Victoria
Active Member
There are two foundational things that are required for a sound Bible translation (not to speak of the qualification of the translator). The first is that it must be translated from the right Hebrew and Greek texts. The second is that it must use the right method of translation. But before we go into those two foundational principles, first thing that must be addressed is the promise of God of perfect preservation of His words.
1. The Promise of God to Perfectly Preserve His Inspired Words.
The doctrine of preservation must start and finish with faith in what God’s Word says. What it actually says, not what people want it to say. This is the foundation.
God has promised to perfectly preserve His inspired words. Not just Word but all the words in His Word right down to the jot and tittle. Perfect preservation applies to all his words as they were given, in Hebrew, Greek and some Aramaic. Passages that speak to this include: Ps 12:6-7; 33:11; 100:5; 111:7-8; 117:2; 119:89, 152, 160; Pr 30:5-6; Is 40:8; 59:21; Matt 5:18; 24:35; 1 Pet 1:23-25; Rev 22:18-19. Consider some important points concerning the doctrines of inspiration and preservation.
a) God’s Words were inspired perfectly in the autographs (2 Tim 3:16-18; 2 Pet 1:21). Copies of autographs are just as inspired as an original writing, and are considered perfectly equal in authority, and almost no one has ever handled an original wiring. Original manuscripts were destroyed at the hand of Emperor Diocletian's wrath between 303 A.D. and 313 A.D. Copies referenced in the Bible (such as 2 Tim 3:15) are not translations. They are copies of the original document, which was written in a certain language: Hebrew or Greek.
b) The Lord promised to preserve all these inspired words from His Word for each subsequent generation, just as they’re preserved eternally in Heaven (Ps 12:6-7; 119:89; Dan 10:21, 11:2 ff; Am 1:1; Matt 24:35; Jn 17:8; Rev 1:1). The Bible teaches the verbal, plenary preservation of the inspired autographa (Ps 12:6-7). The promise of preservation of the words was the words that were given, which were given in what language? Right, Hebrew and Greek and some Aramaic, not another language.
c) The Lord promises and affirms the perpetual availability of the preserved words of God to every generation of believers (Is 59:21).
d) The Lord used His chosen people Israel to preserve and guard the OT Scriptures in the Hebrew Masoretic Text (Ac 7:38; Rom 3:2) and the true NT local churches to preserve and guard the NT Scriptures in the Greek Textus Receptus (Matt 28:19-20; Rev 22:7-10).
e) NT churches are to recognize, receive and preserve the Lord’s Words (Jn 17:8, 20; 1 Th 2:13) while rejecting manuscripts with added or deleted words or forged canons (2 Th 2:2) offered by Satan (Gen 3:1 ff; cf. De 13:1-5). The local church, as the depository of God’s words (1 Tim 3:15), led by the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:13), recognized and received (Jn 17:8) the words of God as they were given to her by Christ her Lord. Believers can have confidence that the words of Scripture, and, as a necessary consequence, the books of Scripture, and these alone, constitute the deposit of infallible revelation which forms their sole authority for faith and practice (2 Tim 3:15-17) and upon which they will be judged (Jn 12:48), because the Spirit led the church to accept these words, the words from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and Greek Textus Receptus, and no others, as God’s Word. These true local churches have recognized the KJV as the Word of God in the English language because it came from the recognized, received, and preserved words that God gave, and thus have rejected all modern versions, including the ESV, NIV, NKJV, etc, as corrupted perversions and Gnostic laced readings in both text and translation.
f) The Lord has given His explicit Words of revelation to man in order that man may be able to demonstrate his stewardship with all of God’s Words at his respective judgment (Jn 12:48; Rev 20:12). That requires preservation.
g) In summary, the Lord Jesus Christ has inspired His autographa (2 Tim 3:16-17), promised to preserve all of His Words (Ps 12:6-7), expects man to receive by faith His revelation and produce perfect copies or accurate translations based on the Received Bible which originated with Him (Matt 28:19-20; Jn 17:8, 20; Rom 16:25-26; cf. Neh 8:8), which movement He began (cf. Ac 2:41; 8:14; 11:1; 17:11; 1 Th 2:13).
