Read Burgon

Quotes against Westcott and Hort from scholars of their time

INVENTION UPON IMAGINATION UPON CONJECTURE: Prebendary Scrivener, assessing the textual theory of Westcott and Hort that defends the use of the Alexandrian Greek texts in the revision of 1881:

1) There is little hope for the stability of their imposing structure, if its foundations have been laid on the sandy ground of ingenious conjecture. And, since barely the smallest vetige of historical evidence has ever been alleged in support of the views of those accomplished Editors, their teaching must either be received as intuitively true, or dismissed from our consideration as precarious and even visionary.

2) Dr. Hort's System is entirely destitute of historical foundation.

3) 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...

4) "We cannot doubt" (says Dr. Hort) "that S. Luke 23:34 comes from an extraneous source." Nor can we, on our part, doubt, (rejoins Dr. Scrivener) that the System which entails such consequences is hopelessly self-condemned. [quoted in Burgon's Revision Revised as the frontispiece, from Scrivener's "Plain Introduction, 1882 edition].

The "System" he is talking about is the same reasoning that is now enshrined as Text Critical gospel in such ideas as that the texts underlying the KJV were "conflated," which is an idea they made up in order to support the other ideas they made up, such as that the Alexandrian texts they favored were closer to the original [Burgon denounces them as corrupted], and, to explain how it is that it wasn't the Alexandrian texts that got passed down through the centuries, but the texts that fed into the Textus Receptus, they added the further ingenious conjecture that eminent leaders of the early churches must have gotten together to decide on the text that came down to the translators of the KJV, now called the Textus Receptus, which ingenious conjecture was treated as fact by them. [Burgon has a lengthy section in Revision Revised demonstrating the utter stupidity of such a conjecture for supporting W&H's ideas, and showing how in fact if it were true it would demonstrate the authenticity of the Textus Receptus instead]. There isn't a shred of support for their insane historical fantasy/theory, it is all "ingenious conjecture" as Scrivener says. But over and over on Christian radio I hear otherwise good preachers reject the KJV's choice of a word ON THE VERY BASIS OF HORT'S insane purely imaginary theory.*

Bishop Wordsworth, another of their contemporaries, commenting on the English translation of the Westcott and Hort revision:

CHANGE FOR CHANGE'S SAKE:

I fear that 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 ... sanctioned a Revision of her Authorized Version under the express condition ... 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, Address to Lincoln Diocesan Conference (quoted in Revision Revised, p. 368)

Just as I hear good preachers on the radio rationalize preferring a false word based on the 1881 fraud over the KJV's, I also cringe abd groan over the multitude of UNNECESSARY WORD SUBSTITUTIONS I hear in every quoted portion of scripture that comes from one of the modern versions.

But hey, it's supposed to be just WONDERFUL that we have all these OPTIONS. Who needs a standardized Bible anyway, that all English-speaking people could share with each other without stumbling, could memorize and trust? Who cares that centuries of English preaching not to mention literature of all sorts QUOTE THE KJV where these idiotic substitutions now reign in its place and make a confused wreck of English history? Who cares that language has been trashed like this? Who cares that the Bible has been turned into a Babel of awkward phrasing and meaningless word downgrades anyway?

Excuse me while I scream and tear out my hair.

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After that rant I realize I have to add, to make it clear again, that I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF KEEPING THE KJV AS OUR STANDARD JUST AS IT IS. THERE NEEDS TO BE AN UPDATING OF SOME OF ITS LANGUAGE AND A REVISION OF SOME OF ITS ERRORS, which they COULD have done in 1881 but didn't. I've been wondering if perhaps Scrivener detailed what he thought were the NEEDED CORRECTIONS to the KJV in the 1881 revision because that might be the place to start. The revision that is needed would be as conservative as the revision of 1881 was supposed to be. It would respect the historical value of the KJV and not affect the best known of the KJV's expressions unless there is some absolutely compelling need for such a change. There would not be anything like 36,000 changes, probably less than a tenth of that many, even only a fiftieth if Bishop Wordsworth is correct, in the revision that is still needed. And the Alexandrian texts would have no part in it but go back to the wastebasket to be burned where Tischendorf found one of them anyway. And of course all the modern versions that have built upon Westcott and Hort need to be retired.

