AUTHORIZED BIBLE VIDICATED
CHAPTER IX
Westcott and Hort
IT IS interesting at this juncture to take a glance at
Doctors Westcott and Hort, the dominating mentalities of the
scheme of Revision, principally in that period of their lives
before they sat on the Revision Committee. They were working
together twenty years before Revision began, and swept the
Revision Committee along with them after work commenced. Mainly
from their own letters, partly from the comments of their
respective sons, who collected and published their lives and
letters, we shall here state the principles which affected their
deeper lives. (Wilkinson gives the footnotes, as he does in all
chapters - which I have mainly omitted - Keith Hunt)
THEIR HIGHER CRITICISM
WESTCOTT writes to his fiancee, Advent Sunday, 1847:
"All stigmatize him (Dr.Hampden) as a 'heretic' ... If he be
condemned, what will become of me! ... The battle of the
Inspiration of Scripture has yet to be fought, and how earnestly
I could pray that I might aid the truth in that."
WESTCOTT'S son comments, 1903:
"My father ... believed that the charges of being 'unsafe' and of
'Germanizing' brought against him were unjust."
HORT writes to Rev.Rowland Williams, October 21, 1858:
"Further I agree with them (authors of "Essays and Reviews") in
condemning many leading specific doctrines of the popular
theology ... Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than
untrue. There are, I fear, still more serious differences between
us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of
the Bible."
HORT writes to Rev.John Ellerton, Aprii 3, 1860:
"But the book which has most engaged me is Dawin. Whatever may be
thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be contemporary
with ... My feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable. If
so, it opens up a new period."
THEIR MARIOLATRY
WESTCOTT writes from France to his fiancee, 1847:
"After leaving the monastery, we shaped our course to a little
oratory which we discovered on the summit of a neighboring hill.
... Fortunately we found the door open. It is very small, with
one kneeling-place; and behind a screen was a 'Pieta' the size of
life (i.e. a Virgin and dead Christ) ... Had I been alone I could
have knelt there for hours."
WESTCOTT writes to Archbishop Benson, November 17, 1865:
"I wish I could see to what forgotten truth Mariolatry bears
witness."
HORT writes to Westcott:
"I am very far from pretending to understand completely the
oft-renewed vitality of Mariolatry "
HORT writes to Westeott, October 17, 1865:
"I have been persuaded for many years that Maryworship and
'Jesus'-worship have very much in common in their causes and
their results."
HORT writes to Westcot:
"But this last error can hardly be expelled till Protestants
unlearn the crazy horror of the idea of priesthood."
HORT writes to Dr Lightfoot, October 26, 1867:
"But you knew I am a staunch sacerdotalist."
DR.HORT FALLS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MAURICE, COLERIDGE, WINER,
AND COMTEHORT - writes to Dr.Harold Brown, (Bishop of Eli),
November 8, 1871:
"Moreover, Mr.Maurice has been a dear friend of mine for
twenty-three years, and I have been deeply influenced by his
books." Frederick Maurice, the son of a Unitarian minister, and
brilliant student of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, became a
clergyman in the Church of England. He had a commanding influence
upon the leaders of his day, especially upon Dr.Hort. Maurice was
dismissed from his position as principal of King's College,
London, on charges of heresy.
HORT'S son says of his father:
"In undergraduate days, if not before, he came under the spell of
Coleridge."
HORT writes to Rev.John Ellerton, October 21, 1851:
"You cannot imagine his (Carlyle's) bitter hatred of Coleridge,
to whom he (truly enough) ascribes the existence of 'Puseyism.'"
HORT writes to W.F.Moulton, July 17, 1870:
"It has long been on my mind to write and thank you for a copy of
your Winer which reached me, I am shocked to find, four months
ago.... We shall all, I doubt not, learn much by discussion in
the New Testament Company."
WESTCOTT says in the preface to a volume of Westminster Sermons:
"Those who are familiar with recent theories of social morality
will recognize how much I owe to two writers who are not often
joined together in an acknowledgment of deep gratitude - Comte
and Maurice."
THEIR SPIRITUALISM WESTCOTT'S son writes:
"The 'Ghostlie Guild,' which numbers amongst its
members A.Barry, E.W.Benson, H.Bradshaw, the Hon. A.Gordon. F.J.
A.Hort, H.Luard, and C.B.Scott, was established for the
investigation of all supernatural appearances and effects.
Westcott took a leading part in their proceedings, and the
inquiry circular was originally drawn up by him."
WESTCOTT'S son writes, speaking of his father:
"The Communion of Saints, sums peculiarly associated with
Peterborough ... He had an extraordinary power of realizing this
communion. It was his delight to be alone at night in the great
'Cathedral,' for there he could meditate and pray in full
sympathy with all that was good and great in the past. I have
been with him there on a moonlight evening, when the vast
building was haunted with strange lights and shades, and the
ticking of the great clock sounded like some giant's footsteps in
the deep silence. Then he had always abundant company. Once a
daughter, in later years, met him returning from one of his
customary meditations in the solitary darkness of the chapel at
Auckland Castle, and she said to him, 'I expect you do not feel
alone?' 'Oh no,' he said, 'it is full.'"
HORT writes to Rev.John Ellerton, December 29, 1851:
"Westcott, Gorham, C.B.Scott, Benson, Bradshaw, Luard, etc., and
I have started a society for the investigation of ghosts and all
supernatural appearances and effects, being all disposed to
believe that such things really exist, and ought to be
discriminated from hoaxes and mere subjective disillusions.
THEIR ANTI-PROTESTANTISM
WESTCOTT wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury:
"It does not seem to me that the Vaudois claim an ecclesiastical
recognition. The position of the small Protestant bodies on the
Continent, is, no doubt, one of great difficulty. But our church
can, I think, only deal with churches growing to fuller life."
HORT writes to Westcott, September 23, 1864:
"I believe Coleridge was quite right in saying that Christianity
without a substantial church is vanity and disillusion; and I
remember shocking you and Lightfoot not so long ago by expressing
a belief that 'Protestantism' is only parenthetical and
temporary."
"Perfect Catholicity has been nowhere since the Reformation."
THEIR ANTI-ANGLICANISM
WESTCOTT writes to his fiancee, January 6, 1848:
"You can scarcely tell how I felt when I found we had to sign
some declaration before the degree (A.B.). I feared it might be
of an assent to the Thirty-nine Articles, and that I dare not
give now."
WESTCOTT'S son writes:
"In 1881 he was appointed by Mr.Gladstone a member of the
Ecclesiastical Courts Commision ... It did valuable service to
the Church of England in that it asserted its continuity, and
'went behind the Reformation.' In speaking of Archbishop Benson's
work on this Commission, my father says: 'It was my happiness to
it by Benson's side, and to watch as he did with unflagging
interest the gradual determination of the relations in which a
national church must stand to the nation....
The ruling ideas of the Lincoln Judgment were really defined by
these inquiries.'"
It will be remembered that Archbishop Benson's ruling in
this judgment constituted the greatest victory for ritualism, and
the most serious defeat for Protestantism. In fact it discouraged
the Protestants.
WESTCOTT:
"Nothing remains but to assert our complete independence of
Convocation ... If the (Revision) Company accept the dictation_
of Convocation, my work must end." These words he wrote to Dr.
Hort when Southern Convocation practically asked them to dismiss
the Unitarian scholar from the New Testament Revision Committee.
HORT writes to Westcott, September 23, 1864:
"Within that world Anglicanism, though by no means without a
sound standing, seems a poor and maimed thing beside great Rome."
THEIR ANTI-METHODISM
HORT writes to his father, December 14, 1846:
"In fact his (Dr Mill's) whole course lay in misrepresentation,
confounding Evangelicalism with Methodism, which last is worse
than popery, as being more insidious."
THEIR ANTI-AMERICANISM
HORT writes to Rev.John Ellerton, September 25, 1862:
"It cannot be wrong to desire and pray from the bottom of one's
heart that the American Union may be shivered to pieces."
"Lincoln is, I think, almost free from the nearly universal
dishonesty of American politicians (his letter to Greely I know
nothing about). I cannot see that he has shown any special
virtues or statesmanlike capacities."
THEIR ANTI-BIBLE DOCTRINES
WESTCOTT writes to Mr.Wickenden, October 26, 1861:
"I was much occupied with anxious thoughts about the possible
duty of offering myself for the Hulsean Professorship at
Cambridge. I had little wish, and no hope, for success, but I was
inclined to pretest against the imputations of heresy and the
like which have been made against me."
HoRT writes to Mr.A.Macmillan:
"About Darwin, I have been reading and thinking a good deal; and
am getting to see my way comparatively clearly, and to be also
more desirous to say something."
HORT writes to Westcott:
"You seem to me to make (Greek) philosophy worthIess for those
who have received the Christian revelation. To me, though in a
hazy way, it seems full of precious truth of which I find
nothing, and should be very much astonished and perplexed to find
anything, in revelation."
THEIR TENDENCY TO EVOLUTION
WESTCOTT writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury on 0.T.
Criticism, March 4,1890:
"No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of
Genesis, for example, give a literal history - I could never
understand how any one reading them with open eyes could think
they did."
HORT writes to Mr.John Ellerton:
"I am inclined to think that no such state as 'Eden' (I mean the
popular notion) ever existed, and that Adam's fall in no degree
differed from the fall of each of his descendants, as Coleridge
justly argues."
THEIR TRACTARIANISM
WESTCOTT writes to his fiancee:
"Today I have again taken up Tracts for the Times and Dr.Newman.
Don't tell me that he will do me harm. At least today he will,
has, done me good, and had you been here I should have asked you
to read his solemn words to me. My purchase has already amply
repaid me. I think I shall choose a volume for one of my
Christmas companions."
WESTCOTT writes to Hort, September 22, 1864:
"My summer was not as fruitful as I had wished; or rather, it was
not fruitful in the way I had wished. Dr.Newman's 'Apologia' cut
across it, and opened thoughts which I thought had been sealed
forever. These haunted me like spectres and left little rest."
HORT writes to Rev.John Ellerton, February 25, 1869:
"It is hard to resist a vague feeling that Westcott's going to
Peterborough will be the beginning of a great movement in the
church, less conspicuous, but not less powerful, than that which
proceeded from Newman."
HORT writes to his wife, July 25, 1864:
"How inexpressibly green and ignorant (Blank) must be, to be
discovering Newman's greatness and goodness now for the first
time."
The above quotation shows Hort's contempt for anyone who is
slow in discovering Newman's greatness and goodness.
THEIR RITUALISM
We have already noticed Westcott's associated work with
Archbishop Benson in protecting ritualism and giving the most
striking blow which discouraged Protestantism.
HORT writes to Mr.John Ellerton, July 6, 1848:
"The pure Romish view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead
to, the truth than the Evangelical ... We should bear in mind
that that hard and unspiritual medieval crust which enveloped the
doctrine of the sacraments in stormy times, though in a measure
it may have made it unprofitable to many men at that time, yet in
God's providence preserved it inviolate and unscattered for
future generations.... We dare not forsake the sacraments or God
will forsake us."
THEIR PAPAL ATONEMENT DOCTRINE
WESTCOTT writes to his wife, Good Friday, 1865:
"This morning I went to hear the Hulsean Lecturer. He preached on
the Atonement ... All he said was very good, but then he did not
enter into the great difficulties of the notion of sacrifice and
vicarious punishment. To me it is always most satisfactory to
regard the Christian as in Christ - absolutely one with him, and
then he does what Christ has done: Christ's actions become his,
and Christ's life and death in some sense his life and death."
Westcott believed that the death of Christ was of His human
nature, not of His Divine nature, otherwise man could not do what
Christ did in death. Dr.Hort agrees it the following letter to
Westcott. Both rejected the atonement of the substitution of
Christ for the sinner, or vicarious atonement; both denied that
the death of Christ counted for anything as an atoning factor.
They emphasized atonement through the Incarnation. This is
the Catholic doctrine. It helps defend the Mass.
HORT writes to Westcott, October 15, 1860:
"To-day's post brought also your letter ... I entirely agree -
correcting one word - with what you there say on the Atonement,
having for many years believed that 'the absolute union of the
Christian (or rather, of man) with Christ Himself' is the
spiritual truth of which the popular doctrine of substitution is
an immoral and material counterfeit ... Certainly nothing could
be more unscriptural than the modern limiting of Christ's bearing
our sins and sufferings to his death; but indeed that is only one
aspect of an almost universal heresy."
THEIR COLLUSION PREVIOUS TO REVISION WESTCOTT writes to Hort, May
28, 1870:
"Your note came with one from Ellicott this morning ... Though I
think that Convocation is not competent to initiate such a
measure, yet I feel that as 'we three' are together it would be
wrong not to 'make the best of it' as Lightfoot says ... There is
some hope that alternative readings might find a place in the
margin."
WESTCOTT writes to Lightfoot, June 4, 1870:
"Ought we not to have a conference before the first meeting for
Revision? There are many points on which it is Important that we
should be agreed."
WESTCOTT writes to Hort, July 1, 1870:
"The Revision on the whole surprised me by prospects of hope. I
suggested to Ellicott a plan of tabulating and circulating
emendations before our meetirg which may in the end prove
valuable."
HORT writes to Lightfoot:
"It is, I think, difficult to measure the weight of acceptance
won beforehand for the Revision by the single fact of our
welcoming an Unitarian."
HORT writes to Williams:
"The errors and prejudices, which we agree in wishing to remove,
can surely be more wholesomely and also more effectually reached
by individual efforts of an indirect kind than by combined open
assault. At present very many orthodox but rational men are being
unawares acted on by influences which will assuredly bear good
fruit in due time, if the process is allowed to go on quietly;
and I cannot help fearing that a premature crisis would frighten
back many into the merest traditionalism."
Although these last words of Dr.Hort were written in 1858,
nevertheless they reveal the method carried out by Westcott and
himself as he said later, "I am rather in favor of indirect
dealing." We have now before us the sentiments and purposes of
the two men who entered the English New Testament Revision
Committee and dominated it during the ten years of its strange
work. We will now be obliged to take up the work of that
Committee, to behold its battles and its methods, as well as to
learn the crisis that was precipitated in the bosom of
Protestantism.
......................
To be continued
Revision to DefameThe Received Test on the chopping block! AUTHORIZED BIBLE VINDICATED
CHAPTER X
Revision at Last!
BY the year 1870, so powerful had become the influence of
the Oxford Movement, that a theological bias in favor of Rome was
affecting men in high authority. Many of the most sacred
institutions of Protestant England had been assailed and some of
them had been completely changed. The attack on the Thirtynine
Articles by Tract 90, and the subversion of fundamental
Protestant doctrines within the Church of England had been so
bold and thorough, that an attempt to substitute a version which
would theologically and legally discredit our common Protestant
Version would not be a surprise.
The first demands for revision were made with moderation of
language. "Nor can it be too distinctly or too emphatically
affirmed that the reluctance of the public could never have been
overcome but for the studious moderation and apparently rigid
conservatism which the advocates of revision were careful to
adopt." Of course, the Tractarians were conscious of the strong
hostility to their ritualism and said little in public about
revision in order not to multiply the strength of their enemies.
