Welcome, everyone. We're glad we can come together to, I guess, to learn more about what it means to be a Christian and how particularly New Covenant Church understands the scriptures. And yeah, this is part of just, I guess, educating people and as well as for those who are interested in membership. It's part of growing into the distinctives of New Covenant Church. And hopefully we all just learn. And so it's open to anybody. And that's why we're glad people are here, just to visit and stuff. So let's open in a word of prayer and then I'll get into the slideshow. Let's pray. Holy God in heaven, we come before you and we thank you that we can come together to learn more about your word, to learn more about how you moved in history and how you have kept your word and how you have provided it for us. And we ask that you would give us a level of awe for your word and for you and for what you have spoken and help us to be educated and to be always affected by the contents of your holy word. May we see the Lord Jesus and may we know that He is the living word and He has given us the written word. In His name we pray. Amen. So the topic is the scriptures and question, who knows Old Testament, New Testament? What were they originally written in? Old Testament in Hebrew, yes, and a little touch of Aramaic. And the New Testament in Greek. That's right. And so here's the difference. That bottom manuscript there is in a majuscule manuscript, so that's all in capitals. That's how the original ones first were. Later they went to minuscules with lowercase letters. So then we get to the idea of ways to translate from the original language and you see here this nice comparison of different ways of translating and you see on there it talks about dynamic equivalent which is thought for thought basically these translations will look at giving you the meaning of a given text so when they're translating the translators will say well this is what it literally says we think it means this and there's kind of a graph here that the farther you go this way you end up with the message, I wouldn't even consider that Bible, but that is where it's virtually completely meaning-based and not at all text-based. And then we move to the other side, and we get to what's called formal equivalence, which is more literal and word-for-word. Now, you'll see here the King James and the New King James kind of land here. The reason why these two are in the extreme is the NASB is a good example of a Bible that will go, I would say, too far in translating from the text. It does such a formal way of translating that it loses the sense of idiomatic translation. So when there's sayings and things like that, the translators later have to be very careful how they translate that. So the NASB can be very wooden in the way it is, and the ASV as well. But all of these are considered formal, more or less they're word-for-word translations. So the big question that we need to talk about tonight, however, is not translation method. Is it all about translation method? And just to get back to that previous slide, we would definitely endorse and stand behind formal translations, getting the text, letting the interpreter determine the meaning, let us to study the text. But as soon as you move to more dynamic texts, you end up getting the meaning that any given translator wants you to have. And so The more formal in that sense, the formal translations will allow you to study the actual texts, the words that were given. But it isn't all about the method of translation. And here's why, as a church, we are very particular in the version we choose to preach from and use within. So the big question is this, what about the actual text that is being translated? What you have is you don't just have the same Greek or Hebrew that every version is using. They're using different Greek or different Hebrew texts to begin with. And that's really where the issue lies. And that's what we need to talk about here tonight. The reason why is because we do not have the original manuscripts anymore. Right? Paul would have written to Colossae or to other People to Philemon and whatever and we don't have those copies and since we don't have them the question ends up being is do we really have God's word because we don't have the copies and If we do and we all believe we do then which one is it? Where is the Word of God? That's the question. We want to address tonight and that leads us to also when it comes to versions translations of those Original manuscript or of those copies which version is the Bible is an important question So that's where we're going. It leads to the question of preservation right here. Has God preserved his word for us? Or was it only perfect in the originals? And remember that question, because that's where we're going to, I guess, see a difference in philosophy between a lot of scholars and I would say the minority. We take what is called today the minority view on this, and historically was the majority view. So there's been a big shift in the way the churches view these things, and scholars as well. So I guess to answer the question of preservation, let's go to the Bible itself. And what does the Bible say about the doctrine of preservation, God keeping or preserving His word, and these are just a few verses. There's a lot more I could have taken here. So from Mark 13, 31, Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Now, if he there only meant the meaning of the words, then we would have a problem because we wouldn't know the words. So not only what they mean, what he was actually intending to say, but the words themselves, we need them in order to get the content. And another one from Isaiah 40, verse 8, and Peter quotes this in 1 Peter 1, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. And we see in Peter, he picks that up and saying, and this is the word which by the gospel was preached unto you. So you link the Old Testament, God spoke, thus saith the Lord, to the New Testament, the gospel proclaimed, and it says that the word of God shall stand. Now this one, I think, this next one from Jesus, Matthew 5, 18, And so regarding the Old Testament law, the Torah, Jesus says, and he's actually using parts of the words here to say they will stand. And here's what they are. So this is, the the divine name Jehovah and here you see the jot is the yod and The tittle is the little little end here on the vav those little lines these things right here And so he's going to the minutest the smallest detail of the Hebrew text and he's saying they will not pass And this one I think is really important because this one ties the old in the New Testament and Do not think, Jesus speaking, that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, and he's referring to the law when he says that, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? So he's referring back to what Moses wrote. and the giving of that, and there's an implicit assumption about what Jesus says here, and that is that the Jews of his day had the words of Moses. They were preserved, and that's what we will go to, the doctrine of preservation. It was a doctrine that was often taught historically. I would say nowadays it's being let loose, and the reason is because of where we're gonna be going. So how did God preserve the Bible? By what method? Did he do that? So the first question, the first place we'll go is the Old Testament. How is the Old Testament preserved? Because when Jesus refers to Moses in the writings, he's referring to the Old Covenant. We believe that God inspired the Bible, both Testaments. And Paul talks about all scripture being God-breathed or given by inspiration of God. And there he's referring to the graphe, the scriptures of the Old Testament. And when we believe that, it means that all scripture are God's words, which were spoken and written through men. And so God inspired them and everything there. It's plenary, it's total, it's verbal. And you'll see that in most confession statements. And therefore we speak of the Bible being theopnotos, which is God, theos, notos, is breathed. And so we talk of God breathed or inspired, the inspired text. So preservation follows from this, and this is how we understand the doctrine of preservation. Since or because God gave His Word and inspired it, then any authority it has in our lives means we must be sure He has preserved it for us. Because if it's going to have authority, and if we don't have it, then it can't have any authority in our lives because we just don't know what it is. but because he gave it under inspiration and he preserved it for us and we have it, therefore it has authority in our lives today and we can hear it and be challenged by it and be judged by it as well. And that's why when God's word references God's word, so the New Testament referencing the Old Testament, it's referencing the preserved scriptures, the graphe, the writings, or the scriptures. And that's why in the New