King James Onlyism

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The King James Bible is 400 years old this year and it's sold an estimated 1 billion copies.
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For some, it's still the only version we should use. For others, modern techniques, modern scholarship has given us more accurate versions.
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Who's right? Will you change your mind? Well, let's find out as we present tonight's
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Live at 9 special debate Should we exclusively use the
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King James Bible? As you can hear, we've got this wonderful live audience here tonight who are going to be taking part in our debate but especially
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I want to welcome two very special guests who are going to lead us off tonight as our debate.
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First of all, Jack, Jack Borman, thank you for coming. Author of six books, including early manuscripts, church fathers and a whole host of others.
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And you are going to be speaking for the King James Bible. Great, thank you very much for coming.
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And Dr. James White, director of Alfred Omega Ministries author of 20 books, including the
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King James only controversy and just had heart surgery, you were telling me.
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Thanks for letting everybody know that. Just in case something happens tonight, we'll let them know what's going on.
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And you are going to put the case of why we shouldn't exclusively use it. Great, thank you very much for both of you being with us.
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Let me explain, it's going to be slightly different to our other debates we have. What is going to happen is both
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Jack and James are going to have 20 minutes to present their case.
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This will be interspersed with booing and hissing and applause and all sorts of things from our audience.
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During that time, you will have opportunity to send in your text and your emails to the normal address number that will come up onto your screen.
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Please get those in even as the debate gets going. At the end of what will be 40 minutes, we'll start taking some comments from the audience.
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We'll start taking some of your texts and emails and we'll be asking more questions. I'll be asking some, the audience will be asking some as well.
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So whether you're at home or here, we want you to be taking part. We want you to be sharing what you think.
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This debate has caused a tremendous enthusiasm, I think
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I would say. I think there are many that are watching online from the States. Welcome to you and welcome to those that are watching online in Britain or via the satellite.
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You are very welcome and we want you to take part. So, without further ado,
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Jack, I want to give you the first 20 minutes to present your case for the
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King James Version. Well, certainly, thank you very much tonight. And again, as it's been mentioned, when an edition of the
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Bible has become a 400 -year standard, that is certainly quite a matter of wonder and a case for reflection and especially so when that Bible is still widely used and especially so when the language of that Bible, though different, is not difficult.
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The King James Version was always different. It was never current.
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It was never contemporary. It was never like your morning newspaper.
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It was always a step up. It was not Elizabethan.
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The King James Version is a 400 -year standard that is a matter for great reflection.
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With a standard, you know where you stand. With a constant flow of modern versions and revisions of these versions, you're not so certain where you stand.
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The footing is not so secure. It's more tentative.
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It's more provisional. It's not quite as nailed down.
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This evening, I want to show that the Authorized Version prepared during the years 1604 to 1611 is fundamentally superior to the modern versions.
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And I emphasize the term fundamentally because whilst there are many issues involved here, there is one great mount -impassable issue that, with respect,
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I do not believe my friends who use the modern versions can adequately address this issue.
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If you can see this issue, and if you can see the major issues,
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I do think that the second -area issues begin to fall into line.
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My first main point is I propose that the King James Version is a very accurate translation of the
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Greek and Hebrew words which God inspired in the beginning. Number one, that these words were given by inspiration verbally.
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The faith once delivered, Jude verse 3, there is no secondary inspiration, that these words were preserved verbally.
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Christ promised in Matthew 24 verse 35, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.
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Number three, that Christ further promised that the Holy Spirit would guide believers into all truth concerning these words.
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John 16, 13 compared with verses like John 17, verse 17.
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And then number four, that these preserved Greek and Hebrew words would not be difficult to find across the centuries.
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Deuteronomy 30 verse 14, the word is very nigh thee.
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These words would not be hidden in a desert. These words like Codex Vaticanus would not be hidden in the
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Vatican library. These words like Codex Sinaiticus would not be found near a waste paper bin in a
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Greek Orthodox monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. These words would not be out there somewhere, but we're just not certain where they are.
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And then number five, that these words during the manuscript period would be found in the multiplication of Scripture rather than in their being hidden away.
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2 Corinthians 9 verse 10 says, and multiply the word sown, seed sown.
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Psalms 147, 15, his word runneth very swiftly.
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Psalm 68 verse 11, the Lord gave the word, and great was the company of those that published it.
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And then, and then in time, the 47 translators divided into six companies gathering at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster would accurately translate these preserved, originally inspired
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Hebrew and Greek words into the English of the authorized version.
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My second point, my second major point. I propose, as shown by that most remarkable of documents, the authorized version preface known as the translators to the readers, that this was likely the most unique gathering of godly scholarship ever.
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As to the originals from which they translated, they say, the originals thereof being from heaven, not of earth, the author being
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God, not man, the inditer the Holy Spirit, not the wit of the apostles or prophets, the scriptures being acknowledged to be so full and so perfect.
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Unlike biblical scholarship today, these men were not tainted by rationalism, by unbelief, by uncertainty.
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As to how they approached their work, the preface says, and in what sort did they, these assemble?
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In the trust of their own knowledge, and they had knowledge, they were the greatest grammarians in the land, and in what sort did they assemble?
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In the trust of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of judgment, as it were, in an arm of flesh, at no hand.
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They trusted in him that hath the key of David, opening, and no man shutting, if you ask what they had before them.
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Truly, it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and the Greek of the
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New. These are the two golden pipes through which the olive branches empty themselves into the gold.
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Neither did we think much to consult the translators or commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or Latin, nor the
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Spanish, French, Italian, or Dutch. Neither did we disdain to revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered.
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We have at the length, through the good hand of the
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Lord upon us, brought the work to that pass that you now see.
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As to their result and conclusion, they say, Truly, good
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Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one, in the literary sense, a good one, but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be accepted against.
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That hath been our endeavor, that hath been our mark.
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Many other things we might give thee warning of, gentle reader, if we have not exceeded the measure of a preface already.
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Ye are brought unto fountains of living water, which ye dig not.
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Do not cast earth into them with the Philistines. Neither prefer broken pits, nor tread under foot so precious things.
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Neither yet with Esau sell your birthright for a mess of pottage.
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When one disparages a passage in the authorized version, it is correct to ask them,
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How long did you look at that passage before you were prepared to surrender it?
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My third main point, mount impassable, mount impassable.
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I propose that there is a huge mount impassable difference between the
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Greek text that underlies the authorized version, and that which underlies the modern versions.
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The authorized version text first. I have a copy of it right here.
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That text first. This text represents the vast majority of the 5 ,500
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Greek manuscripts that we now have. Most of these
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Greek manuscripts are obviously very much used.
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This text has 2 ,900 more words.
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This text is doctrinally fuller. This text is cohesive.
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And yet amongst the manuscripts that support this text, there is just enough difference to let you know that they are not lateral copies or reproductions of each other, but they are each individual witnesses representing long lines of transmission into the past.
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If you were to ask how many are a copy of each other, probably less than 10.
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Kersop Lake said, regarding those that he looked at, almost all are orphan children.
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We've got nearly 5 ,500 manuscripts of the type that underlie the authorized version.
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They're all independent witnesses, not copies of each other.
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And this text, and let me also add, Gordon Fee asks, he says, but the question still must be answered.
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How does one account for its dominance and general uniformity?
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How did the Byzantine text, and that is one of the names for this text, how did it become dominant?
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And this text spread widely. The second text, our modern version text, which underlies most of the modern
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Bibles. The modern version text. This text is represented by two very, very old manuscripts,
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Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, dating from about the year 360.
