Mistakes of the Tiqqune Sopherim

So the title of tonight's Bible study is Mistakes of the Tikune Soferim. What? The Tikune Soferim. It's a Hebrew word that means the corrections of the scribes, or the edits of the scribes. Let me explain. Tikune is T-I-Q-Q-U-N-E. Soferim, S-O-P-H-E-R-I-M. Tikune Soferim. The edits of the scribes. Okay, here's the explanation.

The Jewish scribes are some of the world's most careful scholars, and God used them to preserve what we call the Old Testament. So tonight we're going to give a little criticism, but by no means are we criticizing the skill level of the Jewish scribes. Brethren, for most of us in this room, they are far above our skill in the Word of God. These guys were good, and God blessed them so. Romans 3, verses 1 and 2. The apostle of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, endorsed the Jewish scholars as being some of the best in the world.

Romans 3, verse 1. What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the prophet of circumcision? Much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.

They were the record keepers of God's Word. Okay, so really, really good scholars.

But they were people, and these excellent scholars were not without their own set of flaws. And one of those flaws was the love of their own opinion and their own commentary. They would carefully record the Scriptures, but they would add tikunae, or edits, in the margins of their Bible. And this tikunae, today the Jews read more from the margins of their Bibles. They read their own commentary more than from the original text of the Bible, although they preserve the original text very, very carefully. But they go by their traditions more than they do the Word of God. And that was exactly Jesus' criticism of them, that they replace the Word of God with their traditions. And their traditions were called tikunae, the edits, the corrections, the commentary. However, there is a specific error that I want to hone in on tonight that they made, because it is applicable to Christians in 2025. It's an error that we all make, and it's costly. On 18 different occasions, in 18 different scriptures in the Old Testament, which is mild compared to the Christian scholars of the New Testament, when the Christian scholars got a hold of the New Testament, there were over a thousand edits to the scriptures. But we know where they are and what they are. We have them catalogued. The Jews only made 18. But in 18 scriptures, instead of just writing commentary in the margin of their Bible, they actually changed the words in the Bible. They did that 18 times. Fortunately, they were such good scholars. They were so honest that they recorded that the change was made. These 18 changes are called tikune sofereme, meaning the edits of the scribes. The sofereme are the scribes. So the tikune sofereme were usually made in situations when they perceive that a phrase might sound too accusatory towards God, even though it was the Word of God, or when human characters, their words might seem irreverent if quoted literally, so they made the change, or when an original expression could, in their opinion, be misinterpreted theologically. They were like, well, we'll just help God out here, and we'll edit that word, so you don't misunderstand, according to their opinion. So tonight, let's go through some of these tikune sofereme edits and see how changing the Word of God is wrong and completely unnecessary. It's not only wrong, they completely miss the point. And when you notice this, you gain a closer relationship with God, not trying to edit His Word. Before we look at some of these edits, let's see what God says about changing His inspired words to us. Changing a single word in the Scripture is strictly forbidden. Deuteronomy. Let's go back to the Law of Moses. Deuteronomy 4, verse 2.

I'm going to read largely from the ESV, the English Standard Version, tonight. It is a word-for-word translation like the King James. It's just in slightly more modern language than even the New King James, but it's still word-for-word. So all translations have their issues, but ESV will be easier to... You know, the NIV is not word-for-word. The NIV is more thought-for-thought translation. Which, don't get me wrong, I'll use the NIV as well. But the ESV is careful, like the New King James, as it is a word-for-word translation. Okay. Deuteronomy 4, verse 2.

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you. We're going to come back, not to this scripture, but to that thought at the end of the Bible study tonight, because that's how it applies to you and me. Let's go to chapter 12 in Deuteronomy, and verse 32.

God adds to this through Moses, He says, Everything I command you, you shall be careful to do, not just some of it, all of it. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it.

Continuing on through history, moving down through to King Solomon, Proverbs 30, verse 5. Proverbs 30, verse 5. Every word of God proves true.

Not just every verse.

Every word.

Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar. Let's interpret that. Let's interpret that. In other words, every time you try to edit the Bible in your own words, if you stray away from what God said, even in one word, you end up making a mistake.

That's why when I give a sermon or a Bible study, and I've been a minister for a long time, I still pray every single time that God will bridle my tongue like a horse, stick a bridle on that tongue, and don't let me misspeak his words. Because these are his words we're talking about. They're not yours or mine.