Testament you'll see these words, it is written, or all scripture is given. And you actually, interesting, I didn't notice, is that the word it is written is always in the perfect tense in the Greek, which means it is given, it is fixed, and will stand. And so the very use of the Greek tense for the Old Testament is a firm and a steadfast foundation all scripture is given. Now when Paul wrote that, particularly in 1st Timothy or 2nd Timothy 3, does he mean the originals? What would you guys say? When he says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for instruction and reproof, does he refer to the originals? Exactly. They wouldn't have been around anymore. And we know that because somewhere in the Old Testament, there was only one copy left. And then they found it and made more copies. So he wasn't referring to the originals. He meant the copies, faithful copies that they had in their possession. And that's why he says it's profitable. Because if you don't have it, how can it profit us? And these were copies that were being used by God's covenant people. That's a very important point. So when we talk about the doctrine of preservation, it's God's covenant people that preserves the very Word of God. For the Old Testament, it was preserved by the scribes, and they would have been from the Levitical tribe, Levitical line, scribes like Ezra. And later, as we move into the New Testament time, and later after Christ, a special group of Jewish scribes known as the Mazarites, they were very meticulous in keeping and preserving the Old Testament canon. And in fact, in the Bible itself, it says that to the Jews, to them, were given the oracles of God. And so they were the guardians of the Word of God, from Romans 3-2. Now here's just, I'm not going to read all of these. These are the rules that the Mazarites would use to preserve the Word of God. They would use only clean animal skins. They could have no less than 48 and no more than 60 lines. Ink must always be black, special recipe. They had to speak each word aloud while they were writing. Another way of remembering. They had to wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing Jehovah. It had to be a review within 30 days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone. Those are tight parameters. Hand copying. The letters, words, paragraphs had to be counted, and it would be invalid if two letters touched each other. Good thing they didn't ask me to. Do that. They had to be stored in a sacred place and no document containing God's Word could be destroyed. They were buried or stored in a synagogue or in a cemetery. So most English translations regarding the Old Testament stay close to the Hebrew Masoretic text. And we would use the Daniel Bomberg text and it was in the time of the Reformation that it was given. But here's where we get into a little bit of a change. So other versions nowadays are starting to incorporate readings from very corrupt Greek manuscript known as the Septuagint, the LXX. We could talk a lot about that, but we won't tonight. And the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. And by doing that, you are actually starting to undermine the doctrine of preservation, because then we're going we're saying, well, we'll rediscover and we'll get into that. So we'll move on to the new Testament. And, um, yeah. Any questions up to this point? I'm moving pretty quick. No. Okay, good. So the most, you won't notice many differences in the old Testament. They are there, but most of them are in the new Testament. So here we go in the new Testament. The text of Scripture is preserved through the priesthood of believers. Where in the Old Testament it was a Levitical line, priestly line, now it is kept through the priesthood of believers. It's a very important point that we realize that the believers, the believing church, preserved the Word of God. And most early Christians weren't wealthy, but they copied with fear. For God in their hearts now the reason I brought up the fact that they weren't wealthy means they would probably have copied on cheap papyrus and They wouldn't have the money usually to put it on expensive vellum and skin animal skins and things like that and so it actually speaks to the reason why many old Manuscripts have been lost because the early church didn't have the wealth to put them on expensive deerskin And they also knew that God told us not to tamper with his word. He warned of that in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 4, and in the New Testament, the last book of the Bible, almost the very last set of verses. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book. referring to the apocalypse, the revelation, that's when this is written, but that principle is for the whole of scripture. And so they would have known this, and to add even one word, or to take away one word, was a severe thing. So they wouldn't have done it. Now we get into... Yes? Sure. It would go beyond revelation only by a sense of implication. So you get the same doctrine taught in Deuteronomy 4, the same kind of wording, and that would apply to the Torah at that point. But because God has spoken in all things, I think the principle applies to all, but there specifically it is revelation. But now we're getting into, I would say, a wholesale shift as to how we have the scriptures we have today. We have moved since 1881 in particular from a doctrine of preservation to a doctrine of restoration. And you'll hardly see in any modern books on the topic of scripture the word preservation. I've looked at some and you have to find it like somewhere in one paragraph. They hardly talk about it. Instead you'll see this word a lot and that is to restore. And the reasons they say that is because they say over the centuries scribal error Heresies and corruption, wars and so on have caused the exact readings of the Bible to be uncertain. And so we have to restore them because it's been lost. And it is true that all these things have taken place. There has been errors, mistakes, heresies and so on. So they're not wrong in saying that. And they will say rightly, not one manuscript is the same. The manuscript refers to the old discoveries of writings they found. And they all have what's called variants, variations, spelling, words gone, words missing. There's actually not one manuscript that is identical with another manuscript. And so there's always going to be little variations. The original reading, they say, has been lost. And the textual critics, those are the experts, in their fields use methods they consider both scientific and artistic methods kind of to restore the original reading. But the key is the word restoration. It's been lost, and we have, or are working on restoring it. And they'll say we're 95% certain we have the word of God, but we're still hoping to land there someday. The question is, between these two approaches to the word of God, are the results the same? And I would say that there are glaring differences. I'm only going to pick up a few here, but they're important ones. I'm going to recommend some books later on that I would really encourage you to look through. Colossians 1.14, and I'm using this one as an example. So I took a screenshot from my computer. This is a website I used to study for sermons and what. So here you have the Greek. This is the Texas Receptus. This is what our King James is based on. So this Greek right here, and that is this column, the TR. And so it says, in whom we are having the redemption and you'll notice Tia through Haimata, so through his blood, actually that should have been highlighted as well, that is completely missing here, even if you can't read Greek, it's not there, you can see it's shorter, and there you're comparing the King James to the NASB, completely gone, so there is the, through his blood, it's just been taken out. It is striking, the doctrines that are taken out are intentionally, intentionally taken out, because they usually refer to the deity of Christ, the blood of Christ, the work of Christ. And so you'll see that there is a doctoring that has happened. So here we go at some more examples, key passages that are missing. So between the King James and the NIV, but that would speak for all, virtually all new versions. So Matthew 6, 13, and leads not to temptation, but delivers from evil, underlined is missing, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. So the Lord's prayer is shortened in the new versions at that reading. They'll say, well, it's found in the other, in the Lucan version, but it's still missing in the Matthew version. And so they'll say actually the Texas Receptus adds it in, but we'll get into that. So another one, Matthew 9, 13, for I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And the repentance there is missing. Matthew 20, 16. So the last shall be first, and the first last. For many be called, but few be chosen. Again, missing. Mark 7, 16, completely missing. If any man have