A Voice In The Wilderness Vital Topics Booklet Index
Paul writes:
| 2 Corinthians 2:17 | For we are not as many , which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. |
| 2 Thess.2:2 | That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. |
During the latter part of his life the apostle John strongly defended the Word of God. Being an eye-witness of the events involving the ministry of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), John was well qualified to refute written or spoken error and to put the record straight. The enemies of truth had this reliable eye-witness banished to the island of Patmos. Note the reason why.
John writes:
| Revelation 1:9 | I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. |
There were many church fathers who hand-copied the whole or portions of Scripture. Let me mention a few who greatly influenced the church, particularly in Europe.
In his book Story of Our English Bible W Scott
writes: "Crysostom, the most eloquent of
the fathers, spoke of them (the Scriptures) as The Divine Books,
Polycarp, who lived at a still earlier
date, having been personally instructed by the Apostle John, spoke
of the Bible as The Sacred Scriptures, as also the Oracles of
the Lord. Clement of Rome, whom Paul styles
his 'fellow-labourer' (Phil.1V.3), termed the Scriptures The True
Sayings of the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus, of
the second century, makes about 1200 citations or references from
the New Testament; Tertullian, also of the
second century refers to or quotes from the New Testament about
2500 times; Clement of Alexandria, another
of the second century Fathers, cites from or refers to the New
Testament 800 times; and Polycarp, already
referred to, in a brief epistle addressed to the Philippians,
quotes from the New Testament about 50 times." (Ref:
A6)
Lucian (AD 250-312) was born in Antioch in Syria where the early believers in Jesus were first called Christians. (Acts 11:26) In his book Truth Triumphant the historian Benjamin George Wilkinson Ph.D writes this about Lucian:
| Quote: | "Lucian founded a college at Antioch
which strove to counteract the dangerous ecclesiastical alliance
between Rome and Alexandria. How bitter the situation became and
how it finally split West and East will be clarified by the following
four facts:
First, the original
founders of the ecclesiastical college at Alexandria strove to
exalt tradition. Justin Martyr, as early as 150, had stood for
this.
|
Patrick belonged to the Celtic race. Tradition has it that he was born about AD 360 in the kingdom of Strathclyde in Scotland. Wilkinson writes of Patrick:
| Quote: | "Patrick preached the Bible. He appealed
to it as the sole authority for founding the Irish Church. He
gave credit to no other worldly authority; he recited no creed.
Several official creeds of the church of Rome had by that time
been ratified and commanded, but Patrick mentions none. In his
Confession he makes a brief statement of his beliefs, but he does
not refer to any church council or creed as authority. The training
centres he founded, which later grew into colleges and large universities,
were all Bible schools. Famous students of these schools -
Columba, who brought Scotland to Christ, Adrian, who
won pagan England to the gospel, and Columbanus with his successors, who brought Christianity
to Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy - took the Bible as
their only authority, and founded renowned Bible training centres
for the Christian believers. One authority, describing the hand-written
Bibles produced at these schools, says, 'In delicacy of handling
and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palaeography
offers nothing comparable to these early Irish manuscripts…
Patrick, like his example, Jesus, put the words of Scripture above
the teachings of men. He differs from the papacy, which puts church
tradition above the Bible. In his writings he nowhere appeals
to the church of Rome for the authorization of his mission. Whenever
he speaks in defence of his mission, he refers to God alone, and
declares that he received his call direct from heaven…
Patrick believed that Christianity should be founded with the home and the family as its strength. Too often the Christian organizations of that age were centred in celibacy. This was not true in the Irish church and its Celtic daughters in Great Britain, Scotland and on the continent. The Celtic Church, as organized and developed under Patrick, permitted its clergy to marry." (Ref:J3) |
| Quote: | "Columba, an Irishman, was born
in Donegal in 521, and both his parents were of royal stock. He
founded a memorable college on the small island of
Iona which was a lighthouse
of truth in Europe for centuries. That the Celtic, not the Latin,
race populated the British Isles was a determining factor, for
the Christian churches in which Patrick had been reared received
their doctrine, not from Rome, but from their brethren of the
same faith in Asia Minor. Here was the link which connected the
faith of Patrick and Columba with primitive Christianity. The
farthest lands touching the Atlantic saw the rise of a vigorous
apostolic Christianity not connected with the Church of Rome,
but independent of it…
Columba possessed a superior education. He was familiar with Latin and Greek, secular and ecclesiastical history, the principals of jurisprudence, the law of nations, the science of medicine, and the law of the mind. He was the greatest Irishman of the Celtic race in mental powers; and he founded in Iona the most learned school in the British Islands, and probably in Western Europe for a long period…" (Ref:J4) |
Comparatively few Christians know that Columba kept the seventh day of the week (Saturday) as the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Wilkinson writes about this little known fact.