Matthew chapter 5. Let's go towards the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, moving much further ahead in history. Jesus says this, Matthew 5 and verse 18, For assuredly I say to you, Till heaven and earth pass away, One jot, or one tittle. So that's, he's getting down not even to the word, but to the letter.

Well, by no means pass from the law, meaning the teaching.

Meaning more than just the do's and the don'ts, but the stories, the writings as well.

By no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Revelation chapter 22 verse 18. We haven't even gotten into the tikunae, uh, soferem yet. We're just looking at God warning not to do what they did. Revelation 22 verse 18.

I warn everyone who hears the word of the prophecy of this book.

A lot of people think when John wrote these words, he didn't just mean the book of Revelation.

He meant the entire Bible when he said this book. Because Revelation wasn't necessarily a book to John. Could have been. It could have meant the book of Revelation. But we have a hunch he was meaning the Bible itself. And it matches the other scriptures that we read. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. If anyone takes away the words of this book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and the holy city, which are described in this book.

It's pretty serious. Now, like I said, the Christian scholars made many more edits in the New Testament than the Jewish scholars did in the Old Testament. But we're not keeping score tonight. We've just established the fact that you don't change one word. And that's the point that I want to make to us, to you and me tonight, for our individual spiritual lesson. So what I want to do, let's go through and let's look at three of the 18 examples of these edits that the scribes made. Three times when they changed a word and we'll sort of look at what we assume was their reasoning for changing the word, and then we will see that it was completely unnecessary to make the change.

That God's word stood by itself, didn't need human intervention.

It's like God's saying, I've got this, thanks kiddos, but I don't need you, you know, to edit my word.

The first one we examine has to do with God's mercy and compassion. And it seemed like, and this is just an assumption on my part, the Jews were looking at God as the majestic leader of the entire universe, and they weren't looking at every facet or every aspect of God. That God is also a loving, caring, compassionate individual.

And this one, this edit, is in Genesis chapter 18 and verse 22. A small change, but an absolutely unnecessary one.

Genesis 18 and verse 22, it says, then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, and Abraham still stood before the Lord.

That's apparently not what the original, what it said. It doesn't say Abraham stood before the Lord. The original Hebrew said the Lord stood before Abraham, and they reversed it.

Turn my volume down on the computer here.

They changed it because they thought, in my assumption and other people's assumption, that saying that God stood before Abraham would put God in service to Abraham. So they changed it to look like Abraham was the servant in this situation.

Not giving thought or heed to the thought that maybe God was serving Abraham. Maybe Abraham was upset because God just told him he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And maybe God was comforting Abraham. And is that not a wonderful service?

Psalm 103, verse 13. King David thought God was this way. Psalm 103, verse 13.

There was no need for that change.

There was no need for them to say Abraham stood before the Lord, instead of the Lord stood before Abraham. As though God was tending to and caring for Abraham. Of course he was! Of course he was!

Exodus 34, verse 6. Moses even thought so of God.

Exodus 34, verse 6. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children, and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation?

So yes. God is a God of justice. God is all-powerful.

So they were correct in assuming that God was in charge. But they were incorrect in assuming that God would not serve Abraham.

Of course he would. And Abraham was very upset that Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed. He was very concerned, and God was very tender-hearted, and literally stood before Abraham, implying to comfort and serve him, even though he was the great God of the universe.

Okay. That's just one of the changes that they made. Let's look at a second one.

This one I find amazing on the part of Moses.

When we realize what Moses actually wrote, and the Saphirim made, or Saphirim, they made the edits to make Moses look better, and to sort of clean it up and make God look better.

But Moses actually recorded a mistake that he made, and he wrote it down honestly and raw, to let everybody know something very, very important about himself and about God. This is in Numbers 11, verse 15.

There's a textual variation here involving the phrase, Your evil versus my evil.

This verse in question is part of Moses' plea when he feels overwhelmed by the burden of leading the griping, complaining Israelites.

He was leading them, and he would get complaint after complaint after complaint.

And he finally hit a breaking point, Moses did. And Moses had a bit of a temper. Numbers 11, verse 15. Here is how it reads in our Bible.

If you will treat me like this, kill me at once.

