Bible Versions

So I'm not sure whether it's on or off. I'm assuming that it's on, but I am. Oh, good. Thank you. Well, some of you have had the opportunity of at least hearing this presentation, sort of following along with most of it anyways on your computers, because we recently sent this file out, or at least I tried to.

It was somewhat of a disaster, and I think my internet service provider now has me on a blacklist for sending too many copies of large files out or something. I'm not sure. But I put this presentation together about a year and a half ago, because the subject of Bible translations, and especially the claims of King James Only advocates, is a very difficult subject to address.

And I've discovered that doing it visually has been extremely helpful. The issue of the transmission of the text to scripture over time, the issue of translations, is becoming more and more prominent, mainly because people keep producing new translations.

I mean, there's a new Brodman-Holman translation. The new ESV just came out. Is it Crossway that's behind the ESV? I think it's Crossway that's behind the ESV. And in essence, every publisher is coming up with its own Bible translation for economic reasons.

Once you have your own Bible translation, then all the study Bibles and everything you do, you put them in that translation. You don't have to pay royalties. And so everybody's coming out with Bible translations.

And the ESV is a new one. A while ago, somebody spent $2 million promoting the New Living translation, which I'm not really certain you can use the word translation for the NLT. But anyways, they're just cranking them out right and left.

And unfortunately, there is not a commensurate amount of discussion and study on the issue of where the Bible came from, how it came to us. I grew up in a Christian home. And I still remember as a teenager at North Phoenix Baptist Church, I very distinctly remember one day up in the balcony of a very large church.

And the pastor said, now, the Greek for this word is such and so. And I remember sitting there going, why should I care what the Greeks say about this? I mean, all that really matters is what it says in English, right?

I honestly did not know that the New Testament had been written in Greek. And I had never sat back and gone, hmm, I wonder where this came from. How did this get to me? What was the process? And I had not heard any discussions of it either.

So if that can happen growing up in a Christian family, it's understandable that there's a large amount of confusion that exists concerning exactly how the New Testament text came to us. What's the difference between the New Testament text in Greek, the Old Testament text in Hebrew, so on and so forth?

And since it's right around the holidays, this particular presentation I have starts off with a nice snowy scene, which doesn't have anything to do with us around here these days, that's for sure. But just an example of a verse that most of us would be, I think all of us, would probably have memorized.

Glory to God in the highest and on earth. Peace, goodwill toward men. Luke 2 .14, the King James Version of the Bible. And we all know the passage. We're hearing it all the time. You'll hear it in songs and Christmas carols and things like that.

And yet, if anyone has something other than the King James Version of the Bible with them, they might be reading along in the Christmas story and get to this verse. And all of a sudden, things aren't quite as simple as you thought they were back in second grade when you quoted this in the Christmas pageant.

Because in the New American Standard Bible, it says, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among men with whom He is pleased. You read that and you go, that doesn't sound exactly the same as it did in the King James Version of the Bible.

In fact, when you think about it, peace on earth, goodwill toward men is a little bit different than peace among men with whom He is pleased. That's a different concept. One is generic and universal. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

And that's, I was, where was I sitting? I was sitting at a restaurant somewhere. Oh no, it was on the flight out here. Continental, the little square napkins they give you to put your drinks on. I happened to be sitting there.

Actually, it was more like this. And I looked down and moved the cup out of the way and it said, peace on earth. And so there's a little quote from, well, from the King James Version of the Bible, but not from the New American Standard Version of the Bible.

Very generic and universal. One, however, is very specific. And speaking of peace, those who enjoy God's favor. So which is it? And can we know which it is? And why is there a difference? All the way through this discussion, there's two ways of discussing a difference in a translation.

You can either say, why is there a difference? Is it a difference in the underlying text? Is it a difference in the translational methodology? That is, some translations have a certain goal they're going for in readability, others in formality and literalness, so on and so forth.

Or you can put it into very emotional terms. Why did someone alter the word of God? Who's trying to hide divine truth? One inflames the emotions. One allows us to discuss things on an even keel. Sadly, most of the discussions that we have on this subject do not partake of the even keel part.

It's the inflamed emotions part, as I will show you in just a moment. So what about the King James Only controversy? I'd like to separate some fact from fiction, give you some things to think about, and hopefully actually increase your trust in the trustworthiness of the scriptures.

The Emotional Rhetoric of King James Onlyism

Now, speaking of the emotional level, Tex Marr is one of the leading biblical theologians of our time. Says, how many of you know Tex Marr? Only one? Tex Marr is, anything that has a barcode on it is a mark of the beast.

Okay, Tex is into all of the conspiracies that you could possibly name. And he said, James White, a boastful King James Bible opponent, continues on his baseless crusade to bash King James Only believers.

It makes for a rather sad spectacle to observe critics of the King James Bible, like Mr. White, humiliate themselves and show disrespect for servants of God. I am praying that he will be given a repentant heart and know the grave damage he is doing to the kingdom of our Savior.

Elsewhere, Marr calls me a servant of Satan and a devil. And Mr. Marr lives down in Austin, Texas. And if you're ever interested, you can get onto our website. There is a page called The View from Marr's.

And he was promoting the idea that during the Ankerberg program back in 1995, that God had struck one of the non-King James Only fellows dumb. That was actually Don Wilkins, who at the beginning of one of the segments coughed.

And so Ankerberg said, let's start from the top on that one. And that was being struck dumb. But he also called into a radio program that was on once and the sound clip is on there. And I just refer you to it for an interesting experience in listening to someone, or we could go with Gail Riplinger.

Anyone ever read New Age Bible versions? Anyone ever heard of New Age Bible versions? Okay. She is the author of New Age Bible versions and she calls me a rude, crude heretic and a serial soul killer, which I had never even thought of the terminology serial soul killer before.

But I have with me today, this is the first time I've done this, except we did play this clip on the air. It's hard to explain the nature of some King James Only material. Gail, Tex, Pete Ruckman represent the most vocal, hence the most widely represented, but also the most weird side of things.

And it's hard to explain her book. People look at you and they simply don't believe you when you say you've never seen more errors per page than Gail Riplinger puts into a 700 page book. But just to give you an idea of what she is promoting and what she's putting out, I have now attached to this presentation, a discussion that was recorded in January of 1999, wherein Gail Riplinger explains, I think, I'll let you figure it out, the relationship between the NIV, Rupert Murdoch, who if you don't know, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox Television and his media conglomerate purchased Zondervan, which owns the copyright to the NIV.

So King James Only folks are really excited about the fact that the same guy who owns Bart Simpson owns the NIV as if that somehow means something. And then the sinking of the Titanic. So it's the relationship of the NIV, Rupert Murdoch, and the sinking of the Titanic.

I'll just let you listen for yourself. Stop it right there. I think, I'm not certain, but I think if you missed it, six small slits, 64 ,000 words, 16 verses, there's a six in each one, six, six, six.

I think that was the connection. And Murdoch is the name of the guy who owns Fox and Murdoch was also the name of the guy who was in charge of the Titanic at the time. There you go. That's why the NIV will sink into the flames of fire.

Well, you might say, oh, come on. No one takes those folks seriously. Sadly, Jack Heil's school gave Gail Ripplinger a honorary doctorate for her book. And of course, Jack Heil's school also gave one fellow's horse a doctorate once and it was a literal horse.

I'm not sure that I'd want a doctorate from a school that gave doctorates to horses. But anyways, she travels all over the place. She speaks in pulpits in many churches all the time. And I've known of entire churches that have had NIV burning parties as a result of the pastor buying into Gail Ripplinger's stuff but don't they have a point?

Can't you make an argument? For example, compare these passages. 1 Timothy 3 .16, the King James Version of the Bible says, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.

Of course, compare that then with the New American Standard Bible. By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh. Now, obviously the terms God and he who are not the same thing.

And this is something you can preach. If you want to really preach the perspective that the New American Standard and other modern translations are in some way, shape, or form seeking to denigrate the deity of Christ, you can go to a passage like this and really push the issue if you seek to do so.

But certainly those look like, that looks like a very major difference. And we will, of course, look very closely at what the actual difference is, but you can see how if a person does not have access to the background issues, this would look like a tremendous difference.

And then compare these. Most of the books that are available out there provide page after page after page of charts that look just like this. And this chart could be extended almost indefinitely in comparing modern versions versus the King James Version.

Now, those of you who are familiar actually with the technical terminology would know we're talking here, comparing the modern text with what's called the Byzantine text. And the modern version, for example, in Matthew 4 .18, he, in the King James, is Jesus.

But if you want to go the other direction, Jesus becomes he in the modern translations. The Lord Jesus becomes the Lord in Acts 19 .10. Jesus Christ becomes just Jesus in 1 Corinthians 9 .1. The reverse in 2 Corinthians 5 .18.

Lord Jesus Christ becomes Lord Jesus in Acts 16 .31. And the Lord Jesus Christ just becomes Jesus Christ in 2 John 3. I just use these as illustrations of how in the King James Version, the titles of deity are more extensive.

They're longer, they're fuller than is what is frequently found in the modern versions. And of course the argument is made, why make this change? Why delete titles of Jesus? You're not, the modern versions are not as respectful, et cetera, et cetera.

But you can go beyond that. Now, what I've done in the past is I have, in a role-playing situation, I'm role-playing a Mormon. We'll ask somebody, if you have an NIV, and someone's reaching down there, which probably tells me it's an NIV, right?

Would you like to read John 5, 4 for us? Anyone who has an NIV, if you'd like to look at John 5, verse 4. Oh, well, that's now the shortest verse in the Bible. Oh, well, there is no John 5, 4 in the NIV.

It goes from John 5, 3 to 5, 5. And there is a little teeny tiny footnote at the bottom in micro print that's certainly too small for folks over 40 to read. It's down there, but it is very, very difficult to find.

There is no John 5, 4. Well, if you're sitting there with a Mormon missionary who's talking about how all Bibles are different and stuff like that, how are you going to respond to what he has to say? I've done that.

That's just so much fun with college groups and stuff like that. They just all sit there going, especially when they think you're really a Mormon. That's when it's really fun. But, of course, defenders of the modern translations are not without their arguments as well.

You can bring up many issues regarding the King James Version. For example, if someone wants to say, well, the modern versions get rid of the deity of Christ or try to get rid of the deity of Christ at 1 Timothy 3, 16, well, we can respond by looking at passages such as John 1, 18.

In the King James Version of the Bible, it says, no man has seen God any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him. But the NRSV reads, no one has ever seen God.

It is God, the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made Him known. So in 1, you have the only begotten Son, but the NRSV says God, the only Son, or the unique God, I believe, or the one and only God in the NIV is the rendering there using the specific word God of Jesus.

And so in 1 Timothy 3, in the King James, you have God used of Jesus, but not in the main text, the NASB. You may notice that there is a footnote in the NASB noting that. But here you have the reverse.

So if it's a conspiracy over in John 1, in 1 Timothy 3, isn't it a conspiracy over in John 1? Or maybe there's not really a conspiracy going on here at all, as we will see. In the same way, King James-only folks love to point out parallels between the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses and any modern translations that would read the same way.

Guilt by association. Well, you can turn that around. In John 14, 14, modern translations agree that here the Lord speaks of prayer to himself. He's talking about after he goes back to heaven and asking him something in his name.

But in the King James version, it doesn't have, if you ask me anything in my name, it simply says, if you ask anything in my name. No direct reference of prayer to him, just simply asking for something in his name.