ears, let him hear. You won't find it in the NIV. Mark 15, 28. And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, and he was numbered with the transgression. So Mark saying there was a fulfillment, gone from the NIV. 1 Timothy 6, 5, speaking about false teachers, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness, from such withdraw thyself. So the command to Timothy, completely gone, what to do with these false teachers. Hebrews 2.7, quoting the Old Testament again, Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, Thou crownest him with glory and honor, and did set him over the work of Thy hands. Missing in the New Greek text. Revelation 11.17, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art and was and art to come. So that in Revelation 1, it talks about that, and here as well, and here it's gone. It's quoting Psalms, yeah, Psalm. No, no, no, it's missing there. Yeah, I'm gonna get into some interesting stuff as to what's happened and why this is. And again, tonight is a fast fly over this issue, but I hope by the end of the evening we get a sense of this. There's a book that I'll recommend at the end, it's called Ripped Out of the Bible. It's free, it's online, I can give you guys copies of it on PDF. And it tabulates page after page after page of what has been taken out of the Bible. All of the differences that are between the versions. Yeah, exactly. And that's from the Revelation 1 quotation. And you'll even hear guys like R.C. Sproul and whatever that they'll often quote from the King James because that's how they grew up. That's how they began, but now they are recommending the newer versions. But often they're quotations. They're going back to how they were raised. And the thing is, what they will say, what the text critic will say is, well, no, the King James, some pious scribe added it to fix the Bible, because they thought, well, it should say that. These are additions, they say, rather than deletions. But they're very specific, and they're very intentional. So here's a few of the names of Christ and charge these disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ and so they're his name Specifically lining himself this one's completely out for the son of man has come to save that which is lost. It's gone Matthew 1917 and he said unto them why call us thou me good. There's none good, but one that is God missing Mark 11 verse 10 blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh in the name of the Lord Missing Hosanna in the highest So Mark 11, 26, completely missing. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father, which is in heaven, forgive your trespasses. Now, as an aside, when you bring these up and they say, well, it's found in other accounts of the Gospels, the same thing, they say no doctrine has been touched. But if you keep pulling out these doctrines here, left, right, and center, it's like playing a game, let's say football, and you pull the quarterback out sometimes, and you say, we're gonna go shorthanded to this world. change the Word of God, and that's how we're going to approach this world and the Word of God. I really think this is a serious issue. Another one that's completely missing, and it's interesting, Acts 8.37, referring to the eunuch when he asked, what does hinder me to be baptized? In all the new versions, it's gone, the answer, Acts 8.37. It'll be footnoted, saying some older manuscripts include, but it won't be in the main text. And Philip said, he answers the question, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Is again, it's footnoted in an NIV, but it's not in the body of the text. First Corinthians 16, 22 and 23. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Also, there you see what's missing. And then this is the most disputed difference of all of them, and that is the Kama. It's called the Kama Yohaniyim because it is a very Trinitarian passage for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, and there are three that bear witness on earth. That is missing. It is the one that is the hardest textually to defend from our position, but there is a good defense out there for it, and it really is Once we go into the doctrine of preservation, these questions take care of themselves. But I will say this is the hardest one, but it has a good defense to it. So those are just a few. Again, there are hundreds and hundreds of differences. So here's a few more things. These next passages are printed in an NIV or in an ESV, but there's gonna be a footnote saying, older and better manuscripts do not contain them. And the one is this, John 7, 53 to 8, 11, the woman caught in adultery. Remember, they go to accuse him. Jesus writes in the sand and says, he who was without sin, let him cast the first stone. They will say, and I keep hearing it over and over again, John Piper to John MacArthur to whoever they say, they will argue that that is not scripture. Why do they print it then? Why are the publishers still putting it in there if they don't think it's Scripture? The other one is Mark 16, 9-20, the resurrection appearances of Jesus. They do not think should be Scripture. Again, my question is, why are you printing it when you've ripped out all these other things on the same rationale? Why are you still printing it now? And I think it's because it's such a big section that it will affect Bible sales. And they will say again, these things, earliest manuscripts do not include them. They are in your NIV. There will be a footnote or a line or something like that or in your ESV or in any new version. They are in the main body of the text. They shouldn't be there. They kind of, I don't know, I think again. Yeah, yeah. And the funny thing is there's another one like that too where the scholars will say that when Jesus says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, one of the seven sayings from the cross, they also think isn't scripture. Why print it? Why put it in your Bible if you're going to be consistent with yourself? So a history of the Bible. We hold to what's called the Texas Receptus for the New Testament, and that simply means the received text. Now, if you note in the Doctrine of Preservation, those are important words, and those aren't words that I coined. Those are words that were used in the time of the Reformation. So back in the 1500s, they brought a cry. It's called humanism in that day. It's not humanism as we would see it today. It actually meant back to the sources, ad fontes, for Latin. And there was a man named Desiderius Erasmus from Rotterdam. He was a Roman Catholic priest. He was actually a bastard's son who was an expert in Greek and Latin. Every country in Europe wanted him. They would pay hundreds and hundreds of, well, not dollars, whatever they were using back then, to get this guy to their country. He traveled to Cambridge. He scoured libraries all over Europe in this time of the 1500s. and he vehemently protested the abuses within the Roman Catholic Church. He never did leave the Roman Catholic Church. There's questions whether he actually ended up, what his faith actually was, because he wrote against Luther in some areas, but after years of traveling and scouring all these libraries, he compiled and printed the first Greek New Testament, and here's a copy of it. He had six editions before he kind of was content with where it was, but it was the first one, And that is the one that brought us the Luther Bible and brought the Protestant Reformation kind of into full swing. And also William Tyndale was actually a student of Desiderius Erasmus. And the linguistic skill this man had and taught Tyndale is unparalleled. In fact, 70% of the King James Bible is William Tyndale. It is amazing how they were just geniuses of language and translation. Mm-hmm Exactly Calvin came out of the Luther did all of the Reformers came out of the Roman Catholic Church In fact Desiderius Erasmus died with the Reformers. He would send manuscripts to the Reformers some guys like William Pharrell You're reading a book sickly about him saw through this man and saw his duplicity in some areas again, he was cynical about Roman the abuses, but he didn't leave the Roman Church and so Yeah, he was a man of his days in that way, but his learning was unparalleled. So later, the Texas Receptus in 1550 at Theodor Beza, that is a student of John Calvin, a direct successor actually of Geneva, updated his work with some slight changes, spelling and stuff like that. There are very little differences between Erasmus' 6th edition I have Stephanus' 1550, and then the last text is Receptus. They're so minor. They're just case endings and stuff like that. And Theodor Bezos' 5th edition became the main foundation for the King James Bible, almost virtually following Theodor Bezos' text. And there's the 1611 KJV. So in 1624, remember the King James is published in 1611, and the Dutch Staat of Italy was published in 1618. Translators would have gone across the pond, they actually counseled each other as to how to translate things, because most of these scholars were conversant in many languages of Europe. And then in 1624, the Elsevier brothers basically coined the term Texas Receptus, again, because it was received by the church. in the time of the Reformation. And so it reflects the actual text that was used by the church. And that's an important point. So when we talk about the received text, it's not a recreated text. It was a text they received and was used. It wasn't pick and choose. Now, So I have here again a Texas Receptus. I have never bought, because I don't want to spend the money on it, an actual, what's nowadays called the Nessala Land Greek text. So the Nessala Land is one that comes out of Restorationism. You'll see the word a land right there. He is, he's no, I think he's still alive, but he may not be. I'm not sure. But anyways, the Nessala Land, what's that? You don't think so? So Nestle, Ueberhart or something, and Kurt Alain, they got together and compiled a text after the New Theories, and Kurt Alain is one of the textual giants of this day and age, and he says, it is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century, orthodoxy, doctrine, a verbal inspiration, assumed the Texas Recepts. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the original text. quite a statement from this professor, and you'll see that he says that's what they believed, that's what the church held on to, was that this is the very Word of God, that basically all those omissions in the New Versions, that they are bad, and that the King James is based on the Word of God preserved for us. Here comes another textual critic from 1955 from Harvard, So remember, these are the guys that are the experts in their field. And he said, the Texas Receptus is not the true text of the New Testament. But then he goes on to say this, it, the Texas Receptus, was the scripture of many centuries of the church's life. The Texas Receptus is the text of the church. It is that form of text which represents the sum total and the end product of all the textual decisions which were made by the church and her fathers over a period of more than a thousand years. That's a tremendous admission from this textual critic Merrill Parvis. So he's basically saying it's not the New Testament, but it is what the church thought was the New Testament for over a thousand years. That's a glaring admission because it basically says that for a thousand years they did not have the New Testament. So now we get into what's called eclecticism. And Nick put this together really nicely because I think this is the issue. It breaks with the idea of preservation, the historical use of the scripture throughout history, and the link is gone. And so the Bible we have nowadays needs to be restored because the chain of preservation has been broken. Eclecticism is the new method that's used to determine the Word of God. So basically what eclecticism does is it seeks to compile a text which is, in which each reading, and now when I talk about a reading, you go to a, like we showed all those mistakes and errors, and they actually look at a reading and say, what is the weight of that particular reading in all of the manuscripts? And so they go into the very specifics of each reading and say, should it be there, should it not be? So each reading is weighed on its own merits. subjectivity rules, because one textual critic to the next will say this or that. In fact, if you would go to seminary today, you will get Bruce Metzger's big book on this issue. It's a commentary, a textual commentary, and basically it gives a weighting to each Reading and they'll say here's what we think here's what it might be and it leaves it up to the pastor I've read many modern books theologians where they say well This could be scripture because of these reasons it may not be scriptures because of these words. I like these reasons better So I'm going to assume this is scripture or I'm going to assume this is not scripture You'll see that in all the modern commentaries because that's how they're taught to look at the Word of God. So it's very subjective How are we doing on time here The eclectic method involves considering what they call external and internal evidences. External evidence makes us ask these questions. In how many manuscripts does the reading occur? What are the dates for these manuscripts? And what region were these manuscripts found? So those are the external questions. And then it's the internal ones that get even more subjective, because it has all kinds of questions. What could have caused these readings? And when you saw those missing things, they said, well, why would... Why would this manuscript not have that reading? And they have to come up with reasons to conceive why maybe this manuscript doesn't have it. And then, which reading can possibly explain the origin of the others? You see how that's a very subjective way of approaching the Greek, the Word of God. So, to refute that, are there any questions up to this point? I'm going fast, so. Yeah, yeah, that will be coming. Absolutely. Couldn't leave that one out. Yeah. The other ones. In fact, I'm going to be handing out a piece of paper that's going to explain a lot of that. No, but again, this piece of paper will give you a really nice thing. One thing I will say is Erasmus, again, because of his travels through Europe, saw virtually every reading. In fact, there's a quote coming that he knew of every variant that is known of today. So he knew of all the readings. And yeah, so we're getting to the rationale of why he and Beza and Stephanus all and all the King James translators and all the Dutch translators, why they all hung on to the Texas Receptus. In fact, Calvin for a while was dubious about it, and he also came on board and stood behind the Texas Receptus. And so it held. Basically, it started to wobble in the 1800s from German rationalists, and in 1881 is when the walls started coming down. And now we're ended up where we are. So, any other questions? Yeah. Yeah. Into German. Yeah. and very good translation as far as I've read. So we're going to just uncover eclecticism, this whole idea of gathering from all sorts of readings and putting together a Bible that's never existed. Because that's what eclecticism has done. It's picking and choosing from all the manuscripts that are around today and saying, this is the Word of God, we think, maybe, because we're putting out another version. In fact, the 28th edition has just come out and it completely undid all of the previous thinking again. So, refuting eclecticism, this is the chart we'll be referring to, so you all have a copy of it. So, when it comes down to understanding what happened to the manuscripts, it's very early on in church history, the Bible already warns about it, there will be false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who shall privily bring in Damnable heresy. So heretics in the church, they were there already in John's day. He talks about Antichrist that already were there then. And then in 2 Corinthians 2.17, Paul says, for we are not as many which corrupt, some versions here will have peddle, but it is a corruption of the word of God, but as of sincerity, but as of God in the sight of God speak we in Christ. And so they had a tremendous view of the reverence of God. So now I want to get into this question of older and better because every time in your versions when it talks about older and better manuscripts do not contain these verses or something like that. They're referring largely to two manuscripts known as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. You'll see them there in the middle of your chart under Eusebius on the right side. So are they really better? They are old. They are old. Are they the oldest? No, there's been new manuscripts discovered that are older. But these are very well kept, and we'll get into the details. So, these are the two that we're going to talk about. Here's a copy of Vaticanus. Remember how I said Mark 16, the resurrection account, is missing? What's striking is that in Vaticanus, right here, this is the end of Mark. It is missing. Now, normally, at the end of a gospel account, if this is Mark, and it was Matthew, Mark, Luke next, you would have Luke starting right here. In fact, if you look at Codex Vaticanus, Codex simply means the book. If you look at Vaticanus, at all the other gospels, that's what happens. You get the blank after the book is done. On the next column, because this is expensive, you get not the next page, you get the next book. Not here. And the gap that's left behind exactly fits the verses that are missing. So whichever scribe did this, and you can actually see underneath, you see as if there's been doctoring happening. And so this is just a very tampered with manuscript, but it is considered older and better and it is interesting. Vaticanus, it was stored in the Vatican. Very striking, Vatican, Rome. Here we go to the heretics. Yeah, the completion, the age, and yeah, it's a full, most of his fragments, this one is very well kept. And it is on antelope skin, very expensive. We'll get to that. It's a good question. It's a very good question. In fact, basically the answer is, it was recognized as being corrupt. Clement and Origen is where things really start. So there was a school in Alexandria and Clement, a student of, I forget the guy's name, another guy, that really started to introduce Greek philosophy, Platonic thought, into the church. And in Christianity, he was followed by what we would consider one of the big arch-heretics, Origen, and who taught all sorts of heresies, soul sleep, baptismal regeneration, that you're saved by your baptism, universal salvation, including for the devils, purgatory, that Jesus was a little G-God. Does that look familiar? The little G-God thing? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God. The Watchtower, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Isn't that interesting? He compiled what's called a parallel Bible, the Hexapla, and he has six columns of the Old Testament. Remember I talked about the LXX, the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament. There's the column. Every scholar today, not every actually, many scholars today will date the Septuagint before Christ. I'm fairly convinced, based on Floyd Jones and a number of other things I've read and heard, that I think it is a work of origin to doctor the New Testament and the Old Testament to fit together. But that's a topic for another night. But that all relates to the Hexapla written around 200. And so it has six columns. And though mostly lost, it's a very highly suspicious book. He also compiled the New Testament. And that is where we're going. So in AD 325, the Council of Nicaea, we've heard of the Nicaean creed potentially, where it condemned a heresy of Arianism, which basically taught that Jesus was not God, but he was a created being. He wasn't quite man, but he's not quite God. And so every early heresy would attack the very person and work of Christ. And so you get all the councils getting together, and the church almost lost at this point on Arianism. But Athanasius was one of the defenders of the divinity of Christ, that he is God. And so That's for your history homework if you want to know more about Arianism. But Eusebius was a church historian that wrote in this time, and he was also an Arian. And in 331, Emperor Constantine, who was quote-unquote Christian, this is where you get the marriage of the church and state, commissioned him to prepare 50 copies of the Bible. Now remember, he is a sympathizer of Arianism. Eusebius considered origin, to have been the greatest of men. He used Origen's hexapla for the Old Testament and Origen's edited New Testament. These 50 Bibles were made on fine antelope skin, very expensive and durable. No way that the church was copying this. This was only possible if it was commissioned by the king and the coffers of Constantine. Eusebius Bibles have become the source of the two favorite older and better manuscripts of eclecticism, Sinaiticus Aleph and Vaticanus B. We don't know exactly if they are part of the 50 or not, but it is almost certain that this is where their origins are. And again, I am no expert in this, but everything I've read from able sources defends that view, that they are from that, from origin. So the question is, what happened? So Eusebius' Bibles have become the source of that. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in 382. His text heavily also leaned on origin and was initially rejected because before the Latin, you had the old Latin and the old Latin follows actually the text's receptus reading, not the new Latin. And it was slowly gaining supremacy and Rome actually adopted it, I think at the Council of Trent and said that this Latin, so when the Roman Catholic Church is reading from its Latin Bibles, they are actually using a text, again, that is from origin and where it reads similar to Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. And again, there you go, Vaticanus involved. Any questions? Okay. Yes, they disagree with each other, but they largely, the biggest thing is they disagree with the bulk of manuscript history. So should we give them a voice? And this is from Floyd Jones. He says, how do we evaluate the credibility of a witness in everyday life? How do you do when you talk with somebody, when police interview somebody, when a judge weighs something, when a teacher asks a student a question, how do we weigh the validity of an individual or of a witness? By observing their actions, by what they say and how they say it, listening to the opinions of his neighbors and associates, and by observing the same things in his associates. Check out his associates. In other words, does he round with a bad crowd? If it can be demonstrated that he is a habitual liar, morally depraved, or that his critical faculties, his thinking faculties, are impaired, then his testimony should be received with skepticism. That's how we handle everything normally in life today. What about these two manuscripts? Between the two of them, Vaticanus Beta and Sinaiticus Aleph have lied over 3,000 times in just the Gospels alone, according to Hoschei. Now, a quick word about Hermann Hoschei. This guy was a textual genius that lived in the time when everything was going south, and he spent years of his life studying those two manuscripts, and he writes a book about it. Nobody talks about it anymore. It's called Codex B and its allies, and he totally undercuts the validity of these manuscripts, but you don't hear about it anymore. And that's the striking thing, is that the guys today, I will particularly point to the seminaries and the professors, that Christians should be reading the textual critics in the day when it started going south, how they were responding, what were they doing, and they were uncovering the corruption of these manuscripts. So when he compares the true reading of Texas Receptus between them There are 656 differences in Matthew, so many in Mark, Luke, a total of over 3,000 differences between these manuscripts and the Texas Receptus. Aleph is a bigger liar than Bet, so between these Vaticanus. They're both terrible. Everyone agrees to that. If Aleph is, let us say, a two to one bigger liar than Bet, then 1,000 of those lies belong to Vaticanus B and 2,000 to Sinaiticus. Are Bette and Aleph reliable witnesses? That's the question for us to ask. When they're so different, should we be trusting them at all? That's the question that today's eclecticism says yes, older and better. Every time you see it in your footnote, they're referring to these not-credentialed witnesses. Frederick Nolan, his book is available online. It is a tome, huge book. He spent 28 years of his life. He was a scholar, researching the text. Now look when he lived. Remember, Erasmus printed in 15-something, 1530s. This is in 18, around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. He spent 28 years researching this, and he makes the following amazing statement. With respect to the manuscripts, it is indisputable that he, speaking of Erasmus, was acquainted with every variety which is known to us, having distributed them, and this is the key, this is how they looked at these manuscripts, into two classes, one of which corresponds with the Vaticanus manuscript the church was aware of, and it was infested with Origenists and Arians, and affinity with any manuscript of that version that had Origen and Arian in it, consequently conveyed some suspicion that its text was corrupt. And so what the reformers would have done in Erasmus and Bezos, they said, this associates with Origen. This manuscript is untrustworthy. And that's how they would regard those manuscripts. Now, just so you know, there's only 43, maybe now a few more, manuscripts of this stream available today. of the over 5,000 that defend the majority Texas Receptus reading. So it is heavily weighted today in the favor of the Texas Receptus. The thing is, the Texas Receptus readings, most of them are more from the medieval ages. So that's where that comes from. So is naturalistic, that means human-determined criticism, eclecticism and restorationism, a shot in the dark? They talk about new manuscripts having been found, but many, many manuscripts that were available during the time of the Reformation have also been destroyed. And this is a partial list. I didn't take the whole shot here. Look how many libraries were destroyed. 