'The Superiority of the KJV' (Part 2)
Helen Willis hhiwater@BRIGHT.NET
Sun, 12 Apr 1998 17:36:09 -0700 (00892449369, 35315DF9.2DA5@bright.net)
Matthew Bell wrote:
>
> THE FOUR-FOLD SUPERIORITY OF THE KING JAMES VERSION
> By Dr. D.A. Waite
>
> 'THE KING JAMES BIBLE HAS A SUPERIOR NEW TESTAMENT GREEK TEXT. There is a
> simple table in our book which speaks volumes concerning the New Testament
> Greek text debate. Here it is:
HELEN:
Snip
MATT'S POST:
It is a very useful
> tool. Scrivener's Greek text is also available on the LOGOS Computer
> Program which enables the student to study more carefully. Dr. Jack Moorman
> counted 140,521 Greek words in the Textus Receptus. Scrivener's Greek
> edition has 647 pages which would average 217 Greek words per page. That's
> what the Textus Receptus has.
HELEN:
The texus receptus is a compilation from several source codices. The
actual Greek Codices that exist today wildly differ in length and
content. the most classic example is in the ending of Mark, of which
there are three quite different ones. I think your author is babbling
here.
MATT'S POST:
> 2. The Greek Text of Westcott and Hort that underlies the Modern
> Versions. Though there were some scattered opposition to the Received
> Text in years before, the concerted effort against the Received Text came
> in 1881, and after. In 1881, two theological heretics (posing as
> conservatives) from the Anglican Church, B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort,
> published their Greek text that rejected the TR in 5,604 places by my
> actual count. This included 9,970 Greek words that were either added,
> subtracted, or changed from the TR. This involves, on the average, 15.4
> words per page of the Greek N.T., or a total of 45.9 pages in all. It is 7%
> of the total of 140,521 words in the TR Greek N.T. It was a radically new
> Greek text. Westcott and Hort concocted a new Greek text and changed the TR
> that had been used in the Church from the beginning of the writing of the
> N.T.
HELEN:
This is utter nonsense. Since there are many early manuscripts of
greatly varying length. What ever this fellows doing here makes no sense
whatever.
MATT'S POST
> You might rightfully ask, "How did you come up with this number of
> changes?" That's a valid question. I took a copy of the original
> Scrivener's Greek N.T. to a summer Bible Conference where I was preaching.
> During the afternoon, when there were no meetings, I studied that volume
> carefully, making notations on it as I read. When I indicate that there are
> 5,604 places in the Greek N.T. where Westcott and Hort actually altered the
> Greek Textus Receptus used by the KING JAMES BIBLE translators, it is
> because I actually counted that many places. I have the data in my copy of
> Scrivener's Greek New Testament. These 5,604 places involve a total of
> 9,970 Greek words. How do I know that? Again, I counted them. I saw from
> the footnotes exactly how many Greek words each of the 5,604 places
> involved. As you might know, some of the places involve twelve entire
> verses (Mk. 16:9-20 and John 7:53-- 8:11). In each of the 5,604 places,
> compared to the Textus Receptus that underlies the KJV, Westcott and Hort
> either added Greek words, subtracted Greek words, or changed the Greek
> words in some other way. You can see that the Westcott and Hort alterations
> amount to just thirty words short of 10,000 Greek words. This means that
> there are almost 10,000 Greek words that are different in the Westcott and
> Hort Greek New Testament (and probably about the same or more in the
> Nestle/Aland 26th edition Greek text) as compared to the Greek text that
> underlies our KJV.
Helen:
Why does this guy not state that the textus receptus is based on several
different codices? He, also, does not understand that because of the
political situation in Europe at the time of the writing of the KJV,
Protestant scholars from England would never have been allowed access to
any of the largest collections of the early codices because they were
held by the Catholic Church. This is something that the C of E freely
admits. I don't understand how this fellow think that scholars limited
in what they could see could be as accurate as modern scholars with
unlimited access to far more codices than were even known about then or
even in 1881.
MATT'S POST
> Hort's own three estimates on the extent of the Greek textual problems
> between his text and the Textus Receptus. In 1882, Hort wrote an
> Introduction to the so-called Westcott and Hort Greek Text of 1881. In his
> Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek--The Text
> Revised by Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., and Fenton John Anthony Hort,
> D.D., Hort made an estimate of the differences between various Greek texts.
> His estimate had three parts. Let me quote each of the parts:
>
> (1) Hort's estimate of the proportion of the Greek New Testament that was
> virtually accepted by everyone. He wrote: "With regard to the great
> bulk of the words of the New Testament, as of most other ancient writings,
> there is NO VARIATION or other ground of doubt, and therefore no room for
> textual criticism; . . . The proportion of words virtually accepted on all
> hands as raised above doubt is VERY GREAT, not less, on a rough
> computation, than SEVEN EIGHTHS OF THE WHOLE. The REMAINING EIGHTH
> therefore, formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative
> trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism" (Hort, p. 2).