Now, the New World Translation does the exact same thing. Does that somehow indicate a connection or a conspiracy? Well, we'll find out that it doesn't, but if we're consistent, we would have to argue that it would.

Look at Revelation 1 .8. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty, in the King James. But the New American Standard says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

And if these are the words of Jesus, as many people feel that they are, here's another reference to the deity of Christ, found in the modern translations that is not found in the King James Version of the Bible.

And how is this for a conspiracy? New American Standard, 1 John 3 .1. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God, and such we are. That last phrase is an affirmation of our adoption as sons into the family of God.

But look at the King James Version of the Bible, which says, behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. That's it. The entire phrase, and such we are, is not found anywhere in the King James Version of the Bible.

So are we to assume that maybe the high church Anglicans who were involved in the production of this translation had something against adoption as sonship or something? I don't know. Or is there a more simple reason, which in fact, there is a more simple reason.

There's no conspiracy on either side. There are simple, basic reasons why there are differences in translations. Differences always will come down to one of two things. The differences will come down to either a difference in the underlying text that is being translated, whether it be in the Hebrew or the Greek, or differences in the methodology you use of translating languages.

But given the fact that we don't discuss those issues in the church very much, this is an area where there's a tremendous amount of possibility of misleading people and giving only partial bits of information rather than the whole, which leads to all sorts of endless difficulties as my files have proven over the years how many people have written me letters about church splits and missionaries coming back from the missions field because of the controversy and all the rest of that stuff.

So let's look at the passages we've looked at. And to do that, we're gonna have to do a little history. There's nothing you can do about it. If we're gonna find out why translations differ, we need to know something about where the Bible came from.

And as I mentioned last night, we live in a day where because of the internet and because of the ready availability of communication and information, false information can be communicated just as fast as the truth can be.

And there's a whole lot more people who wanna communicate false information than true information. And so given that, and especially since 9 -1 -1 with the focus upon Islam and her apologists, her apologists focus upon attacking, excuse me, attacking the veracity and validity of the Bible and its text.

So this is not just something that's relevant anymore to just the King James Only controversy, but many of the things we'll be talking about as to where our modern texts came from are extremely relevant to responding to the current situation with Islam as well.

So keep that in mind. If you've not run into King James Onlyism, though I would imagine in this area that you have, I know folks up, for example, at Bethany House up in Minneapolis had never heard of it when we first started working on the King James Only controversy.

They didn't even know there was a controversy, but it is larger in some parts of the nation than in others. Using 1 Timothy 3 .16 is sort of the touchstone. Why would one translation say God was manifest in the flesh and the other would say he who was manifest in the flesh?

We need to understand why modern translations differ. The King James and the New King James, and how many New King Jameses do we have hiding out there? A number of New King Jameses back there. Even our cameraman is using the New King James version of the Bible, but in micro print.

The smallest version of the New King James ever produced on microfiche. We need to know something about the text from which these translations came. The King James and the New King James version of the Bible are based upon a 16th century Greek text that is loosely known as the Textus Receptus or the TR.

So you'll hear me refer to the Textus Receptus or the TR. Now, there isn't any one single TR. In fact, as another slide will mention, there were at least seven different printed Greek texts available to King James translators and there have been more since then.

But just generally, we use it as a general term and we'll get a little bit more specific later on, called the Textus Receptus or the Received Text. Modern translations are based upon the Nestle-Aland Greek text of this century.

The current edition, the Nestle-Aland text is the 27th edition. Most of the more modern translations will be based upon the 26th or the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. Now, the TR represents what's called the Byzantine family of manuscripts.

And these manuscripts constitute about four fifths of all the extant Greek texts that we have in our possession. So when I refer to a Greek text, I'm referring to a handwritten Greek text. And of course, handwriting was the way in which texts were transmitted all the way up into the very beginning of the 16th century.

Now, printing is invented in the middle of the 15th, but the first printed and published edition of the Greek New Testament does not appear until 1516. And so there's a period of time between the invention of printing and the actual production of the first Greek New Testament.

