It gets to me, sometimes it makes me angry. I do wonder if I'm wrong, Lord please please correct me if so, or motivated by self and pride and I suppose there's always going to be some degree of that influence but again Lord please please correct me. When they, meaning otherwise good solid Bible teachers, refer to the "earliest manuscripts as their authoritative source on some passage where the King James tradition of manuscripts differ from it, I either cry or get mad. Same when I hear the interpretation of the women's head covering twisted by that false claim that it's really all about the sucultural context of Paul's time and not about a literal head covering, or when I hear the End Times prophecy foloowers say we aren't going to know who the Anticrhist is because he is only going to be revealed after the Rapture.
Sounds arrogant of me I'm sure. There are people on my side but they aren't the BIG guys. TThey aren't the seminary professors.
I just heard a praecher interrupt his sermon on the book of Ephesians to note that the "earliest manuscripts" don't have the word" Ephesians' in the first line of it although for the most part it is there in the current versions anyway. What's the implication of this? That the earliest manuscripts are true to what Paul actually wrote and that somebody somewhere along the line added the word into later copies. Which is a SIN. That idea came from Westcott and Hort, that all kinds of things that aren't in those earliest manuscripts were added later into the line of manuscripts that underlies the King James Bible.
I've heard Westcott and Hort referred to with reverence by otherwise decent pastor. Two men who violated the directive they were under on the committee called to update the King James, by addint a new set of Greek manuscripts, besides in the opinion of Dean JQ Bufgon, producing a very bad translation because of their inferior understanding of both Greek and Englihs. Burgon is my standard, a highly qualified scholar of Greek as well as a true man of God. Nwither can be said of Westcogtt and Hort.
It CAN be said of the King James translators though. And besides Westcott and Hort I doubt it can be said of ANY of those who have produced any of our modern translations which are based on their corrupted manuscripts. If the revising commiittee ohad done its job we could have had a decent updating of the King James. Instead we have a babel of inferior translations based on a set of Greek man7uscripts that were known to Burgon as at least corrupted by earliy heretics, or possibly, as is explored in documentariesby Chris Pinto, even later forgeries.
In any case those manuscripts arfe, amazinglyh, still intact, though they go all the way back to the early centureies of the Church. How did they manage to remain so pristine? Consider that the textus receptus, the line of Greek manuscripts on which the King James was based, only exist now in fragments, some five thousand of them, that go back only to the tenth century. Which is what you'd expsect of Bibles that were actually USED. For some reason those earliest manuscr9ipts were not used. That's the only reason they could have survived for so long in such good condition. IF rhey do in fact go that far back, which may be untrue. T3ehy may be forgeries. At least Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.
But the Church has accepted the Westcott and Hort production and takes it all very seriously. Dare I suggest this is just a form of captivity by the devil? Over what is at least the majority of the Church?
BDoes it really matter? Well, I think it does. I think the very fact that we have so many different translations in itself has a crippoling influence on the Church. We need a common la nguage in order to share the scriptures with one another without always having to stop and correct and second guess everything, and certainly for the purpose of memorizing scripture. And there is no need in MOAT of the cases for any change to the King James wording. I was listening to the Book of Revelation read on the radio the other day in the NASB version and it was hard not to turn inte radio off. There is no reason to have changed the word "V8ial" into the word "bowl,: or to make "fornication" reduceable to the vague term "immorality." And that's just a couple of the problems I kept hearing in the reading.
Well, nobody is likely to isten to me. I'm nobody a nd nobody readds my blog anyway, or not many. I also strenuously object to the devil's work on the women's head covering too. Scholars even of very good reputation can err but when they err they getr taken seriously as in this case. The passage is about the HEAD, over and over and over it is clear it is about the HEAD, because it is about the order of headshi9p or authority God gave to His creation, God over Chirst over man over woman. It is not about cultura,l expressions of femininmity. I would think that would be prestty obvioujs. Besides, as I like ot point out, we require men to uncover their heads in church, and that also came from that same pasage, so how on earth do we justify chanigng the meaning of the passage onlyu to apply it to women and remove the meaning that it's really about which is covering the head.
And then there is the Anticrhist. He's been identified by ttrue Christians down the centuries as the Pope and the Reformers discovered thatat fact in their turn. He's the Pope. There's no reason to think some other figure is going to show up as a new version of the Anticrhist. The number six six six fits him as it does no otgher person and he's been known for centuries as the Anticrhist. We just aren't required to read the right histories any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment