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| Judge them by the fruits of their unholy labor. They created distrust in the New Testament and empowered the New NIV to completely subvert Justification by Faith. |
Someone asked about the Biblical texts, where a great divide exists, with reliable New Testaments almost gone from the market.
The Old Testament text is carefully controlled by a long history counting the words, even the letters, of each book. As I recall, when the Qumran scroll of Isaiah was examined, it was not different from ones that were 800 years younger, except for "holy" being used instead of "holy, holy, holy." A good compilation can be found in Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell. I am not a big McDowell fan, but this is a good start in looking at false claims about the Bible. I understand a group of people helped him with it, and that is the only way to get a big project done.
The Great Divide - Thanks to Wescott and Hort, Tischendorf
The new attitude fostered by the apostates was this - we have thousands of Byzantine Greek NT documents, so we cannot trust them - too traditional. We must find the rare exceptions and use those.
Wescott and Hort invented rules for judging the New Testament text, pulled right out of their English bowlers. Here is a tirade directed against critics of Wescott and Hort. The defense is mostly an unsupported attack on the critics, very light on evidence. Reasons for abhorring Wescott and Hort can be found here, a popular report. A clear analytical approach is found in Burgeon, the dean of KJV defenders and of Wescott/Hort despisers. Burgeon - Unholy Hands on the Bible.
Dismissing all that, the two principle arguments against Wescott and Hort are
- Their ridiculous rules for judging texts, and
- Their use of the highly suspect Tischendorf finds.
The rules include such absurdities as preferring the shorter version to the longer one. That makes no sense at all, since we all have short and longer versions of events - and even of quotations.
Another rule was against the traditional reading. Any liberal or apostate would appreciate reading that no one really thought Jesus to be the Son of God. That was, according to Harvard, "a late development." Jesus did not teach the Trinity, as my college professor stated, because the Trinitarian formula of the Great Commission was "put on the lips of Jesus by Matthew."
Bethany Greek Class - here is an example.
Note that the opening has brackets: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, [the Son of God]. That means - with the footnote - that this phrase is disputed.
ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ 1:1-21881 Westcott-Hort New Testament (WHNU)
1 αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιησου χριστου omitting the Son of God
2 καθως γεγραπται εν τω ησαια τω προφητη ιδου αποστελλω τον αγγελον μου προ προσωπου σου ος κατασκευασει την οδον σου
ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ 1:1-2SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) Society of Biblical Literature
1 Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ [a]χριστοῦ. omitting the Son of God
2 [b]Καθὼς γέγραπται ἐν [c]τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ· [d]Ἰδοὺ ἀποστέλλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου, ὃς κατασκευάσει τὴν ὁδόν [e]σου·
ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ 1:1-21550 Stephanus New Testament (TR1550) Stephanus is the editor of the Byzantine edition.
1 αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιησου χριστου υιου του θεου - includes the Son of God
2 ως γεγραπται εν τοις προφηταις ιδου εγω αποστελλω τον αγγελον μου προ προσωπου σου ος κατασκευασει την οδον σου εμπροσθεν σου
The Ending of Mark
The same results can be found with Mark 16:1-20. Biblegateway.com is handy in going through the various English editions, but more importantly the Greek editions. The tradition text includes all 20 verses. The new ones stop at verse 8, which is a grammatical absurdity. The post-positive was never used at the end of a chapter and book. Like ending with a preposition, it is something I have never heard of.
As the lawyer asked, "Is knowledge of the Biblical languages important for studying the Bible?" After 15 weeks of Greek study, the Bethany students can look at the results and make sense from them. Anyone can, but basic reading skills in Greek really help the brain stay out of panic mode.
Pulling Celebrity out of the Trash
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| Tischendorf claimed the oldest Bible was used to warm the monastic library! I always burn shoes to start the charcoal in my BBQ. So beleeevable. |
Tischendorf wanted to make his reputation in New Testament manuscripts, and he made himself a hero and celebrity with not one, but two trash tales. I am eternally suspicious of people who find treasure in the trash with improbable tales. Here is someone who agrees with me about the great Tischendorf deception - The Bin of Plenty - and I quote -
Nineteenth century Biblical scholar Constantin Von Tischendorf, on the other hand, parlayed his trash finding story into celebrity. As a young man, Tischendorf set for himself the rather ambitious goal of reconstructing the original text of the New Testament; he noted to a friend that he would compile this Bible “upon the strictest principles; a text that will approach as closely as possible to the very letter as it proceeded from the hands of the Apostles.” Initially this meant he would simply make copies of the oldest New Testaments he found, mostly in Europe, and bring them together for research. But his thinking on the matter would evolve.