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* I've been getting the impression for some time now that we might as well think of the 19th century as the century of fantasy being taken for theory. That's what Darwinianism is -- just pure conjecture off the top of his head that is now enshrined as fact, and that's what Marxism is too, utterly out of touch with reality but the darling of way too many who think of themselves as scholarly, intellectual and compassionate. Same with Westcott and Hort, who were true to the mindset of the 19th century when they concocted their view of textual criticism and the history of the texts out of hot air, based only on their feelings about it and the one and only fact that the Alexandrian texts happen to be older copies, and somehow it's now THE scholarly position and the ENTIRE CHURCH follows them, with few exceptions.

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This post is intended to be a reminder of the theme of this blog since I haven't been getting to it lately. These quotes alone ought to alert anyone who is half awake that there is something very very wrong with today's W&H-contaminated Bibles.

When I can get to it I want to add some quotes from Burgon I've also posted elsewhere, showing the corruption of the Alexandrian texts.

Conspiracy Thinking or actual tampering with scripture by early heretics?

I once mentioned Burgon to a pastor who responded that Burgon was a conspiracy thinker. I don't think he'd ever read anything of Burgon's but he had that idea about him from somewhere.

The accusation no doubt comes from the fact that Burgon did attribute some of the errors in the Alexandrian manuscripts to tampering by heretics in the early centuries of the church. He also made it clear that this was the consensus of others besides himself, and he documented the reasons for thinking this, including the fact that some of the early fathers specifically testify of those they knew to have altered the texts of scripture to suit their heretical views. This is no mere supposition of a conspiracy, but something known to have occurred.

Edward Hills in his book The King James Version Defended reports that the story of the woman taken in adultery whom Jesus forgave was left out of some early manuscripts by some who objected to it on moral grounds, as condoning adultery, and gives much evidence that this actually occurred. He also shows in the case of the last twelve verses of Mark -- another passage that is omitted from those Greek texts preferred today by those under the spell of Westcott and Hort -- a strong likelihood of its having been eliminated by early followers of Docetism (the heretical doctrine (associated with the Gnostics) that Jesus had no human body and his sufferings and death on the cross were apparent rather than real).

The arguments for these historical occurrences take up many pages in both Hills and Burgon and gleaning the most pertinent quotes for my blog is beyond me at the moment, so this has to be just another post strongly recommending that these arguments be read, though I'd like to come back and give some more information if I can.

READ BURGON!

READ HILLS!

READ CLOUD TOO!

These are the ones who have the evidence and the right perspective, not White, not Wallace, not any of the rest of the defenders of the modern versions.

Burgon's Revision Revised OUGHT to set the terms of the debate

It continues to puzzle me how it could ever have happened that the Westcott and Hort production of 1881 came to have such influence in the churches -- of course it was first accepted in the seminaries and then later by the churches, but I have the same question about that --how? What sort of blindness led so many to accept it?

Most discussions of Bible transmission and reliability assume the validity of their work; the anti-KJV-only literature also assumes the validity of their work. Westcott and Hort's Greek text is not used in its totality any more but is accepted at least to the extent of forming part of the Critical Texts in use today, such as Nestle-Aland. Even their textual theory with its purely invented claim of "conflation" in the Textus Receptus is taken seriously, and much of their English translation even continues to be carried over in subsequent translations.

After reading Burgon this all strikes me as such a dreadful mistake I mourn for the churches. I can't help thinking that if Burgon's work had been made generally known from the beginning this could not have happened. Hardly anyone reads Burgon now -- he's become pretty much the property of KJV-onlyism and few others read him. He gets footnotes in just about every discussion of Bible translation and transmission but an actual quote from his Revision Revised is a very rare find, let alone a discussion of anything he said.

Was it also the case at the beginning that Burgon was simply ignored? What happened back then? How did all that prodigious work of Burgon's get so utterly and completely buried and forgotten? Was it that the propaganda about the 1881 Revision managed to get itself falsely disseminated as the legitimate updating of the KJV it was supposed to be but never was, simply bypassing such criticism as Burgon's?

