Bruce M. Metzger on the Textus Receptus.

Bruce M Metzger on the Textus Receptus and the KJV (NKJ) book of Revelation...

In a post on the BBC Christian board the topic ‘preferred translations...’another poster replied to me and said that the information I provided on the KJV(NKJ) (which he said was 100% accurate), said that what I have been writing about the KJV (NKJ) is nonsense.

Well, here (Below) is what I said, and the words of Bruce M. Metzger, the world respected Trinitarian scholar. Below is what he said regarding the KJV (NKJ) (and other bibles...) when compared to the late Byzantine Greek texts...The KJV (NKJ) book of revelation is based on the Byzantine text. Please read on...



The KJV (NKJ) book of Revelation and the Byzantine text?


"A TEXTUAL COMMENTARY ON THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT" By Bruce M. Metzger

Metzger who worked in collaboration with Professors, 'Black, Martini, and Wikgren' (all Trinitarians) [preface p. 7] had this to say (see below) regarding the Byzantine text upon which the KJV (NKJ) book of revelation is based. (see below)

The evidence here is first hand and by the above said professors who worked together...


letusreason



Take the KJV (NKJ) for example; the Koine Greek [textus receptus] manuscript(s) (texts) which are behind the KJV (NKJ) and others…is inferior in many places, and has been shown to be time and again, to say the least. At the time, ‘Erasmus’ was under great pressure to release his Greek version, as records show that up to his day no Greek NT had yet been ‘printed’, and because he had competition…


Erasmus produced one of the most lamentable NT editions we have…there are literally hundreds of errors in his Greek NT edition.

Erasmus had no Greek manuscript for some six verses in the book of revelation by John and had only a handful of very late Greek manuscripts for the whole of the NT (15th/16th cent.).

Erasmus had to translate from Latin (Vulgate) back into Greek (known as back translation).

What Erasmus actually did in this ‘back translation’ was to create some seventeen variants readings of Revelation, and none of these ‘variants’ are to be found in any Greek manuscript of Revelation. Unfortunately, Erasmus (like the KJ translators) and others…was used to reading the NT in Latin!

Because Erasmus had to back translate (Latin Vulgate to Greek), because of having no Greek manuscript for those 6 missing Revelation verses (see above) he actually just guest what those verses were! (Erasmus and 1 John 5:7, 8-a Catholic scribe named ‘Roy’ manufactured 1 John 5:7, 8 (not covered here)).

Since the introduction of the KJV in 1611 it has undergone 3 revisions and when those revisions are examined, it will be seen that more than 100,000 changes have been made (revisional changes).

Some 300 hundred words that are in the KJV (the NKJ updates some of the English…) do not have the same meaning today and in fact some words mean the opposite to what they originally meant…!


One absolute error in the KJV at Math 23:24
Matthew 23:24 (King James Version)
“Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”

The Greek is markedly different in that it reads (English translation)
“..strain out a gnat and swallow a camel”

Matthew 23:24 (New King James Version)
“Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (no change)



The NKJ like the KJV adds and omits words that are not to be found in Greek.

Of notable interest, is that certain Greek manuscripts (Byzantine) of the book of Revelation were produced by ‘apostates’ [heretics] “Christians”.

And what is generally not known, is that it is the ‘Byzantine’ Manuscript that is behind the KJV and therefore the NKJ as the NKJ just has a slight English cosmetic makeover for the modern English reader…!

When the ‘textus receptus’ [which is behind the KJV (NKJ) is compared to the best extant Greek manuscripts, there is some 5000 differences and hundreds of errors and not just spelling mistakes etc!


In conclusion.

Those who put their trust in the KJV and the NKJ do so, not because of accuracy, but that they keep telling each other how accurate it/they is/are without doing any proper research. Emotion and tradition and worse bias get in the way.


So, when one reads,

>>Indeed I have KJV, NIV, New Amplified...Good news ...<<How are they when compared to the best extant Greek manuscripts of the NT?

