Summer Reading

The Divine Original by T. H. Brown
A short history of how we got the corrupted Bible versions, online but also available in booklet form, put out by the Trinitarian Bible Society.

I suggest that only because it's short, and it might whet the appetite for the one book I think all pastors must read, and as many Christians in general who can handle it, Dean John William Burgon's eye-opening The Revision Revised.

I pray for pastors to break the spell of the Bible versions wolves in sheeps' clothing.

Another area of concern is of course 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Most of the relevant material is online, including Mary Kassian's chapter in her Women, Creation and the Fall, at the CBMW site. Chapter 9. A quick read.

The only book I'm aware of on the subject is Warren Henderson's Glories Seen and Unseen and it's a very good start.

Faith Understands What Intellect Can't Grasp

It seems so simple -- you simply believe it. But if you aren't born again, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, it's apparently impossible.

I was just reading more in David Cloud's book, the Bible Versions Hall of Shame, and read through the information on the fourteen translators of the Revised Standard Version he presents, which is a compendium of modernist/rationalist doubt of the Bible, refusal to believe most of what it says, and every kind of speculative reinterpretation of whatever seemed too incredible for them. Complete destruction of everything the Bible is meant to be to us through simple faith. What a sad story. Infinitely sad.

It made me sad but it also made me SO grateful that God gave me faith in His word from the moment I believed. I just "knew" it was all true, every word of it, and I've never wavered an iota since that moment. I may not understand many things in the Bible but I believe it all and my understanding grows because of my belief. After reading the ugly sad destructive thoughts of these translators it comes home to me with extra force how faith really is a gift of God. I'm SO grateful.

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Later. June 29

Studying the Bible versions problems makes me aware that I believed implicitly in the inerrancy of the scripture before I knew anything about how it is all put together. I believed that the ENGLISH was inerrant I realize now, not merely the original autographs. But that didn't necessarily mean I believed every single word had to be the ONLY word to convey the point, I simply believed that what it SAID was the TRUTH. For that purpose it doesn't matter if some words might have been better chosen or some words change their meaning over time; still they convey the truth as they are. I didn't have the King James particularly in mind though, simply vaguely assumed ALL the English Bibles were inerrant in the same sense.

But now I have to rethink all that. How could all the modern versions, that have sprung up like so many suspect mushrooms from the fetid soil of Westcott and Hort's bogus Greek text and abominable English revision, also be the inerrant word of God? They are too different. I assumed they were inerrant TOO (except maybe some we were frequently told should be avoided), before I had any idea how gratuitous and inelegant were most of their changes in the English, how mutilated the Greek on which they were based.

How am I now to think about this? ARE they the inerrant word of God? Well, no they aren't. Not a single one of them is. Oh they may CONTAIN some of God's word, but in the sense the term is normally used, no, they are not the inerrant Word. I suppose it's a sort of poetic justice too (God's justice is always "poetic"), now that they dominate the field, that the Higher Criticism which presided over their birth also reigns over more and more churches, and more minds, and it tells us that of course the Bible is not inerrant anyway.

Another thing I recognized recently is that I have been aware of the follies of the Higher Criticism since soon after I became a Christian, but it never linked up in my mind with the Bible versions for some reason until now.

Much to mull.

KJV "Errors" and the Fictional History of the Versions

I have a copy of The Layman's Parallel Bible published in 1973 which has the King James, the Modern Language Bible, the Living Bible and the Revised Standard Version side by side for the sake of comparison.

Was just reading the Preface to the RSV and want to note how it presents the history of Bible versions. First it gives a history of the English Bibles before the King James, with the usual compliments to the prose of the King James and so on and so forth. Then goes on:

Yet the King James Version has grave defects.

I'm already worn out from the research I've done so far on the versions but I've realized for some time I'm going to have to do at least a minimum of research into what people mean when they say there are errors in the KJV. How can it be that one group says there are NO errors at all and another says there are "grave defects?" Then there are some in the middle as well who allow for some errors or defects and so on and so forth. Sigh. Makes me really appreciate those who have dedicated the necessary time and study to this issue to be as thorough and accurate as possible.

