Bogus Bibles: A Complete Tangent to the Strange Fire issues but it was getting to me

It kept bothering me as I listened to the Strange Fire Conference so I'd like to register my objections:

BIBLE VERSIONS
I have a separate blog on the Bible manuscript controversies, The Great Bible Hoax of 1881,  and am probably hypersensitive to quotations from any of the modern Bibles, having come to regard them as based on the bogus Greek manuscripts that were introduced into all our new Bibles with the Revision of 1881.  At the Conference every time a lengthy quotation was read from -- presumably --  the New American Standard, I cringed.  The English is just plain awful in that translation, which is a different problem from the fact that it's also one of the modern versions that is based on the Critical Text, which includes the corrupt Westcott and Hort Greek text.  The NAS is considered to be a good "literal" translation, but in fact it is a klutzy rendering that is deaf to English, attempting to render the Greek in ways that are simply alien to the English language.   For one thing, it keeps on saying "keeps on doing" this that or the other, which is NOT the way ongoing action is normally conveyed in English.  John Burgon pointed out this strange mistreatment of English  -- yes it's a legacy from the 1881 Revision -- in his book, The Revision Revised, a massive critique of the 1881 Revision put out by the Westcott-and-Hort-dominated committee.

THE STRANGE FIRE CONFERENCE IS BASED ON ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, IT IS BASED ON SOLA SCRIPTURA, AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE THIS ALWAYS AFFIRM THAT OUR BIBLE IS INERRANT.  BUT ALL THESE VARIOUS BIBLE VERSIONS, AND ESPECIALLY THE CORRUPTED GREEK TEXTS CONSIDERED TO BE THE "OLDEST AND BEST" ALTHOUGH THEY ARE FULL OF CORRECTIONS AND ERRORS, TESTIFY TO ERROR, NOT INERRANCY.  THE "SCHOLARLY" ASSESSMENT DOES LEAD SOME CANDID THINKERS TO THE FALSE BUT NOT UNREASONABLE CONCLUSION THAT THE BIBLE IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY.   THE CHURCH NEVERTHELESS CONTINUES TO AFFIRM BIBLE INERRANCY, WHICH WE SHOULD DO IN ANY CASE, BUT BECAUSE OF THESE FALSE MANUSCRIPTS THE DEVIL HAS BEEN BUSY USING ALL THOSE BOGUS BIBLES QUITE PLAUSIBLY TO TEACH SOMETHING ELSE. 

AEON
Burgon also pointed out the equally bizarre mistranslation of the Greek word "aeon" as "age" as opposed to the King James rendering, "world."   "Age" is now in most of the new Bibles and is staunchly defended as the "correct" meaning of the Greek term, at the Conference by Justin Peters if I recall correctly, although Westcott and Hort's insistence on it merely demonstrated their ignorance of nuances of translation from Greek to English (OR possibly a more sinister motive?  They DESPISED the Textus Receptus and the King James).  Of course it also bothers me that it wouldn't just be obvious that the King James translators were the highest caliber scholars who knew Greek far better than W and H did, but maybe you have to read Dean Burgon to have a sense of the difference. 

YAHWEH
And I also cringe at the name "Yahweh" as the Name of God in the place of "Jehovah."  As for the scholarly excuses for the change - the reasons are NOT as clear as is often claimed -- even at best they are not worth the confusion and disruption of the historical usage in the minds of millions of English speaking Bible readers, not to mention the disruption of the literary and cultural heritage of centuries.  Not only does it sound to me like the name of a tribal god, a lesser god, but it shows only too tellingly the lengths to which some "scholars" are willing to go to undermine the King James Bible in one way or another.  There was NOTHING wrong with "Jehovah" just as there was nothing wrong with MANY of the English words in that Bible that the Westcott and Hort Committee chose to change, some 36 thousand UNNECESSARY changes in the English alone, that went on to spawn more and more change-for-change's sake in subsequent translations (although much of that is due to the fact that a certain number of differences from other versions is necessary for a translation to qualify for copyright). 

It's something of a puzzle why people do not simply HEAR the problem when all these different translations are compared, not to mention why we don't hear the confusion that is created by simply HAVING so many translations used by so many Christians, the cacophony, the confusion of tongues, even the simple inability to locate a verse because you've remembered its wording from a different translation.  The effect is to GARBLE THE BIBLE.  But I didn't hear it either once upon a time, I've had to learn all this stuff over the years. 