There are three main groups concerning the Bible:
1. Those who hold that the modern translations, based on the text of Westcott and Hort (aka., Critical Text, Nestle-Aland), are more reliable than the Authorized Version of 1611 (KJV) translation, which is based upon the Greek Textus Receptus and Hebrew Masoretic Text;
2. Those who hold that the KJV is most reliable (in English) because it was translated from the Greek Textus Receptus and Hebrew Masoretic Text,
3. Those who hold that a translation such as the KJV was given by inspiration and is the preserved Word of God and is the final authority in our present world, not the Hebrew Masoretic Text and Greek Textus Receptus.
The second is the right position, the one that Scripture attests to. The third one is wrong, which I debunk in this linked report. The first one, the modern version position based upon the Critical Text, is a diabolical attack on God’s Word and under the condemnation of Rev 22:18-19 — my focus here in this report.
Frankly, Critical Text scholars and many of its proponents are deceptive heretics; “evil men and seducers . . . deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Tim 3:13) that blasphemously attempt to reconstruct the autographs, the very words of God. These individuals, who for the most are pretending to be “ministers of righteousness” while they are in fact servants of Satan (2 Cor 11:12-15), falsely define and limit the “Word” of God to mean only the “message, ideas, thoughts, or concepts,” in general, but not all the “words” of God. This is gross and clever deception. These, under the guise of superficial and deceptive piety, are deniers and rejecters of Gods promise of preservation of His words. They are heretics, but also blasphemers. For instance, they cleverly and deceitfully re-define the term “Bible preservation” to mean that they have the “Word of God,” but not necessarily the “words of God.” Though in the Bible these terms are equated, to them there is a difference, and there must be to further their agenda and continue their attack on God, which started way back in the Garden of Eden already (Gen 3:2-3; cf. Gen 2:16-17), with Satan deceiving Eve which led to her omitting, adding and substituting God’s Word (she omitted the words “every” from “every tree” and “freely” from “freely eat,” and added the words “neither shall ye touch it,” and substituted the words “lest ye die” for “thou shalt surely die.”) Thus was born the first “revised version” of the Word of God. It is the paradigm for Satan’s attempts down through history to nullify the Word of God and this practice is more prevalent today than it is has ever been in the past.
There are two distinguishing factors that we base our analysis on as to whether a translation is Biblical and considered the Word of God in that particular language. The Text and the Translation Methodology. Firstly we will consider the Text.
2. The Text.
Does the textual basis of your Bible version matter? This should be an easy question to answer since everything that relates to the Bible is important.
Many people today naively believe that modern translations of the Bible are simply an effort to update or modernize the wording of the Bible. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is in fact a diabolical attack of Satan against the very words that God gave, which he started doing immediately after the creation of man, in the garden, speaking to Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” (Gen 3:1). What many fail to understand and grasp is actually the greatest difference, and it’s not just modernization of the wording in modern translations but the actual underlying text.
Most professing Christians are unaware that there are two main competing texts of the N.T. from whence all translations of the Bible flow, and that the differences are substantial:
- the Traditional or Received Text, also known as the Greek Textus Receptus (Greek for Received Text) and,
- the Critical Text, also known as the Eclectic Text, Westcott and Hort, and Nestle-Aland.
One text, the Received Text, is the true text of Scripture, and the other, the Critical Text, a corrupted text. The true text represents the united testimony of the vast majority (~95%) of manuscripts, while the corrupt text is derived from a few manuscripts which are in conflict with each other.
They are not the same. They differ in many thousands of places. Differences vary from letters, words, phrases, verses and extended passages and they are extensive. There are 655 significant and critical errors in the Critical Text of the NT. Besides that, there are thousands of other changes, with over 8,000 word changes. Things that are different, are not the same. And things that are not the same, are obviously not equal. Even just one error would be an attack on God and His Word, never mind thousands of changes.
The Received Text. There is the Received Text underlying the King James Bible and other Protestant Reformation-era versions (such as the Geneva Bible, Great Bible, Coverdale Bible, Bishops Bible, Tyndale Bible), also known as the Traditional Text, Byzantine, and Textus Receptus (Greek for Received Text). It represents the vast majority of the greater than 5,600 extant Greek manuscripts. The Received Text is published today by the Trinitarian Bible Society, The Dean Burgeon Society and others. The Received Text has been the text used by the Lords churches since the first century. It is the perfectly preserved Word of God.
