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Now the Church of England used the King James Bible exclusively and was spreading in Europe and it was the Bible of the Puritans, Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Quakers, the Baptists and the Pilgrims and of the English colonies across the Atlantic Ocean. But one religious group that didn't use the King James Bible and could be said to abhor it  was Roman Catholicism. They had persecuted for centuries those who had even printed Bibles and tried to keep their members from reading and learning from it by banning and burning Bibles. They had even developed their own school system to keep control over their interpretation of scripture which used only their own version.

Then there was the Great Awakenings right before 1844, as people got access to the King James Bible's coming off the printing press from the many Bible societies. But now it seems in response there came a rise of Darwinism and Humanism right at this time, and a challenge arose these two men who were officially Protestants, from the Church of England, Bishop Brooke Foss Westcott and Cambridge University Professor Fenton John Anthony Hort.

The core of Westcott and Hort's challenge was their theory that the New Testament was preserved or so they claimed in almost perfect condition in two manuscripts, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. These were two of the Alexandrian codices, which had been altered extensively by the Gnostic sects that had arose in Alexandria in Egypt.

The Sinaiticus was discovered in a wastebasket in St. Catherineï's Monestary near Mt. Sinai in can you believe in 1844 and the Vaticanus was first documented in the Vatican library in 1475 and was 'rediscovered' in 1845. Right in time to challenge the what most Protestants and Christians in America were using.

Westcott and Hort, hated the Textus Receptus which they considred "villainous" and "vile" and here was the King James Bible based on it and in widespread use. They made clear their distaste and declare it an inferior translation and determined to replace the King James Bible and the Greek Textus Receptus. In short, their theory was that for fifteen hundred years the preserved Word of God was lost until it was recovered in the nineteenth century in a trash can in a Monestary and in the Vatican Library.

Westcott and Hort, claimed the basis of the Majority text which came from the ancient school at Antioch had loosely translated the true text of Scripture in the second century A. D. So this supposedly created an unreliable text of Scripture which formed the Textus Receptus. They did not have any historical evidence but simply theorized that it must have taken place so the Textus Receptus must be discarded. This theory was spread by their claims and became known as the 'Lucian Recension' theory, and despite having no evidence, became held as fact.

In the book 'Truth Triumphant' bible scholar Benjamin Wilkinson writes :

"The Protestant denominations are built upon that manuscript of the Greek New Testament sometimes called Textus Receptus, or the Received Text. It is that Greek New Testament from which the writings of the apostles in Greek have been translated into English, German, Dutch and other languages..."

The churches who from ancient times were in opposition to the Church of Rome used the Majority Text from the many thousands of manuscripts, which formed the Textus Receptus, or the Received Text. The Church of Rome built on the Eusebio-Origen type of Gnostic Bible which were basically from the Alexandrian type text.

So why did Protestant Reformers choose the Textus Receptus in preference to the Minority Text derived from Alexandrian manuscripts? The answer is simply because the Textus Receptus is based upon the vast majority of over 5000 Greek manuscripts in existence. That is why it is also called the Majority Text. The Textus Receptus agrees with the earliest versions of the Bible, Peshitta (AD150) Old Latin Vulgate (AD157), the Italic Bible (AD157) and what the Waldensians had from almost the time of the Apostles. These Bibles were produced some 200 years before the minority Egyptian Alexandrian codices. The Textus Receptus is untainted with pagan Egyptian/Greek philosophy and unbelief of the Ghostic sects.

Now for centuries the Textus Receptus was the standard and the KJV along with others used it as the basis of their version.  Then about a century and a half ago come into the picture, two Anglican churchmen, Westcott & Hort. They undertook the translation of these Alexandrian Greek copies back into their original Greek language and differences began to suddenly appear. Gone was the resurrection story in the book of Mark (the last twelve verses of the KJV). Gone was Acts 8:37 where the Ethiopian eunuch confesses Jesus as the Son of God along with many other passages.

Westcott and Hort claimed that the Alexandrian Codices were older so they were better. But Westcott and Hort didn't just pick up the Alexandrian Codices by accident, they used them for a purpose which they tried to hide but is obvious if you check their letters and contacts and the associates which influenced them.

What they did can be shown in this simple allegory:

A claim is made by naysayers' that time clocks are not keeping correct time, so a man goes seeking for the most authentic clock, trying to find the most original measure of time. Knowing that many good and famous clocks were made in Switzerland, he travels to Switzerland and visits numerous clock shops.

He compares several thousand of the world's finest antique clocks, and he checks their measurement of time against a finely-calibrated modern atomic clock. Imagine his surprise to find that there was some truth in the naysayers' arguments! In fact, as he studies, he finds one particular small line of clocks whose minutes deviated from the modern measure so that they are more than a second longer than 60 seconds!

