The Textus Receptus

I wanted to share with you a great article that my father William Weston wrote not that long ago. I think he with some great research really sums up the heart of this whole 'King James Debate' as some like to call it. You have probably heard things like "If it was good enough for Paul it is good enough for me" as well as other unscholarly things from people that call themselves "King James Only". But the true debate here is about the preservation of God's Word through history and that should interest any one that believes that God preserves His word even down to the jot and tittle. If God has to preserve His word that would ultimately suggest that there are men either accidentally or intentionally that have damaged it. This is the story of the Textus Receptus which I have come to believe is the word of God along with the Hebrew texts that we have today.

As far as the King James it is a translation and my preferred one at that. Any translation has mistakes including this one, but the Textus Receptus is the closest thing we have to the original manuscrip in Paul's handwritting. I have my reasons for choosing the King James which I will not go into here. I think it is a work of art and a foundation stone for Christianity in the English world, but that is enough of my rambling here is the article.

The King James Version vs. Latinized Bibles

By William Weston 

Many modern English translations of the New Testament have footnotes indicating variations among 

Greek manuscripts. Most of the time these footnotes indicate words, phrases and even whole verses 

that have been omitted from the main text. Gradually, as time goes on, with the printing of newer 

Bibles, the footnotes are   removed and all evidence of missing words, phrases, and verses disappear 

into a black hole. Today’s readers of the Bible are often unaware that they are reading a condensed 

Bible. A comparison of some verses shows the difference between an older translation and a modern 

one.

King James Version	New American Standard
Mat. 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.	"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
Mat. 27:35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.	And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves by casting lots.
Luke 11:2 Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.	Father, hallowed be Your name.
I Cor. 10:28 But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that showed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof:	But if anyone says to you, "This is meat sacrificed to idols," do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience' sake;
Col. 1:14 In whom we have redemption through his blood even the forgiveness of sins	in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

To understand why there is a difference we must go back in time to a diplomatic and ecclesiastic

 conference conducted in the city of Florence in 1439. Threatened by the growing power of the 

Moslems, the Greek emperor John Palaeogus departed from the city of Constantinople to appeal 

for help. Desperate for Western armies and navies, John agreed to the any terms, including the

latinization of the rites and theology of the Greek Orthodox Church. This meant that the Greeks had 

to become Roman Catholics. John’s diplomatic efforts ultimately proved futile, for the military aid 

was too little and too late. The Greek empire fell to the Turks in 1453.

A stipulation of the treaty was a revision of the Greek New Testament to make it conform to the 

Latin Vulgate. A sixteenth century scholar named Erasmus said,“It should be pointed out here in 

passing, that certain Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have been corrected in agreement 

with those of the Latin Christians. This was done at the time of the [1439] reunion of the Greeks 

and the Roman church. This union was confirmed in writing in the so-called Golden Bull. It was that 

this [the adaptation of the Greek biblical manuscripts to the Latin] would contribute to the 

strengthening of the unity.”  (Rummel, p. 39)

The Greek New Testament had to be modified to conform to the Latin Vulgate, which in the eyes of the 

Roman Catholics was more sacred than the Greek text, even though strangely enough the Latin is itself

a translation from the Greek. After the Council of Florence, a small number of Greek scholars moved 

into Italy to begin the task of “latinizing” the Greek manuscripts. This meant scrapping off the ink of a 

disputed passage and re-writing it with the approved alteration. The parchment pages of the manuscripts 

had the kind of surface that allowed this kind of erasing and re-writing. Their task was complicated by 

the fact that there was at that time no standard text of the Latin Vulgate. Variations from manuscript to

manuscript were many: confusion of words that sound alike and letter substitutions resulting in the 

formation of different words. Sometimes scribes had to erase a text in order to put something that was 

supposedly superior. Erasmus examined a Latin manuscript of the Gospels kept at the College of 

Constance and observed that at Matthew 23:25 “a corrupter had erased the genuine text.” 

(Rummel, p. 110) He inspected the Pauline codex and found at 1 Cor. 8:6 the true reading, almost 

obliterated, underneath the altered reading written on top (Rummel, p. 110). From such imperfect 

materials, the Greek scribes had to make the modifications that would render their own texts as bad as 

the Latin Vulgate. 

The inaccurate transmission of the Latin text can be partially attributed to the emergence of new 

languages that took the place of the dead Latin language. Manuscript-copying scribes whose native 

tongues consisted of Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese struggled with unfamiliar words. One 

scribe substituted the word “evertit” (overturns) for the word “everrit” (sweeps) in Luke 15:8, which 

is the parable of the lost coin. The ridiculous picture of a woman overturning her house to look for the 

lost coin must have puzzled readers of these words. In I Cor. 11:24, the Vulgate has Jesus saying, 

“This is my body which shall be given up for you.” Catholic theologians thought that this verse supported

the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is the miracle of the bread or wafer turning into the actual body 

of Christ. The actual reading according to the Greek should have been: “This is my body which is broken

for you.” The bread, broken during the Last Supper, symbolically represents His “broken” body, meaning

suffering death on the cross. The errors that crept into the Latin Vulgate attained a time-honored status 

and even became sacred to the poorly educated Christians of the West. 

