By
way of introduction A
terrible Fruad has been perpetrated on Christianity!! You NEED the
facts!
Section
One - The Protestant Reformation
Section
Two - "My Words Shall Not Pass Away"
Section
Three - War on the King James Bible
27. Fruits of Anti
Christ This chapter clearly shows the
systematic and deliberate corruption of truth in the modern versions!!
For well over three centuries, when
English-speaking people spoke of the Bible, it was accepted that they
were referring to the Authorised of King James I. Its appearance in
1611 was the culmination of a century of diligent toil on the part of
the Reformers who were prepared to place their lives at risk in order
that the common people might have access to the Word of God. In the
process, there emerged the Protestant Reformation which quickly
dispelled the spiritual and intellectual gloom of the Dark Ages.
By the mid-twentieth century, while
adjusting to the changing values of the newly arrived atomic era,
English-speaking Protestants were subjected to a strange phenomenon.
Gradually, they were becoming accustomed to their pastors referring to
curious renditions of Bible texts. At first, the version from which
they were reading was always identified and used only as an aid to
amplifying the sense of their beloved King James Bible.
After a while, some of the more daring
preachers were beginning to show a decided preference for modern
versions by using them in place of the King James Version. Young
people were told that the archaic language of their old Bible was
beyond their comprehension. It was suggested to their parents that
Bibles needed to be constantly tuned to modern-day relevance.
Soon, many preachers ceased to identify
the version from which they read. The Bible of the Reformation had
been replaced! But replaced with what?
With a plethora of modern Bibles now
being offered by numerous Bible houses, many sincere Christians are in
a quandary as to which Bible best projects God's will for man. Then,
after having selected a new Bible, it is not long before they are told
that a better one has arrived. Confusion, and lack of confidence in
changing and sometimes conflicting Scriptures, is the inevitable
result.
The purpose of this book is to simply
demonstrate that, fundamentally and historically, there are only two
differing Bibles and that their New Testaments issue from two basic
streams of manuscripts. One, reflecting God's will for man, has been
guarded and handed down to us by the Apostolic Churches; the other,
has been polluted by a super power which has used its corrupt Bibles
in a relentless effort to achieve global domination through total
spiritual and political control.
When this fact is grasped, the reader
will have no difficulty discerning on which side a particular version
stands in relation to this long-running Battle of the Bibles.
In pursuit of this goal the author has
divided this work into four sections. Each deals with a particular
time period and each is a topic largely complete in itself.
It is the author's fervent wish that
the reader's faith in God's revelation of His will for man will be
established or confirmed, and that any doubts or reservations as to
which version most faithfully transmits that revelation will be
irreversibly dispelled.
H. H. Meyers November 1993.
Chapters One to
Eleven
The Protestant
Reformation
"In the sixteenth century, the
Reformation, presenting an open Bible to the people, had sought
admission to all the countries of Europe. Some nations welcomed it
with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands the papacy
succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance".
"The war against the Bible,
carried forward for so many centuries in France, culminated in the
scenes of the Revolution. That terrible out breaking was but the
legitimate result of Rome's suppression of the Scriptures. It
represented the most striking illustration which the world has ever
witnessed of the working out of papal policy" (E.G. White,
"The Great Controversy", p 265).
Pre-Reformation
Years
When the people of England went to
church in the early sixteenth century, they did so with a sense of
obligation tinged with awe and even fear, for attendance at Mass in
the parish church was seen as a ritual essential to the preservation
of body and soul.
In those days their priests were seldom
heard reading from the Bible; it was written in Latin. What they did
hear and understand were the prayers for an Italian prince of the
Medici nobility who was known to them as Pope Clement. The pope was
virtually the indisputable ruler of Europe in temporal as well as
spiritual matters. Believing him to be a successor of the apostle
Peter, and, therefore custodian of the heavenly keys, the English were
not only inclined to render him spiritual allegiance, but were bound
by ecclesiastical and civil laws to pay taxes for his support.
One of the annual taxes levied on every
household was cunningly designed to reinforce the dogma of apostolic
succession. It was called, "Peter's Pence". When first
introduced it was a mere "penny per hearth", but like other
schemes for collecting tax, it soon demonstrated its propensity to
increase as well as to proliferate.
