"Modern versions" in a Nutshell

At one time the KJV was a modern translation.

 

Is this what happened in 1611?

 

I liked your presentation. :thumbs:

It was indeed "in a nutshell".

 

Yeah, so well they christened infants and had the state's king as "head of the church."

 

If "still believed in the authority and power of the word of God" describes them and their approach, I will please to unlike them and their racks and hotseats and strappados and annual required teachings that opposition to the king [the one who "authorized" this version] means imprisonment or death in this world and damnation in the next.

Am I supposed to say "Hail Mary", or what?

 

You are again repeating the lie that W&H and the whole company of the English Revised Version translators were composed of Unitarians.

 

I am generally in agreement with you but not entirely at this point. He was wrong for demanding that the terms 'baptizo" and "ekklessia" should not be translated but instead the ecclesiastical terms "baptism" (a transliteration) and "church" should be used to represent those Greek terms.

I have his 15 rules and most are good but not these as they interferred with proper translation of these Greek terms.

 

Well, the "whole" company may not have been Unitarians but the fact that the "whole" company allowed Unitarians into the translation committee certainly speaks volumes about the orthodoxy of the "whole" company of translators.

 

JOSEPH HENRY THAYER

Thayer was on the American Standard Version translation team (chairman of the New Testament committee) and was the author of the famous Thayer’s Greek Lexicon.

He was a Harvard professor of New Testament criticism. He was the assistant to Ezra Abbot at Harvard, and succeeded him as Bussey professor of New Testament criticism and interpretation at the Harvard Divinity School when Abbot died in 1884.

He was a Unitarian who denied the deity of Christ and the infallibility of Scripture. Prior to his tenure at Harvard, Thayer was a professor at Andover Seminary, but resigned in 1882 in protest to Andover’s requirement of “a rigid assent to the letter of the Creed” (Ernest Gordon, The Leaven of the Sadducees, 1926, p. 145). Thayer could not assent to the infallibility of Scripture and the deity of Jesus Christ.



EZRA ABBOT

Abbot was on the American Standard Version translation (ASV) committee (1901). He was a Harvard theology professor and was an influential textual critic.

The testimony of Matthew Riddle, who was a translator on the ASV committee: “Dr. Abbot was the foremost textual critic in America, and his opinions usually prevailed when questions of text were debated” (Matthew Riddle, The Story of the Revised New Testament, 1908, p. 30). Matthew Riddle‘s testimony is very important, as he was one of the most influential members of the ASV committee and one of the few members who survived to see the translation printed.

The testimony of the ASV committee upon the death of Abbot on March 21, 1884. The following excerpt from a memorial resolution issued by the committee gives additional evidence of the Unitarian’s influence on the Revision on both sides of the ocean: “Always one of the first in his place at the table, and one of the last to quit it, he [Ezra Abbot] brought with him thither the results of careful preparation. His suggestions were seldom the promptings of the moment. Hence they always commanded consideration; often secured instant adoption. ... But it was in questions affecting the Greek text that Dr. Abbot’s exceptional gifts and attainments were pre-eminently helpful. Several of his essays on debated passages, appended to the printed reports of our proceedings which were forwarded from time to time to the brethren in England, are among the most thorough discussions of the sort which are extant, won immediate respect for American scholarship in this department, and HAD NO SMALL INFLUENCE IN DETERMINING THAT FORM OF THE SACRED TEXT WHICH WILL ULTIMATELY, WE BELIEVE, FIND ACCEPTANCE WITH ALL CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS” (Historical Account of the Work of the American Committee of Revision, 1885, p. 68).

Abbot was a Christ-denying Unitarian.

He authored the footnotes in the ASV that say that Christ should not be worshipped and that question his deity. For example, at John 9:38, the wicked footnote states, “The Greek word denotes an act of reverence, whether paid to a creature (as here) or to the Creator.” I cite this from an edition of the 1901 ASV that I have in my library.

He argued that the last clause of Romans 9:5 was a doxology to God and does not refer to Christ.

In Acts 20:28 Abbot led the committee to remove “God” and replace it with “the Lord,” thus corrupting this powerful witness to the deity of Jesus Christ. Unitarians and theological modernists alleged that Jesus is “the Lord” but not actually God.

Abbot wrote a long article arguing for the omission of “God” in 1 Timothy 3:16.



http://www.wayoflife.org/database/unitarianism.html

 

GEORGE VANCE SMITH

Smith was on the British translation committee that produced the English Revised Version.

He was a Unitarian minister of St. Saviour’s Gate Chapel, York, who denied the deity and atonement of Jesus Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the divine inspiration of Scripture. This was made plain in his book The Bible and Popular Theology, which appeared in 1871. This was reissued in 1901 in an enlarged fifth edition entitled The Bible and Its Theology: A Review, Comparison, and Re-statement. Consider some of the blasphemies that came from the pen of this man:

“... what is really meant by the term in question [the Holy Spirit], is no other than God himself ... but this fact will not justify us in saying that it is ‘God the Holy Spirit,’ as though it were a distinct personality...” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, p. 215).

