Galatians220
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
The NKJV has been marketed as "The King James Bible, only better." But it is not: The NKJV Examined.
The NKJV largely adopts the same CT "variants" as the NASB and the NIV. Much of it has other bases, among them the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), and not that of the KJV:
...Because of modern textual criticism, the certainty and dogmatism of a settled biblical text has been replaced with the uncertainty of conflicting texts.
This is true for the New Testament. Westcott and Hort’s principles that gave us the critical Greek text in 1881 have undergone continual modification throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, and the Greek Testament based on those theories has also continually shifted, with a subsequent change in the translations based on it. The 3rd edition of the UBS Greek New Testament differed from the 2nd edition three years earlier in more than 500 places, and the same five textual critics made those changes.
The same is true for the Old Testament. With the introduction of textual theories whereby the Hebrew Masoretic text was dethroned, the Old Testament has undergone continual revision on the basis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Targums, the Symmachus and Theodotion Greek translations of the Old Testament, and other sources. These are the sources listed in the Preface to the 1978 New International Version as the basis for the NIV O.T. translation (pp. viii, xi). Dr. Donald Waite observes: “The NIV editors have very honestly and very boldly altered the foundations of our Old Testament text in the above fifteen DIFFERENT WAYS, whenever it suited their fancy! You don't know at what point they’ve used one document to contradict the Masoretic Hebrew text, and at what point they used another document” (Waite, Defending the King James Bible). According to Dr. Waite’s calculations, the 1937 Hebrew text by Rudolph Kittel (Biblia Hebraica) and the 1977 Stuttgart edition of the Hebrew Old Testament (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) contain footnotes listing some 20,000 to 30,000 textual changes. Even the New King James Bible, which professes to follow the same textual foundation as the King James Bible, follows instead an eclectic Old Testament, modifying the Hebrew Masoretic with the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, “a variety of ancient versions,” and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New King James Bible, Preface). As with the New Testament, those who are doing the revision of the Old Testament do not agree in their principles or their conclusions. Consider one area of O.T. textual evidence, that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first of these was discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947, with subsequent finds in nearby caves. The first finds supported the Masoretic text but subsequent finds unearthed some O.T. manuscripts that differ from the Masoretic. Textual scholars do not agree on many important points touching these manuscripts, not even their date. G.R. Driver (1965) disagreed with Burrows, Albright, and Cross, claiming that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the first two centuries A.D., rather than B.C. This is brought out in the book Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) by F.F. Bruce. The very title of the book exposes the fact that the textual scholars disagree and that their conclusions are in flux.
...The contemporary doctrine of eclecticism has elevated the Bible student as the master of the text and has resulted in a massive decline in the authority of the Scriptures in this generation.
The concept of dogmatic interpretation and preaching has faded greatly because of this damnable principle. In a typical Bible study in a church that has bought into eclecticism, every individual is an authority unto his or herself as to what Greek manuscript or Greek text or English translation to follow in any given instance. There is no dogmatic authority for any statement, because someone can always come up with an alternative reading. This same principle has greatly weakened the authority of Bible preaching. I recall a visit in August 2003 to Saddleback Church in southern California, where Rick Warren of “Purpose Driven Church” fame is senior pastor. I observed on the way into the auditorium that only a few people carried Bibles, and the reason became clear when I saw the bewildering multiplicity of versions that were used in the preaching. An outline of the sermon was handed out with the bulletin, and six or seven versions were quoted, most of them loose paraphrases or dynamic equivalencies such as the Living Bible, the New Living Translation, The Message, Today’s English Version, and the Contemporary English Version. It would be impossible to follow along in one’s Bible. The result is that the people do not bring their own Bibles and do not therefore carefully test the preaching. How could they, when any biblical statement they would attempt to examine has dozens of variations?
...The uncertainty produced by modern textual criticism has given ammunition to the enemies of the Bible.
They recognize, even if the evangelicals and fundamentalists who have adopted textual criticism don’t, that an array of conflicting texts and versions undermines the doctrine of divine inspiration and preservation.
...Modern textual criticism has led many into theological modernism.
(Emphasis is mine; this is copied from www.wayoflife.org.)