Chris Pinto is now the best source of information about what all this is REALLY about, at least the Greek manuscripts (he doesn't object to the English translations as I do).  Hint:  Vatican, Jesuits;  the Roman Catholic behemoth's plots to destroy the English Bible and ultimately whatever is left of the Protestant Reformation.  Westcott and Hort were at least Anglo Catholics, and so were/are many of the scholars who have been promoters of their Greek text.  I know, conspiracy conspiracy.  Well, you need to hear Chris Pinto and I've done some work myself toward demonstrating all this at my blogs including the Catholicism blog, nowhere near as much as needs to be done.  Pinto is the best source of all this information.

Of course this doesn't apply only to the Strange Fire Conference, it is just as true of most of today's Christian teachers, of Reformed teachers and Charismatics as well.  I do a lot of cringing these days as I listen to sermons by today's preachers.  It's just that I know MacArthur is a strong NAS guy and it started to get to me so I had to mention it.  I'd call it a "pet peeve" but obviously I take it a lot more seriously than that.

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Later:  Listening to the Charismatic radio show host, Dr. Michael Brown, I encountered another common affront to the Church brought to us courtesy of the Westcott and Hort 1881 debacle, the belief that the last twelve verses of Mark are not authentic.  The vast majority of supposed Bible-inerrancy believers now accept this devil-wrought slap in the face of the Church.  Well, that's what we get for accepting the work of scholars who are unbelievers, who let their disbelief in the supernatural dictate their dating of the Bible among other things.  Not to mention scholars who are Jesuits.  How gullible today's Church is!  Is it too late to wake up?    

A Short History of Feminism, Pt. 2: CBMW's compromised foundations

How the Bible Versions Contribute to Liberalism and Feminism by Undermining Inerrancy

After watching the film about the 19th century women's movement, I went to the website of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in search of material on the history of feminism. Of course the preponderance of their work is aimed against feminism.

There I found Mary Kassian's book, The History of Feminism and the Church, where the material I've just covered from the film is reviewed; also a talk by Carolyn McCulley that outlines the movement and its various phases, three phases as she describes it, and also Wayne Grudem's book, Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism, an excerpt of which is here.

As I say in my previous post, it seems to me that the feminist movement was itself born of liberalism, so to consider that today's evangelical counterpart in the church could lead to theological liberalism is only to affirm the natural affinity between the two. Grudem traces the phenomenon in the growing practice of ordaining women ministers, and analyzes the various ways Biblical inerrancy and authority are undermined to allow this. A study found that

Biblically inerrant denominations are . . . resistant to formal gender equality.10 .... for "biblically inerrant denominations" the argument that the Bible prohibits the ordination of women is by far the most persuasive argument.11

Of course, what immediately comes to my mind because of my immersion in the Bible versions issues over the last months, is that there has to be a connection with this major influence against Biblical authority. The Bible versions hoax is the biggest Trojan horse ever parked inside the churches, and it is hard to believe that the influence of the liberal thinking that brought these versions to us would not have an undermining influence on Biblical thinking in general. One of the most jarring pieces of cognitive dissonance in the general acceptance of the modern Bible versions, it seems to me, is the fact that their very existence argues against Biblical inerrancy while the evangelical churches that so uncritically accept them nevertheless try to hold onto the idea of Biblical inerrancy without noticing that the foundation for it has been pulled out from under it.

If you can question the authority of the text that was held to be preserved by God up to the King James Bible, throw it all over in favor of the notion that it had been erroneous all those centuries and that only in the 19th century was it possible to begin to reconstruct the true originals, you've stabbed the very idea of Biblical inerrancy in the heart. And this is exactly what the Westcott and Hort revision of 1881 did. They planted doubt in all the Bibles up to their time. They claimed that their own favorite Alexandrian texts had to be the truest because they were the oldest, but that required them to come up with an explanation how it was that the traditional Byzantine texts existed in such great numbers and with such obvious church approval for so many centuries afterward. Their explanation was the completely hypothetical idea that the true texts (their cherished Alexandrians) were officially revised early on, meaning officially corrupted, and that this corrupt line became the basis for the Bibles in all languages including all the English Bibles through the King James. According to this hypothesis much was added to the text that didn't belong there.

As John Burgon points out, this very hypothesis defeats itself since it implies that the church leaders must have regarded the Alexandrian texts as the corrupt ones if they felt it necessary to reject them and try to reconstruct what they considered to be the authentic text, and in the third century they would still have had access to the earliest manuscripts to work from.