The friends and devotees of the King James Bible, naturally
wished that certain retouches might be given the book which would
replace words counted obsolete, bring about conformity to more
modern rules of spelling and grammar, and correct what they
considered a few plain and clear blemishes in the Received Text,
so that its bitter opponents, who made use of these minor
disadvantages to discredit the whole, might be answered.
Nevertheless; universal fear and distrust of revision pervaded
the public mind, who recognized in it, as Archbishop Trench
said, "A question affecting ... profoundly the whole moral and
spiritual life of the English people," and the "vast and solemn
issues depending on it." Moreover, the composition of the
Authorized Version was recognized by scholars as the miracle of
English prose, unsurpassed in clearness, precision, and vigor.
The English of the King James Bible was the most perfect, if not
the only, example of a lost art. It may be said truthfully that
literary men as well as theologians frowned on the revision
enterprise.
For years there had been a determined and aggressive
campaign to take extensive liberties with the Received Text; and
the Romanizing Movement in the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, both ritualistic and critical, had made it easy for
hostile investigators to speak out with impunity. Lachmann had
led the way by ignoring the great mass of manuscripts which
favored the printed text and built his Greek New Testament, as
Salmon says, of scanty material. Tregelles, though English, "was
an isolated worker, and failed to gain any large number of
adherents. Tischendorf, who had brought to light many new
manuscripts and had done considerable collating, secured more
authority as an editor than he deserved, and in spite of his
vacillations in successive editions, became notorious in removing
from the Sacred Text several passages hallowed by the veneration
of centuries.
The public would not have accepted the extreme, or, as some
called it, "progressive" conclusions of these three. The names of
Westcott and Hort were not prominently familiar at this time
although they were Cambridge professors. Nevertheless, what was
known of them, was not such as to arouse distrust and
apprehension. It was not until the work of revision was all over,
that the world awoke to realize that Westcott and Hort had
outdistanced Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles. As Salmon
says, "Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament has been described as
an epoch-making book; and quite as correctly as the same phrase
has been applied to the work done by Darwin."
The first efforts to secure revision were cautiously made in
1857 by five clergymen (three of whom, Ellicott, Moberly, and
Humphrey, later were members of the New Testament Revision
Committee), who put out a "Revised Version of John's Gospel."
Bishop Ellicott, who in the future, was to be chairman of the New
Testament Revision Committee, believed that there were clear
tokens of corruptions in the Authorized Version. Nevertheless,
Ellicott's utterances, previous to Revision, revealed how utterly
unprepared was the scholarship of the day to undertake it. Bishop
Coxe, Episcopal, of Western New York, quotes Ellicott as saying
about this time:
"Even critical editors of the stamp of Tischendorf have
apparently not acquired even a rudimentary knowledge of several
of the leading versions which they conspicuously quote. Nay,
more, in many instances they have positively misrepresented the
very readings which they have followed, and have allowed
themselves to be misled by Latin translations which, as my notes
will testify, are often sadly, and even perversely, incorrect."
The triumvirate which constantly worked to bring things to a
head, and who later sat on the Revision Committee, were Ellicott,
Lightfoot, and Moulton. They found it dffcult to get the project
on foot. Twice they had appealed to the Government in hopes that,
as in the case of the King James in 1611, the King would appoint
a royal commission. They were refused.
There was sufficient aggression in the Southern Convocation,
which represented the Southern half of the Church of England, to
vote Revision. But they lacked a leader. There was no outstanding
name which would suffice in the public eye as a guarantee against
the dangers possible. This difficulty, however, was at last over
come when Bishop Ellicott won over "that most versatile and
picturesque personality in the English Church, Samuel
Wilberforce, the silver-tongued Bishop of Oxford." He was the
remaining son of the great Emancipator who was still with the
Church of England; the two other sons, Henry and Robert,
influenced by the Oxford Movement, had gone over to the Church of
Rome. Dr.Wilberforce had rendered great service to the English
Church in securing the resurrection of the Southern Convocation,
which for a hunderd years had not been permitted to act. When
Ellicott captured the persuasive Wilberforce, he captured
Convocation, and revision suddenly came within the sphere of
practical politics.
First came the resolution, February 10, 1870, which
expressed the desirability of revision of the Authorized Version
of the New Testament:
"Whether by marginal notes or otherwise, in all those passages
where plain and clear errors, whether in the Hebrew or Greek text
originally adopted by the translators, or in translation made
from the same, shall, on due investigation, be found to exist."
An amendment was passed to include the Old Testament. Then a
committee of sixteen - eight from the Upper House, and eight from
the Lower House--was appointed. This committee solicited the
participation of the Northern Convocation, but they declined to
cooperate, saying that "the time was not favorable for Revision,
and that the risk was greater than the probable gain."
Later the Southern Convocation adopted the rules which
ordered that Revision should touch the Greek text, only where
found necessary; should alter the language only where, in the
judgment of most competent scholars, such change was necessary;
and in such necessary changes, the style of the King James should
be followed; and also, that Convocation should nominate a commit-
tee of its own members who would be at liberty to invite the
cooperation of other scholars in the work of Revision. This
committee when elected consisted of eighteen members. It divided
into two bodies, one to represent the Old Testament, and the
other to represent the New. As the majority of the most vital
questions which concern us involve New Testament Revision, we
will follow the fortunes of that body in the main.
The seven members of this English New Testament Revision
Committee sent out invitations which were accepted by eighteen
others, bringing the full membership of the English New Testament
Committee to the number of twenty-five. As we have seen before,
Dr.Newman, who later became a cardinal, declined, as also did the
leader of the Ritualistic Movement, Dr.Pusey. It should be
mentioned here also that Canon Cook, editor of the "Speakers
Commentary," declined. W.F.Moulton, who had spent some years in
translating, from the German into English, Winer's Greek Grammar,
and himself a member of the Committee, exercised a large
influence in the selection of members. Dr.Moulton favored those
modern rules appearing in Winer's work which, if followed in
translating the Greek, would produce results different from that
of the King James. How much Dr.Moulton was a devotee of the
Vulgate may be seen in the following words from him:
"The Latin translation, being derived from manuscripts more
ancient than any we now possess, is frequently a witness of the
highest value in regard to the Greek text which was current in
the earliest times, and ... its testimony is in many cases
confirmed by Greek manuscripts which have been discovered or
examined since the 16th century."
From this it is evident that Dr.Moulton looked upon the
Vulgate as a witness superior to the King James, and upon the
Greek manuscripts which formed the base of the Vulgate as
superior to the Greek manuscripts which formed the base of the
King James. Furthermore, he said, speaking of the Jesuit New
Testament of 1582, "The Rhemish Testament agrees with the best
critical editions of the present day." Dr.Moulton, therefore, not
only believed the manuscripts which were recently discovered to
be similar to the Greek manuscripts from which the Vulgate was
translated, but he also looked upon the Greek New Testaments of
Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, built largely upon the same
few manuscripts, as "the best critical editions." Since he
exercised so large an influence in selecting the other members of
the Committee, we can divine at the outset, the attitude of mind
which would likely prevail in the Revision Committee.
The Old Testament Committee also elected into its body other
members which made the number in that company twenty-seven. Steps
were now taken to secure cooperation from scholars in America.
The whole matter was practically put in the hands of Dr.Philip
Schaff of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Of Dr.
Schaff's revolutionary influence on American theology through his
bold Romanizing policy; of his trial for heresy; of his
leadership in the American "Oxford Movement," we will speak
later. An appeal was made to the American Episcopal Church to
take part in the Revision, but that body declined. Through the
activities of Dr.Schaff, two American Committees were formed, the
Old Testament Company having fourteen members, and the New
Testament, thirteen. These worked under the disadvantage of being
chosen upon the basis that they should live near New York City in
order that meetings of the committee might be convenient. The
American Committee had no deciding vote on points of revision. As
soon as portions of the Holy Book were revised by the English
committees, they were sent to the American committees for
confirmation or amendment. If the suggestions returned by the
American committees were acceptable to their English coworkers,
they were adopted; otherwise they had no independent claim for
insertion. In other words, the American committees were simply
reviewing bodies. In the long run, their differences were not
many. They say:
"The work then went on continuously in both countries, the
English Companies revising, and the American Committees reviewing
what was revised, and returning their suggestions ... When this
list is fully considered, the general reader will, we think, be
surprised to find that the differences are really of such little
moment, and in very many cases will probably wonder that the
American divines thought it worth while thus to formally record
their dissent."
Dr.Schaff, who was to America what Newman was to England,
was president of both American committees. The story of the
English New Testament Revision Committee is a stormy one, because
it was the battle ground of the whole problem. That Committee
finished its work three years before the Old Testament Company,
and this latter body had three years to profit by the staggering
onslaught which assailed the product of the New Testament
Committee. Moreover the American Revised Bible did not appear
until twenty years after the work of the English New Testament
Committee, so that the American Revisers had twenty years to
understand the fate which would await their volume.
When the English New Testament Committee met, it was
immediately apparent what was going to happen. Though for ten
long years the iron rule of silence kept the public ignorant of
what was going on behind closed doors, the story is now known.
The first meeting of the Committee found itself a divided body,
the majority being determined to incorporate into the proposed
revision the latest and most extreme higher criticism. This
majority was dominated and carried along by a triumvirate
consisting of Hort, Westcott, and Lightfoot. The dominating
mentality of this triumvirate was Dr.Hort. Before the Committee
met, Westcott had written to Hort, "The rules though liberal are
vague, and the interpretation of them will depend upon decided
action at first." They were determined at the outset to be
greater than the rules, and to manipulate them.
The new members who had been elected into the body, and who
had taken no part in drawing up the rules, threw these rules
completely aside by interpreting them with the widest latitude.
Moreover, Westcott and Hort, who had worked together before this
for twenty years, in bringing out a Greek New Testament
constructed on principles which deviated the farthest ever yet
known from the Received Text, came prepared to effect a
systematic change in the Protestant Bible. On this point Westcott
wrote to Hort concerning Dr.Ellicott, the chairman:
"The Bishop of Gloucester seems to me to be quite capable of
accepting heartily and adopting personally a thorough scheme."
And as we have previously seen, as early as 1851, before
Westcott and Hort began their twenty years labor on their Greek
text, Hort wrote, "Think of that vile Textus Receptus." In 1851,
when he knew little of the Greek New Testament, or of texts, he
was dominated with the idea that the Received Text was "vile" and
"villainous." The Received Text suffered fatal treatment at the
hands of this master in debate.
We have spoken of Bishop Ellicott as the chairman. The first
chairman was Bishop Wilberforce. One meeting, however, was
sufficient for him. He wrote to an intimate friend, "What can be
done in this most miserable business?" Unable to bear the
situation, he absented himself and never took part in the
proceedings. His tragic death occurred three years later. One
factor had disturbed him considerably,--the presence of Dr.G.
Vance Smith, the Unitarian scholar. In this, however, he shared
the feelings of the people of England, who were scandalized at
the sight of a Unitarian, who denied the divinity of Christ,
participating in a communion service held at the suggestion of
Bishop Westcott in Westminster Abbey, immediately preceding their
first meeting.
The minority in the Committee was represented principally by
Dr.Scrivener, probably the foremost scholar of the day in the
manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and the history of the
Text. If we may believe the words of Chairman Ellicott, the
countless divisions in the Committee over the Greek Text, "was
often a kind of critical duel between Dr.Hort and Dr.Scrivener."
Dr.Scrivener was continuously and systematically outvoted.
"Nor is it difficult to understand," says Dr.Hemphill, "that many
of their less resolute and decided colleagues must often have
been completely carried off their feet by the persuasiveness, and
resourcefulness, and zeal of Hort, backed by the great prestige
of Lightfoot, the popular Canon of St.Paul's, and the quiet
determination of Westcott, who set his face as a flint. In fact,
it can hardly be doubted that Hort's was the strongest will of
the whole Company, and his adroitness in debate was only equaled
by his pertinacity."
The conflict was intense and oft-times the result seemed
dubious. Scrivener and his little band did their best to save the
day. He might have resigned; but like Bishop Wilberforce, he
neither wished to wreck the product of revision by a crushing
public blow, nor did he wish to let it run wild by absenting
himself. Dr.Hort wrote his wife as follows:
"July 25, 1871. We have had some stiff battles today in Revision,
though without any ill feeling, and usually with good success.
But I more than ever, felt how impossible it would be for me to
absent myself"
On the other hand, Westcott wrote:
"March 22, 1886. I should be the last to rate highly textual
criticism; but it is a little gift which from school days seemed
to be committed to me."
Concerning the battles within the Committee, Dr.Westcott
writes:
"May 24, 1871. We have had hard fighting during these last two
days, and a battle-royal is announced for tomorrow."
"January 27, 1875. Our work yesterday was positvely distressing.
... However, I shall try to keep heart today, and if we fail
again I think that I shall fly, utterly despairing of the work."
Same date. "Today our work has been a little better - only a
little, but just enough to be endurable."
The "ill-conceived and mismanaged" attempts of the Revision
Committee of the Southern Convocation to bring in the radical
changes contemplated violated the rules that had been laid down
for its control. Citations from ten out of the sixteen members of
the Committee, (sixteen was the average number in attendance),
show that eleven members were fully determined to act upon the
principle of exact and literal translation, which would permit
them to travel far beyond the instructions they had received.
The Committee being assembled, the passage for consideration
was read. Dr.Scrivener offered the evidence favoring the Received
Text, while Dr.Hort took the other side. Then a vote was taken.
Settling the Greek Text occupied the largest portion of time both
in England and in America. The new Greek Testament upon which
Westcott and Hort had beer working for twenty years was, portion
by portion, secretly committed into the hands of the Revision
Committee. Their Greek Text was strongly radical and
revolutionaiy. The Revisers followed the guidance of the two
Cambridge editors, Westcott and Hort, who were constantly at
their elbow, and whose radical Greek New Testament, deviating the
farthest possible from the Received Text, is to all intents and
purposes the Greek New Testament followed by the Revision
Committee. And this Greek text, in the main, follows the Vatican
and Sinaiticus manuscripts. It is true that three other unicals,
the Codices Beza, Ephraemi and Alexandrinus were occasionally
used, but their testimony was of the same value as the other two.
Hort's partiality for the Vatican Manuscript was practically
absolute. We can almost hear him say, The Vaticanus have I
loved, but the Textus Receptus have I hated. As the Sinaiticus
was the brother of the Vaticanus, wherever pages in the latter
were missing, Hort used the former. He and Westcott considered
that when the consensus of opinion of these two manuscripts
favored a reading, that reading should be accepted as apostolic.
This attitude of mind involved thousands of changes in our
time-honored Greek New Testament because a Greek text formed upon
the united opinion of Codex B and Codex ( - not printable on my
keyboard - Keith Hunt)) would be different in thousands of places
from the Received Text. So the Revisers "went on changing until
they had altered the Greek Text in 5,337 places. Dr.Scrivener, in
the Committee sessions, constantly issued his warning of what
would be the outcome if Hort's imaginary theories were accepted.
In fact, nine-tenths of the countless divisions and textual
struggles around that table in the Jerusalem Chamber arose over
Hort's determination to base the Greek New Testament of the
Revision on the Vatican Manuscript. Nevertheless, the Received
Text, by his own admission, had for 1,400 years been the dominant
Greek New Testament.
