Christianity and how the bible was put together

[EdSutton]

For the sake of differentiating, I shall take the liberty to 'bold' and color two things in your post, here. The first is opinion, which I will make "blue." This does not mean that the opinion is incorrect or inaccurate, but it is still only opinion, as opposde to objective statement.

The second is inaccurate statements, regardless of how sincere you and those you cite, may be about such. I shall bold these in "red." Each and every one of these has been refuted, usually more than once, by one or more posters, yet they still pop up in your posts, just like some freeloading relative who only drops by at mealtime, hoping for a "free lunch."

Finally, I will make one note in "brown" regarding something that I have previously noted here, which quote I shall repeat at the end of my reply, here.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1311074&postcount=356

The Hebrew scribes made word for word copies of the texts everytime the parchaments got old and passed them on to the next generation. They did this from the time of Moses to the present day.
The massoretic text was compiled by the massoretes from these accurate copies that were passed down through the ages. The Isaiah scroll is one of those copies. Separated by hundreds of years they still have the authentic text of the Hebrew scriptures.
The same thing was done in the byzantine section of the Roman empire with the New Testament scriptures. They were copied word for word and passed down to the next generation as the parchaments got old. The accurate copies, unaltered, of the new testament scriptures is what came to be known as the majority or byzantine text, or textus receptus.Thousands of accurate copies exist in other languages and Greek and they agree together.
The King James Version (old king James version) has accurate translations of the massoretic text old testament and textus receptus new testament.

The so-called Critical NT text, in fact differs with the MT in somee 5=6000 plqaces, that actually affect translation; Granted, that is far fewer differences than onwee will find, with the MT vs. TR. However -

To quote the late Dane John W, Burgon, " 'Very nearly — not quite:'"
IMO, the late Dean had it exactly right!

There are still some 1800 differences between the MT and the TR, according to Hodges and Farstad, and Robinson and Pierpont, with some 1000 of them affecting translation (although not doctrine, particularly).

This still happens to be a significant number. So -

How come this "inconvenient truth" is never acknowledged??

It is the original writings in English and as the inspired Word of God, it is infallible when you understand it correctly. (Conjecture, at best! -Ed)
The Old King James version bible is the real Word of God. Copied, recopied, and handed down through the ages.

I cannot say that for the modern versions. They have texts that were obviously corrupted and are not the original writings mixed in them, ie. vaticannus and sinaiticus. Vaticannus and sinaiticus were corrupted by gnostic heretics in the 3rd or 4th century, and they disagree with the accurate texts and disagree with each other in many places.

Since you can say the same thing in different words, and words need to be added to make proper sentence structure in other languages, when I say they agree I mean they are saying the same thing, although other words might be used to say it.
example:
Jane went to school.
Jane left her house and arrived at school.
Those are two different ways of saying the same thing. They agree although using different words.
The Tyndale bible, the Geneva bible, Luther's german (sic) bible, the bishops (sic) bible, and the King James version, all agree, in that they say the same things, but they may say those things using different wording because they were translated by different people. [The old King James Version is the best translation of the original texts and was done by the best translators.]
You can say the same thing using different words, and that is what I mean by agree.

The corrupted manuscripts, vaticannus and sinaiticus, don't agree and they don't say the same things. Words are added, deleted, and changed from the original meanings, probably to promote gnosticism which disagrees with Christianity on important doctrines. The modern versions don't say the same things as the original writings in about 5% of important places that have to do with doctrine.

[This last statement you have made above, is simply, patently false.

There is nothing like any 5% of (NT) Scripture where there is any real question, regarding doctrine, based on the NT CT vs. the NT TR. At worst, one can find maybe a coupla' or three dozen examples of where there might be any question, yet you seem to keep blithely repeating this charge! Why????

This objection I have raised, here, has nothing to do with whether or not I think that Codex Aleph (Sinaicatus) or Codex B (Vaticanus) is a very good copy of Scripture, for frankly, I generally do not think they are to be preferred, over the entire range of Scripture found in them, from what I have been able to find and access, both on-line, and in my own two "hard copies" of the Greek New Testament. [/quote]Finally, my alter ego, Language Cop, previously had me post this,

Incidentally, Language Cop says the word you keep hunting for is spelled "parchment", not "parchiament" as you have repeatedly written it, so he knows it is not a typo!

and now says I should repeat the spelling of "parchment," since that word appears to be giving you multiple, continuing problems. It was and is not "parchiament", as shown in my above linked post. Nor is the word "parchament" as You have spelled it here. And the manuscript you refer to is correctly spelled "Vaticanus."