I already glanced very briefly at a site that lists what they regard as KJV "errors." I randomly chose one reference from their list to see if Burgon says anything about it in his Revision Revised and found out that he did! I'd chosen Luke 2:14, and find Burgon beginning a six-page discussion of this verse with:

A more grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture is scarcely to be found than occurs in the proposed revised exhibition of S. Luke ii. 14, in the Greek and English alike; for indeed not only is the proposed Greek text (...) impossible, but the English of the Revisionists ('peace among men in whom he is well pleased') 'can be arrived at' (as one of themselves has justly remarked) 'only through some process which would make any phrase bear almost any meaning the translator might like to put upon it. [footnote Scrivener's Introduction, p. 515] More than that: the harmony of the exquisite three-part hymn, which the Angels sang on the night of the Nativity, becomes hopelessly marred, and its structural symmetry destroyed, by the welding of the second and third members of the sentence into one. Singular to relate, the addition of a single final letter (Greek s) has done all this mischief....

Over one hundred years later people are still blindly accepting what the revisionists did with that verse instead of heeding Burgon's knowledgeable discussion in favor of the KJV. His discussion goes on for six pages and I've only quoted part of the first paragraph. There are also many footnotes I found in the Index that discuss this same passage that I haven't yet checked out.

Granted, this is only one verse, which I've only barely touched on, and a couple dozen or so "errors" are listed for the KJV which also require investigation in order to be thorough, but if I never get beyond this one I'm happy to conclude that there's no error in the KJV here and if there is none here then it's quite likely the others aren't errors either. All I need is a few words from the righteous and knowledgeable Burgon to conclude that the "error" is no error at all, because he CLEARLY knows what he's talking about and all the rest are ignoramuses by comparison.

In fact the whole idea that there are errors at all is based for starters on the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts, and the whole list is rationalized by made-up specious explanations by people who don't know what they are talking about.

An unbelievable mess was made of the Bible by the Revisers of 1881, at least the leaders of the pack, who had no feeling for the Greek or the English, no ability to appreciate the work of the KJV translators, a strange personal disdain for the Textus Receptus and indeed for the supernatural revelations of the Bible altogether, and the only right conclusion of this sad tale would be that the whole enterprise be denounced and all the modern Bible versions burned. I'd say we should start all over at that point but clearly there is no one today with the abilities and sensibilities of a Burgon, let alone a whole committee who could be entrusted with the necessary tasks, so there is no starting over possible. The KJV has to become the Bible of all the churches if there is any genuine concern that God's word survive among His people, until such time as Greek and English scholarship improves enough to rethink it, but I'm not holding my breath. I have no doubt but that the Lord Himself will return before that could even become possible.

Oh but I only quoted one line of the Preface to the Revised Standard. There's more (a LOT more):

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for revision of the English translation.

I'm sorry to have to report here that this is simply a lie, in fact it is a collection of lies. The majority of new discoveries were of the Byzantine tradition and agreed with the Textus Receptus and no revision was called for at all.* The very few of the very ancient Alexandrian type were already known to the KJV translators -- they were aware of that other TYPE of manuscript and that TYPE of reading and had REJECTED it as corrupt.

Another lie is that "many" and "serious" defects were the reason for the revision. The reason for the revision was for an UPDATING of the text as MINIMALLY as possible. No hint of many serious defects was given at all.

Another lie is that the finding of these manuscripts had anything whatever to do with the call for a revision. They did not. The other manuscripts were not to figure in the revision at all. The Textus Receptus was to remain the foundation for the revision. That the revisers substituted their own preferred texts was a violation of their agreement.

