more, prove that the word 'you' was well known by the translators of the King James Version. If you consult a concordance you will discover that it was used hundreds of times in that version: but not exclusively as in modern translations. In short, when the Saviour addresses a particular individual, church or town he uses the words 'thee' or 'thou' simply because these words are more explicit and personal than the uni-plural word 'you.' The Bible, remember, is the Word of God: explicit in every sentence - yea in every word!

ALLEGED KJV ERRORS: Easter/Passover
Many claim that the King James Version has serious 'errors' in it. The most quoted 'error' concerns the use of the word Easter in Acts 12:1-4. The original word, these believers maintain, should have been translated as Passover - not Easter! Let us now examine the passage concerned and see if that argument holds water.

Acts 12 vv 1-4
Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.) And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people


To properly understand the sequence of events described above I will briefly explain some facts about the sacred calendar.
The first Passover occurred in ancient Egypt when Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews spared the lives of Israel's eldest sons and slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt. That event took place on the evening (night) of the 14th Abib (Nisan), the first month in the sacred calendar. The Passover, which is an event rather than a day, is now commemorated each year on the evening of the same date. The story is well known and is recorded in Exodus chapters 11 and 12.
After the Passover came the seven days of Unleavened Bread. The week of unleavened bread begins on the evening of the 14th Abib and finishes on the evening of the 21st Abib. This whole week is sometimes referred to as the Passover week: but, strictly speaking, its proper name is Week of Unleavened Bread. When the Passover and the days of unleavened bread are mentioned in the same passage, as in Acts 12:1-4, we can be certain that the Passover refers to the event which occurs on the evening of the 14th Abib and the days of unleavened bread refer to the week that follows. (i.e. 15-21st Abib or Nisan).
The events recorded in Acts 12:3-4 occurred during the days of unleavened bread. In other words, the Passover in that particular year had passed: it was history: it had gone. Why, then, would Herod wait for an event which had already passed? Surely Herod knew that the Passover had passed and that the days of unleavened bread were in progress.
What, then, was Herod really waiting for before releasing Peter? The answer is: Herod was waiting for Easter to come and go - just as the King James Version says. We can be confident that the translators of the KJV knew full well why in this passage they rendered the word 'Pesah' as 'Easter' and not 'Passover' as at other times. Their combined knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and the vast amount of manuscript evidence before them (thousands of copies, versions, and church-father citations etc.) were all used to arrive at every word in the King James Version. Are we, whose knowledge of these languages is microscopic by comparison, to challenge their judgement? The fact is that Herod, during the days of unleavened bread, was not waiting for the Passover - which had come and gone: he was waiting for Easter just as the KJV says.

The events in our story tell us that:
The Passover in that particular year was history.
The Days of Unleavened Bread (15th - 21st Abib) were in progress.
And Easter was approaching: after which Herod planned to bring out Peter.
The question now arises: Was the pagan festival of Easter known at that time? And were the Romans keeping Easter? The answer is - yes. The pagan festival of Easter, with its hot cross buns and Easter Sunday sunrise services was well known in ancient Babylon and Rome centuries before the events recorded in Acts 12. Let me quote a short passage about EASTER from Alexander Hislop's book The Two Babylons. (ISBN 0 7136 0470 0)


Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain, along with the Druids, "the priests of the groves" (page 103)


No scholar doubts the fact that Easter is a pagan festival which came down from ancient times, long before the Christian era. The next question is: Did some Israelites keep Easter and worship the QUEEN OF HEAVEN? Did they bake hot cross buns for Ishtar - Easter? The answer, surprisingly, is again - yes! Ancient Israel worshipped the Queen of Heaven - ISHTAR and they honoured her each year with special cakes (buns) and drink offerings. I quote Scripture:

Jeremiah 7 v 18

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger

Jeremiah 44 v 18

18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.
19: And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?
20: Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying,
21: The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember them, and came it not into his mind?
22: So that the LORD could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day.
23: Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned against the LORD, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies; therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day.
24: Moreover Jeremiah said unto all the people, and to all the women, Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah that are in the land of Egypt:
25: Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying; Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hand, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her: ye will surely accomplish your vows, and surely perform your vows.


Oh yes, many ancient Israelites kept Easter. Modern Israelis still do. In summary we can say that when Herod, after the Passover and during the days of unleavened bread shut up Peter intending to bring him out after Easter, Herod meant exactly what the King James Version is saying.

He meant Easter not Passover which had already come and gone. This means that every translation which uses the word Passover in Acts 12:3-4 is, strictly speaking, incorrect. Easter is the correct word, and the King James Version uses it.

The Protestant Reformers
When the early Protestant Reformers of Europe (German, Dutch, French and English etc.) began to translate the Old and New Testaments into their native languages, they first had to decide which Hebrew and Greek Text they were going to use.
Hebrew

For the Old Testament, the King James translators used the traditional Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text. This text was produced under the strict Masoretic rules mentioned earlier. Besides it was the only trustworthy Hebrew Text available. Do not the Scripture teach in: Greek

Romans 3 v 1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? 2: Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God

[John]

For the New Testament, the Protestant translators of the King James Bible had a choice between two vastly different Greek texts:

The Received (Majority) Text favoured by the early churches of Christendom (The Greek, Waldensian, Albegensian, Gauls and Celtic churches).

Or the Minority Text favoured by the Roman Catholic Church.

Wisely they settled for the Received (Majority) Text. No doubt the Spirit of God was guiding their minds and providentially preserving His Word.

It is a grave error to think that the early Protestant Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries were unaware of the Minority Texts produced in the 4th century.

They were well aware of them.

They had before them copies of the Majority, Minority and Neutral texts.

In addition they had many ancient versions of the Scriptures: the Penutsta, Old Latin Vulgate, Italic, Waldensian, Albegensian, Gaul and Celtic Bibles.

They also had before them thousands of scriptural citations of the early Church Fathers, which date back to the 2nd and 3rd century.

They were also well aware of the fact that the Roman Church used a Eusebio-Origen type of Bible based on the Minority Text.

What did these great men of God do? The answer is: in making their translations they set aside the Minority Text and chose to produce versions of the Bible which were all based on the Majority Text, the text used by the early Christian Church. The following quotation will help fix this fact in the reader's mind.

Unquestionably, the leaders of the Reformation -German, French, and English - were convinced that the Received Text was the genuine New Testament, not only by its own irresistible history and internal evidence, but also because it matched with the Received Text which in Waldensian form came down from the days of the apostles." (Ref:F6)


The King James Version Translators

When the LORD God of Israel chose the prophets and apostles of old to pen the Scriptures, He made His selection with the utmost care. Faith, holiness, a love for truth and inherent ability were the deciding qualities He looked for. In other words the Most High looks within when selecting His servants. That is how He always judges men.

1 Samuel 16:7
But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.

The Protestant translators of the King James Version were providentially chosen by God in exactly the same way: firstly for their faith, holiness and love of truth, and secondly for their linguistic abilities. In other words, they were TRUE BELIEVERS.

At their centre some 47 pious scholars were involved. In addition many hundreds of Protestant ministers and believing linguists throughout the UK assisted in the great work.

I cannot over stress the importance of that fact: that FAITH IN GOD was the first and overriding reason why the Almighty chose the KJV translators for their sacred task. It is totally inconceivable that the Almighty, who initially inspired "faithful, holy men of God" to write the Scriptures in the first place, would then - centuries later - hand over the translating of those selfsame Scriptures to unbelievers and sceptics. So I repeat: the translators of the King James Version were men of FAITH, who believed that the text they were translating was, in fact, the WORD OF GOD!
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Editors Note:

But they were also all members of the Church of England , the State Church, who did not recognise Non conformists as fellow Christians and whose Church treated them with contempt, and persecuted them while their own Church continued in error with a non-Biblical hierarchy and infant baptism. ,

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Thus started the greatest writing project the world has ever known, and the greatest achievement of the reign of James I - the making of the English Bible which has ever since borne his name." at least by those that call it the KJV. (Ref: L2)
W Scott writes as follows:

King James named 54 pious and scholarly persons - and who were empowered to communicate with 'all our principal learned men within this our kingdom,' so that the scholarship of the country was consecrated to the noblest work which could engage the heart, the mind, and the pen of men - the production of our admirable English Bible.

Seven of the number, through death and other causes, were unable to serve, so that the list was reduced to 47. It may be interesting to know how and to whom the work was distributed.

There were six committees chosen, two of which sat at Westminster, two at Cambridge, two at Oxford. The whole were presided over by Bishop Andrews, who, besides possessing an intimate knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Chaldee, and Syriac, was familiar with 16 other languages.

As each set or committee of translators finished the particular part assigned to them, it was then subjected to the criticism of the other five sets in order; so that each part of the Bible came before the whole body of the translators.

When the 47 finished their work it was then carefully reviewed by the final committee. Dr Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, wrote the preface." (Ref:A8)

Always bear in mind the spiritual qualifications of these great men of God.

They were Pious Christians who believed that the text they were handling was the very Word of God!
They had absolutely no doubt in their minds that the Genesis account of creation was true.
They never for a moment doubted the miracles of Jesus or that he was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was crucified for the sins of mankind and that he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

They were pious Protestants who saw through the errors of the Roman Catholic Church.

They were scholars of the highest order. Few - if any - of today's scholars come anywhere near them in their understanding of the original languages; let alone their faith, piety and commitment to truth above tradition.

Here are a few quotes about some of these great men of God from Rev.Gipp's book entitled An Understandable History of the Bible..
Lancelot Andrews: "As a preacher, Bishop Andrews was right famous in his day. He was called the 'star of preachers…Dr Andrews was also known as a great man of prayer…But we are chiefly concerned to know what were his qualifications as a translator of the Bible. He ever bore the character of a 'right godly man,' and a 'prodigious student.' One competent judge speaks of him as 'that great gulf of learning'! It was also said, that 'the world wanted learning to know how learned this man was.' A brave, old chronicler remarks, that such was his skill in all languages, especially the Oriental, that had he been present at the confusion of tongues at Babel, he might have served as the Interpreter-General! In his funeral sermon by Dr. Buckridge, Bishop of Rochester, it is said that Dr. Andrews was conversant with fifteen languages." (page 186)

John Overall : He was chosen for his expertise in the writings of the early church fathers. " Dr. Overall was vital to the translation because of his knowledge of quotations of the early church fathers." (page 186-187)

Robert Tighe: " an excellent textuary and profound linguist." (page 189)

William Bedwell : " an eminent Oriental scholar. His epitaph mentions that he was 'for the Eastern tongues, as learned a man as most lived in these modern times.'" (page 189)

Edward Lively: " One of the best linguists in the world…Much dependence was placed on his surpassing skill in Oriental languages." (page 190)

Lawrence Chaderton: " He made himself familiar with the Latin, Greek and Hebrew tongues and was thoroughly skilled in them…Dr Chaderton was a powerful preacher who lived to the age of one hundred and three. A preaching engagement in his later years was described as follows: 'Having addressed his audience for full two hours by the glass, he paused and said, 'I will no longer trespass on your patience.' And now comes the marvel; for the whole congregation cried out with one consent 'For God's sake, go on!' " (page 191)

Francis Dillingham : "was so studied in the original languages that he participated in public debates in Greek." (page 191)

Thomas Harrison : Vice-Master of Trinity College in Cambridge. "On account of his exquisite skill in the Hebrew and Greek idioms, he was one of the chief examiners in the University of those who sought to be professors of these languages." (page 192)

John Harding : "At the time of his appointment to aid in the translation of the Bible, he had been Royal Professor of Hebrew in the University for thirteen years." (page 192)

John Reynolds : "Determined to explore the whole field and make himself master of the subject, he devoted himself to the study of the Scriptures in the original languages, and read all the Greek and Latin fathers, and all the ancient records of the Church." (page 193)

Dr. Henry Saville : "was known for his Greek and mathematical learning. He was so well known for his education, skilled in languages and knowledge of the Word, that he became Greek and mathematical tutor to Queen Elizabeth during the reign of her father, Henry VIII." (page 195)

Dr. Miles Smith : "the man responsible for the preface of the King James Bible. The preface is no longer printed in present copies of the Book. He had a knowledge of Greek and Latin fathers, as well as being an expert in Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic. 'Hebrew he had at his finger's end.' And so was the Ethiopic tongue." (page 195)

"It should be noted that these men were qualified in the readings of the church fathers which prevented them from being 'locked' to the manuscripts, causing earlier readings to be overlooked. This is vastly better than the methods used by modern translators. It should also be recognised that these men did not live in 'ivory towers.' They were men who were just as renowned for their preaching ability as they were for their esteemed education. It is a lesson in humility to see such men of great spiritual stature call themselves 'poor instruments to make God's Holy Truth to be yet more and more known.' " (Ref:B10)

William Grady backs up this evidence:

The men on the translation committee of the King James Bible were, without dispute, the most learned men of their day and vastly qualified for the job which they undertook. They were overall both academically qualified by their cumulative knowledge and spiritually qualified by their exemplary lives…

William John Bois was only five years old, when his father taught him to read Hebrew. By the time he was six, he could not only write the same, but in a fair and elegant character. At age fifteen, he was already a student at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was renowned for corresponding with his superiors in Greek." (Ref:E7)


Why the King James Version Should be Retained.

This is so important an issue that I will again quote from Edward F Hills' book The King James Version Defended pages 218-219

"But, someone may reply, even if the King James Version needs only a few corrections, why take the trouble to make them?

Why keep on with the old King James and its 17th century language, its thee and thou and all the rest?