The Latin Vulgate also lost a lot of words as a result of sleepy or inattentive scribes failing to proofread their work. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) compared manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate to five Greek codices and found a lot of missing words in the Vulgate, such as Luke 6:26. The Vulgate said, “Woe to you when men speak well of you, for so their fathers behaved toward the prophets.” Valla found an additional word in the Greek that clarified the meaning of this verse: “Woe to you when men speak well of you, for so their fathers behaved toward the false prophets.” The Vulgate also lacks the last words of the Lord’s prayer, “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” Valla complained that Latin scribes had left out “a good chunk of Scripture.”

Let us now look at the Greek text. The integrity of the text can be attributed to the ongoing use of Greek

as a spoken language. The original words of Peter, Paul, and other apostles were familiar to the people.

Unlike the terrorized scribes of Western Europe who had to worry about marauding barbarian hordes, 

scribes in Eastern Europe had the advantage of living in a peaceful, stable society. Good roads and a 

reliable postal system enabled copyists to check their work against exemplars in well-established 

ecclesiastical libraries in major centers of the empire.

The classically educated Greek scribes were highly disciplined in copying manuscripts. 

Strict regulations ensured accuracy. Proofreading and double, sometimes multiple, checking 

was the order of the day. The penalty for soiling a copy was fifty genuflexions. A triple 

amount was assigned for omitting an accent or punctuation mark. A diet of bread and water 

and solitary confinement for three days was the fate of the copyist who left out any part 

of the original. For most scribes the task of copying the Scriptures was not onerous, but 

was instead deemed as an honorable task and an act of worship. 

Beginning in 1495 Erasmus travelled around Europe looking for Greek manuscripts that had not been   

“latinzed” in order to do a print edition of the Greek New Testament and he wanted to use uncorrupted   

texts. Thousands of uncorrupted texts were in the     cities of the old Greek empire, but that region was    

then under Moslem control. Erasmus went to England and the Brabant, and wherever he went he  found 

corrupted manuscripts. A Greek twelfth century manuscript supplied by the Augustinians of 

Corsendonck was “very elegant” yet “nothing can be more faulty … it has been corrected 

against the Latin text.” (Rummel, p. 39) 

A scholar writing to Erasmus recommended he use a manuscript of the Epistles called

the “Rhodian” manuscript, but Erasmus was not interested. He said, “I have found that some Greek 

manuscripts had been corrected against our [Latin Vulgate] copies, one of which I suspect this 

Rhodian to be.”

Erasmus could have used a very famous manuscript called the Codex Vaticanus written with uncial letters, today considered the earliest and most authoritative of the Greek manuscripts. This is the predominant text used by modern translations (except the New King James Version). Although Erasmus never saw it, he acknowledged that it was “a very old manuscript in the Vatican Library . . . if anyone is impressed by age, the book was very ancient.” His knowledge of it came indirectly from correspondence with a Spanish priest named Sepulveda who sent him a selection of 365 readings. The priest thought Erasmus would be impressed by how these readings agreed with the Latin Vulgate. He must have been surprised when he learned that they had the opposite effect. On the basis of the quotes provided Erasmus realized that this old manuscript suffered much tampering. He therefore rejected the Codex Vaticanus. After the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament came out, Sepulveda offered to make the whole text available for a future edition. Erasmus declined. Commenting on the text, he said, “. . . after the Greeks were united with the Roman church, their texts were amended after the Latin manuscripts. Among these, I gather from many circumstances, was the one written in uncials.” (Rummel, p. 132).

Erasmus’s search for uncorrupted Greek manuscripts finally ended in Basel, Switzerland, where he found in a Dominican library the uncorrupted texts he was looking for. Six manuscripts were donated to the library upon the death of Cardinal John of Ragusa in 1437. What is interesting about these particular texts is that they were brought to Western Europe before the Council of Florence of 1439. At that time, the bishops of Basel were in opposition to the pope, so these six manuscripts were beyond the reach of latinizing Greek scribes loyal to the interests of Rome.

The manuscripts in Basel included (1) a twelfth century manuscript of the Gospels, (2) an eleventh/twelfth century manuscript of the Gospels, (3) a twelfth century manuscript of Acts and the Epistles, (4) a fifteenth century manuscript of the Acts and Epistles; (5) an eleventh century manuscript of the Epistles, and (6) a twelfth century manuscript of Revelation. None of these manuscripts were ancient. To check their accuracy, Erasmus referred to his notes gathered from examining manuscripts in other countries. He also surveyed Church Fathers, especially John Chrysostom and Theophylactus, whose quotations and commentaries were invaluable. (Rummel, p. 143)

  

After Erasmus printed the first edition, Protestant reformation leaders such as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin readily made use of it in framing Reformation doctrine and theology. In 1633 a Greek New Testament was printed by Abraham Elzevir, who wrote in the preface that his edition was “the text, now received by all, in which (is) nothing corrupt”. The Elzevir edition became known as the Textus Receptus, and this name was retroactively applied to the Erasmus editions. In 1526 William Tyndale published the first English translation based on Erasmus’ third edition.

