The Holy Bible: King James Version or
Modern Translations?
A common delusion of the young and ignorant
is reflected in a Catholic catechism, which says, “The Bible today exists only
in translations; the original books of the Bible have disappeared” (The Baltimore
Catechism No. 3, eighth edition, p. 14.) A careful reading of the title
page of the King James Version of the Bible should dispel this delusion. It
informs the reader that it is “translated out of the original tongues.” The
original language of the Old Testament, which contains the divine law and holy
books of the nation of Israel, is Hebrew, with brief portions (Daniel 2:4-7:28,
Ezra 4:8-6:18 and 7:12-26) in Aramaic, a related language learned by the Jews
during their Babylonian captivity in the sixth century before Christ. The
original language of the New Testament, which contains holy books and letters
written after the conversion of the Gentiles, is Greek, the lingua franca, that is, the common language, of the Roman world in
the apostolic era. Translations made during the Middle Ages, when knowledge of
Hebrew and Greek was virtually nonexistent among Christian scholars in the
West, were often made from the Latin, as was the fourteenth-century English
translation of John Wycliffe. With the Renaissance and Reformation came a
resurgence of interest in the original languages of the Bible. Martin Luther
was the first to translate the whole Bible from the original languages into
modern German. His translation, published in 1534, was followed by a multitude
of translations into other modern languages, including English. Our King James
Version, which was published in 1611, displaced earlier English versions and
remained the only Bible in common use until the publication of the Revised
Version, of which the New Testament appeared in 1881 and the Old Testament in
1885.
The
Samaritan Pentateuch
The Hebrew Pentateuch has been copied over
the centuries not only by the Jews but by the Samaritans as well. These first
five books of the Bible, written by Moses, are the only portion of the Bible
accepted by the Samaritans. When the Hebrew and Samaritan Pentateuchs are
carefully compared with each other, a few differences emerge. However, Bible
critics have been unable to use the Samaritan Pentateuch to justify a revision
of the biblical text because their own research has revealed that the Samaritan
variants have been adopted to defend the Samaritan religion against that of the
Jews. (See, for example, The Samaritan
Pentateuch an Adaptation of the Massoretic Text by C. H. Heller, 1923.) One
example of this is Deuteronomy 27:4, where the Samaritan scribes have replaced
“Ebal” with “Gerizzim” as the place where Moses commanded the children of
The Septuagint
The ancient Greek translation of the Old
Testament known as the Septuagint or the Seventy received its name because 72
men are said to have been involved in its translation at the beginning of the
third century B.C. in
Kitto and Keil
John Kitto’s Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature of 1851, which is by no means
devoted to a defense of the integrity of the Bible, sums up the evidence
presented by the Samaritan and Septuagint Bibles for the authenticity of our Old
Testament. In the second volume, page 708, we read that these Bibles, although
they are “the work of inaccurate and capricious, if not sometimes ignorant
translators,” and “although the version of the Seventy has come down to us in a
very corrupted state,” are nevertheless “sufficiently close in their general
resemblance to our Hebrew copies to show that the text in use among the Jews
long before the Christian era was essentially the same with that which is now
in our hands.”
In his Introduction
to the Old Testament (vol. 2, p. 328-331), C. F. Keil, a contemporary of
Kitto, informs us that as early as the seventeenth century opponents of the
integrity of the Hebrew text as handed down by the Jewish scribes known as
Masoretes not only “exaggerated” its supposed faultiness but also
“overestimated the critical value of the ancient versions and the Samaritan
Pentateuch in accordance with their preconceived opinions.” He then says that
the doubts about the integrity of the Hebrew text that had been rekindled in
the eighteenth century failed to achieve any results from the collation of
manuscripts other than “to confirm the old Protestant persuasion that the text
of the Bible was faithfully and carefully handed down by the Masoretes.” He
concludes that “without an exception, the various readings obtained from the
manuscripts exert no influence of importance on the meaning and the contents of
Scripture, so far as concerns the subject matter of the faith.” Finally, using
similar terms, he dismisses the objections to the Hebrew text raised by
contemporary critics.
Aramaic Bibles
Before Alexander the Great, who spread the
Greek language by his conquests in the fourth century B.C., the lingua franca of the Eastern World was
Aramaic. This language, which is called Syriac in Daniel 2:4 and Syrian in Ezra
4:7, was never entirely supplanted by Greek and was still used by the Jews at
the beginning of the Christian era. The Jews still publish and use Targums,
that is, free translations of biblical books in Aramaic, the ages of which are
not precisely known, but according to Kitto’s Cyclopedia (vol. 2, p. 826), “all the circumstances of the case
conspire to show that there were written Targums of several Old Testament books
in the time of the Maccabees.” The Samaritans also have a translation of the
Pentateuch in their own Aramaic dialect, which agrees with their Hebrew
Pentateuch. Since early Eastern Christians who spoke Aramaic also needed a
Bible in their own language, it is assumed that the Aramaic translation known
as the Peshitta, which is still their standard Bible today, was translated
before the end of the apostolic era. The antiquity of the Peshitta seems to be
confirmed by the fact that this version lacks certain books, namely, II Peter,
II John, III John, Jude and Revelation, which were written later than others
and may not yet have been in general circulation or were not yet fully accepted
when it was translated. According to George Lamsa, who has translated this
Bible into English, the name Peshitta means “straight, simple, sincere and
true,” to distinguish it from other versions, which were introduced into some
of the churches of the East after the emergence of early heresies. (See his
Introduction to The Holy Bible from
Ancient Eastern Manuscripts.)
Latin Bibles
Western Christians, who spoke Latin, also
needed a Bible in their language, and so early in the Christian era a variety
of translations emerged in this language as well. It took several centuries for
Jerome’s version, known as the Vulgate, that is, the common version, which was
completed in about 405 A.D., to entirely displace the former Latin
translations. The Vulgate eventually became the standard Latin Bible. In about
1455 it was the first book to be produced on a printing press by Johann
Gutenberg. The remnants of the older Latin translations are known collectively
as the Old Latin version.
The Latin Vulgate Bible known as the
Sixtene Edition was published by Pope Sixtus V in 1590. It was prefaced by the
famous papal Bull Aeternus ille,
which decreed that it was the authentic Vulgate to be used in all churches of
the Christian world and that no one was to change the slightest particle or
print any other edition under pain of severe penalties, including the “greater
excommunication,” from which one could be relieved only by the pope himself.
However, as early as 1592 a revised edition was published under Clement VIII.
