Are All Bibles Created Equal?

A title for the sermon today is, Are All Bibles Created Equal? It's a question we need to be able to answer as the Church of God in the modern age. Are all Bibles created equal? Brethren, you and I live in a world where God's inspired word is more accessible than it has ever been. Most of us probably own multiple copies of the Bible. We probably have it in various forms and translations. We probably have hard copies on our bookshelves. We have them on our smartphones, on our tablets, on our computer. You can go online. You can find the Bible. One of my favorite websites is Bible Hub, where you can put in a scripture and you just pop up multiple translations of that scripture across various Bible platforms. You get into the Hebrew as well as the Greek. So virtually everywhere we turn, we have quick access to the Bible at almost every given moment. And it's a blessing. And frankly, it's a blessing that has not been available down through the majority of human history. We've died to preserve this word and to make it readily available for us today.

But along with that blessing, we need to ask and answer the question, are all Bibles created equal?

John 17, in verse 17, Jesus Christ is preparing to be delivered up shortly before his crucifixion. And this is a prayer to his father regarding the disciples.

And he prayed, Sanctify them by your word. Your word is truth. Your word is truth. And so here we have Jesus praying that God's people would be sanctified. They would be set apart by the truth, the pure and absolute truth that is the word of God. And the form in which we receive the word of God today is through the scriptures.

It's by the Bibles that we have in our lap, the written scripture. God speaks to us through his word. And therefore, we need to know that the Bible that we are reading and studying is reliable. We need to know that it's not some distorted or corrupted variation of the word of God. Because we all have to understand there is an adversary to God's pure word. And that's Satan the devil.

You go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis. You have the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and God had given instructions, Don't eat of that tree. Don't touch it, lest you die. And the serpent confronts Eve and says, Well, did God really say that? You'll not surely die. I mean, God knows you eat that. You'll be like him. So from the very beginning, the adversary's ploy has been to corrupt the pure truth of God's word. And his ploy, frankly, remains the same ever since. As God's people, we do need to be on guard. So as we'll see today in the message, all Bibles are not created equal. In fact, there's a great degree of variation among the translations that we have to choose from. So we need to recognize the differences in these translations and the motivations behind those things. We're going to look to the Bible with certainty that it is accurate and that we can rely on it for doctrine. And I guess if I could sum up what I'm trying to present to us today, I would say not every Bible should be relied upon for doctrine. In fact, the majority should not. And we'll see that as we go along.

Probably most of us have heard a message about the Bible at a time or two in the past. I kind of had to brush off some cobwebs and freshen up on this this week. But this is probably the most important message I've ever given on the Bible text itself. There's a lot of information I'll be conveying today, and we'll primarily be focusing on the New Testament Greek portion of God's word, the New Testament Greek.

And so in some ways, this is going to be like taking a drink out of a fire hose. And I apologize for that. There is so much information, and we're just going to take just a thimbleful of it today. But it will be a lot like drinking out of a fire hose. So if you're worried about not getting everything in your notes, I'm going to take my PowerPoint slides.

I'm going to put them into a PDF format, and I'll be able to at least make them available for download for those who would like to possess a copy. Why the King James Bible? That's a question that sometimes comes up. I recently had a conversation with a friend who mentioned they understood the Church of God has always recommended the King James Bible. And in fact, when the ministry teaches, most often it comes from the King James or the New King James Bible. But why is that? Why is that? Well, the answer is the King James Bible, along with a number of other translations, a very small number of translations, I might add, traced back to manuscripts that were originally preserved by the Church of God down through time.

Not every manuscript can make that claim, but the New King James and a few others traced back to manuscripts that were originally preserved by the Church of God down through time. Now, it's not the same for a number of the manuscripts in the Greek New Testament that have been discovered. It's not that same fact for a number of the Bible translations, the modern Bible translations, that have been produced over the last hundred years. The most recent modern Bibles draw their source of New Testament text from a completely different family of manuscripts than do the King James versions, a family that we believe has been tampered with and corrupted through the centuries.

So today, I at least want to present us a little bit of an overview. Again, there's so much information that could be gone into, but a little bit of an overview as to why it is that we rely on the manuscripts that we do and the translations that we do in the Church of God. This is one of the handouts that you have in your hand, translations of New Testament manuscripts.

This was put together by Pastor Dan Dowd, and I appreciate his sharing this with me so I could share it with you. There's a lot of information here, and for those on the webcast that maybe don't have access to this, we'll come back to this graph two or three times throughout the presentation. There are basically two major families of Greek manuscripts that are typically used to translate the New Testament into English. They are the Byzantine texts. You may have heard of that name before, the Byzantine text. And then there are the Alexandrian texts.

Now, the go-to texts for the Church of God and the early English Bible translators were the Byzantine texts. Today, scholars like the Alexandrian texts better. They've tended to draw on those more frequently because they believe that they date closer than the time of Jesus Christ, and they hold them up against the Byzantine text. But honestly, there's not much difference. Certainly not more than 100 years, and recent finds actually are putting the Byzantine texts back to the time, or even earlier than the number of the Alexandrian texts. But again, many scholars look at the Alexandrian texts as being closer in date to the time of Jesus Christ, and they think this means that they are more accurate when, in fact, there can be wide variations in the Alexandrian texts.