Roman Catholic scholars were not pleased by Erasmus’ work which displaced the Latin Vulgate from its position of authority. They asserted that the Vulgate preserved the words of the apostles better than the Greek did. One outspoken scholar said that the Vulgate was directly inspired by the Holy Spirit (Rummel, p. 31) These men demanded that all Greek manuscripts be revised to conform with the Vulgate. They called for official condemnation of Erasmus, and his New Testament was eventually put on the Index of Prohibited Books.

In spite of these dogmatic assertions, there was still no standard version of the Latin. The Council of Trent commissioned the pope to make a standard text out of the countless editions produced during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The authorized text did not appear until 1590. Corrections and revisions were still needed and a new edition called the Clementine Vulgate appeared in 1592. This edition is still the officially recognized version.

  

Supporting the Latin Vulgate was the Codex Vaticanus. The text of the Vulgate conformed to the Vaticanus (or is it the other way around?). Scholars wanting to check the Vaticanus were denied access. After many delays, the Vatican authorized Cardinal Angelo Mai to publish the Codex Vaticanus. He completed his edition in 1839, but it was not released until 1858 (ostensibly on the grounds of inaccuracies), four years after the cardinal’s death. It had 759 pages (617 of the Old Testament and 142 of the New Testament), averaging 11 inches x 11 inches, three columns 42 lines per columns. It lacks a portion of Hebrews after 9:14, I and II Tim., Titus, Philemon, and Revelations.

  

Joining the Vaticanus is another old manuscript discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert in 1844. The Siniaticus, like the Vaticanus, has dots in the margin indicating passages deleted. Scribal dots were placed near Luke 22:43-44: “There appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became as it were great drops of falling down upon the ground.”The above verses were not deleted after all, because a later scribe had erased the dots, leaving trace impressions. It is noteworthy to add that these words have been deleted in the Vatican Text. (Bentley, p. xxx) A corrector of the Gospel of Luke in the Sinaiticus deleted a prayer of Jesus when he was on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Thousands of alterations appear over every page.

B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, both professors at Cambridge, were ardent admirers of the Vatican and the Sinai texts and called for a new English translation based on them. They condemned the King James Version and its foundational text. Hort said, I had no idea until the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus. Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late manuscripts." 

B.F. Westcott

F.J.A. Hort

Hort, an Anglican minister, had Roman Catholic sentiments. He said, "The pure Romanish view seems to be nearer, and more likely to lead to the truth than the Evangelical." (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 77) "I agree with you in thinking it a pity that Maurice verbally repudiates purgatory . . . (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. II, pp. 336)

In 1881, Westcott and Hort published their edition which is 90% word for word Vatican text. The remainder consists of 7% Sinaitic text, and 3% from others. It is remarkable how much the NASB resembles the Douay-Rheims, the Catholic English Bible. Below is a comparison of the three translations.

Verse	King James Version	Douay-Rheims	NASB
Matt. 9:13	for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinnersto repentance.	for I am not come to call the just, but sinners.	for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Mark 10:21	and come, take up the cross, and follow me.	and come, follow me.	and come, follow Me.
Mark 1:11	Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.	Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased	You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased
Luke 2:40	And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit,filled with wisdom	And the child grew and waxed strong, full of wisdom:	the Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom;
Acts 2:41	they that gladly received his word	they therefore that received his word	those who had received his word
I Cor. 11:24	And said, Take, eat, this is my body, which isbroken for you, this do in remembrance of me.	And said, “This is my body which shall be given up for you; do this in remembrance of me.”	And said, “This is My Body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Eph. 3:9	God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:	God who created all things:	God created all things;
I Tim. 6:5	Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from suchwithdraw thyself.	Conflicts of men corrupted in mind and who are destitute of the truth, supposing gain to be godliness.	and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
Jude 1:25	To the only wise God our Savior	To the only God our Savior	to the only God our Savior,
Rev. 11:17	O LORD God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come;	O Lord God Almighty, who art and who wast	O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were,

It should be borne in mind that the NASB is based on two fourth century codices, but the Douay-Rheims is translated from the Latin Vulgate. Their similarities are therefore striking. The NASB and other modern translations are based on a text that has many deletions. People who use a modern translation must depend on scholars trained in textual criticism to determine the inspiration or truth of any one particular passage. On the other hand, people who use the Textus Receptus can rely on a text faithfully transmitted from the apostles of the first century.

Bibliography

Bentley, James. Secrets of Mount Sinai: The Story of the Codex Sinaiticus, 1985

Rummel, Erika. Erasmus' Annotations on the New Testament, 1986