Monday, August 24, 2009

What really happened on the RV committees.

According to Gail Riplinger, the Revised Version was a Luciferian plot, and merely being on the RV committee lays a man open to all sort of aspersions. But what was it really like? First of all, we must remember that not all members of the committee agreed with Westcott and Hort. Among them were some of the most conservative Bible scholars of the period, some of whom produced a 'minority report' charging Westcott and Hort with going far beyond the remit of the committee.

According to Riplinger, the RV committee were determined to Let me quote to you Prof. David Brown, one of Westcott and Hort's critics on the RV committee. In 'The Expository Times' Vol. 4, P. 63 he recounts how a change was introduced in Matt. 2. 2:
"The wise men of the East ask: 'Where is He that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east and are come to worship Him.' The question here is, What kind of worship is here meant? Is it the homage due to a superior among ourselves (as in Luke 14.10) or is it religious worship? The former, it was thought by one member, was the meaning intended, and therefore proper to be expressed. But, as it was belived by one member that verse 11 would throw light on this question, the Company agreed to wait until they reached that verse. On which it was stated that the phrase here rendered, 'they presented gifts' is one used several hundred times in the LXX., and always in the sense of religious offerings made in worship to God; and the only question here was, Is the phrase used in that sense in the New Testament? And the six passages besides this one in which it is found in the New Testament are admittedly used in this sense. Hence (it was argued), it ought to be so understood there; and therefore in verse 2 'worship' should be retained, and in verse 11, instead of 'presented unto Him gifts,' etc., we should render it 'they offered unto Him,' etc. This was accordingly done, if not unanimously, certainly without objection." (David Brown, 'Is the Revised Version a Failure?' Pp. 63-5, The Expository Times Vol. 4 (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1892) P. 63.

Note that Brown did regard the RV as a failure. Elsewhere in the article he condemns it stylistically, and he is well known to have felt Westcott and Hort relied too much on the two Uncials Vaticanus and Sinaiaticus. That is not my concern here. My concern is to show that the RV committees did not sit in a smoke-filled room gleefully tearing out the deity of Christ from the New Testament, and that in fact in several places they strengthened the testimony to the deity of Christ.

It is interesting that while Riplinger piles abuse on Liddell of Liddell-Scott, she says nothing about Scott. Well, Scott was actually on the RV Committee! David Brown had something to say about this man that rather indicates why Riplinger may have been silent about him. Brown's biographer recounts how In Roman 6.1 one of the company, Dr. Kennedy, argued for the translation 'God who is over all be blessed for ever,' (thus replacing the ambiguous AV reading with one that is confessedly opposed to the deity of Christ) declaring that the only reason anyone disagreed with him was theology. Dean Scott (of the Liddell Scott Lexicon), replied, "No, sir, we stand upon Greek. The verse won't translate but, as in the Authorised Version, according to the Septuagint and New Testament Greek." Thus the R.V. (following the Geneva Bible, which here as in other places is much stronger than the AV) DOES describe Christ as 'God over all, blessed for ever.' Hardly an enemy of the deity of Christ, I think!

22 comments:

The Puritan said...

Your defenses of these liberals and apostates (and if that langauge angers you as one who is loyal to the academy, let's just call it extreme amateur hour with God's Word) are unintentionally comical (which means, of course, disappointing). These furry characters changed the English Bible. In the 19th century, that golden age of theology.

God's remnant know the voice of the Shepherd, and that voice is not in the furry manuscripts favored by the furry Westcott and Hort and their underlings (absolutely happy underlings or not).

Highland Host said...

Your childish name-calling betrays an inability to engage in rational conversation, and the fact that you must be feeling the heat. It is YOU who are unintentionally comical for this reason!

Apparently all you can do is retreat into your little schismatic world and mutter to yourself over and over again 'we are the remnant'. If I'm disturbing you, by all means stop reading and go and read Riplinger some more. Obviously my presentation of the realities of the RV committee angers you as one of Riplinger's loyal followers. It becomes apparent that you can't handle the truth.

The Puritan said...

Like Riplinger, I spend most of my reading time reading the Word of God.

And it's interesting that you could think I could be 'feeling the heat' as if you could have any chance of 'converting' me to the Alexandrian cult and its Satan-corrupted 'bibles'.

I will give you credit in having not banned me before now. That is the usual result from critical text defenders. The critical text and its defenders work better in friendly, cleansed environments. Cleansed of the tribunal of Scripture as well.

Scott McClare said...

