Why We Believe - God Has Preserved His Word

The 1689 Confession on Scripture and the Canon

If you will take your bulletins, I want to direct you to the statement at the bottom inside of the front cover for the London Bapst Confession of Faith of 1689, chapter 1, a portion of section 8. It's not the entire portion, but the part that will be important to us.

Chapter 1 lays the foundation for the rest of the Confession of Faith and it is on Scripture. And so it provides the list of inspired books that we would call the canon. And it discusses the authority of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, its origin.

And then makes this statement, the Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the New Testament in Greek, which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical, so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto them.

And so here is the assertion that the Scriptures, the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament were immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages. Now, if you are a student at that rather large institution of higher learning to the west of us here a ways, called Arizona State University, or down in Tucson, the University of Arizona, or Northern Arizona University, or any of the community colleges in the state of Arizona or wherever else you might be, this is not what you would be told if you were to take a class on the subject of the Bible.

This is not what you would hear in high school classes, if this was even discussed in such places. What you would hear is that your Bible is a collection of mythology and history, and that it has been altered and changed down through the ages.

And this would also be what you would hear in many religious contexts, not only in very liberal leftist churches, but I'll never forget many, many years ago when I and my wife attended the Glendale Sixth Ward of the LDS Church.

And during the course of the presentation on the subject of the Bible during the priesthood meeting type thing that they had at that time, the people there were informed that their King James version of the Bible, which is what they used, had started off in Hebrew and then it was translated into Greek, and then it was translated into Latin, and then it was translated into French, and then it was translated into German, and finally was translated into English.

And so the whole idea was that there had been this long process of translation from language to language to language to language until you finally came to the King James version of the Bible. And I remember sitting there staring at the person saying this, going, can I say something in here?

And we really couldn't. But that is very much the kind of thinking that many even religious people have as to the origin of the Bible. And no matter how much you know, many of you, I realize you've listened to The Dividing Line for years and years, and you could probably come up here and do this entire presentation for me, but the reality is that when you speak to people in our society, there is a tremendous amount of mythology out there as to where the Bible came from.

And a tremendous number of people believe that what you have, whether you're looking at your phone or whether you have it open on your lap in a paper form, whatever that might be, that what you have today is only a faint resemblance of what was originally written by the authors in the first place.

This is so common that it's important for us to understand why we can have confidence that what we possess today is what was given. And of course, then you have the spiritual aspect of given by inspiration of God.

I mean, there is a simple historical question, and that is, do we have meaningful confidence that when we open up the book of Romans that we are seeing a meaningfully accurate representation of what Paul wrote to the church at Rome?

What about the Gospels? What about the book of Revelation?

What about Hebrews?

Do we have confidence that what we possess today is what was written back then? Because we all know that there was no such thing as photomechanical reproduction until 1949. That's when the photocopier was first invented.

And I can assure you, having used older photocopiers, that they weren't all that perfect even then. There were many times those old photocopiers that the quality of what came out left you really wondering what you were reading in the first place.

And so our ability to have electronic absolute reproduction, Control-C, Control-V. I remember the first day I found out about Control-C and Control-V. Wow, that was cool stuff. Let me tell you, it really, really was.

My life changed because up until that point, it was open the book, copy it yourself. That's how it worked. And so we live in a modern age and many of the people to whom you might be speaking and to whom you might be speaking to bring the Gospel don't realize what history was like and don't realize that for all of human history, up until the invention of printing in the West, any type of written communication had to be hand copied.

And it was a long process, it was a slow process and not many people possessed much in the way of books. There were libraries, but those contained books that had taken weeks, months and years to copy.

And so they were very precious. Books were looked at in a different way than we look at things today because of our modern ability to process things and to print things. And so take your Bible, whatever translation you might have or just look inside your bulletin, but you might wanna look at it in context.

I want to use an example as I seek to explain to you some basic fundamental realities about where our Bible came from and especially in the New Testament, how we can have confidence in regards to its distribution to us, how it's come down to us over time.

John 1:18 and the Difference Between Modern Translations

And that is I wanna look at the Gospel of John 1 .18. Gospel of John 1 .18. And I have three different modern translations for you inside the bulletin. The New American Standard Bible says, "'No one has seen God in any time.

"'The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, "'He has explained Him.'". Now the ESV, which I think is what most of you have, says, "'No one has ever seen God, "'the only God who is at the Father's side, "'He has made Him known.'".

