The Lies of the Versions – Jim MacIntosh

The Lies of the Versions

To read this article on Jim MacIntosh’s site, follow this link, Assembly Line.ca

In April of 1891, just a year before he went home to be with his Lord, C.H. Spurgeon addressed the graduating students of Baptist College. Here is a brief bit of what he told those students concerning attacks on the Scriptures:

“In reading books of the new order, though no palpable falsehood may appear, you are conscious of a twist being given you, and of a sinking in the tone of your spirit; therefore be on your guard. Our warfare is with men who are giving up the atoning sacrifice, denying the inspiration of Holy Scripture and casting slurs upon justification by faith…..the truth of God versus the inventions of men. …In fact, the “wine on the lees well refined” was so mixed with the muddy water of human speculation, that it was no longer wine at all.
Yet, surely there is a remnant of faithful ones, and these will be stirred to action and will cry mightily unto God that the plague may be stayed. The gospel is too precious for us to be indifferent to its adulteration. By the love we bear to the Lord Jesus we are bound to defend the treasure with which he has put us in trust.
We live in perilous times: we are passing through a most eventful period; the Christian world is convulsed; there is a mighty upheaval of the old foundations of faith; a great overhauling of old teaching. The Bible is made to speak today in a language which to our fathers would be an unknown tongue.”

Did you notice that line in the second paragraph? Read it again: By the love we bear to the Lord Jesus we are bound to defend the treasure with which he has put us in trust. It is in that spirit of love to the Lord Jesus, and with love to the fellow saints that I prepare this document.
– –
How important is it that we have and use the Bible that God gave to us when holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost? The great reformer Martin Luther believed it to be important when he said:

“No greater mischief can happen to a Christian people than to have God’s Word taken from them or falsified, so that they no longer have it pure and clear. God grant that we and our descendants be not witnesses of such a calamity. Let us not lose the Bible, but with diligence, in fear and invocation of God, read and preach it.”

The Bible is God’s Word, His revelation to us of all that He wants us to know. Nothing is more important than knowing what God wants us to know. So it is critical that we have the Word of God as God intends that we should have it. It is also important to the devil to try to deprive us of what God wants us to know. As the father of lies, the devil hates the truth, and will do all that he can to distort and pervert the truth, as he did to our first parents. The devil has always despised the Word of God and has done all he could through the centuries to attack it. And he has not stopped. His greatest weapon against the Word of God is the same one he has always used: lies!
The following words are extremely important:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Not all of the Bibles among us today contain all Scripture, although those who endorse them say they do. That is not the only lie being told by supporters of some of the Bibles that are finding their way into the hands of the Lord’s people. Many Christians are repeating these lies, although they are doing so in ignorance, believing what they have been told by people they trust. And many of those they trust have also been deceived.
What are these lies? This composition looks at eight of them; there are others.

1: The lie of the overzealous additions

Consider these crucial words:
Revelation 22:18-19: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
These words occur at the very conclusion of our Bible, almost the last verses of Scripture. They are extremely important and carry huge repercussions for those who add or take away anything from the Book. It is God’s Word and we have no right or authority to add to it or take anything away from it. If God gave us His Word (and He did), if we add to it or subtract from it we make it something other than God’s Word.
All Bibles are based on one of two texts, which we will refer to here as the Majority Text and the Minority Text. The term Majority Text is used because some 90 percent of all of the approximately 5,500 manuscripts that exist support it. Only five percent of all existing manuscripts support the Minority Text, while the other five percent are neutral, supporting both or neither.
If we examine the Bibles that are based on each of the two texts, we will find a large number of differences. Almost all of these differences involve content that is found in the Majority Text versions that is missing from the Minority Text versions. There are only two possible explanations for this:
Something was added in the Majority Text, or
Something was taken away in the Minority Text.
Either one would be a violation of Revelation 22:18 and19.
Those who endorse the Majority Text say that heretics deleted certain portions that they disagreed with or that they knew were damaging to their own beliefs. If this occurred, it would be a wilful deletion of the contents of the Word of God, a very serious charge.
Those who endorse the Minority Text say that overzealous Christians took the writings of the authors of the New Testament books and added to them things that they felt should have been included. Again, if this occurred, it would have been a wilful addition to the contents of the Word of God, a very serious charge.
So which happened? I will provide two separate arguments, both of which I believe lead to the conclusion that the Majority Text is the preserved Word of God and the Minority Text is not.
In light of Revelation 22:18 and 19, how likely would zealous Christians have been to tinker with the actual text of the Word of God? It seems to me that they would have been very careful to preserve the text rather than to alter it in any way. Compare that to the likelihood that a heretic might make changes of one kind or another, given that a heretic would have little regard for warnings such as those in Revelation 22:18 and 19. I admit this is not proof, but an appeal to common sense. But common sense does strongly favour the work of a heretic rather than an overzealous Christian in producing the differences in the text.
So what about actual proof? It exists!
If we were to study the manuscripts on which the Majority Text is based, we will find no evidence of tampering, no deletions, additions, or alterations in the text. In fact, there is a wonderful consistency from manuscript to manuscript, with variations almost non-existent. Those variations that occur are miniscule, resulting in no difference in meaning or content.
The same cannot be said about the manuscripts that support the Minority Text. Not only are those manuscripts inconsistent with those that support the Majority Text, but they are inconsistent with each other.
Let’s take a closer look at the two primary manuscripts on which the Minority Text is based: the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, which both date back to the 4th century. The word “codex” indicates they are not scrolls but books with leaves. They are both in good physical condition, and are printed on vellum, some form of animal skin, either lamb or antelope. But their content is not so good, to say the least. I will have more to say on these two manuscripts later, but for now, let’s just look at how they have been corrupted. Highly qualified scholars have examined these manuscripts and we will look at what some of them have had to say.
Barry Burton wrote a book called Let’s Weigh the Evidence, in which he makes the following observations about the Codex Sinaiticus:
The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was found in 1844 in a trash pile in St. Catherine’s Monastery near Mt. Sinai, by a man named Mr. Tischendorf. It contains nearly all of the New Testament plus it adds the ‘Shepherd of Hermes’ and the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’ to the New Testament. The Sinaiticus is extremely unreliable, proven by examining the manuscript itself. John Burgon spent years examining every available manuscript of the New Testament. He writes about Sinaiticus…
’On many occasions 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness. Letters, words or even whole sentences are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately cancelled; while that gross blunder, whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament.

On nearly every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions, done by 10 different people. Some of these corrections were made about the same time that it was copied, but most of them were made in the 6th and 7th century. … Phillip Mauro, a brilliant lawyer who was admitted to the bar of the US Supreme Court in April 1892, wrote a book called “Which Version” in the early 1900s. He writes concerning the Sinaiticus… ‘From these facts, therefore, we declare: first that the impurity of the Codex Sinaiticus, in every part of it, was fully recognized by those who were best acquainted with it, and that from the very beginning until the time when it was finally cast aside as worthless for any practical purpose.’
Another scholar, Dr. Samuel Gipp, in his book An Understandable History of the Bible, also comments on the Codex Sinaiticus:
One of the MSS is called Sinaiticus and is represented by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. This MS from all outward appearances looks very beautiful. It is written in book form (codex) on vellum. It contains 147 1/2 leaves. The pages are 15″ by 13 1/2″ with four columns of 48 lines per page. It contains many spurious books such as the ‘Shepherd of Hermes,’ the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’ and even the Didache.
The great Greek scholar, Dr Scrivener, points this out in his historic work A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus. He speaks of correctional alterations made to the MS: ‘The Codex is covered with such alterations… brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional or limited to separated portions of the MSS, many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.
Although produced in the 4th century, the Codex Vaticanus was discovered in 1481 in the Vatican library in Rome. Like the Sinaiticus, this codex is full of omissions, insertions, and amendments. Dr. Gipp, mentioned earlier, has the following to say about Vaticanus:
This codex omits many portions of Scripture vital to Christian doctrine. Vaticanus omits Genesis 1.1 through Genesis 46:28; Psalms 106 through 138; Matthew 16:2,3; Romans 16:24; the Pauline Pastoral Epistles; Revelation; and everything in Hebrews after 9:14.
It seems suspicious indeed that a MS possessed by the Roman Catholic church omits the portion of the book of Hebrews which exposes the ‘mass’ as totally useless (Please read Hebrews 10:10-12). The ‘mass’ in conjunction with the false doctrine of purgatory go hand-in-hand to form a perpetual money making machine for Rome. Without one or the other, the Roman Catholic Church would go broke! It also omits portions of the Scripture telling of the creation (Genesis), the prophetic details of the crucifixion (Psalm 22), and, of course, the portion which prophesies of the destruction of Babylon (Rome), the great whore of Revelation chapter 17.
Vaticanus, though intact physically, is found to be in poor literary quality. Dr. Martin declares, ‘B’ exhibits numerous places where the scribe has written the same word or phrase twice in succession. Dr. J. Smythe states, ‘From one end to the other, the whole manuscript has been travelled over by the pen of some… scribe of about the tenth century.’ If Vaticanus was considered a trustworthy text originally, the mass of corrections and scribal changes obviously render its testimony highly suspicious and questionable.
The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts, which make up less than one percent of the existing ancient manuscripts, differ significantly from the Received Text. Vaticanus omits at least 2,877 words; it adds 536 words; it substitutes 935 words; it transposes 2,098 words; and it modifies 1,132 words; making a total of 7,578 verbal divergences from the Received Text. Sinaiticus is an even worse corruption, having almost 9,000 divergences from the Received Text.
In fact, these two manuscripts do not agree with each other. Bible scholar Barry Burton notes that the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts disagree with each other more than 3,000 times in the Gospels alone!
Given the lack of respect that heretics would have for the content of Holy Writ, the presence of actual evidence that heretics did delete material from the original texts, and the presence of extensive evidence that the Minority Text manuscripts were heavily edited and altered, it is easy to believe that the Minority Text lacks material that was in the original texts.
Given the obvious reluctance of devoted Christians to tamper with Holy Writ, and the unblemished condition of manuscripts that support the Majority Text, and given the wonderful harmony and absence of disagreement among the thousands of manuscripts that support the Majority text, it is difficult to believe that overzealous Christians added material that was not in the original texts.