In any case, this is pure conjecture. There is no evidence for this hypothetical early revision; it rests absolutely on the unsupportable assumption that the Alexandrian texts are superior, and the evidence against that assumption is voluminous. Just read John Burgon. But the assumption has prevailed in the minds of those who accept the modern versions. And it would have to work its poison into their thinking in many subtle ways, insinuating that the Bible is not inerrant but subject to the same treatment as any man-made book, which is exactly the viewpoint aggressively endorsed by the revisers themselves.

The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood doesn't question the modern versions. Some probably have no idea of the anti-inerrancy textual criticism principles that underlie them, but it can't escape all awareness that so many versions can't all be right, and that fact in itself undermines Biblical inerrancy. So to my mind the Bible versions Trojan horse must contribute to the thinking that brings liberalism into the churches by justifying opinions that contradict the Bible. They hold firmly to Biblical inerrancy with the one hand while the other surreptitiously throws it away.

I also found at CBMW that they deny that women are literally to cover our heads, in favor of a culturist explanation that effectively renders meaningless the whole idea of the covering in 1 Corinthians 11, and this seems to me to be another way Biblical authority is undermined even while it is proclaimed. In fact this is an attitude that's similar to some of those Grudem outlines as the thinking that leads to liberalism. He lists two that seem most pertinent, one being "2. Saying that New Testament teachings are "seed ideas" showing that superior teaching would come later." If Paul really was calling for a literal head covering, and this is in fact recognized, but in our superior wisdom we know he really really was only affirming the cultural standard of his day, isn't this similar to judging that what the New Testament actually said needs our superior perspective to be fully grasped? It isn't quite the same as another of Grudem's points: "4. Saying that Paul was wrong" but almost.

This is relevant because CBMW makes much of the concept of male headship in their work, but 1 Corinthians 11 is where Paul defined the concept most particularly, arguing strenuously that headship authority is symbolized by the literal human head. The head of the man is to be uncovered because he is the glory of Christ and has headship over the woman, but the woman's head is to be literally covered in order to conceal her own glory and the glory of man which she is, and to show subordination to the man's authority. But CBMW and others who follow them have dropped the literal human head part (in favor of the vague "feminine dress" which ignores the head), yet they try to hold onto the headship idea.

Along with the leaking away of Bible inerrancy through the embrace of the Bible versions, it seems to me they've got a serious leak in the idea of male headship, and the poison of liberalism is already within their own house.

Oh that the churches would rethink the Bible versions problem

I continue to read in Burgon's Revision Revised. Mastering Burgon is no doubt beyond me but he continues to inspire -- and sadden -- me as I read. Reading him makes me cry. I feel the force of his truthfulness and his knowledge, even the Holy Spirit in his work. But what his writing reveals is a state of the Lord's church so misled by profane minds, the word of God worked throughout now with a leaven of doubt and corruption to such a degree the grief overtakes me at times. He himself did not expect that such a thing could occur. He maintained that the flaws in the Revision could not stand the scrutiny of sane minds, which he supposed would prevail. That the corrupted work should prevail instead he regarded as a terrible thing to contemplate, but he didn't allow that it could prevail. To read him now of course is to recognize that it was his warnings the churches discarded while accepting the corrupted Bibles that have come down from Westcott and Hort.

How is it that their text of the Bible got to be so accepted by so many pastors and churches? I puzzle over this a great deal as I read through Burgon again. What explanation is there but that it's God's judgment against the Church, judgment beginning at the house of God? The Anglican Church that commissioned the revision in the first place was already beginning to be infected with the 19th century rationalism which threw much of the Bible into doubt. Burgon comments that some of the new revision reflects this infection.

But how did it spread so far? It's astonishing how so many well-known teachers today seem to take it for granted, as well as many thousands of unknown pastors. In their sermons they may depend on a favorite variation on the W&H text but refer to other variations (even to the KJV which is not such a variation but an entirely different Bible) to resolve sticky points of interpretation. They ponder the principles of Greek that have been passed down from Westcott and Hort, apparently unaware that Burgon refuted them with great care and demonstrably great knowledge. In principle there's nothing wrong with comparing texts for the sake of clarity, I suppose, although isn't there something wrong with the simple fact that pastors are put in this position at all? In any case it demonstrates the degree to which the status quo of multiple Bibles is taken for granted, and the degree to which W&H's thinking prevails, and if these are seriously in error then the pastors and their churches are unfortunately the victims of a great hoax.