If I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness. Or in the Old King James, I think it's evil.

In the New King James and the ESV, it's wretchedness. But he says, my wretchedness. But the original text that Moses jotted down here, what Moses actually said to God was that I may not see your evil, your wretchedness. Moses called God evil.

And he is the one who recorded it.

He is the one who tattled on himself and said, yeah, I did this.

For good reason.

Moses did make the mistake, and he admitted it in his writing. When you consider the original words of what he wrote, saying, your evil, we can surmise that he was expressing frustration about the burden that was placed on him by God.

Don't let me see your evil.

This verse is coming during a moment of really, really deep frustration in Moses. The Israelites were freshly delivered from Egypt. They were complaining bitterly about the food in the wilderness. In verses 4-6, they longed for the variety that they had in Egypt, and they were tired of manna. Oh my!

And Moses is just getting overwhelmed by the constant complaints, the weight of leadership. So verses 11-14, he pours out his heart to God, sort of saying, why have you put this burden on me? I can't carry it alone. And then in verse 15 is the emotional climax, where Moses is exhausted, he's in despair, he says he would rather die than continue under the crushing responsibility, and Moses accuses God of evil. So the Maserites, the scribes who were responsible for preserving the text, and the earlier scribes adjusted it to say, one of them did, I don't know exactly who did, or when the change was made. But they changed your evil to my evil, to avoid implying that God was capable of evil.

Well, guess what? God's not capable of evil.

But their change implied that Moses could not have been mistaken. And of course, he was a human being under great distress, and he made a mistake. Have you ever had a sibling, a brother or a sister? Have you ever made a mistake in words, growing up with your brothers and your sisters? I grew up with two brothers.

We loved each other. We were loyal to each other to a fault. But we fought all the time.

I mean, we were rounders with each other. Of course Moses made a mistake. And since it was Moses who recorded the Scripture, Moses was tattling on himself to teach us a lesson. The scribes made this change to maintain a reverent depiction of God aligning with their practice, the tikunae sofirim, where the texts were adjusted to avoid statements that would be perceived by their opinion as irreverent or somehow theologically problematic. Here's the point. Never trust your opinion. There is never a need to change the Scriptures. Moses was simply recording a mistake that he made. He felt sorry for himself. He spoke against God. He was humble enough to record that for our benefit. Moses was an incredibly humble man. Numbers 12, verse 3, Now Moses was very meek and more than all people who were on the face of the earth. This adds to the story as to why God did not allow Moses to enter the promised land. Right? We reread the story about him striking the rock and God saying, Okay, you can't enter the promised land. But it wasn't a one-time incident with Moses. And Moses was recording that.

Moses had a history of kind of losing his temper.

And the striking of the rock was the final straw. God was like, Okay, you need to learn a lesson. You're not going to go into the promised land. And the sofirim, the scribes, thought it better to sort of polite that down a little bit.

And it takes the lesson away.

It wasn't just one incident. Moses had a temper. God loved him with compassion. The punishment that he gave Moses wasn't harsh. It was loving. Okay, so those were two examples. Let's look at one more, and then we'll draw a point from it tonight in the Bible study. One last example.

And this should be a short Bible study tonight. It's a pretty simple point.

And this one is that God won't die. Well, duh!

Okay, he wouldn't be God if he died. But they were worried about the wording here. In Habakkuk chapter 1 and verse 12, let's go to Habakkuk chapter 1 and verse 12. Heh. They were worried that people might think that the Bible says God could possibly die.

So they were biting their nails on this one, apparently.

And they wrote, they made a simple change that was absolutely, to me, freakishly unnecessary.

Like, this one is obvious.

Habakkuk 1 verse 12. And I'll tell you why it's obvious in just a second. But verse 12. Are you not from everlasting? O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We, not you, we shall die. O Lord, you have appointed them from the judgment, O Rock. You have marked them for correction. So they changed, you shall not die, O Lord, to we shall not die, O Lord.

Why? To avoid the implication that God could possibly die. Thus maintaining this strict monotheistic theology and reverence towards God, eternal's nature.

So they thought. But they were actually disrespecting God's eternal nature.

By thinking that they could write God's Word better than He.

Changing a single word in the Bible is strictly forbidden.