And then the New King James Version of the Bible, which is a modern translation, but based upon a different Greek text. I'll explain that in a moment. It says, "'No one has seen God in any time. "'The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, "'He has declared Him.'".

Now, there are differences between each one. And for example, the New American Standard has, "'At any time.'". The New King James has, "'At any time.'". The ESV does not. That is not because of anything in the original language.

That is an editorial choice on the basis of the ESV to be as simplistic as possible in its rendering. And they figure that no one has ever seen God, ever, is their way of saying, "'At any time.'".

Okay?

So that's just simply the NASV and the ESV are translating the same Greek text. And there isn't any difference in the text that the New King James is translating. Those are just simply translational issues.

And the differences between a ESV and the Christian Standard Bible, used to be called the Holman Christian Standard Bible, now it's just called the Christian Standard Bible. ESV, NASV, you've probably heard that Master's Seminary, John MacArthur's group, has gotten permission to produce a new version of what's been called the New American Standard Bible, where they're gonna be making some changes.

All of those are based upon a modern Greek text. Now, I brought some texts with me today. Not that I'm gonna pass them around because they wouldn't come back. But modern Greek texts, such as this is the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, the New American, the Nestle Island, the United Bible Societies, these are modern Greek texts that are based upon thousands and thousands of manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric, and other languages thrown in just for the fun of it, as well as analysis of the writings of many of the early church fathers.

We have right around 5 ,800 fragments of the Greek New Testament that have come down to us in handwritten form. The vast majority of those come from after the year 1000, but we also have more fragments of the New Testament that come from earlier than any other work of antiquity.

Let me make sure you understand that. The New Testament wasn't the only book that was being written back then. There were Greek historians and Latin writing historians that were writing there in the first century.

There were, of course, famous Greek poems being written at that time. And these are called the works of antiquity. And it is agreed by everyone, including the critics of the New Testament, that the New Testament has far earlier attestation, that is, we have far earlier manuscripts that are witnesses to the New Testament than any other work of antiquity.

If you've seen the debate that I did with Bart Ehrman a number of years ago, that was his statement during cross-examination, that for the New Testament, we have far earlier attestation than for any other work of antiquity.

And that's plainly the case. So for Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus, the Latin historians, the average amount of time between when they wrote their book and the first copy we have, or even just a fragment of that book, is between 500 and 900 years.

Okay? So in general, something that was written around the time of the first century, you can expect to have the first fragmentary copies 500 to 900 years down the road. For the New Testament, we have small fragments that can be dated to as early as the year 125 of the Gospel of John.

So if John was written, some people say in the 90s, that would only be 35 years. 70s, then it would be a little bit longer than that. But that's an incredibly small period of time. And then we have entire manuscripts, such as P66, P75, things like that, that date from around 175 to 200.

And so as you can see, for the New Testament, we have much earlier manuscript evidence than you have for any other work of antiquity. Now that does not make the New Testament inspired. It drives me crazy when I hear Christians, well-meaning Christians, who will say, well, of course the Bible's inspired.

We have 5 ,000 manuscripts. So, what's the connection between that? I mean, anybody can, I mean, how many copies are there of Harry Potter, for crying out loud? I mean, if you're gonna go on that, Harry Potter's far more inspired than anything else, right?

Because numbers of copies of that, no, that's not what makes something inspired. Now, it is important that we have such a large manuscript tradition. It is important that we have all those manuscripts.

And I'll explain why in a moment. But that's not what makes the Bible inspired. And having earlier attestation, earlier manuscripts than anything else at that time, that's not what makes the Bible inspired either.

Now, it does demonstrate that when people say, we can't have any idea what the New Testament originally said. How can we know it's been so long? And then they turn around and quote from Tacitus and Pliny and Suetonius and the Greek historians and stuff like that.

They're being hypocrites. Because we have better evidence for the New Testament than they have for those historical sources. So it does demonstrate that, but it's not what makes the New Testament inspired, okay?

So what's important for you to understand is that up until the time of the inventing of the printing press, Christians had no problems at all with the reality that in their handwritten manuscripts, there were particular textual variants.

There would be differences between their handwritten manuscripts. They started talking about it in the second century. In the second century, you can find early church fathers like Justin Martyr, eventually you've got Tertullian, Origen and others, and they're talking about differences in manuscripts.