It was of necessity that Westcott and Hort should take this
position. Their own Greek New Testament upon which they had been
working for twenty years was founded on Codex B and Codex (not
printable for me - Keith Hunt), as the following quotations show:
"If Westcott and Hort have failed, it is by an overestimate of
the Vatican Codex, to which (like Lachmann and Tregelles) they
assign the supremacy, while Tischendorf may have given too much
weight to the Sinaitic Codex."
Dr.Cook, an authority in this field, also says:
"I will ask the reader to compare these statements with the views
set forth, authoritatively and repeatedly, by Dr.Hort in his
'Introduction,' especially in reference to the supreme excellence
and unrivalled authority of the text of B - with which, indeed,
the Greek text of Westeott and Hort is, with some unimportant
exceptions, substantially identical, coinciding in more than
ninetenths of the passages which, as materially affecting the
character of the synoptic Gospel; I have to discuss."
Another quotation from Dr.Hoskier, an authority who worked
in this field many years after the appearance of the Revised
Version:
"We always come back to B, as Westeott and Hort's text is
practically B."
Of course the minority members of the Revision Committee,
and especially the world in general, did not know the twenty
years' effort of these two Cambridge professors to base their own
Greek New Testament upon these two manuscripts. Hart's "excursion
into cloudland." as one authority describe his fourth century
revisions, was apparent to Dr.Scrivener, who uttered his protest.
Here is his description of Hort's theory as Scrivener later
published it:
"There is little hope for the stability of their imposing
structure, if its foundations have been laid on the sandy ground
of ingenious corjecture: and since barely the smallest vestige of
historical evidence has ever been alleged in support of the views
of these accomplished editors, their teaching must either be
received as intuitively true, or dismissed from our consideration
as precarious, and even visionary."
As Westcott and Hort outnumbered Scrivener two to one, so
their followers outnumbered the other side two to one, and
Scrivener was systematically outvoted. As Professor Sandy writes:
"They were thus able to make their views heard in the council
chamber, and to support them with all the weight of their
personal authority, while as yet the outer public had but partial
access to them."
As a consequence, the Greek New Testament upon which the
Revised Version is based, is practically the Greek New Testament
of Westcott and Hort. Dr.Schaff says:
"The result is that in typographical accuracy the Greek Testament
of Westcott and Hort is probably unsurpassed, and that it
harmonizes essentially with the text adopted by the Revisers."
THE REVISERS PROFESSEDLY LIBERAL, ACTUALLY NARROW
We meet the paradox in the Revisers, as they sit assembled
at their task, of men possessing high reputation for liberalism
of thought, yet acting for a decade with extreme narrowness.
Stanley, Thirlwall, Vaughan, Hort, Westcott, Moberly - men of
leading intellect - would naturally be expected to be so broad as
to give most sacred documents fair consideration. Dean Stanley
had glorified the Church of England because within her ranks both
ritualists and higher critics could officiate as well as the
regular churchmen. When Bishop Colenso, of Natal, was on trial,
amid great excitement throughout all England, for his destructive
criticism of the first five books of Moses, Dean Stanley stood up
among his religious peers and placed himself alongside of Col-
enso. He said:
"I might mention one who ... has ventured to say that the
Pentateuch is not the work of Moses ... who has ventured to say
that the narratives of those historical incidents are colored not
unfrequently by the necessary infirmities which belong to the
human instruments by which they were conveyed, and that
individual is the one who now addresses you. If you pronounce
against the Bishop of Natal on grounds such as these, you must
remember that there is one close at hand whom ... You will be
obliged to condemn."
Bishop Thirlwall, of "princely intellect," had a wellknown
reputation for liberalism in theology. He introduced both the new
theology of Schleiermacher and higher criticism into England. In
fact, when Convocation yielded to public indignation so far as
essentially to ask Dr.Smith, the Unitarian scholar, to resign,
Bishop Thirlwall retired from the committee and refused to be
placated until it was settled that Dr.Smith should remain.
Evidence might be given to show liberalism in other members.
These men were honorably bound to do justice to thousands of
manuscripts if they assumed to reconstruct a Greek Text. We are
informed by Dr.Scrivener that there are 2,864 cursive and uncial
manuscripts of the New Testament in whole or in part. Price says
there are 112 uncials and 3,500 cursives. These represent many
different countries and different periods of time. Yet
astonishing to relate, the majority of the Revisers ignored these
and pinned their admiration and confidence practically to two,
the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.
Doctor Moberly, Bishop of Salisbury, Bishop Westcott, and
Dr.G.Vance Smith, came to the Committee with past relationships
that seriously compromised them. Bishop Moberly "belonged to the
Oxford Movement, and, it is stated in Dean Church's 'Life and
Letters' that he wrote a most kind letter of approval to Mr.
Newman as to the famous Tract 90." During the years when he was a
schoolmaster, the small attendance at times under his instruction
was credited to the fact that he was looked upon as a Puseyite.
While with regard to Dr.Westcott, his share in making the
Ritualistic Movement a success has been recognized. Dr.Vaughan,
another member of the Revision Committee was a close friend of
Westcott. The extreme liberalism of Dr.G.Vance Smith, the
Unitarian member of the Committee, is well known through his book
on the "Bible and Theology." This amounted practically to
Christianized infidelity. Nevertheless, the worshipful attitude
of these men, as well as that of Lightfoot, Kennedy, and Humphrey
toward Codex B, was unparalleled in Biblical history. The year
1870 was marked by the Papal declaration of infallibility. It has
been well said that the blind adherence of the Revisionists to
the Vatican manuscript proclaimed "the second infallible voice
from the Vatican."
THE RUTHLESS CHANGES WHICH RESULTED
Even the jots and tittles of the Bible are important. God
has pronounced terrible woes upon the man who adds to or takes
away from the volume of Inspiration. The Revisers apparently felt
no constraint on this point, for they made 36,000 changes in the
English of the King James Version, and very nearly 6,000 in the
Greek Text. Dr.Ellicott, in submitting the Revised Version to the
Southern Convocation in 1881, declared that they had made between
eight and nine changes in every five verses, and in about every
ten verses three of these were made for critical purposes. And
for the most of these changes the Vatican and Sinaitic
Manuscripts are responsible. As Canon Cook says:
"By far the greatest number of innovations, including those which
give the severest shocks to our minds, are adopted on the
authority of two manuscripts, or ever of one manuscript, against
the distinct testimony of all other manuscripts, uncial and
cursive ... The Vatican Codex ... sometimes alone, generally in
accord with the Sinaitic, is responsible for nine-tenths of the
most striking innovations in the Revised Version."
WRECKERS, NOT BUILDERS
A force of builders do not approach their task with swords,
spears, bombs, cannons, and other instruments of destruction. If
the Greek New Testament of Westcott and Hort marks a new era, as
we are repeatedly informed, then it was intended that the Revised
Version would mark a new era. The appointees to the task of
Revision evidently approached their work with the intention of
tearing down the framework of the teachings which sprang from the
Received Text and of the institutions erected for the spread of
such teachings. The translators of 1611 organized themselves into
six different companies. Each company allotted to each of its
members a series of independent portions of the Bible to
translate, so that all would act as checks and counterchecks on
one another, in order that the truth might be transmitted. Above
all, their inter-relations were so preserved that the world would
receive the gift of a masterpiece. Their units were organizations
of construction. The units of the 1881 Revision did not make for
protection and independence, but rather for the suppression of
individuality and freedom, and for tryannical domination. The
instruments of warfare which they brought to their task were new
and untried miles for the discrimination of manuscripts; for
attacking the verb; for attacking the article; for attackirg the
preposition, the pronoun, the intensive, Hebraisms, and
parallelisms. The following quotations show that literal and
critically exact quotations frequently fail to render properly
the original meaning:
"The self-imposed rule of the Revisers." says the Forum,
"required them invariably to translate the aoristic forms by
their closest English equivalents; but the vast number of cases
in which they have forsaken their own rule show that it could not
be followed without in effect changing the meaning of the
original; and we may add that to whatever extent that rule has
been slavishh followed, to that extent the broad sense of the
original has been marred."
One of the Revisers wrote, after the work was finished:
"With reference to the rendering of the article, similar remarks
may be made. As a rule, it is too often expressed. This sometimes
injures the idiom of the English, and in truth impairs or
misrepresents the force of the original."
The obsession of the Revisionists for rendering literally
Hebraisms and parallelisms have often left us with a doctrine
seriously, if not fatally, weakened by their theory. "The
printing in parallelisms spoils the uniformity of the page too
much and was not worth adopting, unless the parallelism was a
good one."
Probably no one act of Germany during the war brought down
upon her more ill feeling than the bombing of Rheims Cathedral.
We felt sad to see the building splintered and marred. It was the
work of centuries. The Revisionists approached the beautiful
cathedral of the King James Version and tunneled underneath in
order that they might destroy the Received Text as its
foundation, and slip into its place another composed of the
Vatican and Sinaitic Manuscripts. In thousands of places the
grandeur of the sacred building was chipped and splintered by the
substitution of various readings. In the form of the Revised
Version we no longer recognize the strong foundation and glorious
features of the old edifice.
This is a case where a little means much. "If one wonders
whether it is worth while," says Dr.Robertson, speaking of the
Revision, "he must bear in mind that some of the passages in
dispute are of great importance." The Bible should more probably
be compared to a living organism. Touch a part and you spoil it
all. To cut a vital artery in a man might be touching a very
small point, but death would come as truly as if he were blown to
pieces. Something more than a crushing mass of accumulated
material is needed to produce a meritorious revision of God's
Holy Book.
THE REVISERS' GREATEST CRIME
Ever since the Revised Version was printed, it has met with
strong opposition. Its devotees reply that the King James met
opposition when it was first published. There is a vast
difference, however. Only one name of prominence can be cited as
an opponent of the King James Version at its birth. The King, all
the church of England, in fact, all the Protestant world was for
it. On the other hand, royal authority twice refused to associate
itself with the project of revision, as also did the northern
half of the Church of England, the Episcopal Church of North
America, besides a host of students and scholars of authority.
When God has taught us that "all Scripture is given by
Inspiration" of the Holy Spirit and that "men spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost," the Holy Spirit must be credited with
ability to transmit and preserve inviolate the Sacred Deposit. We
cannot admit for a moment that the Received Text which, by the
admission of its enemies themselves, has led the true people of
God for centuries, can be whipped into fragments and set aside
for a manuscript found in an out-of-the-way monastery, and for
another of the same family, which has lain, for no-one knows not
how long, upon a shelf in the library of the Pope's palace. Both
these documents are of uncertain ancestry, of questionable
history, and of suspicious character. The Received Text was put
for centuries in its position of leadership by divine Providence,
just as truly as the star of Bethlehem was set in the heavens to
guide the wise men. Neither was it the product of certain
technical rules of textual criticism which some men have chosen
the last few decades to exalt as divine principles.
The change of one word in the Constitution of the United
States, at least the transposition of two, could vitally affect
thousands of people, millions of dollars, and many millions of
acres of land. It took centuries of training to place within that
document a combination of words which cannot be tampered with,
without catastrophic results. It represents the mentality of a
great people, and to change it would bring chaos into their
well-ordered life. Not of one nation only, but of all great
nations, both ancient and modern, is the Bible the basis of the
Constitution. It foretold the fall of Babylon; and when that
empire had disappeared, it survived. It announced beforehand the
creation of the empires of Greece and Rome, and lived to tell
their faults and why they failed. It warned succeeding kingdoms.
All ages and continents have their life inwrought into the fabric
of this Book. It is the handiwork of God through the centuries.
Only those whose records are lifted high above suspicion, can be
accepted as qualified to touch it. Certainly no living being or
any number of them ever had authority to make such astounding
changes, as were made by those men who were directly or
indirectly influenced by the Oxford Movement.
The history of the Protestant world is inseparable from the
Received Text. A single nation could break loose and plunge into
anarchy and license. The Received Text shone high in the heavens
to stabilize surrounding peoples. Even many nations at one time
might fall under the shadow of some great revolutionary wave.
But there stood the Received Text to fill their inner self with
its moral majesty and call them back to law and order. On what
meat had this great critic, Dr.Hort, fed, when, even by his own
confession, at the time he had read little of the Greek New
Testament, and knew nothing of texts and certainly nothing of
Hebrew, he dared, when only twenty-three years old, to call the
Received Text "villainous" and "vile"? What can be the most
charitable estimate we can put upon that company of men who
submitted to his lead, and would assure us in gentle words that
they had done nothing, that there was really no great difference
between the King James Bible and the Revised, while in another
breath, they reject as "villainous" and "vile" the Greek New
Testament upon which the King James Bible is built? Did they
belong to a superior race of beings, which entitled them to cast
aside, as a thing of naught, the work of centuries? They gave us
a Version which speaks with faltering tones, whose music is
discordant. The Received Text is harmonious. It agrees with
itself, it is self-proving, and it creeps into the affections of
the heart.
But, they say, there are errors in the Received Text. Yes,
"plain and clear errors," as their instructions informed the
Revisers. It is to the glory of the Textus Receptus that its
errors are "plain and clear." When God showed us these errors
were "plain and clear," we recognized them as errors of the copy
its and therefore, like printer's errors, they can be promptly
and certainly corrected. They are not errors of the Author. Man
made them and man can correct them. Neither are they "errors"
which man made and only God can correct. They do not enter into
the core of any question. They are not, like the errors of the
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, the product of Systematic Depravation.
They are the scars which witness to the terrible struggles
endured by the Holy Word throughout the centuries.
The glorified body of Christ will always have five scars
where the nails pierced His hands and feet, and where the sword
entered His side. A captious critic might cry out that the
eternal form of Christ is not perfect; it has five scars. But
another of deeper insight would point out that by those scars we
know that Christ does not bear an untried form. Those
reminiscences of His humiliation testify to it; struggle and His
triumph. Christ's perfection would not have been complete without
those scars. Without them, He would not have been our Saviour.
The errors of the Received Text, are the scars which tell of
its struggles throughout the centuries to bring us light, life,
and immortality. The Living Word and the Written Word correspond.
How vastly different are the errors of the Revised! They are
the product of a well-laid, designing scheme to incorporate in
the text the theology of the Revisers. Westcott, writing to Hart
before the committee was under way, rejoiced that the future
chairman, Dr.Ellicott, was "quite capable of accepting heartily
and adopting personally a thorough scheme." And when the new book
was published, Bishop Westcott recommended it to the Bible
student, because the profound effect on doctrine was produced by
changing "here a little, there a little." He clearly convicted
the Revised Version of being the product of a designing scheme
with an ulterior purpose. He said:
"But the value of the Revision is most clearly seen when the
student considers together a considerable group of passages,
which bear upon some article of the Faith. The accumulation of
small details then produces its full effect. Points on which it
might have seemed pedantic to insist in a single passage become
impressive by repetition ... The close rendering of the original
Greek in the Revised Version appears to suggest ideas of creation
and life and providence, of the course and end of finite being
and of the Person of the Lord, who is the source of all truth and
hope, which are of deepest interest at the present time."
