A Kind Post Card from San Antonio

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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January 14, 2008

I got a postcard in the mail at my church instructing me to repent and believe. Here are the details.

00:08: Okay, so I go to church today, and I walk into the office, and sometimes
00:14: I get mail there. I mention the church that I'm an elder in and stuff, and so people send me things, and sometimes they're odd.
00:21: This one doesn't have a return address on it. For some reason, the stamp's upside down. It's from San Antonio, Texas, sent on the 5th of January, 2008, in the afternoon.
00:32: And it says, Dear James, it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. How can we believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?
00:43: The word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, Amen. Okay, and so I turn it over on the back, and this is what we see.
00:56: It says, The word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, 1 Peter 1 .23.
01:02: The word of God is preserved in many languages, including English, the universal language of the last days.
01:08: It is in that form of English used by the legal profession in the entire English -speaking world.
01:14: You will find ye, signifying plural, and thou, signifying singular. Modern perversions have only you.
01:31: The motive for copyright is profit, period, and then handwritten in 2 Timothy 2 .9.
01:36: Number three, the word of God has but by every word of God in Luke 4 .4, through his blood in Colossians 1 .14,
01:43: which thing I hate in Revelation 2 .15, God in 1 Corinthians 16 .2, the Son of God in Daniel 3 .25, and these three are one in 1
01:52: John 5 .7. Does the book you call the Bible pass the three tests above? Does your church use one hymn book and fourteen different Bibles?
02:00: God is not the author of such confusion. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, Romans 10 .17.
02:06: Repent ye therefore, and be ye converted, that your sins may be blotted out, Acts 3 .19. Then we have a little cartoon figure.
02:13: Yes, pastor, I believe we have many Bibles that say one may divorce and remarry, 2 Timothy 4 .3,
02:20: and that is marked the average Bible bookstore. Now this is assuredly not the first time that someone from the
02:29: King James only camp has sent me a kind little note instructing me to repent, and it would be very easy to go through each one of these textual variants and respond to each one.
02:40: I had to chuckle just a little bit. English is the universal language of the last days.
02:47: Now given that that's a biblical phrase and English didn't exist at that time, in fact didn't really come into existence for at least another 12, 1300 years, even to the most primitive forms of English, that's an interesting observation.
03:00: And then I really, this one was, it is in that form of English used by the legal profession in the entire
03:07: English speaking world. It's best for lawyers to use the language in the culture they're in.
03:12: That does make sense. So that would be the form of English used by the legal profession in the entire
03:18: English speaking world. I mean, most lawyers in the English speaking world would not do well if they were speaking
03:24: Swahili. But anyway, I did want to at least go through one of the textual variants. I mean, we have the
03:29: Comma Iohannium mentioned here, 1 John 5, 7, and I've mentioned in the blog, all you gotta do is search the blog, search the blog archives, and you'll see how many times
03:37: I've discussed the Comma Iohannium and those who attempt to promote that as the acid test, the final means of examination.
03:47: But one of them that might bother some people is Colossians 1 .14. I have addressed this in my
03:53: King James Only presentations. It's in the King James Only controversy. But it might be helpful to look at what the textual data for this is and to see why this is not in any way, shape, or form some indication of someone trying to pervert the text of Scripture.
04:08: Let's take a look at it. Now, here we have the Greek text, en ho ekemen tein apalutrosen, tein aphesen ton hamartion.
04:18: What is missing is the phrase, diatu haimatas autu, that is, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
04:29: It's the reading of Colossians 1 .14 in all the modern texts, except not in the
04:35: King James version. And then the phrase that is missing is just the four words, through his blood, diatu haimatas autu.
04:42: Now, when we say missing, we're obviously using the King James as the standard here. And I've given you the textual data down below where it notes e1 ,7.
04:52: That is the critical text way of letting you know this is a parallel to Ephesians 1 .7.
04:58: This is an example of what's called parallel corruption, where you have very, very similar phraseology used in two verses in the
05:07: Bible. And scribes, being familiar with the longer form, automatically fill this in.
05:13: We do this all the time when we are transcribing things, when we're writing things. We make this very same type of error today, and scribes did in the ancient world as well.
05:22: Now, you'll notice, however, that there are only about four manuscripts.
05:28: The italicized al means there are a few others. But you have some forms of Vulgate, some forms of Syriac.
05:36: But there are four manuscripts from the 13th century, the 12th century, and the earliest, 2464, from the 9th century, that actually have this as the reading in the text itself.
05:49: Then you have Cassiodorus. He dies about AD 59, and some of them might say, ah, see? There you have a clear example that this existed at least as early as 590.
05:59: The problem is Cassiodorus is probably doing the same thing. He's doing it. Early church fathers very frequently paraphrased things as they were writing, as they were quoting things, just as preachers do today.
06:12: Or a later scribe who is writing Cassiodorus' stuff does the exact same thing as happened in the biblical texts.
06:20: That is, familiarity with the longer text in Ephesians 1 -7 results in the insertion of this text here in Colossians 1 -14.
06:31: To help you understand exactly what I'm referring to, here are the two texts put together. Remember, Colossians and Ephesians are parallel works.
06:38: There's entire sections. Just like you can parallel Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Colossians and Ephesians are written at the same time.
06:44: They have similar audiences, and so there's parallel sections between them. You can see Colossians 1 -14 and then
06:49: Ephesians 1 -7 with that phrase included in it. Now, if someone's trying to get rid of this, someone's trying to remove the blood of Christ in the
06:56: Bible, why not remove it from Ephesians 1 -7? It's in all editions of the Greek New Testament, modern editions of the
07:01: Greek New Testament as well. It's in the modern translations. Look at the New American Standard, Ephesians 1 -7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.
07:10: And in fact, if you look at the Greek, you will see that in whom we have the redemption is identical in both situations.
07:18: And so a person who is familiar, maybe had memorized Ephesians 1 -7, which was frequently used in liturgical contexts, it would be natural for them to include in their transcription the phrase, through his blood.
07:30: And there are four manuscripts and maybe a few others, but none earlier than 9th century, where that's exactly what takes place.
07:37: There's no conspiracy theories here. The fact is, Colossians 1 -14, Paul did not include that phrase originally.
07:45: All the early manuscripts agree on this, even the earliest. The Byzantine manuscript tradition does not contain this.
07:51: The majority text does not contain this. It is only those few manuscripts that were used in substantiation of the
07:58: Textus Receptus, which became the basis of the King James Version of the Bible, that has this particular reading in it.
08:05: You would basically have to say that for the first 600 years of the Christian faith, no one read
08:11: Colossians 1 -14 this way, but since the Anglican translators of the King James in the beginning of the 17th century rendered it that way, then we should too.
08:19: And if you don't believe that, well, you should repent. That basically is what is being said.
08:26: Now, unfortunately, I have no way of contacting this person, maybe sending them a URL, letting them know they could listen to this, anything like that.
08:34: And to be honest with you, it's not been my experience that King James -only advocates are willing to listen to what
08:39: I have to say anyway, at least most of them. But hopefully for you, if you run across someone who utilizes this text to accuse the modern translations of being bloodless
08:49: Bibles, I've actually heard that one, or something along those lines, maybe now you'll be able to open up your
08:54: Bible to Ephesians 1 -7 and say, hey, if we're trying to get rid of the blood of Christ, why is it right here? And why are you asking me to believe that I must read a text a certain way that no one for over half a millennium in church history at the beginning had ever read it that way?
09:08: Maybe that'll help them to maybe be able to get a sort of a conversation going at that point. Then again, in my experience, that's normally not what happens.