2: The lie of the oldest and the best

One of the most successful of the lies relating to the versions of the Bible is that the newer versions are founded on manuscripts that are the oldest in existence. From this it is implied that, being older, they must also be better. But while the Greek manuscripts that make up the Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus may be the oldest manuscripts available, they are definitely not the oldest versions of the Bible in existence. Several ancient versions, including the Peshitta, Italic, Waldensian, and the Old Latin Vulgate are at least two hundred years older than the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. And these ancient versions are all in agreement with each other and with the Majority Text. Remember that the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do not agree with each other, as we have already seen, having some 3,000 points of difference in the Gospels alone.
It is also true that the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts are in better physical condition than most other manuscripts. But does that automatically mean they are better in terms of their content? To suggest that they are is akin to suggesting that the most beautiful women are always the most virtuous, and that the most magnificent cathedrals always harbour the greatest truth. Why are they in better condition physically? For one thing, as we have already seen, they were written on high quality vellum and were therefore better able to stand the conditions of the centuries through which they have passed. For another, they are in better condition because nobody used them, primarily because they weren’t worth using. Bible scholars readily identified them as having been corrupted.
At this point, let me use an illustration to show the folly of the “older is better” argument:
In our fanciful story, Colonel Sanders is beginning his first restaurant, and is having great success because people like the flavour produced by his secret recipe with its eleven herbs and spices. The colonel wrote out the recipe on a sheet of paper so others in the restaurant could use it when he was not there. As he opened new restaurants, he wrote out the recipe to provide it to managers in the new locations, carefully dating each sheet of paper.
But one of the employees felt he could improve on the colonel’s recipe. He dropped two or three of the original herbs and added one or two spices, and wrote out the new recipe on a sheet of paper, which he carefully dated. He took that recipe to several of the restaurant managers and told them that it was new and improved, and suggested that they use it instead of the colonel’s recipe. Some of them actually tried it, but quickly rejected the recipe because the chicken did not taste right. So the renegade employee took his recipe home and placed it in a shoebox on a back shelf. There it sat for 40 years, until the man died.
One of his nephews discovered the recipe and became excited when he noted the date. During the 40 years, the colonel had replaced the sheets of paper that he had given to his restaurant managers several times, because constant use quickly rendered them too soiled and tattered to read. Each of the managers had copies of the true recipe that were dated only a few years or even a few months previous. The nephew took the 40-year-old false recipe to those restaurant managers and declared that, because it was older, it must be better than the newer copies of the colonel’s recipe.
Did they use his “older and better” recipe? Of course not! Only the paper was older, and the recipe was corrupted. Their “newer” versions were true to the colonel’s original.
And so it is with the manuscripts on which our Bible is based. The translators of the KJV, and of other versions that rely on the Majority Text, had access to the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts, but they rejected them when they found that they had been corrupted and were not true to the older versions.
When they translated the New Testament, the KJV translators, and the great reformers before them, including William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, and others, chose between two vastly different Greek texts:
The Received (Majority) Text that was favoured by the early churches of Christendom (The Greek, Waldensian, Albegensian, Gauls, and Celtic churches).
Or the Minority Text that was favoured by the Roman Catholic Church.
Was the Holy Spirit guiding those translators? One of the untruths being told about those early Protestant Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries is that were not aware of the Minority Texts produced in the 4th century, the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus codices. The truth is that as they began their work, they had copies of the Majority, Minority, and Neutral texts before them, along with a large number of ancient versions of the Scriptures:, including the Peshitta, Old Latin Vulgate, Italic, Waldensian, Albegensian, Gaul and Celtic Bibles. Besides all of these were thousands of scriptural citations of the early Church Fathers, dating back to the 2nd and 3rd century. They also knew that the Roman Church used a Eusebio-Origen type of Bible based on the Minority Text. With all of these resources before them, these men set aside the Minority Text and made the determination to produce versions of the Bible based entirely on the Majority Text, the same text used by the early Christian Church.
Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were produced by unbelieving Egyptian scribes who amended, added to, and deleted many portions of the true text and then palmed off their work as the Word of God. These manuscripts were then taken up by sceptical translators, who did not believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, to spawn a whole generation of new translations.

3: The lie of the careless KJV translators

The translators of the King James Version have come in for significant criticism for what is perceived by some to be inaccuracies and inconsistencies, some even accusing them of being careless in their work. But those men were anything but careless, and they worked diligently and scrupulously to make sure that their work was heavily edited for the presence of any mistakes of any kind.
To get an idea of their work, let us consider a portion of an article called The Authorized Version; What Today’s Christian Needs to Know about the Authorized (King James) Version, by G.W. and D.E. Anderson:
Because they were translating the very Word of God, they translated as much as possible word-for-word, producing a literal rendition of the Greek. They based the English Old Testament upon the Hebrew Masoretic ‘Text, using the ancient translations of the Hebrew as aids when the Hebrew was obscure, but remembering that these were translations only, and not the language into which God had given His Word to the people of Israel. The Authorized Version translators continued in the textual tradition which the Church had used and accepted for hundreds of years. In doing so, they continued the solidarity of both original language texts and also of earlier English translations, upon which they based their work. As careful as the Authorized Version translators were to translate word-for-word, there were occasions in which words had to be added in order to give clarity to the English translation. The translators did not just add words indiscriminately; these words were implied by the Greek and Hebrew, although not found in their explicit forms.  The translators took care to let the reader of Scripture know that these words were added; they placed the words in italic script rather than in the print of the regular text. Thus the reader could be certain of what was before him in his Bible; he would know that the words in italic script were, perhaps, open to interpretation. This upheld the Reformation doctrine of the ‘priesthood of all believers’; each believer-priest has the right and privilege – and responsibility – of interpreting the Scriptures for himself under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The translators took further care in their rendering of the Word of God into English. The Hebrew and Greek use different pronouns to distinguish between ‘you’ singular and ‘you’ plural. ‘Thee’ and ‘thou’ were not in common usage in the seventeenth century, but found a place in the Authorized Version in order that the English reader of Scripture could know, as the Greek reader did, that Jesus in His conversation with Peter had said that Satan had demanded to sift the disciples (‘you’) like wheat, but that Jesus had prayed specifically for Peter (‘thee’), so that he could strengthen his brethren (Luke 22.31-32). In this day, many Christians are so ego-centric, more interested in themselves as individuals than in their place as part of the body of Christ, that they view the pronoun ‘you’ as always speaking to themselves as individuals. Modern translators condemn the use of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ as antiquated, but these pronouns more correctly render the Greek and Hebrew texts and help eliminate the individualism so fervently held by modern man – and even modern Christians – in the twentieth century. (Note also in this regard the use of ‘you’ plural in Philippians 2.5.)
The Authorized Version translators were even concerned enough with rendering God’s Word faithfully that they left some passages ambiguous. Some grammatical constructions, such as the genitive case, could have two different translations; is Ephesians 3.19 speaking of the Christian’s love for Christ, or Christ’s for His people? This and other structures the Authorized Version translators in many instances left purposefully ambiguous, because God in the Greek and Hebrew had done so. They left to the expositors the work of interpretation according to sound principles of exposition, as well as to the individual reader of Scripture.
One of the places where the critics accuse the KJV translators of sloppiness is in using the term “Easter” instead of “Passover” in Acts 12:4: And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. In this verse, the Greek word Πάσχα (pronounced Paska or Pasga) is translated as Easter, the only place in the Bible where it is not translated Passover.
One of the errors of the modern translators is to assume that the Greek word Πάσχα always means Passover. It does not. This word is known as a polyseme, a word with multiple meanings. Almost every modern Greek-English dictionary will define the word Πάσχα as either Passover or Easter. And at the time of the KJV translators’ work, this multiple meaning for Πάσχα was well known. Remember that there is probably nobody alive today who had the knowledge of New Testament Greek that those translators had. Because they knew of the dual meaning, they had to decide which meaning was appropriate in this case. And they used their knowledge of the context to make that decision.
Actually, to translate Πάσχα as Passover in Acts 12:4 is ridiculous. Why? Look at the previous verse, Acts 12:3: And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.) This verse comes after the description in verse 2 of Herod seizing and killing James. Verse 3 relates to Herod’s arrest of Peter, making it clear that this occurred during or after the days of unleavened bread.
When is the Feast of Unleavened Bread? The Feast of Unleavened Bread is a seven day festival that begins on the evening of the 15 day of the month Nisan. When is Easter in relation to the days of unleavened bread? Depending on the date of the spring equinox, Easter would usually come two or three weeks after the days of unleavened bread. Now, when is Passover in relation to the days of unleavened bread? Passover is a one day (or one evening) event that is always celebrated on the evening of the 14 day of the month Nisan.
This means that when Herod arrested Peter during or after the days of unleavened bread, the Passover had already occurred for that year. So if Herod was waiting until after Passover to execute Peter, he would have to wait for almost an entire year! For a bloodthirsty fox like Herod, how likely was that? Only by translating Πάσχα as Easter does Acts 12:4 make sense. This shows that rather than proving the KJV translators were careless, it proves they knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it.