The Received Text bears the stamp of divine inspiration and preservation. It came to us through the fires of persecution; it represents the traditional text that was used by the churches through the centuries; it can be traced to Antioch rather than to Egypt; and it is not the product of modernistic and Unitarian scholarship.
The Critical Text. The modern Greek text is called the “Critical Text,” because it is the product of “modern textual criticism.” This was invented in the 19th century (largely) by theological modernists and Unitarians. It was not based on the belief that the Scripture is the infallible Word of God and that God has preserved His Scripture. Modern textual criticism treats the Bible as just another book and uses naturalistic tools to determine its text. The modern Critical Greek text largely originated from the Westcott and Hort text of 1881, which work they deceptively did under the guise of improving the Received Text. They hid their diabolical work from the public so that brilliant scholars like John William Burgon wouldn’t sound the alarm and stop their evil work. The Westcott and Hort text of 1881 is published today by the United Bible Societies and others. Every modern English version of the Bible is translated from the Critical Text.
The Critical Text is also referred to as the Egyptian text or the Alexandrian text, because the manuscripts it is based upon—two actually which are the “Aleph” (Codex Sinaiticus) and “B” (Codex Vaticanus)—originated from Egypt and the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which was a center of learning during the early centuries of the church age, and also a centre of serious heresy and apostasy. Most false doctrines canonized in the Roman Catholic Church can be traced back to Alexandria as their birth place. The modern Greek text favours these two Greek manuscripts above all others, which are the two oldest nearly complete Greek New Testaments, dating to the 4th century (allegedly). The translators of the NIV, for instance, call the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus “the two most reliable early manuscripts” (footnote to Mark 16:9-20, which is removed in modern versions or greatly questioned for its authenticity). Sinaiticus was discovered in 1844 by Constantine von Tischendorf in St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, in a garbage can. Vaticanus was discovered in the Vatican Library in 1475. Its history is unknown. Because of its age, it is generally conceded to be the most important one. For instance, Peter van Minnen, in Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts, concludes, “It is to be noticed that all the manuscripts listed above come from Egypt. The papyri . . . Sinaiticus . . . B [Vaticanus] . . . We owe the early Egyptian Christians an immense debt.” Westcott and Hort, who named this the Neutral Text, thought that Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus had preserved a pure form of the Alexandrian type of text. But Egypt is not the place where the Spirit of God gave the NT Scriptures. God chose to deliver the Scriptures to churches in Israel, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe. Not one book of the NT is associated with Egypt. Everything Egypt is considered apostatized and is untrustworthy, including these extremely corrupted codices.
The first edition of the modern Greek NT was that of Westcott and Hort (1881). The Westcott-Hort has been largely the basis for the Nestles’ Greek NT and the United Bible Societies Greek (UBS) NT. The Nestles and UBS Greek NT are almost identical to the W-H text of 1881 in significant departures from the Received Text and in passages that have extensive doctrinal significance. Bruce Metzger of the United Bible Societies (UBS) states in the introduction to his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, after listing the main Greek texts and finally that of Westcott and Hort: “It is this latter edition (Westcott and Hort), that was taken as the basis for the present United Bible Societies’ edition” (page xxiii). Jack Moorman counted only 216 instances in which the Nestle/Aland 26th edition apparatus departs from the Vaticanus and Aleph. The Westcott & Hort (WH) and the UBS delete or question almost the same number of verses (WH—48, UBS—45), and almost the same number of significant portions of verses (WH—193, UBS—185), and almost the same number of names and titles of the Lord (WH—221, UBS—212).
So it is a different Greek text that accounts for thousands of changes in the modern versions. That is the culprit. It is shorter than the Received Greek text by 2,886 words, which is the equivalent of the omission of the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter. We will say more about this below. On the OT side, changes began to be introduced from the Septuagint (Greek translations), the Talmud, and other sources.
The Critical Text, aka. The Alexandrian Text or Westcott and Hort or Nestle/Aland Text, is corrupt, evil, and blasphemous attack on the Triune God, and on His words and doctrines that He inspired and preserved.
Some of the major differences between the Critical Text (CT) NT and the Received Text (TR) NT:
The King James Bible stands alone amongst English translations as translated from the text given by God, the Received Text. ALL modern English translations (since 1881) have been translated from the corrupt Critical Text, and that includes the New King James Version (which was translated in part from both texts, the Received and the Critical).
