The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his125/majority.lzh/MAJORITY.TXT

Text File | 1991-07-08 | 6.6 KB | 122 lines

PER:Does 1 John 5:7 belong in the Bible?  by Peter Ruckman

   It is a standard cliche taught by Metzger, Hort, Bob Jones III,
Custer, Zane Hodges, Curtis Hutson, and all apostate Fundamentalists
(Waite, Hudson, Combs, Dell, Walker, Sherman, et al), that 1 John 5:7
has no business being in the Bible because Erasmus only added it after
finding a sixteenth century Greek manuscript (61) probably "written in
Oxford in 1520 by a Franciscan friar." On the basis of this
"historical" fairy tale the NIV omits the "Johannine Comma," and so
does the ASV and NASV along with the RSV and NRSV and similar Roman
Catholic Alexandrian productions.

   How well do I remember my dear professor at Bob Jones, back in 1951,
telling me that there was NO Greek manuscript evidence for the reading.
When I called 61 to his attention he said, "Well, only one." He lied.
Professor Armin Panning (New Testament Textual Criticism) lists an
eleventh century manuscript. I was then told, "Well, that is all." It
wasn't all. There was a ninth century manuscript that the Vulgate used
to put the verse into its text with. That all? Well, not by a long
shot. It shows up in the Old Latin of the fifth century. Knowing this,
supercilious little pipsqueaks like Doug Kutilek respond with "Well, if
you are going to correct the Greek with the Old Latin why don't you use
the Old Latin every time to correct the Greek?" Because we are
"eclectic," just like anyone else. The AV translators didn't choose
either every time, so why should we?

   Here is a twelfth century manuscript (min. 88) with the words found
in the margin, but it is cited as scripture in a fourth century Latin
treatise by Priscillian. Get rid of Priscillian. They do; all of the
critics of the Johannine Comma call him a "heretic." That is what the
Roman Catholic Church called him.

   The plot thickens. When Cardinal Ximenes planned to print his
Polyglot in 1502 he planned to include 1 John 5:7-8 and did. He stated
that he had taken care to secure a number of Greek manuscripts; he
described some of these as very "ancient codices" sent to Spain from
Rome. Why haven't the manuscript detectives given us a complete list of
these "ancient codices"? They must have contained 1 John 5:7. Ximenes
printed the verse.

   Shall we do some homework? I mean, why stop with the insipid,
shallow, traditional cliches of the faculty and staff of Louisville,
Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas, BJU, BBC, and the University of
Chicago?

   John Gill (appealed to by Doug Kutilek as a CORRECTOR of the AV)
says that Fullgentius cites the passage at the beginning of the sixth
century (where did he get it? From a friar at Oxford in 1520?), and
Jerome cites it in his epistle to Eustochium and wants to know why it
was excluded (450 A.D.). But Gill says further that Athanasius cites it
in 350 A.D. WHERE FROM? Jerome's Latin Vulgate? Jerome hadn't been born
yet.

   But why stop here? Gill says that CYPRIAN quotes it in 250 A.D.
nearly one hundred years before Sinaiticus or Vaticanus were written.
(Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament (3 vols.), Vol. 2, pp.
907-8), and Tertullian beats him by fifty years. Tertullian evidently
had Erasmus's manuscript 61 in 200 A.D., more than one hundred years
before Vaticanus and Sinaiticus removed the verses from the text.

   Why was I not given this material at BJU? How is it that the faculty
and staff at Tennessee Temple and Liberty University never picked up
the information? How does one explain this cocky, blatant, dogmatic
correction of the Holy Bible going on year after year by lazy children
who have not done their homework? These are the people that think YOU
are a fanatic for believing the Book. These are amateurs like Kutilek
and Hudson whose lives are taken up with simply reproducing CLICHES
that are passed on from one legendary campfire to another as
Alexandrian myths move from generation to generation.

   When the AV committee sat down they didn't have just Erasmus and his
"61." They had Diodab in Italian, Luther in German, Olivetan in French,
and Geneva in English, plus six Waldensian Bibles whose sources come
from the fourth and fifth centuries. Suppose you couldn't find a Greek
manuscript reading for 1 John 5:7 but saw it show up in 200 A.D., again
in 250 A.D., again in 325 A.D., again in 350 A.D., and then found it in
four anti-Catholic texts which were based on Old Latin that often
disagreed with the Vulgate?

   Don't get much for your tuition these days, do ya?

   Manuscript 61: Professor Michaelis says that this manuscript in four
chapters in Mark possess three coincidences with the OLD SYRIAC, two of
which agree with the Old Itala, while they differ from every Greek
manuscript extant. Do you mind if I remind you of something very basic?
The AV of the English Reformation and Luther's Heilige Schrift of the
German Reformation BOTH contain the Johannine Comma. "By their fruits
ye shall know them." (I just thought I would throw that in there
"extra, free of charge," since by now any scholar reading this has
already become completely unglued and has forgotten the basics.)

   Manuscript 61 was supposed to have been written between 1519 and
1522; the question comes up "from WHAT?" Not from Ximenes; his wasn't
out yet. Not from Erasmus for it doesn't match his "Greek" in places.
The literal affinities in 61 are with the SYRIAC (see Acts 11:26), and
that version was not known in Europe until 1552 (Moses Mardin). The Old
Latin and Old Syriac (despite Custer of BJU espousing the liberal
theories of the unsaved scholar Burkitt) date from 130 and 150 A.D. The
Diatesseron of Tatian (Syriac) which has the King James readings in
Luke 2:33 and Matthew 1:25 and Matthew 6:13, contrary to Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus, was written no later than 180 A.D., and probably earlier.

   The contested verse (1 John 5:7) is quoted at the Council of
Carthage (415 A. D.) by Eugenius, who drew up the confession of faith
for the "orthodox." It reads with the King James. How did 350 prelates
in 415 A.D. take a verse to be orthodox that wasn't in the Bible? It
had to exist there from the beginning. It came out. "Pater, VERBUM, et
Spiritus Sanctus" (1 John 5:7).

   So the old dead heads at BJU lied to me, like they are Iying right
now to a couple of hundred "ministerial students." They have plenty of
company. The faculty at Dallas, Denver, and Pacific Coast are doing the
same thing. Ditto Lynchburg, Arlington, and Springfield. The CULT IS
THE CULT.

   There is no cure for apostasy.

   Keep 1 John 5:7, and if "the Greek" doesn't have it, you know what
to do. CORRECT "THE GREEK"!

   Amen and Amen.