This Vulgate, known as the Clementine Edition, which is said to differ from the
Sixtene Edition in 3,000 places, became the standard Latin Bible of the
Catholic Church. The difficulty of escaping the penalties pronounced by Sixtus
V was surmounted by the bold device of presenting the Clementine Edition as a
Sixtene Edition. Early editions thus had the name of Sixtus V, rather than that
of Clement VIII, on the title page. (See the entry under Vulgate in James
Hastings’ larger Dictionary of the Bible.)
The Greek New Testament
The canon, that is, the contents, of the
New Testament was defined not by any Church council, as is commonly believed,
but by the apostles themselves, as we see in I Timothy 5:18, where Paul quotes
from Luke 10:7, referring to it as scripture, and in II Peter 3:15,16, where
Peter views Paul’s epistles as scripture. From the epistles of John and the
first chapters of Revelation we see that heresies began to emerge in the
apostolic era. Church history describes the progress and development of these
heresies, which have racked the Church through the ages. The existence of early
heresies ensured that any attempt to revise the New Testament or its contents
would be unsuccessful, for no reviser would have had access to all manuscripts
of all sects in all languages. The Greek New Testament, edited by Desiderius
Erasmus, was first printed in 1516. Translations of the Bible in affordable
printed editions then became available in all the languages of Christendom. The
power of the Pope was, of course, threatened by the resultant exposure of his
errors and superstitions, and it was not long before Catholics, inspired by the
devil, began to burn Bibles and Bible translators and readers, as Reformation
histories confirm.
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus
When the devil realized that threats and
violence were of no avail, that the more his vicar, the Pope, raged, the more
the Word of God prevailed, he came up with a new scheme. He inspired scholars
to catalogue and compare extant manuscripts to see whether any differed from
the standard texts sufficiently to justify using them to revise the Bible. The
uniformity of Hebrew manuscripts precluded any serious attack on the Old
Testament, and so critics focused mainly on the New Testament. It is not
surprising that, as in all ancient books, a few minor variants exist also in
copies of the New Testament, as for example in James 2:18, where the text of the
King James Version reads, “without thy works.” Here the margin reads “Some
copies read by thy works.” A careful
reading of the context shows that, regardless of which version is followed, the
meaning of the passage remains the same. No scholar would seriously expect to
find enough typographical errors in the various editions of Shakespeare to
justify revising his works, but secular works do not afflict consciences as
does the Word of God. Human beings, who cannot find relief for their burdened
consciences in other ways need to convince themselves that the Bible is
unreliable. Bible critics, driven by the devil to satisfy this need, were
convinced that with enough effort they could eventually find enough variants to
mutilate the Bible.
Critics began to focus, in particular, on
one manuscript or codex located in the Vatican Library in
Burgon’s Criticism
The critics have assigned identifying
letters to each of their uncial New Testament manuscripts. Vaticanus is
identified by the letter B and Sinaiticus by the Greek letter Aleph. Three
later uncial manuscripts that have also found a special place in the hearts of
Bible critics are Alexandrinus (A), Ephraemi (C), and Bezae (D). Alexandrinus
and Ephraemi are alleged to have been copied in the fifth century and Bezae in
either the fifth or sixth century. In a book published in 1883, John Burgon, a
Bible critic who strongly objected to the radical approach of his colleagues,
wrote a devastating review of these five uncial manuscripts:
“Singular to relate, the first,
second, fourth and fifth of these codices (B, Aleph, C, D), but especially B
and Aleph, have within the last twenty years established a tyrannical
ascendency over the imagination of the critics, which can only be fitly spoken
of as a blind superstition. It matters nothing that all four are discovered on
careful scrutiny to differ essentially, not only from ninety-nine out of a
hundred of the whole body of extant manuscripts besides, but even from one
another. This last circumstance, obviously fatal to their corporate
pretensions, is unaccountably overlooked. And yet it admits of only one
satisfactory explanation: viz. that in different degrees they all five exhibit
a fabricated text.”
Burgon goes on to say that Alexandrinus, is
also “depraved” and that Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Bezae are “three of the most
scandalously corrupt copies extant, that they “exhibit the most shamefully
mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with,” that their history is
totally unknown and that they are the “depositories of the largest amount of
fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and intentional perversions of truth
which are discoverable in any known copies of the Word of God.” Burgon asks us
to imagine the text of Hamlet edited on the basis of similarly depraved and
conflicting documents. The variant versions of
“To be or not to be” might then read as follows: Toby or not Toby, Tob
or not, To be a tub or not to be a tub, To beat or not to beat Toby, to beat
that Toby or to be a tub. (See his book The
Revision Revised, 1991 edition, pp. 11-16.)
The Revision of the New Testament
Under the leadership of two Englishmen,
Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort, critics classified the New Testament
manuscripts that they had examined into families in accordance with shared similarities
or variants. The theories have changed somewhat over the years, but at that
time they classified their manuscripts into four families. The majority of
manuscripts fell into a Syrian family, which they sometimes refer to also as a
Byzantine family because it is the text that is actually used by the
Greek-speaking world. Other manuscripts fell into Western and Alexandrian
families. A fourth group, which they referred to as the Neutral family, was
defined as the oldest and best, represented mainly by -- you guessed it --
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, on the basis of which they concocted a new Greek New
Testament, known as the Westcott and Hort text. Greek texts published later by
Nestle, Souter, Aland, the United Bible Societies and others represent the same
perverted manuscripts. Even if their manuscripts are as old as they claim,
there was no legitimate reason for these manuscripts to annul the testimony of
the horde of other manuscripts on which our New Testament is based. There are
said to be over 5,300 manuscripts of part or all of the Greek New Testament in
existence today. (See, for example, Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1979 edition, p. 39.) Other
ancient books by contrast, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, often exist in
no more than a handful and sometimes only one or two manuscripts. In addition
to actual New Testament manuscripts, there are so many quotations in the
multitudinous works of the Church Fathers of the first centuries of the
Christian era that if the New Testament were lost it could quite conceivably be
reconstructed from their writings. As for paleography, common sense tells us
that if even one scribe can live and write as long as 70 or more years, there
is no way to determine specifically when he copied a document on the basis of
handwriting style alone. Styles differ, and a scribe may even prefer to imitate
an older one. There is also the possibility that a recent copy of a manuscript
may have been copied from an ancient one that is no longer extant. Perhaps the
most damning objection to the revised text is the fact that the old manuscripts
on which it is based have not worn out with time, as would be the case if they
had been viewed as worthy of use. Why were they shelved so long before being
“discovered”? In fact, why did Tischendorf have to recover part of Sinaiticus
from a wastebasket?