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It's also supported by not many more than 40 or 50 other manuscripts.
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This text has 2 ,900 fewer words.
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This text is less doctrinally distinct or full. This text is not cohesive.
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Klaus Watschel and Barbara Alland of the Munster Institute, the primary architects of this text, say, the papyri and majuscules, i .e.
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this type of text, are for the most part individual witnesses, despite sharing general tendencies on the form of their text.
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They go on. They differ so widely from one another that it is impossible to establish any direct genealogical ties among them.
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This text did not spread widely. It's mainly an
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Egyptian text, mainly an Alexandrian -type text.
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Bruce Mitsker lists 25 heretical groups and documents that came from Alexandria.
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It was not a good place to get a Bible. This is the fundamental, mount -impassable issue that we face.
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Almost all manuscripts, cohesive, doctrinally distinct, spread widely against a small number of manuscripts, not cohesive, not so doctrinally distinct, did not spread widely.
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This is mount -impassable for our friends, and many friends, indeed, who use the modern
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Bibles. I feel this must be addressed. My fourth point.
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Truth speaks first. Truth speaks first.
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Beginning with the inspiration of the autographs, in each of the major epochs of how the
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Bible came down to us, from inspiration to our having it in our hands today, a number of important epochs, and in each of these, truth spoke first.
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Dissent, division, debate, corruption would follow, but in each major epoch, truth would have the first voice.
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I'll give you three examples. In the 850s, there was a changeover from the large -lettered unsealed text to the small -lettered minuscule text.
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Virtually every manuscript that went through that change was of the type that underlies our authorized version.
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Again, Barbara Alland and Klaus Watschel at the Munster Institute say, they're at a loss to explain this, they say, although transferring other ancient
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Greek literature into the new script involved a work of criticism, this was not the case for the
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New Testament, at least in the sense that no attempt was made to base the newer manuscripts on the oldest available text, i .e.,
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this kind of text. This was not an accident of history.
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We see the hand of God in this. A second point. In the initial printing of the
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Greek New Testament during the early 1500s, it does not seem to have occurred to any of those so involved to set type for any other type of text than that which underlies the authorized version.
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There was no debate, there was no dissent. Other manuscripts were known, they left them where they lay, but nothing approaching an
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Aleph -B, Vaticanus -Sinaiticus type of text made it within sight of the newly established publishing houses in Europe.
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Debate, dissent, opposition would follow, but this text had the first word.
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A third point. Some accuse Erasmus of haste in getting out his 1516 edition to the printer.
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He did get in a bit of a hurry, he did make a few mistakes, but I'm glad he got in a hurry.
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Just in time for a monk with a piece of paper nailing it to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther would take
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Erasmus' text, translate it into German, the rest is history.
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Not an accident of history, we see the hand of God in this.
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My fifth point. My fifth point. Would it matter?
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Would it matter if you've got 2900 fewer words in your
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New Testament? That's about the number of words in 1st and 2nd Peter scattered through the
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New Testament. Would it matter if you've got a total of 8 ,000 other differences?
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Some say, oh you could get all of the differences on one single sheet of paper.
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Indeed you could, if you write small enough and if the sheet of paper is big enough.
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8 ,000 differences. We've got them all listed here.
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Would it matter if doctrines are not so clearly stated or if key doctrinal verses are missing?
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We've got here 356 doctrinal passages in the
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Authorized Version generally missing in the Modern Version. We have checked these against the entire strata of manuscript evidence, against the
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Greek, against the Early Version, against the Fathers. There was indeed a battle for the doctrinal heart of Scripture.
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When the living word went to heaven, Satan turned all of his guns upon the written word, but there was also a winner.
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And so would it matter if doctrine is missing? Would it matter if the
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New American Standard Version has the name of Christ 214 fewer times, the
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New International Version 176 times?
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Would it matter if 85 times the name Jesus is disassociated from a term of deity?
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Thank you, Jack, very much indeed. I think it's always the case that when one person puts their argument forward, you think, yeah, oh, absolutely.
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I think it's your turn, James, to begin to share what you would feel and where you would answer,
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I'm sure, some of those points. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is an honor to be with you all here in London this evening.
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A couple of years ago I had the opportunity of debating Dr. Bart Ehrman, who is considered to be one of the leading critics of New Testament Christianity in the world today.
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And Dr. Ehrman has a very odd view. He believes that if there was, in fact, an inspiration of Scripture, that God would make sure that there would be absolutely no textual variance that would ever appear in any manuscript of that written
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Scripture. And therefore he rejects the Bible as the Word of God because there are differences between every manuscript, every single
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Greek manuscript that we have today, varies from every other one because they're handwritten.
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If I pass something out to you this evening, had everybody in the front row copy it, then the next row copy theirs and the third row copy theirs, we would have differences as they went back, even with the lighting we have today.
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Maybe some of you have glasses and LASIK and everything else. We would still have copyist errors, even in a modern situation.
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And so Dr. Ehrman takes the idea that, well, God would keep that from happening, and since he didn't, then there can't really be
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Scripture. I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. I defend the inerrancy of Scripture. Next week here in London I'm debating a
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Muslim on the subject of whether Islam has misrepresented Christianity. I have debated people like John Dominic Crossan, one of the co -founders of the
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Jesus Seminar, on the historical reliability of the Gospels. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God.
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But I also believe that King James Onlyism removes the best defense we have of the veracity of the text of the
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New Testament because it goes backwards. It goes back to a standard that cannot be substantiated, and I need to try to explain to you why that is.
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Pastor Moorman showed us the Textus Receptus over there. There is not a Greek text in the entire world that reads like the
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Textus Receptus. Not a single one. In fact, that blue text right there is actually the work of a man named
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Scrivener who went back to the King James itself, saw what readings the
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King James translators used, and created a Greek text that no one had ever seen before Scrivener created that in the 19th century.
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There are over 1 ,800 differences between that text and what's called the majority or Byzantine text.
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Even though Pastor Moorman said that it was the Byzantine text, there are over 1 ,800 differences between them.
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In fact, this evening I brought with me, this is, we heard of Erasmus. This is a photocopy of Erasmus's third edition.
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There are five editions that Erasmus produced between 1516 and 1535. Very, very important.
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Luther did use the first edition and discovered that was very different than which means to repent.
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Very, very important. Yes, God was definitely involved with that. But then in 1550,
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Stephanos produced this text. And this isn't a photocopy. This is a 1550. This book is 461 years old.
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This is the Stephanos 1550 Greek text, which was the Textus Receptus, the received text of its day.
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This, along with all the editions of Erasmus and Beza's work, were the texts that were used by the
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King James translators. This very one may have been used by the King James translators, for all we know. They did not use manuscripts.
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They used printed editions. They knew there were other manuscripts. No one at that time knew anything about Byzantine text types or Alexandrian text types.
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They did not make a decision to reject anything. In fact, Erasmus himself wrote to his friend
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Bombasius in Rome when he was in the controversy about 1 John 5 -7. He asked his friend whether the
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Vatican manuscript contained the Commiohonium. Erasmus would have loved to have used that manuscript.
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The idea that they somehow chose not to, because they knew about the text types, there's just no way of substantiating that from the historical sources at all.
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These are the sources that the King James translators used. Now, the other text over there, the Nestiolan text, now has far earlier manuscripts.
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Erasmus only had about half dozen to a dozen manuscripts to work with. The earliest from was around 1000
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AD. Folks, remember something about church history. Something happened between 632 and 732 that changed the face of the globe.
