"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 The Textus Receptus
The KJV translators used something known as the Textus Receptus (meaning “the received text”) for the New Testament. Riplinger attacks all the alternative manuscripts as unreliable. But the Textus Receptus comes from something known as the Majority Text, which is not a source document in its own right. The Textus Receptus draws on at least four other source manuscripts, with the dominant source being from the Byzantine text tradition. Another text, called the Alexandrinus, draws on the same source. The Textus Receptus – in common with other texts that the King-James-Only people condemn – has the same source!
How can you say that this is the only right one, the others follow bad source texts, when they actually have a common source text? It is an absurd argument, but the average person would not know that. Riplinger says that, under the influences of Origen at Alexandria, all the other texts were mutilated to point away from the Deity of Christ.
Origen was a heretic. I do not deny that for one second. He had crazy, Gnostic ideas (ultimate reconciliation, Satan is going to be saved), he castrated himself. The guy was nuts. I am no fan of Origen. However, Origen also wrote something called the Hexalpha, where he published the six Greek versions of the Bible available in his time alongside one another, so that people could compare them. What we know about his life shows that Origen was not trying to push any one version. These people claim all the other versions were mutilated, except the (so-called) Majority Text, which came to be the Textus Receptus and what evolved from that. It is pure conjecture. There is no proof Origen ever did what they say. On the contrary, the Hexalpha indicates that the exact opposite is more likely.
This is Page 11 of 14
Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.