250,000 volumes lost. Two million volumes and manuscripts lost. Not that those were all from Bibles. These are 760,000 lost. There's just so much that's also been lost since the Reformation in wars and burning and stuff. They don't talk about that, because it's not convenient to talk about stuff that's been lost. They only like to talk about new discoveries. It's interesting. This thing is kind of acting up. So what are some of the rules of today's how to pick and choose your Bibles? Manuscripts must be weighed, not counted. Like I said, there's more than 5,000 in favor of the Textus Receptus reading. But no, they say we need to weigh the validity of them. Yep, they give them one voice. They only count as one vote. To determine the reading, one of the rules is determine the reading that would most likely give rise to the others. We talked about that. Maybe this reading resulted in that reading. It's very subjective. The more the distinctive reading is usually preferable. That means the more unique reading, the one that's way out there, that's the one we should be using. That's an actual rule they use. The weirder, the better. The shorter reading, this one I thought was always weirder, is generally favored. So if it says Jesus Christ or it says Lord Jesus Christ, always go with the short one. That's the rules they've made. They would have always assumed addition rather than deletion. Determine which reading is more appropriate in its context. How subjective is that? I think this one fits in the context. the context, the grammar, and the spelling errors, historical context. So that is very subjective. These are the actual rules that they're using. And they were developed in the 1800s by Germans, German rationalists. So, now the question is, what about today's text critics? What do they actually think? This is Jeff Riddle. He's a Baptist Reformed teacher and professor. I highly recommend his stuff on Sermon Audio. And he says that, let me get this thing, there. He says that it's a seismic shift in the field of textual criticism. Mainstream academic scholars, Bart Ehrman is one of them if you've heard his name, are by and large abandoning the effort to reconstruct the original autographs. They don't believe the autograph, that means the original reading, can be recovered. So that means that the church is following, and most of these guys are atheists, they don't believe in God at all, We're following these guys that don't even believe that there is a possibility of recovering. They don't even believe in an original. And the next one is from an actual text critic today. David Parker in England. Textual criticism never has had the goal of recovering a text which has the supposed authority of the author. That's what they say. Because they think it's an interesting science. Academics. They don't believe it. And so that's who we're following. So the newest method, so we've come out now with the 28th edition of the Nessela Land, and this is let the computer give us the Bible. So if you went to seminary three years ago, you wouldn't have had the Nessela Land 28th, you would have had the 27th edition. They applied a new technique, it's called the coherence-based genealogical method right there in the middle. And it basically says, It's a method of what could be the potential ancestor of this reading. They spit it into a computer, and the computer spits out your text. What's interesting is they only applied that method, the computer method, to four or five books of the New Testament, the general epistles. And they said, well, the rest we'll do later, maybe. Here, 28th edition, let's sell them. I went to their website. It's all copywritten, and it's So they're basically saying, we're giving you a Bible, computer generated, a potential, and not even to all of it. So they're not even sure. That's today's seminary students getting this stuff. So what happened? Why did everything go south? Well, I talked about 1881 when it all started going that way, but how did the churches get affected? What about the North American churches in particular? Benjamin Warfield, the great theologian from Princeton, he's a really good theologian, but I think in this area is where he took the church south. He studied two years in Germany, and that's where all this thinking really came from. And he came back with the answer to the question of, what is the Word of God? Because they looked to this giant and said, can you help us here? We need answers. And he said this, Warfield's solution was to shift the doctrine of inerrancy, that the Word of God is inerrant, to include only the originals, only what Paul would have written. not holding to the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible of the reformers, the traditional text. That's the shift. Push inerrancy to the originals and we've solved the problem. We've kept the scholars happy. We've kept the church happy. Here's the word of God. Thus he moved that if the locus or the center of providence were now centered in restoration via enlightenment criticism that I just talked about, Rather than in the doctrine of preservation of the traditional text, then we need not concern ourselves with the criticisms lodged at the text of scripture presently and historically used in the church." And so he pushed it to the originals. That's what happened. Benjamin Warfield's solution was accepted wholesale by seminaries everywhere, slowly following suit. Look up statements of faith of seminaries. You will see this happening. He says, Benjamin Warfield again, I have been surprised in comparing the Revised Testament, so he's talking about the new versions, with other versions to find out how many of the changes which are important and valuable have been anticipated by the Remesh, the Roman Catholic translation, which now forms a part of what is known as the Douay Bible. So this is the Roman Catholic Bible that you can buy on the shelf today. And he's saying, I'm amazed that when we started applying these new methods, We were getting a Roman Catholic Bible, like the Roman Catholics were already ahead of us in this game. And yet a careful comparison of these new translations with the Remus, the Catholic Testament, shows them in many instances to be simply a return to the old Catholic version. And leads us to think that possibly there were, as Finnish scholars, 300 years ago as now. So he's basically saying, oh, the Catholics, they got it right. 300 years ago. We're catching up now. And nearly as good an apparatus for the proper ending of the original text. That's Benjamin Moorfield. Here's the real issue. Dollars. Every year, over 425 million dollars spent every time they pump out a new version. Constantly new Bibles being printed. It is tremendous money. I just read that Tyndale published 26 different Bibles. Huge money in the Bible world. There's another law involved and that is called the copyright derivative law. That means that every new Bible that is published has to be so many percent different from another version or you can't print it. You'll infringe on copyrights. So every time they pump out a new Bible it has to be different. by law. I tried to find that. I've heard 10, I've heard 20, I've heard 30. Land in the middle at 20. So, providential preservation, that's what we hold to as a church, and historically it has been the held position of this issue. The text of Receptus reflects the text of the church, the Bible that was actually used by the church and the providential hand of God in keeping it. So, a quick history. After the churches received the New Testament, so the originals, they right away started making copies. and started handing them out to other churches around the area. And then pretty soon the missionary movement started happening. In fact, they, when the Roman Catholic Church got to Scotland to bring their Latin Bible, they said, thanks, we already have a Bible in our own language. And it follows the Texas Receptus readings. So early on the missionary movement went out and the ancient copies, the missionary movement copies back the Texas Receptus. Slowly, the church divided into the Eastern Greek and the Western Latin Roman churches. And by the 5th century, it culminated in Greek Bibles being banned from the West in the 5th century. And so, because you had political division under Constantine's sons, I believe he had four, and they all split up. Was it four, Nick? Remember? Anyways, that's where the division started happening. So, you guys keep your Greek, we're keeping our Western Latin, and the church started to unite under Rome in the West, and that's where stuff started really going south. The West plunged into what's known as the Dark Ages from 476 to 1453. 