4: The lie of the KJV revisions

The committee that carried out the 1881 Revision, and the committees that created all of the subsequent modern versions of the Bible have all used the argument that, because there were previous revisions to the 1611 text of the King James Version, there is no reason to object to yet another revision. This argument is based on a claim that there were four earlier revisions to the KJV. This is a false claim. There have been no revisions to the text of the KJV. There were, in the early years after its first printing, new editions to clean up printing errors, printing styles, and spelling errors. But there have been no revisions made to the text as produced by the translators. To call the editions revisions is akin to having a university student present a report in Times New Roman font and then present the same report in Arial font, and claim the second to be a major revision to the first.
Although the printing press had been invented 161 years earlier, printing in 1611 was still very slow and difficult. All of the type was set by hand, one character at a time through the entire Bible. Any completed book was expected to have some printing errors, and the first printings of the Bible were no different. Correcting those obvious printing errors involved nothing like the major textual alterations that are to be found in modern Bibles.
Consider the second edition of the first printing in 1629, only 18 years after the very first printing. Among the people who worked on the second printing were Dr. Samuel Ward and John Bois, two of the people who worked on the very first printing. The next edition was only nine years later, in 1638. These two editions, both completed within 27 years of the original printing and while at least two of the men who worked on the first printing were still alive, account for the vast majority of the changes that have been made, including 72 percent of the textual changes.
The third and fourth editions were actually two parts of the same process, started in 1762 and completed in 1769, and they involved primarily the standardization of the spelling of various words.
Exactly what types of changes were made in these subsequent editions of the 1611 text? In addition to the actual typographical errors that had occurred, we can divide the changes up into three categories: printing changes, spelling changes, and textual changes.
Printing changes: The most significant difference in the appearance of the KJV from the first printing to the second edition 18 years later occurred because of printing changes. Although they involved absolutely no changes to the actual content of the text, these changes radically altered the appearance of the text. The first printing in 1611 was done in what is called Gothic Type style. This was a beautiful but difficult to read style that was changed for the Roman Type style in the second edition. Not only did the change to the Roman Type style make the Bible much more readable, but it also eliminated some confusing aspects of the Gothic Type style. For example, the letter “s” when used at the beginning or in the middle of a word looked like the Roman “f”. So a Roman “also” looked like “alfo” in Gothic, and a Roman “set” looked like “fet”. Similar confusing issues existed with the letters “j”, “u”, and “v”. Switching to Roman Type eliminated these issues. When the critics of the KJV refer to the thousands of alterations made to the original 1611 text, they are actually referring primarily to the change in the type that was used. Not one word changed! A revision? I think not!
Spelling changes: Although the English language had become well standardized by 1611, spelling of words had not become standardized. That is the reason for the changes that were made in 1762 and 1769, when spelling had become standardized. What did the editors change? Just the spelling of many of the words! In earlier printings, people spelled words as they pleased, with no consistency even within the same book. One of the inconsistencies, for example, was to add the letter “e” at the end of many words. That is why earlier printings included such spellings as “hee”, “shee”, “feare”, “darke”, and “beare”. Double consonants were also much more common. The word “ran” could appear as “ranne”, for example. But by the eighteenth century, spelling of words had become standardized. So the editors in 1762 and 1769 primarily applied standardized spelling to the text. In this process, they did not change one word from what was intended by the translators. A revision? Of course not!
Textual changes: But there were some textual changes made during this time, if you can call them textual changes. In total, some 400 textual changes have been made since the 1611 printing. While that might sound like a large number, it represents fewer than one change for every three chapters in the Bible. That is insignificant compared to the sweeping changes made by modern versions, which have several changes made in virtually every verse. So, what were those changes? Actually, they were merely the insertion or correction of words or phrases that the original printers accidentally dropped or misspelled when they were setting up the type. They were definitely not changes made for the purpose of altering the meaning. For example, in Matthew 6:3, the phrase “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” was originally printed “let not thy left hand know what thy right doeth” – the word “hand” was accidentally dropped by the 1611 printers. This was corrected only two years later! In fact, three quarters of the textual corrections were completed within the first 30 years. All of the textual changes are of this nature, all of them! The only one that could possibly have a doctrinal impact is in Psalm 69:32, where the 1611 reading was “seek good”, which the editors changed to “seek God”. This was obviously just a printing error (the adding of a single letter), and it was corrected by 1617. Can these textual changes be considered revisions? Not that I can see.