Strangely enough, we do not have to prove
the antiquity of our Greek text, for critics agree that the Greek text on which
the King James Version is based is as old as the revised text. They cannot deny
its antiquity because they have compared it with ancient translations and with
quotations in the writings of the Church Fathers, many of whom wrote before
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were allegedly copied. Thus even Westcott and Hort
write, “A text virtually identical with the prevalent Greek text of the Middle
Ages was used by Chrysostom and other Antiochian Fathers in the latter part of
the fourth century, and thus must have been represented by manuscripts as old
as any manuscript now surviving.” (See their appendix to The New Testament in the Original Greek, 1916 edition, p. 548.) The “prevalent Greek text of the
Middle Ages” is, of course, the so-called Syrian or Byzantine text, that is,
the standard text, known as the Textus Receptus, on which the King James
Version is based. They refer to it as Antiochian because they fantasize that it
is the result of a revision made by Greek Fathers in Antioch of Syria in about
350 A.D. In spite of the fact that there is not as much as a hint of such a
revision in historical writings, it is represented as a historical fact in
modern theological textbooks, having gained credibility through much
repetition. The postulation of such a revision of the Greek text by critics is,
of course, necessary to relieve the pressure of the massive evidence arrayed
against their own text. What they leave unexplained, however, is why their
text, which they allege to be no older than ours, should be preferred over the
one used by all denominations of Christians, whether orthodox or heretical,
until modern times.
The Resurrection in Mark
One of the most glaring omissions in
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus is in chapter 16 of Mark, which ends abruptly with
verse 8, with the women leaving the sepulchre afraid. The resurrection is thus
missing in these manuscripts. After Westcott and Hort had completed their
revision, Vaticanus was made available in a facsimile edition, which clearly
shows that at the end of Mark an empty space was left by the scribe with enough
room to add the remainder of the chapter. This seems to indicate that the last
leaf was missing from an early manuscript of Mark from which Vaticanus was
copied. The scribe thus left the blank space in Vaticanus, intending perhaps to
add the missing words later. This blank space constitutes evidence that
knowledge of the ending of Mark is as old as Vaticanus. In any case, it is
simply ridiculous to assume that Mark, a member of the early church and a
traveling companion of Paul and Barnabus, would end his Gospel without
mentioning the resurrection.
Modern theologians promote the fantasy,
parroted in our anti-Christian media, that Mark is the oldest gospel, that it
was written after the fall of
The Woman Taken in Adultery
Another glaring omission, known as the
“pericope de adultera,” occurs in the revised text from John 7:53 through 8:11.
This contains the well-known story of the woman who was to be stoned after
having been “taken in adultery.” If we read the story carefully, we will see
that the omitted portion is required by the context. The omitted portion comes
after a failed attempt by the authorities to apprehend Jesus. The officers who
had heard him speak went to the priests and Pharisees and were criticized for
failing to bring him to them. The officers replied, “Never man spake like this
man.” Nicodemus, who was also present, said, “Doth our law judge any man before
it hear him, and know what he doeth?” The other leaders then rebuked him,
saying, “Art thou also of
One of the manuscripts that revisers cite
as evidence for the omission is Alexandrinus. However, Burgon points out that
John 6:50 to 8:52 is missing because two leaves -- the very leaves that would
have contained this passage -- are missing from the manuscript. This means that
there is no justification for the use of Alexandrinus as a witness against the
passage. Burgon also points out that two other manuscripts cited by the
critics, though intact, exhibit a vacant space where the omission occurs, which
testifies to the consciousness of the copyists that something is missing. He
mentions too that a fourth witness to which the revisers appeal is not a Bible
at all but a commentary. He then goes on to demolish the argument of the
revisers by citing a horde of witnesses to our text from manuscripts, ancient
translations and quotations in the writings of the Church Fathers, too numerous
to list here. (See The Woman Taken in Adultery
in Jay Green’s edition of Burgon’s works entitled Unholy Hands on the Bible.)
God Manifest in the Flesh
In I Timothy 3:16, where we read “God was
manifest in the flesh,” certain old manuscripts allegedly lack the word “ΘΕΟΣ”
(God), which is replaced by “ΟΣ,” a word that modern translations
generally render here as “he.” Thus they read instead, “He was manifest in the
flesh.” However, “
,”
an abbreviation for “ΘΕΟΣ ” that appears in old
manuscripts, is identical with the word “OΣ,” except for two horizontal
lines, one in the middle of the “theta” and another one above the word, which
indicates that it is an abbreviation. Some manuscripts have one line but not
the other, as in the case of English handwritten documents in which the writer
forgot to cross a “t” or dot an “i.” One manuscript appealed to by the revisers
is Alexandrinus, which has faded somewhat with time, but researcher Frederick
Nolan, in a book published in 1815, tells of a researcher of a previous
generation by the name of Dr. Berriman, who had taken two friends to examine I
Timothy 3:16 in this manuscript in the light of the sun with the aid of a magnifying
glass. After two indifferent persons standing by had also examined the
manuscript, Dr. Berriman committed the observations made that day to writing so
that there would never be just cause to doubt the true reading of “.”
Although the middle of the line in the “theta” had been retouched, the ends of
the original line were still visible. (See Nolan’s book, An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, p. 285.) Burgon
too, at the end of the nineteenth century, mentions a scholar who was still
alive, who said that when his eyes were 20 years younger he could still discern
a faint trace of the original line in the “theta.” Burgon then cites a
multitude of witnesses to the true text from manuscripts, ancient translations
and quotations from the Church Fathers (The
Revision Revised, pp. 424-520).
The Johannine Comma
In I John 5:7,8 we read, “For there are
three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and
these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the
spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” The
revised text omits all mention of the Trinity here and reads, “For there are
three that bear witness, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these
three agree in one.” The omitted clause, known as the Comma Johanneum or
Johannine Comma, is allegedly missing from most Greek manuscripts and even from
some Latin ones. Neither is it in the first two printed editions of the Greek
New Testament, published by Erasmus. Critics are thus confident that the
evidence against the Comma is overwhelming. One advocate of the revised text
boasted in 1881, “No defender of the genuineness of I John 5:7,8 will probably
arise in the future. The controversy regarding the passage is finished, and
will never be renewed” (See Alexander Roberts, Companion to the Revised Version of the English New Testament, p. 71.)
Erasmus, criticized for the omission, added
the Comma in 1522 to his third edition from a transcript of the passage found
in a manuscript in
Another early printed Bible, the
Complutensian Polyglot Bible of 1522, contains the Comma in parallel Greek and
Latin columns. It has been charged that the version of the Comma in the Greek
column of the Complutensian has been translated from the Latin. If so, why then
does the Comma in the Latin column of this polyglot Bible differ from the one
in the parallel Greek text? In verse 7, the Latin text has the reading of the
standard printed edition of the Vulgate, known as the Clementine version (which
is also the reading in the Gutenberg Bible): “For there are three that bear
record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit: and these three are
one.” The Greek column, which differs, reads: “For there are three that bear
record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three
agree in one.” Thus we see that the Complutensian version of the Comma could
not have been translated from the Latin because the Greek and Latin texts
differ from each other in this Bible.