The pope's tax agents were considered
as set apart and above the mundane affairs of life. They were not
subject to civil laws, but if the occasion demanded it, they were
tried before an ecclesiastical court. They carried impressive titles
such as Archbishop, Archdeacon and Parish Priest.
To assist the pope's men in their holy
endeavours, lay men and women were appointed as church wardens.
Besides being responsible for the upkeep and care of the church and
its surrounds, they were expected to keep Peter's Pennies rolling in.
They also had to collect other of the numerous taxes among which were
levies consisting of tithes, mortuary dues and probate fees. (See D.H.
Pill, "The English Reformation", pp 22, 25)
And then there were the Mendicant
Friars who literally swarmed over the countryside like a plague,
begging and sometimes demanding food, lodging and money.
For the pious faithful, the church had
much to offer, but it was nearly all collectable in a future life. If
this was insufficient inducement for the faithless, there was the ever
present spectre of an intermediate stay in purgatory and even
everlasting hellfire. But for those who openly questioned the
credibility of the system, their passage to hell was given a decided
impetus with the designation of the term, "heretic". In the
year 1519, seven "heretics" from Coventry and Birmingham
were burned and consigned to hell.
It seems that these unfortunate victims
of ecclesiastical judgment imbibed Lollard-like beliefs. The Lollards
had arrived at "wicked" and "dangerous"
conclusions as a result of reading Wycliffe's English translation of
the Bible. They no longer believed such Roman Catholic dogmas as
transubstantiation and infant baptism.
John Wycliffe was born in Yorkshire in
1324. Like many ambitious young men of his era, he had pursued
theological studies at Oxford with a view to following a political
career. This may seem strange to us today. However, back then the
church had a monopoly on education. It was what came to be known as
Rome's scholastic system. The language of Rome was Latin. Therefore,
as Rome controlled the colleges and universities, the learned men of
Europe spoke and wrote in Latin. Such men were regarded by the pope as
subjects of his ecclesiastical empire. Under this strange system,
civil servants could become bishops and bishops could become
highly-placed civil servants. There were men ordained as priests who
had never seen, let alone read the Bible!
When Wycliffe was only twenty-four he
witnessed a terrible calamity. The people of England were struck down
by a plague known as the, "Black Death". Coming from Asia
and through Europe, it left a trail of death and misery which
effectively halved both Europe and England's populations.
To the youthful Wycliffe
"This visitation of the Almighty
sounded like the trumpet of the judgment-day... Alarmed at the
thoughts of eternity, the young man... passed days and nights in his
cell groaning and sighing, and calling on God to show him the path he
ought to follow" (D'Aubigne's "History of the
Reformation", Book XVII chapter VII).
Turning to the Scriptures (for by this
time, Wycliffe was an accomplished Latin scholar), he found solace and
inspiration, and he developed a determination to make them his rule
and guide in life. He longed to see the Bible not only re-established
as the authority of the church, but to make it available in the
language of the people.
Soon he was writing and preaching
condemnation of the excesses of his church, and in particular the
pope's lately assumed sovereignty over the English crown. As a result,
Wycliffe won the patronage of King Edward III who appointed him as one
of his chaplains. Thus, when Wycliffe inevitably drew upon himself the
wrath of the papacy, he was able to enjoy the King's protection.
Little by little Wycliffe's priorities
were changing. Caring less about the temporal kingdom, he devoted more
time to Christ's Eternal Kingdom. As he studied the Bible, he came to
expose the absurdities which he perceived to be part of the Roman
Catholic ritual. He longed to replace in the minds of his people the
mysteries of the Mass and Transubstantiation with the "mystery of
Godliness".
As Wycliffe's reputation in the
universities increased, he was able to inculcate in the minds of his
students the authority of God's Word as opposed to the assumed
authority of the Catholic Church and its priests.
His obvious sincerity and love of the
gospel soon imbued his students with a desire to take the Bible and
tell from it the story of Christ's way of salvation which does not
depend on works. There was much poverty and ignorance in those days
and people were still suffering from the devastating effects of the
Black Death. To those of whom Christ said: "Blessed are the poor
in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3),
the gospel of love contrasted pleasantly with the cajoling and threats
of the pretentious, pleasure-loving friars. As in the days of Christ,
the common people received Wycliffe's unpretentious priests gladly.
