Re: Which Bible version shall I use
Stick to your Authorized King James Version Bible (KJV), it has been the standard workhorse of Scriptures for four-hundred years, and it will be the standard till the end! Don't sacrifice accuracy for 'easier to understand' newer versions, for what good is understanding, if what you are understanding is not completely accurate?
The newer versions, with their critical omissions are becoming more and more, with each newest version, a Bible for the new one-world apostate religion that fancies itself as: all-faith, any-faith, any-god, any-path to salvation. However, God didn't say do it any-way, He said to do it His way. The new one-world false religion that is growing is all-inclusive, but true Christianity is exclusive, in other words, you must do what God says and not do what God says not to do. That is why He sent us the Holy Scriptures, so that we would know the difference. Sadly, "certain men have crept in unawares" [Jude 1:4], and have corrupted the newer versions of God's Word. Stick to the King James Version Bible my friend.
Did God leave us without warning? Of course not!:2 Pet 2:1
1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in ****able heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. (KJV)
Acts 20:29-31 (Apostle Paul warning prior to his departure from his students of God's Word)
29 For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
31 Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. (KJV)
What are the so-called 'majority of texts' mentioned in the footnotes of the newer Bible versions?:
There has been a fraud perpetrated on the Bible reader. What many of the newer Bible versions do is to place the correct reading into the Scripture but they refer the reader to the margin or a foot note that says something like " This verse (or word) does not appear in any of the best manuscripts, or (not in the oldest manuscripts), or (not in the majority of Manuscripts)." When they do that they are basically telling the reader to disregard that particular verse or word.
However, what they are really saying is that the verse or word is in the Manuscripts that the King James Bible was translated from (in 1611), but it is not in the manuscripts that they are translating their newer version from (in 1881-1990's). They had to make mention of this because in fact the newer version Bibles are 10% shorter than the King James Version. In fact, the NIV version has 64,098 less words than the King James Bible! So instead of admitting that their Bibles have gross omissions, they make it look like the King James Bible added a bunch of stuff about Jesus Christ, God, The Trinity, salvation by faith...
It is a fact that the NEW King James Version Bible (as well as all other newer versions) was prepared from DIFFERENT manuscripts than the regular King James Version (which used the Received Text - Textus Receptus) was translated from. They call their Manuscripts the "Majority of Texts," but that is a misleading statement. Let me explain.
The New King James Version (NKJV) footnotes erroneously point to a 'majority of texts', when they are in fact only referring to the faulty Greek Text According to the majority by Hodge and Farstad. It falls far short of a full collation of manuscripts since it is based primarily on Von Soden's collation of only 414 of the over 5000 manuscripts! So when they say the majority, what they are in essence saying is the majority of 414 texts, not the majority of the over 5000 Texts available. And if you guessed that their 414 are all from the same corrupt tree out of Alexandria Egypt you would be correct. They are corrupt copies of corrupt copies.
The percentage of extant (existing) Manuscripts in pyramid graph at right: - Original autograph (the actual first manuscript) - None Extant.
- Light colored blocks = Accurate copies - 95% of 5,309 manuscripts.
- Dark colored blocks = Corrupted copies - 5%of 5,309 manuscripts.
ACCURATE COPIES (Light colored blocks)
These manuscripts represent the manuscripts from which the 'Textus Receptus' or the Received Text, was taken. They are the majority of Greek manuscripts which agree with each other and have been accepted by Bible-believing Christians down through the centuries. It is from these manuscripts that the King James Bible was translated in 1611.
CORRUPTED COPIES (Dark colored blocks)
These manuscripts represent the corrupted copies of the Manuscripts, also known as the Alexandrian manuscripts. These manuscripts, many times, do not even agree with each other. The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts are part of this group. These are the manuscripts on which Westcott and Hort and the modern versions rely so heavily.
There are 5,309 surviving Greek manuscripts that contain all or part of the New Testament. These manuscripts agree together 95% of the time with the Received text of the King James Version. The other 5% (Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus...) accounts for the differences between the King James and the modern versions.
The modern versions had to use the Textus Receptus readings in many places because their corrupt manuscripts were incomplete. The problem is that when the Textus Receptus disagreed with the Vaticanus or the Sinaiticus, they preferred these corrupted manuscripts PLUS the Textus Receptus. That accounts for the 5%corruption in the modern versions. Even these two manuscripts agree with the Textus Receptus much of the time. When they do not agree, it is because Marcion (A.D. 120-160), Origin (A.D. 184-254), Westcott & Hort (1853), and others CORRUPTED them.
And it is just not that the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus (newer Bible version manuscripts) disagree with the Textus Receptus (King James version manuscript). But they do not agree with EACH OTHER either! In just the four Gospels alone (Matthew - John) the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus disagree with EACH OTHER in over 3,000 places! Let's take a closer look at these two Manuscripts that all the newer Bible versions are based upon.
The dubious origin of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus:
The Vaticanus:
It was written on fine vellum (tanned animal skins) and remains in excellent condition. It was found in the Vatican Library in 1481 AD. In spite of being in excellent condition, it omits Genesis 1:1-Gen. 46:28, Psalms 106-138, Matt. 16:2-3, the Pauline Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews 9: 14-13:25, and all of Revelation. These parts were probably left out on purpose.
Besides all that - in the Gospels alone it leaves out 237 words, 452 clauses and 748 whole sentences, which hundreds of later copies agree together as having the same words in the same places, the same clauses in the same places and the same sentences in the same places. Something is not right here!
The Vaticanus was available to the translators of the King James Bible in 1611, but they didn't use it because they knew it is unreliable.TheVaticanus also contains the Apocrypha. Which are pre-New Testament writings that do not appear in the Hebrew Old Testament. The Apocrypha cannot be considered realiable Scripture as a whole, but it is included in the Catholic Bible to this very day.
The Sinaiticus:
The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was 'found' in 1844 in a trash pile in St. Catherines Monastery near Mt. Sinai by a man named Mr. Tischendorf. It contains nearly all of the New Testament plus it adds the to the New Testament, the "Shepherd of Hermes" (which reads that we are to take the mark of the beast!) and the "Epistle of Barnabas."
As stated, in the Sinaiticus Manuscript (newer Bible version Manuscripts) there appear two spurious books that do not appear in the Textus Receptus (King James Bible manuscripts), they are the: "Shepherd of Hermas," and the "Epistle of Barnabas." - In the Shepherd of Hermas, it states: "I gave myself up to the beast", and in another place it says: "Receive his name".
- In the Epistle of Barnabas, it states: "Satan...is Lord".
There is an effort underway to remove the book of "Revelation" in the newer Bible versions (the vaticanus does not have it) and replace it with "Shepherd of Hermas." need anymore be said on that? Christian beware! Our own so-called people are selling us out to satan!
The Sinaiticus is extremely unreliable, proven by examining the manuscript itself. John Burgon spent years examining every available manuscript of the New Testament. He writes about the Sinaiticus:"On many occasions 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness. Letters, words or even whole sentences are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately canceled; while that gross blunder, whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause proceeding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament."
On nearly every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions, done by 10 different people. Some of these corrections were made about the same time that it was copied (probably in the 4th Century), but most of them were made in the 6th or 7th century.
Phillip Mauro was a brilliant lawyer who was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in April 1892. He wrote a book called "Which Version" in the early 1900's. He writes concerning the Sinaiticus:"From these facts, therefore, we deduce: first that the impurityof the Codex Sinaiticus, in every part of it, was fully recognized by those who were best acquainted with it, and that from the very beginning until the time when it was finally cast aside as worthless for any practical purpose."
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