And so up until that time, if you had a Greek, if you wanted to have access to the Greek language of the New Testament, yours would be a handwritten manuscript. And about four fifths of all of them that we have, and we have around 5 ,400 of them, about 5 ,400 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament in handwriting, about four fifths of those come from what's called the Byzantine manuscript tradition.

They are all similar to one another. And where there are variations in the text, they will sort of stick together and have pretty much the same reading. However, the vast majority of those Byzantine texts come from the 10th to the 15th centuries.

So we're talking 1 ,000 years after Christ to 1 ,500 years after Christ is the timeframe on the vast majority of the Byzantine manuscripts. They represent what is in fact a later, what might be called ecclesiastical text rather than the more primitive texts of the first centuries.

This is the majority text, though the TR differs in over 1 ,800 places from the majority text type. But what do I mean there? Well, you can sort of guess what a majority text methodology is. When you have a variant, that is where you have, let's say in the Gospel of Mark, there are many variants, for example, of the spelling of various place names.

And so let's say you have Caesarea Philippi and one spells it one way and one spells it another way. Well, the majority text approach would be, well, if there are 1 ,500 manuscripts that contain Mark approximately and 1 ,100 of them read one way and 400 of them read the other way, well, the 1 ,100 win.

It's a simple vote count. The majority wins. Now, there are just a few passages where that sort of gets a little bit more difficult to do, but in general, he who has the most manuscript votes wins as far as the majority text methodology goes.

We'll talk a little bit more about that when we look at some of the specific references. Now, what I'm saying here at the bottom of the screen is the TR and the majority text are actually two different texts.

They're both Byzantine in flavor, but there are about 1 ,800 places where the majority text and the TR would differ from one another. And we'll see the reasons for that in just a moment. Now, here's a little graph.

Down here along the bottom, you have centuries, 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, so on and so forth. The white boxes represent the Alexandrian manuscripts and the black boxes represent the Byzantine manuscripts.

Alexandrian is another family of manuscripts. Now, when I say a family of manuscripts, a lot of people get a little bit confused as to what in the world we're talking about. Generally, manuscripts are placed into families based upon their characteristics.

There are certain variations where Alexandrian manuscripts will read the same and Byzantine manuscripts will read the same. It's not like the Alexandrian manuscripts are totally different than the Byzantine manuscripts.

They all are of the same text. And I have said many times that if you take the most Alexandrian manuscript there is and the most Byzantine manuscript there is, interpret them the same way, you get the same result.

And again, we're talking about anywhere from as far as serious textual variation goes, two to 3 of the text. So the vast majority of it is not even involved in this issue whatsoever, as we'll see when we get into some of those specific variations.

But the Alexandrian manuscripts are the ones that are vilified most by King James Only advocates. You'll find all sorts of stuff about how Alexandria, Egypt is an evil place. And Egypt is always representative of evil in the Bible.

And so if they're called Alexandrian manuscripts, that must mean they came from Egypt, which actually we don't know where they came from, but the text type was found around that area. And there's all sorts of vilification of the Alexandrian manuscripts, but in reality, they're the oldest ones that we have.

And they're also the ones that have references to the deity of Christ at such places as John 118 as well. People always say, oh, well, these are connected with origin and he was a heretic. No one's ever been able to connect an Alexandrian manuscript with a heretic.

In fact, the earliest manuscript that we can trace to anyone that we could actually identify as a heretic by name is a Byzantine manuscript traced to an Arian who denied the deity of Christ. So I'm not sure exactly what that means.

Anyways, as you can see, looking at these, and I normally bring my little laser, it really makes it very high tech and stuff like that, but all I've got is a pen, so it's not really high tech. But anyhow, if you look at the relative numbers of manuscripts, I asked the question, what was the majority text during the first millennium?