And this one kind of makes me chuckle a bit because there's no way you can take these literal words to mean that God could possibly die. Habakkuk literally says, you shall not die.

And they thought, well then maybe, possibly, that could be construed and twisted to mean God could die. No! It can't! It literally says, you will never die. Meaning, God can't die. But the scholars of the Old Testament were so worried that someone somewhere might misunderstand this obvious blatant statement that God will not die to possibly mean He could die. And thought they had to edit the Word of God. On the contrary, God's Word is so reliable to us that we don't need to change it. As Jesus said, not one jot or one tittle. God's Word comes from His mind. And His mind is not like our mind.

I mean, we're sort of like Him. We're made in His image. But He is above us.

There are several Scriptures that convey this idea. I want to quickly go through several Scriptures, even though I know you know this, just by way of reminder that God's wisdom is above our wisdom. And it's important to establish this again as a way of reminder so that we can actually make the point we need to make tonight. So let's look at how God's understanding surpasses all human knowledge combined. That means all of us in this room combined with everybody else on the planet combined. Thinking our way through a solution do not match in any way, shape, or form God's wisdom. Isaiah 40, verse 20, God's wisdom.

Isaiah 40, verse 28, Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, He who does not faint nor grow weary, His understanding is unsearchable. You can't even figure out how much God knows and understands. The context of this verse highlights that God's infinite understanding and eternal nature indicates that human beings cannot fully understand or comprehend God's wisdom.

So how do we presume to edit His words in the Bible? We should never do that. And you're probably sitting there thinking, I would never do that. And you're probably thinking, well, I need to figure out which Bible to purchase. Believe me, that's not the point. We'll get to the point. But believe it or not, you and I do this all the time. We edit God's Word. And His Word doesn't need editing. So yeah, we're not picking on Jewish scholars tonight.

We're learning a lesson from them so that we don't fall into the same trap. We should learn to trust the Word of God, even when we don't understand the reason for the command. We trust it so much that we don't need to know why. We just follow it. Psalm 147, verse 5. You know, when you're first learning about God, you prove everything.

God even says to prove everything. And we do that. But brethren, once you've proven it, you don't need to re-prove it. Start learning it and following it. Now, if you haven't proven it, get diligent, get busy, and prove it for yourself. Every human being has to do that. You have to prove it for yourself that God is correct, that the Scriptures I'm reading are actually His Word. You have to go through that.

Does God exist? Is the Bible His Word? What does the Bible say for me? You have to prove it all true. But once you've done that, and you get baptized, do you then go edit God's Word? And the answer is we do. Yes, we do. We need to quit doing that. I'll show you. Psalm 147 verse 5, Great is the Lord and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. I can't even pronounce names properly. Can't even come close to comparing my understanding to the Great God.

You hear me read those greetings from Feast of Tabernacles, you know, goers around the world. And I butcher those names. Because I'm not comparable to God. We're not. God is infinite! Let's go to Isaiah chapter 55. Isaiah 55 verses 8 and 9.

If mankind had the wisdom of God, we would have a cure for every disease. There would be peace on earth. Energy would be free and abundant. But no, it's not that way. We are very limited. God has no limits. How can a limited human being edit the words of an unlimited being like God?

Why do you and I ever change God's Word in our life, in our actions, in our obedience to Him? Why do we make little edits to the Word of God? Isaiah 55 verse 8. My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

God speaks through the prophet Isaiah here to illustrate the vast, huge difference between the divine and the human understanding of wisdom. How many of you have stood on one edge of the Grand Canyon and looked across? How many of you have done a lot of us? Pictures don't do it justice. Do it, does it? You know, the problem with looking at the Grand Canyon through a photograph or in a video is you don't realize how small you are compared to that canyon.

And then you stand on the edge of that Grand Canyon and you get chills. Looking down and looking across, it's like, wow, I am tiny. Here's the point. God made that canyon. He's not the size of that canyon. He simply made that canyon. Romans 11, verse 33. Romans 11, verse 33. Oh, the depth of riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

How, listen to this word, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. The Apostle Paul marvels at God's profound wisdom. And these scriptures collectively that we just read give us the idea of God's intelligence. Okay, so He's infinitely greater than all of us combined, right? So these Jewish scribes, some of the world's most careful scholars, could probably put us to shame when it comes to Bible study. God used them to preserve the entire Old Testament, and they did it so well, but they made their fair share of mistakes.