| Quote: | "The last hours of Columba are recorded as follows: Having continued his labours in Scotland thirty four years, he clearly and openly foretold his death, and on Saturday, the ninth of June, said to his disciple Diermit: 'This day is called the Sabbath, that is the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me: for it will put an end to my labours.'" (Ref:J5) |
We in Scotland are greatly indebted to Columba, who founded many churches in this country. He is credited with having hand-copied the New Testament 300 times! His writings show that he used the Itala version of the Bible. In Stewarton there is a church called St Columba's Church.
Bear in mind that a version is a translation
made directly from the original Hebrew or Greek: i.e. from Hebrew
or Greek into Syriac, Latin or English; whereas a translation
of a version into yet another language is simply called a translation.
Bible versions were made in several languages within a few years
of the New Testament's creation. This was a rarity in the ancient
world for any book.
Josh McDowell writes on pages 16-17 of his book Answers to Tough Questions.
| Quote: | "...Translation of a document into another language was rare in the ancient world, so this is an added plus for the New Testament. The number of copies of the versions is in excess of 18,000, with possibly as many as 25,000. This is further evidence that helps us establish the New Testament text. Even if we did not possess the 5,500 Greek manuscripts or the 18,000 copies of the versions, the text of the New Testament could still be reproduced within 250 years from its composition. How? By the writing of the early Christians. In commentaries, letters, etc., these ancient writers quote biblical text, thus giving us another witness to the text of the New Testament. |
| Quote: | John Burgon has catalogued more than 86,000 citations of the New Testament in the writings of the early church fathers who lived before A.D.325. Thus we observe that there is so much more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament text than any other comparable writings in the ancient world." (Ref: M1) |
In his book Final Authority William P Grady quotes John Burgon on pages 33-34 concerning the reliability of a version over any single manuscript.
| Quote: | "I suppose it may be laid down that an ancient
Version outweighs any single Codex, ancient or modern, which can
be named: the reason being, that it is scarcely credible that
a Version - the Peshitto ,
for example, an Egyptian or the Gothic - can have been executed
from a single exemplar (copy).
A second reason for the value of ancient versions is in their ability to exhibit a text which antedates the oldest Greek manuscripts. Readings which are challenged in the Authorized Version for their non-existence in the 'two most ancient authorities' (Codex Sinaiticus or A; and Codex Vaticanus, or B, fourth century) are frequently discovered in the Syrian and Latin translations of the second century." |
In the course of time many versions (translations from the original language) of Scripture were made. Let us now consider a few.
The Peshitta Version (AD
150)
The Peshitta was the first Syrian translation
from the original languages. Even to this day there are around
350 copies of the Peshitta (or Peshitto) version in existence.
In his book Which Bible? David O Fuller writes this of
the Peshitto:
| Quote: | "It was at Antioch, capital of Syria, that the believers were first called Christians. And as time rolled on, the Syrian-speaking Christians could be numbered by the thousands. It is generally admitted that the Bible was translated from the original languages into Syrian about 150 AD. This version is known as the Peshitto (the correct or simple). This Bible even today generally follows the Received Text. One authority tells us this - 'The Peshitto in our days is found in use amongst the Nestorians, who have always kept it, by the Monophysites on the plains of Syria, the Christians of St.Thomas in Malabar, and by the Maronites on the mountain terraces of Lebanon.' " (Ref: F8) |
The Old Latin Vulgate (AD157)
The word 'vulgate' is Latin for vulgar
or common. The Old Latin Vulgate is a version.