And frankly, a lot of issues with doctrinal foundations in those texts. Again, I'll draw your attention to the handout, the line that we have running along the top in the blue. Those are information and translations related to the Byzantine manuscripts.

And what you're going to see is during the time 1500s, 1600s AD, was when you had a surge of Bibles that were translated into modern English, and their base source was the Byzantine Greek New Testament manuscripts, at least for their translation portion of the New Testament. If you drop down to the second line, which is the line highlighted in red, this represents the Alexandrian manuscripts. And what you're going to find if you follow that timeline up into the 1900s and our day and age today, there's been an explosion of Bible translations and even paraphrases that aren't necessarily translations, but an explosion of these have come in the last hundred years, and basically exclusively from the Alexandrian manuscripts. Pretty much exclusively, anyway. The New King James Version was released, but then that goes back to the work that was done in the King James, based on the Byzantine manuscripts. To just start out, draw our attention to the explosion of the Bible in the modern age, it's founded back onto the Alexandrian manuscripts. What is an original autograph? The autographs of the New Testament are the original copies that were hand-written by the authors. So you have the Apostle Paul, and when we visit the New Testament in Paul's writings, we see a number of times where he referenced the fact that this was written with my hand. 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 17, the salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is a sign in every epistle, so I write. Galatians 6, verse 11, see with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand.

Colossians 4, verse 18, this salutation by my own hand, remember my chains. The Apostle Paul and the other apostles wrote by hand letters that were then sent to the various churches. Unfortunately, those original autographs have not survived down to our time, or they have just simply not been discovered yet, one of the two. So the manuscript families we're talking about today are copies of the original.

There were the original autographs, and somebody sat down and wrote copies. And then copies were also made of the copies. And what we have in existence today to pull from for Bible translations are basically copies and copies of the copies. And obviously, the hope and desire is that the copying process was accurate. There are basically four categories of manuscripts that are relied upon for translation today. The oldest would be written on papyri. And the fact is, this is like early, early first century paper. It's paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant that dates to the first three centuries AD.

And there are 88 manuscripts written on papyri. They are given a name and abbreviation such as P66, P46, P75, etc. P standing for, again, the form of the paper it was written upon. Unseals came into place in the fourth to tenth centuries, unseals. The writing in those were using rounded, unjoined, or capital letters. Writing was done on vellum, which was essentially animal skins or parchment. And there are 274 manuscripts from this period given a name or abbreviations of A, alif, B, C, D, etc.

as they would categorize these. And just understand the numbers that I have here. It's a moving target as discoveries are made. And these numbers come from a couple of short years ago, but discoveries are constantly being made as they dig through the sands of that region. Next, we have the miniscules, the tenth to the fourteenth century. Writing was done on vellum and small cursive letters, letters connected to each other.

There are 2,795 manuscripts and 1,600 electionaries from this period, and they are given the number M1 through M2,795, or whatever the latest number of manuscripts would be. And then finally is electionaries. Electionaries are books that were used in early churches after paper came into use, primarily dated to the 13-1500s. And there are 2,209 of these in existence. And they are given a number L1 through L2,209.

And again, these are the four main categories of manuscripts that are gathered and compared and relied on for translations today. Which road should we take when considering manuscripts? It's an important question to ask. If you're looking for absolute doctrine, it's an important question to ask. Which road should we take? The original sources of all Greek manuscripts go back to two main regions, at least biblical manuscripts.

They go back to two main regions. One is Alexandria, Egypt, and the other is Antioch, Syria. So the Alexandrian manuscripts obviously come from Alexandria. The Byzantine text family comes from Antioch. There are many differences between them, as we will see. But the question as we go forward is, which road should we take? Which manuscripts shall we rely on?

The family from Alexandria, Egypt, or the family of manuscripts that came out of Antioch, Syria? Really, in terms of Bible translations, you stand out of crossroads of asking, what will the basis of this scripture be based upon? Some turn to the left, and others turn to the right. They lead to two very different places.

The answer is, for us in the Church of God, we need to take the high road to Antioch. Here's a map of the Mediterranean Sea region. You see on the map designated there Antioch, Syria. Visiting him up to the north, and Alexandria, Egypt, down to the south. When we consider the lay of the land, it's important to note that Antioch was a hub of Christianity during the time of the apostles.

You'll recall that Antioch was the church that sent out the Apostle Paul and Barnabas. Antioch was the church that Paul returned to after his missionary journeys. The Apostle Paul was a prolific writer. This was his home base. It would stand to reason that Antioch, and the church in Antioch, even carrying on after the time of the apostles, would have carefully handled and copied the Word of God in its original form. Visiting him, which lies to the north, preserved what later became known as the Byzantine text until their fall in 1453. When you talk about the Byzantine text, it's texts that came from the Byzantine Empire region, which Antioch became a part of.

Ultimately, they were preserved in Byzantium and with the practices and teachings of the early Greek Orthodox Church up until the fall of Byzantine in 1453. Could I request a small bottle of water, please? Thank you. By contrast, the Bible makes no mention of an early church congregation in Alexandria. I have to ask myself whether anything doctrinally profitable ever came out of Alexandria, Egypt.

