LCMS President Pfotenhauer Said - "Resist the Beginnings" And Was Not Heeded

 

Fritz Pfotenhauer said "Resist the beginnings" and was not heeded. That warning explains what happened to the text of the Greek New Testament.

Count Tischendorf was a fraud who constantly pumped up his status as a great scholar. He declared Sinaiticus (Aleph) and Vaticanus (B) to be the earliest and best manuscripts, and that was accepted with great excitement. 

Two ridiculous notions helped fuel this. 

I. John's Gospel was dismissed as being very late (300 AD or so) and therefore not from an apostle or anyone close to that era. That claim came from the Tuebingen School - and that sticks today among the apostate scholars. So nothing in John had any validity, and dropping the woman caught in adultery passage was easily accomplished (plus the Johannine Comma).

II. Mark's Gospel was held up as the earliest of the four, the simplest in concepts, and the most likely to reveal the real historical Jesus - a rabbi and nothing more.

III. There are 5,000 or more witnesses to the Majority Text, which varies only a little due to typical copyist errors. Aleph and Vaticanus must be the best because they are a tiny minority. The Majority Text was preserved in the Greek Byzantine Empire for 1100 years, so it must be loaded down with errors. 

Notice how powerful those false concepts are when considered together with these below. 

A. The oldest and best readings must be the shortest ones, because "everyone adds details" to older stories. Since Jesus was "only a man", anything suggesting His divinity was added later and a "pious fiction." But actually, a new writer's additions will stick out when inserted into the original text. even today.

B. Those who are indifferent or opposed to the Christian Faith are scholars. But those who understand the Scriptures to be inerrant and infallible are backwoods, ignorant hillbillies who cannot grasp the subtle work of Biblical "scholars" and apostate theologians.

C. The vast majority of scholars agree, so there is no alternative view. Those who favor the King James Version cannot be trusted in teaching at any seminary or university, and congregations must be encouraged to move ahead with the latest translations paraphrases, especially those with NEW! in the title: 

1. New International Version, 
2. New American Standard Bible, 
3. New Living Translation, 
4. New Revised Standard Version.
5. New Revised Standard Catholic Edition.