Granted the Textus Receptus is the best text but why not make a new translation of it in the language of today?

In answer to these objections there are several facts which must be pointed out.

In the first place , the English of the King James Version is not the English of the early 17th century. To be exact, it is not the type of English that was ever spoken anywhere.
It is biblical English, which was not used on ordinary occasions even by the translators who produced the King James Version.

As H Wheeler Robinson (1940) pointed out, one need only compare the preface written by the translators with the text of the their translation to feel the difference in style.

And the observations of W A Irwin (1952) are to the same support.

The King James Version, he reminds us, owes its merit, not to 17th century English - which was very different - but to its faithful translation of the original.
Its style is that of the Hebrew and of the New Testament Greek.

Even in their use of thee and thou the translators were not following 17th century English usage but biblical usage, for at the time these translators were doing their work these singular forms used in the 13th century, had already been replaced by the plural you in polite conversation

In the second place ,

Those who talk about translating the Bible into the language of today never define what they mean by their expression. What is the language of today?

The language of 1881 is not the language of today, nor the language of 1901, nor even the language of 1971, nor 2009

In none of these languages, we are told, can we communicate with today's youth.

There are even some who feel that the best way to translate the Bible into the language of today is to convert it into folk songs.

Accordingly, in some contemporary youth conferences and even worship services there is little or no Bible reading but only crude kinds of vocal music accompanied by vigorous piano and strumming guitars.

But in contrast to these absurdities the language of the King James Version is enduring diction which will remain as long as the English language remains, in other words, throughout the foreseeable future.

In the third place, the current attack on the King James Version and the promotion of modern-speech versions is discouraging the memorisation of the Scriptures, especially by children.

Why memorise or require your children to memorise something that is out of date and about to be replaced by something new and better? And why memorise a modern version when there are so many to choose from? Hence even in conservative churches children are growing up densely ignorant of the holy Bible because they are not encouraged to hide its life-giving words in their hearts.

In the fourth place, modern-speech Bibles are unhistorical and irreverent.
The Bible is not a modern, human book. It is not as new as the morning newspaper, and no translation should suggest this.

If the Bible were this new, it would not be the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible is an ancient, divine Book, which nevertheless is always new because in it God reveals Himself.

Hence the language of the Bible should be venerable as well as intelligible, and the King James Version fulfils these two requirements better than any other Bible in English. Hence it is the King James Version which converts sinners soundly and makes of them diligent Bible students.

In the fifth place, modern-speech Bibles are unscholarly. The language of the Bible has always savoured of the things of heaven rather than the things of earth. It has always been biblical rather than contemporary and colloquial.

Many years ago this fact was denied by E J Goodspeed and others who were publishing their modern versions. On the basis of the papyrus discoveries which had recently been made in Egypt it was said that the New Testament authors wrote in the everyday Greek of their own times. This claim, however, is now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration.

As R M Grant (1963) admits, the New Testament writers were saturated with the Septuagint and most of them were familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures. Hence their language was not actually that of the secular papyri of Egypt but biblical.

Hence New Testament versions must be biblical and not contemporary and colloquial like Goodspeed's version.

Finally in the sixth place , the King James Version is the historic Bible of English-speaking Protestants. Upon it God, working providentially, has placed the stamp of His approval through the usage of many generations of Bible-believing Christians. Hence, if we believe in God's providential preservation of the Scriptures, we will retain the King James Version, for in doing so we will be following the clear leading of the Almighty." (Ref: G3)



MODERN VERSIONS & TRANSLATORS

Most, if not all, modern translations are based on the Revised Version (1881-5) which, as we have already learned, was influenced throughout by the Alexandrian manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. In effect there really are only Two English language Bibles to choose from.

The King James Version: which is based on the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Majority Greek Text.

The Revised Version: which is based on the Minority Text. This version has spawned a whole generation of inaccurate translations: which, like their unholy mother the RV, all rely heavily on the Minority Text.

I list a few of the 100+ modern Bibles which followed in the trail of the Revised Version of 1881-5:
The American Standard Version (1901)
The Moffatt Bible (1935)
The Revised Standard Version (1952)
The Amplified Bible (1958-64)
The Jerusalem Bible (1966)
The New International Version (1966)
The New English Bible (1970)
The New American Bible (1970)
J B Phillips' New Testament (1972)
New American Standard Version (1971)
The Today’s English Version - Good News Bible (1976 and 1994)
The New International Version (1978)
New Jerusalem Bible (1985)
The New King James Version (1984)

As Samuel Gipp so succinctly puts it:

All modern translations, such as the New American Standard Version, are linked to the Revised Version of 1952, which is a revision of the American Standard Version, an American creation growing from the English Revised Version of 1881." (Ref: B11)

The Revised Version Committee

It is true that many of the Revised Version's (RV) committee members were godly scholars: but they cannot be compared with the King James Version's committee when it comes to extreme reverence for the Word of God. W Scott, writing over 100 years ago, makes this enlightening comment concerning the RV committee.

The movement for a revision of the authorised version of the Holy Scriptures commenced on May 6,1870, in the Convocation of Canterbury. An influential committee was at once formed, consisting mainly of distinguished scholars and divines within the pale of the Established Church, but with power to consult or add to their number eminent Biblical scholars of all denominations. Many of its members were truly eminent for godliness and of distinguished ability, but it may be gravely questioned whether the constitution of the Committee as a whole may be compared with that nominated by King James, for piety and extreme reverence for the Word of God." (But who may judge this so. Editor ) (Ref: A9)


Sad to say the revision committee when faced with a choice between Textus Receptus and the corrupt Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, usually chose the Egyptian manuscripts. To be sure the Egyptian codices, written on vellum, were in far better physical condition than the papyrus or parchment MSS. But beauty, as pointed out earlier, is no indication of character.

In Part Two we will examine some 80+ texts which have been seriously corrupted by these Egyptian codices. Two of the revision committee's most prominent translators were:

Brooke Foss Westcott
Fenton John Anthony Hort

Brooke Foss Westcott

Westcott was a Cambridge scholar who played a leading role in the production of the Revised Version. A very brief look at this man's spiritual standing is sufficient to tell us that the Almighty would never have used him in the preservation of His Word. Before anyone blindly accepts Westcott's decisions, he/she should consider what this man believed. The following statements by Westcott, (from the book Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott) are quoted in William Grady's book Final Authority:
"I never read of the account of a miracle but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it." (page 216)
"Oh the weakness of my faith compared with that of others! So wild, so sceptical am I. I cannot yield." (page 217)
"O Marie , (his wife's name) as I wrote the last word, I could not help asking what am I? Can I claim to be a believer?" (page 217)
"It seems as if I am inclined to learn nothing; I must find out all myself, and then I am satisfied, but that simple faith and obedience which so many enjoy, I fear will never be mine." (page 217)
"What a wild storm of unbelief seems to have seized my whole system." (page 217)
"If you make a decided conviction of the absolute infallibility of the N.T. practically a sine qua non for co-operation, I fear I could not join you, even if you were willing to forget your fears about the origin of the Gospels." (page 230)

Rev. Gipp has this to say about Westcott:

We have in Brooke Foss Westcott a man who believed in communal living; a man who believed that the second coming of Christ was spiritual, heaven was a state of the mind, prayers for the dead were permissible in private devotions, and that Christ came to bring peace through international disarmament. He believed in purgatory and admiration for Mary, and he thought the Bible was like any other book.
This is the man who walked into the Revision Committee and sat in judgement of our Bible. He thought he saw room for improvement in the Authorised Version and offered a pro-Roman Greek text with which to correct it.
The ironic thing is that Bible-believing Christians, educators and preachers, who would never agree with his theology, have for years exalted his opinion of the Greek as nearly infallible.

These facts alone should be reason enough to condemn Westcott and Hort, their Greek Text and the MSS which they used to arrive at such a text. But let us look at their actions concerning the molesting of the pure words of the King James Bible, in favour of Rome. Saddest of all, we have in Brooke Foss Westcott a man who neither believed in salvation by grace nor ever experienced it. There is no record in his 'Life and Letters' that he ever accepted Christ as his personal Saviour." (Ref: B9We have in Brooke Foss Westcott a man who believed in communal living; a man who believed that the second coming of Christ was spiritual, heaven was a state of the mind, prayers for the dead were permissible in private devotions, and that Christ came to bring peace through international disarmament. He believed in purgatory and admiration for Mary, and he thought the Bible was like any other book.
This is the man who walked into the Revision Committee and sat in judgement of our Bible. He thought he saw room for improvement in the Authorsed Version and offered a pro-Roman Greek text with which to correct it.

The ironic thing is that Bible-believing Christians, educators and preachers, who would never agree with his theology, have for years exalted his opinion of the Greek as nearly infallible.

These facts alone should be reason enough to condemn Westcott and Hort, their Greek Text and the MSS which they used to arrive at such a text. But let us look at their actions concerning the molesting of the pure words of the King James Bible, in favour of Rome. Saddest of all, we have in Brooke Foss Westcott a man who neither believed in salvation by grace nor ever experienced it. There is no record in his 'Life and Letters' that he ever accepted Christ as his personal Saviour." (Ref: B9



We can see from these quotations that Brooke Foss Westcott wasn't really a believer in the Almighty or in His inspired Scriptures. By his own admission he was a sceptic who doubted the infallibility of the New Testament and the miracles of Jesus. He was unable to give up the scepticism and unbelief that stormed his mind. He totally rejected the infallibility of Scripture and confessed that simple faith would never be his. These are warning signals! You ignore them at your peril!

Fenton John Anthony Hort


Hort was another leading translator of the Revised Version. Most of the other committee members were unfamiliar with the methods of textual criticism and dynamic equivalence which Westcott and Hort introduced to get their way. Besides, and this is a fact we all do well to remember, Westcott and Hort were theistic evolutionists. To them the Genesis account of creation was absolutely unacceptable. Darwin's book on the Origin of the Species was more to their liking.
David Fuller writes:



"Textual criticism cannot be divorced entirely from theology. No matter how great a Greek scholar a man may be, or no matter how great an authority on the textual evidence, his conclusions must always be open to suspicion if he does not accept the Bible as the very Word of God." (Ref: F2)


A quick look at what Hort wrote will leave one in no doubt but that he disbelieved the most basic Bible doctrine, that the universe was created by God in six literal days. He was also an ardent admirer of the Roman Church. Indeed only in October 1996 Pope John Paul 11 declared that "Today new discoveries lead one to acknowledge in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis… The convergence, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes a significant argument in favour of this theory." However, he added, "The soul was created directly by God." You may be sure that very soon the entire Roman Catholic Church will be following the Pope's lead in rejecting the Biblical account of the creation.

Hort believed in the evolutionary theory over a century ago. Here are a few statements of his from the Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort taken from page 223 of the book Which Bible?
"Have you read Darwin? How I should like to talk with you (Westcott) about it! In spite of difficulties, I am inclined to think it unanswerable. In any case it is a treat to read such a book."
"But the book which has most engaged me is Darwin. Whatever may be thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be contemporary with. I must work out and examine the argument more in detail, but at present my feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable."

Dr Frederick Maurice was an avowed heretic who instilled in Hort a love for the homosexual Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Hort writes of Maurice as follows: "He urged me to give the greatest attention to the Plato and Aristotle, and to make them the central points of my reading."
"…Anglicanism, though by no means without a sound standing, seems a poor and maimed thing beside great Rome."

In his book Defending the King James Bible Rev.D.A. Waite, Th.D, Ph.D writes on page 41 as follows:


The Westcott and Hort Text changes the Textus Receptus in over 5,600 places…My own personal count, as at August 2, 1984, using the Scrivener's GREEK NEW TESTAMENT referred to above, was 5,604changes that Westcott and Hort made to the Textus Receptus in their own Greek New Testament text.

Of these, 5604 alterations, I found
1,952 omissions (35%),
467 to be additions (8%), and
3185 to be changes (57%). In these 5604 places that were involved in these alterations, there were 4,366 more words included, making a total of 9970 Greek words that were involved. This means that in a Greek Text of 647 pages (such as Scrivener's text) this would average 15.4 words per page that were changed from the Received Text." (Ref: Q1)


Dr Henry M Morris, a founding father of the Institute for Creation Research, USA, made these telling comments concerning modern translators.


"As far as the Hebrew text developed by Rudolph Kittel is concerned, it is worth noting that Kittel was a German rationalist higher critic, rejecting Biblical inerrancy and firmly devoted to evolutionism

The men most responsible for alterations in the New Testament text were B.F.Westcott and F.J.A.Hort, whose Greek New Testament was largely updated by Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland. All these men were evolutionists.

Furthermore, Westcott and Hort denied Biblical inerrance and promoted spiritism and racism. Nestle and Aland, like Kittel, were German theological sceptics.
Westcott and Hort were also the most influential members of the English revision committee which produced the English Revised Version of the Bible. The corresponding American revision committee which developed the American Standard Version of 1901 was headed by another liberal evolutionist, Philip Schaff. Most new versions since that time have adopted the same presuppositions as those of the 19th century revisers…

So one of the serious problems with most modern English translations is that they rely heavily on Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible developed by liberals, rationalists and evolutionists, none of whom believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Is this how God would preserve His word? Would he not more likely have used devout scholars who believed in the absolute inerrancy and authority of the Bible?…

I believe therefore, after studying the, teaching and loving the Bible for over 55 years, that Christians - especially creationists - need to hang on to their old King James Bibles as long as they live. God has uniquely blessed its use in the great revivals, in the world-wide missionary movement and in the personal lives of believers, more so than He has with all the rest of the versions put together, and 'by their fruits ye shall know them' (Matthew 7:20). It is the most beautiful, most powerful and (I strongly believe), the most reliable of any that we have or ever will have, until Christ returns. " (Ref:N1)

The Revised Standard Version Committee
Few Protestants know that the Revised Standard Version (RSV) committee had Roman Catholic members on it: or that the RSV is the preferred choice of the Roman Church. I quote from the preface of this Bible:



The Revised Standard Version Bible committee is a continuing body, holding its meetings at regular intervals. It has become both ecumenical and international, with Protestant and Catholic active members who come from Great Britain, Canada and the United States."