The words “and these three agree in one”
are missing from verse 8 in Montfortianus, in the Greek and Latin columns of
the Complutensian and in some other early editions of the Bible. We should
point out, however, that the fourth-century writer Priscillian, who used the
Old Latin, quotes not only the Comma but also a version of verse 8 that is
identical with that of our Greek text. Quoting verse 8, he uses the very words
“agree in one” (“in unum sunt”) in his
Liber apologeticus 1:4. The unabridged edition of Matthew Henry’s
Commentary also points out, under I John 5:7, that a third-century Latin book, De baptismo haereticorum, which does not
quote I John 5:7, does quote a version of verse 8 that contains the words
“agree in one” (“in unum sunt”). The presence of these words in works that even
predate the Vulgate proves the antiquity of the reading “agree in one” (“eis to
en eisin”) in verse 8 of our Greek text. A footnote in the Complutensian
explains why the words “and these three agree in one” are missing from verse 8.
According to this footnote, St. Thomas Aquinas believed that these words were
added by heretics who wanted to obfuscate the unity of the Godhead by creating
a unity of spirit, water and blood in verse 8. The problem, however, is really
one of a defective Vulgate text, which reads “are one” (“unum sunt”), rather
than “agree in one” (“in unum sunt”) in verse 8, but the footnote is
significant because it shows that the Complutensian editors evidently felt no
need to justify the inclusion of the Comma in verse 7 but only the omission of
the final clause of verse 8. Such an omission is, of course, unjustified, in
spite of what Aquinas may have believed, and verse 8 has been retained in
entirety even in revised editions of the Greek New Testament.
Kurt Aland’s third critical edition of the
revised Greek New Testament (1975) lists the identifying numbers and estimated
ages of four cursives in which the Comma is found in the text: 629 (fourteenth
century), 918 (sixteenth century), 61 (sixteenth century), and 2318 (eighteenth
century). He lists four more in which the Comma is found only in the margin:
221 (tenth century), 88 (twelfth century), 429 (fourteenth century), and 636
(fifteenth century). The Comma is also found in Greek in the Acts of the
Lateran Council, held in 1215, and is quoted in Greek by Manuel Calecas, a
Dominican monk of the fourteenth century, and by Joseph Bryennius, a Greek monk
of the fifteenth century. (See Kitto, vol. 2, pp. 138,139.)
It is evident that with the advent of
printing, manuscripts became expendable. We will never know how many thousands
of manuscripts have been worn out and lost for various reasons, such as the
dissolution of monasteries and the dispersion of their libraries. Moreover, not
all extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament are complete. According to
scholars of the eighteenth century, 113 manuscripts of the First Epistle of
John were still in existence. (See the notes in Clarke’s Commentary under I
John 5:7.) In the nineteenth century, Kitto claimed that there were more than
180 such manuscripts written between the fifth and fifteenth centuries (Cyclopedia, vol. 2, p. 138.) Now the
number has grown to over 500. (See the section entitled Faith’s Solid Warrant
in Jesse M. Boyd’s 1999 study And These
Three Are One.) However, let’s not concern ourselves about these numbers,
and just for fun, let’s play their game and take into consideration only older
manuscripts, as they do. Aland’s revised Greek New Testament is quite
comprehensive in its listing of sources, and so let’s select it as the basis on
which to proceed. Aland lists in a footnote in support of the omission of the
Comma only 10 so-called uncial manuscripts, which are supposed to be older and
more reliable than cursives. Let’s first eliminate all manuscripts to which
Aland cannot conclusively assign a date earlier than the ninth century. This
leaves us only four uncial manuscripts, including the notorious fourth-century
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which are so hopelessly corrupt that they will have
to be eliminated out of hand, leaving only Alexandrinus from the fifth century
and another manuscript from the same century identified only by the number 048.
If we reject Alexandrinus, which Burgon defines as “depraved,” we are left with
only one uncial manuscript that is said to omit the Comma before the ninth
century, which is insufficient to establish any truth (Deuteronomy 19:15).
The Comma is found in the bulk of Vulgate
manuscripts and even in Old Latin ones, including Freisingensis, an Old Latin
manuscript copied in about 500 A.D. As for quotations of I John 5:7 in the
writings of the Church Fathers, critics allege that Cyprian, a Latin writer of
the third century, is unaware of the Comma, although he writes, for example,
“And again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
And these three are one” (On the Unity of
the Church 1:5). Tertullian also, who lived even earlier, referring to the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, says, “These three are one.” (Against Praxeas, chapter 25.) Critics imagine that these early
writers are actually discussing the spirit, water and blood of verse 8, which
they apply mystically to the three persons of the Trinity. The works of the
Church Fathers are readily available in theological libraries, where readers
can see for themselves that such mysticism has been extrapolated from later writers,
who indeed expostulate on the Trinity on the basis of verse 8. Numerous other
early Latin sources contain the Comma. The footnotes of Aland’s revised Greek
New Testament acknowledge Varimadum (380 A.D.), Priscillian (385), Cassian (435
A.D.), Victor-Vita (489 A.D.), Pseudo-Athanasius (sixth century), Fulgentius
(533 A.D.), and Ansbert (eighth century). Among the many citations and
allusions to the Comma that are conveniently ignored by the critics we find in
Augustine’s City of God, which he
finished writing in 426 A.D., the words “God, supreme and true, with his Word
and Holy Spirit, which three are one” (book 5, chapter 11). It is noteworthy
that Augustine here writes not “Son” but “Word,” as in I John 5:7, which he
would hardly be expected to do if he were mentioning the Trinity without regard
to the Comma.
Faced with incontrovertible evidence of the
Comma’s existence as early as their oldest Greek manuscripts, critics resort to
fantasy. They imagine that in the fourth century, when Vaticanus and Sinaiticus
are alleged to have been written, a marginal note or interpretative gloss was
incorporated into the text of the Bible of the
Other Omissions and Variations
Among the many other omissions in the
revised Greek text, there is the story of the angel troubling the water in John
5:3 and Philip’s statement to the eunuch in Acts 8:37 that he may be baptized
if he believes. Some of the more blatant omissions are found in Matthew 6:13,
Matthew 23:14, Matthew 27:35, Mark 9:44,46, Luke 9:55,56, Luke 17:36, Luke
23:17, Acts 15:34, Acts 23:9, Acts 24:6,7, Acts 28:29, Romans 11:6 and I
Corinthians 6:20. The omission of the words “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all” in Romans 16:24 is of special significance because these are
the very words that Paul uses to validate the authenticity of his epistles (II
Thessalonians 3:17). In addition to omissions, the revised text contains many
corrupted passages, such as in Matthew 19:17, where Jesus, in the new text,
does not say, “Why callest thou me good?” but “Why askest thou me concerning
that which is good?” Again in Luke 2:14, instead of the angels proclaiming
“Peace, good will toward men,” we read, “Peace to men of good will.”
