"Bible Versions"
The Bible is the Word of God in the Word of Man. That doesn't make it any less the Word of God, but neither does that make it any less the Word of Man.
Download or email this sermon New Age and "The Christ"
Riplinger charges that the translators of the NIV use the term "the Christ" in the same way as New Age people do. It is true that when New Agers say "the Christ", they mean "the Christ within". They are not referring to Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, they are referring to their spiritualist concept of the Christ. It all goes with their Gnostic idea of the Cosmic Illumination of the Inner Self.
It is true that New Age people do that. However, the Hebrew Old Testament uses the term HaMessiach – the Messiah (or “the Christ” or “the Anointed One”), because there were many messiahs – many “anointed ones”. Every king, every prophet and every priest was an 'anointed one'. The use of the definite article was necessary to indicate the ultimate “anointed one” who was to come.
Jesus is apart from and above all the other “anointed ones”, and this fact is indicated by the use of the definite article. The HaMessiach of the Old Testament becomes the ho christos – the Christ – of the New Testament. There is no problem here, except that Gail Riplinger says there is a problem. "Real references to Jesus as 'the Christ' are rare: however, new versions literally paint their pages with this pawn". (7) Let's look at the facts. The phrase "the Christ" appears 19 times in the King James Version. It appears 48 times in the NIV. The Greek ho christos appears 59 times in the (so-called) Textus Receptus. If you take into account all the instances of ho christos in its other case forms, the total number of times "the Christ" appears in the various Greek texts is:
- Textus Receptus (1551) = 169
- Majority-Byzantine = 166
- Nestle-Aland 26th Ed. = 146
Which is to say that, if we take Riplinger at her word, the manuscript on which the King James Version is based contains more "New Age" references than the manuscripts used in the modern versions.
- Her argument is, itself, stupid.
- If the term "the Christ" is proof of heretical tendencies, then the King James Version is far more heretical than the translations that she attacks.
The whole thing is absurd. Gail Riplinger is a charlatan and a fraud. I don't know how much money she has made out of her book, but I know the damage she has done to many Christians.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.