Since most of the citations in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the first update of this catechism in some 400 years, are from the RSV, we can safely say that this translation has virtually become the official version of the Roman Church.

In effect, the aim of the translators is ecumenical. They want all the churches, yea all religions, to unite under one supreme authority - the Pope!

Several on the RSV committee regard the Scriptures as being on an equal footing as church TRADITION: for this is - and always has been - the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

The RSV committee, in other words, is vastly different from the Protestant committee which produced the King James Version. They are as different as chalk is from cheese. A brief look at some of the members of the RSV committee is startling to say the least. The following quotes are taken from Rev. Gipp's book An Understandable History of the Bible:
"Edgar Goodspeed was on the Revised Standard committee. Goodspeed did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. He looked at Jesus as a social reformer who gave his life as a martyr for a 'cause…' Goodspeed called Genesis the product of an 'Oriental story teller at his best.' " (page 197-198)
"Julius Brewer, another reviser, stated, 'The dates and figures found in the first five books of the Bible turn out to be altogether unreliable.' " (page 199)

"Henry Cadbury, another member of the Revised committee, believed that Jesus Christ was a just man who was subject to story telling. 'He was given to overstatements, in his case, not a personal idiosyncrasy, but a characteristic of the Oriental world.' " (page 199)

"Walter Bowie was another revisor who believed that the Old Testament was legend instead of fact. He says in reference to Abraham, 'The story of Abraham comes down from ancient times; and how much of it is fact and how much of it is legend, no one can positively tell.' " (page 199)

"Clarence Craig was one of the revisers who denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. 'It is to be remembered there were no eye witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus. No canonical gospel presumed to describe Jesus emerging from the tomb. The mere fact that a tomb was found empty was capable of many explanations. The very last one that would be credible to a modern man would be the explanation of a physical resurrection of the body.' " (page 200)

"William Sperry shows his dislike for the gospel of John in the following statement. 'Some of these sayings, it is true, come from the Fourth Gospel (John), and we do not press that gospel for too great verbal accuracy in its record of the sayings of Jesus.' " (page 201)

"William Irwin believed that the Jewish prophets inflated the position of God in the Bible. 'The prophets were forced by the disasters that befell to do some hard, painful thinking. They were forced by the history of their own times to revise their messages again and again in order to keep up with the progress of the age. The Assyrians and the Babylonians forced them to revise their conception of Yahweh from time to time until they finally made Him God of the universe.' " (page 201)

"Fleming James doubted the miracle of the Red Sea crossing. 'What really happened at the Red Sea WE CAN NO LONGER KNOW; but scholars are pretty well agreed that the narrative goes back to some striking and pretentious event which impressed Moses and the people with the belief that Yahweh had intervened to save them. The same may be said of the account of the plagues.' Concerning Elijah's action in 2 Kings 1:10, he said, 'The narrative of calling down fire from heaven upon soldiers sent to arrest him is plainly legendary.' " (page 201-202)

Some Christians flatly refuse to take account of these facts.

They contemptuously brush them aside as false or irrelevant.

But these are facts which can be proved and should not be ignored.

They are well documented statements and they are vital. In them we can see, and that very clearly, that the leading and most influential members of the Revision committee were confessed unbelievers.

They did not believe in the very fundamentals of the Christian faith: the creation account in Genesis, the account of the Exodus, the miracles of the prophets, the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection etc.
They selected hopelessly corrupt manuscripts which cast doubt on the time-honoured King James Version.
They have conflicting religious beliefs: some are Protestants and others are Roman Catholics
They have one aim - to unite all the churches.
How should Protestants who believe in the divine inspiration and preservation of Scripture evaluate this committee's work? I answer without hesitation: With grave suspicion!

JEHOVAH the Holy One of Israel, who initially gave us the Scriptures through His prophets and apostles of old, who carefully selected the King James Version translators on the basis of their faith and linguistic ability and has since blessed His Word for some 400 years, would certainly never, never change His methods and use translators who reject basic Bible doctrines such as the creation account in Genesis. Would the Almighty, who claims never to change (Malachi 3:6), now use unbelievers to re-translate the Bible? The very idea is preposterous, if not blasphemous. I am still aghast that it took me so long to learn these facts. I am even more astounded when Christians, who are given this information, continue to hold to their modern Bibles.


Dangerous Changes

Even the jots and tittles of the Bible are important. God has pronounced terrible woes upon the man who adds or takes away from the volume of inspiration. The Revisers apparently felt no constraint on this point, for they made 36,000 changes in the English of the King James Version, and very nearly 6,000 in the Greek Text.

Dr Ellicott, in submitting the Revised Version to the Southern Convocation in 1881, declared that they had made between eight and nine changes in every five verses, and in about every ten verses three of these were made for critical purposes. And for most of these changes the Vatican and Sinaitic Manuscripts are responsible.

As Canon Cook says: 'By far the greatest number of innovations, including those which give the severest shocks to our minds, are adopted on the authority of two manuscripts, or even on one manuscript, against the distinct testimony of all other manuscripts, uncial and cursive'…

The Vatican Codex …sometimes alone, generally in accord with the Sinaitic, is responsible for nine-tenths of the most striking innovations in the Revised Version…

There is a case where a little means much. 'If one wonders whether it is worth while' says Dr Robertson, speaking of the Revision, 'he must bear in mind that some of the passages in dispute are of great importance.' The Bible should more probably be compared to a living organism. Touch a part and you spoil it all. To cut a vital artery in a man might be touching a very small point, but death would come as truly as if he were blown to pieces." (Ref: F4)

Every Word
Every word in Scripture is important: infinitely more important than a bolt or rivet in a jet airliner; or a line of code in a life-saving computer program. If His Father's words were that important to our Saviour, yea every jot and title, how much more should they be to us in these end times.

Matthew 4:4
But he (Jesus) answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God..

Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Rev.22:18-19
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Dynamic Equivalence

Yes, God's words are important - vitally important. A translator must, therefore, translate God's words - all of them - and not assume that he understands the Almighty's thoughts and can change or delete the divine words to reflect what he thinks God meant.

The King James Version translators employed a 'word for word' translation technique. That is, they translated each Hebrew and Greek word as closely as possible into its English equivalent.

Modern translators chose a vastly different method called 'dynamic equivalence.' using this method the translator primarily endeavours to carry forward 'God's thoughts and intentions' without paying too much attention to His actual words. Using 'dynamic equivalence' in hundreds yea thousands of places, the modern translators have changed the very 'words of God' and replaced them with what, they think, God meant. In effect, dynamic equivalence is not true translation, but interpretation or paraphrase.

Writing in his highly recommended book Defending the King James Bible, Rev. D.A.Waite writes on page 105:

"A paraphrase makes no effort to carry over or translate the words of one language into the words of another language but rather to 're-state, interpret or translate with latitude.' Since this is the object of a paraphrase there's no assurance of fidelity in carrying-over exactly what is there in one language - no more and no less - into the other language, no more and no less. Therefore, paraphrase takes great liberty in doing any of these three things or all of them: ADDING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings;
SUBTRACTING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings; or
CHANGING words, phrases, ideas, thoughts or meanings. That is the essence of paraphrase, that is the essence of dynamic equivalence. So it is commentary, it is interpretation, it is not translation." (Ref: Q2)

SPIRITUAL POLLUTION
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We have seen that Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are corrupt and unholy manuscripts; that they were the work of unbelieving Egyptian scribes who amended, added to and deleted many portions of the true text and then palmed off their work as the Word of God.

These manuscripts were then taken up by sceptical translators, who didn't believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, to spawn a whole generation of new translations.

With these sobering facts in mind let us now consider a Biblical principle of which comparatively few Christians know anything. It concerns

SPIRITUAL POLLUTION, of how something unholy can pollute everything it touches. This little-known principle is described in the following passage:

Haggai 2:11
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying,
12 If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No.
13 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean
What does this symbolic drama, involving dedicated meat, bread and wine becoming unclean if touched by an unclean person, mean? What spiritual truth is the Almighty trying to put across in this passage? The answer, I believe, is as follows:

At its basic physical level it means that if an ancient Israelite believer, whilst carrying his consecrated tithes (flesh, bread, wine or oil) to the Temple, happened to come in contact with an unclean person (a leper or corpse for example) his offering would lose its holiness and would become unacceptable to God. It's like pure meat being infected with a disease virus: or like a cup of tea being polluted by a fly: or a computer hard disk being infected by a virus-laden floppy. In other words: unclean and unholy people or things pollute whatever they touch.

At its higher spiritual level it means that any sacred offering (prayer, charitable gift or act of worship) becomes unacceptable to God if the unholy element of unbelief motivates it.

Does this spiritual principle, that diseased things pollute everything they touch, apply to Bible translations? I'm certain it does.

The Bible is the Bread of Life, the strong spiritual meat for the soul. It can also become spiritually unholy, unclean and unacceptable to God if its words are infected by the unbelief of a scribe or translator or twisted out of context by the leprous spirit of Satan. That is exactly what happened to the holy manuscripts which were carried down to Egypt.

First: the holy texts were corrupted by unbelieving scribes who did not recognise their divine origin . As far as they were concerned the Scriptures were merely the writings of a religious group called Christians based initially in Jerusalem and Antioch. Thus, in the process of copying, Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were corrupted in hundreds of places with deletions, additions and alterations, till they themselves became unholy, unclean and unacceptable to God.

Second: we see many unbelieving translators daring to use those corrupt codices to translate the Word of God: men who rejected the fact that every word of Scripture is God-breathed and, therefore, absolutely true. Always bear in mind that these men were professed unbelievers and evolutionists.

And so the high-level spiritual lesson of Haggai 2:11-13 has become a living reality in these last days.
First: the sacred texts were corrupted by unbelieving Egyptian copyists and Second: unbelieving modern translators used those corrupt manuscripts to complete their work. The end product was a deluge of unholy modern Bible versions.
That is why we should never refer to modern translations as "Holy Bibles" because they are far from holy: and most certainly the Spirit of the Holy One of Israel was not involved in their production. They are unholy counterfeits posing as the Word of God! We ignore those two facts at our peril. Indeed, these are the two main reasons why I have set aside all modern English translations of the Bible and have returned to the King James Version.

12. FAMINE OF THE WORD OF GOD

Bible prophecy never ceases to amaze me. I used to wonder how come the Bible predicted a famine in the last days for the Words of the Lord, when there are still millions of "Bibles" being printed every year. Are not Christian shops, churches and homes bursting with Bible translations and paraphrases to suite every taste? What does this prophecy mean?

Amos 8:11
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD

I wonder no longer, because now I know that the predicted famine of the Word of God has already begun. The Real Bible is fast disappearing from Christian churches and homes. To be sure there are scores of modern translations available: but the Real Word of God, the King James Bible, is comparatively hard to find and seldom used. Soon it will be as scarce as is bread during a literal famine.

A Solemn Warning
In the closing chapter of his book The King James Version Defended, Edward F Hills pens this solemn warning. We all do well to take heed.

In regard to Bible versions many contemporary Christians are behaving like spoiled and rebellious children. They want a Bible version that pleases them no matter whether it pleases God or not. 'We want a Bible version in our own idiom,' they clamour. 'We want a Bible that talks to us in the same way in which we talk to our friends over the telephone. We want an informal God, no better educated than ourselves, with a limited vocabulary and a taste for modern slang.'

And having thus registered their preference, they go their several ways. Some of them unite with the modernists in using the R.S.V. or N.E.B. Others deem the N.A.S.V. or the N.I.V. more evangelical. Still others opt for the T.E.V. or the
Living Bible.

But God is bigger than you are dear friend, and the Bible version which you must use is not a matter for you to decide according to your whims and prejudices. It has already been decided for you by the workings of God's special providence. If you ignore this providence and choose to adopt one of the modern versions, you will be taking the first step in the logic of unbelief. For the arguments which you must use to justify your choice are the same arguments which unbelievers use to justify theirs, the same method.

If you adopt one of these modern versions, you must adopt the naturalistic New Testament textual criticism upon which it rests. In other words, naturalistic textual criticism regards the special, providential preservation of the Scriptures as of no importance for the study of the New Testament text. But if we concede this, then it follows that the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures is likewise unimportant. For why is it important that God should infallibly inspire the Scriptures, if it is not important that He should preserve them by His special providence?


Where, oh where, dear brother or sister, did you ever get the idea that it is up to you to decide which Bible version you will receive as God's holy Word?

As long as you harbour this false notion, you are little better than an unbeliever.

As long as you cherish this erroneous opinion, you are entirely on your own.