The Hebrew Old Testament
The Hebrew Old Testament was first printed
by the Soncino Press in 1488. Until recently the oldest complete manuscript of
the Hebrew Bible was said to be one in
The original Hebrew Old Testament is still
available in libraries, bookstores and private collections. The standard
edition, first published in 1852, is known as the Letteris edition. It is named
after its editor, Meir Letteris of
The text of the original Hebrew Old
Testament is written only in consonants. To facilitate pronunciation of the text,
the Masoretes added their own markings, known as vowel points, beneath the
consonants. Variant readings in the Masoretic Text generally affect only these
vowel points. Marginal notes in our King James Bible indicate a few consonantal
variants in some manuscripts, which do not affect the basic meaning of the
text. For example, in Genesis 10:4 and I Chronicles 1:7, where we see the name
“Dodanim,” the margin indicates that some manuscripts read “Rodanim.” This
variant is due to the shape of the letters for “R” and “D” in the Hebrew
alphabet, which appear nearly identical to the untrained eye. Another marginal
note, in Song of Solomon 5:4, where the text reads “for him,” indicates that
some manuscripts read “in me.” The difference here is due to the omission of
one letter in one Hebrew word -- “alaiv” means “for him” and “alai” means “in
me.”
The final book of the Old Testament is
Malachi, which was written about four centuries before Christ and looks forward
to the coming of John the Baptist and the “great and dreadful day of the Lord”
(Malachi 4:5). In Catholic Bibles there are some additional books, written
during the intertestamental period, which Protestants refer to as the
Apocrypha. These books were translated not from Hebrew but from Greek and have never
been part of the Hebrew canon, that is, they were never accepted by the Jews as
Holy Scripture. Modern Bible critics, who do not believe that Daniel could have
predicted future events, imagine that his book was written not in the sixth
century B.C., as Daniel claims (Daniel 10:1), but in about 164 B.C. to
encourage the followers of the Maccabees in their struggle against the Syrians.
This is supposed to be indicated by its location in the Hebrew Bible, in which
the books are arranged differently than in translations. The Hebrew Bible is
divided into the Torah (Pentateuch), the Neviim (Prophets), and the Ketuvim
(Hagiographa). Christ divides the Old Testament similarly in Luke 24:44. As
arranged today, the book of Daniel is not among the prophets, where we would
expect to find it, but among the Ketuvim. Whatever the reason for its inclusion
with other old books, such as Job and Ruth, in the Ketuvim, Daniel lived and
wrote long before the Maccabean era. He is mentioned along with Noah and Job as
one of three righteous men in Ezekiel 14:14,20, a book that was also written in
the sixth century B.C. The Apocrypha admits, in fact, that no prophets existed
in
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Not satisfied with the uniformity of the
manuscripts that they catalogued, critics such as Rudolf Kittel and Paul Kahle
continued their quest for variants, poring over hordes of manuscripts in a
frantic search for anything they could sink their teeth into. Kittel died in
1929, but Kahle, undaunted, carried on their work but could find nothing to
undermine the Hebrew Bible. The most that he could do was to replace the text
that had been used in former printed editions with that of the Leningradensis
manuscript in the third edition of their Hebrew Bible, published in 1937.
However, this did not significantly aid their cause, for the previously printed
editions and Leningradensis reflect the same Masoretic Text and are thus
virtually identical. Then, in 1948, it was reported that the earliest known
manuscript of Isaiah, which became known as the Isaiah Scroll, had been found
with other ancient scrolls in the library of St. Mark’s Syrian Monastery in
As early as 1949, Metropolitan Mar
Athanasius Samuel of St. Mark’s Syrian Monastery was trying to sell the scrolls
in the
Experts continued to doubt the truth of the
story, the age of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the existence of the
Bedouins. Quite conveniently, a photograph of one of the boys turned up and has
been published in various books, and an “interview” of this person was
published by William Brownlee in October 1957 in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies under the title “Muhammad ed-Deeb’s
Own Story of His Scroll Discovery.” There is no way to verify the identity of
the person in the photograph or whether he ever found any scrolls anywhere. In
fact, the so-called “interview,” is really no interview at all but the boy’s
own brief account of the “discovery.” Unfortunately for those who believe in
the Dead Sea Scrolls, his story contradicts the details of all previous
accounts. He claims that he was searching for the lost goat not with anyone
else but alone, that he found the scrolls not in 1947 but in 1945, and that he
did not travel on to
Among those who viewed the whole story as a
hoax was Professor Solomon Zeitlin of
The whole story may just be a rehashed
version of an earlier story that goes back to 1883, when an antiquities dealer
in Jerusalem by the name of Moses Shapira tried to sell the German government
some parchments containing texts of the Pentateuch, mainly from Deuteronomy,
that he said were found in caves by Arabs and were nearly 3,000 years old.
These documents, written in the ancient Canaanite script, were eventually
exposed as frauds. (For more on Shapira, see G. S. Wegener’s book 6,000 Years of the Bible, 1963 English
edition, pp. 334-337.) The
In the Middle Ages, nearly every synagogue
allotted a room known as a geniza for
old or defective Bibles, where they, too sacred to be discarded, could quietly
disintegrate. Sukenik and Aldrich, in fact, both voiced the opinion that the
Revised Versions
At the end of the nineteenth century, as
the result of the work of Westcott and Hort and other New Testament critics,
revised versions of the Bible began to displace Reformation-era Bibles in all
countries of Christendom. The Revised Version of the New Testament was
published in
Anxious to free themselves from the bond of
the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament, the translation committee of the
Revised Standard Version of the Bible gave serious consideration to the variant
readings of the Dead Sea Scrolls as presented to them by Millar Burrows.
Thirteen variants in the book of Isaiah were then quietly incorporated into
their work. These variants are easily identifiable because footnotes indicate
that they are based on “one ancient manuscript” -- a veiled reference to the
Isaiah Scroll. One such footnote can be seen, for example, under Isaiah 21:8,
where the Hebrew word “arieh,” which means “a lion,” is replaced by “roeh,”
which the revisers render as “he who saw.” Evidence offered not by two or three
but by one depraved witness should never be held as sufficient to revise any
book, let alone a sacred text that exists in nearly every Jewish and Christian
home and library throughout the world. Burrows himself changed his mind about
the value of the readings. He wrote in 1955: “For myself I must confess that in
some cases where I probably voted for the emendation I am now convinced that
our decision was a mistake, and the Masoretic reading should have been
retained.” (See his Dead Sea Scrolls,
p. 305.) However, the damage was done, and the New Revised Standard Version
retained all 13 items of the previous Revised Standard Version and even added
seven more.