It was used by early believers in Europe when Latin was in popular
use. It was sometimes referred to as the Itala version.
The Old Latin Vulgate must not be confused
with Jerome's Vulgate, which was produced over 220 years later
in AD 380. Jerome's Vulgate (also written in Latin for the Roman
Church) was rejected by the early Christians for almost a millennium.
The Waldenses, Gauls, Celts, Albegenses and other groups
throughout Europe used the Old Latin Vulgate and rejected
Jerome's Vulgate. In his book An Understandable History of
the Bible Rev. Samuel Gipp Th.D confirms this fact. He writes:
| Quote: | "The Old Latin Vulgate was used by the Christians in the churches of the Waldenses, Gauls, Celts, Albegenses and other fundamental groups throughout Europe. This Latin version became so used and beloved by orthodox Christians and was in such common use by the common people that it assumed the term 'Vulgate' as a name. Vulgate comes from 'vulgar' which is the Latin word for 'common' It was so esteemed for its faithfulness to the deity of Christ and its accurate reproductions of the originals, that these early Christians let Jerome's Roman Catholic translation 'sit on the shelf.' Jerome's translation was not used by the true Biblical Christians for almost a millennium after it was translated from corrupted manuscripts by Jerome in 380 A.D. Even then it only came into usage due to the death of Latin as a common language, and the violent, wicked persecutions waged against true believers by Pope Gregory IX during his reign from 1227 to 1242 A.D." (Ref:B2) |
David Fuller confirms this fact:
| Quote: | "It is clearly evident that the Latin Bible of early British Christianity was not the Latin Bible (Vulgate) of the Papacy." (Ref:F9) |
The Italic Bible (AD157)
| Quote: | "Italy, France and Great Britain were once provinces of the old Roman Empire. Latin was then the language of the common people. So the first translations of the Bible in these countries were made from the Greek Vulgate into Latin. One of the first of these Latin Bibles was for the Waldenses in northern Italy, translated not later than 157 AD and was known as the Italic Version. The renowned scholar Beza states that the Italic Church dates from 120 AD. Allix, an outstanding scholar, testifies that enemies had corrupted many manuscripts, while the Italic Church handed them down in their apostolic purity." (Ref:D2) |
The Waldensian (AD 120 & onwards)
| Quote: | "The Waldenses were among the first of the peoples of Europe to obtain a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the Reformation, they possessed a Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution …Here for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith…In a most wonderful manner it (the Word of Truth) was preserved uncorrupted through all the ages of darkness." (Ref:F7) |
The Gallic Bible (Southern
France) (AD177)
The Gothic Bible (AD 330-350)
The Old Syriac Bible (AD
400)
The Armenian Bible (AD
400) There are 1244 copies of this version still
in existence.
The Palestinian Syriac (AD
450)
The French Bible of Oliveton
(AD 1535)
The Czech Bible (AD 1602)
The Italian Bible of Diodati
(AD 1606)
The Greek Orthodox Bible: Used
from Apostolic times to the present day by the Greek Orthodox
Church.
All the above mentioned Bibles and the vast majority (about 99%) of the 5200 extant New Testament MSS are in agreement with the text now known as Textus Receptus; the Text which underlies the Authorized King James Bible.
William Tyndale's New Testament (1526)
was the first printed Testament in the English language. Unlike
Wycliffe's translation, Tyndale's New Testament was translated
directly from the Greek Majority Text, from which came the Received Text - Textus Receptus. More about this Text later. Tyndale's
work, in other words, was a 'version.' The first printings
of Tyndale's version were burned at St Paul's Cross (London).