5: The lie of the spiritual character of the modern translators

Because the characters of the men who led the modern Bible translation movement down the Minority Text path are so suspect, those who support their work tell us that regardless of their character, these men were eminent scholars, experts in their field, and therefore their work should be viewed as entirely credible. Let’s look briefly at what those men really believed, to see if they qualify as suitable stewards of the truth of the Word of God. Just being eminent scholars is not enough. If these men went into the revision process carrying any bias toward or against any set of manuscripts, then that bias ought to have been declared. And if they went into the revision process with any personal agenda against any set of manuscripts, they ought to have disqualified themselves from the task. The leaders among the revisionists had such a bias and a personal agenda against the Majority Text. They also had doubts as to the inspiration of the Word of God and had convictions and involvements that would have disqualified them as being suitable candidates for reception to God’s Assemblies, to put it mildly.
In 1870, the Convocation of Canterbury commissioned a revision company to revise the New Testament. Their stated aim was “to adapt King James’ version to the present state of the English language without changing the idiom and vocabulary,” and “to adapt it to the present standard of Biblical scholarship.” The influential committee that was formed consisted primarily of distinguished scholars and divines within the Established Church of England, but with power to consult or add to their number eminent Biblical scholars of all denominations.
The most significant decision made at the start of the revision committee’s work was to select a Greek text from which to make the revision. The committee was persuaded that there was a Greek text that was of higher reliability than the Majority Text, or Textus Receptus, that the translators of the King James Version used. As they carried out their work, the committee members time and again selected the corrupt Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and rejected the Textus Receptus. It is important to know how they came up with that decision and who the people were who persuaded them to do so.
The most influential of the committee in terms of selecting the text for the revisions were Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort. The other committee members relied on the expertise of these two men, both of whom were strongly opposed to the Textus Receptus and were strong proponents of the Minority Texts. They openly admitted that they were sceptics who doubted the infallibility of the New Testament and the miracles of Jesus.
Dr. Samuel C. Gipp, in his publication The Answer Book, A Helpbook for Christians, provides the following valuable comments about Westcott and Hort:
Brook Foss Westcott (1825-1903) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) were two non-Christian Anglican ministers. Fully steeped in the Alexandrian philosophy that “there is no perfect Bible”, they had a vicious distaste for the King James Bible and its Antiochian Greek text, the Textus Receptus. [The infidelity of Westcott and Hort is well documented in this author’s work entitled An Understandable History of the Bible, 1987, Bible Believer’s Press, P.O. Box 1249, Pottstown, PA. 19464]
It cannot be said that they believed that one could attain Heaven by either works or faith, since both believed that Heaven existed only in the mind of man.
Westcott believed in and attempted to practice a form of Communism whose ultimate goal was communal living on college campuses which he called a “coenobium.”
Both believed it possible to communicate with the dead and made many attempts to do just that through a society which they organized and entitled “The Ghostly Guild.”
Westcott accepted and promoted prayers for the dead. Both were admirers of Mary (Westcott going so far as to call his wife Sarah, “Mary”), and Hort was an admirer and proponent of Darwin and his theory of evolution.
It is obvious to even a casual observer why they were well equipped to guide the Revision Committee of 1871-1881 away from God’s Antiochian text and into the spell of Alexandria.
They had compiled their own Greek text from Alexandrian manuscripts, which, though unpublished and inferior to the Textus Receptus, they secreted little by little to the Revision Committee. The result being a totally new Alexandrian English Bible instead of a “revision” of the Authorized Version as it was claimed to be.
It has only been in recent years that scholars have examined their unbalanced theories concerning manuscript history and admitted that their agreements were weak to non-existent.
Sadly, both men died having never known the joy and peace of claiming Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
Dr. Henry M Morris, a founding father of the Institute for Creation Research, USA, regarding the modern translators.
“As far as the Hebrew text developed by Rudolph Kittel is concerned, it is worth noting that Kittel was a German rationalist higher critic, rejecting Biblical inerrancy and firmly devoted to evolutionism. The men most responsible for alterations in the New Testament text were B.F.Westcott and F.J.A.Hort, whose Greek New Testament was largely updated by Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland. All these men were evolutionists. Furthermore, Westcott and Hort denied Biblical inerrancy and promoted spiritism and racism. Nestle and Aland, like Kittel, were German theological sceptics.
Westcott and Hort were also the most influential members of the English revision committee which produced the English Revised Version of the Bible. The corresponding American revision committee which developed the American Standard Version of 1901 was headed by another liberal evolutionist, Philip Schaff. Most new versions since that time have adopted the same presuppositions as those of the 19th century revisers.
So one of the serious problems with most modern English translations is that they rely heavily on Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible developed by liberals, rationalists and evolutionists, none of whom believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Is this how God would preserve His word? Would he not more likely have used devout scholars who believed in the absolute inerrancy and authority of the Bible?
I believe therefore, after studying the, teaching and loving the Bible for over 55 years, that Christians – especially creationists – need to hang on to their old King James Bibles as long as they live. God has uniquely blessed its use in the great revivals, in the world-wide missionary movement and in the personal lives of believers, more so than He has with all the rest of the versions put together, and ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’ (Matthew 7:20). It is the most beautiful, most powerful and (I strongly believe), the most reliable of any that we have or ever will have, until Christ returns.”
Just as a point of interest, to show how morally bankrupt these men were, Fenton Hort was deeply racist. Making use of the n-word that black people find so offensive, Hort made the following statement about them: “…they have surely shown themselves only as an immeasurably inferior race, just human and no more, their religion frothy and sensuous, their highest virtues those of a good Newfoundland dog.”
Dr. Morris makes the following observations about several other key people involved in revising the Bible into the modern versions:
Edgar Goodspeed did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. He looked at Jesus as a social reformer who gave his life as a martyr for a ’cause’. Goodspeed called Genesis the product of an ‘Oriental story teller at his best.’
Julius Brewer stated, “The dates and figures found in the first five books of the Bible turn out to be altogether unreliable.”
Henry Cadbury believed that Jesus Christ was a just man who was subject to story telling, saying, “He was given to overstatements, in his case, not a personal idiosyncrasy, but a characteristic of the Oriental world.”
Walter Bowie believed that the Old Testament was legend instead of fact. He says in reference to Abraham, “The story of Abraham comes down from ancient times; and how much of it is fact and how much of it is legend, no one can positively tell.”
Clarence Craig denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. He said, “It is to be remembered there were no eye witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus. No canonical gospel presumed to describe Jesus emerging from the tomb. The mere fact that a tomb was found empty was capable of many explanations. The very last one that would be credible to a modern man would be the explanation of a physical resurrection of the body.”
William Sperry showed his dislike for the gospel of John in the following statement: “Some of these sayings, it is true, come from the Fourth Gospel (John), and we do not press that gospel for too great verbal accuracy in its record of the sayings of Jesus.”
William Irwin believed that the Jewish prophets inflated the position of God in the Bible. He said, “The prophets were forced by the disasters that befell to do some hard, painful thinking. They were forced by the history of their own times to revise their messages again and again in order to keep up with the progress of the age. The Assyrians and the Babylonians forced them to revise their conception of Yahweh from time to time until they finally made Him God of the universe.”
Fleming James doubted the miracle of the Red Sea crossing. He said, “What really happened at the Red Sea WE CAN NO LONGER KNOW; but scholars are pretty well agreed that the narrative goes back to some striking and pretentious event which impressed Moses and the people with the belief that Yahweh had intervened to save them. The same may be said of the account of the plagues.” Concerning Elijah’s action in 2 Kings 1:10, James said, “The narrative of calling down fire from heaven upon soldiers sent to arrest him is plainly legendary.”
Dr. Morris makes the following statement that describes how important it is that those who handle the Word of God be people who believe what the Bible teaches:
Textual criticism cannot be divorced entirely from theology. No matter how great a Greek scholar a man may be, or no matter how great an authority on the textual evidence, his conclusions must always be open to suspicion if he does not accept the Bible as the very Word of God.