1453 is a very important date. Who knows what happened? It is the date of the fall of what? Constantinople, the Eastern Orthodox, the Eastern Empire. fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Muslims invaded, took it, and what happened was piles and piles of manuscripts started heading west because scribes and scholars and monasteries and literature and art started just tumbling into the west. The same time, Johann Gutenberg developed the first printing press right around that time. At the same time, so here we're gonna get the age of, well, it's a very important point, because the age of hand copying is over. That means scribal variation is finito. If you print a copy, you're gonna have 100 copies with the mistake. So it's very easy to see a mistake when you compare it to the other 100 copies, right? Once hand copying is over, scribal error is easy to identify. So here we get the East, Constantinople, West. And this whole empire fell to the Ottoman Turks. Hundreds of manuscripts, literature, etc. flooded in. 90% of all existing manuscripts today are from the Byzantine Empire. What else happened in that time? We're celebrating 500 years of the Reformation. Luther, Tyndale, Calvin, and Zwingli, and some other guys. Oh, there's Calvin. The rise of humanism. Ad Fontes, going back to the sources and ultimately the Reformation. All these things coincided together under the providential hand of God. Byzantine falling, printing press happening, the Reformation happening, Ad Fontes back to the sources, humanism means the acceleration of learning of languages again was happening, scrapping the Latin, going back to Hebrew and Greek, that all happened within 50 years of each other. It is amazing in the providential hand of God that all happened then. And that from that time, the text that was received was the Word of God, the textus receptus. So, which Bible? Wrapping it up. We hold to the King James Bible being the best English translation available. The King James Version was translated in an era when English expression and linguistic excellence was at its highest. You will never again find a time in the history of the world where the scholarship in languages was as high as it was in those days. You do your history research on that, you will not find it. Those are the years of Shakespeare, those are the years of tremendous language and linguistic studies. It was common to know six languages if you were a scholar. Common. The methods of translating was superb. The King James Method is excellent because it will actually translate all verbs as verbs. all adjectives as adjectives, all participial phrases as participial phrases, they will be exact with the original. No new version is doing that, that they're following the nuances of the original that stringently and yet maintaining a readable poetic prose that is very readable. Italicizing, I want to get into some of these things at the end here, why some of the things that have been abandoned in today's versions were actually intentional by those translators because they believed they were handling the Word of God. The translators of the King James, just very shortly, Lancelot Andrews was conversant with 15 languages at his funeral. This was said of this guy. His knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic, besides 15 modern languages, was so advanced that he may be ranked as one of the rarest linguists in Christendom. A great part of five hours every day he spent in prayer. And in his last illness, he spent all his time in prayer. And when both voice and eyes and hands failed in their office, his countenance showed that he still prayed and praised God in his heart until it pleased God to receive his blessed soul to himself. These were men that believed in God. That cannot be said for many of today's particularly textual critics. but unfortunately, translators as well. William Bedwell, his knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Coptic, that's where we get the Egyptian, Syriac was so vast that he was thoroughly familiar with each. This would be huge in determining meanings for what's called a hexalegonoma, which is words used only once in the Bible. You'll get sometimes where I'll say in a sermon, that Greek word is only used once in the entire New Testament. That means the idea of knowing what that word means means you have to be so familiar with all the other manuscripts of that time to be able to give a fair rendering of that word. These guys were very qualified for that. Henry Saville, his expertise in Latin and Greek was amazing. He was the first to translate the works of Chrysostom into English. Chrysostom was a great church father that wrote so many works and it was translated first by this man. So every translation after that is just following in his footsteps. He set the benchmark in that. John Bois, this guy's amazing. At age five, he had read the Hebrew Bible. His dad was a pastor. He was also a master at Greek. He wrote his own letters to his friends, always in Greek. I mean, it's one thing to read Greek. It's another thing to be able to write Greek, ancient Koine Greek. or on top of that, the older Greek. Yeah, it's amazing. As a young man, it was common for him to read Greek literature for 16 hours straight. He'd get up at 4, go to bed at 8 at night. All he did all day was just study. These guys, they had no iPads. They had no TV. This was it. The King James ER, we have a couple here. It's called ER for Easy Reading. It kind of bridges between the old archaic and today's. It's being republished again. It's a nice bridge. I prefer the King James, but this is a nice bridge. So what you get in this is you, and I took a screenshot, you get the actual King James translation. It is not changed, but you get underlining and synonyms for today's. So you are they which have continued, stood with me in my temptations or trials. So it's just helping you with modern synonyms to help you along there. They did, and so it doesn't read thou hast said, it just says you. But when it says you, you'll see a little p here, so it tells you it's plural. So you'll still know that. The problem with that, however, is when you're memorizing. Because when you're memorizing, you're not going to memorize you, p. Right? So when you have thee and thy, you instantly know, and I was going to get to that, that it's singular, and when it's you and ye, it's always talking about group. I took a screenshot of this part on purpose, because look in the New Version, and even in the New King James, right here, why that is important. And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you. You would have been you. We would have thought he's talking to Simon. He actually says, Satan has desired to have y'all. You. Plural, all of you. You wouldn't see that in a new version. You wouldn't know that. You'd think he's talking to Simon. I've actually seen commentaries do that. And then it says, that he may sift you, y'all, but look, it's italicized, we'll get to that, as wheat. But I have prayed for you, there's no P, King James, thee. Singular, Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you all, to sift you all as wheat, but I have prayed for thee. Because one of them fell, didn't he? Judas, the son of perdition. Interesting. So here you get a bridge translation that does that, uses the P for plurals. The New King James, briefly, it uses the same text in the Old Testament, but at times it does defer, and if you look at its introduction, to the very corrupt LXX from Origen and the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so that is, to me, a knock against the New King James. It's not very noticeable, though. Six times in the Old Testament, you would notice it. But that's it. So it's fairly minor. For the New Testament, in the main body of the text, it does thankfully follow the textus receptus. But in the footnotes, it constantly refers to the corrupt manuscript. So it's printing one thing, But half the translators didn't believe they were handling the Word of God, because they always said older and better manuscripts actually say this. More reliable witnesses say this. The translators didn't believe it. In fact, when Kirk DiVietro, he was a scholar that was asked to come to the first launching of the New King James, and he says, we are printing this Bible to get people off of their high horses in the King James, and to bring them or bridge them to the New Versions. He couldn't believe that's why they printed it. He could not believe it. If you are having tremendous issues with the King James or the ER, it is your next best bet. I think you are losing some stuff though. And I do think because of the copyright derivative law, at times their translational choices are suspect. But it is still the text that's receptive. The words will still be there in the body of the text. Other versions, how do we handle other versions? All of the other ones here. I don't know any other version printed today that is on the Texas Receptus. So where do we go with them? Is there still value in having them in ESV or in NIV or reading them? I'd say yes, but be very aware of the textual differences. Always compare them to a King James. They will help you sometimes to get a sense because they are modern or they are paraphrasing or they're giving you what this author thinks the text means as they are translating. But be very careful. They are not the word of God in my mind. They are part of origins corruptions. Because there is still 90% agreement, they'll help you understand. But be careful. If you are going to choose a version that is not based on the Texas Receptus, only for comparison, and that's the only reason