Maybe. But again, when we look at the Word of God, Antioch is a hub of the church, a place where the apostles did a lot of work and where God's Word was multiplied and expounded.

Thank you. Let's talk for a moment about the Byzantine text family. Again, over 5,000 manuscripts can be traced to Antioch, Syria and its surrounding region. These are the Byzantine texts. Again, the numbers are always changing and increasing over 5,000. Let's go back to the Antioch-Byzantine region. 95% of those are the basis for the majority text, meaning that the vast majority of the manuscripts agree. I just want to take a moment to talk about the majority text.

You probably heard that phrase, or maybe in your Bible you've seen an M in the reference column. That's a reference to the majority text. The majority text essentially came to being when two groups of scholars took the 5,000 Byzantine manuscripts and compared them. They found that they agreed. A large amount of agreement to these, a very close agreement. They took the manuscripts, the most common reading of them all, and created what is called the majority text.

It's the text that is representative of the vast majority of the 5,000 copies that have been discovered. Again, if you look at your Bible and you have a center reference margin, sometimes you might have a notation that takes you and it says M. It might say M says this, and it will be a notation.

Carrying on with the Byzantine text family. I apologize to those who are on the phone hookup. It might be a little harder to follow without seeing the slideshow, but I'm happy to send these to you over email. The Byzantine text family was the go-to text for the early Church of God. It was the go-to text for the early Bible translators as well. The Waldensian Bible, 11-1300, was translated from the Byzantine text family. Tyndale's Bible, you've probably heard of Tyndale. His Bible in 1525 was the first translation of the Bible into modern English.

Tyndale was actually burned at the stake for his work. Just a little history. When you have the Catholic Church that is dominating everything essentially, and they control the Scriptures, and the people were not allowed to own their own personal copy of the Bible, you receive what was given to you by the Church authority of the Catholic Church. And yet the Protestant Reformation, a lot was founded in the fact that we want the Word of God in our own two hands.

The Catholics added all these things, and you can buy people out of purgatory. You can do all these things, and it's like, we need to see the Word of God in our own two hands. And the big part of the Protestant Reformation, and indeed the work that Tyndale did, was to produce a Bible in the modern English that the common man could read the Word of God for themselves.

And of course, the Catholic Church didn't care for that too much. Tyndale was burned at the stake, and his final words were, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England. Geneva Bible 1560, English translation from the Byzantine text. And we come down to 1611 then, King James Version 1611, also known as the Authorized Version, because it's the only version then that was authorized by the King and the ruling authority to be produced.

The King James Version. And it remains pretty much as it was translated in 1611. The King James Version was taken from what is called the Textus Receptus. Maybe that's another phrase you've heard. The Textus Receptus. Textus Receptus is a Latin phrase meaning the Received Text. And it's a primary Greek source of the English King James and New King James Bible, and it's the particular text that came down from the Byzantine family of texts, which Erasmus possessed just prior to the making of the Greek New Testament, upon which then the King James Version was based.

So we have the Byzantine text family, okay? And Erasmus possessed and brought over the England roughly four to six of these copies from the Byzantine text family. It was what they had received and called the Received Text or the Textus Receptus. And again, this is what the King James Version was translated from.

It wasn't translated, we need to understand, from the 5,000 Greek manuscripts as we know of them today, because those have largely been discovered since the time that the Bible was begun here in 1611, or 1607. It was finally produced out in 1611. But when you compare the Textus Receptus to the majority text, again, the Byzantine text, those 5,000 that were brought out into the majority text, there are very minor, minor variations, and very few variations of significance.

And those variations are well documented after years of study. You've had the King James Bible for 400 years. Many of them are marked in your Bible, King James, or New King James again, with the M. So if you take the majority of the 5,000 texts and their agreement, if it varies a little bit from the Textus Receptus, which is what the King James is, you're going to find a notation in the marginal footnote of M. And it might say, the M says this. But again, the agreement is very, very close. And the King James Bible is still considered to be a very solid text to rely upon for doctrine in the Church of God.

A quote for you. This comes from the book, Which Bible? by David Fuller, and this is a quote by Zane Hodges in that book. And he says, quote, the majority text, upon which the King James Version is based, has the strongest claim possible to be regarded as an authentic representation of the original text, based on its dominances in the Transmisional History of the New Testament text. He's saying, basically, looking back, we can see how these were produced, the Byzantine texts, how they were preserved and handed down.

And he says that they believe that it has the strongest claim possible to be regarded as the authentic text of the original. The only thing you can get in the English that's probably a little better than the King James in the New King James Version would be a Greek English in a linear New Testament that's based on the majority text. So I have one of these. This is the New King James Greek English in a linear Bible, or it's not a Bible, but it's a translation in a linear on the New Testament text taken from the majority text.

And it has the New King James in one column, and then it has the Greek of the majority text in another with essentially a word-preferred translation. And you can compare those in case there's ever a question on something that you find in the King James. All right, continuing on, this quote comes from Edward Hills, again from the book Witch Bible, and it says, quote, Byzantine text was the text of the entire Greek church, and no more than three centuries after the Protestant Reformation it was the text of the entire Protestant church.