All must see that it was a "thorough scheme." The dominant
minds on the Revision Committee approached their task, committed
beforehand to this "thorough scheme." The errors therefore of the
Revised Version are not incidental and accidental, as those of
the Received Text, but are so systematically interlinked that
they constitute with cumulative effect vital changes in doctrine.
The Revised Version bears the stamp of intentional Systematic
Depravation.
When we consider the men who dominated the Committee and
consequently determined the content of the Revised work, and when
we consider their critical bias, their sympathy with the germinal
ideas of modern 'religious liberalism;' their advocacy of
Ritualism, and their fondness of Rome, simple intelligence com-
pels us to wonder if the "scheme" does not embrace a subservience
to these predilections.
When a company of men set out faithfully to translate
genuine manuscripts in order to convey what God said, it is one
thing. When a committee sets itself to revise or translate with
ideas and a "scheme," it is another thing. But it may be objected
that the translators of the King James were biased by their
pro-Protestant views. The reader must judge whose bias he will
accept, that of the influence of the Protestant Reformation, as
heading up in the Authorized Version, or that of the influence of
Darwinism, higher criticism, incipient modern religious
liberalism, and a reversion back to Rome, as heading up in the
Revised Version. If we select the latter bias, we must remember
that both higher criticism and Romanism reject the authority of
the Bible as supreme.
The predominant ideas of the respective times of their
births influenced and determined the essential characteristics of
the Authorized and Revised Versions. The following chapters will
establish the truthfulness of the position just stated.
.....................
To be continued
NOTE:
MOST modern New Testaments of many Bibles are based upon the
Vaticanus and Siniaiticus Greek MSS, the latter found in a
garbage basket ready to be throw in the trash, as trash, and that
from a Catholic Monastry in the Holy Land.
The reader, if they have not yet done so, is encourage to read on
this Website, the "Introduction" to Green's Greek/English
Interlinear Bible.
We shall see in Wilkinson's next two chapters some of the
difference between the Received Greek Test and the "modern"
Westcott and Hort - wild and horrid - text of many modern New
Testament Bibles.
According to Westcott and Hort, we really did not have the
correct New Testament till the middle of the 19th century. Well
just another of the MANY deceptions that have bathed the world in
the false Babylon Whore church of Rome's spiritual fornications.
God says she is not only full of the blood of the saints, but her
many false doctrines and practices have truly covered this earth.
And she continues to increase her spiritual adultery all the
time, now she claims over ONE BILLION members - one in every six
person on the planet.
Keith Hunt
Blow after Blow!Against the KJV Greek! AUTHORIZED VERSION VINDICATED
by
Benjamin Wilkinson PhD
CHAPTER XI
Blow After Blow Against the Truth
(Revised Texts and Margins)
THERE are many who claim that the changes in the Revised
Version did not affect any doctrine. Bishop Westcott reveals the
contrary. His utterances prove that the Revisers worked
systematically during the ten years of their task to make
alterations that by a repetition of details they might alter
articles of faith. This we have shown in the previous chapter.
They did not use the margin to indicate changes in the Greek text
as directed by Convocation; on the contrary they choked the
margin with preposterous readings designed to carry out "the
scheme" of Westcott, Hort, and Lightfoot. "There is some hope,"
wrote Westcott to Hort, before revision began, when prospects of
a complete textual revision seemed small, "that alternative
readings might find a place in the margin." And they did, only
to sow, broadcast, doubts about the sacred utterances.
A further word from Bishop Westcott to show how
systematically the Revisers worked in making changes:
"For while some of the variations which we have noticed are in
themselves trivial, some are evidently important; but they all
represent the action of the same law; they all hang together;
they are samples of the general character of the Revision. And,
even if we estimate differently the value of the particular
differences which they express, we can certainly see that they do
express differences; and they are sufficient, I cannot doubt, to
encourage the student to consider in any case of change which
comes before him, whether there may not have been reasons for
making it which are not at once clear."
To show that it was the settled purpose as well as the
definite expectation on the part of the leaders in the movement
for revision, that doctrine should be changed, I will now quote
from the outstanding agitator for revision, who was also chairman
of the English New Testament Revision Committee, Bishop Ellicott:
"Passages involving doctrinal error. Here our duty is obvious.
Faithfulness, and loyalty to God's truth, require that the
correction should be made unhesitatingly. This class of cases,
will, however, embrace many different instances; some of real and
primary importance, some in which the sense will be but little
affected, when the error, grammatically great as it really may
be, is removed, and the true rendering substituted. For instance,
we shall have, in the class we are now considering, passages in
which the error is one of a doctrinal nature, or, to use the most
guarded language, involves some degree of liability to doctrinal
misconception."
I. Tradition Equals Scripture According to the Revised
1.
2 Tim. 3:16
KING JAMES: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God."
REVISED: "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable."
In this, the Revised follows the thought of the Douay. This
change in the Revised indicates that parts of the Scriptures may
not have been inspired. Therefore; as we are not able to judge
what is, and what is not inspired, the Catholics say that
tradition tests the inspiration and gives us the correct meaning.
The tradition of the Catholic Church corresponds to the higher
criticism of the so-called Protestants, only with this
difference, that the Catholics claim their higher criticism to be
infallible. On this point we will quote the note in the Douay on
this very passage, 2 Tim. 3:16.
"Every part of divine Scripture is certainly profitable for all
these ends. But, if we would have the whole rule of Christian
faith and practice, we must not be content with those Scriptures,
which Timothy knew from his infancy. That is, with the Old
Testament alone; nor yet with the New Testament, without taking
along with it the traditions of the apostles, and the
interpretation of the Church, to which the apostles delivered
both the book, and the true meaning of it."
The Dublin Review (Catholic), July, 1881, speaking of the
changes in the Revised Version, shows clearly that Catholics see
how the Revised reading robs Protestantism of its stronghold, the
Bible. It says:
"It (Protestantism) has also been robbed of its only proof of
Bible inspiration by the correct rendering of 2 Tim.3:16."
Also the "Interior" says on this change:
"It is not very probable that Paul would utter an inconsequential
truism of that kind. No one need be told that a Scripture
inspired of God would be profitable, that would be taken for
granted; but what has needed to be known was just the truth that
Paul wrote, that'all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.'"
Knowing the views held by the Revisers, such a change as
this
could be expected. Many controlling members of the English New
Testament Revision Committee believed that "there may be parts of
the canonical books not written under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit."
2. John 5:39
KING JAMES: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have
eternal life."
REVISED: "Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in
them," etc.
The command of the Saviour to search the Scriptures, as given in
the King James; establishes them as the source of life eternal
and the authority of true doctrine. The Revisers destroyed this
command. Is not this changing a fundamental doctrine?
On this point the Dublin Review (Catholic), July, 1881,
says:
"But perhaps the most surprising change of all is John 5:39. It
is no longer 'Search the Scriptures,' but 'Ye search;' and thus
Protestantism has lost the very cause of its being."
Other changes of passages, which we investigate following
this, affect the great doctrines of truth; the change now under
consideration affects the very citadel of truth itself. The
Church of England Convocation, which called the Revision
Committee into existence, authorized that Committee to correct
only "plain and clear errors" in the Received Text. Neither
Convocation, nor Protestant England expected it to be changed in
thousands of places.
When the Revised Version declares that parts of the Bible
may not have been inspired of God, (as in 2 Tim.3:16), the
defendant is forced to bear witness against itself. So far as the
Revised Version is concerned, the change destroys the
infallibility of that glorious citadel of revelation which for
centuries had been the standard of truth.
11. A Deadly Blow Against Miracles
I.
John 2:11
KING JAMES: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of
Galilee."
REVISED: "This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee."
The word "miracle" is found, singular and plural, thirty-two
times in the Authorized Version of the New Testament. Alas! What
desolation has been wrought by the Revised! In twenty-three of
these instances, the word "miracle" has entirely disappeared. In
the case of the other nine, although the term is used in the
text, its force is robbed by a weakening substitute in the
margin. While in the Old Testament, it has disappeared from the
Revised in the five instances where it occurs in the Authorized.
Modern religious liberalism finds consolation here. So the
Revisers have exposed believers in the Bible to the ridicule of
unbelievers because they describe the supernatural events of the
New Testament by belittling words. To describe the supernatural
in terms of the natural, indicates doubt in the supernatural. If
we persist in calling a mountain a molehill, it is evident that
we do not believe it is a mountain.
The Revisers, in persistently describing supernatural events
by ordinary terms, have changed doctrines respecting miracles.
And if they made such fundamental changes in these thirty-two New
Testament texts, all there was on the subject, what is this, but
systematic depravation of doctrine?
III. Doctrine of Conversion Undermined
1.
Matt.18:2,3
KING JAMES: "And Jesus ... said ... Except ye be converted,
and become as little children."
REVISED: "And He ... said ... Except ye turn, and become as
little children."
FERRAR FENTON "Then Jesus ... said: I tell you indeed, that if
you do not turn back."
Not only in this text but in all the rest (seven texts
altogether), "be converted" has been changed to "turn." On this
point we will use the following quotation which speaks for
itself:
"The Rev.Homersham Cox writes to the 'Church Times' in favor of
the New Revision because (as he says) it alters 'be converted'
into 'turn,' the former implying that the sinner is converted by
another, that is, the Holy Spirit, and the latter that he turns
or converts himself. He says: 'I have here given every passage
without exception in which the word converted in the passive
voice occurs in the older translation. In every one of these
instances the passive form is avoided in the new translation. The
change seems to be one of incalculable importance. The former
version teaches men that they are converted by a power external
to themselves; the later version teaches them to turn themselves.
In other words, the doctrine of superhuman conversion disappears
from the New Testament, and thus the main foundation of modern
Evangelicalism. is destroyed. Only a few Sundays ago it was my
misfortune to have to listen to a long 'Evangelical' sermon, the
whole burden of which was that men could not convert themselves.
This pernicious tenet is preached every year in myriads of
sermons, books, and tracts. I rejoice that it is now shown to be
unscriptural.'"
Also Dr. Milligan, commenting on this change in Matt.18:3
and in Acts 3:19, says that "the opening verb, though passive in
form, is properly rendered actively, and the popular error of men
being mere passive instruments in the hands of God thereby
exploded."
The dangerous doctrine of salvation by our own effort is
exalted; and the miracle-saving power of God in conversion, so
far as these texts are concerned, is thrust out of the New
Testament.
The Revised changes the doctrine of conversion, and that
change is a complete reversal of the doctrine.
IV. No Creation: Evolution Instead
We shall present a series of Scripture texts to exhibit how
the Revisers made the Bible teach the origin of the material
universe by evolution instead of by creation.
S.Parkes Cadman explains clearly how the German brain,
working in theology and higher criticism, manifested itself in
science and history, thus influencing Sir Charles Lyell to
produce his "Principles of Geology," which heralded the advent of
Evolution and contravened the cosmogonies of Genesis. Lyell
altered the whole tone of Darwin's thinking, and Darwin's
inquiries were vindicated in a revolution foreshadowed by
Newman's "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine." In
this, Newman followed Mohler of Germany, and started the great
ritualistic movement in the Church of England, which blossomed
out into Revision. Both Westcott and Hort leaned heavily toward
Ritualism and Evolution.
Bishop Westcott says:
"Again 'world' answers to a plural or singular, 'the
ages,' or 'the age,' (Greek ....), in which creation is
regarded as a vast system unfolded from aeon to aeon, as an
immeasurable and orderly development of being under the condition
of time, of which each 'age,' or 'this age,' and 'the age to
come,' has its distinguishing characteristics, and so far is 'the
world.'"
This truth, he says, is "consistently preserved" in the
margin. That is, the unfolding of the 'vast system" from "age to
age" (evolution), is consistently preserved in the margin. In
other words, the Revisers consistently, consciously, and
intentionally, by their own confession, maintained the basal
theory of evolution in the margin. On the importance of "age" and
"ages" in the margin, I quote from Dr.Samuel Cox, editor of the
Expositor:
"And here I may remark, in passing, that in such marginal
readings as 'this age' and 'the coming age' which abound in our
New Version, there lie the germs, latent for the present, of far
larger doctrinal changes than either of those which I am now
suggesting."
1. Hebrews 11:3
KING JAMES: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God."
REVISED: "By faith we understand that the ages have been framed
by the word of God." (Margin.)
On this Westcott says:
"In this connection we see the full meaning of the words used of
creation in Hebrews 11:3: By faith we understand that the worlds
(the ages, i e. the universe under the aspect of time) have been
formed by the Word o f God ... The whole sequence of life in
time, which we call 'the world' has been 'fitted together' by
God. His one creative word included the harmonious unfolding on
one plan of the last issues of all that was made. That which is
in relation to Him 'one act at once' is in relation to us an
EVOLUTION apprehended in orderly succession." (Caps. Mine).
Bishop Westcott's interpretation of God's work in creation
is evolution, making room for the long geological ages.
Hort considered Darwin's theory of evolution "unanswerable."
Westcott and Hort, whose Greek New Testament was the basis
of the Revised, injected evolution into the Revised Version.
2.
Col. 1:15,16
KING JAMES: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every creature: For by Him were all things created."
REVISED: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of
all creation; for in Him were all things created."
Dr.G.Vance Smith, a member of the English New Testament
Revision Committee, commenting on Colossians 1:15,16
says:
"Is it not therefore probable that, in the very different
phraseology of Colossians, he is speaking of the promulgation of
Christianity and its effects under the figure of a spiritual
creation? ... Is it possible to think that this language can
refer to the material creation?"
The new language of the Revised in the judgment of this
Reviser, hinders the application of these texts to a material
creation, as in the King James, and limits them as a spiritual
application to Christianity.
3.
Hebrews 1:2 (last part)
KING JAMES' "By whom also He made the worlds."
REVISED: "Through whom also He made the ages." (Margin.)
By this change the door is opened to spiritualizing away
creation.
V. The Person of Christ
The "Person of Christ" is the evangelical phraseology used
to express a doctrine which is taught in a way that tends to
Rome.
Some make it the central principle of all doctrines, and
especially of ritualistic practices. This is shown by the
following words from a ritualistic clergyman:
"Let every one who hears you speak, or sees you worship, feel
quite sure that the object of your devotion is not an idea or a
sentiment, or a theory ... but a real personal King and Master
and Lord: present at all times everywhere in the omnipresence of
His Divine nature, present by His own promise, and His own
supernatural power in His Human Nature too upon His Altar-Throne,
there to be worshiped in the Blessed Sacrament as really, and
literally, and actually, as you will necessarily worship Him when
you see Him in His beauty in Heaven."
This ritualistic clergyman believed that preachers (or
priests) have power to change the wafer into the actual body of
Christ.
1.
1 Tim.3:16
KING JAMES: "And without controversy great is the mystery of
godliness: God was manifest in the flesh," etc.
AMERICAN REVISED: "And without controversy great is the mystery
of godliness; He who was manifest in the flesh," etc.
On the change of "He who" for "God," Bishop Westcott says:
"The reader may easily miss the real character of this deeply
instructive change. The passage now becomes a description of the
essential character of the gospel, and not simply a series of
historical statements. The gospel is personal. The gospel 'the
revelation of godliness' is, in a word, Christ Himself, and not
any propositions about Christ."