When Justin Martyr writes to a Jewish person that he's seeking to bring to the faith, there is discussion of who has changed the scriptures because Justin Martyr was quoting from this, the Greek Septuagint.

This is actually only half of the Greek Septuagint. I just didn't want to bring the whole thing. Justin Martyr was quoting from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. But Trifo, the Jew, the man who Tummi is talking about, said, you've made changes in this.

And Justin Martyr was saying, no, you've made changes in this. And that was around the year 150. So early on, there were discussions. They were necessary discussions. They could not be avoided concerning the nature of the text of Scripture and its transmission.

But everyone recognized, well, that's the only way you can have books is they have to be hand copied. There is no such thing as a photocopier. There was no such thing as a printing press. And so that is how everyone read anything.

Now, there are a lot of people that honestly, and in fact, there might be some people in here today, that if you're honest with yourself, what you wish had been done with the Bible is a little bit like, and I've used this illustration before and it bombed, but I'll try it again, is a little bit like that Indiana Jones movie and all the young people go, who?

And that's what makes me feel very old. But the Indiana Jones movie where they're looking for the Holy Grail, remember? And they find this guy, this knight or monk or something who has been guarding this thing for like 700 years, living in one cave.

I don't know about you, that's boring. 700 years in one room. It's dedication, but it's still boring. And what a lot of people would like is instead of having those little notes that you've noticed in the side column of your Bible or down at the bottom of the page where it says some manuscripts say this and some earlier manuscripts say that, people don't want anything like that.

They don't want that kind of information. They want one copy, maybe even on golden plates. Wouldn't that be nice? On golden plates protected by a monk or a knight someplace. And when we really need to know what it says, we go ask that guy so there's no questions.

I think that's what a lot of people would like to have. Or what's even more dangerous is I think a lot of Christians think that's what we do have. Until someone comes along with a different translation of the Bible and goes, have you noticed that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 7, 53 through 8, 11 isn't in your Bible, but it's in mine?

And they go, oh, uh, hmm. Or they're reading 1 John 5, 7 in the King James version of the Bible. And someone's sitting there with the ESV going, that's not what mine says. Oh, really? We need to know about these things.

We need to know where we stand in the history of the church. And so many of us today have such modern concepts that we are uncomfortable in recognizing God gave us the scriptures through history. He didn't send them down on golden tablets.

He did not make it so that whenever a scribe was about to make a mistake while copying a manuscript, can you imagine how hard it would be? What if right now I stopped and I got all those young folks that passed out the contact cards to come back down the aisles and pass out a little, you know, ring binder of paper.

You know, just a few of those papers. Remember back in school, you'd have that type of thing. And pass them all out. And I start with the front row here and I give them all the scripture lesson for today.

Say from, well, Gospel of John. And I have them all copy out John chapter one.

How long would that take?

It would take quite a while.

Especially since most of us,.

Our penmanship stinks anymore, right? Who uses, who even does it anymore, right? And then I have them take their copies and give them to the next row. And they've got to do the same thing. And then to the next row.

And then to the next row. But then I take some copies from the front row after the second row gets done using them and I give them to the fifth row and they now have to take what the people in the fourth row give them and compare it with the people from the first row and create a new copy.

And we continue that process all the way to the back of the building. First of all, how long is that going to take? More long, more. Well, let's just say the chili is going to be really cold by then. But here's the simple question.

Will there be differences by the time we get to the back row from what was given to the first row? Well, of course there will be. And so people go,.

Oh, well, wow,.

But will it still be the first chapter of the Gospel of John? Well, unless there's some joker halfway through that decides, I'm going to make up my own story. But if there was, wouldn't that show up real obviously when compared with everybody else's?

Well, of course it would.

But there is a history of transmission of the text through history. We have to recognize this. You are putting yourself in a position of really being refuted easily by the people of the world if you have the idea that what you have today was not passed down to you through history, because it was.

And all Christians before us have recognized this. We need to recognize it so that we can give the strongest answer to those who would object to the means by which it's come to us.

Okay?

The Septuagint, the Early Church, and Manuscript Variants

Now, let me point something out. Remember I pointed, what was this? The Greek Septuagint, right? What's the Greek Septuagint? The Greek Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This was the Bible of the early church.

