Luther's Galatians - From Audio Gutenberg

 

Luther's Galatians - Part VII. Ch. 3, v. 7-19.

LCMS-WELS-ELS-ELDONA Repudiate Inerrancy by Promoting the NIV-ESV Translations

The LCMS-WELS-ELS-ELDONA sects reject the ancient truth of Biblical inerrancy by embracing the NIV and ESV translations. 

These apostate factions get along well with ELCA because they share the same foundation - the modernized Greek text butchered by Hort-Wescott and further abused in its new disguise as the Nestle-Aland text. 

The traditional or received text (Textus Receptus for Latin 101 veterans) is not only consistent throughout, but exists in other forms as translations, church father quotations, and lectionaries. A lectionary can be dated one century and yet have a tradition going much earlier. As everyone knows - or should know - the publishing of Scripture is far more rigorous than ordinary books. 

Hort and Tiscendorf really wanted to derail the traditional text, so they took exceptions and made them the new norms. I have some interesting quotes about Hort's attitude and methods. In short, he did not reveal his new text until the English revision came out that matched it, 1881. Blowback was enormous because - suddenly - the Greek New Testament was quite different. 

This is a brief description of how this happened. Hort hated the traditional text and decided that later versions were identified by lots of extra words and verses. He liked the Vatican example (conveniently called Vaticanus) because so many words were missing. 

Here is the thinking - a manuscript gets more verbose over time, so we must find the original, clean copy. But that is nonsense. Apart from the overwhelming evidence behind the traditional text, there is this common sense answer to Hort. When we are writing or copying, what happens when an odious or troublesome term or event comes up? We avoid to edit that out or use circumlocutions. When one Yalie was told he would experience the worst pain in his life during one procedure, he explained, "It was everything they promised."

So - if an anti-Trinitarian does not like to equate Jesus with God, he will omit God and substitute a pronoun. 1 Timothy 3:16 is an example. And, the text may be worn and faded, which can yield the same result. 

Mark 16:9ff is beautifully in harmony with Matthew and Luke. One example of a manuscript dropping the ending has become faux-canonical already in the LCMS. (Seminex won!) In various modern translations, the ending is dropped to the footnote area or marked as dubious. "Some ancient witnesses say..."

There are hundreds of examples of this finessing, always reducing the text and its clarity.

Very few clergy know enough Greek to spot this, to follow the evidence, to care about the results. But the denominations and higher education have simply excluded anything KJV from the list. That is why Attempted Murder will be written to explain this so even a District President can understand.

Two fake doctors say, "And then we will remove the ending of Mark and still make a ton of money!"

After the Walther Book Is Done

 My first Greek New Testament was a Hort-Wescott.

A conversation with an MDiv made me consider the book to be written after Walther the American Calvin. I realized that a detective novel that I once planned was already on my bookshelves, ready to be written and released. The plot is simple - three men with a hidden agenda plot to get rid of the King James Version of the Bible and its text. Their labors were long, difficult, and packed with intrigues, lies, and Romanism. But they were not quite successful - Attempted Murder! - they longed to kill the traditional text of the Bible and its translation. They broke the foundations of Biblical understanding - as rationalists with chips on their stooped shoulders - and that provided the path for corrupt translations. Thus -

Attempted Murder: Broken Biblical Foundations and Corrupt Translations

The challenge is to gather information from my books on text criticism and translations. Next I need to explain matters so they make sense for those with little or no Greek and Hebrew - that is - the typical WELS-LCMS-ELS pastor.

My preference is always the King James Version, so I would like to see clergy and congregations move entirely away from the NIV-ESV broken Bibles. The text is the first, foundational issue for the Bible. If the text is butchered, as it is in the NIV-ESV, then the translation is an adiaphoron. Those heavily promoted and over-priced versions present a damaged product that reminds us of what the Bible once was. They are like Hollywood stars who have undergone far too many plastic surgery operations.

The evidence is there in black and white. The criminals let their laughable theories and fables remain in the archives, so the crime scene remains fresh and easy to examine.

This is just a sample. There is nothing wrong with the concept of text criticism, sometimes called Lower Criticism. The next stage was Higher Criticism, where the new ideas provided a basis for questioning the meaning of the Bible.

Text criticism looks for the best possible text. In the course of copying, there are easy to understand mistakes. Other mistakes come from careless copyists. Still other errors come from those with an agenda.

Wescott and Hort chose the worst sources for their Greek New Testament. As Bishop Wordsworth wrote, the two men changed 50 times as much as the project needed. What the pair loved most were the worst manuscripts, a tiny fraction of the thousands existing from ancient times. The overwhelming majority of texts are in complete agreement (minus the typos, or writos). Hort scorned them at the beginning and invented silly "laws" to explain his pernicious changes. Like arsenic, the poison was not immediately fatal but was slow acting.

Hort has his way now. Very few denominations allow the King James (and modern King James updates) to be discussed, let alone used. The Hort completely dominates all seminaries under the name Nestle-Aland edition - same style, same prejudice, same blunders, different brand.

Hence all translations begin with corruption.