The first prominent modern English version based on the modern Greek text was the English Revised Version of 1881, but it never threatened the popularity of the King James Bible, even though they attempted to destroy the KJV through lies, manipulation and false witness. The same was true for the American Standard Version of 1901, the Revised Standard Version of 1952, and the New American Standard Bible of 1960. It was not until the publication of the New International Version in the 1970s that a modern version began to be widely used outside of theologically liberal circles.
It is by the grace and providence of God that the King James Version was not in anywise affected by higher textual criticism:
“In view also of the leading part the English speaking peoples were to play in shaping the destinies of mankind, we are justified in believing that it was through a providential ordering that the preparation of that Version was not in anywise affected by higher critical theories in general, or specifically by the two ancient Codices [Vaticanus and Sinaiticus] we have been discussing” (Philip Mauro, Which Version? Authorized or Revised?).
By: Reuben
Full article (56 min read): Why Modern Bible Versions are Corrupt, and the King James Version is Not
1. The Promise of God to Perfectly Preserve His Inspired Words.
The doctrine of preservation must start and finish with faith in what God’s Word says. What it actually says, not what people want it to say. This is the foundation.
God has promised to perfectly preserve His inspired words. Not just Word but all the words in His Word right down to the jot and tittle. Perfect preservation applies to all his words as they were given, in Hebrew, Greek and some Aramaic. Passages that speak to this include: Ps 12:6-7; 33:11; 100:5; 111:7-8; 117:2; 119:89, 152, 160; Pr 30:5-6; Is 40:8; 59:21; Matt 5:18; 24:35; 1 Pet 1:23-25; Rev 22:18-19. Consider some important points concerning the doctrines of inspiration and preservation.
a) God’s Words were inspired perfectly in the autographs (2 Tim 3:16-18; 2 Pet 1:21). Copies of autographs are just as inspired as an original writing, and are considered perfectly equal in authority, and almost no one has ever handled an original wiring. Original manuscripts were destroyed at the hand of Emperor Diocletian's wrath between 303 A.D. and 313 A.D. Copies referenced in the Bible (such as 2 Tim 3:15) are not translations. They are copies of the original document, which was written in a certain language: Hebrew or Greek.
b) The Lord promised to preserve all these inspired words from His Word for each subsequent generation, just as they’re preserved eternally in Heaven (Ps 12:6-7; 119:89; Dan 10:21, 11:2 ff; Am 1:1; Matt 24:35; Jn 17:8; Rev 1:1). The Bible teaches the verbal, plenary preservation of the inspired autographa (Ps 12:6-7). The promise of preservation of the words was the words that were given, which were given in what language? Right, Hebrew and Greek and some Aramaic, not another language.
c) The Lord promises and affirms the perpetual availability of the preserved words of God to every generation of believers (Is 59:21).
d) The Lord used His chosen people Israel to preserve and guard the OT Scriptures in the Hebrew Masoretic Text (Ac 7:38; Rom 3:2) and the true NT local churches to preserve and guard the NT Scriptures in the Greek Textus Receptus (Matt 28:19-20; Rev 22:7-10).
e) NT churches are to recognize, receive and preserve the Lord’s Words (Jn 17:8, 20; 1 Th 2:13) while rejecting manuscripts with added or deleted words or forged canons (2 Th 2:2) offered by Satan (Gen 3:1 ff; cf. De 13:1-5). The local church, as the depository of God’s words (1 Tim 3:15), led by the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:13), recognized and received (Jn 17:8) the words of God as they were given to her by Christ her Lord. Believers can have confidence that the words of Scripture, and, as a necessary consequence, the books of Scripture, and these alone, constitute the deposit of infallible revelation which forms their sole authority for faith and practice (2 Tim 3:15-17) and upon which they will be judged (Jn 12:48), because the Spirit led the church to accept these words, the words from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and Greek Textus Receptus, and no others, as God’s Word. These true local churches have recognized the KJV as the Word of God in the English language because it came from the recognized, received, and preserved words that God gave, and thus have rejected all modern versions, including the ESV, NIV, NKJV, etc, as corrupted perversions and Gnostic laced readings in both text and translation.