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It was called Islam. And when Islam arose between 632 and 732, all the
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Christian churches in North Africa, up into Portugal and Spain, up into the Holy Lands, all the way up to the gates of Constantinople, well, let's just say
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Islam is not good for the production of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, okay? And so things changed.
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The language of Christianity in the West was no longer Greek. It was Latin. The Latin Vulgate was the language of the people.
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That was the Bible of people, and it was used for 1 ,100 years. Erasmus came under a tremendous amount of pressure for coming up with a new translation.
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There's a Latin translation in this text right here. He came under a great deal of pressure because he dared to question the book that obviously
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God had used for 1 ,100 years to guide his church, and that was the Latin Vulgate. Every time something new comes out, someone opposes it, just as the
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King James was opposed when it first came out. Remember, it's not the first English translation. Remember, the pilgrims detested the
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King James. They thought it was the liberal translation. They preferred the Geneva Bible, and God greatly used the
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Geneva Bible that came out before the King James. You have to keep these things in mind. But why is it that I would believe that that text right there is far more defensible and that we need to be very careful about the
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King James -only movement? Well, it's because I debate people like Bart Ehrman, and I debate Muslim scholars like Shabir Ali all around the world.
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Because, you see, there is this drive on the part of every religious group to have a single religious text and have no questions about it, and I understand that.
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I understand wanting to have it black and white, no questions. Here's the problem. That's not how
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God gave us the Bible. No two Greek manuscripts read identical to one another.
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Erasmus had to examine manuscripts, and he made choices. Erasmus was a Roman Catholic priest.
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He was not infallible. He wrote in defense of transubstantiation in the mass. I would have debated Erasmus had
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I lived in his day. So we have to examine the scholarship that was used then.
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If they used textual critical scholarship to choose between manuscripts, and even the
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King James translators, these two texts do not read identical to one another. The King James translators had to make choices even between the printed texts that they used.
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And so if we did it from 1604 to 1611, why do we stop there? The King James translators never said that we were to stop there.
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They never even suggested that this was the final word in all things. And so we have to continue on.
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If the King James translators were here today, they would not be King James onlyists because they believed in the necessity of revision, the examination of manuscripts, and if they had available to them what we have available to us, they certainly would not take the position that is taken by King James only representatives today.
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And in fact, I did want to correct just one misapprehension. Sinaiticus was not found in or near a trash can.
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That is a common myth, but it's untrue. All you have to do is read Constantine von Tischendorf's own first -hand account of his discovery of the manuscript.
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A monk brought it out of the closet of his cell, wrapped in red cloth. Folks, people in monasteries do not wrap garbage in red cloths.
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This was a text that had been in use for 1 ,500 years at that time. But that text right there is not based simply upon Oliph and Be, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.
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Since the 1930s, we have discovered a number of papyri manuscripts that go far closer to the original than anything, than any work of antiquity.
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When I debated Bart Ehrman, he admitted in our cross -examination section, he said the New Testament is the earliest attested document from all antiquity.
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He could have said also the most widely attested document of all of antiquity.
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We can get much closer to the originals than any other work of antiquity in those papyri manuscripts.
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And what do those papyri manuscripts tell us? That Sinaiticus and Vaticanus represent the text from the second century.
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There is no Byzantine manuscript, a manuscript that contains specifically and only
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Byzantine readings until the fourth or fifth century. And so we're talking about the earliest, most primitive manuscripts.
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And they didn't all come from Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria, the library there, had people coming and going from all over the world.
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And the idea that, well, Alexandria is full of heretics. Folks, the Byzantine manuscripts come from around the area of Byzantium.
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Arianism was very strong in that area. And the person who defended the deity of Christ against the
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Arians, after the Council of Nicaea, was a man named Athanasius. And he became bishop of Alexandria in Egypt.
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So anybody can make an argument in regards to church history. I would just simply challenge Pastor Mormon this evening, show us any evidence that any of these manuscripts were touched by, influenced by, tinged by any heretic that you can name.
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And we can then deal with that kind of assertion that is made. But just simply making a general assertion doesn't work.
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Now, I believe in the deity of Christ. I wrote a book called The Forgotten Trinity. I debate Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Unitarians, all the time the subject of the deity of Christ.
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The modern translations based upon the Nessie Island 27th edition are in much better shape to defend the deity of Christ than if you're utilizing the
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Byzantine text. Now, I realize that there are texts where the King James testifies the deity of Christ that modern translations do not.
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One of the most famous is 1 Timothy 3 .16. In 1 Timothy 3 .16, in the
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King James Bible, it says, God was manifest in the flesh. In modern translations, it simply says, He who was manifest in the flesh.
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And that sounds, you can build a real conspiracy on that. That sounds like those rascally modern translators.
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And I've worked as a critical consultant on the New American Standard Bible for the Lockman Foundation. We are conservative men in the work that we do.
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We believe in the deity of Christ. We defend the deity of Christ. So why is there such a difference?
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Well, let me see, let me explain to you the fact that in the earliest manuscripts, in what's called the unsealed text, the majuscule, the large, the original manuscripts in New Testament were written in all capital letters, no punctuation, no space between words.
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Lots of fun to read. Now, in those capital letter forms, the early
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Christians developed something called the nomina sacra, the sacred names. They would actually use abbreviations to try to get more onto a page.
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Most of the early Christians were poor people. And in fact, remember, the church was under persecution for the first 300 years of its existence.
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You couldn't go to the rich people to have nice manuscript copies made at that particular point in time. And so they would use these abbreviations for like God, Jesus, Spirit, common words, they would abbreviate them as one or two letters and put a line over top of them.
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God was one of the words that they did this with. Now, when we hear the difference between God and he who, that sounds like a big difference.
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But I'd like to show you something on the screen that shows you what the difference between these two words is, if we could bring that up.
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You'll be able to see that in the original language, the term God is two letters and the word he who is two letters.
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There you can see it. I'm not sure if the audience can see it. But you can see the term God, theta sigma with a line on top, and then omicron sigma is has.
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The only difference between these two words are two little lines. And remember what you're originally writing on.
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Papyrus, which is made up of leaves that are pressed together, crossed like this, or leather manuscripts, vellum, all of which have what in them?
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Lines. And you're reading somebody else's handwriting. It's very easy to understand.
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No reason for conspiracies here. It's very easy to understand why someone would misunderstand or misread someone else's handwriting.
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And at the bottom of that screen was a shot from Codex Sinaiticus. And you can see that its original reading was has, and then about 700 years later, someone had written theos in above it.
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You can see it in the second line toward the end, where someone has made an emendation about 700 years after the original writing.
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So every time there is a text where there is a difference in regards to the deity of Christ or anything else,
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I've examined every single one of them. In John 118, for example, the
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King James does not contain a reference to the deity of Christ that is found in the modern translations, where Jesus is described as monogamous theos, the unique God, the one who has exegeted or revealed the
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Father. So in every single one of these instances, there is no reason to think that there is some type of conspiracy.
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There is no reason to think that modern translators, and by the way, please, I hope you hear me here. I am a conservative.
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I do not defend all modern translations. There are garbage modern translations. There are cultic modern translations, like the
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New World Translation. We all recognize that does not even really deserve the name translation at all. That is just a perversion of the
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Bible. And unfortunately, it is Europe that produces most of the liberal stuff.
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But there are fine, excellent, conservative translations of the
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New Testament that will give a much more consistent and full testimony to the deity of Christ, not only because of the text they use, but also because we have grown in our understanding of the
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Greek language. At the beginning of the 19th century, there was a man by the name of Granville Sharp. And Granville Sharp recognized something about the
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Greek language. There is a set of rules named after him called the Granville Sharp Construction. And in Titus 2 .13
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and 2 Peter 1 .1, we have references where Jesus is identified as God.