Ed

 

[Matt Black]

Not to mention Masoretic...

 

[antiaging]

For the sake of differentiating, I shall take the liberty to 'bold' and color two things in your post, here. The first is opinion, which I will make "blue." The so-called Critical NT text, in fact differs with the MT in somee 5=6000 plqaces, that actually affect translation; Granted, that is far fewer differences than onwee will find, with the MT vs. TR. However -


There are still some 1800 differences between the MT and the TR, according to Hodges and Farstad, and Robinson and Pierpont, with some 1000 of them affecting translation (although not doctrine, particularly).

Ed

The old King James version, Old Testament, is translated directly from the Hebrew Massoretic text. It is not translated from the textus receptus.
It don't matter how many differences between the TR and the MT their are; the KJV translators went directly from the MT in Hebrew to English.
[Because the Septuagint probably came at a later date than the writings of the apostles, the Septuagint quoted from the apostles in certain places. The apostles did not quote from the Septuagint, because they used the massoretic text, and not the Septuagint. And they commented on the quotations adding what they thought appropriate, just like preachers do in sermons today.]

The King James translators came along and saw what the Hebrew Masoretic text said and simply translated it right over into the English. They didn't quibble with it; they didn't try to harmonize it. ... Never be ashamed of the traditional Masoretic Hebrew text that underlies the King James Bible! It was accumulated by the Jews in fulfillment of Ro. 3:1- 2. We agree with Dean John William Burgon who wrote of "the incredible folly of tinkering with the Hebrew text" (from a letter April 8, 1885, appearing in the Guardian, as quoted in John William Burgon, Late Dean of Chichester--A Biography, 1892, by Edward Mayrick Goulburn).

"Not only was the Scripture accumulated by the Jews, but it was authorized by Jesus. Jesus Christ authorized the traditional Masoretic Hebrew O.T. text (Mt. 4:4; 5:17-18; Lk. 24:27,44). The Lord Jesus Christ never refuted any text, any word, or any letter in the Hebrew O.T. He didn't say, `Now Moses was misquoted here, it should have been this...' He offered no textual criticism whatever. Had there been any changes, I'm sure He would have corrected it, but He didn't. It stands written! His stamp of approval is on the Masoretic Hebrew text.

http://www.wayoflife.org/ency/textency/ency003e.htm

The KJV New Testament is translated from the textus receptus rendering of Stephanus and someone else. It is not translated from the work of Erasmus who interpolated with the Latin Vulgate in places.
People after Erasmus made better and more accurate renderings of it. They had more copies to work with than Erasmus. To get all of the epistles and gospels you needed more than one copy. The copies were partial that were found. The KJV translators used their copies of the textus receptus.

The Textus Receptus is the text that has been used for 2,000 years by Christians. This is also the text that agrees with more than 95% of the Bible Manuscripts in Koine (common) Greek. It is known by other names, such as the Traditional Text, Majority Text, Byzantine Text, or Syrian Text.

In his essay Texual Criticism, Dr. Thomas Cassidy writes: "The Traditional text of the New Testament has existed from the time of Christ right down to the present. It has had many different names down through the years, such as Byzantine Text, Eastern Text, Received Text, Textus Receptus, Majority Text, and others. Although no complete Bible manuscripts have survived which would allow us to date the Traditional text to the first century, there is a strong witness to the early existence and use of the Traditional text by the early church in its lectionaries."

A few facts showing the respected historical position of the Textus Receptus are in order. Its prominence and respect did not begin in 1611 with the KJV translators. They merely recognized (as others before them had), that the Textus Receptus was God's preserved word in the original New Testament language.



Consider the following:

Prior to the 20th century, all English Bibles since Tyndale's first New Testament (1526) were based on the Textus Receptus. This includes: Miles Coverdale's Bible (1535), Matthew's Bible (1500-1555), The Great Bible (1539), The Geneva Version (1560), The Bishops' Bible (1568), and the King James Version (1611). [STORY OF OUR ENGLISH BIBLE, by W. Scott]

Ancient Versions followed the reading of the Textus Receptus. 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://www.1611kingjamesbible.com/textus_receptus.html/

 

[Thinkingstuff]

BTW I have a copy of the King James Version. I like it because I like the language. I like Shakespear as well. But that has nothing to do with superiority of the text it was translated from.