The Revisers made this change which confounds Christ with
the movement He instituted, the gospel, and leads our minds away
from Christ, the person on His heavenly throne, to Christ, the
bread of the Lord's supper, (Mass), on the ritualistic
altar-throne.
What is this, if not a change of doctrine? Bishop Westcott
was conscious of the change the Revisers were making in this
reading.
On this the Princeton Review says:
"Making Christianity a life - the divine-human life of Christ -
has far-reaching consequences. It confounds and contradicts the
Scriptural and church doctrine as to the Person of Christ."
2.
Acts 16:7
KING JAMES: "But the Spirit suffered them not."
AMERICAN REVISED: "And the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not."
The Douay is like the Revised. On this change Dr.George Milligan
says:
"Acts 16:7 ... the striking reading, 'the Spirit of Jesus' (not
simply as in the Authorized Version 'the Spirit') implies that
the Holy Spirit had so taken possession of the Person of the
Exalted Jesus that He could be spoken of as 'the Spirit of
Jesus.'"
By this change they identified Jesus, the second Person of
the Trinity, with the Holy Spirit, the third Person. (Well
technically, the Godhead is not three individual persons sitting
together in heaven - it is God the Father and Christ at His right
hand - that is all you can find in the New Testament - Keith
Hunt). The evident purpose of this change is to open the way to
teach ideas of the Person of Jesus different from the generally
accepted Protestant view. As the Princeton Review says concerning
the doctrine of the Person of Christ as held by Dr.Philip Schaff,
President of both American Committees of Revision, and by his
former associate, Dr.Nevin:
"It is impossible to understand the writings of Drs.Nevin and
Schaff on this whole subject without a knowledge of the
pantheistic philosophy ... It led men to look on the church as
the development of Christ, very much as that philosophy regards
the universe as the development of God."
VI. The Virgin Birth
1.
Isaiah 7:14
KING JAMES: "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son."
REVISED: "Behold the maiden (margin) shall conceive and bear a
son."
This change gives room to doubt the virgin birth of
Christ. Dr.G.Vance Smith says:
"The meaning of the words of Isaiah may, therefore, be presented
thus: 'Behold the young wife is with child.'"
VII. Change in the Doctrine of Atonement
1.
1 Cor.5:7
KING JAMES: "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for
us."
REVISED: "For our Passover also hath been sacrificed, even
Christ."
One writer thus registers his indignation upon the
change made in this passage:
"Mad? Yes; and haven't I reason to be mad when I find that grand
old passage, 'For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for
us' - a passage which sounds the keynote of the whole doctrine of
redemption - unnecessarily changed into, 'For our Passover also
hath been sacrificed, even Christ'? And we have such changes
everywhere. They are, I believe, called improvements in style by
their authors - and certainly by no one else."
That Christ our Passover was sacrificed is an historical
fact; that He was sacrificed "for us" is a doctrine and the very
basis on which the gospel rests. Take away the fact that He died
"for us," as the Revisers did in this text, and there is no
gospel left.
The leading Revisers, in particular, Westcott and Hort,
rejected the idea that Christ was our "substitute and sacrifice"
Of course, Dr.G.Vance Smith, the Unitarian member of the Revision
Committee, did the same. The widespread refusal today by
Christian ministers of many churches to admit we owe this debt to
our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His divine Person died in our
place, is largely due to those influences which gave us the
Revised Version. Changes which on first reading seem slight, when
examined and read in the light of the intentional change, are
seen to be fatal.
VIII. A Blow Against the Resurrection of the Body
1.
Job 19:25,26
KING JAMES: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall
stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
AMERICAN REVISED: "But as for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and at last He will stand up upon the earth: and after my skin,
even this body, is destroyed, then without my flesh shall I see
God."
What need is there of a resurrection of the body, if,
without our flesh, we can see God? The tendency to make the
resurrection from the tomb only a spiritual event is as great
today as in the first Christian centuries.
2.
Acts 24:15
KING JAMES: "That there shall be a resurrection of the dead
both of the just and unjust."
REVISED: "That there shall be a resurrection both of the just and
unjust."
The omission of the phrase "of the dead" makes it easier to
spiritualize away the resurrection.
IX. Doctrine of the Second Coning of Christ Radically
Changed
1.
Matt.24:3
KING JAMES: "What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end
of the world?"
REVISED: "What shall be the sign of Thy presence (margin) and of
the consummation of the age." (Margin.)
"The consummation of the age" in no sense means the same
thing as "the end of the world." "The end of the world" is the
appointed time for human history, under the reign of sin, to
close. The earth must be purified by fire before being again
inhabited by man. "The consummation of the age" might mean only
some change from one epoch to another, national, scientific,
educational, or dispensational. How systematically this
substitution is thrust forward in the margin by the Revisers is
shown by its recurrence in the other passages in which the phrase
"end of the world" occurs, namely, Matt.13:39,40,49; 24:3; 28:20.
A similar substitution is found in Heb.13:21.
Another depravation in the doctrine of the Second Coming of
Christ is the substitution of "presence" for "coming" in the
margin of the text under consideration. "Presence" does not mean
return; it rather signifies continuous nearness. But "coming"
refers to Christ's Second Advent in glory, at the end of the
world, to raise the righteous dead and confer immortality on all
righteous living or resurrected. How systematically the Revisers
have gone about this, displacing the true idea of the Advent, may
be seen in the twenty other verses where "coming" as it refers to
Christ's Second Advent is changed into "presence," namely, Matt.
24:27,37,39; 1 Cor.15:23; 2 Cor.7:7; Phil.1:26; 2:12; 1 Thess.
2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thess.2:1,8,9; Jas.5:7,8; 2 Peter 1:16;
3:4,12; 1 Jno.2:28. These marginal changes give notice that the
ordinary orthodox interpretation of these verses is not a sure
one. Westcott, one of the Revisers, says:
"His advent, if it is in one sense future, is in another sense
continuous."
According to Westcott, Christ came at the time of Genesis,
first chapter, at the fall of Jerusalem, and many times in the
past: in fact, is "coming" to us now.
2.
Phil.3:20,21
KING JAMES: "Who shall change our vile body that it may be
fashioned like unto His glorious body."
REVISED: "Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation that
it may be conformed to the body of His glory."
The change in us indicated by the King James according to
this
and other Scriptures, is a change that occurs only at the Second
Coming of Christ; it is a physical change of tangible reality.
But the change called for by the Revised may occur at any time
before His Coming, or be continuous; it may be a change from
abstract vices to abstract virtues.
3.
2 Thess.2:2
KING JAMES: "That you be not soon shaken in mind ... as that
the day of Christ is at hand."
REVISED: "That ye be not quickly shaken from your mind ... as
that the day of the Lord is now present."
When an event is "at hand" it has not yet come; but when it
is "now present" it is here. Without offering an opinion which is
the correct rendering, there is certainly here a change of
doctrine. If the day of the Lord "is now present," it is in no
sense, "at hand."
4.
Titus 2:13
KING JAMES: "Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious
appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ."
REVISED: "Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory
of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."
By changing the adjective "glorious" to the noun "glory,"
the Revisers have removed the Second Coming of Christ from this
text.
In the King James Version the object of our hope is the
appearing of Christ, which is a personal and a future and an
epochal event. In the Revised Version, the object of our hope is
changed to be the appearing of the glory of Christ, which may be
the manifestation among men, or in us, of abstract virtues, which
may appear at any time and repeatedly in this present life.
5.
Rev.1:7
KING JAMES: "He cometh with clouds ... and all kindreds of the
earth shall wail because of Him."
REVISED: "He cometh with the clouds ... and all the tribes of
the earth shall mourn over Him."
How great is the change intended here, let the Reviser,
Bishop Westcott himself, state:
"All the tribes of the earth shall mourn over Him in penitential
sorrow, and not, as the Authorized Version, shall wail because of
Him, in the present expectation of terrible vengeance."
It is well known that many of the Revisers believed in what
they called, The Larger Hope, or Universal Salvation, which the
translators of the King James did not believe. Westcott admits
the Revisers made the change, in order to make the change of
doctrine.
6.
Acts 3:19
Here again the Revisers plead guilty to changing doctrine.
That the reading of Acts 3:19,20 was changed because the Revisers
held different views on the Second Coming of Christ from the men
of 1611, a member of the English New Testament Committee, Dr.
Alexander Roberts, testifies:
"Acts 3:19,20. An impossible translation here occurs in the
Authorized Version, in which we read: 'Repent ye therefore, and
be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times
of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He
shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you.' For
eschatological reasons, it is most important that the true
rendering of this passage should be presented. It is thus
given in the Revised Version: 'Repent ye, therefore; and turn
again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so seasons of
refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He
may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, (even)
Jesus.'"
"For eschatological reasons" he says, that is, for reasons
springing from their view on last things, not for textual
reasons, it was "most important" to change the rendering. Most of
the Revisers did not believe there would be a personal return of
Jesus before the restitution of all things which the Authorized
rendering of this passage teaches.
Hort, another Reviser, says: "There is a present unveiling
of Him simply as He is, without reference to any special action
of His, such as came to St.Paul on his conversion. There are
apparently successive unveilings of Him, successive Days of the
Lord. There is clearly indicated, a supreme unveiling, in which
glory and judgment are combined."
G.Vance Smith, another Reviser, says: "This idea of the
Second Coming ought now to be passed by as a merely temporary
incident of early Christian. Like many another error, it has
answered TO transitory purpose in the providential plan, and may
well, at length, be left to rest in peace."
Thus this Reviser dismisses the Second Coming of Christ as a
temporary, erroneous idea among the early Christians.
X. Blows Against the Law of God--The Ten Commandments
1.
Rev.22:14
KING JAMES: "Blessed are they that do His commandments, that
they may have right to the tree of life."
REVISED: "Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may
have the right to the tree of life."
Man keeping the commandments of God, and man washing his
robes in the blood of Christ, are two different doctrines, the
latter applies to forgiveness for past sins, the former applies
to so abiding in Christ as to avoid sinning, or breaking the
commandments. No man washes his robes by keeping the
commandments; that would be salvation by works. Shall we be
sinning and repenting (that is, washing our robes) as we enter
through the gates into the eternal city? Evidently not, since
three verses previous, verses 11 to 13, present the eternally
redeemed as settled in a holy and righteous condition obedient to
His commandments and ready to enter through the gates into the
city. The Revisers have dislocated this verse from its place
in the scheme of the last chapter of the Bible. If, instead of
being holy and righteous still, that is, keeping God's
commandments, the redeemed are sinning and repenting still, or
"washing their robes," they are not ready to say, "Even so, Lord
Jesus, come quickly." The entire book of Revelation is in
agreement with the King James translation of this verse, since
commandment keeping is an outstanding characteristic of those who
wait for the return of their Lord. (See Rev.12:17; 14:12.)
Revelation 22:14 gives final emphasis to this characteristic. The
Authorized rendering is clear and definite, but the Revised is
obscure and misleading.
2.
Acts 13:42
KING JAMES: "And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue,
the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them
the next sabbath."
REVISED: "And as they went out, they besought that these words
might be spoken to them the next Sabbath."
The Authorized Version pictures to us the congregation,
composed of Jews and Gentiles. By this distinction it reveals
that a number of the Gentiles were present and desired all their
Gentile friends to hear the same message the next Sabbath. Since
the Sabbath came in for special mention (see verse 27), and since
the Gentiles requested a special meeting on the following
Sabbath, and waited for it, we see that the great truth announced
by Christ, that "the Sabbath was made for man" (Mark 2:28), was
brought home to the Gentiles. All this is lost in the Revised
Version by failing to mention the Jews and the Gentiles. Thus the
Authorized Version is consistent with itself throughout, a divine
harmony. Here the Revised strikes an absolute discord. Does not
this affect fundamental doctrine?
XI. Affecting Scientific Teaching of the Bible
1.
Mark 7:19
KING JAMES: "Because it entereth not into his heart, but into
the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?"
REVISED: "Because it goeth not into his heart, but into his
belly, and goeth out into the draught? This he said, making all
meats clean."
In the Old Testament system of sacrifices, God never
accepted the offering of an unclean beast. Moreover, He forbade
the use of unclean meats as food. In translating the above
Scripture, there is nothing in the King James which breaks down
this distinction.
Who said that the Revisers had the right to alter what God
anciently ordained?
"But by the change of a single letter in the Greek," says
Milligan on this passage, "a new reading is gained, and the verse
now concludes--'This He said, making all meats clean,' being the
Evangelist's comment upon what he has just recorded, a comment
that gains still further in significance when we remember that
St.Mark's Gospel was in all probability largely dependent upon
the recollections of the apostle Peter, who was taught in so
striking a manner that in God's sight nothing is
common or unclean. Acts 10:9-16."
Peter said that by the vision of Acts 10, "God hath chewed
me that I should not call any man common or unclean." Acts 10:28.
And later he said that "God made choice amongst us, that the
Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel." Acts
15:7. Who gave the Revisers the right to say that the vision sent
by God to Peter to break down the differences between Jew and
Gentile was sent to abolish the age-long distinction between
clean and unclean meats, and which exists in the very nature of
the unclean animals as contrasted with the clean?
2.
Luke 23:44,45
KING JAMES: "And there was a darkness over the whole earth until
the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened."
REVISED: "A darkness came over the whole land until the ninth
hour, the sun's light failing."
MOFFATT: "And darkness covered the whole land till three
o'clock, owing to an eclipse of the sun."
The Greek text of the Revisers on this passage and the Greek
text of Moffatt is the same; the Greek text of the King James is
different. The Greek text of the Revisers says there was an
eclipse of the sun, (Greek .... ). Moffatt honestly translated
his mutilated Greek thus, "owing to an eclipse of the sun." The
Revisers failed to do it. Since an eclipse of the sun is
physically impossible at the time of a full moon which was
shining the night of Christ's burial, this shows that the Greek
text of the Revisers, heralded among us with high praises, was
scientifically incorrect and impossible. Moffatt was true to his
Greek, even if he had adopted the same Greek MS. as the Revisers.
The Revisers were not.
X11.
The Ascension
1.
Mark 16:9-20
These verses which contain a record of the ascension are
acknowledged as authority by the King James, but separated by the
Revised from the rest of the chapter to indicate their doubtful
value. This is not surprising. Dr.Hort, the evil genius of the
Revision Committee, cannot say anything too derogatory of these
twelve verses. In this he is consistent; for he believes the
story of the ascension was not entitled to any place in any
Gospel:
"The violence of Burgon's attack on the rejectors of the
conclusion of St.Mark's Gospel seems somewhat to have disturbed
Hort's calmness of judgment, and to have made him keen-sighted to
watch and close every possible door against the admission of the
disputed verses. In this case he takes occasion to profess his
belief not only that the story of the Ascension was no part of
St.Mark's Gospel, but that it ought not to find a place in any
Gospel."
The rejection of the last twelve verses of Mark's Gospel, or
rather setting them off to one side as suspicious, either indicts
the church of past ages as a poor keeper and teacher of Holy
Writ, or indicts the Revisers as exercising an extreme and
unwarrantable license.