f) The Lord has given His explicit Words of revelation to man in order that man may be able to demonstrate his stewardship with all of God’s Words at his respective judgment (Jn 12:48; Rev 20:12). That requires preservation.
g) In summary, the Lord Jesus Christ has inspired His autographa (2 Tim 3:16-17), promised to preserve all of His Words (Ps 12:6-7), expects man to receive by faith His revelation and produce perfect copies or accurate translations based on the Received Bible which originated with Him (Matt 28:19-20; Jn 17:8, 20; Rom 16:25-26; cf. Neh 8:8), which movement He began (cf. Ac 2:41; 8:14; 11:1; 17:11; 1 Th 2:13).
There are three main groups concerning the Bible:
1. Those who hold that the modern translations, based on the text of Westcott and Hort (aka., Critical Text, Nestle-Aland), are more reliable than the Authorized Version of 1611 (KJV) translation, which is based upon the Greek Textus Receptus and Hebrew Masoretic Text;
2. Those who hold that the KJV is most reliable (in English) because it was translated from the Greek Textus Receptus and Hebrew Masoretic Text,
3. Those who hold that a translation such as the KJV was given by inspiration and is the preserved Word of God and is the final authority in our present world, not the Hebrew Masoretic Text and Greek Textus Receptus.
The second is the right position, the one that Scripture attests to. The third one is wrong, which I debunk in this linked report. The first one, the modern version position based upon the Critical Text, is a diabolical attack on God’s Word and under the condemnation of Rev 22:18-19 — my focus here in this report.
Frankly, Critical Text scholars and many of its proponents are deceptive heretics; “evil men and seducers . . . deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Tim 3:13) that blasphemously attempt to reconstruct the autographs, the very words of God. These individuals, who for the most are pretending to be “ministers of righteousness” while they are in fact servants of Satan (2 Cor 11:12-15), falsely define and limit the “Word” of God to mean only the “message, ideas, thoughts, or concepts,” in general, but not all the “words” of God. This is gross and clever deception. These, under the guise of superficial and deceptive piety, are deniers and rejecters of Gods promise of preservation of His words. They are heretics, but also blasphemers. For instance, they cleverly and deceitfully re-define the term “Bible preservation” to mean that they have the “Word of God,” but not necessarily the “words of God.” Though in the Bible these terms are equated, to them there is a difference, and there must be to further their agenda and continue their attack on God, which started way back in the Garden of Eden already (Gen 3:2-3; cf. Gen 2:16-17), with Satan deceiving Eve which led to her omitting, adding and substituting God’s Word (she omitted the words “every” from “every tree” and “freely” from “freely eat,” and added the words “neither shall ye touch it,” and substituted the words “lest ye die” for “thou shalt surely die.”) Thus was born the first “revised version” of the Word of God. It is the paradigm for Satan’s attempts down through history to nullify the Word of God and this practice is more prevalent today than it is has ever been in the past.
There are two distinguishing factors that we base our analysis on as to whether a translation is Biblical and considered the Word of God in that particular language. The Text and the Translation Methodology. Firstly we will consider the Text.
2. The Text.
Does the textual basis of your Bible version matter? This should be an easy question to answer since everything that relates to the Bible is important.
Many people today naively believe that modern translations of the Bible are simply an effort to update or modernize the wording of the Bible. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is in fact a diabolical attack of Satan against the very words that God gave, which he started doing immediately after the creation of man, in the garden, speaking to Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” (Gen 3:1). What many fail to understand and grasp is actually the greatest difference, and it’s not just modernization of the wording in modern translations but the actual underlying text.
Most professing Christians are unaware that there are two main competing texts of the N.T. from whence all translations of the Bible flow, and that the differences are substantial:
- the Traditional or Received Text, also known as the Greek Textus Receptus (Greek for Received Text) and,
- the Critical Text, also known as the Eclectic Text, Westcott and Hort, and Nestle-Aland.
One text, the Received Text, is the true text of Scripture, and the other, the Critical Text, a corrupted text. The true text represents the united testimony of the vast majority (~95%) of manuscripts, while the corrupt text is derived from a few manuscripts which are in conflict with each other.
