Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Spotlight on Westcott-Hort as the Mother of All Deceptions - Who Benefits?

Aland and Aland did little more than repeat the Westcott-Hort GNT. "It's too late to turn back now, I believe, I believe, I believe I'm falling in love."

One scholar, not even 100% Traditional Text, has nevertheless cooked the goose of Westcott and Hort for handing everyone a finished Greek New Testament with no citation of sources. 

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Citation - 

Alfred Martin, "A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory, Which Bible? edited by David Otis Fuller, 1995. 

Fuller's books are easily found on Alibris.com by searching on the titles.  

They are also on Amazon at new prices and sometimes used prices. Another source is Biblio.

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Let us put it this way. If someone publishes 

  1. a dissertation or 
  2. a formal essay proving a concept or 
  3. a medical study with a conclusion, 

there must be actual evidence to support the argument.

Westcott (first a professor, then a bishop) worked with Hort (a professor) for decades, so they printed their finished Greek New Testament secretly - for the KJV Revision group only - a decade before the formal release, which was the moment the Revised KJV came out.

The Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament never had a critical apparatus at the bottom of each page until the 1950s, long after the men were dead and buried. That was their dissertation with no footnotes, no references, just overweening pride. (Do post-humus references count? How did the living know what the two dead men intended?)

So they were saying - with their apostate cheerleaders -  during the decades when Biblical proof was on trial - "This is the real New Testament, without all the sentimental additions cooked up by the Church many centuries later."

They published their theories separately, and text scholars eventually realized that there was no connection between the strutting, phony theories and the actual evidence. 

Most likely, the text scholars knew it was wiser to ride the Wescott-Hort wave than to question what the truly advanced, free-thinking, apostates argued. Moreover, it is much more fun to attack and generate publicity than to say, "God really did preserve His Word, against all heretics."

Early and Continuous Corruption - Roman Catholic

From Jerome (400 AD) on, the Catholic Church has waged a war against the text of the Bible. To this day, their emphasis has been on the infallibility and power of the Pope and the need to sort out the "unclear passages" in the Scriptures.

Do not be surprised - the WELS sect has the same attitude. When a pastor needs to wiggle out of a definite question about the Scriptures, he will say, "That is a gre-e-e-e-e-e-y area of Scriptures." In other words, he takes the Roman Catholic position that the Word of God is incomplete and unclear. It is a good thing WELS came along to clarify things. Yes, the WELS pastors are infallible but their Bible is unclear.

Missouri pastors are far better trained. They turn their eyebrows into tortured caterpillars and say, "Scholar are divided." That covers everything and reveals nothing.

The Church of Rome has always been part of the American Bible Society, with joint publishing, etc. The United Bible Societies are even more subordinated to Rome. I understand than a Jesuit Cardinal was the senior manager of the Greek New Testament at one point. 

If the Papacy loved the Bible, why did the popes keep Vaticanus (B) tucked away for centuries? Tischendorf, the pope's favorite sock puppet, only had a brief time to glance at it and publish a rave review.

Tischendorf, a nominal Lutheran, with more self-serving lies than a carnival barker, established the double source of Sinaiticus (Aleph, which was clearly a recently manufactured fake) and Vaticanus (which had no more credibility than Sinaiticus.

The Amen Chorus is world-wide now and affects the Bibles in your own church. When you buy from NPH (WELS) or CPH (LCMS) or Fortress (ELCA), you are buying Sinaiticus-Vaticanus. They will let you buy the KJV and allow TLH to be bought, but they promote the latest lame lying Bibles and the worst hymnals ever (until the next Calvinist litter is born).

They fit the saying, "This is not a book to be read lightly, but thrown hard against the wall."