Very sorry for the earlier, off-topic posts. I deleted them.
Margaret
The NKJV largely adopts the same CT "variants" as the NASB and the NIV. Much of it has other bases, among them the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), and not that of the KJV:
...Because of modern textual criticism, the certainty and dogmatism of a settled biblical text has been replaced with the uncertainty of conflicting texts.
This is true for the New Testament. Westcott and Hort’s principles that gave us the critical Greek text in 1881 have undergone continual modification throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, and the Greek Testament based on those theories has also continually shifted, with a subsequent change in the translations based on it. The 3rd edition of the UBS Greek New Testament differed from the 2nd edition three years earlier in more than 500 places, and the same five textual critics made those changes.
The same is true for the Old Testament. With the introduction of textual theories whereby the Hebrew Masoretic text was dethroned, the Old Testament has undergone continual revision on the basis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Targums, the Symmachus and Theodotion Greek translations of the Old Testament, and other sources. These are the sources listed in the Preface to the 1978 New International Version as the basis for the NIV O.T. translation (pp. viii, xi). Dr. Donald Waite observes: “The NIV editors have very honestly and very boldly altered the foundations of our Old Testament text in the above fifteen DIFFERENT WAYS, whenever it suited their fancy! You don't know at what point they’ve used one document to contradict the Masoretic Hebrew text, and at what point they used another document” (Waite, Defending the King James Bible). According to Dr. Waite’s calculations, the 1937 Hebrew text by Rudolph Kittel (Biblia Hebraica) and the 1977 Stuttgart edition of the Hebrew Old Testament (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) contain footnotes listing some 20,000 to 30,000 textual changes. Even the New King James Bible, which professes to follow the same textual foundation as the King James Bible, follows instead an eclectic Old Testament, modifying the Hebrew Masoretic with the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, “a variety of ancient versions,” and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New King James Bible, Preface). As with the New Testament, those who are doing the revision of the Old Testament do not agree in their principles or their conclusions. Consider one area of O.T. textual evidence, that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first of these was discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947, with subsequent finds in nearby caves. The first finds supported the Masoretic text but subsequent finds unearthed some O.T. manuscripts that differ from the Masoretic. Textual scholars do not agree on many important points touching these manuscripts, not even their date. G.R. Driver (1965) disagreed with Burrows, Albright, and Cross, claiming that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the first two centuries A.D., rather than B.C. This is brought out in the book Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) by F.F. Bruce. The very title of the book exposes the fact that the textual scholars disagree and that their conclusions are in flux.
...The contemporary doctrine of eclecticism has elevated the Bible student as the master of the text and has resulted in a massive decline in the authority of the Scriptures in this generation.
The concept of dogmatic interpretation and preaching has faded greatly because of this damnable principle. In a typical Bible study in a church that has bought into eclecticism, every individual is an authority unto his or herself as to what Greek manuscript or Greek text or English translation to follow in any given instance. There is no dogmatic authority for any statement, because someone can always come up with an alternative reading. This same principle has greatly weakened the authority of Bible preaching. I recall a visit in August 2003 to Saddleback Church in southern California, where Rick Warren of “Purpose Driven Church” fame is senior pastor. I observed on the way into the auditorium that only a few people carried Bibles, and the reason became clear when I saw the bewildering multiplicity of versions that were used in the preaching. An outline of the sermon was handed out with the bulletin, and six or seven versions were quoted, most of them loose paraphrases or dynamic equivalencies such as the Living Bible, the New Living Translation, The Message, Today’s English Version, and the Contemporary English Version. It would be impossible to follow along in one’s Bible. The result is that the people do not bring their own Bibles and do not therefore carefully test the preaching. How could they, when any biblical statement they would attempt to examine has dozens of variations?
...The uncertainty produced by modern textual criticism has given ammunition to the enemies of the Bible.
They recognize, even if the evangelicals and fundamentalists who have adopted textual criticism don’t, that an array of conflicting texts and versions undermines the doctrine of divine inspiration and preservation.
...Modern textual criticism has led many into theological modernism.
(Emphasis is mine; this is copied from www.wayoflife.org.)
Very sorry for the earlier, off-topic posts. I deleted them.
Margaret