For you the Bible has no authority, only that which your rebellious reason deigns to give it. For you there is no comfort, no assurance of faith. Cast off, therefore, this carnal mind that leads to death! Put on the spiritual mind that leads to life and peace! Receive by faith the true Text of God's Holy Word, which has been preserved down through the ages by His special providence and now is found in the Masoretic Hebrew text, the Greek Textus Receptus

Concerning the peculiar, yea dangerous, mind-set of the Westcott and Hort followers both past and present, Dean Burgon wrote:

Phantoms of the imagination [That's where they begin.] henceforth usurp the place of substantial forms. Interminable doubts, - wretched misbelief, - childish credulity, -judicial blindness, - are the inevitable sequel and penalty. The mind that has long allowed misbelief in a systematic trifling with Evidence, is observed to fall the easiest prey to Imposture. It has doubted what is demonstrably true: has rejected what is indubitably Divine. Henceforth, it is observed to mistake its own fantastic creations for historical facts; to believe things which rest on insufficient evidence, or on no evidence at all." (Ref: P2)

Martyrs for the Word of God

Multiplied millions of true believers in ages past have died for the Word of God.

Publishing the Bible was a major crime. To possess a Bible, or even portions of one, placed a Christian in a very dangerous position. During the dark ages the situation was immeasurably worse. One has only to study the history of the

Waldensian Church to see how dangerous it was for true believers to possess the Scriptures. Multitudes perished by sword, famine, beatings, burning, hangings and torture. Many were slain with Bibles tied around their necks. One of the greatest Christian classics on this subject is Fox's Book of Martyrs: a book which in ancient days was chained - alongside the Bible - to the reading desks in many British churches. Make time to study this book. It tells of martyrs who died in their tens of thousands - yea millions - all because they lived and loved the teachings of the Real Word of God. Here is a quote from page 179 of this masterpiece concerning William Tyndale, the first man to translate the Bible into English from the original languages:


Tyndale thought with himself no way more to conduce thereunto , than if the Scripture were turned into the vulgar speech, that the poor people might read and see the simple plain Word of God.

He perceived that it was not possible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scriptures were so plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue that they might see the meaning of the text; for else, whatsoever truth should be taught them, the enemies of the truth would quench it, either with reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making, founded without all ground of Scripture; or else juggling with the text, expounding it in such a sense as it were impossible to gather of the text, if the right meaning thereof were seen
In the book of Revelation we read that the Apostle John was banished to the island of Patmos for the Word of God!

Rev.1:9
I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the WORD OF GOD, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.



The prophecy of the Revelation goes on to tell of a great company of believers who would live and die for the WORD OF GOD! a martyrdom which is to be repeated in these last days. I will not exhaust the reader with frightening details: but this is what the prophecy says.

Note carefully that these martyrs and their end-time kinsman were - and still are to be - slain for the WORD OF GOD! The main themes of the Word of God are the Son of God (Yeshua the Messiah) and the Law of God (the Torah). These martyrs, past and future, are slain because they loved the living and written Word of God and kept the commandments recorded in it.
Revelation 6: 9: And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain FOR THE WORD OF GOD, and for the testimony which they held:

10: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

11: And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed AS THEY WERE, should be fulfilled.

Revelation 12: 17: And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Revelation 22: 14: Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

The Basic Bible Study
" 'The textual critic J. Harold Greenlee has said, 'New Testament textual criticism is, therefore, the basic Bible study, a prerequisite to all other Biblical and theological work.'

This is not an overstatement of the importance of this issue. As believers we have the responsibility in our day and age of proclaiming the Gospel, the pure Gospel, the undiluted Gospel.

We also have the right and privilege of being the next in the line of protecting God's Word and proclaiming it. Each individual Christian will make a decision on this matter, of which text is correct. Unmistakably, this decision will be made, consciously or unconsciously, by every single believer.

This decision is made when the believer decides which edition of the Bible he will use to read and study; and if he chooses a translation based upon corrupted manuscripts which reflect views which omit the deity of Christ, His blood atonement, His virgin birth, then the decision has been made to extend this error to the next generation.

If, however, today's Christian chooses a translation of the Word of God which is translated from the Traditional Text of the New Testament, the decision has been made to continue to see God's working through His providence in providing His Word in its complete form, not only for this generation but for those to come." (Ref:L1)


In my opinion, the quote you have just read is one of the most important in this whole publication, that
'New Testament textual criticism is, therefore, the BASIC BIBLE STUDY, a prerequisite to all other Biblical and theological work.'

If you stop to think about it, you will see how true this is: that before we even begin to study any book claiming to be 'The Holy Bible' we should check to see if that really is the case. I must confess that, like multiplied millions of other Christians, I just didn't do that.

I blindly accepted every modern translation as the Word of God; some better or worse than others: but all equally holy. How wrong I was! How terribly wrong! But I thank the Almighty that He mercifully pardoned my ignorance, allowed me to live through a massive heart attack and then opened my eyes to the error of my ways - before it was too late!

I could so easily have died on the operating table. God knows the surgeon warned me of that possibility. But JEHOVAH answered my prayer and allowed me to live and even to place this article on the Internet.

Praise His holy name!

[John]

Summary
########
PART ONE has brought many vital facts to your attention: the most important of which is that unbelieving copyists and unbelieving translators have resulted in the production of millions of modern English Bibles which are nothing more than counterfeits of the Real Word of God - the KING JAMES VERSION. Let me now summarise Part One.
Two great deceptions have now overtaken mankind.

The first is the unproved Theory of Evolution

The second is the Counterfeit Evolving Bibles that are currently flooding the market.

Both cast doubt on the accuracy of the Real Word of God, commonly known as the Authorised Version or King James Bible.

Unbelievers and believers alike are in grave danger of being taken in by one or the other of these deceptions. But the Almighty is faithful. He who inspired the Bible in the first place is well able to preserve His Word. Indeed He has preserved it down through the ages as promised: The Word of the Lord abides forever!

The original inspired autographs (Masters) which were penned by the prophets and apostles of old, have long since disappeared. They literally fell apart through constant use and are no more. There are none in existence today.

Before the Old Testament Masters were buried, they were copied by faithful scribes. The Old Testament scribes were the Aaronic priests and later the Masorites. They took the utmost care to insure that every copy was as perfect as humanly possible: and even a single error was enough to have an entire manuscript rejected.

Sad to say the New Testament copyists were not nearly as meticulous as their Old Testament counterparts. Nevertheless this deficiency was amply compensated by the vast number of copies made: many thousands of which are still in existence. So the truth can easily be detected in the majority of texts.

There are currently in excess of 5250 Greek manuscripts in existence. They are held in various museums and libraries of the world.
If we add the 1800+ copies of the versions and the 86,000 scriptural citations of the Church Fathers, we have a sizeable body of documentary evidence to prove the accuracy of the Scriptures. These ensure that small errors are soon detected. Bear in mind that the Almighty promised to preserve His Word forever! He is doing just that and is fulfilling His promise which says: the Word of the Lord abideth forever!

A version is a translation made directly from the original masters: not to be confused with a translation, or a translation of a translation. There are many foreign language versions of the Scriptures. To name a few: the Penutsta, Old Latin Vulgate, Italic, Gothic, Old Syriac, Armenian, Waldensian, Luther's German Bible and the Authorised King James Version.

Textus Receptus (the Received Text), also known as the Byzantine Text or Majority Text, is the most reliable Greek text in existence. It is based on the vast majority of extant Greek manuscripts.

That is why it is often called the Majority Text. Textus Receptus does not add to, omit or mutilate the Scriptures as does the Minority Text. All the versions mentioned at point 13.7 are in line with Textus Receptus.

Because of its purity, the Majority Text was used by all the 15th, 16th and 17th century Protestant Reformers of Europe to make their translations. Their choice of Textus Receptus attracted the wrath of the Roman Church and tens of thousands of true believers who studied and published the real Bible were martyred as a result.

The Minority Text, by comparison, is dangerously corrupt!

The two most prominent codices in this group are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These two manuscripts are beautiful to look at and are in excellent condition simply because they are written on vellum and were seldom used, even by their custodians.
But they are dangerously corrupt! They are covered with hundreds of amendments made over a long period; amendments which prove that even their owners knew they were hopelessly inaccurate.
They omit scores of words, verses and passages of Scripture.

They are totally unreliable and for this reason were rejected by discerning believers down though the centuries. These two manuscripts outlasted the earliest papyrus copies of the Scriptures. But to suggest that they are accurate is absurd. Remember that early versions of the Scriptures, such as the Penutsta and Italic, are some 200 years older than these two codices. So the 'oldest is best' argument doesn't apply here.

John Burgon was a Greek scholar who personally examined these early codices and exposed their deficiencies in no uncertain terms. The Christian church would do well to read what Burgon has written. The Misleading Footnotes that appear in most modern translations ALL cast doubt on the accuracy of the King James Version. But these footnotes are themselves dangerously misleading.

The Authorised King James Version is based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus. It is a version in the true sense of the term, being based on the original languages. Its style is biblical rather than contemporary. It is infinitely more accurate than any modern translation on the market today.

Remember that the translators of the King James Version were men of faith, piety and learning. They firmly believed that the text they were translating was the very Word of God! Their like has seldom - if ever - been equalled, let alone surpassed. The Almighty brought together this team of faithful, holy and capable linguists to produce the greatest classic in the annals of English literature - the King James Bible. It is the version that God has endorsed and blessed
for many years. It should be kept. It is, in fact, the Real Word of God - the HOLY BIBLE!

By comparison Modern Versions of the Bible cannot be trusted. They are dangerously corrupt! Their renderings are influenced by the distorted codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which were the product of unbelieving scribes. Moreover, many of the most prominent RV and RSV translators, Westcott and Hort in particular, were professed unbelievers - evolutionists! They rejected the creation account in Genesis, the Exodus story, the crossing of the Red sea account, the miracles of Elijah, the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, his resurrection and his promised second advent. Their colossal unbelief was only matched by that of the unbelieving Egyptian scribes who, in the first place, produced codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. These two facts: the unbelief of the scribes and the unbelief of the modern translators are warning signals! Heed them.

SPIRITUAL INFECTION / FAMINE:
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The RV committee's choice of corrupt manuscripts, and the unbelief of its most prominent members (Westcott and Hort), infected their work and has resulted in scores of Unholy Bibles flooding the market and the churches. I honestly believe that Christians who knowingly continue to study these counterfeit Bibles are condoning the errors they contain. By doing so they not only place themselves in grave moral danger, but also encourage spiritual deception! The Bible says: Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

The twin moral onslaught of the theory of evolution and the counterfeit Bibles have made havoc of billions of souls. Together they have resulted in outright atheism on the one hand and an enfeebled Christianity on the other. Be warned by these revelations! They are placed on the Internet to reach millions. Do not be slow to take the warning! Currently the world is in the grip of a mighty spiritual famine: a famine of the REAL WORD OF GOD!

History tells us that countless thousands of true believers in centuries past were martyred for their love and loyalty to the WORD OF GOD. Prophecy tells us that another end-time persecution is due to occur and for the selfsame reason - the WORD OF GOD! We all have a responsibility to ourselves and others to believe, study and live by the teachings found in the REAL WORD OF GOD, THE AUTHORISED KING JAMES VERSION. My sincere prayer is that "The Almighty will grant you the understanding, the humility, the courage and the power to escape the deceptions of the Devil and to stand up for the Truth!" Amen.

Elder David B Loughran

Part Two
#######
INTRODUCTION
##############
In Part Two we will consider some 80+ texts in the King James Version which have been corrupted in the Revised Version upon which most modern 'Bibles' are based. You are now invited to check the particular translation you are using against these texts. To appreciate this exercise, carefully note the words printed in bold text. They will highlight the:
Missing words in the modern translations.
Missing verses in the modern translations.
[Bracketed verses or passages] with
Misleading Notes which all cast doubt on the KJV.
Critical Mistranslations.

Following some of the texts below is a brief Comment. You should, however, also pause at texts which are not commented on and think about the effect of the error being pointed out.

THE PROOF
##########

Genesis 12:18 And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife? 19 Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife.
Comment: Modern translations say: 'Why did you say she is my sister, so that I took her to be my wife.' This is a serious mistranslation. It implies that Pharaoh had sexual intercourse with Sarah and that the plagues that the Almighty had sent on Pharaoh's household to prevent just such an occurrence, had proved futile.
Genesis 49: 10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
Comment: The word Shiloh, referring to Christ the Peacemaker, is missing.

Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Commenting on this amazing error, Jasper Ray writes: "Here we have 'virgin' versus 'young woman.' In the Septuagint, the Bible of the Greeks, the word 'almah' in Isaiah 7:14 is translated virgin, as in the King James.
Almah is used seven times in the Old testament, and always means virgin.

In the RSV the words 'or virgin' being added in the footnote, could easily lead one to believe the term 'young women' was inserted in the text for a subtle purpose, thus making it possible for the orthodox, virgin birth believers, and those who deny the virgin birth to come together. In this way the 'ground' is being prepared for the progress of the Ecumenical Movement (i.e. the plan to unite all religious systems into one great body." (Ref: D4)

Matthew 6:13 … And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
Comment: This last part (in bold type) of the Lord's prayer is either [bracketed] as though the phrase should not be there, or the phrase is left out altogether, which is even worse. Remember the warning in Revelation 22:18-19.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Comment: The word begotten is also omitted in the following texts: John 1:14, 1:18, 3:18.

Matthew17: 21: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Comment: [Whole verse missing]

Matt.18: 11: For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.
Comment:[Whole verse missing]

Mark 7:16: If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
Comment: [Whole verse missing]

Mark 15:28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.
Comment: The whole verse is missing or bracketed, thereby casting doubt on the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12 which tells of the Saviour's crucifixion with transgressors.