> Since the "whole" in numbers of Greek words and pages in the Greek
> N.T. as seen in our table, is 140,521 Greek words (100%=647 pages), Hort's
> 7/8ths of the Greek New Testament virtually agreed to by all would be
> 122,956 Greek words (87.5%=566 pages). Hort's 1/8th of the Greek N.T. that
> he claimed was in dispute would be 17,565 Greek words (12.5%=81 pages). In
> point of fact, as seen in the above table, the area of dispute between the
> Westcott and Hort Greek text as opposed to the Textus Receptus that
> underlies the KJV is only 9,970 Greek words (7%=45.9 pages). So Hort's
> estimate in this area is incorrect.
>
HELEN:
He goes on like this for several paragraph. He never deals with the
problems of the limited access of the KJV scholars or the great number
and differences in the earlier codices that are know know of. I snipped
a lot of strange number things. I think that this fellow took logic
lessons from Louis Farrakan.
MATT'S POST:
> @BODY TEXT2 = "There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, and all of them
> are AGREED 98% of the time. So all of this debate that Carson refers to in
> The King James Version Debate, all of this debate, all of the hullabaloo is
> over less than 2% of the entire text of the New Testament. And in that less
> than 2%, you can select any reading that you wish among the manuscripts,
> (that's not our approach, but you can) and it won't change Christian
> doctrine one bit."
HELEN:
Yes, but most of these 5000 are known to be later copies of earlier
texts. It is in many of the very early texts the problems occur. For
example most later copies put all three endings at the end of Mark.
HELEN:
I snip a bunch here.
MATT'S POSTS
> THE KING JAMES BIBLE'S GREEK TEXT IS ATTESTED BY THE EVIDENCE. Here
> is a table that is printed on page fifty-seven of Defending the King
> James Bible. It gives us a summary of the manuscript evidence that is
> available to us today.
>
> As of 1967, Kurt Aland, of Munster, Germany, counted a total of 5,255 Greek
> manuscripts still in existence. Though there are a few others since 1967, I
> use these figures which are still very close. Aland is the lead editor of
> the 26th edition of the Nestle/Aland Greek New Testament which is being
> used as the critical text of today. I am using Aland's 1967 figures.
>
> As you can see from the table, there are 81 (now 88) papyrus fragments.
> There are 267 uncial manuscripts. These are large, capital letter
> documents. There are 2,764 cursives manuscripts. These are the flowing hand
> manuscripts. There are 2,143 lectionary manuscripts. These are portions of
> Scripture that were read on certain days of the church year. This totals at
> least 5,255 Greek manuscripts of the N.T. that have been preserved and are
> available for us today.
>
> The table gives the approximate number and percent of each type of Greek
> manuscript that supports the Westcott-Hort (WH) Greek text, as well as the
> number and percent of each class that supports the Textus Receptus (TR)
> Greek text. These approximations are taken from the careful research of Dr.
> Jack Moorman in his book Forever Settled (see Bibliography).
> The WH figures are given first and those for the TR second. For the papyrus
> fragments the score is 13 to 75 (15% to 85%). For the uncial manuscripts
> the score is 9 to 258 (3% to 97%). For the cursive manuscripts the score is
> 23 to 2,741 (1% to 99%). For the lectionary manuscripts the score is 0 to
> 2,143 (0% to 100%). For the totals for all classes of manuscripts the score
> is 45 to 5,210. This is a ratio of less than 1% to more than 99%!
HELEN:
The information this guy fails to give is that the papyrus is the oldest
material, then the UNICAP, then the cursive, then the lectionary.
Everone agrees that after a point the texts became more or less
standardized, but that there is great problems with the earliest texts.
I don't under stand theis methord of scoring these texet but it seem to
say that yes indeed there are problems with the earliest source texts.
It is also obvious this guy is trying to hide the problems, so I'm not
sure I trust his counts at all.
MATT"S POST
> THE KING JAMES BIBLE'S GREEK TEXT HAS BEEN PRESERVED BY GOD. Which
> of the two kinds of Greek text has God preserved? How do you define
> preservation? The Scripture says:
>
HELEN:
This is from the same guy who claimed earlier that the Hebrew OT was
preserved by God. Well I can see how you can fight logic like this
(grin).