In 1844, he travelled across North Africa and arrived, eventually, at St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. It was, he later claimed, in the monastery’s library that he noticed a basket full of papers “mouldered by time,” being consigned to flames for the sake of heat. He “rescued” from this trash basket some 86 pages of what turned out to be a fourth century Bible, and brought them back to Leipzig. In an age when fire was a major threat to books, saving one from the flames must have struck Tischendorf as an entirely believable tale — never mind that parchment (which is animal skin, after all) does not burn well enough to be a good source of heat. But aside from that, to accept his rescued-from-refuse claim, a person would have to believe that, after some fifteen hundred years of existence, monks were burning the oldest extant copy of the Bible, in the library, on the very day that a man professed to be searching for things exactly like that just happened to be there. In any event, Tischendorf’s story is somewhat undercut by the fact that he returned years later and stole/borrowed/bought (depending upon who is asked) the rest of the manuscript containing the New Testament.
It is tempting to think that 19th century folks were more credulous, and believed the story as Tischendorf wrote it. Some did, of course — like some continue to believe Breithaupt. But here is the 1892 judgment of noted Englishman and book collector W. G. Thorpe: “But as to stealing books. The thing is not only sometimes lawful, but even meritorious, and one man will go to heaven for it — in fact, has gone there already. The mode in which Tischendorf ran off with the Codex Sinaiticus…may be described as anything you please, from theft under trust to hocussing and felony; but it succeeded, and all Christendom was glad thereof.” [GJ - Not all of Christendom is glad, but perhaps Thorpe was tweaking the apostates on purpose.]
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| What would you give to have your name inscribed in history, on the title page of a rarely used but incredibly influential book? Many Lutheran leaders have sold their souls for less and are soon forgotten, sinking beneath the waves of ecclesiastical history, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." |
Vaticanus and Tischendorf
Paul McCain's The Catholic Encyclopedia
The original home of the Vatican Codex is uncertain. Hort thinks it was written at Rome; Rendel Harris, Armitage Robinson, and others attribute it to Asia Minor. A more common opinion maintains that it was written in Egypt. Armitage Robinson believes that both the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus were originally together in some ancient library.
Tischendorf has a similar story for Vaticanus, which he, Wescott, and Hort made normative (with Sinaiticus) for the New Testament manuscript.
Sinaiticus has the Hebrew letter aleph for its symbol. Vaticanus has B. However, English language Bibles seldom bother with all that. Massive deception is being laid upon all Christians by the Bible boosters who make so much money off the buyers.
Otten is just as guilty as the rest of the apostates, promoting the Beck Bible, which also tips its hat to Tischendorf. Lenski was no better, playing the manuscript game on his own.
Executive Summary
Two schools of Greek New Testament manuscript evidence exist. The earlier school, almost extinct, favors the traditional text, with variant names - Byzantine, Textus Receptus, Erasmus.
Modern Apostates
The modern school dominates all the Bible societies, all modern translations, and all Biblical scholars (so-called). They make the fraudulent and mysterious Sinaiticus, the equally fuzzy Vaticanus, and all the strays the norm for the New Testament. They vote on which verses to exclude from the New Testament, like so many drunken frat boys who cannot stand Flounder or Pinto. A small committee makes decisions for millions of people who dream that a Bible society could never be packed with liars, drunks, frauds, and peculators. Have they looked hard at their Council of District Presidents lately?
The Few, The Humble, the Traditionalists
The traditional school is aware of these problem and prefers the King James tradition, which uses the traditional text only.
Tis interesting that ELDONA wavers between the Babtist New KJV and the Calvinist ESV, the second one extruded from the bowels of the National Council of Churches.
Thanks, Mystery Man, for asking about this issue. I had a blast looking up information. Call this an Ichopedia article, not meant to be the final word. Bereans will study this on their own so that they are not quoting me but presenting information from their own research.
But beware, this is addicting, like great coffee brewed from fresh roasted beans.