I can't help thinking that so many great men of the church who have accepted the Westcott and Hort position can't have read Burgon, such as B B Warfield, J Gresham Machen, John Warwick Montgomery, James I Packer, R C Sproul, John MacArthur and John Piper. How was it first presented to them? As above I suppose, as the legitimate updating it was supposed to be but wasn't, bypassing the criticism as if it didn't even exist. Only the one voice was heard in other words. I can only guess that must have been the case.

So is it that the horrific errors and stupidities of Westcott and Hort are unknown because nobody reads Burgon? Or, depressing thought, is it that they have read him and decided against him in favor of Westcott and Hort? In that case I would have to have a very bad opinion of their judgment, which I'd rather not have. But in either case I'd like to know what really happened, how it came about as it did.

The Bible Versions debate that has raged for a few decades now is miscast, it seems to me, it gets fought around the fringes of what's really important. Somehow from the anti-KJV-only side the debate has been cast in Westcott and Hort's own terms. They have been made the standard, simply assumed, not open to question. Burgon's work should set the standard. He should be the one who has to be answered, he should be the one whose thinking defines the terms of the debate.

As I understand it, KJV-onlyism rose up in reaction against the early uncritical acceptance of the translations that followed on the Westcott and Hort production, and skewed the focus of the debate in the wrong direction from that time on. It became a doctrinal war when it really ought to be recognized as primarily a problem of scholarship. Of course there are doctrinal issues involved but Burgon's arguments are focused on the bad scholarship of the revising committee of 1881, on their superstitious and irrational judgment of the Greek texts, their reliance on pure speculation and assumption instead of evidence, their inadequate understanding of both Greek and English, and on and on.

To read Burgon is to become acquainted with a man of careful scholarship who DOES rely on evidence and put in prodigious work mustering his evidence, but also a man of solid biblical spirituality whose judgments come across as trustworthy in a way his opponents' simply do not. He SHOWS the Westcott and Hort textual decisions, English decisions and insane Theory to be unworthy of anyone's consideration. He PROVES it.

Yet that very Westcott and Hort Trojan Horse of incompetence, bad judgment, literary philistinism and spiritual obtuseness is what is now dominating our English Bibles, while the debate rages on about a hundred irrelevancies or at least secondary issues instead.

How I wish I had the ability to do this subject justice.

Doulos -- Wrongly translated by ALL the English Versions but one?

This isn't going to be a well-researched post, just off the top of my head, so I may have to eat some of it later, you never know.

Heard part of an interview with John MacArthur on Christian radio recently, about a new book of his titled Slave -- first time I'd heard of it -- in which he apparently goes into great detail about this particular Greek word doulos that is translated "servant" in all our English Bibles (but one I'll get to), but which he insists should have been translated "slave." He seems to believe that a great deal of modern theological error that has Jesus being at OUR beck and call rather than we being at His, might never have developed if this word had been properly translated "slave." It's an interesting point.

Of course there is a technical side to this that I am not in a position to judge. I looked up the word in Burgon's Revision Revised to see if he had anything to say about it, and found him mentioning it in a paragraph about many Greek words the 1881 Revisionists had glossed with marginal notes, in the case of doulos notes that point out that it means "bondservant" although apparently in the text they had rendered it "servant" in keeping with the King James. Burgon's comment in effect was that there was no need to bother the reader with such an obvious piece of information, which implies that he thought the implication of "bondservant" quite apparent in the term "servant" already.

And perhaps it was more apparent in the English-speaking mind then than to us today, that's a historical and linguistic question, but now it doesn't carry that connotation so clearly. A servant now is someone who is hired, paid money for his work to spend as he sees fit, and independent of the employer when off duty; but a slave, and I think also a bondservant, is bought, not hired, and always at the command of the owner.

Perhaps Burgon had this in mind as attaching to the word "servant" but I don't know. In any case, John MacArthur makes some very good points in favor of the word "slave" since we are told in scripture we were "bought at a price" and are OWNED by our Lord Jesus, not merely hired by Him, and certainly we don't tell Him what to do but we are always to be like good slaves (or servants) who "wait upon" our Lord to understand His command and execute it promptly.