The scholasticism of Rome with its penchant for allegorising away the
Scriptures began to be replaced with faith in Jesus Christ as the one
and only Saviour and Mediator between man and God (1 Timothy 2:5, 6).
Wycliffe's intense interest in
expounding the Scriptures eventually led him to take the prestigious
degree of Doctor of Divinity. He now felt competent to undertake the
ambitious and unheard of task of making the Bible available to all by
translating it into English. Being highly skilled in Latin, he set
about translating the Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate Bible. He worked on
the New Testament for over ten years, completing it in 1380. At once
an enthusiastic bank of copyists set about the task of hand-copying
hundreds of Bibles which were soon eagerly received by the lower and
upper-class alike.
This was too much for the authoritarian
Church of Rome. The last thing the papacy wanted was to have the
people being led by the Holy Spirit to an understanding of Bible
truths. Successive attempts to stifle Wycliffe and his work were
thwarted by those who had seen the light of reform. But the great
strain on the pioneer Reformer gradually took its toll. At the age of
sixty, Dr. John Wycliffe succumbed to a stroke. He was not to know
that future events would confer on him the illustrious title:
"The Morning Star of the Reformation". Mercifully, he did
not witness the terrible persecutions to which his countrymen would be
subjected, nor the intense anger of Rome which would seek to expiate
its wrath by committing the sacrilege of digging up his bones for
public burning thirty years after his death!
As the missionary work of the Lollards
continued expanding after Wycliffe's death, it seemed that the reform
of the Catholic Church in England was imminent. But sinister
CounterReformation forces were at work. What the church could not do
by persuasion, it would seek to carry out by using the powers of the
state. In 1390 a motion was made in the Upper House of Parliament to
have all copies of Wycliffe's Bible seized.
But the Duke of Lancaster indignantly
exclaimed, "Are we then the very dregs of humanity, that we
cannot possess the laws of our religion in our own language?"
(ibid Chapter VIII).
Rome does not give in easily. By the
dawn of the fifteenth century, the Primate of the Catholic Church,
Archbishop Arundel, connived with the new King, Henry IV for papal
support in return for the outlawing of the Lollards. In no time, a
pious priest who refused adoration of the cross, became the first of a
long list of English martyrs. William Sowtree was his name. He was
burnt alive at Smithfield in 1401.
The famous French chronicler of the
Reformation, H.J. Merle D'Aubigne, D.D., gives us an inkling of the
hatred exhibited by the papacy against the Bible:
"Encouraged by this act of faith -
this auto da fe - the clergy drew up articles known as the
`Constitution of Arundel', which forbade the reading of the Bible, and
styled the pope, 'Not a mere man, but a true God "' (ibid Chapter
IX).
But even as Wycliffe's ashes were cast
into the River Swift at Lutterworth, to flow eventually into the bosom
of the restless sea, so his seeds of reform were to reach out far from
the shores of England, eventually to rock Roman Catholicism to its
very foundations.
But the time was not yet. God's divine
programme was yet to be revealed. Vital to the success of His plan was
the restoration of His Word in unadulterated form. Wycliffe's Bible, a
bold translation of Rome's Latin Vulgate, was in effect an English
version of Jerome's fourth-century Bible. This was a different Bible
from that used by people like the Waldenses and Albigenses who had
received and guarded their scriptures from apostolic times. As Rome
hunted down these faithful Christians, she destroyed their Bibles, a
knowledge of which was virtually forgotten by the time of Wycliffe.
Then there were the Bibles of the
Eastern Churches that had early found their way from Antioch into
Persia, Armenia, India and even China. But during the long period of
the Dark Ages they, along with Greek and Eastern literature, had been
sealed off from the West by Rome's occupation of the strategic gateway
to Asia at Constantinople. With Rome's universal use of the Latin
language, knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew languages had largely been
lost. But in accordance with God's plan a change was to come, and it
struck like an "eastwind" as the Turks invaded
Constantinople. The hordes of Mahomet advanced westward driving before
them all who sought refuge. Within five years, Athens had fallen.
Among the refugees were numerous of the
intellectual classes who fled to Italy, many of whom were Hebrew and
Greek scholars. With them they brought their literature. It was as if
darkened Italy had suddenly received a great burst of light and under
its glare, Roman Catholicism was doomed to suffer. The church, and
religion generally, came under question as Catholic priests and
scholars turned to the study of Hebrew and Greek in order to devour
the newly-obtained classical literature. Along with this literature
came the Byzantine Scriptures and Greek manuscripts from which they
were derived.