In the year 1000, if you used the majority text methodology of just counting up manuscripts and so on and so forth, the majority text in the year 1000 would have obviously been an Alexandrian text. But then over the next number of centuries, the Byzantine becomes predominant.

And so by the year 2000 or 2001, you have a different result from using majority text methodology than you do if you did it in the year 1000. And I would submit that if your methodology results in a different reading over time constantly, that that might cause a little bit of question as to the validity of that particular form of argumentation.

And here's the reason. Here's the second century, all the way up through the 16th century. But this instead of, this gives you a relative number of manuscripts. And the little white boxes now, instead of being Alexandrian, are called papyri.

And papyri manuscripts, that refers to the form of the manuscript is made of papyri, which is a rather perishable material, sort of a cheap writing surface that was made by taking leaves and laying them across from one another.

And generally one side would be fairly smooth and the other side wouldn't be fairly smooth. Christians seemingly use both sides of papyri, maybe because they were so stinking poor. Many of them were slaves.

And obviously in the first few centuries, the persecution of the church, so on and so forth, it wasn't like you could, as a Christian, be really open about copying manuscripts and things like that. It also seems that Christians did not write their manuscripts in scroll form.

On a scroll, you just write on one side of the substance as you think about it. Christians always used the codex or book form. And so even with papyri, they'd use both sides of the sheet. Well, these little white ones here represent papyri.

The green ones represent unseals. Now, an unseal refers to the form of writing. And then the black ones refer to the minuscules, which is also a different form of writing. Now, I'll illustrate what the form of writing looks like right here.

This is unseal text. And you will notice it is all written in capital letters with no punctuation, no space between the words. And that is how the earliest manuscripts up through the eighth century of the Greek language, whether it's secular documents or New Testament documents, that's the form in which Greek was written at that time.

And this actually is the beginning of Romans chapter five. Some of you who read Greek are seeing it going de kaiothentes, ah, yes, yes. Therefore, I haven't been justified. And then around the ninth century, the minuscule text became predominant.

And that looks more like what we have today where you have a mixture of large type and small type, capital letters and non-capital letters. And then you have accenting and spaces between words and various forms of punctuation and things like that.

So keeping that in mind, then we go back to this and you'll see that the vast majority of all manuscripts, grand total, come from the 11th through the 16th centuries. We, you know, that makes sense when you think about it.

The more recent you come to modern times, the more likely you're going to have those manuscripts that survive. By the way, many of these unsealed texts I forgot to mention are written on vellum, which is leather.

Leather obviously lasts a whole lot longer than papyri does as far as over the centuries go. And many of the greatest manuscripts we have come from that unsealed format on leather. But the vast majority of your manuscripts come from here and these are in the main Byzantine texts.

Now there's also another reason for this. Let's think about our world history for a moment. Somewhere right around in here, a little thing happens down in Mecca, remember? And we have the rise of a religion that we're all hearing about all the time now called Islam.

And Islam sweeps across North Africa, moves up through Palestine, into Asia Minor. It comes across North Africa, up into Spain, up into France and is finally halted in 732 by Charles the Hammer, Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.

And, but basically you have all the areas that had been, had had at least nominal Christianity in it down in North Africa and places like that basically disappear. And what area is left to the active production of biblical texts?

Well, you have Europe and what's Europe primarily speaking at this point, but Latin. And then you have the area around Byzantium which continues to speak and utilize the Greek language. And so many of these manuscripts, especially in this time period, are produced around the Byzantine area.

And hence the manuscripts that would have had the most circulation there become the ones that are copied over and over and over again as the language continues in use. Now, Egypt is under the control of Islam.

And so a manuscript tradition that was predominant in that area or in North Africa or any place else simply wouldn't have the same kind of reproduction being, taking place. And in those areas where Latin has become the primary language, the reproduction of manuscripts there, while it would continue at least, because of the monasteries would not be nearly as great as it once was.