Snip
MATT"S POST>
> THE FALSE GREEK TEXTS OF "B" AND "ALEPH" CONTRADICT ONE
> ANOTHER IN OVER 3,000 PLACES IN THE GOSPELS ALONE. In the total numbers
> of manuscripts, you'll notice that the Westcott- Hort type has only 45
> manuscripts that go along with it as over against 5,210 that go along with
> the TR that underlies the KJV. This 45 includes "B" (Vatican) and
> "Aleph" (Sinai) and forty- three of their little heretical puppets
> that follow them. The theory behind the acceptance of these less than 1% is
> that "The oldest are the best." The oldest are not necessarily the
> best, especially if they have been tampered with by heretics!
>
HELEN:
So we finally get him admitting that THE OLDEST MANUSCRIPTS CONTRIDICT
ONE ANOTHER IN OVER 3000 PLACES IN THE GOSPELS ALONE.
He claims heretics are responsible for this, but he provides no proof.
MATT"S POST
Both Dr. Frederick Scrivener and Dean John William Burgon agreed that
the
> greatest pollution of the stream of pure manuscripts was accomplished in
> the first 100 years after the New Testament was written! So the oldest are
> not necessarily the best! This is especially true since the heretics had
> their knives out "correcting" the Greek N.T. almost as soon as it
> was written. The Egyptian scribes and editors of "B" (Vatican) and
> "Aleph" (Sinai) were some of the most vicious "correctors"
> of God's Words; yet these two Greek texts form the very bedrock of the new
> versions and perversions of our day. "B" and "Aleph"
> contradict each other, as Herman Hoskier has so accurately pointed out in
> his two volume work entitled Codex B and Its Allies, in over 3,000
> places in the four Gospels alone! So, they are not good witnesses. They are
> false witnesses indeed!
HELEN:
See, no proof, just assertions. It is obvious logic to presume the
earliest text are the most accurate and that this confusion of
manuscripts was later solved but church officials, but that would mean
that human hand had a lot to do with the version of the Bible that
existed until very recently.
MATT"S POST
> #2: THE KING JAMES BIBLE HAS SUPERIOR TRANSLATORS. The second reason for
> defending the KJV is because it has superior translators. This correctly
> implies that the various versions and perversions of the Bible have
> inferior translators.
>
> Let's take a brief look at the superior translators of the KJV.
> This is not only prideful, but completely false. Their linguistic
> qualifications are unequaled!
>
HELEN:
I snipped a couple I didn't know anything about.
MATT'S POST
> The acumen of William Bedwell. How about Dr. William Bedwell? He was
> famed in Arabic learning. I don't know how many of these new men who are
> "translating/paraphrasing" for these modern versions and
> perversions who have studied as much of the Arabic language as he had. In
> fact, he published in quarto, an edition of the Epistles of St. John in
> Arabic with a Latin version. I don't know how many men today could do that.
> Dr. Bedwell left many Arabic manuscripts in the University of Cambridge,
> with numerous notes and a font of types for printing them. In fact, he
> wrote an Arabic lexicon, or dictionary, in three volumes. He also began a
> Persian dictionary which is among Archbishop Laud's manuscripts, still
> preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford today. I don't think anyone
> among our modern "translators/paraphrasers" of today has done this
> or could do this! Do you know any of these men who have written an Arabic
> dictionary and begun a Persian dictionary, or done anything similar in the
> scholarly world that will even come close to the accomplishments of William
> Bedwell? If so, send me their names and the proof. In our day, many people
> watch too much television. They attend too many football games, baseball
> games. and basketball games. We are ignoramuses today compared to the
> scholars who gave us our KJV!
>
HELEN:
What does football, baseball, Persian, or Arabic have to do with the
KJV? The languages that early versions of the Christian Bible appear in
are Syric, Greek, and Latin. The OT appears in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
I doubt there were any Arabic version of any of this much before 800 AD.
Can you say red herring?
MATT"S POST
> The activities of Henry Savile. Sir Henry Saville was proficient in
> both Greek and mathematics. He became tutor in these two subjects to Queen
> Elizabeth. I don't know how many queens or kings our modern
> "translators/paraphrasers" have tutored, do you? Saville translated
> the histories of Cornelius Tacitus and published the same with notes. He
> published, from the manuscripts, the writings of Bradwardin against
> Pelagius, the Writers of English History Subsequent to Bede, and
> Prelections on the Elements of Euclid. He was the first to edit the
> complete works of Chrysostom, the most famous of the Greek Fathers. He was
> a profound, and exact scholar.
HELEN:
Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 at the ripe old age of 69. The
biographies I've read of her say she was given one of the most complete
educations of any ruler in history so I don't question she had this
scholar as a tutor but is this man really claiming her tutor help write
the 1611 KJV? He must have been well past 100 years of age.
HELEN:
It's late and this is long. I have to go to work. I suspect this will
have many errors on my part. I sorry for that. I really do try to write
right.
Helen
hhiwater@bright.net