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Occasionally I search for new editions of the Bible I might consider as a replacement for my King James, since I've been holding to the view that an updating would be a good thing -- I mean, of course, the Bible based on the same Greek texts as the King James, known as the Received Text or Textus Receptus, before Westcott and Hort substituted their preferred texts that Burgon has shown to be corrupt. I've also considered the Geneva Bible that preceded the King James because it was the Bible of the Puritans, but I don't want another Bible with archaic language and I believe the best opinion is that the King James was an improvement over the Geneva despite the political machinations that went on over its commissioning. There are a couple of modern translations from the Textus Receptus, but the problem is that they were done by individuals, and however well-intentioned those individuals no doubt are I don't want to tie my understanding of God's word to a source that doesn't have some recognizable church authority behind him. And I don't want a Bible that is VERY different from the King James, either. I want one that preserves its basic rhythms and patterns intact. I want FEW changes, the fewer the better, which was also the philosophy of the KJV translators themselves as they set about revising the previous work by Tyndale and others. Just the updating of the worst archaisms that stumble people. OR really good footnotes. Nothing I've seen sufficiently meets my criteria.

So I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the King James it's going to have to be. Or I suppose I should call it the Authorized Version. I've read on the one hand that King James himself was a bad man, even a "sodomizer," and on the other that such accusations are politically-motivated slander, and I'm not in a position to judge any of that, BUT surely we all know that the king did not do the translation himself and that the best scholars in the realm were called in to do that work. BUT calling it the Authorized Version would nevertheless be no doubt a good habit to cultivate if I can.

It would be a major help to all of us if at least it were always made clear that the King James and its predecessors were translations from a different set of Greek (and Hebrew) texts than the vast majority of Bibles produced since Westcott and Hort. Really, it's quite strange that this is not often made clear. For instance, it is just about never brought up when the reliability of the Bible texts is discussed, although their reliability certainly depends on WHICH texts are taken as authoritative.

Just for one example, Ron Rhodes on Manuscript Support for the Bible's Reliability makes not one mention of the "textus receptus," or "received text" or "king james" in this connection.

He quotes the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) on the reliability of the scriptures without mentioning that they had no knowledge of any scriptures other than the King James and its predecessors.

The Westminster Confession makes a very important point here.

The fact is, the God who had the power and sovereign control to inspire the Scriptures in the first place is surely going to continue to exercise His power and sovereign control in the preservation of Scripture.

Actually, God's preservational work is illustrated in the text of the Bible.

By examining how Christ viewed the Old Testament, we see that He had full confidence that the Scriptures He used had been faithfully preserved through the centuries.

Because Christ raised no doubts about the adequacy of the Scripture as His contemporaries knew them, we can safely assume that the first-century text of the Old Testament was a wholly adequate representation of the divine word originally given.

Jesus regarded the extant copies of His day as so approximate to the originals in their message that He appealed to those copies as authoritative.

The respect that Jesus and His apostles held for the extant Old Testament text is, at base, an expression of the confidence in God's providential preservation of the copies and translations as substantially identical with the inspired originals.

Hence, the Bible itself indicates that copies can faithfully reflect the original text and therefore function authoritatively.

This is all misleading since it completely ignores the sea change that was brought about by Westcott and Hort in 1881.

I took it all for granted myself of course since I encountered it in every church I attended, and Bible studies as well. A particular Bible study quite strongly recommended the NASB as the best, most accurate translation, for instance, as did a couple of churches as I recall, though without mentioning that it's a translation from the Westcott and Hort textual family and not from the Traditional Text of the Authorized Version. That is, it's based on the same set of Greek texts as the NIV, the ESV, the Living Bible, and so on, which is a completely different set of Greek texts than the Authorized Version was based on, as well as the Geneva Bible, the Tyndale and all the other previous English Bibles.

In this typical frame of reference, the King James/Authorized Version is treated as merely one of the many "translations" rather than a completely different Bible, although it is not just another "translation," because it is not based on the same underlying texts. Yet the whole discussion is usually falsely framed entirely as a matter of different "translations" and the most important difference is not even mentioned, the fact that the Greek texts (and the Hebrew as well) are different.

The translations themselves are also a problem as they were very badly done, from an inferior grasp of the Greek and even an inferior grasp of English idiom, but we have to start with the textual problem as the first major problem. What we have is a proliferation of Bibles in the English language, the great majority of which are translations from sets of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that to one extent or another derive from the texts promoted by Westcott and Hort in 1881. The exact text they promoted is usually modified now in various ways, but it's still basically the same text they came up with, based on the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which Burgon denounces as corrupt.