And one of those flaws was the love of their own opinion and their own commentary. And they have this running commentary on the sides and on the tops of their Torah, their Bible. The scriptures are in the center, and there's commentary all around it. And they generally read from what I've heard from the commentary, and not the scriptures themselves.

And we do that in our head. We have the Word of God, but we also have a running commentary called My Opinion. Tonight we went through three. Ticune, Sulfurim, the edits of the scribes, and they were changing the Word of God, and we saw it was completely unnecessary, right? It was ridiculous. God is perfect. Vastly more understanding than we have. And we have to love His Word. And the great lesson tonight can be summed up in a proverb. Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 through 7.

This is probably a memory verse for some of us. Proverbs 3 verse 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lay not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. You know that word evil means harm, or implies harm, or doing harm?

That if you stay with the Word of God, you leave or depart harm from doing harm, from being harmed. We can't make the same mistake as the Sulfurim, but we do it all the time. We edit the Word of God in our lives. But how do we do it?

Sometimes, some of us are in the habit of redefining sin to fit modern culture. In the Church of God, instead of letting God define right and wrong, people often adjust His standards to match what they feel is acceptable today. For example, they dismiss clear biblical teaching on lying, on sexual morality, and on forgiveness, and they say, times have changed, or everyone does that now.

Another way we edit to Kunae Sulfurim, we edit the Bible in our own head, is we pick and choose what we listen to in the Bible. We pick and choose what we read. We pick and choose which verses we'll accept. Some people treat Scripture like it's a buffet. Yeah, I want that one, but I don't want that one.

I accept this verse, but I'm going to ignore this one because it challenges my preference. It challenges my lifestyle. Like saying, God is love. Oh, I like that. I'm going to eat a lot of that. But they ignore the call to repentance and obedience, and to be holy and separate from the world. They want comfort, but they don't want correction. Well, the word of God's not a buffet. We're to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Matthew 4.4. Another way we make edits to the Bible is we twist the meaning of the Scripture, just like the Sulfurim did, to justify our behavior. And by doing so, we're editing the Bible. Instead of conforming our lives to God's Word, we bend the Word to excuse our choices, saying, well, God understands my heart. We just kind of spiritualize away the literal command of God.

Or, oh, come on now, don't judge. Judge not that you be not judged to avoid accountability. The problem is trusting your own feelings more than God's commands.

Don't let your feelings fool you into editing God's Word. Trust His Word. That's how you avoid evil. And what does evil mean? Harm.

When you trust God's Word, you avoid harm in your life, harming others and being harmed yourself. Don't edit the Word of God.

When we do that, we're no different than the Sulfurim.

Another way we edit the Bible. And there's so many more than I'm going to list tonight. I'm just giving us some examples to start the wheels churning, if you will. People follow popular opinion, and this is really common in the church now. With the postmodern era, it's almost considered a sin in our society to think for yourself, to examine both sides of an issue and draw a conclusion. What you have to do instead is comply with whatever society says to do.

And if you don't do that, you're intolerant, you're cancelled, you're all the other things that they say.

But it comes down to following people's opinion over God's. Popular opinion over God's truth. People give more weight to society, to friends, to social media than what the Scripture teaches.

Examples. We redefine marriage, and we're afraid to speak plainly about it. We redefine morality. Well, that's acceptable for them. I don't do it, but they can do it.

Or our priorities because of public pressure.

Seeking approval of others rather than the approval of God.

And here's the lesson for tonight's Bible study.

God's way works. It just works.

His instructions are perfect. You don't have to understand everything He tells you. You gain understanding by obeying Him. Then you go, oh, I see why He told me to do that.

Even when you don't understand, take His instructions. Remember, His wisdom is above your ability to understand. That's not an insult, it's an invitation.

It's not an insult, it's an invitation to take a shortcut away from hardship in this life. It's an invitation to avoid trouble.

If a verse doesn't make sense to you, give it some time.

Don't edit it. I've done this before. I've studied something in the Word of God and I've looked at it and go, I don't get that.

Pray about it. Ask God to show you. He will.

He gave you His Word so that you will understand it.

He will help you understand it. Be patient. Don't try to work around it. Just follow it. God's Word is perfect. It will never change.