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*Here's a reference by the Trinitarian Bible Society:

Recent Discoveries and Textual Criticism During the next three hundred years [after the publication of the King James Bible] vast numbers of documents were brought to light and Biblical scholars made many attempts to reconstruct the Greek New Testament. There are now over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, including 90 papyrus fragments (2nd-8th century); 270 Uncial copies (3rd-l0th); 2,800 minuscules (9th-16th); and 2,000 Lectionary copies. The overwhelming majority of these manuscripts agree so closely that they may be said to present the same Greek text, called by some the "Byzantine Text" because it prevailed throughout the Church in the Byzantine period A.D. 312-1453 (and long after).

The Versions. In addition to these Greek sources, scholars have recovered copies of ancient translations in Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Gothic, etc. Some of these originated before our oldest existing Greek copies and thus testify to the contents of still earlier manuscripts. Much of this evidence is favourable to "The Received Text'' underlying the Authorised Version.

Early Greek and Latin writers -- The "Fathers"The writings of early champions of the truth (and heretics) contain copious references to the Scriptures and again testify concerning the Greek text as it was in the 2nd century onwards. The majority of these witnesses support the "Byzantine" or "Received" or "Traditional" text underlying the Authorised Version, and they establish the antiquity of this text and its superior acceptance in the early period.

The Papyri It is alleged that the most ancient papyrus fragments are hostile to the Received Text, but it must be remembered that the fragments that remain are few in comparison with the many that must have perished through long and frequent use. It is probable that the surviving minority survived because they were not much used and that they fell into disuse because of their deficiencies. A number of papyri of the 6th to 8th centuries do not contain a distinctively "Byzantine" type of text, although it is beyond question that the "Byzantine" text was dominant in that period. These papyri are surviving representatives of a defective and discarded text.

Burgon's Damning Facts 6: The Early Heretical Corruption of the Texts

Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 29:

But surely (rejoins the intelligent Reader, coming fresh to these studies), the oldest extant Manuscripts (B [Vaticanus], Aleph [Sinaiticus], A C D) must exhibit the purest text! Is it not so?

It ought to be so, no doubt (we answer); but it certainly need not be the case.

We know that Origen in Palestine, Lucian at Antioch, Hesychius in Egypt, 'revised' the text of the N.T. Unfortunately, they did their work in an age when such fatal misapprehension prehvailed on the subject, that each in turn will have inevitably imported a fresh assortment of monstra into the sacred writings. Add the baneful influence of such spirits as Theophilus (sixth Bishop of Antioch, A.D. 168), Tatian, Ammonius, &c., of whom we know there were very many in the primitive age, -- some of whose productions, we further know, were freely multiplied in every quarter of ancient Christendom: -- add, the fabricated Gospels which anciently abounded; notably the Gospel of the Hebrews, about which Jerome is so communicative, and which (he says) he had translated into Greek and Latin: --lastly, freely grant that here and there, with well-meant assiduity, the orthodox themselves may have sought to prop up truths which the early heretics (Basilides, A.D. 134, Valentinus, A.D. 140, with his disciple Heracleon, Marcion, A.D. 150, and the rest,) most perseveringly assailed;--and we have sufficiently explained how it comes to pass that not a few of the codices of primitive Christendom must have exhibited Texts which were even scandalously corrupt. 'It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound,' writes the most learned of the Revisionist body,

'that the worst corruptions, to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed: that Irenaeus [A.D. 150] and the African Fathers, and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephens thirteen centuries later, when moulding the Textus Receptus.' *

[*footnote: Scrivener, Introduction, p. 453. -- Stunica, it will be remembered, was the chief editor of the Complutensian, or first printed edition of the New Testament, (1514).]

And what else are codices Aleph, B C D but specimens--in vastly different degrees-- of the class thus characterized by Prebendary Scrivener? Nay, who will venture to deny that those codices are indebted for their preservation solely to the circumstance that they were long since recognized as the depositories of Readings which rendered them utterly untrustworthy?