The Sinaiticus and Vaticanus Greek texts were chosen by W&H as superior to the texts from which the King James Bible was translated merely because they are older. The idea is if it's older it's closer to the originals and therefore more reliable. The fact that they differ a great deal from the texts the KJV and its precursors relied on seems only to add to the esteem in which they are held, as if they show that the formerly trusted texts are inferior, though such a position only serves to undermine faith in God's preservation of His word over the centuries.

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Lord, have mercy on Your people and open our eyes to see Your hand in this frowning Providence, to repent of the sins that have brought this disaster upon us, that Your word may be pure among us again and Your glory our utmost concern and Your Spirit our guide.

Dean Burgon, the beleaguered white knight of the Bible versions wars

I've been skimming through Dean J W Burgon's Revision Revised again. I still very much enjoy his rather swashbuckling style, which I know others don't like. To me his style reflects the psychological position of someone with superior understanding having to cope with people with far less understanding who are nevertheless set as experts over him.

[added later: Since it is now the politically correct position to dismiss W&H's work as obsolete and Burgon's work therefore irrelevant, having been eclipsed by later and better texts such as more discoveries of old manuscripts, more work at putting together better versions of the Critical Text, etc., it needs to be said up front that this is merely a smokescreen. It may not be recognized as a smokescreen of course, it is no doubt sincerely believed by some as an important truth, but it is a smokescreen nevertheless, because these changes do not touch the fundamental faults of W&H but perpetuate them under cover of merely minor differences. Slight modifications to W&H's work are made, producing new editions of the Critical Text considered a great improvement over W&H, while their major errors continue to be accepted, as the very term Critical Text indicates: first of all the corrupt Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and secondly even their horrifically bad translation, bad Greek, bad English. No, it ALL goes back to Westcott and Hort, it is ALL traceable to their doorstep, and Burgon's critique applies just as much now as ever and should be read as denouncing the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society's texts as carriers of the original W&H enormity, the same arguments applying.]

Burgon is genuinely astonished that Westcott and Hort and their committee of revisers are taken seriously at all. Their scholarship is so ridiculously deficient he can hardly believe his eyes. I suspect that this is what leads him to employ that strong sarcastic language, hoping, I think, that if he's very forceful in his denunciations this might wake some up to the seriousness of the situation, might persuade some to rethink their acceptance of the inferior Bible produced by the revising committee. This is how he comes across to me. Unfortunately this sort of tactic almost never works. Those who don't have his level of understanding dismiss him as "exaggerating" his case and "arguing like a lawyer more than a scholar" and are not led to rethink their own judgment at all.

I rather doubt any other tactic would have worked any better, however. He is simply in a thankless position if in fact his ability is so much greater than most of his opponents' which is what I suspect from his own attitude and tone. In that case his ability to judge both the Greek and the English of the 1881 revision is so far beyond that of those who produced it, and most of those today who are regarded as Greek scholars, it's like speaking a foreign language. But the revising committee had managed to gain much prestige in its ten years of producing what Burgon regards as their execrable mistreatment of both the Greek and the English, so that their judgment is accepted by sheer force of popular impression. Pehaps in the acceptance of W&H's work there was also some mixture of relief at the eclipse of the "hard" English of the KJV (no matter that this could have been accomplished with far less damage) and perhaps some infection with 19th century rationalist bias against the supernatural claims of the Bible, which W&H themselves exhibit in their private writings, and which we know subsequently overtook much of the Anglican church down to our day.

I don't know how many of today's students of the Bible versions are even exposed to Dean Burgon's writings at all, I suspect few if any. Some ridiculous things are said against him, slightingly dismissive remarks. To say he argues like a lawyer is true enough in a way, though I think of him as having a more of a literary critic's style than a lawyer's, but to say he doesn't do a scholar's work in refuting W&H is far from the truth. Most of his book is a laborious accounting and discussion of the errors he finds in their revision.

Revision Revised is a hard read unfortunately for someone who isn't prepared to make the comparisons Burgon so carefully brings to the reader's attention. Much of the book is a discussion of the differences between the readings in the texts that were used for the King James translation and those preferred by Westcott and Hort on which all the modern Bibles have been based. Only someone who knows Greek as well as he does could really appreciate it, but I can at least grasp WHAT he is saying even if I can't verify any of it for myself.