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In fact, in Titus 2 .13, it says, Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. In 2 Peter 1 .1,
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Our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. That rule was discovered after the translation of the King James Version of the
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Bible. The translators of the King James were much more familiar with Latin. And so, they do not translate the
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Granville Sharp Constructions at those places as clearly as we do today.
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And in fact, many people can look at the King James rendering and they say, Well, it says Our God and Our Savior, those two different people.
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Well, the rule says they are one person. That is why it should be translated Our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So, one of my questions this evening for you in the audience and especially for Pastor Mormon is this.
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Is there any place in the King James where we have come up with a better translation than what appeared in 1611?
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I would expect that you would have to believe that because no one here uses the 1611 KJV. If you are reading a standard
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King James Version today, you are using the 1769 Blaney Revision. That is what is normally printed, but there are two editions of that, the
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Oxford and the Cambridge edition. And they are not identical to one another. Almost nobody reads the 1611. But even if you did, then you would know that there were changes made after the 1611.
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And so, which one is the final authority? Even as the King James translators were producing their text, the different committees did not translate things in the same way.
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In Matthew, they translate the commandment, Uphanusais, you shall not murder, one way.
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And then in Romans, they translate, you shall not kill. It might be kill and murder depending on Matthew or Romans.
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Two different committees translating the very same Old Testament commandment in two different ways.
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I have even had atheists use that as an example of contradiction in the Bible. Now, the question is, will
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Pastor Mormon admit that it would be better to translate Uphanusais as thou shalt not murder in both places?
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Smooth that out. Would it not be best to fix the translation of Romans 9 .5
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so that it is as clear in its testimony of the deity of Christ as the New King James Version is?
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And what about those places where the Textus Receptus is absolutely alone in its reading?
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No Greek manuscript in the world ever has what it has in its reading.
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For example, in Revelation 16 .5, both of these texts, and I can show you right where they are, both of these texts used by the
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King James translators in Revelation 16 .5 speak of God as the one who is and who was the
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Holy One. Hoseos is the Greek term. Both of them say the same thing. In 1598,
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Beza made what's called a conjectural emendation. That is, he conjectured.
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He looked at the form of the word and he said, you know, I bet that was originally esamenos, which means and shall be.
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And so that's what he put in his Greek text. And that's what the King James translators translated. No one before 1598, reading a
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Greek New Testament, had ever seen that before. It's in the King James Version to this day.
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Why? Because, folks, fundamentally, what all this boils down to is this. What I want in a
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Bible translation is what John wrote in the book of Revelation. I want what he wrote in the
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Gospel of John. I want what Paul wrote in Romans. I don't want what a scribe wrote or thought should have been written a thousand years later, even if that becomes the most popular text.
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There's a reason why the Byzantine text is most popular. Again, Latin vulgate in the West, all the other places where Greek was being spoken, taken over by Islam.
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Guess what place is left over producing Greek manuscripts? The area around Byzantium. And so the text type that was predominant there becomes the vast majority.
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But the vast majority of those come from after a thousand years after Christ. If you just look at the first thousand years of church history, the majority text is not the
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Byzantine text, it's the Alexandrian text. And so if your arguments produces a different text, depending on where you are in church history, that might be a bit of a problem.
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I want to know what the original writers wrote, and God has given us the means to know that.
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We have such a tremendous wealth. Nobody has what we have when it comes to the
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New Testament. People ask, though, why couldn't God have avoided textual variation?
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Folks, you need to realize that the way God did this is as soon as the
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Gospel goes out into the world, the Christians want everybody to hear it, and so they let everyone copy their manuscripts.
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Thousands of those manuscripts were destroyed by Roman soldiers and the people who possessed them killed. Many survived to our day, thankfully.
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But they wanted that out there. They didn't say, are you a professional scribe? We want to make sure that you don't make any mistakes here.
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They didn't do that. What that results in is a manuscript tradition that goes all over the world.
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You know why that's so important? You know what you hear my Muslim friends say? Oh, you all put the deity of Christ in the
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New Testament. You all put the resurrection in the New Testament. Folks, that's absolutely impossible.
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There was never a time when anyone had control over all the manuscripts in the New Testament. Constantine, remember the
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Da Vinci Code? Oh, Constantine collected all the Gospels and destroyed them and wrote these four. That is absurd and easily demonstrated to be completely bogus.
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We can demonstrate that what we have in the New Testament is what the apostles communicated.
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The cost of that was having to compare manuscript with manuscript in regards to spellings of words and orders of words and whether a phrase is there or whether a phrase is not.
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But the other cost would have been far greater. For if we only had one manuscript, then we'd have to trust that whoever controlled that one manuscript never tampered with it.
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That's the problem the Muslims have. They have a revised text. They have to trust that Uthman got it exactly right.
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We don't have to do that. We actually have the better situation. God provisionally has provided us with a solid foundation for believing in the inspiration and accuracy of the
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New Testament. Thank you very much. Thank you, James. Thank you. You've sat and listened very patiently to both.
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Let's take a few comments from the audience. If you've got a comment, remember we're not talking about preaching.
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Put your hand up if you've got a comment. Yep, there's one over here. Yes, Pastor White.
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I'm not an academic, in spite of what the BBC say about me. When I open the so -called authorized version,
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I see something about the high and mighty King James. And then there's actually a book called
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James. But in the Hebrew, there's no such word as James. Certainly, he wasn't a member of Yeshua's family.
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Who is that addressed to? Pastor White. I'm James White.
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Pastor Moore. Yeah, you said James. I think he's talking about you. I'm sorry.
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It was addressed to... The dedicatory was to James, yes, to the
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King. I think his question is, the Greek word for James is... Yakubos. Yakubos, yes. All right, that's the
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Hebrew. The Greek equivalent is James. But there was no one in the family of Jesus called
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James. Where did we get that book of James from?
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This is an interpretational question. My opinion is that the
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James that wrote the book of James is the son of Mary's sister.
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That the apostle James, James the less, or James the just, many of my fundamental friends believe it was
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Jesus' actual brother. I don't believe that. I believe it was the son of Mary's sister, whose name was
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Maria, and Mary's name was Miriam. Explain that.
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But I don't know how this deals with our textual problem. I think, yeah, let's... Well, the
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King James version was dedicated to King James. Okay, would you rather it be
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King Jacob or... No, I, okay.
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Let's move on. Any other comments at this point in time that anybody wants to make? Yeah, there's one up here, the top at the back of the other side.
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Go on, run, Katrina, you'll make it. Thank you. Pastor White, you mentioned 1
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John 5 verse 7, which to me is probably the greatest
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Trinitarian verse. You talked a lot about the deity of Christ. One of my understandings is that on the translation committee there was a
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Unitarian, his name was Vance. He was a Unitarian.
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Does this actually reflect, and perhaps you'd both like to comment, does this actually reflect in the translation?
