Corruption in Modern Bible Versions (Part 1) - Different Underlying Greek and Hebrew Manuscripts
Submitted by Pastor Chad Wagner on Wednesday, July 24, 2013. For a master copy of the outline and for more resources on the modern Bible perversions, click here: Bible Versions
I. “...stand still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God” (1Sa 9:27).
II. Some basic facts about the Bible.
1. The Bible is inspired by God; it is the word of God, not man. (2Ti 3:16; 2Pe 1:21; 2Sa 23:2)
2. The Bible is infallible. (Psa 12:6; Psa 19:7; Pro 30:5)
3. God regards His word above His very name! (Psa 138:2 c/w Eph 1:20-21)
4. God’s word is complete and finished. (Psa 119:89)
5. We are not to add to it or take way from it. (Deu 12:32; Deu 4:2; Psa 30:5-6; Rev 22:18-19)
6. God promised to preserve His word for ever. (Psa 12:6-7; Psa 100:5 c/w Joh 17:7; Isa 30:8; Isa 40:8; Mat 5:18; Mat 24:35)
III. Is every book with the title of “Bible” really the Bible?
1. Is the Jehovah’s Witness bible a real Bible? It reads in Joh 1:1, “In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”.
2. The Jehovah’s Witness bible is also missing numerous verses. How many verses need to be missing before the book is not considered a Bible?
3. The NIV is missing at least 16 complete verses, all 16 are also missing in the JW “bible”. (Mat 17:21; Mat 18:11; Mat 23:14; Mar 7:16; Mar 9:44, 46; Mar 11:26; Mar 15:28; Luk 17:36; Luk 23:17; Joh 5:4; Act 8:37; Act 24:7; Act 28:29; Rom 16:24; 1Jo 5:7)
IV. Why all the missing verses and changes? -- The underlying text of the modern versions is different from that of the KJV.
1. The New Testament.
A. The New Testament of the NIV and all modern versions since 1881 is translated from Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which is based primarily on two (out of approx. 5000) Greek manuscripts of the N.T: Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (Aleph).
B. These two manuscripts originated in Egypt; a place notorious in scripture as a place of sin and bondage. (Isa 31:1)
2. The Old Testament.
A. The Old Testament of the modern versions is translated from different Hebrew texts than the KJV, such as Kittel's Biblia Hebraica, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT).
B. "They admit, in their [the New American Standard Version - NASV] Preface (p.viii), the following: "Hebrew Text: In the present translation the latest edition of [1] Rudolph Kittel's BIBLIA HEBRAICA has been employed together with the most recent [2] light from lexicography, [3] cognate languages, and [4] the Dead Sea Scrolls."" - D.A Waite, Defending the King James Bible (p. 20).
C. "The Hebrew text they [NASV] use is Kittel's BIBLIA HEBRAICA. ... This edition has about fifteen to twenty suggested changes in the Hebrew text placed in the footnotes on each page. If you multiply this by the 1424 pages in this Kittel Bible, it comes out to between 20,000 and 30,000 changes in the Old Testament." - Ibid (p. 21).
D. "The New International Version has the same thing to say as to the Old Testament foundation they are using for their translation. On pages viii-ix of the New International Version of 1978, the editors wrote: (p. viii) "For the Old Testament, the standard Hebrew text, the Masoretic text, as published in the latest editions of [1] BIBLIA HEBRAICA [which is the same Kittel Bible I mentioned before] was used throughout. The [2] DEAD SEA SCROLLS contain material bearing on an earlier stage of the Hebrew text...The translators also consulted the more important early versions--[that is] the [8] SEPTUAGINT""- Ibid (p. 21-22).
V. The Authorized Version of 1611, the King James Version.
1. The New Testament.
A. The KJV stands in distinction to all new versions written after 1881, because its New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus (TR), which is Greek for the “Received Text”. The TR was compiled by Erasmus in the early 1500s. It was not a new version, but a printed Greek New Testament that was representative of 85% or more of the surviving 5000+ extant manuscripts of the N.T. that closely agreed with one another.
B. The manuscript family that the KJV was translated from originated in Syria where the first N.T. churches were founded and where the Apostle Paul was based out of. (Act 11:26)
C. The KJV agrees with the majority of the Greek manuscripts and all true English Bibles that preceded it, (Gothic, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, Great Bible, Bishops, etc).
2. The Old Testament.
A. The KJV was translated from the Masoretic Text, specifically the Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text.
B. "The word, "Masoretic," is from the Hebrew masar ("to hand down")." - D.A Waite, Defending the King James Bible (p. 26).
C. "The Daniel Bomberg edition, 1516-1517, was called the First Rabbinic Bible. Then in 1524-25, Bomberg published a second edition edited by Abraham Ben Chayyim (or Ben Hayyim) iben Adonijah. This is called the Ben Chayyim edition of the Hebrew text. Daniel Bomberg's edition, on which the King James Bible is based was the Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text. This was called the Second Great Rabbinic Bible. This became the standard Masoretic text for the next 400 years. This is the text that underlies the King James Bible. For four hundred years, that was the Old Testament Hebrew text." - Ibid, (p.27).
VI. The Westcott and Hort Greek N.T. (text underlying the N.T. of the modern versions) vs. the Textus Receptus Greek N.T. (text underlying the N.T. of the KJV).
1. How do the Greek texts underlying the modern versions and the KJV compare with each other? Are they basically the same?
2. "The Westcott and Hort Text changes the Textus Receptus in over 5,600 places. Do you know how many changes they made? My own personal count, as of August 2, 1984, using Scrivener's Greek New Testament referred to above, was 5,604 changes that Westcott and Hort made to the Textus Receptus in their own Greek New Testament text. Of these 5,604 alterations, I found 1,952 to be OMISSIONS (35%), 467 to be ADDITIONS (8%), and 3,185 to be CHANGES (57%). In these 5,604 places that were involved in these alterations, there were 4,366 more words included, making a total of 9,970 Greek words that were involved. This means that in a Greek Text of 647 pages (such as Scrivener's text), this would average 15.4 words per page that were CHANGED from the Received Text. Pastor Jack Moorman counted 140,521 words in the Textus Receptus. These changes would amount to 7% of the words; and 45.9 pages of the Greek New Testament if placed together in one place." - D.A Waite, Defending the King James Bible (p. 41).