All other clocks in Switzerland, and in fact Europe are within a tenth of a second of the standard time of the atomic clock--with the vast majority of those deviating less than two-hundredths of a second per minute.
He finds that the clocks which are all timed within a couple hundredths of a second of the modern minute are in the majority, over 95% of all clocks are of this line.

The line of clocks with the longer minute, apart from being just a few in number, seem to originate from one place.

Now, in the case that there are 20 clocks, and only one is different while 19 all show the identical same time-- which time would a wise person trust?

That is exactly the situation with the Bible manuscripts. The "Majority Text" is a subset of all known copies of the Bible manuscripts comprising about 95% of them. Only 1 in 20 manuscripts differs, and is part of the Alexandrian text, or "Neutral Text" as it was christened by Westcott and Hort. after they had edited and revised the original copies which had major issues to say the least.

Here is a good description of how the corruptions were weighed and found wanting, in the book LET'S WEIGH THE EVIDENCE by Barry Burton which gives a easy to understand explanation...

"...There Are Two Kinds of Manuscripts:

Accurate Copies

These manuscripts represent the manuscripts from which the "Textus Receptus" or Received Text was taken.

They are the majority of Greek manuscripts which agree with each other and have been accepted by Bible believing Christians down through the centuries. It is from these manuscripts that the King James Bible was translated in 1611.

Corrupted Copies

These manuscripts represent the corrupted copies of the Bible, also known as the Alexandrian manuscripts. These manuscripts, many times, do not even agree with each other. The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts are part of this group. These are the manuscripts on which Westcott and Hort and the modern versions rely so heavily.

There are 5,309 surviving Greek manuscripts that contain all or part of the New Testament. These manuscripts agree together 95% of the time. The other 5% account for the differences between the King James and the modern versions.

The modern versions had to use the Textus Receptus, since it contains the majority of the surviving Greek manuscripts. The problem is that, when the Textus Receptus disagreed with the Alexandrian manuscripts, such as the Vaticanus or the Sinaiticus, they preferred these corrupted manuscripts over the Textus Receptus the Majority Text....

The question is why would any one use these suspect manuscripts produced in Alexandria in Egypt rather than the vast number forming the basis for the Textus Receptus.

"..The Minority Texts were rejected by the early Christians and also by all the Protestant Reformers of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The Reformers, who were well aware of the existence of the Minority Texts, considered them unfit for translation purposes.

It is believed that the Minority Texts were butchered by Egyptian gnosticism with many changes, which are mostly deletions. The gnostics were a group that did not believe:
In the virgin birth, that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus was resurrected to heaven, that Jesus was the Creator, or that Jesus made atonement for our sins. There are many alterations in the Minority Texts, often a single manuscript being amended by several different scribes over a period of many years.

The Minority Texts omit approximately 200 versus from the Scriptures. This is equivalent to omitting First and Second Peter. The Minority Texts contradict themselves in hundreds of places...."

http://endtimeoutreach.com/whichbible.html

Here is some more background on the corruption of the Minority Text from another site....

"...almost all modern English bibles translated since 1898 are based on the Minority Text (this includes the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version, the Living Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, the New World Translation, the New Century Version, the Good News Bible, etc.). These bible versions are only supported by about five of the over 5,000 manuscripts in existence, or about .1% of all manuscripts, which is why it's also known as the "Minority text.".

The two most prominent manuscripts of the Minority Texts are the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus....These Minority Texts frequently disagreed with each other as well as with the Majority Text, and also contained many obvious and flagrant mistakes. Up until the late 1800s, the Minority Texts were utterly rejected by Christians.

The fact that these two manuscripts may have been older does not prove they are better. More likely it indicates that they were set aside because of their numerous errors....

The Vaticanus, which is the sole property of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Sinaiticus, are both known to be overwhelmed with errors. Words and whole phrases are repeated twice in succession or completely omitted, while the entire manuscript has had the text mutilated by some person or persons who ran over every letter with a pen making exact identification of many of the characters impossible...."

"...One of the manuscripts that make up the Minority Text is the Vaticanus. The Vaticanus was found in 1481 in the Vatican library. The other manuscript is the Sinaiticus. The Sinaiticus was found in 1844 in a trash pile at Saint Catherine's monastery, and rescued from a long (and well-deserved) obscurity. It has a great number of omissions and has many words and phrases marked out and re-written. Both of these manuscripts are from Roman Catholic origin...."


http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/nt_manuscripts.html

to the modern versions such as the American Standard Version (ASV), the New World Translation (NWT), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New International Version (NIV),  based on suspect Alexandria codices or manuscripts.

There are only 2 streams of Bible versions, the true text of the Textus Receptus (Majority Text) on which the King James Version is based, and those which picked up the Alexandrian manuscripts (Minority Text) which have been shown to have deleted and changed many parts of the text and  are unreliable. The Textus Receptus or Majority Text in which we find the vast majority of copies, has been attacked with changes, amendments, deletions, and what can only be seen attempts to diminish Gods truth. Many of the new modern versions such as the NIV and others are based on a few corrupted manuscripts which form the basis of the Minority Text, many which can be traced back to their original source, the Alexandrian codices.