It is found in a variety, or the vast majority, of the Greek New Testament manuscripts, and it is the true text because it is that form of the Greek New Testament which is known to have been used in the Church of Christ in unbroken succession. Again, copied, preserved, handed down within the Church. Let's talk for a minute or two about the Alexandrian text family. All right, if you took the road to Antioch, you received the Byzantine text. If you took the road to Alexandria, Egypt, you would discover the Alexandrian text family.

Alexandria was the intellectual and cultural center of the ancient Mediterranean, as well as a major center for Gnostic thinking in the second and third centuries. You go back to the writings of the apostles, and specifically John, who lived at the end of the first century and wrote writings very, very late in the biblical record. He was combating directly Gnostic thinking that is seeking to infiltrate itself into the Church of God.

So Alexandria was a hub for Gnostic thinking in the second and third centuries. It does in or less relatively complete manuscripts are known to exist of the Alexandrian manuscripts. You might get that up to a thousand if you consider all the fragments that have been discovered, little pieces with maybe one, two, three words, a few verses here and there.

Again, understand you have a lot that are on papyri that are disintegrated, perhaps, and no longer exist, even among the Byzantine texts. Some agree with the majority texts, and others do not when comparing the Alexandrian texts. Two to three percent of the Greek New Testament manuscripts that have been found originated in Alexandria. So the Alexandrian by number are two to three percent of the overall Greek New Testament manuscripts that have been found. Most date to the 200 to 400 AD, and there are many variations and different readings among them. So you compare Alexandria to Alexandrian in reading, there's a lot of variations and differences. When you come back to the Byzantine text, they were able to put together the majority text because the majority agreed. We have a difference here. The argument in favor of these Alexandrian manuscripts are that they are older, so they say, and that they are shorter in text. The assumption is that copiers add words when they copy, therefore a shorter text is preferred. However, the Greek Orthodox Church was extremely rigorous in making copies of the Byzantine text. Each of those had to pass a word count. So you made a copy, and the words on the page were counted. There was a discrepancy. If there was one in the word count, you went back and found the problem. If you couldn't find the problem, the manuscript was destroyed. You didn't just stick it in a back room where it could be discovered later. As a faulty manuscript, it was destroyed. So it went through this word count. The Alexandrian texts did not. So their argument is shorter is better and older is better. Quoting to you by an article by United Church of God Elder Ken Graham. This appeared in the Ministerial Journal a number of years ago. Mr. Graham says, In the last fifty years or so, most scholars have felt that because the Alexandrian text family are older than the Byzantine manuscripts, the older ones must be better or closer to the originals. Today, most scholars recognize that the source of the Byzantine text is just as old and possibly even older than the Alexandrian source. That comes from his article titled, Dangers in the Modern Translations. Origen, this is a man you should be at least vaguely familiar with. We ought to know a little bit about Origen. He lived from 185 AD to 254 AD. He was the first systematic theologian and philosopher of the Christian Church residing in Alexandria. So, you know, in my mind when you say philosopher, the antenna goes up. There could be issues because we're told to beware philosophies. Are we not in the Word of God?

He was the most prolific scholar of his age. Origen wrote hundreds, if not a thousand different pieces of work, which was very, very prolific for his time. He's the father of the Trinity Doctrine. So he had some very mixed up ideas on a number of things. Origen was the father of the Trinity Doctrine. He taught the pre-existence of souls, which is basically the concept that all intelligent beings pre-existed human life as souls in heaven. And frankly, you fell out of grace with God, and you've been now confined to this body. These bodies were created for fallen souls, and now we live this life trying to get back to God's throne, back to grace, back into heaven. And that was his teaching on the pre-existence of souls. Origen was a religious fanatic. He slept on the floor. He ate no meat. He drank no wine. He fasted twice a week. He owned no shoes, and he reportedly castrated himself for the faith. A very unbalanced man, in my opinion.

Carrying on with Origen, a quote from Christianity Today article titled, Origen, Biblical Scholar and Philosopher, it says, quote, Well, the biblical text. He instructed those who are seeking to become members of the church, and he himself studied under the pagan philosopher Erimonius Sacheas.

Some of the writings you would read about his life say, you know, he studied philosophy in order to combat against Gnostic philosophy and thought. And he was a student of philosophy. But again, the problem is we see the philosophies creeping in to teachings in the church and, frankly, into the way that the scriptures were copied. The International Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that Origen adapted pagan philosophy to the early Christian faith. Numerous sources point to Origen as instrumental in collecting, editing, and promoting corrupted Greek manuscripts from Alexandria.

So again, it should raise the alarm in our mind, the source of Alexandria versus the source of manuscripts from Antioch. Persecution against Christians was not uncommon. Obviously, that started during the time of the Apostles, and it continued on. It was very common in the Roman Empire. In 303 AD, Diocletian banned Christian churches, he banned assemblies, and he banned sacred books. And he ordered all sacred manuscripts to be destroyed. The penalty for possessing a copy of the scriptures was death. As a result, many manuscripts of both Alexandrian and Byzantine text lines were destroyed.