6. The lie that doctrine is unchanged in the new versions

The devil has been very successful with this lie! Publishers and promoters of the modern versions based on the Minority Text assure us that there is no compromise in doctrine in their Bibles. The slogan of the English Standard Version, for example, is “The Truth, Unchanged!” Is this a valid claim? No, it is a lie. Alterations and deletions that occur in these versions result in different doctrines from those that have been the foundation of the Lord’s people for centuries. Many of these changes are subtle, the removal of a word here and the removal of a phrase there, but the overall result is a gradual lessening of emphasis that makes it easier for the readers to come into agreement with the blasphemous doctrines of organizations such as the Roman Catholics and the Russellites.
Let’s look first at the doctrine of the Gospel, because if we don’t get the Gospel right, everything else is wrong, too. Galatians 1:8 declares “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” The next verse repeats this curse. Do the modern versions present another Gospel?
In both Romans 1:16 and in 1 Corinthians 9:18, the expression “gospel of Christ” becomes simply “the gospel”. In 1 John 3:5, the new versions delete the word “our” from the words “take away our sins”. And in Hebrews 1:3, the lovely words “by Himself purged our sins” becomes simply “purged sins”; the words “by Himself” and “our” are deemed unnecessary! 1 Corinthians 5:7 has the lovely words “is sacrificed for us”, which are trimmed to “is sacrificed” in the NIV. The new versions drop the word “sins” from Colossians 2:11, which speak of “the sins of the flesh”. They even delete the word “sin” from Isaiah 53:10, so that the ESV reads “when his soul makes an offering for guilt’. To me, these deleted words are critical to the meaning and emphasis of the texts. I am certain that the Roman Catholics love these deletions, though; they fit right in with their doctrines.
There is nothing so precious to God than the blood of His Son, and it is precious to us who have been washed in that blood. And yet, the new versions give short shrift to the blood. The blood has disappeared from Colossians 1:14 which says, “In whom we have redemption through his blood.” It is also gone from Romans 3:25, where the King James Version says, “through faith in his blood”, and from Luke 22:20 where the KJV says, “blood, which is shed for you”.
Salvation is redefined in the new versions. In Mark 9:42, the KJV says, “believe in me”, but some new versions just say “believe.” This is not an isolated deletion; it occurs numerous times, such as in John 6:47 which says, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” New Agers will like that; they can believe in anything they want! As we know, religion preaches a works-based salvation, and religion has no issue with the new versions, which can be readily construed as presenting a works-based salvation. Take Matthew 7:14 for example, which the King James Version renders “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The ESV changes the first part of the verse to “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life”. That makes it sound like hard work is involved, just as the religions teach. Where Mark 10:24 presents the Lord Jesus as declaring, “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!” But the new versions truncate that verse to read, “how hard it is to enter into the kingdom of God.” That is in sharp contrast to the “simple trusting faith” that we love to sing about. John 3:36 tells us, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” But the ESV and others change “he that believeth not” to “whoever does not obey”. The word “believeth” is clear; the word “obey” is ambiguous and is easily applied to a works-based gospel.
According to 1 Corinthians 15:4, the fact that Christ “rose again the third day” is a critical element of the Gospel. But the new versions often obscure or omit references to the resurrection, the post resurrection appearances of the Lord Jesus, and His ascension to Heaven. For example, the new versions omit the words “because I go to the Father” from John 16:16, and omit the words “the Son of man which is in Heaven” from John 3:13.
Modern versions make an important change to the Great White Throne, as described in Revelation 20: Verse 12 in the KJV reads, “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened…” But versions such as the ESV change this to, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.” Standing before the throne is much different from standing before God. There is a Judge to meet.
The Bibles that are based on the Minority Text go to great lengths to downplay the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, the ESV deletes 59 instances of the term “Jesus Christ, 14 instances of the term “Lord Jesus”, 22 instances of the term “Lord Jesus Christ”, and five instances of the term “Son of God”. That includes the instance in Daniel 3:25, where “Son of God” is replaced with “a son of the gods”. Other modern-language versions have similar deletions.
The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is challenged in versus such as Luke 2:33, where most if not all of the modern-language versions identify Joseph as the father of Jesus.
Of the 33 references to the blood of Christ in the KJV, many have disappeared from the modern-language versions.
The doctrine of judgment is attacked by the newer versions, most of which have removed all eleven instances of the word “damnation” in the KJV from their pages. As for the word “hell” that occurs 54 times in the KJV, it is removed 40 times in the ESV and is replaced by such obscure and indefinite words as “sheol”, “the grave”, “Gehenna”, or “Hades”. Other versions are just as hard on “hell”. The word “judgment” that appears so frequently in the KJV is deleted wholesale in the modern versions. For example, the ESV deletes 215 instances of the word “judgment”. The ESV is only one of the versions that changes the term “judgment seat of Christ” in Romans 14:10, to “judgment seat (or tribunal) of God”.
Even Heaven is not spared the knife. “Heaven” appears 716 times in the KJV. The ESV goes the easiest, deleting 16 of those. Most of the other versions delete more than 100 of the instances of “Heaven”.
Repentance is not a term that the new versions favour; most of them delete this word and other forms of it several dozen times. The word “fornication”, used 44 times in the KJV, refers to a very specific sin and carries a strong connotation of sinfulness. Most new versions eliminate it altogether, usually replacing it with the ambiguous term “immorality”. Such specific KJV terms such as “whoremonger”, “whore”, “harlot”, and “whoredom” have also vanished from the newer versions.
Because they are based on manuscripts that are heavily favoured by the Roman Catholics, the new versions seize on opportunities to promote Romish ideas. For example, in Romans 15:16, the KJV reads as follows: That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. But most of the newer versions replace the words “ministering the Gospel of God” with the words “the priestly service of the gospel of God” (ESV), “the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God” (NIV), and “ministering as a priest the gospel of God” (NASB). Of course Rome likes those references to priests and priestly service!
Because Acts 8:37 makes it clear that belief is a precondition for baptism, most of the newer versions delete the entire verse.
Because the Bible translators of the 1880s, including Westcott and Hort, did not believe in the resurrection, the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark are conveniently deleted from most of the modern versions.
Even the word “doctrine” is disliked by the creators of the newer versions. For example, the ESV replaces “doctrine” with the more neutral and weaker term “teaching” in 43 different places.