In the New Revised Standard Version, use of
the Dead Sea Scrolls is acknowledged in footnotes by the abbreviation “Q Ms,”
which means “
In his 1993 book The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations
of the Old Testament, Harold Scanlin informs us on page 27 that every major
Bible translation published since 1950 claims to have taken into account the
“textual evidence” of the Dead Sea Scrolls. On page 26 he gives the following
number of departures from the Masoretic Text in modern translations of I Samuel
alone:
New International Version, 15
Today’s English Version: 51
Revised Standard Version: about 60
New Revised Standard Version: about 110
New English Bible: 160
New American Bible: 230.
King James II Version
The Bible version known as King James II,
which has been disseminated by Jay Green, has become popular because it is included
as a parallel text in his Hebrew-Greek Interlinear Bible. The King James II is
not a modernized King James Bible, as its title would lead readers to believe.
Green admits in fact in his Preface that he does not “accept” every word in the
King James Version “as true scripture.” He mentions as one example Acts 9:5,6,
even though these verses are in the Greek text of his own Bible, in older
printed editions of the Greek New Testament, in the Vulgate and in other
sources. As another example, he mentions I John 5:7, which he alleges to be
adopted from the Complutensian, but this cannot be the case because the words
of this verse in the Complutensian differ from the standard text, as has been
shown above.
The King James II does not always adhere
even to its own original text, as in Romans 7:6, for example, where the King
James Version has “that being dead in which we were held.” Here the word “that”
is a demonstrative pronoun, referring to the law. The words “being dead”
(Greek: apothanontos) refer to the abolition of the law in Christ. Instead of
following his Greek text, the translator follows a variant reading
(apothanontes) and renders the passage in the same manner as in other new
Bibles: “having died to that,” meaning that we have died to the law, which, as
true as this is, does not reflect his own Greek text, which is also that of the
King James Version. See also Psalms 68:13, where “sheepfolds” replaces “pots,”
John 1:5, where “comprehended” becomes “overtake,” John 6:20, where “It is I”
becomes “I AM” in capital letters, and Jude 19, where “sensual” becomes
“animal-like ones.” The perfectly understandable word “hell” is changed to
“Sheol” in the Old Testament (II Samuel 22:6) and to “hades” in the New
Testament (Acts 2:27,31). The King James Version makes it clear in Hebrews
10:14 that those who are sanctified by Christ are perfected forever: “For by
one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” In King
James II the doctrine of justification is obscured by changing “those who are sanctified”
to “the ones being sanctified.”
New King James Version
In the Bible fraudulently named the New
King James Version we again see Romans 7:6, Psalms 68:13 and Hebrews 10:14
revised as in the King James II. Among many additional changes, we see in I
John 5:19 the word “wickedness” replaced by “the wicked one.” The Isaiah Scroll
is cited as a legitimate document in the margins, as in Isaiah 10,16 and 21:8,
where it is referred to by the letters DSS. In Isaiah 53:9, “he made his grave”
is changed to “they made His grave.” The margin admits that “he” is literally
correct, leaving open the question of whether the revised reading is based on
conjecture or the Isaiah Scroll, with which it agrees in this place. Isaiah
49:5 is also changed from “Though Israel be not gathered” to “So that
In their Introduction to the New King James
Version, the Thomas Nelson Bible publishers, who also publish numerous versions
based on the defective text of the Bible critics, boast of the integrity of the
original text and the “scrupulous care” they have taken to preserve the
“precision” of the King James Version. According to a pamphlet written by M. H.
Reynolds and entitled The New King James
Bible Examined, popular television evangelist Jerry Falwell, a member of
the Overview Committee, which reviewed the translation, has given the New King
James Version his unqualified endorsement, saying, “It protects every thought,
every idea, every word, just as it was intended to be understood by the
original scholars.” The Preface of the New King James Version assures its
readers that all the scholars who worked on the translation signed a “document
of subscription to the plenary and verbal inspiration of the original
autographs of the Bible.” Careful readers should note that such a subscription
actually means nothing, for although we have copies of the Bible in the
original languages, the actual documents penned by the Bible writers, which
they refer to as the “autographs,” are no longer extant. With such words the
translators thus express no confidence in the ability of the Holy Spirit to
preserve his Word in writing throughout the centuries. In a 1996 pamphlet
entitled A Creationist’s Defense of the
King James Bible, Henry Morris, a member of the Overview Committee who
reviewed the proposed translation of Genesis for the New King James Version,
admits that he cannot even read Hebrew. In the same pamphlet he also
acknowledges it to be his view that the King James Bible “is not inerrant in
the sense of the original autographs” and that “most of us who prefer it agree
that some words should have been translated differently.”
Catholic Bibles
The first complete English Catholic version
of the Bible, the Douay-Rheims of 1609-10, is translated from the Latin
Vulgate. It is equipped with explanatory notes to ensure that its readers
remain in spiritual darkness. Like later Catholic Bibles, it contains
Apocryphal books that have never been part of the Hebrew Bible and whose
canonicity was rejected even by Jerome. In Catholic Bibles, the doctrine of
justification of the sinner by the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus
Christ is obscured, as, for example, by consistently rendering the Greek word
for “righteousness” as “justice.”
A Bible for Catholics known as the
Jerusalem Bible, which was published in
In 1970, a Catholic Bible not based on the
Latin Vulgate was published in
In 1986 the New Testament of the New
American Bible was updated to incorporate non-sexist language. In 1991 the
Psalms were revised with the same intent and with such zeal that common sense
was thrown to the wind. For example, where the King James Version reads in
Psalms 8:4 in regard to Christ: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and
the son of man, that thou visitest him?” we now read in the New American Bible,
“What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for
them?” Yet when this Old Testament passage is quoted in Hebrews 2:6 in the same
Bible it remains utterly “sexist”: “What is man that you are mindful of him or
the son of man that you care for him?”
Bibles for Jehovah’s Witnesses
In 1902 the Jehovah’s Witnesses, acquired
the rights to an interlinear and parallel New Testament known as the Emphatic Diaglott, which was originally
published by Benjamin Wilson in 1865. They were enamored by this New Testament
because in it “God” is frequently and unjustifiably referred to as “Jehovah.”