At that time it was a grievous offence, punishable by fine, imprisonment
or death to even possess a copy of Tyndale's New Testament. It
was said of William Tyndale that he was:
| Quote: | "A man so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and French, that which ever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue." (Ref: E4) |
He it was who said to the ignorant clerics of his day that he would 'cause the boy who driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than them.'
| Quote: | "Before Tyndale's day the English versions of the Bible had been translations of a translation, being derived from the Vulgate or older Latin versions. Tyndale, for the first time, went back to the original Hebrew and Greek. And not only did he go back to the original languages seeking for the truth, but he embodied that truth when found in so noble a translation that it has ever since been deemed wise by scholars and revisers to make but a few changes in it; consequently every succeeding version is in reality little more than a revision of Tyndale's. It has been truly said that 'the peculiar genius which breathes through the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the grandeur - unequalled, unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern scholars - all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, and that man is William Tyndale." (Ref: E5) |
But alas! Tyndale was to suffer the wrath of blind ecclesiastical authority. He was burned at the stake!
| Quote: | "The martyr was first confined in the castle of Filford, about 20 miles from Antwerp. He was taken from prison on Friday, October 6th 1536, fastened to the stake, strangled, and his body burned to ashes. The fervent prayer of the martyr Tyndale, when bound to the stake, 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes,' was about to be answered shortly." ( Ref:A3) |
David Fuller writes of Tyndale:
| Quote: | "In the Reformation period the Church of Rome sought to maintain its dominant position by burning not only the copies of the bible, but also those who recognized the supreme authority of God's word. Tyndale was burned at the stake at Vilvorde outside Brussels in Belgium on August 6, (October according to some historians) 1536. His great offence was that he had translated the scriptures into English and was making copies available against the wishes of the Roman catholic hierarchy." (Ref:F3) |
Miles Coverdale's Bible (1535).
This was the first complete Bible in the English language. Coverdale
was not the scholar Tyndale was, for his translation relied heavily
on Tyndale and Luther's German Bible. It was printed just one
year before his friend Tyndale was martyred.
Matthew's Bible (1500-1555). This was the first Bible issued with the king's license. It was mostly taken from Tyndale's and Coverdale's work which had gone before. It was printed in Hamburg by the king's printer John Rogers and was dedicated to Henry VIII by Rogers under the name Thomas Matthew, hence its name.
The Great Bible (1539). This Bible was printed in large folio (15x9 inches) hence its name. It was printed in Paris and was mostly a revision of Tyndale's and Matthew's work which went before.
The Geneva Version (1560). During the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary many Protestant believers from Britain fled to the Continent. The Scot John Knox was one. The Geneva Bible is a true 'version' having been translated from the original Hebrew and Greek throughout.
| Quote: | "A number of these intellectual pilgrims rendezvoused in Geneva (known as the Holy City of the Alps) to form the first committee to attempt a translation of the Bible. Such men as Theodore Beza, John Knox, William Whittingham and Miles Coverdale laboured six years to produce the celebrated Geneva Bible in 1560. Although this Bible was the first to feature numbered verses and italics, its main achievement was the Hebrew to English rendering of Ezra through Malachi, thus representing the first English Bible translated entirely out of the original languages." (Ref: E6) |
| Quote: | "The Geneva Bible was the first complete translation into English from the originals throughout. It was addressed to 'the brethren of England, Scotland, and Ireland,'… There were two Bibles at this time in general use in England. The Geneva Bible was the more popular of the two, and was generally read in the household and in private study of the Word by the people. The Cranmer or Bishops' Bible was the one, however, which obtained most favour amongst the clergy and was read in the churches." (Ref: A4) |
The Bishops' Bible (1568).
| Quote: | "Archbishop Parker was the master mind in the preparation of this new edition of the Holy Scriptures, assisted by about 15 scholarly men. He distributed the 'Cranmer Bible' into parts, assigning portions to various learned bishops, the whole being subject to his own personal supervision. The large number of the revisers being from the Episcopal bench gave the name and character to this bible. It was printed in large size, and beautifully executed. It was adorned with numerous cuts; its notes were brief, and, like the 'Geneva Bible,' was divided into verses. It was used in the Churches for about 40 years. Various revised additions of the Bishops' Bible were published. Soon after the appearance of the Authorized Version of 1611, the Bishops' Bible - the last edition of which was published about five years before its noble successor - fell into general disuse…" (Ref:A5) |
The King James Version (1611) This is the Real
Word of God for our generation.
The Almighty
has used it to further His work for coming on 400 years. See Section
10 for further details of this Bible.