This was the Bible of the early church. When the early church wanted to know what the scripture said, this is what they went to. The vast majority of the early Christians could not read Hebrew. In fact, there were only two major early church fathers that could read both Hebrew and Greek, Origen and Jerome, even Augustine.

Augustine could not read Hebrew, and his Greek wasn't all that good. He primarily wrote in Latin. And so how do we recognize when we look at the Greek Septuagint and we go, does every manuscript of the Greek Septuagint read the same?

No, there are variations between them. Are there any differences between the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew? Not many, but there are. There are. And sometimes the New Testament writers quote from the Greek Septuagint rather than from the Hebrew.

These are historical realities and we do not stick our heads in the sand to ignore them. If what we teach is true, then we need to recognize that we'll be able to stand up to scrutiny. But what we cannot do is put our hands in the sand and say, no, I can't answer all these questions, so I'm just gonna grab hold of this thing over here and say it's my standard, and I'm gonna ignore its history.

We can't do that. We can't do that. So we have, as I said, the best manuscript tradition of any work of antiquity. We have more manuscripts available to us today than have ever been known before. And please remember something.

It is only in the last century that we have been able to compare those manuscripts with each other. Only in the last century. And it's just really not that bad. You know, it's good that now in this century, we can do that.

But it is just something to recognize. Only in the last century. So in other words, in the days of the reformers, they didn't know what was in the library in a country, you know, across Europe. They had no way of comparing these things.

They had no way of knowing what was in these manuscripts. It's only been in the past century that we began to microfilm these things, give them proper identification. And today, we can look at any single manuscript that's cited in our Greek New Testaments and go, oh, that's in such and such a library.

And it contains this material. And what's happening, thanks to something called the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, many of those are being photographed with high quality digital photographs that you can access yourself if you want to check those things out.

And that's really important because things like wars happen and manuscripts die in wars. People die in wars, so do manuscripts. There were many manuscripts that were lost during World War II, for example, in the bombings in Europe.

There are many manuscripts that are only known to us because of transcriptions and things like that, because of the ravages of fire and war and so on and so forth. So it's good that that type of thing's happening, but we need to realize we're the first generation that's had this kind of information available to us.

We can compare all of these manuscripts with one another. That's a great thing. At the very time when so many of the attacks are coming against the New Testament, we now have more information that we can respond with than any generation before us.

That's a good thing. That's something we should be very thankful for. But we need some more history. Need some more history.

Keep a deep seat.

I know the chili's back there. And look, Jeff went an hour and 15 minutes last week, okay? So I'm not gonna go that long, I promise you, but I could very easily with this topic, all right? So I just need to give you some basic foundational things to grab hold of.

So number one, Christians have always been comfortable with the reality that God has given us His word in history. In history. It has been handwritten. It has been transmitted down to us in this fashion.

And that's what Christians have been comfortable with for a long time. Then what happens? Well, something very important happens. Islam arises and Islam expands very quickly for one century and then it's sort of hemmed in.

But then over the centuries, it's slowly moving this, well, it'll be sort of this way in the map of Europe. And eventually in the middle of the 15th century, the ancient city of Constantinople, Istanbul, falls.

And what happens before it falls is many of its Greek speaking scholars flee the city and they go into Europe with their manuscripts, their Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. And these manuscripts find their way into various universities and eventually are utilized by a man named Desiderius Erasmus.

Erasmus was a Dutch humanist scholar. Humanist was not a negative word back then, at least not as negative as it is today. He was a Dutch humanist scholar and he wanted people to have the New Testament in its original language.

Because what had happened? In Europe, the primary Bible had become the Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate. And that was what had been the standard Bible in Europe for 1100 years. All the reformers could read Latin.

All the reformers were much more comfortable reading Latin than they were any other language. Advertisements in newspapers during the Reformation were in Latin. Everybody who was educated knew Latin. And that was the standard Bible.

But Erasmus recognized that's not what the apostles wrote him. They wrote in Greek. And so he wanted pastors and preachers and scholars to have access to the Greek New Testament. And he also wanted to provide a better Latin translation than the Latin Vulgate was.

And so in 1516, something really important happened. Erasmus published his Novum Instrumentum. Novum Instrumentum, which of course is in Latin. What else would it be in? But it was a diaglot. It had the Latin on one page and it had the Greek on the other.