WHOLE SECTIONS OF THE BIBLE AFFECTED BY THE REVISED VERSION
The Revised Version mutilates the main account of the Lord's
prayer in the Gospel of Matthew, by leaving out the words, "For
thine is the kingdom; and the power and the glory forever, Amen."
Matt.6:13.
It mutilates the subsidiary account of the Lord's prayer in
Luke 11:2-4, so that this last prayer could be prayed to any
man-made god. It omits "which art in heaven," from "Our Father,
which art in heaven;" leaves out the words, "thy will be done, as
in heaven so in earth," etc.
It is worthy to remark here that this mutilation of the
Lord's prayer in both these places was the subject of fierce
controversy between the Reformers and the Jesuits from 1534-1611,
the Reformers claiming Jerome's Vulgate and the Jesuit Bible in
English translated from the Vulgate were corrupt. The Revisers
joined the Jesuits in this contention, against the Reformers. Dr.
Fulke, Protestant, said in 1583:
"What your vulgar Latin translation hath left out in the latter
end of the Lord's prayer in St.Matthew, and in the beginning and
midst of St.Luke, whereby that heavenly prayer is made imperfect,
not comprehending all things that a 'Christian man ought to pray
for, besides many other like omissions, whether of purpose, or of
negligence, and injury of tim, yet still by you defended, I spare
to speak of in this place."
Matthew 17:21 is entirely omitted. Compare also Mark 9:29
and 1 Cor.7:5. On this the Dublin Review says: "In many places in
the Gospels there is mention of 'prayer and fasting.' Here
textual critics suspect that an ascetic bias, has added the
fasting, so they expunge it, and leave in prayer only. If an
'ascetic bias' brought fasting in, it is clear that a bias, the
reverse of ascetic, leaves it out."
It sets off to one side and brands with suspicion, the
account of the woman taken in adultery. Jno. 8:1-11. See how Luke
9:55,56 is shortened:
KING JAMES: "But He turned, and rebuked them and said, Ye know
not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not
come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to
another village."
AMERICAN REVISED: "But He turned, and rebuked them. And they went
to another village."
Acts 8:37. This text is omitted in the English and American
Revised.
Notice Eph.5:30:
KING JAMES: "For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and
of His bones."
AMERICAN REVISED: "Because we are members of His body."
Behold how greatly this verse is cut clown in the Revised!
See how, in 2 Timothy 4:1, the time of the judgment is
obliterated, and Christ's Second Coming is obscured:
KING JAMES: "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His
appearing and His kingdom."
AMERICAN REVISED: "I charge thee in the sight of God, and of
Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by His
appearing and His kingdom."
It changes Revelation 13:10 from a prophecy to a general
axiomatic statement, and, in the margin, places a black mark
against the passage:
KING JAMES: "He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into
captivity."
AMERICAN REVISED: "If any man is for captivity, into captivity he
goeth."
Without presenting any more examples, and the changes are
many, we will offer the words of another which will sum up in a
brief and interesting way, the subject under consideration:
"By the sole authority of textual criticism these men have dared
to vote away some forty verses of the inspired Word. The Eunuch's
Baptismal Profession of Faith is gone; and the Angel of the Pool
of Bethesda has vanished; but the Angel of the Agony remains -
till the next Revision. The Heavenly Witnesses have departed, and
no marginal note mourns their loss. The last twelve verses of St.
Mark are detached from the rest of the Gospel, as if ready for
removal as soon as Dean Burgon dies. The account of the woman
taken in adultery is placed in brackets, awaiting excision. Many
other passages have a mark set against them in the margin to show
that, like forest trees, they are shortly destined for the
critic's axe. Who can tell when the destruction will cease?"
Dublin Peview, July, 1981.
...................
NOTE:
As Wilkinson says, many indeed are the alterations and just
"vanishes" of words and phrases and sentences, in all the modern
New Testament Bibles that follow the Greek of Westcott and Hort,
based mainly upon TWO Roman Catholic manuscripts, ONLY coming to
light in the middle of the 19th century. These revisers gave the
modern Bible to modern people, who read every little if any, of
the Bible. Go to some modern Sunday observing churches, as I have
done over the years, and you will find few carrying a Bible
period! You will find music, and all kinds of entertaining
"stuff" thrown up on a stage and screen, to please the people,
but little real Bible reading or studying is done. And that study
which may be done by some churches, is often from the corrupt
Greek manuscripts of Westcott and Hort. And so as Revelation 12:9
says, Satan the Devil has indeed deceived the WHOLE world!
Keith Hunt
Leading back to RomeHere and There and Everywhere! AUTHORIZED BIBLE VINDICATED
CHAPTER XII
Blow After Blow in Favor of Rome
(Revised Texts and Margins)
IT is now necessary to present the Revised Version in a new
phase. To do this, we will offer some passages of Scripture the
Revisers have changed to those Catholic readings which favor the
doctrines of Rome. On this Dr.Edgar says:
"It is certainly a remarkable circumstance that so many of the
Catholic readings in the New Testament, which in Reformation and
early post-Reformation times were denounced by Protestants as
corruptions of the pure text of God's Word, should now, in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, be adopted by the
Revisers of our tiMe-honored English Bibles."
Tobias Mullen, Catholic Bishop of Erie, Pa., calls attention
to a number of passages, whose readings in the Catholic and in
the Revised Version are identical in thought. He comments on one
of these as follow:
"It will be perceived here, that the variation between the
Catholic Version and the Revision is immaterial, indeed no more
than what might be found between any two versions of different
but substantially identical copies of the same document."
I. Human Knowledge Exalted Above the Divine Word by the Revision
1.
John 1:3,4
KING JAMES: "Without Him was not anything made that was made. In
Him was life."
REVISED: "Without Him was not anything made. That which hath been
made was life in Him." (Margin)
Let it be remembered that the marginal readings were
considered of great importance by the Revisers. Many of them
would be in the body of the text but for lack of a two-thirds
majority vote.
The principal defect of Romanism was the assumption of
wisdom communicated to it apart from, and superior to the written
Word. This is essentially the Gnostic theory, that false
knowledge which was spoken of by the apostle Paul in I Tim. 6:20.
To this Gnostic theory, must be laid the blame for the great
apostasy in the early Christian Church. This same Gnostic theory
which Newman had, according to S.Parkes Cadman, led him into the
arms of Rome. To show that the offensive marginal reading of the
Revised on John 1:3 is the product of Gnosticism, I will quote
from Dean Burgon:
"In the third verse of the first chapter of St.John's Gospel, we
are left to take our choice between,'with-out Him was not
anything made that hath been made. In Him was life; and the
life,' etc., and the following absurd alternative,---'without Him
was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in Him;
and the life,' etc. But we are not informed that this latter
monstrous figment is known to have been the importation of the
Gnostic heretics in the second century, and to be as destitute of
authority as it is of sense. Why is prominence given only to the
lie?"
It is the Catholic doctrine that the lay members of the
church are devoid of a certain capacity for understanding divine
things, which capacity is bestowed upon their cardinals, bishops,
and priesthood, transmitted to them by the laying on of hands.
They claim the people cannot secure this knowledge by direct
personal contact with the Bible. This theory of a knowledge
hidden from the many and open only to the few is that ancient
Gnosticism which developed into the Catholic Church. It separated
official Catholicism from the great body of members, and this is
the reason for the power of the priests over the people. In other
words, as in the case of Cardinal Newman, they substituted
superstition for faith; because faith does not come by ordinances
of men, but by hearing the Word of God. (Rom.10:17.) True
Protestantism has faith in the Bible as supreme.
II. Protestantism Condemned by the Change Affecting the
Sacraments
1.
1 Cor.11:29
KING JAMES: "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth
and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's
body."
REVISED: "For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh
judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body."
Why were the two expressions "unworthily" and "Lord's" left
out? By the presence of the word "unworthily" the one partaking
of the bread would be guilty of condemnation upon some other
count than not discerning the body. And if the word "Lord's"
remained, Protestants could still claim that they discerned their
absent Lord in a spiritual sense. The omission of "unworthily"
and "Lord's" therefore condemns Protestants who do not believe
that the bread has been turned into the body of Christ.
III. The Change Restoring the Confessional
1.
James 5:16
KING JAMES: "Confess your faults one one to another."
REVISED: "Confess therefore your sins one to another."
In order to make the change from "faults" to "sins"
the Greek was changed. The Greek word meaning "faults" was
rejected and replaced by he Greek word meaning "sins." If man is
commanded by Scripture to confess his "sins" to man, what
objection is there to the auricular confession of the priests?
On this revised reading the Dublin Review (Catholic), July, 1881,
says:
"The Apostles have now power to 'forgive' sins, and not simply to
'remit' them. 'Confess therefore your sins' is the new reading of
James 5:16."
IV. The Exaltation of the Priesthood Made Easy
1.
Hebrews 10:21
KING JAMES: "And having an high Priest over the house of God."
REVISED: "And having a great priest over the house of God."
This change may seem unimportant; nevertheless the wording
carries with it, its effect. To single out Jesus as our "high
Priest" in heaven, as the King James Version does, makes Him so
outstanding, that we instinctively regard Him, since His
ascension, as our only Priest, so far outdistancing other persons
as to rate them unnecessary. The expression "great priest" exalts
the order of the priesthood among whom Jesus happens to be the
greatest one. The word "great" is a comparative word and implies
a degree of the same order; the expression "high priest"
signifies an office. There can be many great priests, but only
one high priest. The reading of the King James puts Christ in a
class by Himself. Just what singular position would that of
Christ be as a "great priest" if He were not the high Priest?
Moreover Christ is distinctly designated ten times in this same
epistle as the high Priest. The change in the Revised leaves the
conclusion possible that this change provided a priest for the
Confessional, which, in turn, was restored by the change in James
5:16.
We know of one dominating Reviser - Dr.Hort--who exalted the
necessity of an earthly priesthood and who bitterly assailed
Protestantism for not having it.
Since the Greek word "mega" was translated "high," in John
19:31, by the Revisers, why did they not so translate it here?
V. Church Government--Separating the Priesthood
from the Laity
1.
Acts 15:23
KING JAMES: "And wrote letters by them after this manner, The
apostles and elders and brethren, send greeting unto the
brethren."
AMERICAN REVISED: "And they wrote thus by them, The apostles and
the elders, brethren, unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles."
In the King James, the word "brethren" is a noun making the
lay people a third class separate from the apostles and elders.
In the Revised it is a noun in apposition applying alike to
apostles and elders, two classes only.
This passage is used as a foundation on which to base an
argument for a clergy separated by God in their function from the
lay brethren. It makes a vast difference, in sending out this
authoritative letter, from the fiat council of the Christian
Church, whether it issued from the apostles and elders only, or
issued from the apostles, elders, and the brethren. Here again to
effect this change Revisers omitted two Greek words.
The Jesuitical translators of 1582 strongly denounced
Puritans for failing, in their translation, to make the
distinction between the priesthood and the laity. As we read
"This name then of 'priest' and 'priesthood' properly so called,
as St.Augustine saith, which is an order distinct from the laity
and vulgar people, ordained to offer Christ in an unbloody manner
in sacrifice to His heavenly Father for us, to preach and
minister the sacraments, and to be the pastors of the people,
they wholly suppress in their translations."
VI. Changes to Support the Teaching of the
Intermediate State
1.
Hebrews 9:27
KING JAMES: "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but
after this the judgment."
REVISED: "And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die,
and after this cometh judgment."
Canon Farrar claims that this change was deliberately made
to emphasize the doctrine of the intermediate state of men after
death, before being summoned to their final reward or punishment.
Canon Farrar ought to know, because he was a member of that
brilliant organization, the "Apostles Club," dominant in its
influence at Cambridge University, where Hort, Westcott, and
other Revisers discussed questions of doctrine and church reform.
Farrar said on this change:
"There is positive certainty that it does not mean 'the judgment'
in the sense in which that word is popularly understood. By
abandoning the article which King James translators here
incorrectly inserted, the Revisers help, as they have done in so
many other places, silently to remove deep-seated errors. At the
death of each of us there follows 'a judgment,' as the sacred
writer says: the judgment, the final judgment, may not be for
centuries to come. In the omission of that unauthorized little
article from the Authorized Version by the Revisers, lies no less
a doctrine than that of the existence of an Intermediate State."
In the above quotation, note the use of the word "silently."
VII. The Larger Hope-Another Chance After Death
1.
John 14:2
KING JAMES: "In my Father's house are many mansions."
REVISFD: "In my Father's house are many abiding places."
(Margin.)
In the following quotation from the "Expositor," the writer
points out that, by the marginal reading of the Revised, Dr.
Westcott and the Committee referred, not to a final future state,
but to intermediate stations in the future before the final one:
"Dr.Westcott in his Commentary on St.John's Gospel gives the
following explanation of the words, 'In my Father's house are
many mansions.' 'The rendering comes from the Vulgate mansiones,
which were 'resting places,' and especially the 'stations' on a
great road, where travelers found refreshment. This appears to Be
the true meaning of the Greek word here; so that the
contrasted notions of repose and progress are combined in this
vision of the future.'"
"For thirty years now," said Dr.Samuel Cox, in 1886, "I have
been preaching what is called 'the larger hope,' through good and
ill report."
The "larger hope" meant a probation after this life, such a
time of purifying, by fire or otherwise, after death as would
insure another opportunity of salvation to all men. Dr.Cox, like
others, rejoices that the changes in the Revised Version sustain
this doctrine. "Had the new Version then been in our hands, I
should not have felt any special gravity in the assertion." he
said! Doctors Westcott and Hort, both Revisers, believed this
"larger hope."
We have seen how Dr.G.Vance Smith, another Reviser, proved
that the change of "hell fire" in the Authorized to "the hell of
fire" in the Revised opened the way to introduce several hells.
With this, Catholic theology agrees, as it teaches four different
places of punishment after death, either intermediate places for
purification, or the final place. Dr.Samuel Cox rejoices that the
changes in the Revised Version make it possible to find these
different stations. He says:
"The states of being, shadowed forth by the words, Gehenna,
Paradise, Hades, cannot, therefore, be final or everlasting; they
are only intermediate conditions, states of discipline in which
the souls of men await, and may be prepared for, their final
award."
2.
Luke 1:72
KING JAMES: "To perform the mercy promised to our fathers."
REVISED: "To show mercy to our fathers."
To perform the mercy promised to our fathers long ago,
Christ came, is the meaning of the King James. The Revised means
that Christ came to show to our dead fathers the mercy they need
now. As Bishop Mullen says:
"For the text was one which, if rendered literally, no one could
read without being convinced, or at least suspecting, that the
'fathers' already dead needed 'mercy'; and that 'the Lord God of
Israel' was prepared 'to perform' it to them. But where were
those fathers? Not in heaven, where mercy is swallowed up in joy.
And assuredly not in the hell of the damned, where mercy could
not reach them. They must therefore have been in a place between
both, or neither the one nor the other. What? In Limbo or
Purgatory? Why, certainly. In one or the other."