I would do it, to compare translational choice, favor a formal translation. So the ESV, ASV, NASB, stuff like that. But personally, I think you've fallen off the cliff in many areas. Doctrinal statements. Again, I talked about how doctrinal statements of seminaries have moved. We teach that the Word of God is an objective, propositional revelation, verbally inspired in every word, absolutely inerrant in the original documents, infallible and God-bred. This is from John MacArthur's Master's Seminary. Emphasis added. It is all these wonderful things in the originals. They do not give inspiration, verbal inspiration, to every word in the copies, in what we have in our hands today. And that is one seminary among many, that that is their statement of how they understand the Word of God. How did the Reformers see it? And I'll read from our confession, which aligned with virtually every confession of that time. The Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the New Testament in Greek, which at the time of writing of it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired, remember we talked about inspiration, by God and by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic. So as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them. To what? To the kept pure Word of God. That is where every reformed confession was back in those days. Quite a shift, quite a shift. Our church has added to this, and we have more in our constitution on this than just this statement, but we believe that the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament underline the authorized King James Version to be the very Word of God, infallible and inerrant. and we add to that as well. So, some practical tips, we're almost done. Again, I talked about the these and the thys and the King James are singular. Every time you see a thee and a thy, you know, talking to one person. So, God, thou hast, you know, unto thy name, God, one God. Interesting. You get that in the King James. The yees and the yous are plural, always helpful. The italics, the New King James keeps these as well. are added. They are not in the original. If you read a New King James or a King James and it italicizes a word, you know the translators very carefully and very reluctantly added those words only to give the sense if it was absolutely necessary. But they did it italic so you knew it was added. Transparency. the usts, everybody struggles over the usts and the usts, well they were intentional by the translators to get as close as possible to the original source languages because Hebrew and particularly Greek are highly inflected languages which means that you can see from the way the words read the verbs and stuff that how they are used in the sentence, so they said let's keep that Because they could, because English was not a written text, yet they actually got it into English at that time. That's why the whole English language is based on that, yeah? No. They were writing it that way. No, even the these and thys, they started using them again. They recovered them to incorporate the singulars and the plural. It was biblical English, as it were. It's English, but it was with intentionality that they coined words. Loving kindness. wasn't in English. They coined it to capture the Hebrew sense. The "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "-st", the "- For further study, I think the best book out there today, Which Version is the Bible? Heavily footnoted, Floyd Nolan Jones. The footnotes, what he has read, he's read all the old guys and the new guys. But you will have a hard time finding people that are picking up anything before 1900. He heavily footnotes in that stuff. It starts easy, it gets thick sliding. But if you want a technical and yet very readable book Read this. And it's available for free. I can email it to everybody who wants it. Ripped out of the Bible. He just goes verse by verse, comparison to the NIV, what's been missing out in categories. The other one is the King James Version defended. Edward F. Hills was actually a Reformed Presbyterian. He was actually a textual critic in his day, in the 30s, 40s and 50s. And he saw what was happening. And he went back to the original view on these things. Quite amazing. He actually is a, well, I'll leave that. I keep going forever. Trinitarian Bible Society, which we as a church support, they put out booklets like this. We have it here for free. The authorized version, what today's Christian needs to know about the authorized King James Version. You can take a copy, read it, that's what they're there for. Simple, you know, not going to get too detailed. Another one online for free, and you can listen to this guy as well on Sermon Audio. English Bible translation by what standard? A Baptist Reformed gentleman, William Einwächter. Read his book or listen to his three-part series on Sermon Audio. On Sermon Audio, there's him, Kirk DiVietro, D.A. Waite, and Jeff Riddle, the Baptist Reformed guy. So the first and the last guy is Baptist Reformed. Jeff Riddle is a very studious guy as well. That is it. Any questions? This PowerPoint will be available for people. Yes. Right, so the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the caves of the Qumran in Israel, in the 47 and following. They found some more. And they come from, as far as they understand, from the Essenes, which were a very strict sect of the Jews pre-Christ. When they've compared them to, it's the Isaiah scroll in particular, when they've compared them to the Hebrew Masoretic text, it is virtually identical. So there has been, from that text, very little change. But we don't appeal to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because the Dead Sea Scrolls were lost, they were buried, and they were from a sect. They weren't preserved, the chain. So they corroborate the Word of God, but they are not the Word of God. So when new versions start picking and choosing back to them, they're going back to stuff that's been lost. It breaks the cycle. Yeah, I was right, I didn't address that, and then I did have that in my notes to do that. Yeah, so the King James only movement is extreme in the sense that I think it's cultic, because it starts to worship the King James Bible. It says that the translation is perfect. and the translation is all we need. We don't need the source languages. And so they, as much as I think it's a tremendous translation, it is still only a translation. And so we have to be careful there. And King James only will go too far in that they will elevate a translation to perfection. Yeah, double inspiration kind of an idea. Yeah, they weren't complete, and they also added, in the Old Testament, I believe they were adding the apocryphal books. I stand to be corrected on that. But you're right, they were missing certain books as well. And don't forget, these were codices, whole Bibles. They were leather-bound, very well kept, kept in the Vatican. Sinaiticus has a weird story behind it. We won't get into that. Exactly the Vatican manuscript oh and and the interesting with Erasmus was when he was compiling He was actually offered by the librarian from the Vatican that very manuscript He said no. Thank you. That's garbage. Keep it He could have had it Sinaiticus was found later, but this one he could have had it He rejected it. Some people will say, well, Erasmus only translated from six manuscripts. Well, the guy wasn't filthy rich. He traveled every library, made notes this thick, carried it with him when he was moving, but he, in the end, only had six to work from and his notes where he had compared to the hundreds. And they don't talk about that. Yeah, you hear the six, but you don't hear about his notes and how, yeah, there's more there, but yeah, it's duplicitous. Any other questions? Yeah, they do. Absolutely. Yeah. And when you want to evangelize Jehovah's Witnesses, the King James has the quarterbacks. It has the proof text. Look up 1 Timothy 3, 16. For without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was manifest in the flesh. That's how your new versions will read it. Who is it talking about? Anybody guess? He who was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, received us in the glory." Jesus. It's what we'd all say. For without controversy, King James, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. Isn't that amazing? Proof text for the divinity of Jesus Christ. And there's more where your Watchtower Bible, Vladicanus, Unitarians, and the new versions are all coming together again. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you've kept your word. We thank you that we can hold fast to it and that we may say, it is written. For you have spoken, you have kept, and Lord, we may stand fast on that. Would you give us a tremendous assurance in the soundness, in the authority of your word, may it affect our lives. And we thank you that we could just think more about it and see your hand in history. In Jesus' name, amen.