7: The lie of the need for modern language

For this section, I will firstly provide an excerpt from a book entitled The King James Version Defended, by Edward F. Hill. The following is from Pages 218 and 219 of that book:
But, someone may reply, even if the King James Version needs only a few corrections, why take the trouble to make them? Why keep on with the old King James and its 17th century language, its thee and thou and all the rest? Granted the Textus Receptus is the best text but why not make a new translation of it in the language of today? In answer to these objections there are several facts which must be pointed out.
In the first place, the English of the King James Version is not the English of the early 17th century. To be exact, it is not the type of English that was ever spoken anywhere. It is biblical English, which was not used on ordinary occasions even by the translators who produced the King James Version. As H. Wheeler Robinson (1940) pointed out, one need only compare the preface written by the translators with the text of their translation to feel the difference in style. And the observations of W. A. Irwin (1952) are to the same support. The King James Version, he reminds us, owes its merit, not to 17th century English – which was very different – but to its faithful translation of the original. Its style is that of the Hebrew and of the New Testament Greek. Even in their use of thee and thou the translators were not following 17th century English usage but biblical usage, for at the time these translators were doing their work these singular forms had already been replaced by the plural you in polite conversation.
In the second place, those who talk about translating the Bible into the language of today never define what they mean by their expression. What is the language of today? The language of 1881 is not the language of today, nor the language of 1901, nor even the language of 1921. In none of these languages, we are told, can we communicate with today’s youth. There are even some who feel that the best way to translate the Bible into the language of today is to convert it into folk songs. Accordingly, in some contemporary youth conferences and even worship services there is little or no Bible reading but only crude kinds of vocal music accompanied by vigorous piano and strumming guitars. But in contrast to these absurdities, the language of the King James Version is enduring diction which will remain as long as the English language remains, in other words, throughout the foreseeable future.
In the third place, the current attack on the King James Version and the promotion of modern-speech versions is discouraging the memorization of the Scriptures, especially by children. Why memorize or require your children to memorize something that is out of date and about to be replaced by something new and better? And why memorize a modern version when there are so many to choose from? Hence even in conservative churches, children are growing up densely ignorant of the holy Bible because they are not encouraged to hide its life-giving words in their hearts.
In the fourth place, modern-speech Bibles are unhistorical and irreverent. The Bible is not a modern, human book. It is not as new as the morning newspaper, and no translation should suggest this. If the Bible were this new, it would not be the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible is an ancient, divine Book, which nevertheless is always new because in it God reveals Himself. Hence the language of the Bible should be venerable as well as intelligible, and the King James Version fulfils these two requirements better than any other Bible in English. Hence it is the King James Version which converts sinners soundly and makes of them diligent Bible students.
In the fifth place, modern-speech Bibles are unscholarly. The language of the Bible has always savoured of the things of heaven rather than the things of earth. It has always been biblical rather than contemporary and colloquial. Fifty years ago this fact was denied by E. J. Goodspeed and others who were publishing their modern versions. On the basis of the papyrus discoveries which had recently been made in Egypt it was said that the New Testament authors wrote in the everyday Greek of their own times. This claim, however, is now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration. As R. M. Grant (1963) admits, the New Testament writers were saturated with the Septuagint and most of them were familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures. Hence their language was not actually that of the secular papyri of Egypt but biblical. Hence New Testament versions must be biblical and not contemporary and colloquial like Goodspeed’s version (The Complete Bible, An American Translation (1939)).
Finally in the sixth place, the King James Version is the historic Bible of English-speaking Protestants. Upon it God, working providentially, has placed the stamp of His approval through the usage of many generations of Bible-believing Christians. Hence, if we believe in God’s providential preservation of the Scriptures, we will retain the King James Version, for in doing so we will be following the clear leading of the Almighty.
8: The lie of the archaic pronouns
This lie is a first cousin to the one about the need for a modern language Bible. To counter this lie, I will insert the text from a pamphlet I produced earlier, called Accurate, not Archaic:

“But that’s not the way we talk, these days!”
I am sure you have heard that argument from those who prefer to read the newer modern-language versions of the Bible. They dislike using words that are not in common use in ordinary speech today, words that they describe as archaic.
What most people don’t realize is that the words they are objecting to were not used in ordinary speech in 1611, when the King James Version of the Bible was first published. Words such as “thee”, “thou”, and “ye” were not in common use at that time, and had not been in common use for more than 300 years. People back then could also have accused those translators of using archaic language!
Want proof that those words were not in common use at that time? Try looking at writing from the same period. For example, look at the translators’ prelude, or preamble, to the Bible, which was included in the front of most KJV Bibles until a few decades ago. That prelude was published at the very same time as the first edition of the KJV Bible. And yet, the only uses of those so-called “archaic” words in that prelude are when the writers were directly quoting Scripture verses. In several instances in the prelude, as they wrote directly to King James, they addressed him as “you” and “your”. Had the so-called “archaic” pronouns been in common use at that time, they would have said “thee” and “thine”. But they didn’t. That wasn’t the way they talked, those days. Just like it isn’t the way we talk these days.
So, why did the translators use those old English words instead of the everyday words that were common at the time? Were they simply trying to dignify the Scriptures by issuing them in old language? Did they use those words just to make the Bible stand out from the other books that existed? Were they trying to present the Bible in stuffy and scholarly terms to make it appeal primarily to the intellectual and archaeological crowd?
Not at all! They were striving to be accurate. And only those older words allowed them to approach the accuracy of the original languages. Because the words in common use at that time, just like the common words in use in the 21st century, were unable to convey the exact meaning that was needed.
Why is it so important to get the exact meaning? Let us remember that we are talking about the Word of God. When holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21), their writings were perfect. The inspired Word was flawless and accurate, exactly as God desired and required. But the Bible that we read today is not the exact writing that God gave to the holy men of old. Those originals are long gone, and all we have are copies, and copies of copies, which we call manuscripts. The King James Version was prepared from the most accurate and widely accepted manuscripts available. The translators took the words of the Hebrew and Greek in which the originals were written, and converted them into English.
Because the translation into English is not the same as the original, it cannot help but have some flaws and errors. The translators took the greatest care they could to make sure that they captured the exact meaning of the words of the original. Their work is not perfect, although they tried to make it as close to perfect as possible, with a few exceptions. Hebrew and Greek language structure and word meanings do not always line up exactly with English language structure and word meanings. And the translators ran into a puzzle when they tried to translate pronouns of the second person.
Pronouns of the second person are very limited today, regardless of whether we are addressing one person (singular) or more than one person (plural). All we use are “you”, “your”, and “yours”. For example, if I am speaking to one person, I say “you”, just as I do when I am speaking to a dozen people. If I am speaking of something that belongs to one person, I say “yours”, just as I do when I am speaking of something that belongs to a dozen people.
In addition, the “you” is used regardless of whether it is the subjective or objective case. For example, a mother might tell her dirty child, “You need to be washed. I will wash you. Cleanliness will be yours.” She would use the exact same words even if she had three dirty children. This is different from the multiple pronouns that are available in the third person, in which the same mother might speak of her dirty child, “He needs to be washed. I will wash him. Cleanliness will be his.” Or if she had three dirty children, “They need to be washed. I will wash them. Cleanliness will be theirs.” First person pronouns also have a clear distinction between the singular and the plural, as well as between the subjective and objective. For example, a mother might tell her dirty children, “I want those dirty clothes. Give them to me. They are mine.” And the children might reply, “We want clean clothes. Give them to us. They are ours.”
Only in the case of second person pronouns do we find the lack of precision that faced the translators of our Bible. This lack of precision did not exist in the original languages. Second person pronouns were very clear in terms of whether they were singular or plural, or whether they were subjective or objective. This clarity is important to the meaning of the Word of God. To preserve this clarity, the translators had to find an alternative to the ambiguous “you”, “your”, and “yours”. They found the words they needed, right there in the English language, a bit dusty with lack of use, but wonderfully accurate as to their meaning.
And that is why we have, in our KJV Bibles, those pronouns that are shunned by modern-day versions because “that is not the way we speak, these days”. Those other versions are less accurate, less precise, missing the distinctions that the KJV preserves.
Don’t let anyone tell you they can’t understand “those old words”. Those pronouns are very simple one syllable words that elementary school children should have no difficulty in grasping. Those who object to those words are merely using them as an excuse to use the less accurate modern-language versions of the Bible.
The rules of the older pronouns are very simple: if it begins with the letter “y”, it is plural; if it begins with the letter “t”, it is singular. For example, when the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, he declared, “Ye must be born again”. Nicodemus would know – by the use of the plural “ye” – that the Lord Jesus was not singling him out, but was referring to the necessity of us all to have the new birth. Similarly, when the Saviour asked Nicodemus, “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?”, Nicodemus would know that that Jesus was singling out his ignorance alone and not that of the entire Sanhedrin.
Let’s consider another example: Luke 22:31, 32: And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. In this portion, the Lord uses the plural pronoun “you” to indicate that all of the disciples were the targets of Satan’s desire and sifting. But He uses the singular pronouns “thee”, “thy”, and “thou” to indicate the content of His prayer specifically for Peter alone.
The pronouns of the King James Version are accurate, not archaic. That is one of the important reasons why we continue to use them.

Conclusion

Like many Christians, I used to think that the version of the Bible that each person uses is simply a matter of personal preference, because I believed that the content of each version was basically the same. In accepting the claims of the producers and promoters of the modern versions, I was assured that no doctrines are compromised and that no content is altered in these versions. I believed the reports that the manuscripts on which the new versions are based were just as good as the Textus Receptus, the Majority Text on which the KJV is based. While I viewed the King James Version as vastly superior to the modern versions, I could take no reasonable exception to others choosing other versions. Having thoroughly researched this subject, I have changed my mind. I have reached the firm conclusion that the modern language versions – because they are based on faulty and corrupted texts, and because they were translated by godless and devious men – have failed to preserve what holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

This entry was posted in Articles, Articles, Bible Doctrines, Bible Facts, Bible Passages, Greek Manuscripts, Manuscript Differences, Miscellaneous Articles, Textual Issues, The Bible, Translations, Various. Bookmark the permalink.