Now there is absolutely no question his emphasis was on the Latin. That's what he was primarily concerned about. He was very disappointed with the quality of the Greek manuscripts that he had been able to obtain in Basel, Switzerland, where he had relocated to work on this.

He only had a very small number of manuscripts. We know most of the manuscripts that he used and about the oldest he had was from about the 11th, 12th century. He didn't really trust it. He primarily used manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries.

So they were long, long after the writings of the apostles, obviously. And that's what he primarily used. And then he came to the Book of Revelation and he had a real problem. He couldn't find any manuscripts at all.

He could not find any Greek manuscripts. And so what he ended up having to do was he had to borrow a manuscript from a friend of his by the name of Johannes Reuchlin. Reuchlin was a fascinating guy. I don't have time to go into it, but if you ever want to read about a really interesting fellow in church history, Johannes Reuchlin was him.

But he borrows this commentary on the Book of Revelation that's written in Latin, but it contains the Greek text. And so he literally has to excise the Greek text out of a Latin commentary to produce the Book of Revelation.

And then he gets to the end of the commentary and the last few pages have fallen off. And his printer, John Froben, is saying, come on, Erasmus, we need to get this done. You've got all the rest of this work done.

We've got to get it done. And so what he does is he back-translates from Latin into Greek for the last few verses of the Book of Revelation in chapter 22. Now he does a great job, but he comes up with some readings in Greek that no Christian had ever seen since that book was originally written.

And those readings persist to this day in certain versions of the New Testament. I'll explain to you why. So, he publishes this, and since it is very close to Reformation Sunday, let me just sort of throw this in here for the fun of it.

It is one of those versions, those printings, of Erasmus' Greek-Latin New Testament that is obtained by a certain professor at the University of Wittenberg by the name of Martin Luther. And Dr. Luther, in looking at Erasmus' Greek New Testament that has the Latin on one side and the Greek on the other, is looking at it, and he was younger than me, so he didn't have to hold it as far out as I do, but he's looking at it, and he reads the Latin, and it says, poenitentium agitate, do penance.

But then he looks over at the Greek, and it says, metanoiate, repent. And he digs into the meaning of that word, repent, and it doesn't mean to do penance. It means to have a change of heart and mind.

And this begins to be used by the Spirit of God in Luther's experience, especially as he's also using that to preach through Galatians and preach through Romans. And that is when he begins to understand justification by God's grace through faith alone, which leads us to the Reformation itself.

That production of the Greek New Testament, that production of having that original language available to him, vitally important in bringing about the Reformation. And certainly, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, he would go into debate with Roman Catholic priests, and he'd put the Hebrew Old Testament on one side, and the Greek New Testament on the other side.

And he would then debate therefrom, and the Roman Catholic priests he was debating, all they could read was the Latin Vulgate. They didn't know these languages. And so he was able to refute their argumentation.

The original language text became very important in the history of the Reformation. And if you've read any of Calvin's commentaries, you know that he is continually making reference to the original languages and to the Latin Vulgate with which he was extremely familiar.

And you may know that he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he would always write them in two languages. There was a Latin version and a French version. A Latin version and a French version.

If you've read Calvin, you're probably reading an English translation of the 1559 Latin edition, the last Latin edition he did of the Institutes. But he knows these languages and he's utilizing these languages.

Now, here's what's important. How do we understand, in light of our confession, this statement kept pure in all ages? Knowing that the framers of our confession were well aware of the reality that there were differences between manuscripts.

What does pure mean? Well, here's what you need to remember historically. When the Reformation takes place, there is this outpouring of knowledge of the Word of God. And all of a sudden, the plowmen, the farmer, the dairymen, the blacksmith, are quoting from the Bible and studying the Bible.

And vulgar translations, that is translations in the vulgar languages, begin to appear. So even Luther produces a German translation of the New Testament and then in later years, working with others, the Old Testament as well.

And so the Germans are reading it. And remember, the English translations begin to come out. And all of this is taking place. And how does Rome respond? The counter-Reformation, the Jesuit counter-Reformation that takes place, one of its primary focuses, because Rome is still saying, no, the Latin Vulgate, Latin Vulgate.

God has given us the Latin Vulgate. In fact, Pope Sixtus actually said, there were a number of Sixtuses, but Pope Sixtus actually came up with an infallible Vulgate, the final authority, which Rome, of course, doesn't use today.