In an introduction to his New Testament,
The Emphatic
Diaglott has now been superseded by a new version based on the text of
Westcott and Hort known as The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek
Scriptures. The parallel English text of this New Testament is identical to
that found in the standard Bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses known as The New World Translation of the Holy
Scriptures, which was first published in entirety in 1961. Strangely
enough, prior to 1961 the Jehovah’s Witnesses used and even published the very
King James Version that they hold in such contempt. Their new Bible alleges in
an Appendix (page 1452) that the original text of both testaments has been
falsified by Hebrew and Greek scribes, who replaced the Hebrew word “Jehovah”
with other words for God, and so their version reads “Jehovah” even where this
word is found neither in manuscripts nor printed editions. In accordance with
their belief that Jesus was not nailed to a cross, their Bible renders the
Greek word “stauros” not as a “cross” but as a “stake.” Since Jehovah’s
Witnesses do not believe in hell, their version renders this concept as
gehenna, hades, sheol and tartarus. Passages that uphold the deity of Christ
are consistenly distorted. Thus in Hebrews 1:8, where, referring to Christ, the
true text reads, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” their translation
reads, “God is your throne forever.” In John 1:1 “the Word was God” becomes
“the Word was a god.”
New International Version
According to the Preface of the popular New
International Version, it was translated by more than 100 scholars of many
denominations, which helped safeguard it from “sectarian bias.” The Preface
admits that the translation of the Old Testament is not based entirely on the
Hebrew text but that readings from other versions were “occasionally followed
where the Masoretic Text seemed doubtful and where accepted principles of
textual criticism showed that one or more of these textual witnesses appeared
to provide the correct reading.” As for the New Testament, the Preface admits
that “where existing manuscripts differ, the translators made their choice of
readings according to accepted principles of New Testament textual criticism.”
The Living Bible
The Living Bible is believed by many to be
a real Bible even though the author, Kenneth Taylor, never claimed it was an
actual translation but only a paraphrase. According to an article that appeared
in Time in July, 1972, he lost his
voice halfway through his work, which a psychiatrist who examined him
attributed to psychological self-punishment for tampering with what
The Inclusive New Testament
If modern Bibles have not done an adequate
job in blurring the distinction between the sexes for a perverted world, since
about 1996 an Inclusive New Testament has been available in bookstores. In this
version the Trinity in Matthew 28:19 is rendered “Abba God, the Only Begotten
and the Holy Spirit.” The names of Christ’s female ancestors have been added to
the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1:1-17, where they are placed in front of
those of the males. Sensitivity to women extends even to the “great whore” and
“mother of harlots” of Revelation, who becomes the “Source of All Idolatry” in
Revelation 17:5. In the section entitled
“acknowledgments” the editors regret that not all who worked on the
project could be recognized “out of fear for their ministry, career or job.”
Color-Coded Bibles
Those who accept the view of modern
scholarship that the biblical text was concocted by a hodgepodge of various
writers and editors over the centuries will be happy to know that new Bibles
are available to help them sort out who wrote what. There is, for example, The Bible with Sources Revealed, a
Pentateuch published by Richard Elliott Friedman in 2003, which identifies its
imaginary contributors (E, P, R, etc.) by giving them their own colors and
fonts.
Another color-coded Bible has been
published by a group of scholars that began meeting in 1985 in a forum known as
the Jesus Seminar. For six years they discussed the issue of authenticity of
the words of Jesus in the New Testament and finally came up with a new edition
of the gospels entitled The Five Gospels
-- that’s right, five, not four, because a fifth gospel, a so-called Gnostic
Gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas, is included. This gospel, originally
written in Coptic, is alleged to have been found in 1945 -- in what else but a
jar -- together with other ancient Gnostic documents, by two peasants digging
in a cliff near some caves in the vicinity of Nag Hammadi,
The words of Christ in The Five Gospels are color-coded to indicate the degree of
authenticity that the scholars attach to them. However, no certainty is
indicated at all that any of the words attributed to Christ were actually
spoken by him. Those “most probably” spoken by him are printed in red. Pink
indicates less certainty. Words in gray “did not originate with Jesus but may
reflect his ideas.” Words left in black are inauthentic. In this edition, the
Gospels are arranged in the order in which they were allegedly written, Mark
being first and Thomas last. The only words of Christ printed in red in Mark
are found in 12:17: “Pay the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and God what
belongs to God.” In the rendering of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9, the only
words in red are “Our Father.” By the time these scholars reach the version of
the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11:2, the only word they leave in red is “Father” --
a word uttered at some time or other by every human being who is able to speak.
In John, red is entirely lacking, and the only pink is found in chapter 4,
verse 44: “A prophet gets no respect on his own turf.” The Gospel of Thomas
ends with words that can only be viewed as offensive in our politically correct
era. When Peter requests that Mary leave the disciples because “females do not
deserve life,” Christ objects, saying, “Look, I will guide her to make her
male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For
every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.” These
words are, not surprisingly, left in black.
Non-Guilt Bibles for Jews
Even before the release of the new movie
“The Passion of the Christ,” which
was expected to portray the role of the Jews in the crucifixion of their
Messiah in an excessively historical light, a media campaign was launched
against the historical accuracy of the Bible. In an article entitled “Who
Killed Jesus,” the February 16, 2004 issue of Newsweek tried to convince readers that the book that countless
believers take as “the immutable word of God” was written by “human authors”
and “is not always a faithful record of historical events.” However, the
article does not tell us where we can find other accounts of the crucifixion by
which to compare whether the Bible is indeed in error. Unexpurgated editions of
the Talmud confirm, in fact, the hate of the Jews for Christ and their role in
his crucifixion. (See, for example, Sanhedrin
43:1, cited with other Talmudic passages on Christ in Part II of Bernhard
Pick’s The Talmud, What It Is,
published in New York in 1887.) In any case, those who are anxious to relieve
the Jews of all guilt will be happy to know that The Gospel According to Saint John, published by Dagobert Runes in
1967, is void of all passages offensive to Jews. On the title page, Runes
informs his readers that the King James text that is followed has been “edited
in conformity with the true ecumenical spirit of His Holiness, Pope John XXIII”
and “without adulteration by hate and revulsion against the people of the Savior.”
According to the Preface, “serious mistakes have infiltrated the New
Testament.” Passages in which Jesus speaks of the Jews as “the sons of the
devil, doing the devil’s work,” are obviously “erroneous or false,” for Christ,
according to the editor, could not have spoken in such a manner of “his own
kin, his own parents, his own people.”