Here are some points about the TR

Textus Receptus, or "Received Text," (abbreviated TR) is the name we use for the first published Greek text of the New Testament. For many centuries, it was the standard text of the Greek Bible. The name arose from the work of the kinsmen Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, who said of their 1633 edition, "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum" -- "So [the reader] has the text which all now receive."

Froben decided to approach Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most notable (if rather humanistic) scholars of his generation.... It is sad to report that such a noble undertaking was so badly handled... The speed with which the book went through the press meant that it contained literally thousands of typographical errors....The success of Erasmus's edition soon called forth new Greek testaments, all of them based largely on his. The first of these was published by Aldus Manutius in 1518 -- but although it contained an independent text of the Septuagint (the first such to be printed), its New Testament text was taken almost verbatim from Erasmus, including even the typographical errors. Hence the first truly new publication was Erasmus's own edition of 1519. This featured almost the same text as the 1516 edition, but with the majority (though by no means all!) of the errors of the press corrected... It was not until 1550 that the next great edition of the Textus Receptus was published. This was the work of Robert Stephanus (Estienne), whose third edition became one of the two "standard" texts of the TR. (Indeed, it is Stephanus's name that gave rise to the common symbol for the Textus Receptus.) Stephanus included the variants of over a dozen manuscript... The Stephanus edition became the standard Textus Receptus of Britain..Erasmus, having little time to prepare his edition, could only examine manuscripts which came to hand. His haste was so great, in fact, that he did not even write new copies for the printer; rather, he took existing manuscripts, corrected them, and submitted those to the printer. (Erasmus's corrections are still visible in the manuscript 2.) ...Even those who favour the Byzantine text cannot be overly impressed with Erasmus's choice of manuscripts; they are all rather late ...The result is a text which, although clearly Byzantine, is not a good or pure representative of the form. It is full of erratic readings -- some "Caesarean" (Scrivener attributes Matt. 22:28, 23:25, 27:52, 28:3, 4, 19, 20; Mark 7:18, 19, 26, 10:1, 12:22, 15:46; Luke 1:16, 61, 2:43, 9:1, 15, 11:49; John 1:28, 10:8, 13:20 to the influence of 1eap), some "Western" or Alexandrian (a good example of this is the doxology of Romans, which Erasmus placed after chapter 16 in accordance with the Vulgate, rather than after 14 along with the Byzantine text), some simply wild

So how pure is your TR? It obviously wasn't Immaculately concieved in the autographs and immaculatly passed down until the 1611 KJV. Sell your wares elsewhere. You know the phase "caveat emptor".

 

[EdSutton]

For the sake of differentiating, I shall take the liberty to 'bold' and color two things in your post, here. The first is opinion, which I will make "blue." The so-called Critical NT text, in fact differs with the MT in some 5-6000 places, that actually affect translation; Granted, that is far fewer differences than one will find, with the MT vs. TR. However -

To quote the late Dean John W. Burgon, "'Very nearly — not quite:'"
IMO, the late Dean had it exactly right!

There are still some 1800 differences between the MT and the TR, according to Hodges and Farstad, and Robinson and Pierpont, with some 1000 of them affecting translation (although not doctrine, particularly). [Edited by me, to correct several of my own typos, and I reinserted the portion in 'bold' (as it was originally included in 'bold'), from my original response, which you 'Snipped!', in order to accurately reflect context.]

The old King James version, Old Testament, is translated directly from the Hebrew Massoretic text. It is not translated from the textus receptus.
It don't (sic) matter how many differences between the TR and the MT their (sic) are; the KJV translators went directly from the MT in Hebrew to English.
[Because the Septuagint probably came at a later date than the writings of the apostles, the Septuagint quoted from the apostles in certain places. The apostles did not quote from the Septuagint, because they used the massoretic text, and not the Septuagint. And they commented on the quotations adding what they thought appropriate, just like preachers do in sermons today.]

Thank you, Brother David Cloud - Or is the adopted alter ego maybe Bro. Barry Burton, Dr. D. M. Waite, Dr. Edward F. Hills, John Doe, or Dr. 'Joe' Whatshisface today?

For one who signs himself or herself as antiaging, this is certainly getting a bit old, with the number of corrections to what has been posted, that I need to keep making, I would say! Incidentally, should I have been be surprised that you excised from your quotes, the one sentence where the late Dean John W. Burgon was quoted, albeit with two typos? Or is the quote I posted just one more "inconvenient truth"? These happen to be rhetorical questions, so I am not really expecting a response, to them.

