Which version of the Bible based on what text?

[wed2catholic]

I come from a KJV (King James Version of the Bible) only background. I have moved out of that in the last couple of years. The church that I once attended said that KJV is the only right version based on the text it is translated from. They said that there are basically 2 texts—the received text (textus receptus) and the eclectic text (Wescott and Hort??). They said that you should only read a Bible translated from the received text. I know, however, that many Catholic and Protestant Bibles say that some of the verses of the KJV were translated from a later, possibly flawed text. (Example: the Lord’s Prayer and how in some Bibles like the KJV it has a longer ending.) Can anyone give me some history behind this and shed some light on the subject?

 

[WoundedIcon]

Basically there are the most ancient complete manuscripts we have, Vaticanus and Sinaticus, which are of an Alexandrian text family. There are two other text families, the Western (which no one really uses) and the Byzantine which, from the name, is used by Eastern Orthodox Christians as their preferred text (they actually have a text called the Patriarchal Text or something, but it’s basically Byzantine). The issue is that some of the readings and passages present in the Textus Receptus/Byzantine form are not present in whole, or in their wording, in the Alexandrian texts. Modern textual critics use a set of criteria applied to pretty much any ancient fragmented work to compile what is called the Critical Text, from which we translate our modern Bibles. These are published in Greek as the Nestle-Aland and UBS texts. The Alexandrian texts used to be more highly preferred around 1900, but these days the Byzantine texts get a fare shake. The idea is that the two textforms diverged at one point, with the Byzantine as a standardized text making up the vast majority of later manuscripts. However, because they were so “bunched together” geographically and since they’re relatively newer, it lessens their reliability.

We have no “textform” of the Byzantine type, with it’s particular characteristics, before the fourth century. We do have some readings from the early Church Fathers that match some of the Byzantine’s readings, but not a whole text. The idea basically is that the Byzantine text was corrected to make easier sense, and gussied up to be more pious (if you want to distill the argument to the point it sounds goofy LOL).

 

[DianaCC]

Also, those in favor of the KJV text say the WH text is flawed, no surprise there.

The Greek text underlying the KJV NT is a mixture of Greek and other manuscripts and printed editions available to the translators at the time. Since these collectively represented pretty much what everyone else also had, it was nicknamed the Received Text.

In the mean time scholars began to develop theories about how variations arise, and Westcott and Hort, among others, published texts reflecting their theories. For example, the older variant is preferred, and the shorter variant is preferred. Hence the WH text omits *for thine is the kingdom… *in Matthew 6:13 because it is also missing from the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. And most modern translations like the RSV just follow WH’s lead, most of the time.

But if you look at all the ways WH differs from RT, you may notice that a lot of the differences seem to have a theological agenda behind them. For example, WH has *Son of Man *while RT has *Son of God *in John 9:35.

 

[Salvatore123]

Not only did the original King James Bible (1611 version) have the same OT texts as do the present Catholic bibles, but the KJV actually relied, in part, on the Douay Rheims - an entirely Catholic, church-sanctioned english translation of the Vulgate as it existed at the time of the banishment of Catholics from England to the European continent.

It was not until later years that protestants began to remove OT books and alter verses to suit their new-found theology that continues, to this day, to be “made up” as time goes by.

I assure the OP that what I have just said is fact - I did not say this simply to attack protestants. By all means - conduct your own research and you find that what I said above is true.

 

[Todd_Easton]

The Received Text is mentioned in the article on “Editions of the Bible” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, in Part III., on the Greek New Testament, here.

 

[wed2catholic]

The Received Text is mentioned in the article on “Editions of the Bible” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, in Part III., on the Greek New Testament, here.

I looked for the article you mentioned, but I don’t think I have found it yet. I will keep looking.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

I come from a KJV (King James Version of the Bible) only background. I have moved out of that in the last couple of years. The church that I once attended said that KJV is the only right version based on the text it is translated from. They said that there are basically 2 texts—the received text (textus receptus) and the eclectic text (Wescott and Hort??). They said that you should only read a Bible translated from the received text. I know, however, that many Catholic and Protestant Bibles say that some of the verses of the KJV were translated from a later, possibly flawed text. (Example: the Lord’s Prayer and how in some Bibles like the KJV it has a longer ending.) Can anyone give me some history behind this and shed some light on the subject?

The Received Text (Greek) was compiled by the Reformation-era scholar Erasmus based on the manuscripts that he had available to him at the time. The Received Text is also an eclectic text, i.e., it takes the “best of” all the manuscripts available but follows no one single manuscript entirely. There were a number of problems with Erasmus’s version (for example, he didn’t have Greek manuscripts for the entire NT so he “back translated” parts of Revelation from the Vulgate) but for its time, it was an amazing feat. The Received Text formed the basis for Reformation-era vernacular translations such as the King James Version and the Luther Bible.

Modern versions of the Greek New Testament continue to be eclectic texts although many more manuscripts are considered when trying to determine what the original version of the New Testament might have looked like. We are now on the 27th edition of the Greek New Testament.

 

[wed2catholic]

Thank you. These are all helpful answers. Does anyone else have any info?

 

[Salvatore123]

wed2catholic,

If you look at some of the threads regarding “sola scriptura” and “biblical canon”, you will soon see a great divergence of not only what text to use - but which CANON to use.

Catholics have 73 book bibles; most protestants recognize only 66 “official” books for their bibles, but include them under the title “apocrypha”; and the Orthodox Church has even more than the Catholic bibles.

Despite what you may have been told or taught in the past, I assure you that:

(1) the autographs (that is, the original manuscripts written by the authors of each book) are long gone,

(2) every bible in existence today, and everyone that has been published for over 1600 years, is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. (with no one knowing how many copies existed between the autograph and the first bible compiled by St. Jerome)

(3) although inspired by the Holy Spirit, in both authoring and book “selection”, the bible was “compiled” by mortal, fallible men, who were guided infallibly to write and compile God’s word.

If you accept the above premises as fact (with some “leaps of faith” thrown in ), you will be on your way to becoming Catholic.