And yet the ones who vilify the NWT ( as BBC posters do…) heartily accept others English NT’s without doing the necessary research, to justify each English NT on its merits. One major reason is theological bias, locked into an unknowing and unaware (due to ignorance) KJV mentally, of whose translators were locked into the Latin Vulgate... (which has no articles, which means understanding by context only)!

letusreason



Below is what Metzger…has to say. There have been no alterations…



Bruce M. Metzger


"A TEXTUAL COMMENTARY ON THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT"


By Bruce M. Metzger

Introduction page xx-xxII (p. 20-22)



p. xx (p.20)

The Byzantine text, otherwise called the Syrian text (so Westcott and Hort), the Koine text (so von Soden), the Ecclesiastical test (so Lake), and the Antiorhian text (so Hopes), is, on the whole, the latest of the several distinctive types of text of t he New Testament. It is characterized chiefly by lucidity and completeness. The framers of this text sought to smooth away any harshness of language, to combine two or more divergent readings into one expanded reading (called conflation), and to harmonize divergent parallel passages.

This conflated text, produced perhaps at Antioch in Syria, was taken to Constantinople, whence it was distributed widely throughout the Byzantine Empire. It is best represented today by codex Alexandrinus (in the Gospels; not in Acts, the Epistles, or Revelation), the later uncial manuscripts, and the great mass of minuscule manuscripts.

Thus, except for an occasional manuscript that happened to preserve an earlier form of text, during the period from about the sixth or seventh century down to the invention of printing with moveable type (A. D. I450 (i), the Byzantine form of text was generally regarded as the authoritative form of text and was the one most widely circulated and accepted.

After Gutenberg's press made the production of books more


in Modern Scholarship, ed. by J. Philip Hyatt (Nashville, 19651, pp. 336 f., reprinted in Aland's Studien zur rberlieferiung des Pone( Testaments and seiner textes (Berlin. 1967), pp. 18S f.


p. xxI (p. 21)

rapid and therefore cheaper than was possible through copying by hand, it was the debased Byzantine text that became the standard form of the New Testament in printed editions. This unfortunate situation was not altogether unexpected, for the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament which were most readily available to early editors and printers were those that contained the corrupt Byzantine text.

The first published edition of the printed Greek Testament, issued at Basel in 1516, was prepared by Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch humanist scholar.

Since Erasmus could find no manuscript that contained the entire Greek Testament, he utilized several for the various divisions of the New Testament. For the greater part of his text he relied on two rather inferior manuscripts now in the university library at Basel, one of the Gospels and one of the Acts and Epistles, both dating from about the twelfth century. Erasmus compared them with two or three others, and entered occasional corrections in the margins or between the lines of the copy given to the printer.

For the book of Revelation he had but one manuscript, dating from the twelfth century, which he had borrowed from his friend Reuchlin. As it happened, this copy lacked the final leaf, which had contained the last six verses of the book.

For these verses Erasmus depended upon Jerome's Latin Vulgate, translating this version into Greek. As would be expected from such a procedure, here and there in Erasmus's reconstruction of these verses are several readings which have never been found in any Greek manuscript—but which are still perpetuated today in printings of the so-called Textus Receptus of the Greek New Testament. In other parts of the New Testament Erasmus also occasionally introduced into his Greek text material derived from the current form of the Latin Vulgate.

So much in demand was Erasmus's Greek Testament that the first edition was soon exhausted and a second was called for. It was this second edition of 1519, in which some (but not nearly all) of the many typographical blunders of the first edition had been corrected, that Martin Luther and William


p. xxII


Tyndale used as the basis of their translations of the New Testament into German (1522) and into English (1525).

In the years following many other editors and printers issued a variety of editions of the Greek Testament, all of which reproduced more or less the same type of text, namely that preserved in the later Byzantine manuscripts.

Even when it happened that an editor had access to older manuscripts—as when Theodore Beza, the friend and successor of Calvin at Geneva, acquired the fifth or sixth century manuscript that goes under his name today as well as the sixth century codex Claromontanus--he made relatively little use of them, for they deviated too far from the form of text that had become standard in the later copies.


I hope the above shows that even the most learned Trinitarian professor(s) saw some things in the KJV (NKJ) that the poster just brushed aside. Perhaps if he took the time to scrutinize his English translation(s) with the Greek and remove his bias he might just see a bit more clearly.

letusreason