Now, the TR, fascinating stories here, lots of neat church history stories. I have to try to avoid telling you or it goes on forever and ever. And you already discovered I could go on forever and ever last night.

The TR was created by the work of a Roman Catholic priest and scholar. He was called the Prince of the Humanists, a fascinating fellow by the name of Desiderius Erasmus. And reading Erasmus is always interesting.

I can't help but think of the term erasable when I think of Erasmus because he was a fighter. He loved to debate and debate back then was, well, let's put it this way. If any of you have heard the debates that I've had with Tim Staples, either on the Bible Answer Man broadcast or in person, you know that those are normally quite simply nasty.

That they're in your face, back and forth, who cares about the rules, at least from Mr. Staple's perspective. And they can be pretty, I don't know, harsh situations. That ain't nothing compared to what things were like back then.

If you read, for example, Erasmus' letters to certain people who were criticizing him for this, that, or the other thing, it makes anything that has been said in almost any one of my debates, with the possible exception of the debate with Art Sippo, look like absolute child's play.

They went tooth and fang back then, and that's what was expected. And when you read Erasmus, he certainly did that. Now, amongst other things, for example, he loved to mock and ridicule the indulgence trade and the trade in relics in the church.

He was a real thorn in the side of the established church, but he never left it. Even though the Reformation began during his life, and many people thought that he might leave, he never did leave the established church of his day.

In fact, he is the same one who wrote the first written debate of the Reformation against Martin Luther on the subject of the bondage of the will. That was Erasmus versus Luther, same fellow. Now, he printed and published.

Now, you say, well, why are you repeating yourself there? I'm not. He printed and published the first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516. It was not the first printed edition. It was the first printed and published edition.

And the difference is that Cardinal Jimenez had already printed an edition of the Greek New Testament. But back in those days, publication was just as complex as it is today, more so in many ways. And one of the reasons was you had to gain papal approval to publish a book.

And you can imagine what the, shall we say, the red tape was like, trying to get a book through the Vatican and through all the processes in Rome of gaining papal approval before you could publish it.

So Jimenez's New Testament, which was in many ways far superior to Erasmus's, beautifully printed, he had a lot more money behind him, was sitting in a warehouse waiting for the approval of the Roman Curia before it could be published.

Well, John Froben was Erasmus's publisher slash printer in Basel, Switzerland. And I know a little bit something about publishers and the pressures they put upon you when you're behind deadline, and which I am anymore all the time.

And he was putting a lot of pressure upon Erasmus, get this done, get this done, get this done. Jimenez is already in print, we're never gonna get this done. If he comes out, well, we're still printing, we're dead.

No one's gonna want ours when this is available. Move, move, move, move, move. And so Erasmus himself described that first edition as precipitated rather than published. No, precipitated rather than edited is how he put it in his own words.

And as he was rushing to put it out, one of the things that happened was he gets the Book of Revelation and discovers that he has no manuscripts of it. And he couldn't find any in the library there at Basel.

And so he borrowed a manuscript from a friend of his by the name of Johannes Reuchlin. And Johannes Reuchlin, any of you who have studied Hebrew, I noticed that Colin was showing me a new Hebrew text that he had picked up, a Hebrew grammar.

The first Hebrew grammar to be written for Christians was written by Johannes Reuchlin, but it had to be done anonymously because in those days, the only way to learn Hebrew was to sneak off at night to visit with your local rabbi.

Well, in those days, that was a very dangerous thing to do. You'd get caught cavorting with a heretic, which is what a rabbi would be considered, and you would find yourself receiving the warm blessings of the church, that is the flames, as you were burned at the stake as a heretic.

And so Reuchlin had to sneak off by night to get this type of work done, but he felt that it was necessary. We needed to be able to read the original languages, and Hebrew was a bit of a difficulty at that point.

Well, he borrowed Reuchlin's manuscript of the Book of Revelation, and he had some folks helping him to transcribe it and to write it out in the form that Froben would be able to use to do typesetting.