Only by singling out some definite portion of the Gospels, and attending closely to the handling it has experienced at the hands of A Aleph B C D,--to the last four of which it is just now the fashion to bow down as to an oracular voice from which there shall be no appeal, --can the student become aware of the hopelessness of any attempt to construct the Text of the N.T. out of the materials which these codices exclusively supply. Let us this time take S. Mark's account of the healing of 'the paralytic borne of four' (ch. ii. 1-12)--and confront their exhibition of it with that of the commonly received Text.

POST UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

Westcott and Hort Speak from the Heart of the Great Apostasy

Just a few quotes to show the apostasy of Westcott and Hort, the fathers of all our modern Bible versions. Quotes from David Cloud's The Modern Bible Version Hall of Shame, Way of Life Literature, 2005:

No need to believe in the Biblical account of the Creation and Fall, just a myth-based "Gospel":

No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis give literal history -- I could never understand how any one reading them with open eyes could think they did -- yet they disclose to us a Gospel. So it is probably elsewhere.
-----(WESTCOTT, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1890, cited in Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, Vol II, p. 69) -- Cloud, p. 100.

Even Moses and David are really only mythical beings:

If you feel now that it was, to speak humanly, necessary that the Lord should speak of the 'sun rising,' it was no less necessary that He should use the names 'Moses' and 'David' as his contemporaries used them.
-----(WESTCOTT, same source as above)

No need to believe in a real Eden or a historic Fall of man:

I am inclined to think that no such state as 'Eden' (I mean the popular notion) ever existed, and that Adam's fall in no degree differed from the fall of each of his descendants, as Coleridge justly argues.
-----(WESTCOTT, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, Vol. I, p. 78) -- Cloud, p. 101.

Probably we could have done without the Protestant Reformation too:

I have been persuaded for many years that Mary worship and Jesus worship have very much in common in their causes and their results.
-----(HORT to Westcott, 1865, cited in Life of Hort, Vol. II, p. 50) --Cloud, p. 101

The pure Romish view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to the truth than the Evangelical.
----- (HORT, cited in Life of Hort, 1848, Vol. I, p. 76) --Cloud, p. 101

Christ didn't really need to die for us either, in fact the very idea is a "heresy":

...the popular doctrine of substitution is an immoral and material counterfeit. ... Certainly nothing could be more unscriptural than the modern limited of Christ' bearing our sins and sufferings to his death; but indeed that is only one aspect of an almost universal heresy.
-----(HORT to Westcott, 1860, cited in Life of Hort, Vol. I, p. 430.) -- Cloud, p. 101

Nothing divine or supernatural about God's word:

In matters of textual criticism the Bible is to be treated like any other ancient book. No special considerations are to be made concerning its claims of inspiration and preservation.
-----(WESTCOTT AND HORT, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Introduction and Appendix, 1881) --Cloud, 102

No need to believe in the virgin birth, the Deity of Christ etc.:

[on John 14:1] The belief is 'in Christ' and not in any propositions about Christ.
-----(WESTCOTT, The Gospel According to St. John, 1881, p. 200). --Cloud, p. 103

There's lots more where I got these. I tried to select the most obvious ones that need no explanation, but Westcott in particular was a master of using orthodox language to mean something very unorthodox when you finally figure out what he's saying. I left those subtler ones out. Many of them are in his commentaries on the Bible. Hate to think how many might read those and miss his camouflaged heresies. Maybe it would be worth going through them and including Cloud's explanations when I'm up to it.

Affirming the superiority of the KJV, and a quote from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones about it

My updated position on the KJV:

As I've been reading David Cloud's book, For Love of the Bible, my faith in the KJV is getting strengthened. I waver sometimes when I read criticisms of it saying it has many errors, but when I realize that those criticisms are almost exclusively generated from the modern-Bibles perspective, taking the Alexandrian texts and the abominable translation of Westcott and Hort and their followers as their standard, I recover from my lapse.

I see no reason why on principle the KJV COULDN'T need revision, however. I don't believe that any translation is perfect, directly inspired by God, and the translators themselves acknowledged that their work couldn't be perfect. They were, after all, revising previous versions of the English Bible that they considered to be God's word nonetheless.