But at the time, it sounded like a good idea. They're pushing the Latin and they're saying to the people of the Reformation, you can't trust the Bible without us. We are Christ's church. We are the ones to whom that Scripture has been entrusted.

And that Greek stuff comes from heretics anyways. And you can't really trust it without the infallible Vicar of Christ, the Pope. And so when you read our forefathers, whether it be those who put together the London Baptist Confession of Faith, or before that, the Presbyterians who were defending these things against the onslaughts of the Roman Catholics, the Papists, as they called them, what they are fighting against is the counter-Reformation, which was highly successful in some areas, that was saying you cannot trust the original language texts.

You have to utilize the Latin Vulgate that has ecclesiastical authority. And the Reformers said, no. The original languages were Hebrew and Greek. That's what the apostles wrote in. And yes, we have a sufficiently robust manuscript tradition.

Now remember, they don't even know how many manuscripts that they have at that point in time. They don't have any of the information that we have today. They had none of the papyri. We have papyrus manuscripts today that date to within a few generations of the originals.

They had none of that.

They had none of that,.

But they still had confidence in the robust nature of the Greek manuscript tradition, and that's what they were defending against Rome. Now, what version of the Greek were they using? Well, they were using basically this.

This is called today the Textus Receptus. And of course, it's a Greek New Testament with a Latin name because the Reformers loved Latin. Textus Receptus actually, if you know your Latin, and we're all homeschoolers around here, so I'm sure you all do know your Latin.

In fact, I should ask some of the young people to go ahead and render for us Textus Receptus from the Latin. It means the received text, the received text that came from an advertisement in 1633. The Elsevier brothers, who were not brothers, I'm not sure why they're called the Elsevier brothers, but they were called the Elsevier brothers.

So the Elsevier brothers were publishing a Greek New Testament, and in their advertisement for it, they called it the Textus Receptus, the received text. Now, why did they call it that? Well, here's the history.

Ready?

Erasmus published five editions during his life, between 1560 and 1535, five editions. Now, you want a fascinating quick story? Here's a fascinating quick story. You will be able to amaze your families over your less than two hour long Thanksgiving dinners, because we all know in California, you can only have Thanksgiving for two hours, but you can tell this story very, very quickly like I will.

Erasmus realized, I had always wondered, I mean, I teach this stuff, I've taught this stuff for decades, and I had always wondered, why didn't Erasmus ever fix the problems.

In the book of Revelation?

Because as I told you, he back translated into Greek for the last like six verses of chapter 22.

Of the book of Revelation.

Why didn't he ever fix that? I found out last year why, and now you get to find out as well. You're sitting here going, you think we're gonna tell our families this during Thanksgiving? We want to be invited back next year.

Come on, what are you doing? It's fascinating, they'll love it. Go ahead and do it right after the turkey,.

It'll be great.

Anyway, here's what happened. Between the first and second editions, another printing of the Greek New Testament came out. I think it was from the Aldines, but came out, Erasmus knew that. And so Erasmus, I'll be perfectly honest with you, did not think much of the book of Revelation.

He just didn't. He did not have a very high view of it. I think he probably, if he'd had his druthers, would have rather it not being in the canon of scripture. I'm just telling you honestly. And so he found out there was this other printed edition out there, so he said to his printer, before he did the second edition, I'll tell you what, go get their copy and fix the book of Revelation based on theirs.

He didn't even want to take the time to do it himself. Go get theirs, fix the readings, and just go with that.

Here's the problem.

The other guys had used Erasmus' first edition for the book of Revelation. So the printers went and got it and went, oh, they're the same.

Okay, cool.

And that was it. And it was never fixed. And Erasmus didn't know. They didn't bother to tell him. And so here is the Textus Receptus, printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society in England within the past couple of decades.

It has the exact same readings Erasmus put in the book of Revelation in his first edition, even though there's not a Greek manuscript on God's green earth that ever had those readings. And that's why it happened.

Now, what's weird is Erasmus does five editions. He dies in 1535. About 20 years later, a little bit less than 20 years, about 15 years later. Calvin's printer in Geneva is named Robert Estienne, but his Latin name is Stephanos.

And Stephanos prints a Greek New Testament in 1550. I almost brought mine, but I just didn't figure with Chile flying around, it would be good to bring the 1550 Stephanos today. I have an actual 1550 Stephanos.