Romans 16: 24: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Comment: [Whole verse missing]

Acts 10:30 and 1 Corinthians 7:5.
Comment: the requirement to 'fast' is omitted. Hills comments further: 'These omissions are probably due to the influence of Clement of Alexandria and other Gnostics, who interpreted fasting in the spiritual sense and were opposed to literal fasting. (page 138)

Mark 16:9-20. Comment: These 12 verses are all omitted in many modern translations; or they are [bracketed] and noted that they are 'not included in the oldest and best manuscripts;' or 'some ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8.' The fact is, the very opposite is true. These 12 verses are all included in the oldest and best manuscripts: best that is, not in appearance, but in telling the truth!

These 12 verses are also present in ancient Bible versions (the Old Latin Bible, the Waldensian Bible, the Sahidic and the Gothic versions) which are all older than codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. These 12 verses are quoted by the ancients such as: Papias, Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Tertullian and even by Jerome! So to say that they 'do not appear in the best manuscripts,' or 'in the most reliable early manuscripts' is untrue.

Matthew 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Comment: Pause awhile, dear reader, and try to imagine the effect this deletion has already had on the morals of our society. It has already opened the floodgates of adultery. See SBS articles on Adultery, Marriage and Divorce for more detail.

Matthew 20: 16: So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Matthew 27: 35: And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

Comment: A powerful Messianic prophecy is here chopped to pieces. Fulfilled prophecy is the strongest evidence that the Bible is the Word of God. By failing to link this verse with Psalm 22:18 that link is broken.

Mark 1.14: Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Comment: The Saviour's main work in coming to earth was to preach the gospel of the kingdom; to invite mankind to enter the Kingdom of God. His life, death, resurrection and second coming will climax when ransomed believers enter the Kingdom of God. By deleting the words 'of the Kingdom' the whole objective of the Messiah's coming is missed.

Mark 2: 17: When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Comment: Repentance is not a popular word these days. It means being sorry for committing sin, for breaking God's law. Is repentance important? Certainly it is. Jesus said: 'I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

(Luke:13:3) And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent. (Acts 17:30) Failure to repent will lead to eternal death! Why was this important word omitted?

Mark 6:11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgement, than for that city.
Comment: Leaving out this reference to Sodom is obviously a very serious omission!

Mark 9: 24: And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
Comment: Most modern translations leave out the word Lord. Others, posing as translations read: Sir, I believe…

Mark 9:44 and 46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 11:10 And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:

Mark 13: 14: But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains.

Comment: This vital pointer to the prophecy of Daniel is deleted. Comparatively few Christians know that Daniel wrote several end-time prophecies. The prophet Daniel is mentioned only twice in the New Testament: in this verse and in

Matthew 24:15. Of these two pointers to Daniel the prophet, one has been deleted.
Comment: Whole verse is missing.

Luke 2:33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.
Comment: Note the subtle change in many translations of the name Joseph to father. It reflects disbelief of the fact that the Father of our Saviour Jesus Christ is in fact the Almighty God of Israel, not Joseph.

Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
Comment: Another dangerous deletion which robs God's Word of its vital role in life. Also note the special reference to 'every word.'

Luke 4: 8: And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Luke 23:42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
Messiah's Ascension to Heaven
Many translations (we can hardly call them versions for they are merely revisions of the Revised Version) reflect disbelief in the resurrection and bodily ascension to heaven of Jesus Christ; or even that he came from heaven in the first place. Consider the next few verses.

Luke 24 :6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee.

Luke 24:12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

Comment: [Whole verse missing]

Luke 24:51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.

John 3:13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

John 3:15. "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
Comment: Do you know what the "B" (Vaticanus) and "Aleph" (Sinaiticus) manuscripts do to the three words, "should not perish"? They omit them. Try finding those three vital words in the NASV.

1 Cor.15:47: The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

John 16:16: A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.

Acts 2: 30: Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne.

Comment: Here we have an extremely corrupt rendering in many modern translations. God swore an oath to king David that from his loins would come the Christ the Anointed One - the Messiah! What have the modern translators done with this divine oath? They have changed it to 'God would seat (or place) one of his (David's) descendants on his throne.' Pause dear reader and consider this error. I ask, why did God bother with an oath, when the likelihood of one of David's descendants sitting on his throne was inevitable? There was absolutely no need for an oath to a man who had so many sons. But to promise that one of David's sons would be the resurrected Messiah and would sit on David's throne is an entirely different matter. The divine oath has now become tremendously meaningful. But alas! the modern translators have made God's oath into something quite unnecessary by changing the word Christ to a descendant.

John 4: 42: And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

John 6: 47: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
Comment: Those two vital missing words 'on me' have been left out of most modern translations. The corrupted text now implies that all who believe - whatever or whoever they believe - will have everlasting life. A greater falsehood is hard to imagine. Pause and think about it!

John 7:8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.
Comment: By removing the word 'yet' the NASV has turned Jesus into a liar: for in it he said he was not going to the feast, but went. Other modern translations [bracket] the word 'yet' and add the note 'Some early manuscripts do not have 'yet.' ' This Note, by implication, means that, at best, the Saviour didn't know what he was doing, or, at worst, was telling a blatant lie.

John 7:53-8:11 All 12 verses are [bracketed] and/or noted as 'not being in the best manuscripts.'
Comment: Another untruth! These 12 verses are all in the best ancient versions; which are some 200 years older than codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

Acts 7:37 This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. The Divinity of Jesus Christ

Acts 8: 37: 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.

Comment: It is virtually impossible to attribute the omission of this vital statement to anything else than disbelief in the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The divinity of Jesus is a foundation doctrine of the Christian Church. To attack this doctrine is heresy of the most serious order. Every modern translation that omits this vital fact (that Jesus is the Son of God or brackets this confession), regardless of its other merits, is unworthy of study. It should be set aside by all seekers of Truth.

1 Tim.3:16 … God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
Comment: Modern translations have here substituted the word God with he: thereby undermining the greatest truth in all the Bible: that the Almighty God actually came down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yes, Jesus Christ is God in a human body, God incarnate, God manifest in the flesh! This is the foundation truth of the Christian faith that God actually came down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. But alas! the modern translators have either left the word God out or changed the word to he; all because they did not really believe that Jesus Christ is God manifest in human flesh. Pause dear reader and consider that enormous error. That single mistranslation should be enough to set aside any book posing as the Word of God.

Romans 14:10: …for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ..

Comment: Here again the disbelief of the modern translators that Christ is the One before whom all the world will stand at the Judgement. They have replaced Christ with God.

John 9: 35: Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
Comment: Many translations have changed this to read: Dost thou believe in the Son of Man? Once again, this is evidence of doubt that Jesus is the Son of God!

Acts 16: 31: And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Acts 17: 26: And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation..

Comment: Most modern translations have either omitted the word 'blood' or replaced it with the word 'man.' I ask you, how is it possible for any translator to confuse the word blood with man? Any translator who confuses these two words has obviously opted for a corrupt manuscript. He may not have known it, but that act has made his work totally unacceptable to God.

In the Good News for Modern Man Bible the word 'blood' is omitted 15 times. (Matthew 27:4, 27:25, 27:25, Acts 5:28, Acts 20:28, Romans 3:25, Romans 5:9, Ephesians 1:7, Ephesians 2:13, Colossians 1:14, Colossians 1:20, Hebrews 10:19, 1 Peter 1:9, Revelation 1:5, Revelation 5:9). Bear in mind that it is the blood of Jesus that makes atonement for our souls. (Leviticus 17:11)

Acts 20: 25: And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more
.
Acts 23: 9: And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.

Romans 9: 28: For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.

Romans 13: 9: For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Comment: Of the four commandments Jesus quoted, one has been left out.

1 Cor.7: 39: The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her
husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.
Comment: The law of the Almighty has always been under attack, even within the church. This is another example where God's law is ignored.

1 Cor.10: 28: But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.

1 Cor.11:24: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
Comment: The new covenant Passover (communion) service is one of the most sacred in all the year: where the bread and the wine represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ - Yeshua the Messiah. Pause awhile dear reader and try to consider the danger this omission (take, eat) represents.
Missing Name or Title

Many texts in the modern translations omit the Saviour's name (Jesus) or Christ, which means the Anointed One - the Messiah. Is it important? Very important; because by omitting such information the specific person being referred to and his mission are not identified. Scores of men in the Saviour's day were called Jesus. It was a common name. By omitting the word 'Christ' the one specific Jesus being referred to - the Messiah - is missed. By omitting the word 'Lord' his title is ignored. Here are a few examples of where such specific details are missing:

Romans 1:16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Comment: The title Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah) is here missing in most modern translations. The word gospel, as most believers know, means 'good news.' And who can possibly be ashamed of bringing good news to anyone? But being 'ashamed of the gospel of Christ' is quite another matter: millions of Christians are secretly ashamed of the gospel: all the while forgetting that it is the 'gospel of Christ' which is 'the power of God unto salvation.'
Galatians 4:7: Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Galatians 6:15: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.
Ephesians 3: 9: And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
Ephesians 3: 14: For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

1 Cor.16:22-23 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

2 Cor.4:6: For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Cor.4:10: Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

Galatians 3:1: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
Colossians 1: 2: To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1: 14: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
Hebrews 1: 3: Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Hebrews 7: 21: (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:)

1 Peter 1: 22: Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

Comment: Without the Holy Spirit it is absolutely impossible to purify one's soul or obey the truth with unfeigned love. In the rendering of this verse the modern translators have removed the Master Key to all spiritual achievement - the Holy Spirit.

1 Peter 4: 1: Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.
1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Comment: The Greek word for 'faults' is praptomata. The Greek word for 'sins' is hamartias. The word 'sins' in most modern versions is therefore a mistranslation - an error!

It supports the dubious practice of sinners confessing sins to a priest; who has absolutely no authority whatsoever to listen to, let alone forgive, another person's sins. It is one thing to confess your 'faults' (praptomata) to someone you've wronged: but quite another to confess your 'sins' (hamartias) to a priest. Faults are vastly different from sins. Impatience, a short temper, a weakness for drink etc. are faults.
Whereas the sins these faults may lead to are: violence, revenge, drunkenness. According to Scripture it is blasphemy to attempt to forgive another's sins: as only God (and Jesus is God) can do that. (Mark 2:7) To be sure a victim can forgive a sinner, if forgiveness is requested; but an uninvolved third party has absolutely no right to forgive the sins of another.

Rev.1: 8: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Rev.1: 9: I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Rev.1: 11: Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the la
st: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia…
Comment: Ten words are missing!

Rev.2: 13: I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is…

Rev.2:15: So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.

Rev.5:14:And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.

Comment: By leaving out the words 'him that liveth for ever and ever' the text allows the worship of any God.

Rev.11: 17: Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

Rev.12: 12: Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath.

Rev.12: 17: And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Rev.14: 5: And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

Rev.16: 17: And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.
Rev.20: 9: And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Rev.21: 24: And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.
Comment: By leaving out the words 'of them which are saved' the RSV and many modern translations imply that the saved and unsaved of all nations will enter the New Jerusalem: which, of course, is not the case. Here we have 12 verses from the Book of Revelation that have been corrupted. Let no one foolishly suppose that the following divine warning will not apply to those who countenance these deletions.

Revelation 22:18: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19: And if any man shall TAKE AWAY from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.


THE APOCRYPHA
The following quotation is taken from the Westminster Dictionary of the Bible page 33, article Apocrypha.


" The [Greek word apokrypha means hidden or secret things, used by ecclesiastical writers for:
matters secret or mysterious.
2) of unknown origin, forged, spurious.
unrecognised, uncanonical.]

The name generally given to the following 16 books: 1 and 11 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch with The Epistle of Jeremy, The Song of the Three Holy Children, The History of Susanna, Bel and the dragon, The Prayer of Manasses, 1, 11, 111 and 1V Maccabees being omitted."

"Unlike the books of the Old Testament, which are in Hebrew, with some portions in Aramaic, the apocryphal productions are in Greek… The Jewish Church considered them uninspired, and some of their writers disclaim inspiration, (prologue to Ecclesiasticus; 11 Macc.2:23; 15:38). The Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha were produced between about 250 BC and somewhere in the early Christian centuries. They are not found in the Hebrew canon: they are never quoted by Jesus; and it cannot with certainty be affirmed that the apostles ever directly allude to them…"

"The Church of England in the 6 th of the Thirty-nine Articles published in 1562 calls the apocryphal treatises books which the 'Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners: but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.'

The Westminster Confession of 1643 declares, as a matter of creed, that 'the books, commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, or to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.'"

"The Council of Trent at its sitting on April 8th, 1546,…pronounced an anathema against anyone who ventured to differ from it in opinion. This has since regulated the belief of the Roman Catholic Church."…

"A controversy on the subject was carried on between the years 1821 and 1826, which resulted in the exclusion of the Apocrypha from all Bibles issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society." (Ref:H3)

We can see from the above that neither the Saviour, the Apostles, the Jewish Nation nor the Protestant Church reckoned that the Apocrypha was inspired. The only major group which currently holds to the Apocrypha is the Roman Church. In view of these facts, Stewarton Bible School's advice is that you look upon the Apocrypha as the writings of uninspired men and certainly of no use whatsoever when deciding doctrine.

NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV)
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This version is gaining in popularity. Strictly speaking it is not a version, but a revision like most of the other modern translations: which can all be traced back to the Revised Version. I, personally, in my ignorance have given away scores of copies of the NIV. May the Almighty pardon me.
As Edward F Hills says in his book The King James Version Defended:


Modern versions are rich in omissions. Time and again the reader searches in them for a familiar verse only to find that it has been banished to the footnotes. And one of the most familiar of the verses to be so treated is Matthew 6:13, the doxology with which the Lord's Prayer concludes." (Ref: G2)

Try finding these verses in the NIV
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Matthew 17:21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

Matthew 18:11 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.

Matthew 23:14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater d**nation.

Mark 9:44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 11:26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

Mark 15:28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.

Luke 17:36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Luke 23:17 For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.

John 5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

Acts 8: 37 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.

Acts 15:34 Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.

Acts 24:7 But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands.

Acts 28:29 And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.

Romans 16:24 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Bear in mind that the earliest versions of the Bible (the Penutsta, Italic and Old Latin Vulgate etc.) have all these verses: but the NIV leaves them out! Isn't that a serious string of omissions?

Obviously the translators of the NIV are ignoring the command in Deuteronomy 4:2. and the awesome warning in Revelation 22:18-19 For more about this translation see The New International Version.
Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
It is vital that you check these verses in the modern version you are using to see if these words, verses or passages are either missing or mistranslated. Once again I invite you to imitate the believers of Berea mentioned in the book of Acts.


Acts 17:11
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

God knows that after reading this article you can never say 'I didn't know.'

THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION …1984
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The title of this version is extremely deceptive and positively dangerous; because the unsuspecting believer will purchase it not knowing that he/she is getting an unholy counterfeit of the real Bible - the King James Version. In his book Final Authority author William P Grady says this concerning the NKJV.

From 1611 to 1881, God's foot soldiers wielded KJV swords while defending spiritual barley fields against Jesuits armed with Douay-Rheims Versions. Their grip grew tighter from 1881-1974 as one Alexandrian impostor after another was driven from the field.

Suddenly, a profit-oriented corporation (the same crown who manufactured the enemies swords) would prevail upon the church to believe that the Holy Spirit had abruptly ordered a weapon change - in the very heat of the battle! Their corrupt rendering of Romans 1:25 says it best. Instead of KJV's changed we read, 'exchanged the truth of God for a lie.' A true believer will never exchange his KJV for a NKJV. The reason for this resistance is the same today as it was in Bible days.

With his very life at stake, the grip of the ancient warrior was so intense that warm water was often needed at battle's end to literally pry the weapon from his cramped hands. A person with an ounce of spiritual discernment can see that He who is not the author of confusion would never pick such timing to introduce yet another English revision! The outstanding distinction of a spiritual warrior will always be that, his hand clave unto the sword…

The truth of the matter is that the New King James Version represents Satan's ultimate deception to oppose God's remnant in the closing days of the New Testament age .

Having enlisted the lukewarm materialist with his NIV, the devil sets a trap for the diligent soul winner with the NKJV. Although his worldly counterparts embraced the oldest is best theory of manuscript evidences, the true Bible believer refused to abandon the Majority Text, retaining the Divine commendation of, 'thou has kept my word.' Thus we find Satan attempting to wean him away from his Authorised Version with the deceitful half-step of a generic look-alike, TRANSLATED FROM THE TRUSTWORTHY TEXTUS RECEPTUS

Conservative estimates of the total translation changes in the NKJV are generally put at over 100,000!

This is an average of 82 changes for each of the 1219 pages in the NKJV…Along this line of abuse, the most shocking revelation about the 'New' King James Version is that it is literally laced with 'old' readings from the Revised Standard and New American Standard Versions.

This revival of Alexandrian readings is one of the best-kept secrets of the decade. Whenever there is a marked departure from the text of the KJV, the alternative reading is frequently taken from either the RSV, NASV, or oftentimes, both.

For instance, in the first chapter of John's Gospel, there are 51 verses. Of this total, 45 (or 88%) have been altered by the NKJV. Among this number, 34 (75%) exhibit a distinct RSV or NASV reading while 6 show a partial reading. Only 5 (15%) appear unique to the NKJV." (Ref:E2



No doubt very soon another counterfeit Bible will make its appearance. Perhaps it will be called the New Authorized Version. All I can say to the Christian world is - BEWARE!
Comparisons with the KJV

In his book God Wrote Only One Bible Jasper Ray compares some 162 verses in 46 different Bible translations with the KJV which is based on Textus Receptus, the text used by the early churches and Protestant Reformers. His findings make the purchase of his book an absolute must. Very briefly here are a few of his findings:
VERSION………………………………CHANGES
Luther's New Testament (1522).… ……..……0
King James Version (1611).………. .…………0
Revised Version (1881-5)…………….……. 135
American Standard Version (1901)…..……..135
Good News Bible (1976)…..…………..… .144
New American Standard Version (1971).. ..147
Revised Standard Version (1952)…………158
New International Version (1978)..……… 160
Notice how each new translation contains more errors than the one that went before. Are you, dear reader, willing to recognise such error; and how Satan is gradually weakening the very foundation of Christian doctrine - the Holy Bible? Bear in mind that every verse, every word, every jot and tittle of Scripture is eternal: it will outlast the present universe!



Matt.5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

How presumptuous, then, for puny man to attempt to delete, amend and corrupt the sacred Scriptures. I tremble to think of the fate of those who are responsible. Believe it or not, when I learned these facts I was stunned, flabbergasted and ashamed all at the same time.
To think that I had been taken in so easily - for so long! But once I saw the light I determined that if God would allow me to live after my heart attack and triple bypass operation - I would tell the world! The Internet is allowing me to do so. I pray that in the course of time millions will find out what I have learned these past months.
You too may have a part in exposing the corruption in the modern translations of the Bible. The question is: Do you have the humility and the courage to face up to these facts? Have you the spiritual eyes to see that the real Bible for the English-speaking world is still the King James Version?

VITAL QUESTIONS
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Now that you know these facts, and you ought to examine this issue till you are fully convinced in your own mind, several unavoidable questions will present themselves.

Question One: In future which Bible should I study?

Answer: In my opinion you should revert to the real Word of God, the King James Bible; simply because all modern translations of the Bible are infected with error and therefore unholy. Their underlying text is dangerously corrupt and many of their leading translators were/are unbelievers! By continuing to study their unholy output you will be aligning yourself with them: siding with the unbelieving Egyptian scribes who produced their erroneous manuscripts and also with the unbelieving translators who later built on their errors.

Question Two: What shall I do with all the modern translations of the Bible I currently possess?

Answer: You have two options. a) Throw them all away. b) Or keep them just for reference in case you need to prove your stand for the King James Bible. This is the option I have settled for. I have in my possession a CD with some 50 Bibles on it: one of which is the King James Bible. I have kept this CD.

Question Three: I am a preacher, what about quoting from modern translations of the Bible?

Answer: In the past I have quoted extensively from modern translations. You only have to read SBS articles written before March 1997 to realise this.

But I will never again quote from a modern translation; simply because it would give the impression that I considered it to be the Word of God, which it isn't! I repeat: modern translations of the Bible are not the Word of God! They are unholy counterfeits!

Question Four: I am a writer, what should I do with the literature I have already produced and in which I have quoted from modern translations of the Bible?

Answer: This was the foremost question I had to answer for myself. I had two options. a) Throw away all SBS publications printed before March 1997 and reprint the lot. b) Or exhaust SBS stocks and correct all future reprints; making sure meanwhile that I offered a full explanation to my readers of my change of course. I settled for this option. Indeed, this article is part of that explanation.

Question Five: What about my Christian friends who do not agree with me on this Versions issue?

Answer: In spiritual matters, no mortal can open the eyes of another. My advice is, tell your Christian friends what you now know about this Version issue and, after praying for them, leave it at that. You would be guilty before God if you kept quiet. Your responsibility is to tell your Christian friends. What they do with the information is up to them.

These are vital questions all informed believers have to answer for themselves. We cannot ignore them. Should we continue to daily study corrupt "Bibles" and risk the wrath of the Almighty God?

Eating infected meat, by comparison, is of minor importance when we consider the awesome spiritual issue before us. Would you knowingly eat infected or unclean meat once it has been brought to your notice? Surely no one would knowingly eat polluted food, however attractive, appetising or nourishing it may otherwise be.

The recent CJD or E-Coli outbreaks in Britain caused by eating infected meat are simply low-level illustrations of how easily infection can spread and cause death. How much more serious do you suppose is this matter of eating unholy spiritual meat!

The Bible tells us that God overlooks people's ignorance; but once they know the truth, they are held accountable.
…the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: (Acts 17:30)

Yes, as far as this Bible Version issue is concerned, you now know the truth. You are no longer ignorant of it. What then are you going to do about it? For my part I will no longer study any "Bible" based on corrupt manuscripts and translated by unbelievers.

[ But how much of the Bible is infected, some observers say 15% and hardly any doctrine is effected, unless you are a Literalist or a Fundementalist, or someone who cannot see anyone else's point of view , or likes building doctrine on unsubstantiated proof texts instead of on a broad view of the Scriptures with verses kept on context. ]

Moreover, ALL future Bible quotations at the SBS Internet site will only be from the Authorised King James Bible.

SBS articles placed on the Internet before March 1997 will, in the course of time, be purged of quotations taken from modern Bible translations: simply because readers may think that I accept those translations as the inspired Word of God - which I no longer do.

Present hard copy stocks of SBS Booklets, Sermon Notes and Lessons held in Stewarton will be used up:

[ Ed. Why? If this matter is as important as is claimed, one would have thought all existing stocks would be burnt, rather than sold ]




and future reprinted Bible quotations will only be from the King James Version. Yahweh willing - this will be done.
A final comment by Rev. Gipp:


All the translations before and after 1881 which were going to replace the Authorised Version lie silently in the 'grave' right now. Those which do not, shall soon join their ranks in the halls of the 'improved,' 'thoroughly reliable,' 'truly accurate,' and 'starters of a new tradition,' dead. They have failed to start one revival. They have failed to induce Christians back to reading their Bibles, and have only succeeded in casting doubt on the true word of God. The question is, can we repair the damage already done and proceed from here? The answer is YES!" (Ref: B8)

My sincere prayer is: That you will be amongst those who help repair the enormous damage already done.
Elder: David B Loughran

Part Three
REFERENCE BOOKS
A) .. STORY OF OUR ENGLISH BIBLE by W Scott
A1 … page 17
A2 … page 39
A3 … page 141
A4 … page 153
A5 … page 153
A6 … page 31
A7 … page 128
A8 … page 160-161
A9 … page 165-166
B) .. AN UNDERSTANDABLE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE by Rev. Samuel C Gipp. Bible believers Baptist Bookstore: 1252 East Aurora Road, Macedonia, Ohio 44056 USA
B1 … page 63
B2 … page 67-68
B3 … page 65-66
B4 … page 66
B5 … page 70
B6 … page 72-73
B7 … page 78
B8 … page 115
B9 … page 154
B10 .. page 196
B11 .. page 197

C) .. LET'S WEIGH THE EVIDENCE by Barry Burton. Chick Publications: PO Box 662, Chino, CA 91708-0662 USA
C1 … page 61
C2 … page 60

D) .. GOD WROTE ONLY ONE BIBLE by Jasper J Ray, Eye Opener Publications: PO Box 7944, Eugene, Oregon, 974 01 USA
D1 … page 94
D2 ... page 98
D3 … page 104
D4 … page 74

E) .. FINAL AUTHORITY by William P Grady. Grady Publications: PO Box 506, Schererville, Indiana 46375. USA
E1 ... pages 26-27
E2 ... pages 303 and 305
E3 ... page 129
E4 ... page 133
E5 … pages 161-162
E6 … pages 139-140
E7 … page 156
F) .. WHICH BIBLE by David Otis Fuller, D.D. published by The Institute for Biblical Textual Studies. Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503. USA
F1 … pages 196-197
F2 . .. page 157
F3 … page 3
F4 … pages 298-300
F5 … page 308
F6 … page 210
F7 … page 215
F8 … pages 197-198
F9 … page 201
F10 .. page 196
F11 .. Extracts from pages 86 - 103
G) .. THE KING JAMES VERSION DEFENDED by Edward F Hills. Christian Research Press PO Box 13023, Des Moines, Iowa 50310-0023 USA
G1 … page 213
G2 … page 146
G3 … pages 218-219
G4 … pages 242-243
H) .. WESTMINSTER DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE
H1 … page 624 article 'Versions.'
H2 … page 624 article 'Versions.'
H3 … page 33 article 'Apocrypha'
J)..TRUTH TRIUMPHANT published by Teach Services, Route 1 Box 182, Brushton, USA
J1 … pages 47-48
J2 … page 50
J3 … pages 83-84
J4 … page 100
J5 … page 108
K) .. FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS published by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand rapids, Michigan USA
L) .. TRINITARIAN BIBLE SOCIETY:
Tyndale House , Dorset Road, London SW19 3NN
L1 … From a tract entitled: What Today's Christian Needs to Know About The Greek New Testament
L2 … From page 7 of a tract entitled: The English Bible, its Origin, Preservation and Blessing.
M) .. Answers to Tough Questions by Josh McDowell and Don Stuart. Scripture Press, Amersham-on-the-Hill, Bucks HP6 6JQ, England. (ISBN 0-946515-51-4)
M1 … Pages 16-17
N) .. CREATION SCIENCE MOVEMENT
N1 … From the Creation Journal Vol.9 No.10 January 1997. For more details write to: 50 Brecon Avenue, Portsmouth, UK PO6 2AW or to P.O. Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021, USA.
P) .. REVISION REVISED by Dean Burgon. Published by the Dean Burgon Society, Box 354, Collingswood, New Jersey 08108, USA Tel:[phone]
P1 … page 319
P2 … page 350
P3 … page 365
Q)… DEFENDING THE KING JAMES BIBLE by Rev. D.A. Waite Th.D, Ph.D, 900 Park Avenue, Collingswood, New Jersey 08108 USA
Q1 … page 41

USEFUL ADDRESSES
##################

Send to the following addresses for lists of books dealing with this Bible Version issue and study the matter further. You owe it to yourself and your family.