MacArthur is certainly right that Christians don't often live as if this were the case, but instead pray for Him to do OUR bidding more often than not rather than waiting upon HIS will. And there is this horrible contemporary theology that has sprung up that describes the Christian life as trusting Jesus to take care of what WE want and what WE think we need, to make our lives happy, improve our marriages and our finances and so on, that even objects to the idea that we are to submit to Jesus as Lord, and makes Him into our servant. I do think that this ought to be clear enough from scripture apart from however the term doulos is to be translated, but it's always good to hear this way of thinking put down and John MacArthur is always good at doing this sort of thing.

SO. Perhaps doulos would be clearer if translated "slave," if only because "servant" may have lost in our time important connotations of absolute submission to the Lord that it used to have, and perhaps that is one to put on the list for the revision of the King James I keep wanting to happen but suspect won't.

MacArthur says there is only one English Bible version that translates doulos as "slave" and that is the Holman Bible. He calls it a "wonderful" translation but it would have to have a lot more going for it than merely getting one word righter than other translations for me to consider it.

Aion: Burgon's answer to the currently popular Westcott-and-Hort-inspired mistranslation

Finally I'm getting around to a topic I've wanted to cover here for some time. The impetus for doing it now came from something I heard on Christian radio yesterday. I heard only a part of a presentation by someone who was going to argue for a Preterist interpretation of Biblical references to the end times, that is, the interpretation that all or most of the prophecies of events understood by others to refer to the end of time are in reality already in the past, so those of us who look for a yet-future fulfillment are wrong. I couldn't listen to the whole thing and didn't even get the presenter's name (well, I'm not very favorable to the Preterist point of view, though I may eventually have to grapple with it). But he made one comment that stuck in my mind and leads me back to this topic I've wanted to cover here. Perhaps in fact it illuminates the kind of thinking Preterists do -- after you read the following you may agree that it's the mistranslation by the modern Bibles itself that gives them license for their erroneous eschatology.

Ah, yes, the Greek term AION, one of those terms whose translation into English has been embattled since the Westcott and Hort Bible Revision of 1881 -- embattled for those who object to that Revision anyway; otherwise the excruciatingly bad W&H rendering has been enshrined in seminary after seminary as if it were a needed correction to the King James.

Of course all I can do is present J W Burgon's view of it to the contrary as I am not a Greek scholar, but as usual I find his remarks to have the feel of truth and a depth of understanding that is lacking on the other side.

The gist of the dispute is that the King James translates "aion" in certain places as "world" while the revisers of 1881 and Greek students who followed them insist that it should be rendered as "age." So where the KJV says "end of the world" all or most of the new translations of the last century have "end of the age."

The speaker on the radio made the remark that the King James is a very bad translation, that "aion" means "age," not "world." Sigh.

My first take on this kind of remark is always to wonder how on earth anyone can take such a position against the King James as if its immensely learned and God-fearing translators were such idiots that they did not understand that the Greek term literally does mean "age" so that if they rendered it "world" in some contexts THEY HAD EXCELLENT SCHOLARLY AND BIBLICAL REASONS FOR DOING SO!

This is probably a large part of why I found I didn't have time to listen further to the Preterist, I must admit. This attitude is just so offensively ignorant it hardly seems worth making the effort to find out whatever might be of value in what such a teacher has to say. But of course the ignorance goes back to Westcott and Hort themselves. It is an Ignorance that has been elevated to the status of Knowledge in the minds of generations of students of Greek, while the superior and nuanced understanding of Greek -- and English -- of the KJV translators is treated as trash. Sigh.

Well, let's get to what Burgon had to say about it. Unfortunately he didn't discuss it in much detail but what he said does as usual demonstrate his greater grasp of the issues of Greek-English translation than Westcott and Hort and their legions of miseducated followers.