Many Christians were destroyed along with them as well, because obviously the people of God weren't looking to give up His Word. So we have Diocletian, then, who destroyed manuscripts. 20 years later, Constantine is on the scene. 324 AD, Christianity becomes a preferred religion in Rome under Constantine, and in 331 Constantine commissioned Eusebius to produce 50 Bibles in the original Greek language.

In which text do you suppose they used? What was the text from Alexandria? Those 50 Bibles which were produced mirrored the Alexandrian text type. Remember, this is Constantine. Constantine was seeking to blend Christianity and pagan worship, make them agree in peace in his empire. He changed the Sabbath to Sunday in order to try to bring those groups of people together. The production of these 50 Bibles was from a perspective of trying to bring Christians and the pagan people together. Among a couple of those Bibles of the 50 is possibly related to manuscripts which have been discovered more in recent centuries.

The next one is about Aleph, also known as Codex Sinaiticus. It's dated in the mid-fourth century. You have certain manuscripts that have popped up over time of Alexandrian text which appear possibly to have gone back to these 50 Bibles that were produced by Constantine.

Again, dating the mid-fourth century, Constantine had his Bibles put together at 331. That would be mid-fourth century. It was discovered by Constantine Tishinoff. It's an amazing story when you consider. I'll give that to you in a minute. Tishinoff discovered this manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, at the base of what is supposed to be Mount Sinai. There's a monastery that's in place there, St. Catherine's monastery. He discovered this in 1844. An examination of the manuscripts of the Codex Sinaiticus shows 14,800 places where some alteration has been made to the text. In places the original was erased and it was replaced.

Other times it was just written over or drawn over. Again, go back to the Byzantine text and the careful nature of the copying and the destroying of that which didn't meet up to the standard. The Alexandrian text appears to have had a lot more lax of a standard in the copying process. There were 14,800 places where some alteration had been made to this text. 9,000 changes from the majority text, which if you take this Alexandrian text and lay it next to the majority text of the Byzantine family, there'll be 9,000 differences, changes.

This Sinaiticus omits 4,000 words from the Gospels, adds 1,000 other words, plus 1,500 altered readings. Now, interestingly, when Tichendorf discovered this portion of the Bible, he didn't find it on a bookshelf in the monastery between other valuable books, and it wasn't under glass in a display case.

He found it in the trash bin. He found it in the burn barrel, rating to be incinerated in the incinerator, provide heat for the monastery. The monks were throwing the manuscript out, calling it rubbish, and considering it to be damaged scriptures. Again, because of the edits, the copy-overs, the various inconsistencies in it, at least a portion of this, and it was actually the entire Bible generally that was in this manuscript, a portion of it he discovered in the trash can. Tichendorf grabbed some of the pages. He studied them. When he realized what the text was, he came back and tried to receive possession of the entire copy.

But by this time, the monks realized they must have something valuable on their hands, and they refused to turn it over to him, but they gave him 43 pages. Fifteen years later, on a return trip, he persuaded the monks to relinquish the manuscripts to the Tsar of Russia. The Tsar Alexander II of Russia was later published in 1862, and hailed as the oldest complete New Testament, found to date.

Literally, when you consider this, it's a trash-to-treasure story, isn't it? That's the psalm in my mind. This is a trash-to-treasure story saved out of the incinerator. Now it's published, and it's going to be held up for renown and, frankly, to become relied upon as one of the primary manuscripts in our modern age.

The trash-to-treasure story.

Another text we need to understand from the Alexandrian family is the Codex Vaticanus. It as well dates to the fourth century. It's mentioned for the first time in 1481 by the Vatican Library. It was made public gradually, and then finally fully made public in 1890, after Tissendorf then comes up with the Codex Sinaiticus. Now the Vatican says, well, we've got a great text to produce as well, and then they relinquish, or at least make public, the Codex Vaticanus in 1890. The Codex Vaticanus contains the Old and New Testament, plus most of the Apocrypha, but is missing much of Genesis, some of Psalms, half of Hebrews, it's missing 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and the Book of Revelation.

Original letters have been traced over, and some changes to the text have been made.

Continuing on with the Codex Vaticanus, it says, the British Museum of Scholars consider it a reject of the 50 copies requested by Constantine in 331. Like, you know, you're trying to make these 50 Bibles, trying to make them somewhat similar, and you end up with just a very unsalvageable manuscript, and it gets rejected, the British Museum scholars consider it a reject of the 50 copies requested by Constantine. It contains differences with the Textus Receptus in 8,000 places, one about every verse, one change every verse. It omits several thousand key words, one thousand complete sentences, it adds 500 words, and has 600 readings that do not occur in other manuscripts. Again, this is one of the two manuscripts that are held up by today's scholars in very high regard for Bible translations. So if we compare the two side-by-side, these two Alexandrian texts, Aleph and Bea, the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus, they disagree about a dozen times per page with each other, and 3,000 times in the Gospels alone.