A.V. Publications Corp: P.O. Box 280, Ararat, VA 24053 USA
Dean Burgon Society: Box 354, Collingswood, New Jersey 08108, USA Tel:[phone]

The Bible for Today: 900 Park Avenue, Collingswood, New Jersey 08108 USA Tel: [phone]

Which Bible? Society, Inc: 1540 Plymouth, S.E., Apt. 8, PO Box 7096, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49510. Write for information.

Eye Opener Publications: PO Box 7944, Eugene, Oregon, 974 01 USA

Bible Baptist Bookstore: PO Box 7135, Pensacola, Florida 32534, USA (Tel:[phone], FAX [phone]

Chick Publications: PO Box 662, Chino, CA 91708-0662 USA

Penfold Book & Bible House: PO Box 26, Bicester, Oxfordshire, OX6 8PB, England.

Trinitarian Bible Society: Tyndale House, Dorset Rd, London, England. SW19 3NN

Thy Word is Truth: Harvester House, 96 Plaistow Lane, Bromley Kent, England BR1 3AS

This article is just an introduction to the vital subject of Bible Versions. Leading believers of whatever church: bishops, priests, ministers, pastors, theological students, elders, deacons, Bible instructors etc. all have a grave responsibility to make sure that they do not sideline this issue as unimportant: because in my opinion it is critical!

Once again I urge all Christian leaders to write to one or more of the addresses above for lists of books dealing with this matter of Bible Versions

:As it is my opinion that great will be the wrath of Almighty God on those who knowingly and wilfully remain in darkness or keep their flocks in blissful ignorance.



Elder: D B Loughran
Stewarton Bible School, Stewarton, Scotland



WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Use the AV to read from, study and preach from, but perhaps consulting the John Darby Bible which was translated before 1881 and does not use the Alexandrine manuscripts or the 1853 flawed Greek but does refer to them and their errors;

and refer to the best of the modern versions, now regarded as the English Standard Version of 2002 for clarity of modern English, where doing so does not diminish or distort Christian Teaching.

2. If in the absence of better publications to introduce people to God we use Bibles, Testaments, Gospels, Bible Portions, Tracts, Books, Cassettes, DVD's, Videos, that use the modern translations we should issue with them a Warning leaflet.

3, Devise literature using the AV only , perhaps modernising word endings no longer generally used, explaining difficult words, retaining Thy, Thou, Thine, Thee and Ye, but explaining why,

4 Replace Pew Bibles and Bibles to be read in churches with the AV

5.Press for a new Modern English translation of the Byzantine Manuscripts not in any way using the Alexandrine manuscripts.

[John]

We wish to quote from a book entitled Our Authorized Version Vindicated, copyright 1930, by Benjamin G. Wilkinson, who (being a Seventh-Day Adventist) cannot be accused of being partial to us.

Mr. Wilkinson wrote: . . . down through the centuries there were only two streams of manuscripts.

The first stream which carried the Received Text in Hebrew and Greek, began with the Apostolic churches, and reappearing at intervals down the Christian Era among enlightened believers, was protected by the wisdom and scholarship of the pure Church in her different phases;

By such as the Church at Pella in Palestine where the Christians fled, when in 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem;

By the Syrian Church of Antioch which produced eminent scholarship;

By the Italic Church in northern Italy; and also at the same time

By the Gallic Church in southern France and

By the Celtic Church in Great Britain;

By the pre-Waldensian, the Waldensian, and the churches of the Reformation.

This first stream appears, with very little change, in the Protestant Bibles of many languages, and in English, in that Bible known as the Geneva Bible and King James Version, the one which has been in use for three hundred years in the English speaking world.

The second stream is a small one of a very few MSS. These last manuscripts are represented:

(a) In Greek:--The Vatican MS., or Codex B, in the library at Rome; and the Sinaitic, or Codex Aleph, its brother (in the Russian Museum in Moscow).

(b) In Latin:--The Vulgate or Latin Bible of Jerome.

(c) In English:-- The Jesuit Bible of 1582, which later with vast changes is seen in the Douay, or Catholic Bible.

(d) In English again:--In many modern Bibles which introduce practically all the Catholic readings of the Latin Vulgate which were rejected by the Protestants of the Reformation; among these, prominently, are the Revised Versions.--pp. 12, 13.


But let us see what the Waldenses believed, according to their own historian, Jean Leger. Wilkinson, page 32, says:
This noble scholar of Waldensian blood was the apostle of his people in the terrible massacres of 1655, and labored intelligently to preserve their ancient records. His book, the General History of the Evangelical Churches of the Piedmontese Valleys, published in French in 1669, and called "scarce" in 1825, is the prized object of scholarly searchers.

It is my good fortune to have that very book before me. Leger, when he calls (Robert) Olivetan's French Bible of 1535 "entire and pure," says: "I say 'pure' because all the ancient exemplars, which formerly were found among the Papists, were full of falsifications, which caused Beza to say in his book on Illustrious Men, in the chapter on the Vaudois, that one must confess it was by means of the Vaudois of the Valleys that France today has the Bible in her own language.

This godly man, Olivetan, in the preface of his Bible, recognizes with thanks to God, that since the time of the apostles, or their immediate successors, the torch of the gospel has been lit among the Vaudois (or the dwellers in the Valleys of the Alps, two terms which mean the same), and has never since been extinguished." --Leger, General History of the Vaudois Churches, p. 165.
Wilkinson also shows (pp. 42-43) that Erasmus recognized two parallel streams of Bibles:
THE TWO PARALLEL STREAMS OF BIBLES
Apostles (Original
Received Text (Greek)
Waldensian Bible (Italic
Erasmus (Received Text Restored
Luther's Bible, Dutch, French, Italian, etc., (from Received Text
Tyndale (English) 1535 (from Received Text).
King James, 1611 (from Received Text

Apostates (Corrupted Originals
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus Bible (Greek)
Vulgate (Latin). Church of Rome's Bible.
Vaticanus (Greek
French, Spanish, and Italian (from Vulgate).
Rheims (English) from Vulgate (Jesuit Bible of 1582).
Oxford Movement. Westcott & Hort (B and Aleph).
Revised Version 1881
American Revised 1901


This should be sufficient to persuade the reader not to regard these two streams of Bibles as equally pure or good. We believe that translations arising from the corrupted texts have been largely responsible for departures from many of the most essential doctrines of the Christian faith, e. g., the creation, plenary inspiration and preservation of the scriptures, the divinity and virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection from the dead.

The English and Welsh Baptists, having arisen from the Anabaptists, who were descendants of the Waldenses, were supporters of translations made from the textus receptus.

The same may be said of the early Baptists in America. We find no evidence that Wickliffe's translation ever gained much favour or support from them. Wickliffe's English translation was made from the Latin Vulgate, he being ignorant of Greek and Hebrew.

The "Great Reformation" which followed over a century after Wickliffe's death did not make the Catholic Bible the "true Bible," any more than it made the Catholic Church the "true church."

As shown above, the Protestant Reformers and the Waldenses all refused to use the Catholic manuscripts (either Vulgate or Vatican).

We do not claim that the King James Version is the only translation that can be called the inspired word of God, but rather that the Received Text is the only underlying basis for any past, present or future New Testament translation that should be so regarded by Christian people. Translations from the Received Text have been made in most of the major languages of world.

Preservation of the Bible by the Waldenses
(From Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, 1930, pp. 31-42 )
by Benjamin G. Wilkinson, Ph. D.

The Bible of the Waldenses Brought from Judea

To show that the messengers of God who carried manuscripts from the churches of Judea to the churches of northern Italy and on, brought to the forerunners of the Waldenses a Bible different from the Bible of Roman Catholicism, I quote the following:

The method which Allix has pursued, in his History of the Churches of Piedmont, is to show that in the ecclesiastical history of every century, from the fourth century, which he considers a period early enough for the enquirer after apostolical purity of doctrine, there are clear proofs that doctrines, unlike those which the Romish Church holds, and conformable to the belief of the Waldensian and Reformed Churches, were maintained by theologians of the north of Italy down to the period, when the Waldenses first came into notice.

Consequently the opinions of the Waldenses were not new to Europe in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and there is nothing improbable in the tradition, that the Subalpine Church persevered in its integrity in an uninterrupted course from the first preaching of the gospel in the valleys. - Gilly, Waldensian Researches, pp. 118, 119.

There are many earlier historians who agree with this view. (Allix, Leger, Gilly, Comba, Nolan). It is held that the pre-Waldensian Christians of northern Italy could not have had doctrines purer than Rome unless their Bible was purer than Rome's; that is, was not of Rome's falsified manuscripts. (Comba, p. 188.)

The Waldenses of northern Italy were foremost among the primitive Christians of Europe in their resistance to the Papacy. They not only sustained the weight of Rome's oppression but they were successful in retaining the torch of truth until the Reformation took it from their hands and held it aloft to the world.

Veritably they fulfilled the prophecy of Revelation concerning the church which fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God. Revelations 12: 6, 14. They rejected the mysterious doctrines, the hierarchal priesthood and the worldly titles of Rome, while they clung to the simplicity of the Bible.

The agents of the Papacy have done their utmost to calumniate their character, to destroy the records of their noble past, and to leave no trace of the cruel persecution they underwent.

They went even farther - they made use of words written against ancient heresies to strike out the name of the heretics and fill the blank space by inserting the name of the Waldenses. Just as if, in a book written to record the lawless deeds of some bandit, like Jesse James, his name should be stricken out and the name of Abraham Lincoln substituted.

The Jesuit Gretser in a book written against the heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, put the name Waldenses at the point where he struck out the name of these heretics. (Gilly, p. 8.) Nevertheless, we greet with joy the history of their great scholars who were ever a match for Rome.

In the fourth century, Helvidius, a great scholar of northern Italy, accused Jerome, whom the Pope had empowered to form a Bible in Latin for Catholicism, with using corrupt Greek manuscripts. (Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6, p. 338.)

How could Helvidius have accused Jerome of employing corrupt Greek MSS. if Helvidius had not had the pure Greek manuscripts?

And so learned and so powerful in writing and teaching was Jovinian, the pupil of Helvidius, that it demanded three of Rome's most famous fathers - Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose - to unite in opposing Jovinian's influence. Even then, it needed the condemnation of the Pope and the banishment of the Emperor to prevail. But Jovinian's followers lived on and made the way easier for Luther.

History does not afford a record of cruelty greater than that manifested by Rome toward the Waldenses. It is impossible to write fully the inspiring history of this persecuted people, whose origin goes back to apostolic days and whose history is ornamented with stories of gripping interest. Rome has obliterated the records. Dr. DeSanctis, many years a Catholic official at Rome, some time official Censor of the Inquisition and later a convert to Protestantism, thus reports the conversation of a Waldensian scholar as he points out to others the ruins of

Palatine Hill, Rome:"See," said the Waldensian, "a beautiful monument of ecclesiastical antiquity. These rough materials are the ruins of the two great Palatine libraries, one Greek and the other Latin, where the precious manuscripts of our ancestors were collected, and which Pope Gregory I, called the Great, caused to be burned." (DeSanctis, Popery, Puseyism, Jesuitism, p. 53.)

The destruction of Waldensian records beginning about 600 A. D. by Gregory I, was carried through with thoroughness by the secret agents of the Papacy.

"It is a singular thing," says Gilly, "that the destruction or rapine, which has been so fatal to Waldensian documents, should have pursued them even to the place of security, to which all, that remained, were consigned by Morland, in 1658, the library of the University of Cambridge.

The most ancient of these relics were ticketed in seven packets, distinguished by letters of the alphabet, from A to G. The whole of these were missing when I made inquiry for them in 1823." (Gilly, Waldensian Researches, p. 80.)
Ancient Documents of the Waldenses

There are modern writers who attempt to fix the beginning of the Waldenses from Peter Waldo, who began his work about 1175. This is a mistake.

The historical name of this people, as properly derived from the valleys where they lived, is Vaudois. Their enemies, however, ever sought to date their origin from Waldo. Waldo was an agent, evidently raised up of God to combat the errors of Rome. Gilly, who made extensive research concerning the Waldenses, pictures Waldo in his study at Lyon, France, with associates, a committee, "like the translators of our own Authorized Version." (Comba, Waldenses of Italy, p. 169, note 596.)

Nevertheless the history of the Waldenses, or Vaudois, begins centuries before the days of Waldo.
There remains to us in the ancient Waldensian language, "The Noble Lesson," (La Nobla Leycon), written about the year 1100 A. D., which assigns the first opposition of the Waldenses to the Church of Rome to the days of Constantine the Great, when Sylvester was Pope. This may be gathered from the following extract:

"All the Popes, which have been from Sylvester to the present time." (Que tuit li papa, que foron de Silvestre en tro en aquest.) (Gilly, Excursions, Appendix 2, p. 10.)

Thus when Christianity, emerging from the long persecutions of pagan Rome, was raised to imperial favour by the Emperor Constantine, the Italic Church in northern Italy - later the Waldenses - is seen standing in opposition to papal Rome.