Now the scholars of the Western World
began to realise the extent to which they had been deprived of culture
and learning occasioned by the stultifying scholastic system of the
ecclesia.
Shortly prior to the Turkish-driven
flight of learning, there occurred an epoch-making event in the small
German town of Mainz. There the process of printing was discovered in
1440 by Johannes Gutenberg. The subsequent growth of printing
techniques paralleled the growth of the Renaissance, thus providing a
vehicle for the spread of that learning. It was no coincidence then
that the new learning rapidly forged ahead in Germany. D'Aubigne draws
a very interesting comparison of the effects which the ancient
literature had on Italy and Germany:
"What had produced in Italian
minds a minute and barren refinement of the understanding, pervaded
the whole being of the Germans, warmed their hearts and prepared them
for a brighter light... In the one country the foundations of the
Church were undermined; in the other they were re-established on their
true basis" (D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation",
Book 1, Chapter VII).
Near the close of the fifteenth
century, a luminary named John Reuchlin appeared on the German
horizon. By the youthful age of twenty, he was teaching philosophy,
Greek and Latin at Basle. His later interest in the study of Hebrew
resulted in his being the first to publish in Germany a Hebrew grammar
and dictionary. His deep interest in things spiritual led him to study
Hebrew with a view to converting the numerous Israelites to the gospel
of Christ. As a result, he brought out a Hebrew Old Testament free
from the appalling corruptions then prevailing. In so doing, he did
not hesitate to depart in places from the corruptions of the Latin
Vulgate (ibid).
Such "blasphemy" inevitably
brought this daring man into disfavour with the Romish establishment,
drawing the particular ire of the Dominicans, which honourable order
of priests Pope Gregory IX in 1233 had entrusted with conducting the
papal Inquisitions. But their evil designs on Reuchlin were thwarted
by Pope Leo X. With such lack of papal support, the Dominicans had
good reason for alarm; they were witnessing the preparatory phase of
the great Protestant Reformation!
The first of the two Great Witnesses on
which Protestantism was to be built had been set in place. The next
would be the New Testament.
Colet and Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus of Holland was
twelve years Reuchlin's junior. He was born in 1467 of parents who had
neglected the formality of wedlock; yet this did not deter them from
naming their son, "Gerard", meaning in Dutch, "The
Beloved".
The young Gerard early showed all the
classic signs of genius. His fascination and aptitude for learning
languages were soon put to practical use. He sought out the Greek
equivalent of his name and promptly renamed himself
"Erasmus". To this he prefixed the Latin equivalent "Desiderius";
hence a name was coined which would within his lifetime, attract to
itself a lustre rarely duplicated in any one generation. Acclaimed as
"the great genius of the age", he was destined to do for the
New Testament what Reuchlin had done for the Old.
Although unlike his younger
contemporary, Martin Luther who was born in 1483, it would not be to
the credit of the Reformers to designate Erasmus as such. Yet his life
and work were indispensable to the development of the Reformation.
As was the custom of his time, Erasmus
received a monastic education, but this experience only served to
alert him to the folly of the prevailing scholasticism and the
malpractices of the church. He was to spend much of his early career
sharpening his wit and literary skills in satirising the vices
practised by the clerics.
In so doing, he was only confirming the
developing antisacerdotal tendency of the age, a condition which the
church blamed upon the revival of learning brought about by classical
scholars whom it was pleased to brand as "humanists". In
many cases this was true, especially as we have noted of the Italian
scholars.
But in England and Germany the
scholarship of the theologians had been tempered by the now widespread
teachings of Wycliffe and his followers, a circumstance not readily
available to the Italians by virtue of their proximity to Rome. Then
there was an almost constant stream of rottenness issuing forth from
the Holy See, the effects of which conditioned the minds of thinking
Italians to embrace a humanistic philosophy. Perhaps it was the divine
hand of Providence that prevented Erasmus's monastic training from
confirming him in such a course through his meeting with John Colet.