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The Bible says of itself that the word of God is spiritually understood and spiritually discerned, and yet how can a
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Unitarian have that spiritual discernment? Do you have a point, James? Well, just a couple of things, so people understand, because I only mentioned it in passing, if I might have just a minute to mention what the
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Kamiohonium is. The Kamiohonium is the reference in 1 John 5, 7 that is in the
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King James Version of the Bible that is not in the first two editions of Erasmus that says there are three that bear witness in heaven, the
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Father, the Word, and the Spirit. These three are one. I am not, one of the wonderful things about a committee translation, which is what
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New American Standard is, the King James was, etc., is that if you do have any particularities of an individual translator, since it has to go through a committee, the committee helps,
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I think, to balance those things out. That is why, personally, I never use translations that are done by a single individual, simply because there is just too much danger of your own personal bias there, and when you have a committee there, and so I do not have any evidence and have never made the assertion that there is any type of Unitarian bias in the
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King James translation. There is in some modern translations, there is no question about that, but I think what is very important in regards to 1
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John 5 -7 is the early church never used that text as a proof text of the doctrine of the
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Trinity. There are people who summarize the belief by words similar to that, but the doctrine of the
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Trinity is in no way, shape, or form dependent upon that, and my biggest concern is this, is that if we include the
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Communion in the New Testament, we are saying that the Greek manuscript tradition can become completely corrupted for 1 ,500 years and lose vitally important doctrinal material.
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No one who believes in a majority text theory should ever support the Communion, because the majority text does not contain it either.
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It is a much later edition. It is found only in Latin manuscripts and only in very late 14th century and beyond Greek manuscripts, and if we include it, what we are saying is the text of the
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New Testament can be thoroughly corrupted, and I am not only uncomfortable with that,
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I think there is tremendous evidence against it. Jack, if you'd like to comment on this. Well, obviously I disagree with that.
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I've got this book here. When the King James Version departs from the majority text, I am concerned the way that my learned friend here is using this term, the majority text.
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A, it's not a majority text, the two prominent ones that are used, but nevertheless, getting back to your question, firstly with Vance, I want to know that the men who translated my
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Bible were sound men on the deity of Christ. I am very concerned about the chief architect of this
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Bible, of this text. Kurt Allen, toward the end of his life, wrote a book entitled
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The History of Christianity. In this, on page 198, he queries, he makes a statement, which certainly falls short of a ringing endorsement of the deity of Christ.
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I'm also concerned that Kurt Allen, who is the chief architect of this text, in a book that he wrote in 1960 called
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The Problem of the Text, was prepared to remove, or at least consider removing, six of the last books of the
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New Testament. Hebrews, Revelation, 2
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John, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. And so it is important.
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When you take, coming back to the 1 John 5 -7 passage, when you take those missing words out, it does leave its footprint.
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And if you speak to a native Greek speaker on this, the genders do not match up.
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There is strong reason for it being there. A tremendous attack upon it.
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We have given evidence. Many have gone way beyond what I have given here.
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A good friend of mine, Michael Maynard, has written nearly 400 pages showing the debate over this text.
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It was a debate. It should be there. But it leaves its footprint in the mismatched genders when you take the missing words out.
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But I think the point you made was that it wasn't in the majority text. No, it's not. It's not.
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That's an error about the genders. And I have to correct something. I think we just had a perfect illustration of one of my main problems with the
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Textus Receptus. If you look at the Textus Receptus, if you'd open it up for us there, Pastor, there are no textual footnotes in there.
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We're not told anything about the manuscripts. In the Nessie -Olland text, here is the
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Greek text, and down at the bottom, I have an exhaustive listing of every textual variant.
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In the CNTTS apparatus here, the Nessie -Olland apparatus is not as full. Here's the point. Let's say
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Kurt Olland was the worst heretic in the world. Desiderius Erasmus, who created the foundation of the
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TR, was a Roman Catholic priest. Now, I can show that in 1
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John 3 -1, the King James is missing an assertion of our sonship in Christ. Is that because Erasmus made something happen with the text?
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It's very easy to make those kind of assertions. Those are conspiracy theories.
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Here's the problem. I have the textual data here. So does the Nessie -Olland. I'm not limited to what
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Kurt Olland tells me. I can make the textual decisions myself. If I have that case -bound
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TR, I don't know those things. I can't look at the manuscripts myself and make the decision.
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And so, was Erasmus influenced by his Roman Catholic theology? These are all questions we might have, but when you have the information in front of you, someone such as myself, who would disagree with any liberalism of Kurt Olland, does not have to be influenced by anything he has to say.
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I have the information right in front of me. That's what we need to have. We need to have the information right in front of us.
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That's why, as Pastor Moorman notes, there were thousands of column notes and end notes in the
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King James when it was first printed as well. Including textual notes indicating places where there are differences in the manuscripts.
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Do you want a very brief rebuttal to that? Or are you happy with what you've said? Well, again, I don't believe that my learned friend has traversed
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Mount Impassable. He can talk about all of the variants here, but these are really their constant witnesses.
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We're talking primarily of the 50 or so manuscripts that will support that text.
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They do not give a voice to the majority. And so we've got nearly 5 ,500 manuscripts that support this fuller type of text.
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2 ,900 extra words. So, could we specifically talk about 1
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John 5, 7 and 8? Do all those texts have those verses in them? No. So, it's in the
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Latin. It's strongly supported elsewhere in the Latin. But admittedly, it's one of those unique passages as is
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Revelation 16, 5. But I would also like to show some hybrid verses that he's not perhaps aware of for his text too.
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So, he's mentioned two. I've got a hundred and five. Hybrid versions? Yes, yes. Okay. We go on to the hybrids.
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All right. No, no. But he's mentioned two. But I want to make sure. I've got a hundred and five.
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I want to make sure that what we're hearing here is there is no early
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Greek manuscript evidence for 1 John 5, 7. No. Would you agree that Revelation 16, 5, for example, this says hosios, right?
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That's right. Okay. Beza says it. I have given about a page and a half on that.
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I've got it in this pile of notes somewhere. So, if the majority text is what
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God has preserved, would you accept the retranslation of Revelation 16, 5 to change the
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King James Version to say the Holy One? No. I would say it would be the coming one.
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I would stay with... One passage I perhaps missed was
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Matthew 24, verse 35. Christ said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.
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Was hosios his word of passage? Every generation had access to the words of God.
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Truth spoke first. I believe that that which we have underlying the authorized version is the preserved word of God.
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Now, I don't think somewhere along the line we've got to have closure. Are we still looking?
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Because those that hold to this majority text today... Can I just hold you? Because I'd like to talk about that closure.
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It is something I'd like to come back to and we'll come back to that in just a minute. Just before we do, can we get to some of the emails and texts?
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You've got stacks of them there, Rochelle, and I know they're going to flood in. Can you give us just a view of what folks are saying there, please?
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I just want to say a good thank you to everyone who's been texting and emailing in. We've got one here from Gerald in Ohio.
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It says, I teach children in the inner city. Most of them cannot read well, let alone Elizabethan English.
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So which is worse, giving them a bad modern English translation or giving them a translation which is in their old
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English, which is just like speaking a foreign language? Neither one of them do much good, do they?
57:49
Okay. That's an issue one or two of our audience have got a little bit of. We'll come back to that in a minute.
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I have another one from Martin Boyd. It says a number of English translations is now becoming a joke.
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Several appear every year now. Is this not just a recipe for confusion? How can people follow preaching when in a typical church there may be a dozen different transitions in use?
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Are we really better off than before these new translations appeared at the back of the 19th century?
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May I comment on that very quickly? Yes, you can. I agree. We have a glut and there's a reason for it.
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Every major publishing house now wants its own translation so they don't have to pay somebody else for using their translation.
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I'm absolutely certain. I'm telling you that. I am not one who says that we need more
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English translations. Use that money to provide translations to people who don't have them. We have all of them that we need for crying out loud.
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I'm not defending the glut of modern translations. My concern is that we have fine modern translations and the doctrinal and textual issues that are behind it.
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I think as far as the glut, we're both agreed to that. It's a question of how far we go. I've got one here and it's for Dr.
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White. It says what are the differences between the documents? Are they minor things like spelling errors or do they change the meaning of the text?
