by Perry 105 Replies latest watchtower bible
These scriptures are SHOCKING to Jehovah's Witnesses. Don't anyone try and tell me they aren't. I was a regular pioneer and pounded the pavement as much as anyone.... and no one told me this stuff like this. I am a 3rd generation JW on my Dad's side and a 4th generation on my Mom's side.
Ex-JW's... look upon your God! Coughing and spitting up blood..... For You.
All have broken his laws.
There is so much that is false in these copy and paste posts it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps just the first two paragraphs as a beginning:
Their master Greek text is based mainly upon two thoroughly corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts. These manuscripts were available to the King James translators but were rejected because of the thousands of disagreements with each other as well as disagreement with between 95% to 99% of all other ancient manuscripts. Additionally, they were very messy with many marginal notations and scratch outs, etc.
The "two thoroughly corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts" are, presumably, the codex Vaticanus and the codex Sinaiticus. Neither manuscripts were available to the King James translators - the codex Sinaiticus was only discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 and the codex Vaticanus was not made available to scholars for study prior to the nineteenth century - so it is nonsense to say they were rejected. And of course there are differences with each other, just as there are differences with all hand-written manuscripts of any length, but they are described as being Alexandrian because there are sufficient similarities in the text to ascribe them to the same text-type. These are the oldest near-complete mss of the New Testament and are in substantial agreement with even earlier mss such as the Bodmer papyri, P 66 and P 75 , from the early 3rd century.
The Master Greek Text that the King James Version is based upon is called the Textus Receptus and is in agreement with the majority of ancient Greek texts…. Up to 99%
I wrote a post on 'Erasmus and the Textus Receptus' some years ago and see no point in reproducing the whole post as it can be accessed by the link. However, I do think it worth reproducing the list of manuscripts on which the Textus Receptus is based :
He [Erasmus] spent the years 1511-1513 in Cambridge, England where he was teaching and writing. While there he collated the text using four Greek manuscripts which he got from the Franciscan community in Cambridge. One of these has been identified as the Leicester Codex. This late manuscript (cursive 69) was written in the fifteenth century by Emmanuel of Constantinople, a Greek scribe employed by George Neville, Archbishop of York.
When Erasmus moved to Basle in 1514 he took these manuscripts with him but hoped to find older and more complete manuscripts in Basle to publish the Greek New Testament. It was not to be. He was able to obtain five manucripts left in the monastic library by Cardinal John of Ragusa, who had been sent on a mission to the Greeks by the Council of Basle (1431), and probably brought them back from Constantinople. None were ancient or particularly valuable except one (of the eleventh century) which he didnt use much as he (erroneously) believed its text had been tampered with to conform to the Latin Vulgate. They can all still be found in the University Library in Basle. He also borrowed a twelfth-century miniscule from his friend John Reuchlin as none of the manuscripts had the book of Revelation.
Of these manuscripts he primarily used:
Codex Basiliensis 2e. (14th or 15th century). This was used by Erasmus for the Gospels with press corrections by his hand , and scored with red chalk to suit his pages!
Codex Basiliensis 2ap (13th or 14th century). Once belonged to the Preaching Friars then to Amerbach, a printer of Basle. Erasmus used the text for the Acts and Epistles.
Codex Johannis Reuchlini 1r (12th century). The text and commentary are so mixed up as to be indistinguishable in parts. This cursive was rediscovered in 1861 by Franz Delitzch in a library at Mayhingen in Bavaria.
The other manuscripts were not used much.
Codex Basiliensis 1eap. (11th or 12th century). The only cursive of any value was only used on rare occasions as Erasmus believed it had been altered to conform with the Vulgate text.
Codex Basiliensis 7ap.
Codex Bailiensis 4ap. (13th or 14th century) Badly written by several hands, and full of contractions. Erasmus made some use of this copy and of its marginal readings.
Codices Laurentii Vallae 15r. Seven unknown Greek manuscripts of St John, cited in Laurentius Vallas "Annotation in N.T.", edited by Erasmus in Paris, 1505. Erasmus retrieved verse 20 of the last chapter of Revelation which was missing from codex Reuchlini.
The additional manuscripts he had available for his second edition of 1519 were:
Codex Corsendonck (twelfth century) Two manuscripts from the Austin Priory of Corsendonck. They are now in the Imperial Library at Vienna.
A Greek manuscript lent to him by the Monastery of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle.
Codex Aureus (6th 8th century). A Latin manuscript lent to him by Matthew Corvinus, King of Hungary.
The additional manucripts he had available for his third edition of 1522 were:
Two manuscripts he consulted at the library of St. Donation, Brussels.
A manuscript at the Abbey of St. James at Liege. It was left there in the fourteenth century by Radulphus of Rivo.
What improvements did Erasmus make to his first edition?