“[Salvation] was in no way purchased of him [God] or of his justice. It was not because his ‘wrath’ was appeased, or satisfied by the sufferings of an innocent substitute, but because of his own essential fatherly goodness and ‘great love.’ ‘It is the gift of God,’ not a thing bought from him with a price, except in so far as this might be FIGURATIVELY said in reference to that death of the Messiah...” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, p. 246).

“... it is equally clear that it was not as their substitute that he died for men; not to redeem them from eternal misery; not ... because the clouds of God’s wrath had gathered thick over the human race, and required a victim, and could find that victim only in the innocent Jesus! ... The popular theory, in reality, is largely the product of dark and ignorant ages...” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, pp. 248, 253).

“It is, that the Bible manifestly offers itself to us, the people of these later times, largely as a Book of History. It never professes or claims to be more: never, in truth, makes any profession or claim at all on that point; but stands before us there, simply as a collection of writings preserving for us the remaining literature, the traditions, and the history of the Hebrews. ... It nowhere, in truth, claims inspiration, or says anything definite about it. The biblical inspiration, whatever it is or was, would seem, like the genius of Shakespeare, to be unconsciously possessed. The phrase, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ and its equivalents, are simply to be referred to the style of the prophet; or to be understood only as indicating his belief that what he was about to say was conformable to the Divine Will. ... It is scarcely allowable, in short, to think of inspiration as being or acting in THE DEAD WORDS OF ANY BOOK” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, pp. 269, 276, 277).

“Then again, are we not, all of us who seek to be so, spiritual Sons of God?” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, p. 298).

“Jesus of Nazareth is nowhere presented to us as God, but simply as the Christ... ‘There is one God, the Father,’ and ‘one Lord, Jesus Christ;’ but these are not in any sense one being or one nature” (Smith, The Bible and Its Theology, p. 299).

When an attempt was made to have Smith removed from the ERV translation committee, Westcott, Hort, Stanley, and Thirlwall stood by him and threatened that they would resign if Smith were removed. The sordid story is given by A.G. Hobbs in the foreword to the Centennial Edition of Burgon’s Revision Revised: “[Smith’s participation in the communion service] led to a public protest signed by ‘some thousands of the Clergy.’ The Upper House passed a Resolution that ‘no person who denies the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ ought to be invited to join either company to which was committed the Revision of the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture: and that it is further the judgment of this House that any person now on either Company should cease to act therewith.’ This Resolution was also passed by the Lower House. And still they could not get this non-believer off the Committee. Here is a real shocker: Dean Stanley, Westcott, Hort, and Bishop Thirlwall all refused to serve if Smith were dismissed. Let us remember that the Bible teaches that those who uphold and bid a false teacher God speed are equally guilty. ‘For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds’ (2 John 9-11). No wonder that the Deity of Christ is played down in so many passages!” (A.G. Hobbs, Foreword, The Revision Revised Centennial Edition).

Smith testified that the textual changes in the English Revised Version and the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament reflected his own theology. Some of the passages listed by Smith as being theologically superior in the modern texts and versions as opposed to the King James Bible were Rom. 9:5; 1 Tim. 3:16; Tit. 2:13; and 1 Jn. 5:7, and that is because these passages in the critical text weakened the doctrine of Christ’s deity, which Smith rejected. This English Reviser admitted what modern version proponents today such as James White often try to deny, that the modern Greek texts and versions weaken the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ! No man is blinder than he who WILL NOT see. Following are two examples from Smith’s pen:

“The only instance in the N.T. in which the religious worship or adoration of Christ was apparently implied, has been altered by the Revision: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,’ [Philippians 2:10] is now to be read ‘in the name.’ Moreover, no alteration of text or of translation will be found anywhere to make up for this loss; as indeed IT IS WELL UNDERSTOOD THAT THE N.T. CONTAINS NEITHER PRECEPT NOR EXAMPLE WHICH REALLY SANCTIONS THE RELIGIOUS WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST” (Smith, Texts and Margins of the Revised New Testament Affecting Theological Doctrine Briefly Reviewed, p. 47). This statement, of course, is a lie; but we reprint it to demonstrate the damnable heresies of this modern textual critic.

“The old reading [“God” in 1 Tim. 3:16] is pronounced untenable by the Revisers, as it has long been known to be by all careful students of the New Testament. ... It is in truth another example of the facility with which ancient copiers could introduce the word God into their manuscripts,—a reading which was the natural result of THE GROWING TENDENCY IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TIMES ... TO LOOK UPON THE HUMBLE TEACHER AS THE INCARNATE WORD, AND THEREFORE AS ‘GOD MANIFESTED IN THE FLESH’” (G. Vance Smith, Texts and Margins, p. 39).

http://www.wayoflife.org/database/unitarianism.html

 

Tell me what Unitarian or unorthodox doctrines are in the 1881 ERV and the 1901 ASV.