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I'm not sure what they mean by the documents. The vast majority of variations in the
59:14
New Testament manuscripts do not in any way, shape or form change the meaning. In fact, of the approximately 400 ,000 textual variants that exist in manuscript tradition, 99 % of them you would not be able to explain what the difference is to an
59:28
English speaker because it cannot be translated. So you have about 1 % or about 4 ,000 meaningful variants which actually impact the meaning of the text.
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Of those, about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 are viable. That is, they could be original.
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Some of them are so late that they couldn't possibly be in the original anyways. And so you have about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 that have to be examined and that might impact meaning of the text.
59:54
It's very important and we might disagree about this. We probably would. But I want to make this strong assertion and I'll back this up to the hilt.
01:00:01
If I take either of those two texts that Pastor Mormon has on the desk right there and I apply the same translation procedure to those two books,
01:00:14
I will not have a different doctrine or teaching. I will not.
01:00:19
I might have a different list of verses that support any one doctrine. But if you use the same hermeneutics on either of those texts, you will have the same faith.
01:00:31
There is no question about that. Can I comment on the matter of the doctrines?
01:00:38
Yes, in the modern versions, using this text by Kurt with the
01:00:44
Nestle Island text. Yes, you will have the deity of Christ. Yes, you can be saved.
01:00:50
Yes, you have the Trinity. But it is not as frequent. An airplane can fly.
01:00:57
It has three engines. It can fly on just one of them.
01:01:03
But wouldn't we really feel happier going across the Atlantic with all three? And so it's not a question of not having the deity of Christ in the modern versions.
01:01:16
They've been diminished. Again, this is the purpose of this book. This gives you documented evidence how that there was a battle over the doctrinal heart of Scripture in the early centuries.
01:01:32
It does show that the type of manuscript that underlies the authorized version does go far back into the past.
01:01:42
It does show that indeed there is a significant doctrinal lessening in this type of text.
01:01:54
And I know in one of my friend's talks he mentions the fact about lists.
01:02:04
And I think you make a comment you don't like lists. But I must say, seeing the lists of all of the missing verses, all of the missing passages back in 1970 in Johannesburg, South Africa is what really got me thinking.
01:02:20
What about these 4 ,900? They're missing. Notice the use of terminology.
01:02:26
Missing. In comparison to what? The King James has been made the standard. The issue has to be what was originally written.
01:02:35
You'll never hear added, and yet clearly there is added material in the expansion of titles and things like that in the
01:02:42
Byzantine manuscripts. So be very careful as you listen to the debate. Using loaded words like added, deleted, taken away lets you make the
01:02:51
King James the standard. The King James has to be tested on the very same level as all translations before it and all translations after it.
01:03:00
That's the issue. Can we just take a few more, just read a few more emails without them commenting.
01:03:09
There's one here from Matt Bigelow. It says, I have a comprehension problem. Because of that I get confused and I don't understand the
01:03:16
King James version. Would God want me to read a Bible I cannot fully understand or one that I can understand?
01:03:24
And there's one here from Barry. It says, The Jesus Christ in the modern translations is not the same
01:03:29
Jesus Christ in the King James version. Modern translations pervert the deity of Christ, take away from him, remove the virgin birth, eliminate the
01:03:39
Godhead, add works to salvation, support Jehovah's Witness beliefs, and call
01:03:44
Jesus the fallen one of heaven. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That's just not true. To paint with such a broad brush like that is to take the work of conservative
01:03:55
Bible believing scholars and associate with Jehovah's Witnesses. That's just not true. Let me give you an example.
01:04:02
John 14, 14 in the New World Translation does not contain a reference of prayer to Christ that is in the
01:04:09
NIV in the New American Standard. Neither does the King James. The King James lacks the very same phrase the
01:04:15
New World Translation does. Now, does that mean the King James translators were denying the deity of Christ? No, the
01:04:20
Greek text they were translating didn't have the phrase in it. But the Jehovah's Witnesses, they are trying to deny the deity of Christ because their
01:04:28
Greek text has the phrase in it and they refuse to translate it. So you see, you have to be so careful.
01:04:34
It's so easy to broad brush as that one just did. And in the process, you're just not speaking the truth.
01:04:41
And I think the point that we need to make, as we've made already, there are many, many modern translations and some of those modern translations would fall in to the accusations made there.
01:04:52
But not all of those that were translated after the King James Version would. A couple more quick ones and I'm going to let these guys go again.
01:05:00
There's one here from Chris. It says, Evening, gentlemen. How do the Dead Sea Scrolls fit into this? I have read that the
01:05:06
King James Version is the only version that has not incorporated information from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
01:05:12
Most of whom are older than the scripts used for the King James Version. I'm going to have to let them come back.
01:05:18
Sorry. Jack, would you like to comment on the Dead Sea Scrolls? It's not really an issue that we're facing here tonight.
01:05:25
I think actually it is. And here's why. The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that the Greek Septuagint translation, which is the
01:05:32
Greek version of the Old Testament, which the New Testament writers normally cite. They're normally citing the
01:05:38
Greek Septuagint. They're rarely citing the Hebrew. In fact, they even cite the Greek Septuagint when it differs from the
01:05:43
Hebrew in the New Testament. That's just a reality. We have to deal with it. The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that that Septuagint translation has just as ancient moorings as the 1525
01:05:55
Blomberg Masoretic text that we have in the Hebrew. And so that has added to that. And remember, the very same preface to the readers that Pastor Mormon was quoting in his opening statement likewise refers to the
01:06:07
Greek Septuagint and refers to it as the Word of God. And so I think that's very important because some King James Only advocates actually deny that the
01:06:14
Septuagint existed at the time or deny its relevance. And I think that it has a lot of relevance.
01:06:19
Can I bring something in here and maybe develop this? Two or three things which have been said here.
01:06:26
This whole idea of the 1611 version wasn't complete. It needed to be revised, and indeed it was.
01:06:33
And we have the 1769 version. Is it not possible that there needed to be further revision after that?
01:06:43
And some, maybe certainly the New King James version, the New American Standard are both quoted, have actually done that, have continued to bring about a better translation.
01:06:57
The text has been revised, not for the worst, but for the better. How would you see that,
01:07:02
Jack? Well, it was certainly refined over those years. It wasn't formally revised.
01:07:09
It was a refinement. Again, if we...
01:07:14
The second part of your question... Well, let me go back. With a standard,
01:07:20
I do like a standard. And I think you know where you stand with a standard. You know, a constantly shifting...
01:07:28
We've got now the New American Standard. One thing I haven't exactly found out in this encounter tonight is what
01:07:35
Bible my friend uses. He knows which Bible I use, but I haven't exactly discovered.
01:07:42
I don't know whether my friend has memorized out of it, whether he reads it through, whether a multiversional approach allows a person to really spend time with the
01:07:53
Bible itself. Do you flip from one to another? So, with a standard, you have a standard.
01:07:59
Now, you know, we've got... Let's say we've got two disks here. We've got this disk over here which is the originally preserved, inspired word.
01:08:12
And then we've got the translator's disk. And that's the translation of that.
01:08:18
All right, the AV was accurately translated, but it can't fill up this disk entirely.
01:08:27
So light floods around it, and so we can elucidate. We can... Yes, we can get a fuller meaning, but I don't like to change a standard.
01:08:38
We've had a 400 -year standard. That is a marvel. We don't have any other standard.
01:08:47
Nothing else has been offered to us. If one of the other...
01:08:52
If the NIV, but it's now gone through three revisions. The NASV has gone through a couple of revisions.
