Heretics and the Modern Versions

For all you who prefer the new modern versions of the Bible, you should be aware of the facts about those involved in the underlying Greek Text for the New Testament. Almost all the modern versions, take their Greek Text from that published either by the United Bible Societies, or Nestle and Aland. These include the, NASB, NIV, ESV, NRSV, etc.

Read what follows, and then decide whether you are happy that the version that you are using is one that is "blessed" by the Holy Spirit. If you assume that these remarks by the scholars do not have any bearing on the text they were working on, then you ought to seriously consider the fact that you have been deceived by the father of lies!

I cannot emphasise strong enough, that the Word of God ought to be the work of faithful men of God, who have the highest regard to its integrety, and have no doubts to the Infallibility, inerrancy, and trustworthiness of the Holy Bible. Anyone who even has a hint of a doubt on the authorship or authority of the Bible, should never be considered for the work of translation.

THE UNITED BIBLE SOCIETIES GREEK TEXT

Since its third edition, this popular Greek text, published in Münster, Germany, is identical to the 26th edition of the Nestlé-Aland Text. The 1st edition was published in 1966; the 4th, in 1983. The first four editors were Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Bruce Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, and Eugene Nida “initiated, organized, and administered” the first UBS project. Carlo M. Martini has been on the editorial committee since 1967. Not one of these men believes the Bible is the infallible Word of God.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CARLO MARIA MARTINI

“The risen Jesus is present to each one, as though the individual loved person were the only object of his love. The risen Christ is the love of God revealed in our hearts by the Spirit, in the heart of each and of all and in each of all. Jesus does not individualize this ‘each’; he gives himself to the church, the world, the angels, and the universe. Jesus exists for all. But he is for all in such a way that he is for each one, thus making each one become a part of the whole. Such is the power of the resurrection of the ‘abbreviated’ Word, which has made itself small. Whoever accepts the scandal of the Word-become-small will share in the glory of the universality of the cosmic Word which embraces and synthesizes everything, in which all things find their order and fullness, in which everything is resumed and established” (Carlo Martini, Through Moses to Jesus, p. 121).

“The deification which is the aim of all religious life takes place. During a recent trip to India I was struck by the yearning for the divine that pervades the whole of Hindu culture. It gives rise to extraordinary religious forms and extremely meaningful prayers. I wondered: What is authentic in this longing to fuse with the divine dominating the spirituality of hundreds of millions of human beings, so that they bear hardship, privation, exhausting pilgrimages, in search of this ecstasy?” (Carlo Martini, In the Thick of His Ministry, p. 42).

EUGENE NIDA

“...God’s revelation involved limitations. ... Biblical revelation is not absolute and all divine revelation is essentially incarnational. ... Even if a truth is given only in words, it has no real validity until it has been translated into life. ... The words are in a sense nothing in and of themselves. ... the word is void unless related to experience” (Nida, Message and Mission, New York: Harper & Row, 1960, pp. 222-228).

“In a time when the Bible was thought to be written in a kind of Holy Ghost language, the only criterion to exegetical accuracy was the pious hope that one’s interpretations were in accord with accepted doctrine. At a later period, when grammar was viewed almost exclusively from an historical perspective, one could only hope to arrive at valid conclusions by ‘historical reconstructs,’ but these often proved highly impressionistic. At present, linguistics has provided much more exact tools of analysis based on the dynamic functioning of language, and it is to these that one ought to look for significant developments in the future” (Eugene Nida, Language Structure and Translation, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 259).

“Most scholars, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, interpret the references to the redemption of the believer by Jesus Christ, not as evidence of any commercial transaction by any quid pro quo between Christ and God or between the ‘two natures of God’ (his love and his justice), but as a figure of the ‘cost,’ in terms of suffering” (Eugene Nida and Charles Taber, Theory and Practice, 1969, p. 53)

BRUCE MANNING METZGER

Metzger‘s modernism was also evident in the notes to the New Oxford Annotated Bible RSV (1973). Metzger co-edited this volume with Herbert May. It first appeared in 1962 as the Oxford Annotated Bible and was the first Protestant annotated edition of the Bible to be approved by a Roman Catholic authority. It was given an imprimatur in 1966 by Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts. Metzger wrote many of the rationalistic notes in this volume and put his editorial stamp of approval on the rest. Consider some excerpts from the notes:

INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT: “The Old Testament may be described as the literary expression of the religious life of ancient Israel. ... The Israelites were more history-conscious than any other people in the ancient world. Probably as early as the time of David and Solomon, out of a matrix of myth, legend, and history, there had appeared the earliest written form of the story of the saving acts of God from Creation to the conquest of the Promised Land, an account which later in modified form became a part of Scripture. But it was to be a long time before the idea of Scripture arose and the Old Testament took its present form. ... The process by which the Jews became ‘the people of the Book’ was gradual, and the development is shrouded in the mists of history and tradition. ... The date of the final compilation of the Pentateuch or Law, which was the first corpus or larger body of literature that came to be regarded by the Jews as authoritative Scripture, is uncertain, although some have conservatively dated it at the time of the Exile in the sixth century. ... Before the adoption of the Pentateuch as the Law of Moses, there had been compiled and edited in the spirit and diction of the Deuteronomic ‘school’ the group of books consisting of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, in much their present form. ... Thus the Pentateuch took shape over a long period of time.”

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT:

“Jesus himself left no literary remains; information regarding his words and works comes from his immediate followers (the apostles) and their disciples. At first this information was circulated orally. As far as we know today, the first attempt to produce a written Gospel was made by John Mark, who according to tradition was a disciple of the Apostle Peter. This Gospel, along with a collection of sayings of Jesus and several other special sources, formed the basis of the Gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke.”