On page 182 of his Revision Revised, Dean Burgon has a paragraph in which he demonstrates the inferior understanding of the Greek by Westcott and Hort in a number of different instances, starting with a comment about a three-word Greek expression I can't reproduce here which he says:

"is quite an ordinary expression for 'always,' and therefore should not be exhibited (in the margin of S. Matth. xxviii 20) as a curiosity, -- 'Gr. all the days.'"

This is the kind of comment Burgon makes throughout his book that to my mind demonstrates that he knows what he's talking about while the revisers of 1881 whom he is criticizing were klutzy ignoramuses by comparison. Sad to think their inferior knowledge of Greek is now the basis of all the new Bibles.

Burgon goes on in that paragraph to say:

"--So with respect to the word aion, which seems to have greatly exercised the Revisionists. What need, every time it occurs, to explain that [five Greek words here including a form of "aion" it would take me too long to transliterate] means literally 'unto the ages of the ages.'? Surely (as in Ps. xlv. 6, quoted Heb. 1.8,) the established rendering ('for ever and ever') is plain enough and needs no gloss!"

Does this suggest to anybody besides me that the Revisers had a klutzy flat-footed shallow understanding of Greek that ought to have disqualified them from any position of authority over the translation of the Bible?

The other place where Burgon discusses "aion" is on page 208:

What means also the fidgetty anxiety manifested throughout these pages to explain away, or at least to evacuate, expressions which have to do with ETERNITY? Why, for example, is 'the world (aion) to come, invariably glossed 'the age to come'? (See the margin of Rom. ix. 5. Are we to read 'God blessed unto the ages'?) Surely we, whose language furnishes expressions of precisely similar character (viz. 'for ever,' and 'for ever and ever'), might dispense with information hazy and unprofitable as this!

The KJV translators ONLY translate "aion" to mean "world" in expressions that refer to the "END OF the world," or ETERNITY, as Burgon says. "End of the age," on the other hand, today's favored mistranslation, implies something time-limited, the opposite of what the Bible means in those places. Take a look at Strong's Concordance. "Aion" is ALWAYS used with this meaning in those particular places. OTHERWISE, there are two other Greek words for "world" that refer to the globe itself, the planet, or to land.

ALSO, there are TWO places in the New Testament where the KJV DID translate "aion" as "age" or in this case "ages" -- see Ephesians 2:7 and 3:21. They also translated it by other words in different contexts. You can go check it out on the Concordance pages for "aion" at Blue Letter Bible. THE KJV TRANSLATORS KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, and since that is the case it raises much doubt that the Westcott and Hort team had any clue at all as to how to read ancient Greek.

BURGON DESERVES TO BE READ. HE HAS EXPOSED A DEPTH OF IGNORANCE AND FOLLY IN THE REVISERS OF 1881 THAT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO ON INFLUENCING OUR BIBLE.

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I noted when I was checking this out at Blue Letter Bible that the New King James also uses the W&H "age" instead of "world" but I didn't recall that from the list of the NKJV's taking over of the W&H wording that I covered a while back. I checked on two different discussions of the NKJV in this light and didn't find it. This is very strange since this particular change is one of the worst that could have been done.

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COMING SOON: THE GREEK AORIST TENSE. I'm sure that most Christians have been in Bible studies or heard sermons that make a big deal out of the Greek "aorist" tense. Supposedly a recognition of this Greek tense helps us clarify the meaning of some Biblical texts the KJV translators supposedly couldn't grasp. Sigh. Burgon nails it as a pedantic insensitivity to both Greek and English. More klutzy bogus scholarship from Westcott and Hort through the modern Bibles down to us.
(Sorry, Burgon's discussion of the aorist is too lengthy and varied for easy digesting for blog purposes, and not well focused on the issues I had in mind that I've heard discussed in church and Bible study. I may nevertheless try to take it on at some point but I realize that for now with so much else occupying my time that it won't be for a while).

The basic argument against the new versions

A talk given at the Trinitarian Bible Society in 2007 by Pastor John Thackway, The English Standard Version, covers all the basics.

I have a good impression of Pastor Thackway from having heard part of his series on the Song of Songs, which he recognizes as about the spiritual life of a Christian in our relationship with Christ.