However, I've more and more come to believe that in our time it is increasingly dangerous to think of revising the KJV at all. Who would do it? There is no authority who could authorize it as the English Crown could in the day of King James, and there are not enough experts today who deserve to be trusted with the task. The general mentality is utterly changed since the time of the King James translators. The King James was translated from a perspective of God-fearing reverence which can hardly be said for the revisions after it. Also, it seems to me that the revisions themselves with their abominable English have come to define what the text SHOULD say in a subtle but compelling way that makes it hard to defend the King James text even where it is clearly superior. For instance, "charity" even at the time of the revision was no doubt superior to "love" for translating "agape," at least in 1 Cor 13, but we are now so used to the revisions' "love" that the very use of "charity" that the King James had enshrined in the English language no longer carries the same meaning it did then. I suspect that meaning was still quite alive when the revision was first made, but by now it isn't and there is little hope of reinstating it. However, I do not capitulate. I now say we have to stick to the King James no matter what, even in the face of a clear error if there is such a thing in the KJV. ALL the other alternatives are dangerously more undesirable for many reasons.

I'm no longer going to be wavering about the KJV, such as by looking for a new translation from the Received Text as I had been doing from time to time before.

In David Cloud's book I've found many heartening quotes from men before and after Westcott and Hort who understood what was at stake and what was being challenged by the revisions, as they battled against the tide of rationalism that was bringing in destructive doubts about the Bible from many angles. I want to post some of those quotes as I go along with this blog, but right now I want to quote what Martyn Lloyd-Jones said in favor of the KJV back in 1961:

From Cloud, For Love of the Bible page 251, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones speaking at a rally at the Royal Albert Hall in 1961:

I suppose that the most popular of all the proposals at the present moment is to have a new translation of the bible. ... The argument is that people are not reading the Bible any longer because they do not understand its language-- particularly the archaic terms-- what does your modern man ... know about justification, sanctification, and all these Biblical terms? and so we are told the one thing that is necessary is to have a translation that Tom, Dick and Harry will understand, and I began to feel about six months ago that we had almost reached the stage in which the Authorised Version was being dismissed, to be thrown into the limbo of things forgotten, no longer of any value. Need I apologise for saying a word in favour of the Authorised Version in this gathering? ...

It is a basic proposition laid down by the Protestant Reformers, that we must have a Bible 'understanded of the people.' That is common sense ... we must never be obscurantists. We must never approach the Bible in a mere antiquarian spirit ... but it does seem to me that there is a very grave danger incipient in so much of the argument that is being presented today for these new translations. There is a danger, I say, of our surrendering something that is vital and essential ...


Take this argument that the modern man does not understand such terms as justification, sanctification and so on. I want to ask a question. When did the ordinary man ever understand those terms? ... Did the colliers to whom John Wesley and George Whitefield preached in the 18th century understand? They had not even been to a day school ... they could not read, they could not write. Yet these were the terms that were used. This was the version that was used--Authorised Version. The common people have never understood these terms. ...We are concerned here with something that is spiritual something which does not belong to this world at all; which, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, the princes of this world do not know. Human wisdom is of no value here--it is a spiritual truth. This is truth about God primarily, and because of that it is a mystery. ...

Yet we are told---it must be put in such simple terms and language that anybody taking it up and reading it is going to understand all about it. My friends, this is sheer nonsense. WHAT WE MUST DO IS TO EDUCATE THE MASSES OF THE PEOPLE UP TO THE BIBLE, NOT BRING THE BIBLE DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL. One of the greatest groubles today is that everything is being brought down to the same level, everything is cheapened. The common man is made the standard of authority; he decides everything, and everything has to be brought down to him....