In one discussion for instance he objects that the revising committee lacked a grasp of idiomatic Hellenistic Greek so that they clumsily literally translate what was far better and more idiomatically translated by the King James translators. "Aeon" is a case in point. To translate it "age" instead of "world" or "ages of the ages" instead of "forever" is supposed by W&H to be more "accurate" whereas according to Burgon it merely demonstrates their ignorance of both languages. I trust Burgon. His passion for the right things seems indisputable to me. And nobody would make the very specific criticisms he does who didn't have the knowledge necessary; it simply wouldn't occur to him.

But his opponents won. All our present Bibles except the King James are treated as superior and "more accurate" for that very obtuse error among other things. But it would take a higher level of knowledge than most scholars of either language have these days to recognize this. In the days of the King James those who ended up on the translating committee were often men who had been raised from childhood reading Greek, and they certainly demonstrated a superior feeling for English as well. That just doesn't happen today.

He's dismissed as "exaggerating" how much W&H depended on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, although to Burgon ANY dependence on either of them is indefensible. I've seen him denounced as a "conspiracy thinker," apparently lumping him together with some of today's more extreme King-James-only defenders, but he is far from any such thing. Anyone who would say that can't have read him

Burgon wrote other books, among them a lengthy defense of the authenticity of the last twelve verses of Mark. I suppose it's too scholarly for me though I'd like to read it. At 350 pages the level of detail he pursues in his defense has got to be beyond me, but perhaps as with Revision Revised I could appreciate his generalizations. I'm considering investing in it anyway because I like his thinking so much. I got Revision Revised from a second-hand outlet through Amazon.com but the book on the last twelve verses of Mark is a better deal through the Dean Burgon Society.

One continuing confusion in this dispute is the habit of those who defend the modern versions of lumping the KJV in with all of them as just another translation, obscuring the fact that it was done from a completely different set of Greek texts than Westcott and Hort used for their revision. W&H had no authorization for substituting the texts of their own preference for starters, but beyond that the texts they preferred were already considered by competent scholars to be corrupt in multiple ways. Burgon addresses the corruptions in Revision Revised as well as a separate book on the subject. This historical fact is strangely ignored in current discussions of the Bible text. The subject of the reliability of the Bible texts, for instance, will be discussed at great length without the slightest reference to this most crucial distinction between the King James Bible and its predecessors and the majority of current Bibles which are all based on some version or other of the corrupted texts preferred by Westcott and Hort.

Someone I discussed this with also said that the King-James-only people confuse Westcott and Hort's text with the Nestle-Aland text, and exaggerate how much of the N/A is based on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. This just has to reflect some deficiency in how these things are taught, doesn't it? There is no confusion; any textual collection such as Nestle/Aland that makes use of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus AT ALL is following in the footsteps of Westcott/Hort. There are two equally serious complaints against W&H and one is that they used those corrupted manuscripts at all. The other is that their English translation is atrocious.

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark further defended

The post I wrote two weeks ago about the unwarranted doubt of the last verses of Mark was just a sudden inspiration I had on the subject, not expecting to have more to say. But I got a very encouraging comment on that post from a pastor James Snapp about it, with a link to his website where he has a summary of his own research into the manuscript evidence for the authenticity of the verses, and an invitation to write for his complete study. It looks very thorough and well worth reading but I don't think I have enough scholarly patience to pursue it myself right now, knowing that he has to address the many speculations and hypotheses about unknowable historical possibilities. I hope others will have the desire to follow it on out though.

Here is the manuscript summary at his own church site.

But it is also available for download at this address: Here's the site owner's introduction, and here's the whole manuscript.

(Some of the labels I've attached to this post reflect content in Pastor Snapp's study of the Bible manuscripts).

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As I said in my own post on the subject, the only reason this passage is held in doubt is that Westcott and Hort happened to prefer a couple of early Greek manuscripts to those that had previously been accepted as the authoritative Greek text. Not only do the W&H manuscripts have really very little to recommend their authority over the traditional texts when you are aware of all the evidence, but they are notorious for throwing readings into doubt that had been accepted by Christians for all the centuries up until 1881 when W&H cast their spell over our Bible. Oh yes, there are many reasonings based on the texts themselves that support that doubting mentality, but it all started with those two men and their very questionable qualifications and their subterfuge in massively altering the Bible text when they were only commissioned to do a minimum of updating. Unfortunately those who defend this line of Bibles also manage to keep themselves from knowing about the arguments against it, such as the work of Dean John W Burgon, a contemporary of W&H.

Oh if only the seminaries and pastors would read Dean Burgon's Revision Revised.

I wonder how the seminaries teach the Bible versions history, what books top their reading list for the course. Clearly it is taught in most seminaries in such a way as to recommend the modern versions. But how much do they teach of the other side?