MATTHEW BLACK

“It is well known that the primitive Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word of mouth and that this oral tradition resulted in variant reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the Christian record was committed to writing it continued to be the subject of verbal variation, involuntary and intentional, at the hands of scribes and editors” (Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, p. 633)

“This mission is described in the language of the church and most commentators doubt that the Trinitarian formula was original at this point in Matthew’s Gospel, since the NT elsewhere does not know of such a formula and describes baptism as being performed in the name of the Lord Jesus (e.g. Acts 2:38, 8:16, etc.).”

ALLEN WIKGREN

“Of course the New Testament writers wrote something. But what is the use of picturing this original copy? It had no status as a sacred document; no reverence for it as Scripture was accorded it until a century after its writing; it was valued only for its practical value; it was early and frequently copied” (Donald W. Riddle, “Textual Criticism as a Historical Discipline,” Ang. Theological Review 18, 1936, p. 227, cited from E. Jay Epps, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Harvard Theological Review, 1999, Vol. 92, No. 3, pp. 245-281).

KURT ALAND (also co-author of the Nestle-Aland Greek Text)

“This idea of verbal inspiration (i.e., of the literal and inerrant inspiration of the text), which the orthodoxy of both Protestant traditions maintained so vigorously, was applied to the Textus Receptus with all of its errors, including textual modifications of an obviously secondary character (as we recognize them today)” (Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon, 1962, pp. 6, 7).

“The present state of affairs, of Christianity splintered into different churches and theological schools, is THE wound in the body. The variety in the actual Canon in its different forms is not only the standard symptom, but simultaneously also the real cause of its illness. This illness--which is in blatant conflict with the unity which is fundamental to its nature--cannot be tolerated. ... Along this road [of solving this supposed problem], at any rate, the question of the Canon will make its way to the centre of the theological and ecclesiastical debate. ... Only he who is ready to question himself and to take the other person seriously can find a way out of the circuus vitiosus in which the question of the Canon is moving today ... The first thing to be done, then, would be to examine critically one’s own selection from the formal Canon and its principles of interpretation, but all the time remaining completely alive to the selection and principles of others. ... This road will be long and laborious and painful. ... if we succeed in arriving at a Canon which is common and actual, this means the achievement of the unity of the faith, the unity of the Church” (Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon, 1962, pp. 30-33)

 

And your definition of "faithful men of God" is those who "baptize" babies and persecute those who say only believers can be baptized after they profess belief? </font>[/QUOTE]Are you saying that you know that the schorals who worked on the KJV persecuted people? The issue of baptism of babies, though wrong, was even apporved of by John Calvin himself, and is carried out by many Reformed Churches today. Surely you are not saying that they are "heretics" because of this? Just because the KJV is the work of the "Church of England", you cannot conclude that they are the same as the COE today? ALL these scholars were truly born-again, and had a very high regard for the Holy Bible.

Lets stick with the facts and stop trying to defend the heresies that were believed by those on the USB and Nestle-Aland Text Committies. Can you show me where even one of those responsible for the KJV questioned the authority of the Bible? With your reasoning, it does not matter if anyone things that Bible is the Word of God or not, as long as they can do a little translation work, as the Jehovah's Witnesses do! Its no wonder the Church of Jesus Christ is in the state that it is today, far too many liberals in it!

 

Yabba, as the Scripture itself says, "we can do nothing against the Truth, but for the truth" (2 Corinthians 13:8)

The debate on the Holy Bible has been going on for 100's of years now, and will no doubt continue to go on till the Lord returns.

It is because of the extreme importance of this subject, that I write so strongly on it. I consider the "doctrine" of the Holy Bible, to be the second most important "doctrine" in the Church (that of "God" being the most important), as all that we believe and teach, is based on this most Holy and Infallable Word of Almight God. It is os the utmost importance that we as Christains know all of the facts about the various versions that are available, especially since there are differneces on very important doctrinal passages between the KJV and modern versions, like the reading of the Revised Version, which can only be classified as heretical, because in introduces the possibility of error in the Word of God, when it reads for 2 Timothy 3:16, as "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable...". This reading suggests that only the Scriptures "inspired by God are profitable", thereby saying that there are some that are NOT so inspired by God! This sort of heretical nonsense is now taught by some who hide under the "Evangelical" banner, like Daniel Fuller, Clarke Pinnock, and even sadly, G E Ladd and Bernard Ramm, whose views on Scripture cannot be considered as "orthodox"

 

It should be noted, that when I use the term "Heretic", I do so with regard to the view of the person or group referred to, and not in relation to whether they are saved or not, which is not for me to say. This, I use to show when the beliefs of soemone cannot be considered as "orthodox", and are therefore more correctly to be considered as being "Hersey", according to the Encarta Concise English Dictionary. means: "sombody whose opinions, beliefs, or theories in any field are considered by others in that field to be extremely unconventional or orthodox"

 

The last word should read "unorthodox"

 

As I recall you posting yourself... Prove it!

Your adding one more doesn't help too much. </font>[/QUOTE]Alcott, I was just wondering if you would consider the original Word of God to be Infallable and Inerrant in its completeness (Plenary)?

 

WHERE IS YOUR DOCUMENTED PROOF THEN?

 

Can you prove what I have said to be incorrect, then?

 

Almost all. . . ? Then you state "These include . . ." It would help if you read inside of the front covere of those particular translations because not everyone you included is included. </font>[/QUOTE]"Almost all" in English mean just that, "not all"!!!