01:09:00
So we have no standard. With a standard, you know where you stand, and then you can, yes, elucidate, explain, and also discover why it is a standard.
01:09:13
So it could change? No, I would never change it. But I would elucidate it.
01:09:19
I would put, yes, if we need to explain, we've got some old English words, we need to explain those, but I wouldn't change it.
01:09:28
I wouldn't change it. And I would also say that some of these old, archaic words, if you study them, in fact, the meaning is probably fuller than a modern equivalent.
01:09:43
There were some cries of, ooh, at that point. Well, I have a whole list of words that none of us have ever heard of that are in the
01:09:48
King James, but if 400 years is amazing, 1 ,100 years is astounding. The arguments that were just put forward were the very arguments used against Erasmus in defense of the
01:09:58
Latin Vulgate. It just keeps happening. You say, well, we've got a standard. Is it the Cambridge edition?
01:10:04
Or is it the Oxford edition? Is it the 1769? Why wasn't this the standard? This was the standard
01:10:09
Greek text in Europe from 1550 until the time of the King James. And I was really concerned,
01:10:15
Pastor Mormon, when you said, even though this says the Holy One at Revelation 16 .5, you would not accept that as a proper translation, even though no
01:10:24
Christian before Theodore Beza had ever read anything other than that. This is what the standard was.
01:10:29
Why isn't this the standard? Why is that the standard? And when it differs from this, who made it to differ, and why do we feel that they were inspired in inerrance in so doing?
01:10:42
I'm sorry, I... This was the standard from 1550 to the time of the King James. Yes, that was the standard in English -speaking countries.
01:10:49
No, no, this is the harassment. This is the Stephanos text. Stephanos was the standard in English -speaking countries.
01:10:57
Generally, on the continent, it was the Eliezer was the standard. Again, these are two editions of the
01:11:04
Texas Receptive. And you would admit that they differ from what you now say today is the absolutely preserved
01:11:09
Word of God. So, were these lost? Again, again, again.
01:11:15
James, I do have to deal with this. And I have dealt with this. I have dealt with John 16 .5
01:11:21
here. I have dealt... Can you summarize? I would have to read it.
01:11:27
I have dealt with 1 John 5. I think there is a point here that you haven't dealt with.
01:11:34
You have not traversed Mount Impassable. I believe I have. No, you have not. You have got two old manuscripts.
01:11:42
It is still the Alephi text. In this book here... This is not true.
01:11:48
No, that's not true. It is true. How many times does that text reject Aleph and be in favor of a papyri?
01:11:53
Okay, how many times do... When these... There's only 214 times when these agree that the
01:12:03
Nessel -Allen text departs from it. And why did they do so? In your website, you've got the fact that we have, we believe, in an eclectic text.
01:12:17
Eclectic means we choose from the best. So you've got these 50 manuscripts.
01:12:24
You've got these two primary pillars. You've got about 8 or 9 papyri that are reasonably full.
01:12:32
And these are your 50 manuscripts which you've picked from them. These are not cohesive.
01:12:38
Now, I do have... What do you mean cohesive? I believe they are. They are not cohesive. I'm going to bring in a couple more people from the audience.
01:12:46
We're going to have to come back another year. JT, what do you want to say?
01:12:52
Okay, two quick things really. I think there's two issues. There's text and there's language. In terms of the text, if God has chosen in the face of the rise of liberal teaching in the church to give us magnificent manuscripts that go back far earlier than the ones we had in 1611, why on earth would we want to ignore them?
01:13:13
The second thing... Why did they ignore them? They ignored them for 1800 years.
01:13:20
No, because we've only just discovered them. The second thing is to do with language. I work a lot with young people.
01:13:27
Now, to me, it's really, really simple. If God chose in his sovereign wisdom to give us the
01:13:33
New Testament in Koine Greek, which is marketplace Greek, why would we want to give people today a
01:13:40
Bible and his words in a language which is 400 years old? It just doesn't make sense.
01:13:45
I agree. Would you comment briefly on that, Jack? Again, the authorized version was never contemporary.
01:13:53
It was not current. And I do feel that this is an overstated point.
01:13:59
There's a simple directness about it. I do not believe it's as difficult as you say.
01:14:05
I think a column by column comparison will demonstrate that. There is a majesty.
01:14:13
It sounds like the Bible. It doesn't sound like your morning newspaper.
01:14:20
And really, I think with respect, I think this is an overstated case.
01:14:27
But I do admit we have a few problems here. Chambering, champagne, chargers sealed, clouted upon their feet, wimples, wist,
01:14:41
I love this one, habergeon, whatever in the world that is, niecing, niter, impleed, glistering.
01:14:48
These are just some of the terms that are found in the King James Version of the Bible. Okay, there's 15. That no one has any clue.
01:14:54
There's 15. How many are there? There's an entire paragraph in my book.
01:15:01
The point is that as the audience member pointed out, the Koine Greek of the
01:15:07
New Testament was not some elevated theological language. And if there was a specific attempt to create a translation that is above the level of the original, are we not saying we can improve on what the
01:15:20
Holy Spirit himself did? That's right. Okay, this gentleman in the front. Yep, that's it.
01:15:26
Yeah, I've got two main points really. If, as you say, Pastor White. Could you speak up a little, sorry?
01:15:32
Yeah, if, as you say, the manuscripts were copied ad infinitum in the early centuries.
01:15:41
How do you know any of it comes from an authentic source? Say the disciples themselves wrote any source that those were copied from.
01:15:50
In that case, if you concede that, then which version is the truth, as it were?
01:15:57
And does that not open the door to say that we are free to kind of choose which might be the more, which version speaks more truthfully to the religion that you're trying to portray, believe in?
01:16:13
I think you're misunderstanding the nature of the early manuscripts. When you ask the question, how do we know they came from an authentic source, we don't know what the source of any manuscript is.
01:16:24
It's what the manuscript says. For example, when we found P52, the little papyrus fragment that most people feel is the earliest fragment we have in the
01:16:33
New Testament, from John chapter 18, verses 31 -34 and 37 -38, where Pilate and Jesus are speaking, the reason they recognized that is they recognized that this is from the
01:16:46
Gospel of John. And so that's the only way you recognize any of those. So they all go back to an original archetype.
01:16:52
They all go back to that original. And as I said, Christians just allowed everybody to make these copies and distributed them around because they wanted everyone to hear the
01:17:00
Gospel. In fact, the most widely copied book in the New Testament was John. Sort of like we pass out
01:17:06
Gospels of John today, they were doing the same thing back... Well, they didn't do it to Roman soldiers because that would be a bad thing, but they were doing the same thing back then.
01:17:13
So we can recognize them because they're all copies of the same text. So I'm not sure what you mean by an authorized source or something like that.
01:17:20
No, I mean authentic, as in... Authentic. Do you know for a fact that... See, I'll tell you the same thing.
01:17:25
Yeah, I know, but do you know for a fact that the earliest copies that you're citing that are earlier than any of the manuscripts that King James is based on, how do you know that there wasn't an earlier source than that or another source which could also have been copied?
01:17:44
Because we don't have any evidence of it in history. Well, is there? All you can do is go with what history provides you.
01:17:51
And what history provides us is the richest manuscript tradition of any work of antiquity.
01:17:57
But the problem is the text of the Byzantine manuscript tradition is not what you find in those first centuries.
01:18:03
It is the Alexandrian manuscripts that have that most primitive text. Jack, can
01:18:09
I just... The point that was made that after the translation of the
01:18:15
King James version, they say manuscripts that were earlier were found and they would give different...