Are we to do that with the Word of God? I say No! What has happened in the past has been this -- ignorant, illiterate people, in this country and in foreign countries, coming into salvation have been educated up to the Book and have begun to understand it, to glory in it, and to praise God for it, and I say that we need to the same at this present time. What we need is therefore, not to replace the Authorised Version ...we need rather to reach and train people up to the standard and the language, the dignity and the glory of the old Authorised Version. [The emphases in all caps and underlining are Cloud's, those in boldings and italics are mine]

Whenever I start wavering, thinking that the KJV really IS too hard for people as so many complain it is, I'm going to remember this quote from one of my favorite preachers, Lloyd-Jones. He's right. The KJV improved the English language, it should go on improving the English language for every individual.

A Late-Night Polemic

I keep collecting material toward posts for this blog, have many drafts begun that need completion or the checking of some facts before I post them and that sort of thing. It takes time putting together a decent blog post.

But in this post I'm just going to throw out a wild polemic without looking up quotations. I recently ordered Dr. David Cloud's book For Love of the Bible, in which he laboriously documents the history of textual criticism back to 1800 and even earlier, using his huge library of resources he assembled over decades. These resources include many very old out-of-print books he acquired at great expense in order to get his quotations from the horse's mouth. The result is impressive. He quotes from writers on both sides of the issue from well before Westcott and Hort, showing the rationalistic bias of the supporters of the Critical Text, which was continued by Westcott and Hort. By the time you read the quotes you can't have any doubt of this. And I do hope I'll still get around to posting some of them here.

From now on I'm going to be recommending that EVERYBODY read THIS book AS WELL AS Dean Burgon's Revision Revised at LEAST. It's available at Way of Life Ministries under Topical Books.

You will not find this information anywhere else in such complete form, and not at all from any of those who support the modern Bibles. It ought to grieve us all to recognize what has been done with the Bible over these last two centuries to deceive and manipulate us and it ought to be KNOWN to us all, in order that this deception be ended and only those who want to be deceived remain deceived. I think of those many preachers who apparently hold to all the main orthodox positions and preach them avidly and yet nevertheless have swallowed the teaching on the modern Bible versions hook, line and sinker, versions which were the product of the rationalistic Bible-doubting teachings that are normally shunned by them. And they have in all sincerity passed on their own delusion to their congregations.

This is because they trust in their teachers and don't investigate the situation for themselves apart from the materials recommended by those teachers.

I can't do much at my little blog of course. If anybody ever does stumble across it why should they spend any time over it? I'm a woman too and a woman is not to teach men. Well, what can I say? It's up to the Lord whether what I write here has any impact or not. All I can do is write it. I'm not standing in front of a class as some sort of authority, whoever reads any of this reads it by choice, not compulsion. And all I care about is that the truth get to people who CAN teach it. I refer you to MEN who can teach YOU so you can teach it.

Having said that I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs that

ANYBODY WHO IS A CHILD OF GOD AND HAS THE HOLY SPIRIT IN HIM AND WALKS BY THE SPIRIT MUST, FOR HIS SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND, IF HE IS A PREACHER, FOR A BLAMELESS TESTIMONY BEFORE GOD OF HIS RESPONSIBILITY TO HIS CONGREGATION, BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE MODERN VERSIONS AND STOP GIVING AUTOMATIC CREDENCE TO DEFENDERS OF THE MODERN BIBLES.

I DON'T HESITATE TO SAY THAT IF YOU DO HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT YOU CANNOT CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE MODERN BIBLES FOR ANOTHER SECOND AFTER FAMILIARIZING YOURSELF WITH THIS HISTORY -- THE TRUE HISTORY OF ALL THE EFFORTS TO REVISE THE BIBLE AND THE MENTALITY BEHIND THEM, NOT THE PREJUDICED REVISIONIST HISTORY YOU GET FROM THE MODERNISTS.

Again, I hope to get around to giving some quotes here as well so you can see what I mean. But you need to read the books, both Burgon's and Cloud's books.

And while you're at it, you should also seriously rethink 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and push aside everything you've been taught about it.

[P.S. David Cloud is anti-Calvinism and I'm still a Calvinist so obviously I'm not recommending everything he writes. He also doesn't agree with me about the head covering].