They are not the same. They differ in many thousands of places. Differences vary from letters, words, phrases, verses and extended passages and they are extensive. There are 655 significant and critical errors in the Critical Text of the NT. Besides that, there are thousands of other changes, with over 8,000 word changes. Things that are different, are not the same. And things that are not the same, are obviously not equal. Even just one error would be an attack on God and His Word, never mind thousands of changes.
The Received Text. There is the Received Text underlying the King James Bible and other Protestant Reformation-era versions (such as the Geneva Bible, Great Bible, Coverdale Bible, Bishops Bible, Tyndale Bible), also known as the Traditional Text, Byzantine, and Textus Receptus (Greek for Received Text). It represents the vast majority of the greater than 5,600 extant Greek manuscripts. The Received Text is published today by the Trinitarian Bible Society, The Dean Burgeon Society and others. The Received Text has been the text used by the Lords churches since the first century. It is the perfectly preserved Word of God.
The Received Text bears the stamp of divine inspiration and preservation. It came to us through the fires of persecution; it represents the traditional text that was used by the churches through the centuries; it can be traced to Antioch rather than to Egypt; and it is not the product of modernistic and Unitarian scholarship.
The Critical Text. The modern Greek text is called the “Critical Text,” because it is the product of “modern textual criticism.” This was invented in the 19th century (largely) by theological modernists and Unitarians. It was not based on the belief that the Scripture is the infallible Word of God and that God has preserved His Scripture. Modern textual criticism treats the Bible as just another book and uses naturalistic tools to determine its text. The modern Critical Greek text largely originated from the Westcott and Hort text of 1881, which work they deceptively did under the guise of improving the Received Text. They hid their diabolical work from the public so that brilliant scholars like John William Burgon wouldn’t sound the alarm and stop their evil work. The Westcott and Hort text of 1881 is published today by the United Bible Societies and others. Every modern English version of the Bible is translated from the Critical Text.
The Critical Text is also referred to as the Egyptian text or the Alexandrian text, because the manuscripts it is based upon—two actually which are the “Aleph” (Codex Sinaiticus) and “B” (Codex Vaticanus)—originated from Egypt and the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which was a center of learning during the early centuries of the church age, and also a centre of serious heresy and apostasy. Most false doctrines canonized in the Roman Catholic Church can be traced back to Alexandria as their birth place. The modern Greek text favours these two Greek manuscripts above all others, which are the two oldest nearly complete Greek New Testaments, dating to the 4th century (allegedly). The translators of the NIV, for instance, call the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus “the two most reliable early manuscripts” (footnote to Mark 16:9-20, which is removed in modern versions or greatly questioned for its authenticity). Sinaiticus was discovered in 1844 by Constantine von Tischendorf in St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, in a garbage can. Vaticanus was discovered in the Vatican Library in 1475. Its history is unknown. Because of its age, it is generally conceded to be the most important one. For instance, Peter van Minnen, in Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts, concludes, “It is to be noticed that all the manuscripts listed above come from Egypt. The papyri . . . Sinaiticus . . . B [Vaticanus] . . . We owe the early Egyptian Christians an immense debt.” Westcott and Hort, who named this the Neutral Text, thought that Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus had preserved a pure form of the Alexandrian type of text. But Egypt is not the place where the Spirit of God gave the NT Scriptures. God chose to deliver the Scriptures to churches in Israel, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe. Not one book of the NT is associated with Egypt. Everything Egypt is considered apostatized and is untrustworthy, including these extremely corrupted codices.
The first edition of the modern Greek NT was that of Westcott and Hort (1881). The Westcott-Hort has been largely the basis for the Nestles’ Greek NT and the United Bible Societies Greek (UBS) NT. The Nestles and UBS Greek NT are almost identical to the W-H text of 1881 in significant departures from the Received Text and in passages that have extensive doctrinal significance. Bruce Metzger of the United Bible Societies (UBS) states in the introduction to his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, after listing the main Greek texts and finally that of Westcott and Hort: “It is this latter edition (Westcott and Hort), that was taken as the basis for the present United Bible Societies’ edition” (page xxiii). Jack Moorman counted only 216 instances in which the Nestle/Aland 26th edition apparatus departs from the Vaticanus and Aleph. The Westcott & Hort (WH) and the UBS delete or question almost the same number of verses (WH—48, UBS—45), and almost the same number of significant portions of verses (WH—193, UBS—185), and almost the same number of names and titles of the Lord (WH—221, UBS—212).