From what I have come across it seems that the Majority Text (Textus Receptus), also called the Byzantine Text is based on the vast majority of manuscripts still in existence. The manuscripts were brought together by many were faithful to its text such as Lucian, Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza and the Elzevir brothers to form the text known as Textus Receptus. When the Protestant Reformers decided to translate the scriptures directly from Greek into the languages of Europe, they selected Textus Receptus as their foundation Greek document and for good reason.

I know I'm not Adventist, and that I am southern Baptist. However, I would like to add that I have a HUGE problem with women carrying the title Pastor. I do not believe that it is a woman's place to pastor be a deacon or even serve on the church board. 

I further do not believe that God would call any woman to do any of these jobs I have spoken of. So, I would have to agree with Doug Bachelor's analysis.

This is input from a Southern Baptist Minister.

The problem is that Adventist have to be able to discern these questions with scripture and not just what we feel, so it gets a bit complicated.

So what is it, and why the fraud or forgery. Well someone was trying to hide something and now we will see what it was..

The supposed text of the Septuagint is found today only in certain manuscripts. The main ones are: Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph); Codex Vaticanus (B); and Codex Alexandrinus (A). You can see now the origin, the Alexandrian manuscripts are the very texts that are in the Septuagint. In his Introduction to The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English (1851) Sir Lancelot Brenton describes how some critical scholars have attempted to call the Septuagint by its real name, the Alexandrian Text, it is nothing but the corrupt Gnostic text used to support the gnosticism heresy, and picked up by those who reject the true manuscripts of the thousand manuscripts of the Textus Receptus or Received Text.

The story of the Septuagint was just a cover to make people believe that it was something older that Christ used, when in reality it is just as later Gnostic text that has many alterations and changes and not for the better. We have textual critics who try to force these corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts against more than 5,000 copies favoring the Textus Receptus. They use these few codices with their alterations and deletions to translate the new revisions of modern versions of the Bible. But these Alexandrian manuscripts not only put in the Greek line of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism, but also include the Septuagint Old Testament (with the Apocrypha) picking up Gnosticism philosophies and changes and alterations and in addition pagan mysteries and beliefs of the Apocrypha.

The Letter of Aristeas is a hoax that doesn't even fit the time period in which it claims to have been written. And since the other ancient writers merely add to this story, it is clear that the story itself of a pre-Christian Septuagint is a fraud. Even critical textual scholars admit that the letter is a hoax. Yet they persist in quoting the Letter of Aristeas as proof of the existence of the Septuagint before Christ.

They claim that Christ and his apostles used the Septuagint, preferring it above the preserved Hebrew text found in the temple and synagogues. But if the Greek Septuagint was the Bible Jesus used, he would not have said,

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matthew 5:18)

Why would Jesus not have said this? Because the jot is a Hebrew letter, and the tittle is a small mark to distinguish between Hebrew letters. If Jesus used the Greek Septuagint, His scriptures would not have contained the jot and tittle. He obviously used the Hebrew scriptures!

In addition, Jesus only mentioned the scripture text in two ways,(1) "The Law and the Prophets" and (2) "The Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms":

"And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." Luke 24:44

The Hebrews divide their Bible into three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Jesus clearly referred to this. The Septuagint had no such division.

So the Septuagint is claimed to have been translated between 285-246 BC during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Alexandria, Egypt. His librarian, supposedly Demetrius of Phalerum, persuaded Philadelphus to get a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. Then the Scriptures (at least Genesis to Deuteronomy) were translated into the Greek language for the Alexandrian Jews. This part of the story comes from early church historian Eusebius (260-339 AD). Scholars then claim that Jesus and His apostles used this Greek Bible instead of the preserved Hebrew text.

So lets look closer look at the 'Letter of Aristeas':

The whole argument that the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek before the time of Christ rests upon a single document. All other historical evidence supporting the argument either quotes or references this single letter.

In this so-called Letter of Aristeas, the writer presents himself as a close confidant of king Philadelphus. He claims that he persuaded Eleazar, the high priest, to send with him 72 scholars from Jerusalem to Alexandria, Egypt. There they would translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, forming what we now call the Septuagint.

Jewish historian Josephus, Jewish mystic Philo (both first century AD) and others add to the story. Some say the 72 were shut in separate cells and "miraculously" wrote each of their versions word-for-word the same. They say that this proves "divine inspiration" of the entire Septuagint.

Thus, the Septuagint is claimed to exist at the time of Jesus and the apostles, and that they quoted from it instead of the preserved Hebrew text. But if as we shall see, it was not even written before Christ and the apotles, how could that be.


The verifiable facts:

The writer of this letter, Aristeas, claims to have been a Greek court official during the time of Philadelphus' reign. He claims to have been sent by Demetrius to request the best scholars of Israel to bring a copy of the Hebrew scriptures to Alexandria to start the Septuagint translation project. He even goes so far as to give names of Septuagint scholars, yet many of the names he gives are from the Maccabean era, some 75 years too late. Many of them are Greek names, definitely not the names of Hebrew scholars. There are many other evidences that this letter is from a different time period, and is thus a fake. The writer is lying about his identity.

The supposed "librarian," Demetrius of Phalerum (ca. 345-283) served in the court of Ptolemy Soter. Demetrius was never the librarian under Philadelphus.

The letter quotes the king telling Demetrius and the translators, when they arrived, how wonderful it was that they came on the anniversary of his "naval victory over Antigonus" (Aristeas 7:14). But the only such recorded Egyptian naval victory occurred many years after Demetrius death, so the letter is a obvious fraud or forgery, much like the forged Donation of Constantine (Latin, Donatio Constantini) which was a forged Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Roman Bishop or Pope.

are they just more Alexandrian codices? Here is a description given online:

"At this time, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC), the ruler of Ptolemaic Kingdom, sent a request to Eleazar, the chief priest in Jerusalem. He wanted him to send translators, to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, for his library at Alexandria. The letter known as the Letter of Aristeas describes how Ptolemy II requested translators and Eleazar sent 72 scribes, who translated the Septuagint in 72-days. Hence, the name Septuagint, means Seventy from the Latin septuaginta,“

So how much truth is there to this 'story'?

Here is Ministry magazine on the issue:
"The Word became flesh

The Bible says, "The Word [Christ] was made flesh" (John 1:14). What does the Greek word for "flesh" mean? Does it tell us whether Christ's human nature was sinful or sinless? Sarx appears 151 times in the New Testament. 4 Arndt and Gingrich's A Greek-English Lexicon gives it eight meanings: (1) the material covering a body [1 Cor. 15:39]; (2) the body itself as a substance [chap. 6:16]; (3) "a man of flesh and blood" [John 1:14]; (4) "human or mortal nature, earthly descent" [Rom. 4:1]; (5) "corporeality, physical limitation(s), life here on earth" [Col. 1:24]; (6) "the external or outward side of life" [2 Cor. 11:18]; (7) "the willing instrument of sin" [Rom. 7:18]; and (8) the source of sexuality (John 1:13]. Only one of these (number 7) has to do with sin. Therefore sarx does not necessarily mean ''sinful''5

In Greek, the usual word for "sin" is hamartia 6 and not sarx. Schweitzer's theological dictionary notes that sarx may designate an earthly sphere (see 1 Cor. 1:27), not necessarily "sinful and hostile to God, but simply . . . limited and provisional." 7 It also says sarx may mean an object of trust (see Rom. 2:28). Here "what is sinful is not the sarx, but confidence in it." 8 Schweitzer concludes, "Where sarx is understood in a full theological sense, as in Galatians 5:24, it denotes the being of man which is determined, not by his physical substance, but by his relation to God." 9

Does God becoming flesh merely mean He received a human body? Christ said of His incarnation, " 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me' " (Heb. 10:5, N.I.V.). In agreement Paul wrote, "He appeared in a body" (1 Tim. 3:16, N.I.V.). The Greek word for "body" is soma, yet the word "body" (N.I.V.) in 1 Timothy 3:16 is not soma but sarx. It merely means "enfleshment," not "sinful."

How, then, do we understand these words: God sent His "Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and. . . condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3)? First, consider what Paul could have said. He might have written, (1) God sent His Son in sinful flesh or (2) in the likeness of flesh. The first would mean His flesh was sinful, and the second would say that He only appeared to be in the flesh but was really some extraterrestrial being (cf. 1 John 4:1-3, a text misunderstood by some). 10

Paul said neither. He focused on Christ coming in the likeness of sinful flesh. The key word is "likeness." Two Greek words are translated "like" in English: isos, meaning "same," as in Acts 11:17, where "God gave them the like [same, isos] gift," and homoioma, used in Romans 8:3, meaning "similar" (because human), but not "same" (because not sinful). Scripture is consistent on this point. Thus Philippians 2:7 says of Jesus that He "was made in the likeness [homoioma] of men." 11 Hebrews 2:17 says, "He had to be made like (homoioo) his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest" (N.I.V.).

Do these Greek words and these passages suggest that Jesus was only similar to other humans in having a sin-affected physical human body, but not the same as other humans, for He alone was sinless in His spiritual relationship with God? Ellen White thought so.12 The Biblical evidence we have looked at so far supports such a conclusion."https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1985/06/what-human-nature-did-jesus-take-unfallen