The bishop further claims that the Revisers, in making this
change, vindicated the Jesuit New Testament of 1582, and
convicted the King James of a perversion. Dr.Westcott also finds
the "larger hope" in the change made in Luke 1:72 by the
revision. We will now quote from a well-known church historian
who briefly describes the different intermediate states according
to papal doctrine:
"This power of the Church through the Pope extends -
'indirectly,' says Aquinas - to Purgatory. This was one of the
five abodes in the invisible world. These are: 1. Hell, a place
of eternal suffering, the abode of those who die in mortal sin,
without absolution. The Schoolmen unite in affirming torment by
eternal fire. 2. The limbus of infants dying unbaptized--limbus
signifying literally a border, as, for instance, the bank of a
river. In this abode the inmates are cut off from the vision of
God, but, it was generally held, are not subject to positive
inflictions of pain. 3. The limbus patrum--the abode of the Old
Testament Saints, now, since the advent of Christ, turned into a
place of rest. 4. Purgatory, for souls not under condemnation for
mortal sin, yet doomed to temporal, terminable punishments. These
served the double purpose of an atonement and of a means of
purification. 5. Heaven, the abode of the souls which at death
need no purification and of souls cleansed in the fires of
Purgatory."
3.
I
Peter 4:6
KING JAMES: "For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to
them that are dead."
REVISED: "For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the
dead."
The King James Version presents the truth of this passage to
be that the gospel was preached (past tense) to them that are
dead now (present tense); multitudes now dead had the gospel
preached to them while they were living. There is no hint that
there is any preaching going on now to them that are now dead.
The reverse is the teaching of the passage as changed by the
Revised Version. This is another contribution by the new Version,
which, with other passages of the same import, reveals a
systematic presentation of the doctrine of Purgatory.
Still another passage, this time from the Old Testament, reveals
the tendency which the Revisers had in this direction.
4.
Job 26:5
KING JAMES: "Dead things are formed from under the waters, and
the inhabitants thereof."
REVISED: "They ("the shades" margin) that are deceased tremble
beneath the waters and the inhabitants thereof."
It is very evident here that the Revisers did not have a
Protestant mentality. On this passage we will quote from a member
of the Old Testament Revision Committee (American):
"In Chapter 26 the senseless rendering of verse 5, 'Dead things
are formed from under the waters,' etc., is replaced by a vivid
reference to God's control over departed spirits."
5.
II Peter 2:9
KING JAMES: "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of
temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment
to be punished."
REVISED: "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of
temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the
day of judgment"
By the change of this passage, the Revisers have gone beyond
even the Douay Version, which agrees here with the King James.
This change puts the wicked at once, After death, under
continuing punishment, even before they have had a fair trial at
the judgment seat. Speakof I Peter 4:6, a reviewer of an article
(1882) by Professor Evans, of Lane Seminary, says:
"In the department of eschatology, the work of the revision has
been severely criticized. Its terms of gehenna, paradise, and
hades, it is claimed, are not sharply defined and lead to
confusion; ... and probation after death to be favored by its
rendering of I Peter 4:6, and from a passage in the book of the
Revelation."
VIII. The Different Regions of the Conscious Dead, as Roman
Catholics Teach, Supported by the Revised
1.
Rev.13:8
KING JAMES: "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him,
whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world."
AMERICAN REVISED: "And all that dwell on the earth shall worship
him, every one whose name hath not been written from the
foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that hath
been slain."
Even in 1583, thirty years before the King James Version was
published, this text with all its possibilities was the subject
of heavy controversy between the Jesuits and the Puritans. The
Protestants, even then, rejected the way it is now written in the
American Revised Version.
IX. A Substitute Number for the Beast: "616" or "666"
1.
Rev.13:18
KING JAMES: "And his number is six hundred threescore and six."
REVISED: "And his number is six hundred and sixteen" (margin).
Throughout the ages, the certainty of this number, "666,"
and the certainty of applying it to the Papacy, has been a source
of strength and comfort to Protestant martyrs. Behold the
uncertainty and confusion brought into the interpretation of this
prophecy by offering in the margin the substitute number "616."
Did not the Revisers by this change strike a blow in favor of
Rome?
"But why is not the whole truth told? viz., why are we not
informed that only one corrupt uncial (C):---only one cursive
copy(11):---only one Father (Tichonius) and not one ancient
Version - advocates this reading? which, on the contrary,
Irenaeus (A.D.170) knew, but rejected; remarking that 666, which
is 'found in all the best and oldest copies and is attested by
men who saw John face to face,' is unquestionably the true
reading. Why is not the ordinary reader further informed that the
same number:(666) is expressly vouched for by Origen, by
Hippolytus, by Eusebius:- as well as by Victorinus and Primasius,
not to mention Andreas and Arethas? To come to the moderns, as a
matter of fact the established reading is accepted by Lachmann,
Tischendorf, Tregelles, even by Westcott and Hort. Why therefore
- for what possible reason - at the end of 1700 years and
upwards, is this which is so clearly nothing else but an ancient
slip of the pen, to be forced upon the attention of 90 millions
of English speaking people?
Will Bishop Ellicott and his friends venture to tell us that it
has been done because 'it would not be safe to accept' 666, 'to
the absolute exclusion of 616?.
We have given 'alternative readings in the margin,' (say they,)
'wherever they seem to be of sufficient importance or interest to
deserve notice.' Will they venture to claim either 'interest' or
'importance' for this? or pretend that it is an 'alternative
reading' at all? Has it been rescued from oblivion and paraded
before universal Christendom in order to perplex, mystify, and
discourage 'those that have understanding,' and would fain 'count
the number of the Beast,' if they were able? Or was the intention
only to insinuate one more wretched doubt - one more miserable
suspicion - into minds which have been taught (and rightly) to
place absolute reliance in the textual accuracy of all the
gravest utterances of the SPIRIT: minds which are utterly
incapable of dealing with the subtleties of Textual Criticism;
and, from a onesided statement like the present, will carry away
none but entirely mistaken inferences, and the most unreasonable
distrust? .... Or, lastly, was it only because, in their opinion,
the margin of every Englishman's N.T. is the fittest place for
reviving the memory of obsolete blunders, and ventilating
forgotten perversions of the Truth? ... We really pause for an
answer." (Burgon, Revision Revised, pp.135-137).
X. The Entire Meaning Touching Old Testament Prophecies Changed
1.
Matt. 2:15
KING JAMES: "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
REVISED: "Out of Egypt did I call my son."
The comment of Dean Farrar on this change proves how
systematically the Old Testament prophecies were robbed of their
typical meaning by the "modern rules" used to translate that
Greek tense known as the aorist. He says:
"'Out of Egypt did I call my son.' What could the Revisers do but
alter the incorrect rendering of the Authorized Version? The
Authorized Version confuses the entire meaning of the passage,
and hides the invariable method of St.Matthew in his references
to Old Testament prophecies. Hosea's reference, Hosea 11:1, is to
the calling forth of the Israelites from Egypt...
It is by a restoration of the tenses actually used that we may
expect, in this and HUNDREDS OF OTHER TEXTS, to rekindle a light
of understanding which has long faded away." (Capital letters
mine).
When Hosea, who prophesied 700 years after Moses, said, "Out
of Egypt have I called my son," was he talking history or
prophecy? Did he refer back to the Israelites leaving Egypt, or
forward to the flight of the infant Jesus into and out of Egypt?
The King James translators considered it a prophecy and wrote
"have called;" the Revisers wrote "did call" to express history.
The King James translated it by the perfect, "have called," which
shows the action to have effects still continuing. The Revisers
said that this was wrong, claiming that the aorist should always
be translated by the past tense and not by the perfect. This new
rule, Farrar claims, changed hundreds of texts affecting both Old
Testament prophecies and "the great crises of Christian life."
As to the unfairness of this rule, we could quote from many
witnesses. We will let only one testify. Sir Edmund Beckett,
LL.D., says:
"No one rule of that kind has produced so many alterations in the
Revised Version as that an aorist always - means an action past
and gone, while a perfect tense implies action continuing up to
the present time ... But if we find that forcing the English
translation to conform to those rules produces confusion, or such
English as no master of it writes, and no common person uses;
that it is neither colloquial or solemn, nor impressive, nor more
perspicuous than the old phrases, and often less so such facts
will override all general rules in the minds of men of common
sense, not bewildered by too much learning or the pedantry of
displaying it."
How,serious have been the effects upon doctrine by this
"self-imposed rule," as the Forum says, in the Revised Version,
we will now proceed to show.
XI. Entire Meaning of Great Crises in Christian Life Changed
1.
1 Cor.15:3,4
KING JAMES: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the
third day."
REVISED: "... that He was buried; and that He hath been
raised on the third day."
In this text, "He rose," has been changed to, "He hath been
raised," for a definite purpose: We lay a charge against the
triumvirate who swept the Revision Committee along with them, of
deliberately making changes in order to introduce a new set of
doctrines which would be neither Presbyterianism (Protestantism)
or Episcopalianism, but which would favor Romanism. Before
the proof is given that this text, I Cor.15:3,4, is one of them,
a letter of Bishop Westcott to Dr.Hort will reveal the full
scheme. Thus he writes concerning "we three":
"Just now I think we might find many ready to welcome the true
mean between the inexorable logic of the Westminster and the
skeptical dogmatism of orthodoxy. At any rate, I am sure that
there is a true mean, and that no one has asserted its claims on
the allegiance of faithful men. Now, I think that Lightfoot, you,
and I are in the main agreed, and I further think that with our
convictions, we are at such a time bound to express them. The
subjects which had occurred to me are - 1. The development of the
doctrine of Messiah, including the discussion of the selection of
one people out of many. 2. Miracles and history. 3. The
development of Christian doctrine out of the apostolic teaching.
In other words, I should like to have the Incarnation as a center
and on either side the preparation for it, and the apprehension
of it in history."
The term "Westminster" referred to the Westminster
Confession, the Presbyterian articles of faith, while by the term
"orthodoxy" Bishop Westcott could refer only to his own faith,
Episcopalianism. What third set of doctrines different from these
two, did they have in mind, in using the word "mean"? When the
Oxford Movement, with its revolutionary results, was the
background to this situation, when the admiration of this
triumvirate for Newman is considered, as well as the expressed
convictions of Westcott and Hort for sacramental salvation and
Mariolatry, it can be seen that the new set of doctrines they
planned to advocate could be nothing else than Ritualism and
Romanism. Evidently, the Revisers incorporated their theology
into the Scriptures. This is not the function of revisers or
translators.
Many Protestants are not aware of the serious difference
between the papal doctrine of Atonement and theirs; nor of the
true meaning of the Mass. Catholics teach that only the humanity
of Christ died on the cross, not His divine nature. Therefore, in
their eyes, His death was not, in a primary sense, a vicarious
atonement to satisfy the wrath of God against sin and pay the
claims of a broken law. Because of this, His death is to them
only a momentary event; while His coming in the flesh, or the
doctrine of the Incarnation, is supreme. Its effects are
continual and daily, a source of saving grace, as they believe.
The turning of the bread into the body of Christ, by the priest
in the ceremony of the Mass, represents His birth in the flesh,
or the Incarnation, repeated in every Mass.
So fundamental to all their beliefs is this different view
of the Atonement and of the Mass, as held by Roman Catholics,
that it profoundly affects all other doctrines and changes the
foundation of the Christian system. When the triumvirate
approached their task of revision, with their scheme to advocate
their new system of doctrines, Dean Farrar says that "hundreds of
texts were so changed that the Revisers restored conceptions
'profound and remarkable' in the 'verbs expressive of the great
crises of Christian life.'"
The great crises of Christian life are set forth by
Protestants in words and practices different from Catholics. In
the great crisis, when the Protestant is under conviction of sin,
he reveals it by deep sorrow and contrition; the Catholic by
going to Mass. In the crisis of that moment when the soul is
moved by repentance, the Protestant speaks forth his heart to
God, alone or in the assembly of fellow-believers; the Catholic
goes to confess to a priest and so exalts the confessional to the
doctrine of the Sacrament of Confession. In that crisis, when
forgiveness of sins is experienced, the Protestant is conscious
of God's pardon by faith in His Word; the Catholic hears the
priest say, "I absolve thee," which indicates the power of the
supernatural priesthood. In those deep wrestlings of the spirit,
the crises which come from the demands of Christian obedience,
the Protestant leans on the infallibility of the Bible to tell
him what he should, or should not do; the Catholic, through the
priest, gets his light from the infallibility of the Pope, the
crown of the supernatural priesthood.
The Revisers may not have had, in detail, these phases in
their minds as we have enumerated them. But they had, in purpose,
the principle which would lead to them. Westcott said, in the
quotation above, when planning for a new set of doctrines on
which the triumvirate was agreed, "I should like to have the
Incarnation as a center." And on the text under consideration - I
Cor.15:3,4 - Dean Farrar, interpreting it in the new meaning the
Revisers intended it to have, said:
"When St.Paul says that 'Christ was buried and hath been raised,'
he emphasizes, by a touch, that the death and burial of Christ
were, so to speak, but for a moment, while His Resurrection means
nothing less than infinite, permanent, and continuous life."
It is apparent by this translation they mean to minimize the
death of Christ and to magnify His resurrection, which to them is
substantially a repeated Incarnation. This tends to the Roman
idea of Transubstantiation in the Mass. They belittle the death
of Christ when they rule out the death of His divine nature. That
leads to the conclusion that there was no divine law to be
satisfied. Dr.Farrar ought to know what was intended, for he was
one of the coterie in which Westcott and Hort moved.
This translation is purely arbitrary. Why did they not say,
"hath been dead," and "hath been buried," as well as "hath been
raised"? "The aorist, the aorist," we are told. Previously, we
have sufficiently answered this unwarranted plea.
Take another text upon which Bishop Westcott has spoken
expressly to inform us what is the superior reading of the
Revised:
2.
Matt.27:46
KING JAMES: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me."
REVISED: "My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me." (Margin.)
According to their self-imposed rules, the Revisers
considered that the meaning of this text, in the Authorized, was
that the effects of Christ's death were supreme and were
continuous. This thought they believed of Christ's resurrection
which opened the way for repeated Incarnations, as previously
shown. Therefore, in the Revised (margin), they changed the tense
to the past in order to make the death of Christ a temporary
event, as of a moment. Bishop Westcott, on this text, shows in
the following words that he believed Christ's passion was the
death of a human, not of a divine being:
"If, then, we may represent suffering as the necessary
consequence of sin, so that the sinner is in bondage, given over
to the Prince of Evil, till his debt is paid, may we not
represent to ourselves our Lord as taking humanity upon Him, and
as man paying this debt - not as the debt of the individual, but
as the debt of the nature which He assumed? The words in St.
Matthew 27:46 seem to indicate some such view."
He wrote to Benson, "In a few minutes I go with Lightfoot to
Westminster (Revision Committee Session). More will come of these
meetings, I think, than simply a revised version."
As to the "more" which might come of these revision
meetings, two incidents of Westcott's life within the five years
previous to revision are significant, his visit to the Shrine of
the Virgin Mary at LaSalette, France, (1865), and his suspicious
Tract of 1867.
LaSalette was one of the more famous shrines of France where
the Catholics claim that the spirit of the Virgin Mary wrought
miracles. Westcott reports that, while there, a miracle of
healing took place. "The eager energy of the father," he writes,
"the modest thankfulness of the daughter, the quick glances of
the spectators from one to the other, the calm satisfaction of
the priest, the comments of look and nod, combined to form a
scene which appeared hardly to belong to the nineteenth century.