For Jews who would like to become
Christians in name only, there is a Jewish New Testament published by David
Stern in 1989 and a Complete Jewish Bible published in 1998. Throughout his
Bible, Stern replaces common English words with Jewish jargon. The Lord becomes
Adonai, and names such as Jesus, Abraham and Paul become Yeshua, Avraham and
Sha’ul. In his Introduction, Stern does not use B.C. and A.D. but insults Christ
by using the modern Jewish abbreviations B.C.E. and C.E. The aim of his
translation, he explains, is to remove “centuries-old antisemitic theological
biases” from the Bible. For some reason he does not have a similar concern when
it comes to Jewish persecution of the Church. The stoning of Stephen (Acts
7:58), the imprisonment of believers (Acts 8:3), and the pursuit of Paul from
city to city (Acts 17:13) are found even in his translation. In Stern’s
translation the books of the Bible are lumped together without any distinction
between the Old and New Testaments. This is an ideal Bible for those who cannot
accept the doctrine of justification by the imputation of the righteousness of
Christ without the works of the law and through faith alone. Where Paul says,
“Therefore we conclude, that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law” (Romans 3:28), Stern’s version reads, “Therefore, we hold the view
that a person comes to be considered righteous by God on the ground of
trusting, which has nothing to do with legalistic observance of Torah
commands.” And where Paul says, “For Christ is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believeth” (Romans 10:4), Stern’s translation
reads, “The goal at which the Torah aims is the Messiah, who offers
righteousness to everyone who trusts.” In fact, Stern renders the words
“believe” and “faith” as “trust” throughout Paul’s epistles. In Romans 4:3 he
translates Paul’s quotation from Genesis 15:6 as “Avraham put his trust in God,
and it was credited to his account as righteousness.” Yet when we turn in his
Bible to the passage in Genesis that Paul is quoting, we read, “He believed in
Adonai, and he credited it to him for righteousness.” In Galatians 3:6 the same
passage is inflated to, “He trusted in God and was faithful to him, and that
was credited to his account as righteousness.” However, in James 2:23 we read,
“Avraham had faith in God, and it was credited to his account as
righteousness.”
Saul’s Reign
We read in the King James Version in I
Samuel 13:1,2: “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over
The Virgin Birth
Not surprisingly, the doctrine of the
virgin birth is assailed in the new translations. In Isaiah 7:14, we read in
the King James Version the following words spoken by the Prophet to King Ahaz:
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The new versions
render the Hebrew word “almah” not as “a virgin” but as “the young woman,”
ignoring the fact that the word is never used to refer to a married woman.
Furthermore, the context, which calls for a sign or miracle, is rendered
meaningless if the birth is not to be miraculous. The Septuagint uses here the
Greek word “parthenos,” which can only mean “a virgin,” and the same word is
used in the citation of the passage in Matthew 1:23. Although the translators
of the King James II and New King James versions claim to have followed the
same original texts as the King James translators, they cannot resist obscuring
Isaiah 7:14 by adding the article “the” in front of the word “virgin,” which
implies that the virgin in question is not the mother of Christ but one known
to Isaiah and Ahaz.
How to Identify a Real Bible
Phony Bibles have been concocted for nearly
every taste, but it is still relatively easy to identify a real Bible. The
title page of a true English-language Bible will inform the reader that it is
the Authorized or King James Version. The cover of a true English-language
Bible is usually, though not always, black. It is the one that people are
ashamed to read on a park bench or in a bus. It will be identified on its cover
as The Holy Bible, not as The Bible, The Holy Scriptures, The Book, The Living
Bible, The Amplified Bible, God’s Word, New International Version, New English
Version, Jerusalem Bible, Revised Standard Version, New American Standard
Bible, Good News Bible, Today’s English Version, Reader’s Digest Bible, Blue
Denim Bible, nor by any other title. It should not contain a copyright notice,
for it is not man’s word but God’s Word and was translated before copyright
laws were enacted. Any copyright notice that may be added by some publishers is
applicable only to Bible helps, maps or other such material that may be
included. In
Readers should also note that some
so-called King James Bibles contain unjustified variants and omissions. In a
New Testament published by the American Bible Society the spelling of names has
been changed to agree with the spelling used in the Old Testament. Thus, for
example, Osee and Booz become Hosea and Boaz. However, the editors were
inconsistent, for Rachab is not changed to Rahab in Matthew 1:5 and “Jesus” is
not changed to “Joshua” in Hebrews 2:9. The Gideons have disseminated a King
James Bible, which was once common in hotel rooms, in which the subscriptions
are omitted from Paul’s epistles. These subscriptions, which have always been
an integral part of the New Testament, are unnumbered verses at the end of
Paul’s epistles that provide information about them, such as where they were
written and who carried them. Scholars do not like these subscriptions because
they have their own ideas about such matters. For example, the subscription to
Galatians tells us that it was written in
Marginal Notes
The King James translators have, in some
cases, added marginal notes that explain certain words that appear in the
original text. In recent editions of the Bible these notes have been replaced
by notes of modern editors. Unfortunately, it has become difficult to find new
editions of the King James Version in which the original notes are retained. In
undoctored Bibles, such notes are found, for example, in connection with Acts
13:18, where, if we transliterate the Greek words into our own alphabet, we
read, “Gr. etropoforesen, perhaps for
etrofoforesen, bore, or, fed them, as a nurse beareth, or, feedeth her child, Deut. 1:31 according
to the LXX and so Chrysostom.” This means that the Greek word etropoforesen, which is translated in
Acts 13:18 as “suffered he their manners,” should be compared with etrofoforesen in Deuteronomy 1:31 in the
Septuagint (Seventy), the latter being the word used by Chrysostom in citing
the passage in Acts 13:18. Another note on the Greek text is found in
connection with verse 34 of the same chapter, which reads, “Gr. ta osia, holy, or, just things: which word the LXX both in the place of Is. 55:3, and
in many others, use for that which is in the Hebrew, mercies.” This note explains why the Greek words “ta osia,” which
normally mean “holy or just things,” are rendered as “mercies” in Acts 13:34.
Conclusion
Christ says, “Heaven and earth shall pass
away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). The Word that created
and redeemed the world remains with us today in written form in the Holy
Scriptures as the only infallible and immutable rule of life and doctrine. This
Word lives and works without defense or apology from us, convincing even
unreasonable and recalcitrant persons of the truth of its testimony: “Faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17).” All the
strivings of flesh and blood against the Word of God serve only to purify it,
as David says, “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” (Psalms 12:6,7). Christ also
says, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass
from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). Most of those who devoted
their lives and energy to perverting the Holy Scriptures are now receiving
their just reward in the hell in which they did not want to believe. We do not
know whether they share there the missionary spirit of the rich man of Luke
16:19-31, who wanted to warn his five brethren who were still on earth, lest
they too come into the same torment, and who heard Abraham say, “They have
Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” Neither do we know whether they,
like the rich man, still reject the power of the Word of God, saying, “Nay,
father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” In
any case, the reply of Abraham is still valid today, “If they hear not Moses
and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead.”
April 12, 2005