I apologize if this sounds a bit 'flip', but it often does become hard to keep up with the players without a scorecard. Not to mention, that you (and/or whomever you have acquired this so-called 'information' from) have already made at least three major errors, thus far in your post. And we are just now getting started, no less!

1.) The first error is that I did not reference the OT, at all, here. And were it not for the fact that, IMO, you are more concerned with "pushing" the particular version you prefer, as opposed to actually finding out what is being said, you would have noticed this, had you taken the time to actually read my posts, as well as some of the other ones posted. (FTR, I care not what particular version or edition anyone prefers, but would like to see this reported accurately as stated, rather than seeing any 'thinly veiled attack' against any version or edition preferred by some other.)

2.) The abbreviation "MT" is not used to reference the OT, at all, generally speaking, and certainly not by me. It rather stands for the Majority Text, of the NT, is generally equivalent (but not to a 100% certainty, with absolutely zero variants) to the so-called Byzantine text tradition, of the NT, and is how I used, and always do use, that term. (If you choose to 'argue' or raise the point(s), at least learn the nomenclature, that is being used. It will help with the perception that you might actually know something about what you are discussing, which, IMO, is unfortunately lacking in most of these discussions, about the subject!)

3.) So therefore, it is false that "It don't (sic) matter how many differences between the TR and the MT their (sic) are;" for that is exactly the false perception that I was correcting, which happens to be one that you have previously put forth - namely that the TR is exactly that of the MT. (Do I need to explain what "TR" stands for, as well? How about "LXX" and/or "DSS"??)

4.) The implication that the LXX dates from roughly the 2nd Century, A.D. forward, is ridiculous, to say the least, given what we know. Rather, I would suggest this is nothing more than 'spin' designed to promote an "Only-ism" view. The very fact that Apollos quotes one Scripture (Deut. 32:43) found in both the LXX and DSS [although not found in the Masoretic text(s)] as Scripture, in Heb. 1:6b shows this to be a fallacy, for one could not possibly cite a Scripture that did not already exist.

5,) Nor could Jesus have read from a text that did not exist, as I have also shown to be the case in Lk. 4:16-22, and previously posted, in response to you, here. I'll repeat this once again. (Please try and pay attention, this time.) The text that Jesus read from does not correspond to any known text, be it Masoretic, DSS or LXX, yet Jesus both read from the book (or scroll) and declared it Scripture. Below is where that post (#125 in the thread) is found, once again, in which you ignored what was said, but instead made a 'swipe' at any and all other Bible versions (post # 179, same thread) as well as impugned my own abilities, character, motivations and spirituality. FTR, I am not particularly bothered by that (I've endured far worse, I assure you.), but I merely cite it to show that you did not address the facts I cited, even then, nor are you doing so now.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1306382&postcount=125

6.) And there is absolutely zero evidence that would lead anyone to honestly think that the LXX quotes from the Apostles, instead of the Apostles quoting from the LXX. In fact, the KJV translators address this very fact.

Now to the later we answere; that wee doe not deny, nay wee affirme and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set foorth by men of our profession (for wee have seene none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.

['Snipped' for length!]

The like wee are to thinke of Translations. The translation of the Seventie dissenteth from the Originall in many places, neither doeth it come neere it, for perspicuitie, gratvitie, majestie; yet which of the Apostles did condemne it? Condemne it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men doe confesse) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had bene unworthy the appellation and name of the word of God. (From the KJV Preface: The Translators to the Reader)

May I suggest you actually read what they said, rather than just swallow completely what someone else puts forth. It might save some choking, later. The text in the 1611 spelling can be found here, with what I have quoted a little over halfway down the page.

http://www.kjvbibles.com/kjpreface.htm

7.) I'll not even bother to comment on how it appears you rate the Holy Spirit and inspiration, here, save to say that when the words are stated or implied to be Scripture, your assertion that they are 'preaching' and "commenting on" as opposed to "quoting" is less than an orthodox view of inspiration, at best.

[Snipped]

In his essay Texual Criticism, Dr. Thomas Cassidy writes:

[Snipped to print.]

FTR, Dr. Thomas Cassidy is a member of the Baptist Board. I really would like to hang around and play some more, but will have to let it go, at least for now. I have to go feed and water the cattle, then get to the canning of some three bushels of tomatoes.

Ed

 

[Thinkingstuff]

Ed you are a wonderful source of information. Thanks.

 

[Matt Black]

Ditto; you are indeed a very learned brother.

 

[EdSutton]

Even though I probably don't deserve them, thanks for the accolades by Thinkingstuff and Matt Black.

Ed