Part 14
THE LAST WORD
BY JAY P.GREEN,SR.
I think is it fitting that the last word on this series of
studies should come from one of the scholars of Hebrew/ Greek
Textual Criticism, a man who has been there, knows this
particular school of Theology. Jay P. Green, Sr. is the editor
of "The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek Bible," four volume set. I
certainly recommend this work, especially for all Church leaders
and pastors - Keith Hunt.
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION - All Emphasis by Keith Hunt
.........The market-place is being glutted with new books
which are being represented as versions of the Bible. Each one
claims to be the very word of God, yet there are literally
thousands of differences between them......In one way these new
versions agree: they all leave out dozens of references to the
deity of Jesus Christ, and they add words which tend to question
His virgin birth, His substitutionary, fully satisfying
atonement. This is due to their decision to depend on an
Alexandrian textbase, instead of that body of God's words which
have been universally received and believed in for nineteen
centuries., known to us as the Received Text. These new versions
are not only marked by ADDITION, but also SUBTRACTIONS, since
some FOUR WHOLE PAGES OF WORDS, PHRASES, SENTENCES, AND VERSES
HAVE BEEN OMITTED BY THESE NEW VERSIONS. And these are words
ATTESTED TO AS GOD'S WORDS BY OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE CONTAINED IN
ALL THE GREEK MANUSCRIPTS, IN THE ANCIENT VERSIONS, IN THE
WRITINGS OF THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS; and these from every
inhabited land on the earth where Christianity has been........
For remember that it has been written, "For I say to you,
Until the heaven and the earth pass away, in no way shall pass
away one iota or one point from the Law, until all things come to
pass." - Matthew 5:18. WHO THEN WILL YOU BELIEVE? If our
Almighty God assures us that not even an iota, or a point, of His
word shall pass away, then an IMPORTANT WORD, OR PHRASE, OR
SENTENCE, OR VERSE SURELY CANNOT BE LOST! But still we see
version after version after version pouring off the presses
WITHOUT hundreds and hundreds of AUTHENTIC, WELL-ATTESTED WORDS
which have always been held as the very words of God.
Should you not ask, WHO ARE THESE MEN WHO TELL US THESE ARE
NOT GOD'S WORDS?....How did these words come to be questioned in
the first place? WHAT IS BEHIND THESE OMISSIONS?....
WHO ARE THESE MEN WHO ARE ASSURING US THAT THIS OR THAT
WORD, OR PHRASE, OR VERSE DOES NOT BELONG IN OUR BIBLES?........
What then is the evidence these Bible-alterers offer to
persuade you to give up the precious words they have removed from
their versions? MAINLY, THEY CITE TWO MANUSCRIPTS, admittedly
old, but also admittedly CARELESSLY EXECUTED. THE SINAITICUS WAS
SO POORLY EXECUTED THAT SEVEN DIFFERENT HANDS OF 'TEXTUAL
CRITICS' CAN BE DISCERNED AS THEY TRIED TO IMPOSE THEIR
VIEWS ON THE BIBLE. THEY TWISTED IT LIKE A NOSE OF WAX TO MEET
THEIR PURPOSE AT THE TIME. It is no wonder it was DISCARDED,
FOUND IN A WASTEBASKET FOURTEEN CENTURIES AFTER IT WAS EXECUTED.
THE VATICANUS MANUSCRIPT LAY ON A SHELF IN THE VATICAN
LIBRARY AT ROME UNTIL 1431, AND WAS CONSIDERED SO CORRUPT THAT NO
ONE WOULD USE IT (Erasmus, the noted Roman Catholic scholar,
refused to consider it as a source when he formed the Received
Text).
THE VATICANUS HAS ERRORS SO ABSURD THAT THE BOOKS PURPORTING
TO TEACH 'TEXTUAL SCIENCE' CAREFULLY AVOID MENTIONING THESE GROSS
ERRORS IN THEIR FAVORITE MANUSCRIPT. THEY TAKE THIS ONE AND ADD
TO IT A HANDFUL OF OTHER MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE ALEXANDRIAN
TEXTBASE, ALL OF THEM VERY LOOSE IN THEIR HANDLING OF THE
SCRIPTURES. FROM THESE THEY GIVE YOU THEIR THEORIES, THEIR
HYPOTHESES, THEIR GLOSSES. AND YEAR BY YEAR ONE OR ANOTHER
EXPLODES THE THEORIES OF THE PAST
YEAR.
........WHAT ARE THESE WORDS WHICH THEY HAVE SO FREELY
REMOVED FROM THEIR VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES?........
( Green goes on to give some examples. We covered this in part 13
of this series - Keith Hunt).
......Like ORIGEN, an early textual critic, too many men believe
WHAT HE SAID, that "the Scriptures are of little use to those who
understand them as they are written," (quoted by McClintock and
Strong Cyclopedia, article on Origen). And given the
opportunity, MANY LIKE ORIGEN WILL ACTUALLY ALTER THE MANUSCRIPTS
TO MAKE THEM SAY WHAT THEY UNDERSTAND THEM TO MEAN.