01:18:23
In other words, they weren't ignored by the King James translators. They didn't have them.
01:18:29
Why don't we now, because we've got those earlier manuscripts, say, actually, if they'd had them, they would have translated something different?
01:18:38
All right. They did know about Vaticanus. They obviously knew about the
01:18:44
Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate was never a textus receptus, by the way. It was locked away in the
01:18:50
Roman Catholic Church. It was never used amongst God's people in any sense.
01:18:57
But again, yes, we do have some manuscripts today.
01:19:03
I'm glad they weren't used because they are corrupted. And what's your...
01:19:09
Can you explain why you believe they were corrupted and the ones that the
01:19:15
King James version, the King James translators used, weren't corrupted? Can you explain that briefly?
01:19:20
I think a simple little thing. A, we've got 2 ,900 more words.
01:19:25
Now, we've got 5 ,500 manuscripts, many of them with these 2 ,900 additional words.
01:19:35
How did those words... How were those words added?
01:19:41
How did they... You would say, well, we've added to them. How did we do that?
01:19:47
How did you do it cohesively? How could it have been done over a wide geographic area?
01:19:55
You've got 2 primary manuscripts with 50 supporting manuscripts with 2 ,900 fewer words.
01:20:04
Now, that is your Mount Impassable. These are not as cohesive.
01:20:10
They are not as cohesive. I think James feels he's climbed Mount Impassable. I'm on the other side of Mount Impassable.
01:20:17
No, you have not. As I've pointed out, Erasmus knew of Vaticanus. Erasmus knew of Vaticanus.
01:20:23
And he left it where it lay. Did he ask Bombasius to check out the Kamiohonium in Vaticanus? Yes or no?
01:20:30
I don't know. He did. I don't know. He did. And he used it to support his non -insertion of it in the second edition.
01:20:36
So, the point is they were aware of it and they recognized that they did not know about text types that time.
01:20:42
There was no rejection of these other manuscripts. They have been discovered since then. And I believe any fair reading of the
01:20:49
Preface to the Readers would show that if those translators had the manuscript evidence we have today, they would utilize all of them for the production of their work.
01:20:58
Let's take one more question. We'll take a few emails and then I'm going to give you both a couple of minutes to sum up because our time will have gone.
01:21:07
Just a quick statement. Someone mentioned on an email about not understanding the so -called hard words in the
01:21:13
King James Bible. Well, people today still read Shakespeare. And the
01:21:18
Bible says, from a Christian perspective, study to show thyself approved unto God. And the
01:21:24
Bible speaks about the Spirit, which we're not talking about the Holy Spirit of God, teaching people to discern
01:21:31
His Holy Word, not men's critical words. It's the Holy Spirit of God that can teach us.
01:21:37
And now, with that as a sort of a statement, people say, King James only.
01:21:43
I am a King James only, but it's the definition of terms. I'm not like Peter Ruttman, who says the
01:21:49
King James only supersedes and is greater than the original autographs, the
01:21:55
Greek and Hebrew. I am a King James only in the sense that I read, teach, preach.
01:22:01
My children read the same Bible and memorize the same verses, if you please. That is a King James only in my term.
01:22:08
So we have to define the terms. But a question for you, James, really. Sorry, I'm going to have to cut. We'll never get time.
01:22:15
We're all going to come back in a year's time and do it all over again, I think, at this rate. Can we go back for a few more emails,
01:22:21
Kat, please? And then I'll give you both a few minutes to sum up.
01:22:27
And then, if we've still got time, I'll take a few more questions, a few more comments from the audience.
01:22:35
There's one here that says, Jack Moorman says the King James Version is a standard. Well, where do you go when the
01:22:42
King James Version differs in three different places? In Jeremiah 34 .16, Chronicles 33 .19,
01:22:49
and Nahum 3 .16. The Oxford King James differs from the Cambridge King James.
01:22:55
If the King James is supposed to be the standard, which of the two should be our standard? If you say we go back to the
01:23:02
Greek, you expose the error of the King James -only -ism and prove that the King James is not to be used exclusively.
01:23:09
Just use that and you'll sum it up. Yep, fine, just a couple more quick ones. There's another one here. It says Dr. S. Franklin Lodgson, who was the contributor of the
01:23:18
NASB, has denounced his participation and no longer stands by it. He is an authorised version believer now.
01:23:25
And that's from Joseph. There's one for James White. It says you stated that the Pilgrims hated the
01:23:31
King James Bible. However, James Alden owned a King James Bible and it is now on display to this day at Pilgrims' House.
01:23:39
Are you not exaggerating? Do you have any proof that all the Pilgrims hated the
01:23:44
King James? Does the existence of John Alden's King James Bible not prove that you have distorted the facts on this point?
01:23:52
OK, two minutes to sum up. There may have been a Pilgrim who liked it. Two minutes to sum up and then
01:23:58
Jack, two minutes to sum up. Very quickly, just an answer to that. The Pilgrims as a whole used the Geneva Bible. They loved the
01:24:03
Geneva Bible and they distrusted the King James because it was a government Bible. It was. It was sponsored by the government.
01:24:10
In fact, he actually told the translators certain words they could not use. They could not translate ecclesia as anything other than church.
01:24:17
They could not translate it as assembly because the King had given them guidelines as to they could not translate baptize as immerse.
01:24:25
They had to transliterate it. So there were guidelines that the King provided along those lines that were important. I hope everyone understands what the real issue here is this evening.
01:24:33
The real issue is what did the inspired apostles originally write?
01:24:39
And I think we've seen by looking at Revelation 16 .5, there are a number of other places where the TR has a unique reading that no manuscript in the world reads.
01:24:48
What that means is if you take the position that Pastor Mormon has taken is that Christians for 1600 years could not claim to have had the full word of God.
01:24:59
How can that be? That's just simply not a viable alternative. The reality is if you listen to what the translators themselves say and you look at the facts without that bias, without using words like added, deleted, so on and so forth, and just simply ask the questions directly, you will see that God has given to us a tremendous wealth of information.
01:25:22
We can believe the New Testament has been preserved. It was not preserved in one particular text that had to come into existence in 1611.
01:25:31
It has been preserved throughout the history of God's people, whether they were speaking Latin or Greek or any other language,
01:25:38
God has always provided for his people. I think it's vitally important that we not approach this with traditions in the way, but we simply examine the information and allow it to speak for itself.
01:25:49
Thank you very much, Grant. Grant, your final two minutes.
01:25:55
Yes, again. Certainly, it does seem that Christ has promised to preserve his word, and not just his word singular, but his words plural.
01:26:07
If the words were given verbally, they've been preserved verbally.
01:26:12
They could have been found by any generation, and it would seem strange that for 1800 years, we've not had the true word of God, and then it was restored, then from of all places, a manuscript that was hardly ever used.
01:26:33
It's in better shape than this Bible of mine, Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus.
01:26:43
So now we've got this two -fold pillar, and we've got 50 other manuscripts that give partial support to it.
01:26:54
They are not cohesive. Your peers at Munster will tell you that they're not cohesive.
01:27:02
We've got the vast majority of manuscripts that support this
01:27:07
Bible, the authorized version, and then
01:27:13
I acknowledge I have to address Revelation 16 .5,
01:27:20
but I've got 105 hybrid passages that result from, and this is from Maurice Robinson, that appear in no other manuscript that are in this one.
01:27:34
I'm going to have to cut in there. We're going to run out of time. Thank you so much, Jake. Thank you so much, James.
01:27:40
Thank you all very much. Thank you for watching. See you again very soon. Sorry we couldn't deal with it all.