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[reddogs]

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.

[reddogs]

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

[reddogs]

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.

[reddogs]

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.

[reddogs]

Here is the line of the various versions which followed the reading of the Textus Receptus and you can see why the Waldensians were persecuted and their Bibles and manuscripts burned, I feel because it had the true text which some wanted to destroy.

These versions include: The Peshitta Version (AD 150), The Italic Bible (AD 157), The Waldensian (AD 120 & onwards), The Gallic Bible (Southern France) (AD177), The Gothic Bible (AD 330-350), The Old Syriac Bible (AD 400), The Armenian Bible (AD 400 There are 1244 copies of this version still in existence.), The Palestinian Syriac (AD 450), The French Bible of Oliveton (AD 1535), The Czech Bible (AD 1602), The Italian Bible of Diodati (AD 1606), The Greek Orthodox Bible (Used from Apostolic times to the present day by the Greek Orthodox Church). [Bible Versions, D.B. Loughran]
http://home.sprynet.com/~eagreen/kjv-3.htm

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Masoretic Text

1524-25 Bomberg Edition of the Masoretic Text also known as the Ben Chayyim Text

THE NEW TESTAMENT

All dates are Anno Domini (A.D.)

30-95------------Original Autographs
95-150----------Greek Vulgate (Copy of Originals)
120---------------The Waldensian Bible
150---------------The Pesh*tta (Syrian Copy)
150-400--------Papyrus Readings of the Receptus
157--------------The Italic Bible - From the Old Latin Vulgate used in Northern Italy
157--------------The Old Latin Vulgate
177--------------The Gallic Bible
310--------------The Gothic Version of Ulfilas
350-400-------The Textus Receptus is Dominant Text
400--------------Augustine favors Textus Receptus
400--------------The Armenian Bible (Translated by Mesrob)
400--------------The Old Syriac
450--------------The Palestinian Syriac Version
450-1450------Byzantine Text Dominant (Textus Receptus)
508--------------Philoxenian - by Chorepiscopos Polycarp, who commissioned by Philoxenos of Mabbug
500-1500------Uncial Readings of Receptus (Codices)
616--------------Harclean Syriac (Translated by Thomas of Harqel - Revision of 508 Philoxenian)
864--------------Slavonic
1100-1300----The Latin Bible of the Waldensians (History goes back as far as the 2nd century as people of the Vaudoix Valley)
1160------------The Romaunt Version (Waldensian)
1300-1500----The Latin Bible of the Albigenses
1382-1550----The Latin Bible of the Lollards
1384------------The Wycliffe Bible
1516------------Erasmus's First Edition Greek New Testament
1522------------Erasmus's Third Edition Published
1522-1534----Martin Luther's German Bible (1)
1525------------Tyndale Version
1534------------Tyndale's Amended Version
1534------------Colinaeus' Receptus
1535------------Coverdale Version
1535------------Lefevre's French Bible
1537------------Olivetan's French Bible
1537------------Matthew's Bible (John Rogers Printer)
1539------------The Great Bible
1541------------Swedish Upsala Bible by Laurentius
1550------------Stephanus Receptus (St. Stephen's Text)
1550------------Danish Christian III Bible
1558------------Biestken's Dutch Work
1560------------The Geneva Bible
1565------------Theodore Beza's Receptus
1568------------The Bishop's Bible
1569------------Spanish Translation by Cassiodoro de Reyna
1598------------Theodore Beza's Text
1602------------Czech Version
1607------------Diodati Italian Version
1611------------The King James Bible with Apocrypha between Old and New Testament
1613------------The King James Bible (Apocrypha Removed)

This Received Text or  Majority Text (Textus Receptus), was soon translated into a old Latin version before Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and was called the Italic Bible. The Vaudois (later called Waldensians) of northern Italy used the Italic Bible.The Vaudois (Waldenses) the Albigenses, used it and passed it on to the Reformers (Luther, Calvin and Knox) who all held to the Received Text.

Now the "Waldensian," or "Vaudois" Bibles stretch from about 157 to the 1400s AD. The fact is, according to John Calvin's successor Theodore Beza, that the Vaudois received the Scriptures from missionaries of Antioch of Syria in the 120s AD and finished translating it into their Latin language by 157 AD. This Bible was passed down from generation, until the Reformation of the 1500s, when the Protestants translated the Vaudois Bible into French, Italian, etc. John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards believed, as most of the Reformers, that the Vaudois were the descendants of the true Christians, and that they preserved the Christian faith for the Bible-believing Christians today.