The 8,000 changes in Bea and the 9,000 in Aleph from the majority text are not the same changes. You lay one by the majority text, and there's 8,000 differences, lay the other, there's 9,000, but the differences aren't the same because there's great difference between each other. The disagreement approaches 70%. No known children were produced from these Alexandrian manuscripts, as in they've not dug up copies that agree perfectly with these or really even that close. There's the variations between them, unlike the thousands of agreeing manuscripts contained in the Byzantine family of texts. These manuscripts have clearly been tampered with. Not everybody would agree with that, but they do seem they've been tampered with. I acknowledge I'm presenting to you one side of the argument, of the manuscript arguments. You can go out and look, and there's plenty of manuscripts arguments. Some argue for the Alexandrian, a number as well argue for the Byzantine, but I am presenting the side of the argument that I believe is correct, and that is the Church of God's position. But again, these Alexandrian manuscripts seem to have been tampered with. Their disagreement with each other, not to mention their vast disagreement with the majority text, is incredible. I would think the incinerator was a good place, and really where it should have ended up. But guess where they ended up? Both of them. They ended up as a basis for modern Bibles.

Westcott and Horke, two names we should be vaguely familiar with.

Westcott and Horke, they introduced their version of the New Testament in the original Greek in 1881. They based their translation heavily on the Alexandrian texts of Aleph and Bea, the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus. They used the theory that older is better and shorter is better, and the result is what they termed the neutral text. The text that they comprised is comprising of the contradictions in the various Alexandrian manuscripts. They had to figure out a way to make these work, to blend them together and to produce a manuscript that they could say is based on these other manuscripts, although there are disagreements in the others. This is a quote from Wikipedia. It says, The edition of Westcott and Horke began a new epoch in the history of textual criticism. Most critical editions published after Westcott and Horke share their preference of the Alexandrian text type, and therefore are similar to the New Testament in the original Greek publication that Westcott and Horke put out on the Alexandrian texts. They set a standard for manuscripts coming forward and what would be relied on as the New Testament Greek for translation. Nestle Elan in the United Bible Society. This actually brings us up into the modern day. Today's critical apparati, the Nestle Elan 27th edition and the United Bible Society 4th edition, remain close in textual character to that of Westcott and Horke. Their critical editions rely predominantly on the Alexandrian texts, and together their combined standard is often identified with the letters N-U.

So again, take you back to the margin of your Bible. If you're reading and you see a notation and you go to the margin to look at that notation, it might say, The N-U says. Or it might say, The N-U omits. And what it's doing is giving you a little comparative to what is in the Alexandrian texts. It says, The Alexandrian text omits this or says this as opposed to what you're reading in, for example, your King James or New King James Bible.

The forward in the New King James Bible that I have under the heading of the N-U text says, These variations from the traditional texts generally represent the Alexandrian or Egyptian type of text described previously in the New Testament text. They are found in the critical text published in the 26th edition of the Nestle-Alon Greek New Testament, represented by N, and in the United Bible Society's 3rd edition, represented by U, hence the acronym N-U text. The Nestle-Alon in the United Bible Society, their publications are the same. They say the same thing in terms of what they produce for the textual basis for modern translations.

The N-U text and the related Alexandrian texts have been the basis for nearly every modern Bible translation in the past hundred years. So we need to understand the distinction in these. Bibles like the New International Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version, God's Word, the Moffat Translation.

The message is very, very popular with young people these days because it reads really, really well, and it's got a nice flow in verse. But the message actually isn't even a translation. It's a paraphrase, much like the Living Bible is a paraphrase. And the message is a paraphrase from a translation from the Alexandrian text.

All these draw their Greek New Testament source, again, from the corrupted Alexandrian text. So bring us back again to our chart, translations of New Testament scriptures, and just want to focus our attention once again on the timelines. And we'll see, again, around the 15-1600s, you had translations coming from the Byzantine text family in the majority text, which agree.

And you see the heavy explosion, though, down on the line of the Alexandrian text in the last 100 years of modern translations and what the basis for their textual criticism and translation is. And we just need to be aware of these things.

Why does it matter anyway, we might ask? Why does this really matter anyway? Well, the answer is it matters because doctrine must be based on the pure Word of God.

Doctrine must be based on the pure Word of God. Mr. Oliver read this in the sermonette today. I appreciate the scriptural reference. Matthew 4, verse 4.

And Jesus answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Shorter is not better, brethren, when the words that are removed are the inspired word from the mouth of God. Okay? Shorter is not better when the words you remove are the words of life that proceed from the mouth of God. Remember, corruption of God's word is the adversary's ploy, and it's been going on for, well, since the beginning.

The position of the church has been that the Byzantine text family upon which the King James and New King James Bibles are based is acceptable text for establishing doctrine in the Church of God. The problem with the Alexandrian text family is that the modern Bible translations that come from it are unreliable for establishing doctrine because of the script themselves. It's not to say that these modern translations have no value. So modern Bible translations can be easy to read through for verse and flow. Sometimes, like I said, I like to go to Bible Hub and I'll see what other translations say on something, but when there's variances and differences, I always default back to what is in the New King James, what is in Young's literal translation. You'll notice that's on your graph from the Byzantine text. The Young's literal translation is a very, very good translation as well. But again, it's not to say that these don't have any value, but we just have to be careful and we need to be aware. When it comes to doctrine, we won't want to put our confidence in those versions.