Such things were done as soon as the WORD of God was
complete. In fact the apostles, Paul, Peter, and John all warned
that CORRUPTERS OF THE WORD OF GOD WERE ALREADY PLYING THEIR
TRADE WITHIN THE FIRST CENTURY CHURCHES......GALATIANS
1:6,7......1 JOHN 4:1.......2 PETER 3:15,16........
By the time the apostle John died, GNOSTICISM had gotten a
toehold in many Christian churches. And quickly thereafter they
expanded their poisonous influence at a rapid pace. JUSTIN
MARTYR, VALENTINUS, CLEMENT of Alexandria, MARCION, TATIAN, and a
horde of others practiced their textual science by OPERATING on
the manuscripts, or by writing their own 'version.' To this we
have MANY TESTIMONIES, such as this one, "The worst corruptions
to which the NT has ever been subjected originated WITHIN A
HUNDRED YEARS after it was composed; that Ireneus (A.D. 150),
and the African fathers, and the whole WESTERN ,........used FAR
INFERIOR manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or
Stephens, thirteen centuries later, when moulding the Textus
Receptus" - Scrivener, INTRODUCTION TO THE NT, third edition,
p.511.
And Eusebius quotes a second century father as writing:
"Wherefore, they have not fear to lay hands on the divine
Scriptures under pretence of CORRECTING them.....As for their
denying their guilt, the thing is impossible, since the copies
were written in their own hand; and they did not receive the
Scriptures in this condition from their teachers, nor can they
show the originals from which they made their copies." -
Eusibius, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, Vol. 1, p.522-524.
Even ORIGIN condemned MERCIAN and LUCAN for ALTERING the
Scriptures, though he himself can be shown to have quoted the
same verse of Scripture in two contradictory wordings in many
places. Like many "textual critics" of our day, Origin
moulded the Scriptures according to his philosophy, or his fancy
based on the allegory of the day, having no twinge of conscience
for doing so. It is this Origin, considered by his pupils
GOURAMI and EUSEBIUS to be the MASTER of textual critic, that we
owe so many of the invidious deletions from our modern
versions........
Origin believed Jesus was a created being, and by his
reputation, and his influence on his pupils, the Latin Vulgate,
the ornate manuscripts made from the libraries and the rulers of
his day, our latter-day attackers of the Majority Text attempt to
keep out many references in the Scriptures which plainly reveal
Jesus Christ to be God the Son, our original Creator.........
THE PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
We believe wholeheartedly that God has preserved His word,
that He guided His true followers to carefully copy, and to use
the whole Bible, as is represented in the MAJORITY of the extant
manuscripts.....All modern-day critics will admit that the text
as essentially displayed in the vast majority of the extant
manuscripts has been virtually identical in copy after copy from
the period from the fourth century until the invention of
the printing press. In fact the Received Text was so widely and
so completely accepted in all countries, and in all denominations
EXCEPT the Roman Catholic, that WESTCOTT and HORT felt compelled
to invent a mythical council of church fathers, who supposedly
met and fixed the text as we now know it. Such a council is
unknown to history, and being totally demonstrable by evidence,
it must be considered a MYTH proposed in order to DECEIVE......
FIRST, many trustworthy copies were produced by faithful
scribes. SECONDLY, these were read, used, and recopied by true
believers when those original copies were worn out. THIRDLY,
untrustworthy copies (such as the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus)
were laid aside, not copied, consigned to oblivion. TODAY there
are more than 5,000 manuscripts and lectionaries in Greek as
witnesses to the NT text. And 95% OF THEM WITNESS TO THE
RECEIVED TEXT READINGS.
Party due to the fact that ancient manuscripts containing
the Received Text were worn out by use, while the Alexandrian
textbase manuscripts were preserved by the dry conditions in
Egypt, SOME have sort to DISCREDIT the Received Text because they
say it is not ancient. BUT NOW THAT MANUSCRIPT PORTIONS FROM THE
SECOND CENTURY ARE BEING UNEARTHED, it is found that MANY of the
readings of the Received Text which have been tagged scornfully
as "late readings" by nearly unanimous consent of the "textual
scientists" are APPEARING IN THESE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Readings
which were before called "late" and "spurious" have been found in
these early-date manuscripts. FOR EXAMPLE, the Chester Beatty
Papyri contained 65 readings which had before been rejected from
the versions of the critics. AND Papyrus Bodmer 2, of the second
century, actually was found to contain 13% of all the so-called
late readings of the critic-despised Majority Text.
YET STRANGELY, IN TEXTUAL CRITICISM CLASSES, SUCH
DISCOVERIES WERE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG, NOT REPORTED TO THE CLASS.
AND SO IT GOES, DAY BY DAY WE SEE THE CONJECTURES OF THESE
REPUTED EXPERTS BEING SWEPT AWAY, ALONG WITH THEIR HYPOTHESES.
NEXT, WE TRUST, WILL BE THE DISCREDITING OF THEIR "VERSIONS."
In the light of these facts, should we then ALLOW these
"scientists" (falsely so- called...........)
..........All who follow them will wind up in the spiritual
ditch........Try the spirits, whether they are of God.
End quotes from Jay P. Green, Sr.
I do recommend to all Christians, and especially those in
leadership functions within the Church of God, the FOUR VOLUME
SET of Green's Hebrew/ Greek - English Interlinear, coded to
Strong's Concordance Numbers - Keith Hunt.
..................................
Written February 1998
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