In his second edition of 1519 he corrected a large portion of the typos and a few readings, chiefly on the authority of a twelfth century manuscript, codex Corsendonck.
In his fourth edition of 1527 Erasmus was able to take advantage of better readings in the Complutensian Polyglot (1522) to improve the text, especially in the Apocalypse, where he amended at least ninety readings. However, although the editors of the polyglot Bible had access to some Vatican manuscripts there is no evidence they were much older than those available to Erasmus.
Prior to his fifth edition of 1535 he arranged for his friend, Paulus Bombasius, to check the authenticity of 1 John 5:7 in the Codex Vaticanus.
In John Mills edition of the Greek NT (1707), in which he noted variations in the Greek text, he states that Erasmus second edition contains 400 changes from the first - 330 for the better, 70 for the worse.
That the third edition differs from the second in 118 places.
That the fourth differs from the third in 16 or 23 places, in addition to the ninety referred to above.
That the fifth differs from the fourth only four times.So the facts are that none of the Greek manuscripts used by Erasmus which we have been able to identify are earlier than the eleventh century and the actual alterations which he made in his Greek text appear to be inconsiderable. That although both Stephanus and Beza had the codex Beza available to them it was relegated to marginal readings in the editions accepted as "Received Text". That the father of the English Bible (Tyndale) relied directly on Erasmus Greek text and that is largely what we see when we read the AV. The question facing all of us who admire the work of Erasmus and his colleagues is whether we will imitate their spirit. Erasmus wrote to a critic, Martin van Dorp: "You cry out that it is a crime to correct the gospel. This is a speech worthier of a coachman than of a theologian. You think it is all very well if a clumsy scribe makes a mistake in transcription and then you deem it a crime to put it right. The only way to determine the true text is to examine the early codices."
As for the slanders against Westcott & Hort, these may or may not be true but they are simply ad hominem attacks and have nothing to do with the qualifications of these two men as textual scholars. The reasons that Westcott & Hort described the Byzantine text as later than other types was (pp.93-119 of their Introduction) :
(1) the Byzantine text contains combined or conflate readings which are clearly composed of elements current in earlier forms of text;
(2) no ante-Nicene Father quotes a distinctively Byzantine reading; and
(3) when the Byzantine readings are compared with the rival readings their claim to be regarded as original is found gradually to diminish, and at last to disappear.
Perry
Have you read: The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? by James White
The "two thoroughly corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts" are, presumably, the codex Vaticanus and the codex Sinaiticus. Neither manuscripts were available to the King James translators - the codex Sinaiticus was only discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 and the codex Vaticanus was not made available to scholars for study prior to the nineteenth century - so it is nonsense to say they were rejected.
Hi Earnest,
Thanks for drawing attention to the above statement. I found this from Sam Gipp's The Answer Book:
One of the most prominent manuscripts which has been discovered since 1611 is the Sinaitic manuscript. This witness, though horribly flawed, was found amongst trash paper in St. Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai in 1841 by Constantine Tischendorf.
Sinaiticus is a sister manuscript of the corrupt manuscript Vaticanus. Both read very similarly. So, although the Sinaitic manuscript was discovered over 200 years after the Authorized Version was translated, its READINGS were well known to the translators through the Vatican manuscript which was discovered in 1481 and also through the Jesuit Bible, an English translation of 1582.
So we see that there are no readings available today to scholars which were not already in the hands of the King James translators. We might further add that an honest scholar will admit that this "great number of newly discovered manuscripts" that are trumpt abroad agree with the Greek text of the Authorized Version rather than challenging it.
As for the slanders against Westcott & Hort, these may or may not be true but they are simply ad hominem attacks and have nothing to do with the qualifications of these two men as textual scholars.
You are welcome to believe whatever you wish. I happen to think that communication with spirits is an abomination to God and that he would never use such men to so much as touch his word.
Deputy Dog,
No, I haven't. I have mainly been trying to compare scriptural differences between translations for myself in a doctrinal context. It's very time consuming, and at times pretty dry.
But, I have turned up some amazing finds though.
Indulge me.
Would a 100% accurate Bible translation still contain the myth of creation, the fables of a global flood and human/spirit hybrids? Would it still make the provably false claims that a 1st Century virgin became pregnant to a son who could walk on water and raise the dead?
The word 'accuracy' doesn't belong in this topic.
Why was the Holy Spirit so ineffectual in assuring the accuracy of the translation of the Bible?
Why was the Holy Spirit so ineffectual in assuring the accuracy of the translation of the Bible?
False premise. 95% to 99% is ineffectual? About the only other thing God could have done is take away Free Will. Why didn't God make it impossible for Satan to lie to Eve?
95%
95% is a gross overstatement. 99% is closer to the truth.
BTS
Free Will
False premise.