John Colet, son of a London Lord Mayor,
was naturally of a religious temperament. Having spent some time as a
student at Oxford, he went to Rome to further his ecclesiastical
education. There he was imbued with the spirit of the revival of
learning. But the scandalous stories he there heard about the
comparatively recent behaviour of Pope Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia,
impressed him with the urgent need for ecclesiastical reform.
Returning to Oxford, Colet lectured on
the works of the church and its system of religion, condemning its
preoccupation with power, money and pleasure, and denouncing the loose
morals of the clergy. As for the popes, he spoke of them as
"wickedly distilling poison to the destruction of the
Church" (Seebohm, "The Era of the Protestant
Revolution", p 77).
In evidence of his sincerity as an
honest Catholic committed to reforming his church, Colet cried:
"Oh Jesu Christ, wash for us not
our feet only, but also our hands and our head! Otherwise our
disordered Church cannot be far from death". (ibid p 78)
It was into such an environment that
Erasmus arrived when he accepted the invitation of an English nobleman
to attend Oxford in order to further his knowledge of Greek. There he
came to know Colet. Both were just thirty years of age.
But there the similarity ended, for
Colet was a spiritual and religious reformer. He was seeking to lead
the minds of his pupils away from the scholastic system and back to
the Bible as the Christian's authority. On the other hand, Erasmus was
motivated by a thirst for a knowledge of Greek in order that he might
better appreciate the classics and the new learning. But now as he
listened to Colet drawing his students to the Bible and the gospel
story, he was shown for the first time that salvation is a personal
experience, found only in Jesus Christ - not a ritualistic system of
salvation as devised by man and dispensed by the church.
Erasmus was fascinated by Colet's
expositions of Scripture and his historical method of interpretation.
Gradually, he came to appreciate what Colet was trying to achieve and
when invited by Colet to join him in his mission Erasmus declined,
saying that he must first go to Italy to master Greek and then,
"when I feel I have the needful firmness and strength, I will
join you " (ibid p 80).
The course of history is studded with
epoch-making decisions; decisions which were made on the spur of the
moment, or which were the outcome of deliberation. But here was a
decision which, although unforseen by these two scholars, was to alter
the whole course of civilisation, the results of which we all enjoy to
this day.
In the event, Erasmus was not able to
proceed directly to Italy. On the first stage of his intended journey,
he was robbed of his money by a customs-house officer at Dover. In
France, he was unsuccessful in raising money to continue on to Italy.
In those times, many famous scholars were dependant on the generosity
of their benefactors and Erasmus was no exception. It seems that he
spent the next few years wandering around France and Holland. His
biographer gives us an inkling of his life during this period of
frustration:
"If it were possible, it would
perhaps be hardly worth while, to trace all the wanderings of Erasmus
during the next half-dozen years. It may suffice to say that he lived
principally in Paris, Orleans, and in the Low Countries, and spent his
time in studying Greek, running away from the plague, dreaming of
Italy, and begging hard from his patrons to supply him with the means
of going there" (Drummond, "Erasmus", Vol.1, p 92).
Typifying his problems and ambitions at
this time, is this extract from a letter written from Paris (circa
1500) to one of his patrons, James Battus:
"In autumn I shall, if possible,
visit Italy and take my doctor's degree; see you, in whom I hope, that
I am provided with means. I have been giving my whole mind to the
study of Greek, and as soon as I get money I shall buy, first, Greek
books, and then clothes. Farewell my dear Battus, and do not forget
your friend Erasmus. Once my health is mended I shall neglect
nothing" (ibid pp 95,96).
In spite of financial and health
problems, it is quite evident that Erasmus had never lost sight of his
goal to produce a Greek edition of the New Testament. As part of his
preparation for this work, Drummond tells us that he sought out and
collated manuscripts wherever he had the opportunity. While yet in
Paris, "As early as the year 1505, he had appeared as a critic of
the Greek text, not however in his own name, but as editor of the
Annotations of Laurentius Valla" (ibid p 307).
Such study and work had gained a
recognition in England, for upon visiting there early in 1506, he was
made Bachelor of Divinity by Cambridge University. There his old
friends rallied around him and within six months he was able to set
out on his second and successful attempt to visit Italy.