There's an online site by a Michael Marlowe who calls himself The Bible Researcher, who is very informative on many things. He has some degree of seminary training as I recall. He was one of my sources for the understanding of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 as requiring women to cover our heads in church now as well as in Paul's day. But on the subject of the Bible versions he has capitulated to the establishment point of view. I was very disappointed to discover this. He dismisses Dean Burgon as simply overstating his case. He probably represents the majority of the scholarly Christian community.

I deeply wish that Dean Burgon's book were taught in the seminaries at great length. I think if the book were studied in the seminaries and also by pastors in the churches, before they set about teaching on the subject of the versions, it might well revolutionize things, it might well lead to a complete rethinking of the subject. Even if it didn't persuade all or even many, some honest souls would just have to recognize the superiority of his reasoning, his excellent knowledge, his thoroughly mustered evidence.

And he's SO funny too. His sarcasm in dismissing the ridiculous excuse for scholarship he finds in the work of Westcott and Hort is priceless. I still want to assemble some of the best quotes from him, especially in answer to James White, but I can't just toss it off, I'm going to have to work to put it together well. Meanwhile, I just had to say this much. Anyone who wants to read the book online will find it at David Cloud's site, and D A Waite's site sells it as well as hosting the Dean Burgon Society.

Lord, won't You have mercy on the church and open the eyes of many of her leaders on this subject among others?

How the Bible Version Truth-Tellers have been Suppressed

A couple of quotes found in Dean Burgon's The Revision Revised, from Bishop Wordsworth, a contemporary of Westcott and Hort, commenting on their Revised Version of 1881:

I fear we must say in candour that in the Revised Version we meet in every page with small changes, which are vexatious, teasing and irritating, even the more so because they are small; which seem almost to be made for the sake of change.

[The question arises,] ---Whether the Church of England, ---which in her Synod, so far as this Province is concerned, sanctioned a Revision of her Authorized Version under the express condition, which she most wisely imposed, that no Changes should be made in it except what were absolutely necessary, --- could consistently accept a version in which 36,000 changes have been made; not a fiftieth of which can be shown to be needed, or even desirable."

---Bishop Wordsworth

Why is it that such worthies as this Bishop, and Dean Burgon himself, and Prebendary F.H.A. Scrivener who was on the revising committee with Westcott and Hort -- all of whom denounced the Westcott and Hort revision in no uncertain terms, conclusively denounced it, and in the case of the latter two from a position of scholarship certainly equal to and likely exceeding theirs -- are completely ignored by the advocates of the new versions???

Apologists for the new versions simply ignore them or slightingly quote some minor point, if they mention them at all, and most seem never to have heard of them. James White's The King James Only Controversy, paperback edition, has one index reference to Dean Burgon, and three to F.H.A. Scrivener. He mentions both on page 91 only to affirm that neither was a purist King James supporter, seeing a need for some corrections in it. (I cannot find any reference to Scrivener on pages 78 and 80 although the index lists those pages for his name. Perhaps I'm tired and I'll find his name tomorrow.)

But these are the ONLY references to the thoughts of the GIANTS of scholarship who found Westcott and Hort's work to be utterly worthless {note, 1/23/10: according to a comment posted below today Scrivener found some merit in some of W&H's choices}, in probably the most influential book by the biggest name on the side of the new versions.

Burgon's work is monumental and should have been lethal for Westcott and Hort, yet HE fell into obscurity while THEIR execrable doings have infected God's word around the world???

Oh surely the church is indeed under God's judgment!

Here's a quote from Scrivener:

Prebendary Scrivener was on the committee of the Revised Version of 1881 and was about the only one who had the great scholarship and courage necessary to cross swords with Westcott and Hort. Listen to his words taken from his Plain Introduction, Vol. II., pp. 291-92 and 296,

"Dr. Hort's system, therefore, is entirely destitute of historical foundation. He does not so much as make a show of pretending to it; but then he would persuade us, as he has persuaded himself, that its substantial truth is proved by results. . . . With all our reverence for his (Hort's) genius, and gratitude for much that we have learned from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us."

Thus you have a clear, unimpassioned criticism from a learned contemporary of Westcott and Hort. . . . http://users.aol.com/libcfl/autogrph.htm

Dean Burgon's blasts at Westcott & Hort's Bible Revision (Famine of God's Word Pt. 7)

I want to quote some remarks by Dean John William Burgon, the earliest critic of the revision of the Bible done by Westcott and Hort in 1881, on which the most popular Bibles today are based.

