Voelz Commentary on the Gospel of Mark - A Soporific Tome Tied to Vaticanus!

 

Remember Tischendorf from the previous post?

He promoted Vaticanus, the "1500 year old codex" that had no children in all those centuries, kept safe in the Vatican, a bulwark for the truth, eh?

James Voelz' two-volume commentary on the Gospel of Mark.

I am reading the CPH Voelz commentary on the Gospel of Mark. He declared for Vaticanus (!?) as his main source for the Greek text  of Mark but is also willing to depart from some of the moderns a bit. So now we have the Voelz Greek New Testament.

So these genius, scientific commentators cannot agree on their modern Greek text but still cling to Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, to use them like hand-puppets.

Apart from the automatic subscriptions that CPH uses to float their new books, who would read something so egotistical and narrow that his own colleagues in Greek New Testament would fall into a coma?

As they say about gigantic biographies of famous people, "He left no unused note card behind." 

 Jeff Kloha taught at Concordia, St. Louis, until people began debating the text of the Bible. He left to head up the Hobby Lobby Bible Museum.

On the KJV versus the New KJV

 

 Black Friday is killing our page views, but people will be back tomorrow, right?

I am not KJV-Only, and I think few are. I am KJV-Best because all the others says, "We are almost as good as the KJV."

This is Doc Lito's post, which is below, on his fondness for the New KJV.

I have said for decades that the New KJV was far better than any other modern translation - ESV (just another RSV), RSV, New RSV, NIV, and so forth.

People really need to know how much they have been swindled by the NIV-ESV-RSV combine, which is weak in numbers but backed by the denomination's colleges and seminaries. I have heard that the New KJV is trashed as much as the KJV because the modernists want a platform attacking the divinity of Christ, faith in Christ, and the Trinity. The Westcott-Hort-Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament does that for the NIV-ESV-RSV.

My guess is that the New KJV is picking up its numbers from disenchanted NIV-ESV-RSV veterans. One poll showed the KJV demolishing the NIV-ESV-RSV, having 50% of the readership, another 10-12% going to the New KJV. That leaves little room for the Westcott-Hot fans, so named (by me) because they are hotter than Georgia asphalt for the fraudulent Sinaiticus (Aleph) and Vaticanus (B) codices. 

To paraphrase Dean Burgon on Aleph and B, the only way a tiny minority of the so-called evidence (Aleph and B) can overturn 95% of the manuscripts (the Majority Text-KJV) is by walking among the clouds with impossible theories and claims. 

No one has any explanation for the 5% (Aleph and B) having no descendants and 40% disagreement! with each other. Their stools have two wobbly legs. The modernists bitterly cling to Westcott-Hot because the duo's dishonesty and trickery gave the rationalists what they needed - a Bible without the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the miracles, and the Resurrection. 

The second edition of The Bible Book will give fair treatment to New KJV because it continues the Luther-Tyndale-KJV tradition of precise translation based on the best text. The Little Three gush money for their denominational partners, but think of this. 

In the past, the Christian Church guarded the Word, as Jesus Christ commanded time after time in John's Gospel. But now the money-making combines tell the denominations what their churches will get. The NIV even obsoleted itself so they could sell New NIVs to the same pinheads who bought the previous NIV. Uppity-ups like the Missouri Synod brag about using the ESV because it is 2% better than the NIV. Oh joy! Send me a case and bill it to Matt the Fatt.

Some of us are getting older faster, so the next two generations below us need to know why the KJV remains the standard, the best, and why no one should trust  a glory hound like Tischendorf who "rescued a 1500 year old manuscript from the fires at an Orthodox monastery." 

 Tischendorf got the rest of his Aleph to the Tzar, and put his name on it. He is a model for modern Lutherans, always working for the Vatican and Eastern Orthodoxy, loathing Luther.

 Tischendorf was sent to find Aleph and he spirited away a chunk of it to give to a Catholic king. It was pure white leather and supple, but 1500 years old. Yes, I believe not a word of it.