And when you trust God's Word, it will guide and protect your life.

Okay, that's Bible study for tonight.

801, so I was one minute over.

Are there any questions?

Yep.

Okay, so let me rephrase the question so that you all can hear what he said. So when you're doing Bible study and you look something up like a word definition in Strong's Concordance, and of course that's based on human interpretation of the word, it's a good tool to use. I use Strong's, I use Thayer's, I use Brown Driver Brig, I use a lot of different dictionaries, but the question was along the lines of, do we just take their word for it and run with it, or are we more careful about our research? And my answer is, you're careful. And Moses wrote, I'd have to look it up, but it's in Deuteronomy chapter 19. The basic principle that answers your question, Bill, is in Deuteronomy 19, I think starting in like verse 15, and it's the discourse about false witness and not allowing false witness, and it starts with, one witness shall not rise against another. Right? And, well, let's just go there. Deuteronomy 19. I mean, we know where it is. It's easy to get to. Deuteronomy 19 verse 15, a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or any wrong in connection with any offense that he's committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses shall a charge be established. Well, let's extrapolate that into Bible study. One witness does not establish a matter. Strongest concordance, Thayer's dictionary, Brown Driver Brig, does not stand on its own, because they have their biases. So use more than one in prayer to God. Like, I know you do, Bill. You probably already know the answer to that question.

Bill gives a lot of messages. He's going to speak at the feast, too. And you just pray about it. You look it up. You start by asking God to give you understanding from His mind and His word. And then you go to Strong's and you get a word definition. And you go to maybe a commentary. And you listen to what a few of the commentators say about the word. They can give you some great background, some history on the passage that will open your mind and completely change the way you thought about that verse. Especially if you read something in the Bible and you think, wow, God is really harsh. If I make a mistake, He's going to send lightning and turn me into a grease spot. I need to just avoid God. And then all of a sudden, you read a couple of commentaries and you realize it has nothing to do with that at all. So, yeah, two or three witnesses.

Get advice. Talk to others, she said. Get advice. That's a great comment. Excellent.

Yes, in the back.

A thousand. It's more than a thousand.

Okay, so his question was, I said that the New Testament has over a thousand edits and they have been catalogued. This is correct. The edits that were made, you can compare older manuscripts to our English version of the Bible and you can see, well, that's slightly different. One of the examples is most of the edits, by the way, the vast majority of them have to do with the Trinity to try to make the Trinity make sense. And so a lot of people will say, you should only use the King James Bible. I'm like, do you know how many mistakes are in the King James Bible? You should use the King James Bible. Don't get me wrong. King James is a fantastic Bible. If you know how it was put together, it was put together with great integrity. They had their biases. They had their biases. And the Trinity was one of them. The King James version of the Bible upholds the Trinity more than any other version of the Bible, by the way, just FYI. So use Moses' wisdom in Deuteronomy 19. Two or three witnesses. I always try to get... I don't know if any of you remember Herbert Armstrong. He used to use multiple copies of the Bible. He would use the Moffat translation. You remember he used the Moffat translation all the time? You can't even find the Moffat translation. Try to find the Moffat translation now. He used multiple witnesses. And so one place you can find those edits cataloged is in a book by Dr. Bart Ehrman called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. I gotta warn you, it is a really boring read. Oh, it's dry. It will make you pucker. But, you know, you'll have a dry mouth for sure after reading that book. But in the back of the book, there's an index of all the changes in the Bible of the New Testament. It's called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Dr. Bart Ehrman. Google it, look it up on Amazon, it's easy to find. Easy to find. So we know where the edits are. Yes. So you're talking about 1 John chapter 5, the Kama Jahannam. Where there's three, and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yeah, yeah. The 1611, King James doesn't do that. Actually, also the German version, based on the same text that Erasmus wrote, doesn't do that, because it wasn't until his third edition did he add that in. But believe it or not, most theologians know that that scripture, that passage in 1 John, was added in and most disregarded. The edits that I'm talking about are things like where when Jesus was at the temple, and I think this is in Mark's account of the Gospels, and he stayed back and was teaching in the temple, and the parents went on, and then they had to come back and get him. Well, it says in the original text, his father and mother came back to get him, and they changed it to his parents came back to get him, because that might imply that Joseph was his actual father.