Their Bible was of the family of the renowned Itala. It was that translation into Latin which represents the Received Text. Its very name "Itala" is derived from the Italic district, the regions of the Vaudois. Of the purity and reliability of this version,

Augustine, speaking of different Latin Bibles (about 400 A.D.) says:
"Now among translations themselves the Italian (Itala) is to be preferred to the others, for it keeps closer to the words without prejudice to clearness of expression." (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2, p. 542.)

The old Waldensian liturgy which they used in their services down through the centuries contained "texts of Scripture of the ancient Version called the Italick." (Allix, Churches of Piedmont, 1690, p. 37.)

The Reformers held that the Waldensian Church was formed about 120 A. D., from which date on, they passed down from father to son the teachings they received from the apostles.

The Latin Bible, the Italic, was translated from the Greek not later than 157 A. D. (Scrivener's Introduction, Vol. 2, p. 43.) We are indebted to Beza, the renowned associate of Calvin, for the statement that the Italic Church dates from 120 A. D.

From the illustrious group of scholars which gathered around Beza, 1590 A.D., we may understand how the Received Text was the bond of union between great historic churches.

As the sixteenth century is closing, we see in the beautiful Swiss city of Geneva, Beza, an outstanding champion of Protestantism, the scholar Cyril Lucar, later to become the head of the Greek Catholic Church, and Diodati, also a foremost scholar.

As Beza astonishes and confounds the world by restoring manuscripts of that Greek New Testament from which the King James is translated, Diodati takes the same and translates into Italian a new and famous edition, adopted and circulated by the Waldenses. (McClintock & Strong Encycl., Art. "Waldenses.") Leger, the Waldensian historian of his people, studied under Diodati at Geneva.

He returned as pastor to the Waldenses and led them in their flight from the terrible massacre of 1655. (Gilly, Researches, pp. 79, 80.) He prized as his choicest treasure the Diodati Bible, the only worldly possession he was able to preserve.

Cyril Lucar hastened to Alexandria where Codex A, the Alexandrian Manuscript, is lying, and laid down his life to introduce the Reformation and the Reformers' pure light regarding the books of the Bible.

At the same time another group of scholars, bitterly hostile to the first group, were gathered at Rheims, France. There the Jesuits, assisted by Rome and backed by all the power of Spain, brought forth an English translation of the Vulgate. In its preface they expressly declared that the Vulgate had been translated in 1300 into Italian and in 1400 into French, "the sooner to shake out of the deceived people's hands, the false heretical translations of a sect called Waldenses."

This proves that Waldensian Versions existed in 1300 and 1400. It was the Vulgate, Rome's corrupt Scriptures against the Received Text--the New Testament of the apostles, of the Waldenses, and of the Reformers.

That Rome in early days corrupted the manuscripts while the Italic Church handed them down in their apostolic purity, Allix, the renowned scholar, testifies. He reports the following as Italic articles of faith: "They receive only, saith he, what is written in the Old and New Testament. They say, that the Popes of Rome, and other priests, have depraved the Scriptures by their doctrines and glosses." (Allix, Churches of Piedmont, pp. 288, 11.)

It is recognized that the Itala was translated from the Received Text (Syrian, Hort calls it); that the Vulgate is the Itala with the readings of the Received Text removed. (Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, pp. 169, 170.)
Waldensian Bible Translations

Four Bibles produced under Waldensian influence touched the history of Calvin: namely,
a Greek,
a Waldensian vernacular,
a French, and
an Italian.

Calvin himself was led to his great work by Olivetan, a Waldensian. Thus was the Reformation brought to Calvin, that brilliant student of the Paris University.

Farel, also a Waldensian, besought him to come to Geneva and open up a work there. Calvin felt that he should labor in Paris. According to Leger, Calvin recognized a relationship to the Calvins of the valley of St. Martin, one of the Waldensian Valleys. (Leger, History of the Vaudois, p. 167.)
Finally, persecution at Paris and the solicitation of Farel caused Calvin to settle at Geneva, where, with Beza, he brought out an edition of the Textus Receptus, the one the author now uses in his college class rooms, as edited by Scrivener.

Of Beza, Dr. Edgar says that he "astonished and confounded the world" with the Greek manuscripts he unearthed. This later edition of the Received Text is in reality a Greek New Testament brought out under Waldensian influence. Unquestionably, the leaders of the Reformation, German, French, and English, were convinced that the Received Text was the genuine New Testament, not only by its own irresistible history and internal evidence, but also because it matched with the Received Text which in Waldensian form came down from the days of the apostles.

The other three Bibles of Waldensian connection were due to three men who were at Geneva with Calvin, or when he died, with Beza, his successor,

Namely, Olivetan, Leger, and Diodati. How readily the two streams of descent of the Received Text, through the Greek East and the Waldensian West, ran together, is illustrated by the meeting of the Olivetan Bible and the Received Text.

Olivetan, one of the most illustrious pastors of the Waldensian Valleys, a relative of Calvin, according to Leger, (Leger, History of the Vaudois, p. 167) and a splendid student, translated the New Testament into French. Leger bore testimony that the Olivetan Bible, which accorded with the Textus Receptus, was unlike the manuscripts of the Papists, because they were full of falsification.

Later, Calvin edited a second edition of the Olivetan Bible. The Olivetan in turn became the basis of the Geneva Bible in English, which was the leading version in England in 1611 when the King James appeared.

Diodati, who succeeded Beza in the chair of Theology at Geneva, translated the Received Text into Italian. This version was adopted by the Waldenses, although there was in use at that time a Waldensian Bible in their own peculiar language.

This we know because Sir Samuel Morland, under the protection of Oliver Cromwell, received from Leger the Waldensian New Testament which now lies in the Cambridge University Library.

After the devastating massacre of the Waldenses in 1655, Leger felt that he should collect and give into the hands of Sir Samuel Morland as many pieces of the ancient Waldensian literature as were available.

It is interesting to trace back the Waldensian Bible which Luther had before him when he translated the New Testament. Luther used the Tepl Bible, named from Tepl, Bohemia. This Tepl manuscript represented a translation of the Waldensian Bible into the German which was spoken before the days of the Reformation. (Comba, Waldenses of Italy, p. 191.)

Of this remarkable manuscript, Comba says:
When the manuscript of Tepl appeared, the attention of the learned was aroused by the fact that the text it presents corresponds word for word with that of the first three editions of the ancient German Bible.

Then Louis Keller, an original writer, with the decided opinions of a layman and versed in the history of the sects of the Middle Ages, declared the Tepl manuscript to be Waldensian.

Another writer, Hermann Haupt, who belongs to the old Catholic party, supported his opinion vigorously. (Comba, p. 190.) From Comba we also learn that the Tepl manuscript has an origin different from the version adopted by the Church of Rome; that it seems to agree rather with the Latin versions anterior to Jerome, the author of the Vulgate; and that Luther followed it in his translation, which is probably the reason why the Catholic church reproved Luther for following the Waldenses. (Comba, p. 192.)

Another peculiarity is its small size, which seems to single it out as one of those little books which the Waldensian evangelists carried with them hidden under their rough cloaks. (Comba, p. 191, Note 679.) We have, therefore, an indication of how much the Reformation under Luther as well as Luther's Bible owed to the Waldenses.

Waldensian influence, both from the Waldensian Bibles and from Waldensian relationships, entered into the King James translation of 1611.

Referring to the King James translators, one author speaks thus of a Waldensian Bible they used:

It is known that among modern versions they consulted was an Italian, and though no name is mentioned, there cannot be room for doubt that it was the elegant translation made with great ability from the original Scriptures by Giovanni Diodati, which had only recently (1607) appeared at Geneva.

(Dr. Benjamin Warfield, Princeton Univ., Collection of Opinions and Reviews, Vol. 2, p. 99.) It is therefore evident that the translators of 1611 had before them four Bibles which had come under Waldensian influences: the Diodati in Italian, the Olivetan in French, the Lutheran in German, and the Genevan in English. We have every reason to believe that they had access to at least six Waldensian Bibles written in the old Waldensian vernacular.

Dr. Nolan, who had already acquired fame for his Greek and Latin scholarship, and researches into Egyptian chronology, and was a lecturer of note, spent twenty-eight years to trace back the Received Text to its apostolic origin.

He was powerfully impressed to examine the history of the Waldensian Bible. He felt certain that researches in this direction would demonstrate that the Italic New Testament, or the New Testament of those primitive Christians of northern Italy whose lineal descendants the Waldenses were, would turn out to be the Received Text.

He says: The author perceived, without any labour of inquiry, that it derived its name from that diocese, which has been termed the Italick, as contradistinguished from the Roman. This is a supposition, which receives a sufficient confirmation from the fact that the principal copies of that version have been preserved in that diocese, the metropolitan church of which was situated in Milan.

The circumstance is at present mentioned, as the author thence formed a hope, that some remains of the primitive Italick version might be found in the early translations made by the Waldenses, who were the lineal descendants of the Italick Church; and who have asserted their independence against the usurpations of the Church of Rome, and have ever enjoyed the free use of the Scriptures.

In the search to which these considerations have led the author, his fondest expectations have been fully realized. It has furnished him with abundant proof on that point to which his inquiry was chiefly directed; as it has supplied him with the unequivocal testimony of a truly apostolical branch of the primitive church, that the celebrated text of the heavenly witnesses was adopted in the version which prevailed in the Latin Church, previously to the introduction of the modern Vulgate. (Dr. Frederick Nolan, Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, pp. xvii, xviii.)

How the Bible Adopted by Constantine Was Set Aside
Where did this Vaudois Church amid the rugged peaks of the Alps secure these uncorrupted manuscripts? In the silent watches of the night, along the lonely paths of Asia Minor where robbers and wild beasts lurked, might have been seen the noble missionaries carrying manuscripts, and verifying documents from the churches in Judea to encourage their struggling brethren under the iron heel of the Papacy.

The sacrificing labours of the apostle Paul were bearing fruit. His wise plan to anchor the Gentile churches of Europe to the churches of Judea, provided the channel of communication which defeated continually and finally the bewildering pressure of the Papacy. Or, as the learned Scrivener has beautifully put it:

Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony, or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. (Scrivener's Introduction, Vol. 2, pp. 299, 300.)

We have it now revealed how Constantine's Hexapla Bible was successfully met.

A powerful chain of churches, few in number compared with the manifold congregations of an apostate Christianity, but enriched with the eternal conviction of truth and with able scholars, stretched from Palestine to Scotland.

If Rome in her own land was unable to beat down the testimony of apostolic Scriptures, how could she hope, in the Greek speaking world of the distant and hostile East, to maintain the supremacy of her Greek Bible?

The Scriptures of the apostle John and his associates, the traditional text, the Textus Receptus, if you please, arose from the place of humiliation forced on it by Origen's Bible in the hands of Constantine and became the Received Text of Greek Christianity.

And when the Greek East for one thousand years was completely shut off from the Latin West, the noble Waldenses in northern Italty still possessed in Latin the Received Text.

To Christians preserving apostolic Christianity, the world owes the Bible.

It is not true, as the Roman Church claims, that she gave the Bible to the world. What she gave was an impure text, a text with thousands of verses so changed as to make way for her unscriptural doctrines.

While upon those who possessed the veritable Word of God, she poured out through long centuries her stream of cruel persecution. Or, in the words of another writer:

The Waldenses were among the first of the peoples of Europe to obtain a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the Reformation, they possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution. . . . Here for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith. . . . In a most wonderful manner it (the word of truth) was preserved uncorrupted through all the ages of darkness.




A P P E N D I X
BOOKS IN THE PRIMITIVE BAPTIST LIBRARY
REGARDING THE ANCIENT WALDENSES

1. History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont, by Sir Samuel Morland, 1658 (two copies);

2. The Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont, and of the Albigenses, by Dr. Peter Allix, 1690-1692 (two volumes in one) (two copies).

3. History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, by Dr. George S. Faber (two copies);

4. Excursion to the Mountains of Piemont, by William S. Gilly.

5. The Waldenses: Sketches of the Evangelical Christians of the Mountains of Piedmont, by A. W. Mitchell;

6. History of the Waldenses, by J. A. Wylie (two copies).

7. Pierre and His Family, author not given, reprint by the Primitive Baptist Library of Elon College, NC;

8. History of the Crusades Against the Albigenses, by Simonde de Sismondi.

9. History of the Vaudois Church, by Antoine Monastier.

10. Histoire generale des eglises evangeliques de Piemont ou vaudoises (in French), by Jean Leger, 1669 (1980 Italian reprint, in the French language.) (two volumes in one).

11. The Bibliografia Valdese, containing 3,500 titles, available from Societa di Studi Valdesi, Via Roberto D'Azeglio 2, 10066 Torre Pellice, Italy.

12. Claudiana Editrice, Via Principe Tommaso 1, 10125 Torino, Italy, has published a catalog of 500 titles in different languages on the Waldensians. 1991 edition is to be sent to us.

13. Histoire des persecutions et guerres faites depuis l'an 1555 jusques en l'an 1561 contre le peuple appele Vaudois.

14. Histoire memorable de la guerre faite par le Duc de Savoye Emanuel Philebert contre ses subjects des Vallees, 1561.

15. The Glorious Recovery by the Vaudois of Their Valleys, by Henri Arnaud, 1690, with a compendious history of that people previous and subsequent to that event by Hugh d**e Acland, 1827 (microfilm).

16. The Waldenses, or Protestant Valleys of Piedmont and Dauphiny, by William Beattie, 1836 (microfilm).