He was eminently qualified to make such a criticism of their effort, and he pulls no punches.

Burgon is not of the KJV-only school, who believe that the KJV is perfect as it is, although they often claim him as their own. He appears to have supported the original intention to produce an updating of the King James, which is what Westcott and Hort were commissioned to do, so he is not of the opinion that it did not need some revision.

When he saw the revision that was actually produced, however, he was appalled at the liberty taken by the revisers, first in substituting what he denounces as an outrageously corrupt text in the place of the text on which the KJV was based, and second in undertaking not just a revision and updating, but a whole new translation. In the quote I reproduce below, he uses strong language in denouncing their work, such as "calamity" "vicious" "untrustworthy" "gravest errors."

A brief biography of Dean John William Burgon from Christian Classics Ethereal Library:
http://www.ccel.org/b/burgon/

A lengthier biography by the Dean Burgon Society:
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/DeanBurgon/whowasdb.htm

What I've quoted below comes from this page:
http://www.wayoflife.org/articles/truefalse/index.html

Burgon's Revision Revised is excerpted at links on the lower left margin. The other links on the margin are also very much worth reading.

From his Preface to The Revision Revised http://www.wayoflife.org/articles/truefalse/index.html:

It requires to be demonstrated by induction from a large collection of particular instances, as well as by the complex exhibition of many converging lines of evidence, that the testimony of one small group of documents, or rather, of one particular manuscript, (namely the Vatican Codex B, which, for some unexplained reason, it is just now the fashion to regard with superstitious deference,) is the reverse of trustworthy. Nothing in fact but a considerable Treatise will ever effectually break the yoke of that iron tyranny to which the excellent Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol and his colleagues have recently bowed their necks; and are now for imposing on all English-speaking men. . . .

In the end, when partisanship had cooled down, and passion had evaporated, and prejudice had ceased to find an auditory, the 'Revision' of 1881 must come to be universally regarded as what it most certainly is, the most astonishing, as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the Age.

I pointed out that 'the New Greek Text' which, in defiance of their instructions, the Revisionists of 'the Authorized English Version' had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating, was a wholly untrustworthy performance, was full of the gravest errors from beginning to end, had been constructed throughout on an entirely mistaken theory. Availing myself of the published confession of one of the Revisionists, I explained the nature of the calamity which had befallen the Revision. I traced the mischief home to its true authors, Drs. Westcott and Hort, a copy of whose unpublished Text of the N.T. (the most vicious in existence) had been confidentially, and under pledges of the strictest secrecy, placed in the hands of every member of the revising Body. I called attention to the fact that, unacquainted with the difficult and delicate science of Textual Criticism, the Revisionists had in an evil hour surrendered themselves to Dr. Hort's guidance, had preferred his counsels to those of Prebendary Scrivener, (an infinitely more trustworthy guide) and that the work before the public was the piteous (but inevitable) result. All this I explained in the October number of the Quarterly Review for 1881.

In thus demonstrating the worthlessness of the 'New Greek Text' of the Revisionists, I considered that I had destroyed the key of their position. And so perforce I had. For if the underlying Greek Text be mistaken, what else but incorrect must the English Translation be? But on examining the so-called 'Revision of the Authorized Version,' I speedily made the further discovery that the Revised English would have been in itself intolerable. even had the Greek been let alone. In the first place, to my surprise and annoyance, it proved to be a new translation (rather than a revision of the old) which had been attempted.

Painfully apparent were the tokens which met me on every side that the Revisionists had been supremely eager not so much to correct none but "plain and clear errors", as to introduce as many changes into the English of the New Testament Scriptures as they conveniently could.

That's how I would expect it to seem to anybody who makes the simplest comparisons between the different Bibles, as I discovered from doing the casual comparison of the versions on psalm 91 as I have shown here. Since the revisions have some 36,000 changes from the KJV, most of them of the sort I discovered in psalm 91-- that is, absolutely unnecessary, nuisance changes just to make them read differently from the KJV-- that alone ought to make people question the motives of W and H, and the revisions themselves. Then when you see the comparisons that have been done of the passages where actual words have been left out and even whole verses, which is the result of using the corrupted Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, what's amazing is that so many of the church have accepted these new versions and defend them. They are not a revision of the KJV which is what was originally intended, they are entirely new versions, based on corrupt Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, and full of ridiculously unnecessary changes in the English as well.

In all this, the KJV never did get the originally intended MINOR revision, and now it's probably too late.