The Puritan said:

Your defenses of these liberals and apostates

. . . go unchallenged in the specifics by you. Despite the illusion you like to maintain of being well-read and reasonable, your best answer to HH's posts is to cast vague aspersions on his character and research.

You are, in short, a blowhard. A blowhard with OK writing skills, but nonetheless, a blowhard.

Highland Host said...

Isn't it funny that the 'Puritan' is actually unable to say anything of substance? That, of course, is why I haven't banned you, chum, I think people will be able to see who has anything substantive to say, and what the King James Only crowd are actually like.

We have now descended to referring to the 'Alexandrian Cult', and accusing all those involved with the RV of being heretics and apostates, an interesting (and silly) accusation to level at David Brown, who did sterling work defending his Church from heresy, even making efforts to get a professor at his own Theological college removed for heresy.

Also, I am not afraid of the truth. Or of falsehood, come to that.

The Puritan said...

How many liberals and apostates do you need at the table before you notice a bad smell?

Waitaminute! said...

Gail Riplinger's writings are fully documented. No one has been able to refute her work yet. You can lie all you want, but I would be cautious going up against a godly Christian woman who has spent the last thirty years of her life 10 hours a day researching Bible history and the apostates like Westcott and Hort who have corrupted modern Bibles with their constructed Greek text.
The former director of the International Greek New Testament Project committe E. W. Colwell said. "Their (W &H) text is not reconsructed but constructed, it is an artificial entity which never existed"
Anyone who holds that we must keep looking for more ancient manuscripts to some day find out what God really wrote is a heretic according to the Scriptures.

Highland Host said...

There is no Greek text that reads just like the AV, thus the 'TR' is an artificial text. Your point is? Besides, no-one today is arguing that the Westcott and Hort text is a perfect reflection of the original, as witness the hundreds of differences between it and modern critical texts.

Indeed, one of David Brown's main contentions at the RV committee was that Westcott and Hort's text relied far too heavily on two manuscripts, Aleph and B.

The RV was a failure. It was not widely adopted, in part because the Church of England did not authorise it for reading in services, and in part because it was just not a very good version. But the point is that it was not based on a plot to destroy faith in the deity of Christ, it just wasn't a very good effort! Its best service was the restoration of a number of good Geneva Bible renderings of passages.

The Puritan said...

>There is no Greek text that reads just like the AV, thus the 'TR' is an artificial text.

To justified the satanic *constructed* text(s) you pull down the God-preserved *received* text to the corrupt manuscripts' level.

I don't believe you need to have pointed out to you that there is a world of difference between editing manuscripts from the received stream and constructing a manuscripts from every source available that gives you freedom to make of God's word what you will make of God's word.

God's elect know the voice of the Shepherd, and it is not the voice of fallen, unregenerate man.

Highland Host said...

my dear chap, I actually use the New King James in the pulpit, and I am far more comfortable with a fuller text than with the modern shorter texts, I just don't think they're Satanic, just wrong.

Are you saying that everyone on the RV committee was unregenerate? Or just the majority who were able to amend the text against the wishes of the minority?

waldensis said...

I have a question for "The Puritan." Do you use the KJV/AV1611 or one of the revisions which were made in the late 1700's at the 2 Universities? If a revision, which one Cambridge or Oxford, and why? I ask for information to try to discern which is the KJV to use.

The Puritan said...

>Are you saying that everyone on the RV committee was unregenerate?

Again I ask: how many liberals and apostates have to be at the table before you discern a bad smell?

The Puritan said...

>I have a question for "The Puritan." Do you use the KJV/AV1611 or one of the revisions which were made in the late 1700's at the 2 Universities? If a revision, which one Cambridge or Oxford, and why? I ask for information to try to discern which is the KJV to use.

I read a Cambridge plain text AV. If critical text people have told you there is a difference between the AV1611 and editions sold today other than in spelling and limited punctuation they are engaging in what is called false witness. It is something they need to do because what they defend is indefensible.

waldensis said...

The Puritan

There are differences between even the Cambridge & the Oxford AV editions. How do you know the differences in the 1611 and later editions are only in "spelling and limited punctuation?" Again, I am trying to start and argument, but am needing information.

Highland Host said...

I don't use the RV, nor would I commend it. The text is faulty, and the translation wooden. What I am saying is that there was no plot to deny the deity of Christ on the committee.

Mark 10.18 in the 1611 AV reads in part: "there is no man good, but one, that is God." I checked my facsimile 1611 AV (a lovely edition printed in 1911). This is in modern AVs, "There is none good..." You can see why the change was made - "God is not a man...", and it's incredibly minor, but it IS more than a spelling or punctuation change (and spelling wasn't that important in 1611).