Right? So they took the word father, even though it can mean stepfather, it can mean adopted father.

Right? They edited that out because that ruins their trinity idea. Right? That he would have a human father. So they wrote parents in instead. There's a thousand, more than a thousand of those, just like that. So that comma, Johanna, you were talking about is the tip of the iceberg. Yeah.

Question.

Okay, so the question is, how does the new King James Version compare to the New Living Translation, and are there major significant differences? Two things. A, I am a lowly minister, not a biblical scholar. So I'm not, I don't want to come off as an expert. I'm more of a student, you know, than a scholar. I do not consider myself a scholar. Secondly, yes, there are clear differences in the New Living Translation from the New Living Translation to the King James. So the New King James is safer, and the the Old King James or New King James is safer, than the New Living Translation when it comes to doctrine, just because the way that it's, that the two versions are translated. The King James attempts to translate in an almost word-for-word fashion. So to the best of the translator's ability, you are getting word-for-word what was written in the other language, either Hebrew or Greek. The challenge with that is that sometimes in the Hebrew or the Greek it was meant metaphorically or poetically, and a literal translation doesn't convey the meaning. So that's where the New Living Translation comes in and is beneficial. It is a meaning-for-meaning translation or thought-for-thought translation. The problem with the thought-for-thought translations or the challenge, it's sometimes a problem, not always a problem, the challenge is it's so much more subject to interpretation. Human interpretation really intervenes on the thought-for-thought translations. So word-for-word translations are safer on doctrine. So New King James, English Standard Version, those are better for trying to understand, do we keep the Sabbath or we don't? You know? And the New Living Translation is much, much easier to read because it translates thought-for-thought so it makes more sense in our language.

Oh, but an inner linear. Okay. An inner linear takes the original language and puts your language underneath those words. An inner linear is a fantastic tool to use, especially when you get into doctrines like in the book of Galatians where... um... oh, let me see if I can find something for you. Hold on. We're gonna go to Galatians chapter 2, and I'll show you. Pull up my notes. Didn't plan on doing this so it's gonna take me a second.

Um...

We go to New King James where my notes are. There we go. Okay. Galatians chapter 2 verse 16 reads, In the New King James, know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. This is one of the most misunderstood verses in Protestant world. We're not justified by the law, we're justified by faith, so we're excluding the law.

However, if you have an inter-linearity, which answers your question about the inter-linearity, you will read that the word the isn't in the original language.

Now this doesn't mean it's a mistranslation, it just means the author thought it would make sense in English to put the word the there. So we're not accusing, you know, of any subterfuge here.

We're just saying the word the isn't there. And if you take the word the out of this passage, it completely changes the passage, let me explain. The law means the law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. It's called the definite article in the Greek, and it looks like a superscript O. Looks like O raised up, a little tiny O. And if you look in an inter-linearity, you'll see that that little O, the definite article, isn't there, meaning it's not a specific law he's talking about. It's any law, therefore it's any law keeping. So he's not talking about the Bible specifically, he's talking about you, the law keeper. He's not criticizing the law of God at all. He's saying, you can't earn justification. Justification, by the way, just means being made right by God, and you can't be made right by God unless you're forgiven. So justification is synonymous with forgiveness. So in other words, you can't be forgiven of your traffic ticket that you were doing a hundred miles an hour in a 15 mile an hour zone by going out and now keeping the speed limit. You still have to go before the judge and pay the fine unless you are released from that penalty, and that would be grace. And that's what Paul is talking about here. You can't after the fact forgive yourself by keeping law. If you take the article out, if you remove the definite article, it expands what Paul is saying from talking about the law of Moses and looking like Paul is picking on the Old Testament, which a lot of scholars want to do, when he's actually picking on you, not God, but you, the lawkeeper, telling you to keep yourself in line through faith in God and Jesus Christ. Okay, so that's just an example of how an inter-linearity can help.

Cool. Yes. Last question, by the way, and then we're going to wrap it up.

Yeah, he was saying you don't have to actually go out and buy a physical inter-linearity. I agree. I have one on my computer, and I have actually two on my computer, and you can Google it, and there's so many websites out there that have inter-linears for you. Oh, the book with the index of changes is The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, by Bart Ehrman. Very, very boring book.

Okay, let's fellowship.