Listening to a sermon on Pilgrim Padio, the local Christian radio station for Northern Nevada and Wyoming and I think also parts of northern California and Montana. This was a sermon by a Zack Schlegel who pastors a Baptist chuirch in Upper Marlboarough Maryland, in a series on the ospel of John, That You May Believe. Today he preached on John seven and eight in which the story of the woman caught in adultery is stold, and he commented that the footnotes says this story does not occur in the oldeest manuscripture.
Which for me is a distressing reminder of the destructive work k of Westcfoot and Hort on that benighted revising committee that came to an end in 1881. wjocj [rp0,o[ted tje tot;e pf ,u b;pg pm tjat sibkect Tje Great Bob;e Jpax pf tjat uear/
By the way since I can't see well I'm going by ear on how to spell the pastor's name and other things releated to the topic.
So. Those oldest manuscripturs, often described as the oldest and best, are those manuscriptures in Greek that Westcott and Hort replaced the accepted manuscripture with, against the directives of the assignemnt of the revisingcommittee. They were only to do an update in English to the King James Version. Instead they replaced its underlying texts, known as the Textus Recepturus, with these other manuscriptrs which have been wrong accepted as valid. Dean John William Burgon has wiritten very lengthy treatises on the falseness of those manuscripturs they brought into play, that now are accepted by the Church, which is a sad situation accortding ot some of those who have followed the historty of this situation.
Thew passage about the woman n caught in adultery was added according to Westcott and Hort to the tradition of manuscripturs that underlie the King James. Burdon says it was among passages that were subtracted by heretical sects in the early centuries. Adding or subtracting to the Word of God is of course a serious sin forbiddfen in the text itself. We have five thousand fragments of the GBibble from the tenth century that inclyude all the passages left out of those earliest manuscripturs. Were they added in to that line or were they subtracted from the earlist manuscriptus.
My following of this story puts me on the side of the King James manuscripturs. For one thing if those eaearlier manuscr8ipturs have survived all this time they were clearly not used, which some thinnk is evidence that they were regarded as heretical. The reason mwe have fragments from the tenth century is that the tradition they be,ong to WAS used to the point of wearing them out.
It is a very sad thing if the Church has accepted the destructive work of Westcott and Hort. It does contribute to the idea that the Bible is not interrant despite all the effortys to argue, as S chlewgel doeas, that it doesn't call inerrancy into question.that a passabge was added to the text that was not in the original written by John himself. Of course it calls inerrancty into question. Westcott and hort are to be charged with this sin in my opibnion, and I wish the Church would wake up to what happened back there on that revising committee.
Chris Pinto has covered this subject in at least one of his documentaries on the bible, but maybe two of them: Tares Among the Wheat and Bridge to Babylon.