So it is a different Greek text that accounts for thousands of changes in the modern versions. That is the culprit. It is shorter than the Received Greek text by 2,886 words, which is the equivalent of the omission of the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter. We will say more about this below. On the OT side, changes began to be introduced from the Septuagint (Greek translations), the Talmud, and other sources.
The Critical Text, aka. The Alexandrian Text or Westcott and Hort or Nestle/Aland Text, is corrupt, evil, and blasphemous attack on the Triune God, and on His words and doctrines that He inspired and preserved.
Some of the major differences between the Critical Text (CT) NT and the Received Text (TR) NT:
- The CT is substantially shorter than the TR Greek due to all the omissions. The text is shorter by 2,886 words, which is the equivalent of the omission of the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter.
- The CT omits or questions 45 entire verses — Matt. 12:47; 17:21; 18:11; 21:44; 23:14; Mk. 7:16; 9:44; 9:46; 11:26; 15:28; 16:9-20; Lk. 17:36; 22:43- 44; 23:17; Jn. 5:4; 7:53–8:11; Ac 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; Rom. 16:24; and 1 Jn. 5:7.
- The CT additionally omits significant portions of 185 other verses.
- The CT greatly weakens and corrupts key doctrines in the Word of God including the doctrine of Christ’s deity (e.g., omitting “who is in heaven” from Jn. 3:13; omitting “God” from 1 Tim. 3:16 — more examples given further below).
- The Westcott and Hort CT changes the Textus Receptus in over 5,600 places. Donald Waite, the godly and brilliant defender of the Received Text and King James Bible, and founder of the The Dean Burgeon Society, writes, “Do you know how many changes they made? My own personal count, as of August 2, 1984, using Scrivener's Greek New Testament referred to above, was 5,604 changes that Westcott and Hort made to the Textus Receptus in their own Greek New Testament text. Of these 5,604 alterations, I found 1,952 to be OMISSIONS (35%), 467 to be ADDITIONS (8%), and 3,185 to be CHANGES (57%). In these 5,604 places that were involved in these alterations, there were 4,366 more words included, making a total of 9,970 Greek words that were involved. This means that in a Greek Text of 647 pages (such as Scrivener's text), this would average 15.4 words per page that were changed from the Received Text. Pastor Jack Moorman counted 140,521 words in the Textus Receptus. These changes would amount to 7% of the words; and 45.9 pages of the Greek New Testament if placed together in one place.”
- Jack Moorman, in his book entitled, ‘Missing in Modern Bibles--Is The Full Story Being Told?’ (link goes to the free pdf ebook), did a word comparison between the Received Greek Text and the Nestle/Aland Greek Text and discovered the Nestle/Aland text was shorter than the Received Text by 2,886 words. This means the omission of 934 more words than the Westcott and Hort text, the one that Donald Waite examined (1,952 vs. 2,886), from whence the Nestle/Aland originates. This omission of 2,886 Greek words is the equivalent, in number of English words involved, of omitting the entire books of 1 and 2 Peter!
The King James Bible stands alone amongst English translations as translated from the text given by God, the Received Text. ALL modern English translations (since 1881) have been translated from the corrupt Critical Text, and that includes the New King James Version (which was translated in part from both texts, the Received and the Critical).
The first prominent modern English version based on the modern Greek text was the English Revised Version of 1881, but it never threatened the popularity of the King James Bible, even though they attempted to destroy the KJV through lies, manipulation and false witness. The same was true for the American Standard Version of 1901, the Revised Standard Version of 1952, and the New American Standard Bible of 1960. It was not until the publication of the New International Version in the 1970s that a modern version began to be widely used outside of theologically liberal circles.
It is by the grace and providence of God that the King James Version was not in anywise affected by higher textual criticism:
“In view also of the leading part the English speaking peoples were to play in shaping the destinies of mankind, we are justified in believing that it was through a providential ordering that the preparation of that Version was not in anywise affected by higher critical theories in general, or specifically by the two ancient Codices [Vaticanus and Sinaiticus] we have been discussing” (Philip Mauro, Which Version? Authorized or Revised?).
Full article (56 min read): Why Modern Bible Versions are Corrupt, and the King James Version is Not