Of course most of the changes are spelling. For one thing the first edition was riddled with printing errors (though my favourite is in a subsequent edition, where the line "Princes have persecuted me without a cause" read "Printers have persecuted me without a cause." Mostly because it looks like it might have been deliberate sabotage by a disgruntled typesetter). A 1611 AV (like mine) is more a curiosity than a book for daily use.

waldensis said...

Highland Host,

I have that edition and the smaller, Nelson edition of the 1611 as well. I do use the smaller one for reading and study. I was asking "The Puritan" to find out if there is a list anywhere of the changes that were made by both the Oxford and the Cambridge revisers. I don't like to take people's word for these things unless they have reliable sources to back them up.

Thank you as well for this lovely blog. I have much appreciated your writings

The Puritan said...

I don't know if a list is available. As stated it is mainly spelling and punctuation changes. Also printing errors. But anything beyond that is miniscule. The Cambridge edition I mention is standard. Some publishing houses make their own little changes here and there, which they shouldn't, such as changing a capital 'S' to a small cap for spirit, or ignorantly changing the spelling of a word...stuff in the list at the bottom of this page:

http://www.biblebelievers.com/believers-org/counterfeit-kjv.html

Highland Host said...

It's all these Americans. Leave it to the University Presses and the Crown copyright, as King James intended.

waldensis said...

The Puritan

That was NOT the type list for which I was looking! That was some kind of Arminian, New Age Numerological list. Seems like I remember there's a list such as I want in Hartwell-Horne. D.V. I'll check today. Also, how does that article square with your use of a Cambridge Bible, since that's the one that's the very one which is a "counterfeit King James?"

The Puritan said...

You seem a bit confused, waldensis.

The Puritan said...

I don't know what the guy is talking about. Unless Cambridge uses different texts.

I.e. in my Cambridge Bible:

asswaged is asswaged
basons is basons
chesnut is chesnut
cloke is cloke
enquire is *inquire* (the only one the guy is accurate about)
further is further
Jubile is jubile
Intreat is intreat
morter is morter
ought is ought (where I checked, anyway, in Gen 20:9)
rereward is rereward

I once checked my Cambridge Bible against the full list at the bottom of that page and only found, at the time, one difference, and it was questionable whether the list itself was accurate on that one. Now I see inquire/enquire is different. But that's it.

Many webpages on the subject of the manuscripts issues advertise themselves as KJV supporting pages (usually in the title) and turn out to be critical text propaganda against the KJV and underlying manuscripts. I'm not saying the site I linked is like that (I havn't looked into it), but it's something to keep in mind. There is big money behind the modern versions, and a lot of vanity-protecting and so on.

Highland Host said...

I think the trouble is that people assume there are multiple differences because published by different presses - you know, just as the NIV, published by Zondervan, is different from the ESV, published by crossway. In fact there may be one or two little differences (I'm told there's a difference between the two in one verse in Jeremiah, as to whether a word is in the singular or plural), but they ares supposed to be the same. The Crown (who own the copyright of the AV), granted permission to BOTH university presses to print AVs.

In the past there have been far more differences, owing to printing errors. And my favourite is still the old Bible that read in Psalm 119:161 "Printers have persecuted me without a cause," which I like to think was the complaint of an aggrieved typesetter who really shouldn't have been given Psalm 119 to typeset!

Mind you, the 1815 Douai-Rheims 'Debased Bible' was worse, telling readers that Our Lord "debased himself'. In English to 'debase oneself' is not a good thing, or something compatible with sinlessness!

Other bad errors are found in the so-called 'Wicked Bible', where the omission of the word 'not' from the seventh commandment led to readers being enjoined to commit adultery (the printer was fined heavily, and all copies were recalled), and the so-called 'Fool's Bible', where 'no' was replaced with 'a', so that it read "The fool hath said in his heart that there is a God." For this subversive error the printer was heavily fined and all copies recalled. A Bible printed in 1716 reads "sin on more" in John 8.11, another catastrophic error that makes Christ appear to condone sin!

The word 'not', being only small, has been accidentally omitted in several Bible printings, leading to scandalous readings, and heavy fines for printers.

Sadly only two 20th century Bibles continued this grand tradition, the 1927 'Affinity Bible', which contained a table of affinity informing the reader that he must not marry his grandmother's wife (eh?), and the 1944 'Owl Bible', which in 1 Peter 3.5 read "and their owl husbands."