After a laborious trip across the Alps
(for the saddle was the means of transport then), Erasmus arrived in
Turin, Northern Italy. There he remained for several weeks, during
which time the prestigious University conferred on him the degree of
Doctor of Divinity. Next, he visited Florence and Bologna. While in
Bologna, Erasmus became friendly with a "public Professor of
Greek" engaged by the Bologna University. This friendship with
Paul Bombasius was later to prove invaluable to Erasmus while
translating his New Testament. By that time, Bombasius had been made
secretary to Cardinal Pucci, who gladly assisted Erasmus by providing
him with readings from the Codex Vaticanus.
His visit to Rome in 1507 appears to
have been relatively short, yet he was able to make the acquaintance
of Cardinal de Medici who was so sympathetic with Erasmus's ambitions
for a Greek New Testament that later, when he became Pope Leo X,
Erasmus dedicated it to him.
Erasmus's visit to Italy must have
lived up to his expectations. There he had not only taken the
opportunity to examine rare and valuable manuscripts but he had
engaged the minds of scholars who had helped settle in his mind the
line of manuscripts which he should use in his planned forthcoming
Greek translation of the New Testament. Now he would return to England
as a Doctor of Divinity with an invitation from none other than King
Henry VIII.
With such illustrious credentials, and
back now among his friends of Oxonian days, it is not surprising that
he was appointed Greek Professor at Cambridge, a position which he was
to hold from 1510 to 1514. And now Erasmus was to find among his
English pupils a student of Greek who was destined to leave an
indelible mark on English literature and society. He was William
Tyndale.
The Pupils of Erasmus were fully aware
of his desire to produce a Greek New Testament which scholars of all
nations could use to translate into their own language. There can be
little doubt that Tyndale there gained a desire to give the English
People a Bible of their own. But it would not be a translation of the
Roman Catholic Vulgate as was the Bible of Wycliffe, for Erasmus had
shown him that the Latin Vulgate swarmed with errors" (D'Aubigne's
"History of the Reformation", Book 1, Chap. VIII).
It was during the month of April, 1515,
that Erasmus was to receive word from a friend in Basle that a famous
German printer by the name of Froben wanted to print his New
Testament. Here was wonderful news for Erasmus. By this time, his many
dissertations on the state of the church had spread his fame abroad.
Now Erasmus could fulfil his pledge to
Colet in a way that could not be compared to his previous writings.
With his proposed New Testament, he would not only realise Colet's
ambition to draw men away from the prevailing scholastic theology, but
he would, "place before them, in all the freshness of the
original" a new translation of the "living picture of Christ
and His Apostles contained in the New Testament" ("The Era
of the Protestant Revolution", p 92).
It should be realised that, at this
time, the Latin New Testament in use by the church was substantially
that of Jerome's late fourth century translation. Along with the Old
Testament and the Apocrypha, it constituted the Bible shortly to be
re-affirmed and authorised by the Council of Trent (15451563).
Drummond's comments are instructive:
"To the monks and theologians of
that day it was the Bible as much as if no originals had existed, or
as if Hebrew Prophets and Galilean Apostles had written in Latin"
("Erasmus", p 309).
Drummond continues:
"No one had been sufficiently
enterprising or sufficiently zealous in the cause of religious
progress to edit or to print the Christian Scriptures in the original
tongue. The truth is that those who were interested in religion cared
very little for learning; while most of those who were interested in
learning cared not at all for religion" (ibid).
This is where Erasmus differed greatly
from the learned humanists of his day. He cared for the literature of
the "new learning" but he had (thanks to Colet) great
respect for God's Word. It is a gross insult, based on questionable
motives, for his modern day critics and enemies to discredit him as a
humanist, a term devised by Rome to denigrate those scholars who
threatened her religious system with the "new learning" and
which today is used to designate an irreligious class of people.
After proceeding to Basle, Erasmus
busily engaged himself in finishing off his translation of the New
Testament, which consisted of two columns containing the Latin and
Greek side by side, as well as his own annotations.
The great day came, when on the first
of March, 1516, Erasmus had the satisfaction of seeing his
long-cherished ambition climaxed with the publishing of his New
Testament. The work carried a Dedication to Pope Leo X, an indication
that Erasmus ever remained a loyal Roman Catholic, in spite of the
fact that he had been so critical of the conduct of the clergy and of
much of its dogma. Interestingly, it seems that the pope was quite
appreciative of the compliment, at first that is, for it was not long
before the church was branding Erasmus as a "second
Lucian".'