Doc Lito - Convinced by the New KJV

How I got convinced by the Textus Receptus

 The Textus Receptus aka Received Text is the basis for the NT part of the KJV and those translations that follow its tradition.

Now, what convinced me that I should standardize on this text?

It was the NKJV!

Yes, that is what happened to me. The NKJV helped me to determine that the TR holds the orthodox teaching of early Christians.

I have heard a lot of conspiracy theories against NKJV because it has these myriad of footnotes about the text. The assertion is that these textual comments lead the reader away from the Received Text. Yet, that is not what happened to me. What happened to me was the reverse.

Many years ago, I bought a leather bound NKJV NT (nice leather actually, you cannot find this anymore, unfortunately, I believe I gave it away to a relative). 

It had of course, some footnotes, but I focus for you only the one that caused me to think.

This NKJV comment here:

NU omit - meaning the Nestle-Aland Union Greek collection omits this word or phrase or passage.

What I did was to highlight all occurrences of these comments, even using a marker.

I discovered that if you follow the said comment, you will miss out in explicit terms some orthodox teachings of Christianity.

An example of this is Mk 16:9-20 being reportedly omitted in the Nestle-Aland.

That involved a support for the Great Commission, the teaching on faith and baptism and signs and charismatic gifts which St Paul experienced.

Another is  1 John 5:13, this is a verse which powerfully supports the promise we now have eternal life for us who believe in Christ.

After this discovery, I seemed to have neglected it. I got affected with Bible translation trends and fell into considering other translations like the NASB, the NRSV and ESV. I used the NRSV a lot. Funny but I got into these translations because the pastor who had an influence on me used the RSV. We should really double check the person we look up to and respect, for after all they are like us, human beings too.

Some maybe 10 years ago, I read that you can re-construct the TR passages from the quotation of the Church Fathers.

This fact and my discovery experience with NKJV led me to conclude - I should stick to the TR. I still have these other translations, as a reference, but I do not use them for my personal Bible Study or personal devotion.

That is what happened.

Squirrels, Birds, and Food

 Blue birds love suet.

 

Squirrels have been called a lot of names for being first at the bird-feeders, brazen in waving birds away from the food, clever in sending the youngest out to forage in the wild because bird-feeders are so easy to find and inventory.

I pile up food on two outside kitchen window sills for the squirrels to enjoy. The youngest are only inches away from me, often grabbing one peanut at a time, eating while looking back at me.

 Bluejays love the same food as squirrels. I watched a juvenile Bluejay jump up and down screaming at a squirrel to leave the barrel top. The squirrel ignored him

I got a large suet cake with sunflower seeds and tiny worms mixed in. I put it in a wire basket manufactured for bird watchers and hung it on the squirrel-proof feeder. The next day the cake was on the ground and mostly eaten, because I did not fasten the hanging chain correctly.

I was happy about the special suet cake on the ground, because the forlorn feeder was ignored for being empty a long time. Surrounded by Poke Weed, God-created feeders, I did not invest in bird food. So I filled and locked the wire basket with frozen suet from the butcher, made sure seeds were coming out of the bird-feeder, and watched.

The suet did not bring the birds - the cold brought all the favorite birds out for the suet, seeds on the ground, and opportunities on top of the two self-cleaning garbage barrels. Suet eaters are bug eaters, so a few dollars spent on suet is good for next year's nests.

The garden is losing its summer colors quickly now, the roses all nipped by frost. The squirrels of the backyard continue to encourage regular feedings of all kinds. Nothing is funnier than having a more mature squirrel stand up on the window sill, peer in, and look back and forth inside, reminding the humans to bring out more food. Justice demands a regular supply.

 I notice Goldfinches when they change colors and enjoy sunflower seed. Male dress for mating and to back to their drab colors later.

 Getting a close look at a Goldfinch is difficult but good for the camera industry. Notice the wood mulch the ground. That by itself is a giant bird-feeder.