I want to shift gears a little bit now because you can argue history, and people can argue history from both sides and make claims from both sides. All right? So I want to take a little different approach for the remainder of the message, and I want to compare select scriptures that are often used for doctrine in the Church of God between the King James, which will represent the Byzantine text, and the NIV, which will represent the Alexandrian text. I want to lie in some of these verses up side by side so we can just see what the difference is in practical application. Because if we're talking about building doctrine from the Bible, we need to know what it says when the rubber meets the road. First one I want to look at is John 13 and verse 2.

John 13 verse 2, the King James version says, But it says, I have it highlighted in yellow, the NIV from the Alexandrian says, You know, evening meal was in progress, and that may not seem like a huge distinction, but frankly, brethren, it is, because the context is the Passover. And the difference here is when does Jesus wash the disciples' feet and institute, then the Passover symbols of the bread and the wine.

If you're going to rely on the Alexandrian text, it says it's during supper when these things began, an attempt to disguise the New Testament Passover as being a part of the Jewish Seder meal, as opposed to the symbols and foot washing being separate from the meal. We understand, and that's our teaching, supper being ended, then Christ got up and washed their feet, gave them the bread, gave them the wine.

Matthew 1, verse 25, King James Version says, The NIV says, But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus. Why the distinction? And what's the big deal here about the distinction?

Well, the word firstborn is gone from the Alexandrian text. That may not be, maybe seem significant to us, but the word firstborn tells us that Mary did, in fact, have more children after Jesus.

So what happens? She had more children? You mean she's not the Virgin Mary? Still?

Those that would seek to deify her and worship her as the Virgin Mary may have a much harder time if they have to acknowledge her having had sexual relations and giving birth to other children besides Jesus.

Maybe you can see there can be a slant to how a number of these verses are translated.

1 Timothy 3 and verse 16.

And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed in the world, received up in glory.

God was manifested in the flesh. Speaking of Jesus Christ.

The NIV says, The word of God is missing. The word God is not in the text. God has been replaced by he or who appeared in the flesh. Why is that significant?

Well, I'm standing here before you today. I have appeared in the flesh. But I'm just another one of you.

But Jesus Christ was Emmanuel. He was God with us. God was manifested in the flesh.

And again, this is a scripture upon which we build doctrine in the Church of God.

Ephesians 3, verse 14 and 15, King James Version.

Alexandrian text.

Again, this passage diminishes Jesus Christ's divinity by not calling God his Father. It is simply left out. John 6, verse 69, King James Version.

Again, the NU, the Alexandrian text, is seeking to minimize the identity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

And it simply calls him the Holy One. And he was a Holy One, but there are all the Holy Prophets prophesied, you know, these things that were intended that they would prophesy.

The Prophets were called the Holy Prophets as well. So we understand Holy One is a more generic term than the Son of the Living God.

Christ's divinity and his stature of who and what he was is diminished in the Alexandrian text. Acts 18, verse 21, this is a very important one for doctrine. Acts 18, verse 21, King James Version. This is the Apostle Paul. He says, I have to get to Jerusalem. I must by all means keep this feast in Jerusalem. It's one of the key, critical New Testament scriptures that show the observance of the Holy Days by the Church of God.

The NIV says, but as he left, he promised I will come back if it is God's will. Then he set sail from Ephesus.

So again, there's no mention of Paul seeking to keep the feast in the Alexandrian text. It's been removed altogether. And again, understands Satan the devil has plans. He has purposes for which he does things. Satan doesn't want the modern-day Christian to keep the Holy Days. Why?

Well, because they are a condition of the New Covenant relationship with God. If Satan can trick them into thinking the Holy Days are not required or the Holy Days are done away with, and he's tricked them into believing they entered into a covenant relationship with God when they have not. Because we don't get to determine the terms of the covenant. God determines the terms of the covenant. He alone sets those terms. And so I hope you can see why this is so critical, brethren, why we have to base translations and our doctrine on the proper translations. You know, when Moses read the book of the Covenant to the people of Israel in the Old Testament, their response was, all that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient. And after they professed and claimed their faithful obedience that they would have towards that covenant agreement, only then was the blood of the covenant sprinkled on them, placing them in covenant relationship with God not before. Obscuring the Holy Days is Satan's desire to prevent people from entering the New Covenant relationship with God. And when God sets the terms, we agree to God's terms and he enters into that relationship with us at baptism. Matthew 17, verse 21, KJV, how be it this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting? Maybe you know why I usually read to you all in the New King James. My wife's great at the Old King James. I struggle with it a little bit. But how be it this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting? The NIV says there is no verse being NIV, the Alexandrian text corresponding with that fasting and prayer and fasting. You know, the disciples said we can't cast out these demons and Christ says this kind goes out not except by prayer and fasting. Well, maybe there's an adversary that wouldn't like it promoted how indeed he and his demons would be cast out. Fasting is left out of many modern translations. Fasting is left out of, or in some places it's changed. It just says they were hungry as opposed they were fasting or they had fasted. But it's altered or left out of 2 Corinthians 6, verse 5, 2 Corinthians 11, 27, Mark 9, 29, 1 Corinthians 7, 5, and Acts 10, 30. It just is not there.

