Oh Oh please please please please please please. At a Ligonier conference John MacAethur mentioned that Mark 16 "is not in the Bible." this is SO upsetting, and yes I know I've said this so many times if anybody did read my blog it would be so annoying they wouldn't read muc more of it.
Who said it's not in the Bible? Westcott and Hort. Westcott and Hort. All sorts of thingsx that for centuries were known as Bible truth were declared by W and H not to be in the Bible Because their preferred Greed manuscr9ipts, known as the "earliest" we have, don't include them. It was their manuscripts that became the bedrock of the modern translations while the King James was treated as a poor translation from a bad set of Gree Manscripts. On their sayso. The fact that their
earliest" manscripts are extant today, in nearly peperfect condition after nearly two millennia, doesn't seem to raise any doubts in anyone's minds. They are dated back to the fourth century and there they are in all their pristine glory and it's just accepted that the tradition on which the King James ghad been based is the wrong one and this earlier stuff the true one. Well, golly gosh, it IS earlier, right? Isn't that all you need to know?
Bamboozled by the :scholars" Mac Arthur, R C Sproul, Martyn Lloyd Jones. all these and many others of the best of the best have accepted thje work of Westcoot t and Hort of the revising committie that produced its new bogus Bible in 1881. I've heard all of these speak of passages that are not really in the Bible although they are included for tradition's sake in most of the newer translations. they've bought the lie foisted on the Church by the Westcott and Hort dominated revosomg cp,,ottee/
Unfortunately the main opponents, or the best known, the King James Only people, have credibility pro0blems of their own, so when James White did his book against them it had a lot of authoritative clout. But although they are maybe the biggest group of opponents to the new fersions, and I'm not even sure of that any more but they certainly were a couple of decades ago, ... lost track of what I qas sayhing and insce I ca n't see what I'm writing I have to leave it there. Sorry
I don't condser myself to be KJV Only althoughn I end up on their side from a different angle. I read enough of DSean John Willion Burgon's books to be his staunch supporter and I consider him to t bbe the one who should be taught in tbhe seminaries, not Westcott and Hort. Burtgon is very convincing that W and H were not only Crypto Catholics who hated the King James Bible for reasons of their own, but deficient scholars to the point of operating at what he called "schoolboy" level/. He wrote a lengthy book on Mark 16that I wish MacArthur had read, and he wrotge The REVISION revised which takes apart the Greek manuscripts they smuggled into their revision as well as their bad translation which Burgon says mangle the English on top of giving us a bogus Greek man uscript.
Burgon identified the Gree,k manuscripts preferrs by W and H as the word of early heretics. they took out some of the most famous passages that had come down to us as the "textus Receptus which underlies the King James, and W and H made up the explanation that this was because scribes must have added in those passages along the way wince obviously to their mind these supposedly earliest manuscripts were the authentic ones and they couldn't be at fault. Except that Burgon says they are at fault, and that is in fact why they are in such pristine condition. the textus Recepturs exists only in fragments back to the tenth century because it was USED, while the W and H manuscripts are in such condition because they were never used.
Anyway in my opoinion Buregon is the authority we should be trusting.
Somehow or other MacArthur and others who accept this bamboozle nevertheless don't let it affect their belief in the Bible's inerrancy. I'm not sure how they manage this but somehow they do. If pasages were added in later how can we accept them and how can we believe the Bible is inerrant if the original authorts cid not include them. ???
QWho am I to say anything at all? I'm no scholar. I just happen to think burgon makes the best case and what I've read about Westcott and Hort show them to be supre,e;lu iuntrustworthy. For on e thing they did not even stick to the instructions given them for the revising committee. Bringing in a new set of Greek manscripturs was a sneaky act of their own that was not warranted by the defined task of the committee, which was only tu up[date the King James Bible.
Burgon criticized W and H for their translation of the Greek word "aeion" as "age" and he argues that at some langth. But their translation has stuck and people take it as an apt criticizm of tyndale's "wold" as opposed to "age." He also criticized their ustranslation of a Greek tense which I think is called the Aorist? aorist tense, which they translated with the awkward and unnglish phrases ending in "indg" supposedly because English doesn't sufficiently get across the ongoing nature of many of the Greek phrases which are more clearly expressed in the Greek. As Burgon says this is ludi crous, and it reads badly in mty opinion. I cringe everytime someone quotes such a phrasef from the NASB. It's bad English. The Eordinarly English past tense is just fine for conve nyhint gwhat needs to be conventy in most of those cases where they have mangled it with their schoolboy understanidng. Where something more emphastic is required to get across the ongoing meaning of a pphrase the King James uses the "ing" form but for the bast manjroity of places wehre the Greek uszes the aorist tense it is not needs ed in the English. Burgon knows what he is talking about. i wish he were the authority the seniminaries use.
But whole generations of seminary students are now bamboozled about the Greek language, and ofcourse they aren't in any position to know any better. Idf MacArthur and Sproul and >Llloyd Jones don't knjow any better then the poor student new to Greek doeshnj'[t stand a chance.
Chris Pinto has covered a lot of territory on the subject of the bogus Greek Manuscripts used by Westcott and Hort in his filom series on the history of the Bible. tares among the Wheat is one of them where it comes up but I think Bridge to Bablyon is where he gets more deeply into it.
Mark 16 belongs in the bible. It wqas wsritten by Mark.
I suppose it must be because the Church is under God's judgment that we are now subjected to this kind of insanity that undermines our Bibles.
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Mea
Meant to poihnt out that in one of the supposedly earliest manuscripts so revered by W and H, the Siniaticus I think, there is a big gap in the text where tMark 16 appears in the tradition that undelies the King James. Certainly d\suggests thatcontrary to the theories of Q and H that passage had been there before and was left out of this version.
Also want to add that I just heard R XC Spro7ul call the King James Bible "a bad translation" because of how it used the word "evil" instead of "calamity""y. But isn't it just that the word had more of that connotation when the translation was done? Why call it a bad translation? that's part of the legacy of Westcott and Hort. Distressing to me but then who am I ? Most Christians have accepted the W and H frame of reference. the fact that the King James Bible had a very high place in english speaking cultrue for centuries no longer carries any weight. We now accept inferior translations of possibly heretical or even forged Gre4ek manuscraupts
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