[reddogs]

But lets get back to what occurred because of these corrupted Alexandrian manuscripts. Now the corrupted Alexandrian text was allowed to creep into the early church and led to the spread of a wrong belief or doctrine which divided the church, confused even true followers, and is with us to this day. Arius, parish priest of the church of Alexandria, spread his doctrine which diminished the deity of Christ and create such a controversy in the Christian church that a general council was called at Nicaea, by the emperor Constantine in A.D. 325, to consider and rule upon its teaching. Arius maintained "that the Son was totally and essentially distinct from the Father; that He was the first and noblest of those beings whom the Father had created out of nothing, the instrument by whose subordinate operation the Almighty Father formed the universe, and therefore inferior to the Father, both in nature and dignity." This opinion was condemned by the council, which decreed that Christ was of one and the same substance with the Father. For ages it continued to agitate the Christian world, as the Arians spread the false teaching of Arianism among the people of the Roman Empire and beyond. We can look at the changes and deletions of the Alexandrian text and its derivatives and see the results in this view held by Arians, it almost destroyed the faith of Christian believers.

But what was it that was in these changes that led to the spread of Arianism.
Lets go back and look a the Vaticanus & Sinaiticus since they were somehow 'found' in the Vatican Library & a monastery in the Sinai respectively. They were not in the original Greek language, but in a Coptic translation, an early Egyptian language. These previously unknown or unrecognized Alexandrian manuscripts became known collectively as the Alexandrian Codices .

In Alexandria the Gnostic heresy had many followers, it was a Greek line of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism and started soon after the death of Christ.  Gnosticism tried to blend into Christianity and attempted to combine Paganism with Christianity. Some Gnostic groups had beliefs that often contradicted the beliefs of other Gnostic groups. The Gnostic mixed their beliefs into the manuscripts they made of the scriptures, putting changes of their particular beliefs or taking out what disagreed with it.

The Alexandrian Codices that Westcott & Hort's version used, the Vaticanis & the Sinaiticus reflect this. In fact many, if not all of the passages altered or missing from these codices were in fact quoted by the early church fathers as far back as the late 1st century. For instance, if one reads Irenaeus' Against Heresies 3.10.5-6, he states, "Furthermore, near the end of his Gospel, Mark says:'thus, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God.'" quoting Mark 16:19. Irenaeus wrote this in AD180, some 200 years before the Alexandrian Codices, yet he quotes word for word all the verses from the missing part of Mark which were supposedly not to have been added until the 4th or 5th centuries.

With the discovery of a Gnostic Library called the Nag Hammadi, it became clear that the sect known as the "Gnostics" did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. Nor did they really believe in His humanity either. Jesus' mission according to the Gnostics, was to impart special knowledge or "Gnosis" to spirits trapped in this material world seeking release. Thus, Jesus never died on the cross, was never resurrected, was not God, nor was He human. Rather conveniently, all the altered or missing texts in the Alexandrian Codices always happen to involve one or a combination of these subjects.

If one looks below the surface, the pieces fall into place. All these "missing" verses were in the original texts written by the apostles, but taken out in the Alexandrian versions. The older manuscripts & the many quotes from the 1st and 2nd century church fathers more than confirm that. However, since these verses did not agree with the theology being taught by the Gnostics, when they made their own Alexandrian copies of the Greek originals, they conveniently altered or deleted them to suit their own ideas of what God should say.

Westcott & Hort picked up on these corrupted Alexandrian texts as they supported views prevalent in their time from Darwinism & secular humanist questioning of the validity of orthodox Christianity, if just a few verse could be altered or brought into question, it would serve their purpose. These corrupted Alexandrian texts easily appealed to Westcott & Hort's own views. They as seen in many of the letters they exchanged, knowingly made a Greek translation of what was a changed or heavily edited & thus corrupted Alexandrian translation of a Greek original.

And yet here we are today, with the same text in the NIV and other new versions which was one of causes of Arianism, and Christians pick it up and don't understand what it is..

[reddogs]

All the modern translations which were written during this time are based on the Westcott & Hort Coptic Greek text including the American Standard Version (ASV), the New International Version (NIV), the New World Translation (NWT) & many others with vague references or worse deceptive about what they are based on. But since from the theory Westcott & Hort had spread, the Alexandrian Codices were considered older than any document in the Textus Receptus. The idea of Westcott & Hort mushroomed and had made many believing that these verses did not exist in the original manuscripts that the apostles wrote and may even have been added by eager scribes or others sometime between the 3rd century & the 5th. This idea grew andwas the prevailing theory for many years.

However, since Westcott & Hort's version, some revealing scholarship & textual discoveries have taken place and there now exist over 24,000 fragments & complete texts of the New Testament, many dating to even earlier than the Alexandrian Codices. There is even fragments of the Gospel of Matthew dating to AD 50 a mere twenty or so years after the crucifixion of Christ. From this assemblage of 24,000 documents, scholars have found it agrees with Textus Receptus and thus  has shown the value of the KJV  as the more authoritative text.

 (You can look for Acts 8:37 in most of these 'Modern' Bibles based on the Westcott & Hort Coptic Greek text & you will see that it skips directly from 8:36 to 8:38 without the proclamation of the deity of Christ by the Ethiopian.)

[Bob Pickle]

I favor the KJV and Received Text.

[Daryl Fawcett]

Have you seen the following video???:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X0bmLOHR8M&t=01

Very interesting information in the video that is verified in our own SDA Bible Commentary.