Luke 4, verse 8, And Jesus answered and said to them, Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Get behind me, Satan. NIV says Jesus answered, it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.

The Alexandrian text obscures Jesus' authority over the devil. Now understand, there are times where maybe in modern translations some of these things might perhaps be inserted, but you go back and look into the margin. And they'll have a marginal footnote in most cases that says, does not appear in the preferred text. So you just need to understand the basis for these things.

John 14, verse 14, we see that praying to Jesus is introduced in modern translations. John 14, verse 14 in the King James Version, If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.

The NIV says, You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

We understand by the example of Jesus Christ when we pray, we pray to the Father, and we ask God in the name of Jesus Christ. We are not praying to Jesus in the name of Jesus seeking favor in things granted in that way. We come to the Father through him. Mark 16, verse 9 through 20, as well as John 7, verse 53 through 8, verse 11. The sections of Scriptures are not contained in the NU or Alexandrian text. When added to modern translations, they are often offset by brackets or notations. They are simply not there. You will be reading along through the book of Mark and it ends. The whole sections of Scripture are not even in the Alexandrian text that are the basis for modern Bible.

The question we need to ask and answer is permissible to add to or to take away from Scripture?

What does God's Word say itself? Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, New Testament witness to this, Revelation 22, verse 18 through 19, He will see Him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man takes 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. To take away or add to the Word of God, brethren, is a very serious, serious matter. So again, just one last quick glance at the handout in your lap.

And you'll again notice the explosion in the popularity of the modern Bible versions based on the corrupted Alexandrian texts. And again, I acknowledge I presented one side of the textual argument today, but it's the one that the church supports, and it's the one that, through my personal research, I do believe is accurate and true. The other handout you have—I won't spend a lot of time here—but again, the question is, are all Bibles created equal?

And clearly the answer is no. Not only do you have a difference in the textual source of Bibles, there's also a difference in the literalness of Bibles. Some Bibles are word-for-word translations, or at least as close as possible.

You can't exactly get the exact Greek word into the exact English word, and they always mean the same. Sometimes you're putting as close as possible of the English term in there to equate to that, but some are word-for-words as close as possible.

Some are thought-for-thought translations. We're trying to get the essence, the critical essence of the thought from the Greek over to the English. And then others are not translations at all. They are paraphrases. And as you can see, they're on a sliding scale of literalness here. So depending on what you're going to use the Bible for might affect which one you choose.

A number of years ago, I read through the New Living Translation. New Living Translation is a paraphrase, but it's put in kind of a smooth, verse-and-flow, almost a story flow that's easy to read through. And I thought, well, I'm going to read through the Bible and the New Living Translation. And I found very quickly that I didn't want to let my new King James be very far from me as I was reading through that, because I would read through and I think, well, is that even right?

And I'd have to go grab the King James, look it up, and compare. Well, maybe it was right in this case, maybe it was wrong in that case. And I found, don't let that Bible get too far away from me. You need to be careful and at least just aware of these things. And I'm not saying don't own a modern Bible. And I'm not saying don't read a modern Bible, but read it critically and have something solid by your side to look up where conflicts may seem to be present.

Brother, we can take confidence in the fact that the truth of God will prevail. It is God's promise. Matthew 24, verse 35 says, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. It is God's promise that He would preserve His Word for His people. Isaiah 40, verse 8, The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever.

God has and will continue to preserve His Word for His people, and we can take confidence in that. We can take confidence that God isn't allowing us just to flounder in mistranslation and no true source of His Word. He's preserved His Word for His people in the modern age. So, come back to where we started. John 17, verse 17, Christ's prayer sanctified them, set them apart by your truth. He says, Your word is truth. And for you and I, our responsibility is we must continue to live and continue to study to be a people who are set apart by the truth of God's Word.

That's where His Word is contained. It's in the Scriptures. He's given us the spirit of discernment as we study those things. Sanctify them by Your word. Your word is truth. So, here's an Acknowledgement page. We want to keep everything legal and above line. All the pictures I used in my presentation were from the public domain, apart from the two Bible charts that were prepared by Pastor Dan Dowd. And while that's up there, I'll just show you briefly a couple books. This one is titled, Which Bible? I shared a couple of quotes out of it today. Which Bible? Edited by David Otis Fuller.

He actually combines a number of authors' writings and even doctrinal thesis on the Byzantine and the Textus Receptus into this book. I'm partway through it, but there's been a lot of valuable information. And again, a reminder to the New King James Greek English in a linear New Testament. It uses the Greek majority text as the basis as the King James running by its side. This is out of print. It originally sold for about $29.95. I think I paid $60 for this copy, but it is still out there.

So, Brelin, I hope you enjoyed the presentation today. I hope it was informative. Again, I know it's like drinking a sip of water out of a fire hose, and I'm sorry for that. I'll try to have my slides packaged up so I could email them to you or at least send you a link to download them, hopefully here within the next week.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions. And also, let's enjoy our studies into God's Word. It is a blessing to have the Scripture that we have in our lap. Let's enjoy it. Let's study and learn and grow from it. For Brelin, let's also remember not all Bibles are created equal.