In his preface, Erasmus reveals his
desires, which by no stretch of the imagination could be equated with
those of a humanist:
"I wish that even the weakest
woman should read the Gospels - should read the Epistle of Paul; and I
wish that they were translated into all languages, so that they might
be read and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by
Turks and Saracens" ("The Era of the Protestant
Revolution", p 92).
' "Furious monks loaded him with
abuse from the pulpits: "they called him a second Lucian - a fox
that had laid waste the Lord's vineyard" (D'Aubigne's
"History of the Reformation", Book 1, Chapter VIII).
It is not stated to which Lucian they
are referring, but as we shall see in Section 2, the text which
Erasmus used in his translation of the New Testament was virtually the
one certified by Lucian of Antioch which formed the basis of the
Waldensian and Greek Bibles. These were known as the Traditional Text
and became the progenitors of the later-named Received Text.
The demand for Erasmus's New Testament
was such that another printing was needed within three years. His
second edition appeared early in 1519 and like all responsible
authors, he took the opportunity to make corrections. This edition
which had a greatly improved Latin Text carried a "papal
Brief'... which spoke in the highest terms both of the scholarship and
orthodoxy of the work. Yet:
"But one thing was clear to the
commonest understanding: he had departed from the Vulgate translation,
and had substituted comparatively pure Latin for its intolerable
barbarisms" (Drummond "Erasmus", Vol. 1, pp 313-314).
With such a departure from the church's
Vulgate, it is not surprising that his work was soon vigorously
attacked, and the more so as the editions multiplied. His fifth
edition appeared just one year prior to his death in 1536. These
charges not only persist to this day but they have taken on a more
vindictive nature by those who wish to uphold Rome's Bible.
One common charge is that Erasmus was
too hasty in his translation which suffered from a paucity of
manuscripts. Drummond answers this charge:
"As to the charge that Erasmus had
been guilty of carelessness and dishonesty in not consulting more than
one manuscript, it was simply absurd. He had, in fact, consulted many
in England, in Brabant, and at Basle, and at different times had had
in his hands a greater number than Valla2 (ibid p 331).
2
"Laurentius Valla, the only humanist of distinction born in Rome
... He combined classical with theological erudition and attained an
influence almost equal to that enjoyed by Erasmus several generations
later" (Schaff - "History of the Christian Church", p
595).
To the above defence, we could add the
experience Erasmus had gained while wandering around Europe and Italy,
both in examination of manuscripts and in his discussions with learned
classical scholars. Later critics on this score have been more
generous, claiming that Erasmus had only five manuscripts to consult
in Basle. But it seems that even this is an understatement, for
Drummond says:
"Erasmus himself, however, seems
to say that he used at least nine manuscripts, as he says in the
Apologia prefixed to his first edition" (ibid p 311).
But what does it really matter? If
Erasmus had researched his project thoroughly, and then selected one
manuscript, it would be the one which he considered representative of
the purest text. Nolan, in his definitive work, "Inquiry",
adds his weight to such a conclusion. He says:
"The two great families of Greek
Bibles are well illustrated in the work of the outstanding scholar,
Erasmus. Before he gave to the Reformation the New Testament in Greek,
he divided all Greek manuscripts into two classes: those which agreed
with the Received Text and those which agreed with the Vaticanus
Manuscript" ("Inquiry", p 413).
In connection with this statement, it
is here appropriate to observe that the manuscripts of the Received
Text Line are also known as the Traditional or Majority Texts, simply
because they were traditionally regarded as the purest and were
overwhelmingly in the majority. Says Wilkinson:
"So vast is this majority that
even the enemies of the Received Text admit that nineteen-twentieths
and some ninety-nine one-hundredths of all Greek MSS are of this
class, while one hundred percent of the Hebrew MSS are for the
Received Text" ("Our Authorised Bible Vindicated", p
13).
It is highly significant that two of
the world's most prominent Christian scholars of the day, had no
problems with Erasmus's New Testament. We refer to Doctors Martin
Luther and William Tyndale. Instantly they recognised his work as an
instrument by which they could give to their peoples the unadulterated
gospel in their own language. The reforms planted by Wycliffe, which
had lingered, struggling to survive in the climate of a defective
Bible, were now to burst forth in the full power and beauty of the
Protestant Reformation. The world would never be the same again.
Bible
Battle TOC