An age of faith was restored before our sight in its ancient
guise ... In this lay the real significance and power of the
place."
So thorough was the impression of a "restored age of faith,"
made by this Catholic shrine miracle, on him, that he wrote a
paper and sent it in for publication. Dr.Lightfoot besought him
to withdraw it. He feared, "that the publication of the paper
might expose the author to a charge of Mariolatry and even
prejudice his chance of election to a Divinity Professorship at
Cambridge."
Again, in 1867, Westcott wrote a tract entitled, "The
Resurrection as a Fact and a Revelation." It was already in type,
his son tells us, when he was obliged to withdraw it because of
the charge against it of "heresy."
Thus the Revisers revealed how they were influenced by
exhibitions of what they considered the channel of divine power -
shrines and sacraments. This came from their incorrect view of
the Atonement. For if Christ paid not the debt for our sins by
the death of His divine being on Calvary, then, from their
viewpoint, satisfaction for our sins must logically be made to
God by some other means. Catholics find it in the sacrifice of
the Mass and also by their own works of penance, while the
Ritualists and leading Revisers look to the sacraments, which is
in reality the same thing. This leads to the power of the priest
and the practices of Ritualism. These views of doctrines so
different from those held by Protestants in 1611 would
fundamentally affect, not only the foundation truth of the
Atonement, that Christ's death paid the debt for our sins, but
all other doctrines, and pave the way for a different mentality,
a different gospel, wherever the ascendancy of the King James
Bible was broken down. The evidences produced in connection with
the American Revisers will show this more fully.
XII. The Jesuitical Doctrines of the Sacraments Favored by the
Revised
1.
1 Cor.11:24
KING JAMES: "And when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said,
Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you."
REVISED: "And when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said,
This is my body, which is for you: This do in remembrance of me."
Why were the two expressions, "take, eat" and "broken"
omitted from the Revised? Before answering this question, let us
consider further some fundamental viewpoints of the Revisers.
The word "sacrament" is not found in the Bible. The Lord's
Supper and Baptism are never called "sacraments." The observance
of these memorials of Christ's death, burial and resurrection
indicate the Christian's faith, but the Scriptures nowhere teach
that they bring salvation or the forgiveness of sin. The mystic
power of the priest by means of the so-called "sacraments" is a
human invention. Therefore, sacramental salvation is no
salvation. We do not wish to offend, or wound, but to us it looks
like an empty delusion.
It is a most significant fact that of the system of
doctrines with which the Cambridge trio of Revisers---Westcott,
Hort and Lightfoot--set out to permeate Christendom, the central
one was what they call the "Person of Christ." This doctrine
teaches, first, that the only true way to do God's will is by
"good works," in dependence upon "the Person of Christ;" second,
it involves a clearer grasp of the fact that as the "God
Incarnate," Christ is thus "mighty to save;" third, that the
believer's incorporation into Christ is by means of the
Sacraments; fourth, that the principal Sacraments are three in
number, - Baptism, the Lord's Supper (the Mass), and the
Confessional. Rev.Kempson, a Church of England clergyman, while
admitting that others look upon the Movement of the Jesuits as
counter to the Reformation, himself, holds a different view. He
says:
"I say the Reformation, because I can see no sound reason for
calling the events of that period which occurred within the Roman
Communion a 'Counter-Reformation.' It was a movement which
involved a great revival of personal piety and devotion to God
and desire to do His will, and an equally clear realization of
the fact that that desire could only be realized in good works in
dependence on the Person of Christ. Thus far we have a remarkable
parallel to our own Evangelical Revival. But in this case there
was a clearer grasp of the fact that it is as the God Incarnate
of the Creed that Christ is mighty to save, and that He
communicates Himself to those who desire to live through Him by
means of the Sacraments. That is, that the individual is grafted
into Christ in the New Birth of Baptism, that he feeds on Christ,
'Who is verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in
the Lord's Supper,' and that His healing grace is applied to the
sinner and the results of sin by the receiving of the 'Benefit of
Absolution.'"
In Catholic theology, "Absolution" means the forgiveness
which follows confession to a priest. Another quotation by the
same author, presents the strong part Westcott had in this work:
"Maurice and Kingsley, and Bishop Westcott, in his insistence on
the social significance of the Incarnation, have done their
work."
The significant remarks above, that "Christ is mighty to
save," only "as the God incarnate of the creed," - which is made
available to us in the Lord's Supper or in the Mass, the
reincarnation, and that "He communicates Himself to those who
desire to live through Him by means of the Sacraments," were the
central doctrines of the Counter-Reformation, or the world-wide
movement of the Jesuits. The Revisers changed the words of the
King James Version to embody the very same sentiments. On this,
Milligan, in his book on the Revised Version, says:
"The doctrine of the Sacraments may next engage our attention,
and here again the variations in the renderings of familiar
texts, though they may not appear at first of great importance,
involve far-reaching truths ... The Bread - that is, the Body of
Christ - recalls more particularly His Incarnation, apart from
His sufferings."
Now we see why the word "broken" was left out of the Revised
text under consideration, as it is also in the Douay. A footnote
of Milligan, in connection with the above quotation, emphasizes
the disappearance of "broken."
How we are supposed to come in touch with the "Person of
Christ," and receive His power and blessing, is shown by the
following quotation from a ritualistic clergyman:
"Now there are, of course, many Catholic practices that
necessarily result from a belief in the Real Presence of our dear
Lord upon the Altar ... Bowing and genuflecting. Bowing to the
Altar at all times ... because the Altar is the throne of God
Incarnate, where daily now, thank God, in many a Church in the
land He deigns to rest ... And genuflecting, not to the Altar,
but to the Gift that is upon it; to the God-man, Christ Jesus,
when He is there."
This is the doctrine of the "Person of Christ," as taught by
the Ritualists and Revisers. The priest in every Mass creates
from bread the very body, the "Person of Christ," and then
worships, and causes others to worship, the work of his own
hands. We would not wish to offend or speak unfeelingly when we
express our opinion that this is as truly idolatry as was ancient
paganism, or as is the heathenism of today. This localizing of
the literal body and "Person of Christ," by making Him present -
in every particle of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, or
the Mass, is exactly the opposite, and contrary to the statement
of the Saviour when about to bid fare well to His disciples, "It
is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the
Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send
him unto you." John 16:7.
When Christ ascended, He withdrew His personal presence from
the disciples, and the era of the ministration of the Holy Spirit
began. His words indicate that it was necessary for His person to
go away, that His Spirit might come to His disciples. He who,
like doubting Thomas, depends only on the local, personal,
literal, presence of Christ, walks by sight and not by faith and
deprives himself of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. "God is a
Spirit: they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth." John 4:24.
No Scripture commands us to worship in the Lord's supper the
"Person of Christ." The Romanists, the Ritualists, and the
Revisers invented this unspiritual dogma. Christ is with us
always, not in "person," but by His Spirit. We receive Him by
receiving His Word, for "they are Spirit, and they are life."
John 6:63).
Nineteen hundred years ago, Christ journeyed on this earth
from Bethlehem to Calvary in "person." When He departed from this
world and ascended up on high, He left the glorious promise that
He would come the "second time" in "person." His Second Coming is
yet future. But if He comes personally in every Mass, or the
Lord's Supper, He has already come not only the "second" time but
the millionth time. The Revisers' doctrine of the Incarnation
(the Mass), therefore, makes unnecessary and destroys the truth
that He shall come "the second time without sin unto salvation."
Hebrews 9:28. How feeble is the coming of the "Person of Christ"
in the Mass, or Lord's Supper, compared with His Second Coming in
His own glory and the glory of His Father with all the holy
angels! The fact that He came once in person and that His
"second" personal coming is still future, proves untrue, the
doctrine of the "Person of Christ" in the Mass.
This doctrine is a weak substitute for, and counterfeit of,
the glorious Second Coming of Christ.
Here a little, and there a little, the Westcott-Hort
generalship moved forward, changing the divine Word to bear the
impress of their doctrines, until they had changed the Greek in
5,337 places, and the English of the King James in 36,000 places.
These 5,337 mutilations of the Greek and 36,000 metamorphoses of
the English, in working out their scheme, stamp many of the
readings of the Revised Version with the marks of Systematic
Depravation.
........................
NOTE:
Remember Wilkinson gives all the "references" (those 1,2 3 etc.
numbers in the text corresponding to the numbers at the foot of
the page) throughout his book. I for time and speed in producing
his book have left them out, but I assure the reader they are all
there.
For in-depth understanding of Roman Catholic theology I refer the
reader to CHICK PUBLICATION. Google it in and you'll find their
Website.
Keith Hunt
Rome RejoicesThe Revision Bible is their Bible AUTHORIZED BIBLE VINDICATED
CHAPTER XIII
Catholics Rejoice That the Revised Version
Vindicates Their Bible
PREVIOUSLY we have shown how Catholics were elated over the
readings in the Revised Version that undermined Protestantism,
and criticized the Revisers for wanton omissions. We shall now
show how they rejoiced that Catholic readings rejected by the
Reformers have been restored by the Revisers, and their Catholic
Bible vindicated.
A Catholic bishop says that the Revisers were not as
Protestant as the translators of 1611:
"It must be admitted that either the Revisers wished to withdraw
several important passages of the Holy Scripture from
Protestants, or that the latter, in their simplicity, have all
along been imposed upon by King James' translators, who, either
through ignorance or malice, have inserted in the Authorized
Version a number of paragraphs which were never written by an
apostle or other inspired author."
Cardinal Wiseman exults that the Revision Movement
vindicates the Catholic Bible:
"When we consider the scorn cast by the Reformers upon the
Vulgate, and their recurrence, in consequence, to the Greek, as
the only accurate standard, we cannot but rejoice at the silent
triumph which truth has at length gained over clamorous error.
For, in fact, the principal writers who have avenged the Vulgate,
and obtained for it its critical preeminence, are Protestants."
A Catholic Magazine claims Revision for Higher Criticism and
Catholicism:
"How bitter to them must be the sight of their Anglican bishops
sitting with Methodists, Baptists, and Unitarians to improve the
English Bible according to modern ideas of progressive Biblical
Criticism! Who gave these men authority over the written Word of
God? It was not Parliament or Privy Council, but the Church of
England acting through Convocation. To whom do they look for the
necessary sanction and approval of their work, but to public
opinion? One thing at least is certain, the Catholic Church will
gain by the new Revision both directly and indirectly."
A Catholic priest indicates that the changes agree with the
Latin Vulgate:
"It is very pleasant to read the commendation given by the
learned reviewer, the Very Rev.James A.Corcoran, D.D., in the
American Catholic Quarterly Review, of the new Revision. He
devotes a considerable space to proving that the earlier English
translations corrupted the text, for the purpose of attacking the
Roman Catholic faith, and that even King James' Version retained
many of these odious mistranslations. Of the Revision he says
'One of the greatest benefits conferred by the Revision on the
English Protestant world, though very few or none seem to realize
it, is that all the wicked translations, whether by falsification
of meaning, or by interpolation, or by foisting of glosses into
the text, have been ruthlessly swept away by the besom of the
Revisers. And why? Solely on the ground that they were
corruptions. They do not explicitly say that they were sectarian
corruptions, nor need we insist on their saying it; but they
recognized them as such, and every honest man, every friend of
religious truth must be thankful that they have with unsparing
hand driven these unholy abominations out of the book of God's
revelation. This proves that their honesty was wholesome, not
partial or interested.'"
The above quotation shows the hostile attitude of Romanists
to the King James Version, and their endorsement of the Revision.
A Catholic Bishop says that Protestants have prayed the
Lord's prayer wrong for 300 years:
"This writer (Dr.Alexander Roberts) notifies his readers in one
place, that, because the Revisers made use of an amended Greek
text, 'a vast multitude of changes will be found in the Revised
English Version' of the New Testament. Next he reminds them of
'the entire omission of the doxology of the Lord's prayer of
Matt.6:13,' so that all English speaking Protestants have been
all along adding to that prayer words which the Lord never
dictated. Indeed, they are likely to continue the practice, as
the Revision of the Authorized Version will probably never be
generally adopted by them."
A Catholic priest says that the Revised Version confirms
readings of the Catholic Version:
"From the Very Rev.Thomas S.Preston, of St.Ann's (R.C.) Church of
New York,--'The brief examination which I have been able to make
of the Revised Version of the New Testament has convinced me that
the Committee have labored with great sincerity and diligence,
and that they have produced a translation much more correct than
that generally received among Protestants. It is to us a
gratification to find that in very many instances they have
adopted the reading of the Catholic Version, and have thus by
their scholarship confirmed the correctness of, our Bible."
A Catholic Magazine says that the Revised readings do
justice to Catholics:
"We have next to examine the new Version in detail to see how it
will affect Catholic truth. In the first place, there are several
important corrections and improved renderings. The Revisers have
done an act of justice to Catholics by restoring the true reading
of 1 Cor.11:27."
A Catholic Bishop considers that the Revised Version is like
the Douay Bible:
"And there is no reason to doubt that, had King James'
translators generally followed the Douay Version, the convocation
of Canterbury would have been saved the trouble of inaugurating a
movement for the purpose of expurgating the English Protestant
Bible of the errors and corruptions by which its pages are
defiled."
French and German Catholic authorities approve the critical
features of the Greek text which underlies the Revised Version:
"In the Bulletin Critique of Paris for Jan.15, 1881, the learned
Louis Duchesne opens the review of Westcott and Hort with these
words: 'Voici un livre destine a faire epoque dans la critique du
Nouveau-Testament.' (Here is a book destined to create a new
epoch in New Testament criticism.) To this Catholic testimony
from France may be added German Catholic approval, since Dr.
Hundhausen, of Mainz, in the 'Literarischer Handweiser,' 1882,
No.19, col.590, declares: 'Unter allen bisher auf dem Gebiete der
neu-testamentlichen Textkritik erschienenen Werken gebuhrt dem
Westcott-Hort schen unstreitig die Palme.'" (Among all printed
works which have appeared in the field of New Testament textual
criticism, the palm belongs unquestionably to the Westcott-Hort
Text.)
A Catholic magazine claims that the Revised Version is the
death knell of Protestantism:
"On the 17th of May the English speaking world awoke to find that
its Revised Bible had banished the Heavenly Witnesses and put the
devil in the Lord's Prayer. Protests loud and deep went forth
against the insertion; against the omission none. It is well,
then, that the Heavenly Witnesses should depart whence their
testimony is no longer received. The Jews have a legend that
shortly before the destruction of their Temple, the Shechinah
departed from the Holy of Holies; and the Sacred Voices were
heard saying, 'Let us go hence.' So perhaps it is to be with the
English Bible, the Temple of Protestantism. The going forth of
the Heavenly Witnesses is the sign of the beginning of the end.
Lord Panmure's prediction may yet prove true - the New Version
will be the death knell of Protestantism."
.......................
Note:
Well Protestantism is not dead by any means, but it certainly has
been drawn back some into her Mother, by many of the modern NT
versions based upon the Catholic Greek MSS that Wescott and Hort
bowed before.
Keith Hunt
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