Chapter Four         God Breathed Scripture   Scholarship is important. However, we are dealing with a “Living” document of the Eternal Living God Who “breathed into his (Adam’s) nostrils the BREATH OF LIFE; and man became a Living Soul!” (Genesis 2:7) Likewise, “All Scripture” is “God-breathed.” The phrase “given by inspiration of God (II Timothy 3:16) is from just one Greek word (theopneustos). Thus, “THE WORD OF GOD is quick (Old English for LIVING)! (Hebrews 4:12) Every single WORD is vibrant with the very Life of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. We must never forget “…holy men of God spake (and wrote scripture) as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (Spirit).” (II Peter 1:21, 20). Nathaniel T. Jeanson, Ph.D. from Harvard University put it this way: “Though the Bible was written by many human authors, it has a single divine Author who knows the end from the beginning and who chose exactly what material He wanted in the Bible for a purpose that spans all of history. (Therefore)…it is the only completely reliable source of Truth about the past.” Now what happened in 1870 to open the door to the flood gates of translation after translation, to the point that today we have dozens and dozens of “English” bibles that again is causing confusion of faiths? Where is our King James to settle this? Remember, “…God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” (I Corinthians 14:33) Imagine the disorder when a minister reads his favorite translation of Psalm 23 along with the members present who were asked to read it along with him-each using their favorite translation! On February 10, 1870 the Bishop of Winchester proposed to the leaders of the Church of England that “…a report upon the desirableness of a revision of the Authorized Version of the New Testament…” be done. After much debate, on June 22, 1870 the English New Testament Revision Committee began. A subsequent English Old Testament Committee was taken up and also began in 1870. The translators of this new revision wrote their purpose in the preface: “The English Version of the New Testament here presented to the reader is a Revision of the Translation published in the year of Our Lord 1611, and commonly known by the name of the Authorized Version.” (1881 Edition, it’s first). Later in 1885 the entire English Version (E.V.) was the first published. However these same translators revealed that it was based on a different foundation than that of the 1611 English Bible! They wrote also in the preface: “A revision of the Greek text was the necessary foundation for our work…” This Greek Text was that of Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, both leading scholars of the Church of England. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition, it was “their own revision”. In other words, it was a new revision of the Greek in the New Testament. Over the next ten years they spoon-fed the N.T. committee, of which they were a part, with their own Greek revision, which was deliberately not published until 1881 so that it would not reveal its significant difference from the traditional “Received Text (Textus Receptus),” from which all previous English Bibles used. The “Received Test” was copied and preserved by the Christian Church, going back to Paul. There are well over 5,000 Greek Manuscripts that prove its originality (going even back to the 1st Century). The revised Greek of Westcott and Hort when studied is purely based on the 45 known manuscripts from Alexander, Egypt. They are products of Gnostic (non-Christian) believers. Only two of these are said to be complete: Vaticanus (Codex B) and Sinaiticus (Codex Alph). They are both housed by the Vatican Library of the Roman Catholic Church. These two pillars of all the modern translations (beginning with the English Version of 1881) disagree in well over 6,000 places. One does not include the Book of Revelation, as it has a spurious epistle that states “to take the Mark of the Beast”! The secrets that modern translators don’t want known or even discussed is that these 2 foundations of modern translations not only disagree with each other, they both have different spurious epistles canonized! Also, these total of 45 manuscripts are less than 1% of all known Greek manuscripts! Most of the scholars of the 1870 English Bible Revision Committee had good hearts and were trying to do the right thing. However they were trapped in a “conspiracy” to sabotage their work. How can this charge be made? Because Westcott and Hort’s own sons each preserved all their writings- including correspondence of the secret work to totally change the Greek foundation of the New Testament! These volumes are both well over 900 pages each. They were most likely doing this out of pride, not knowing that they preserved hard evidence of villainy. Yes, this account reads like a mystery novel. And yes, bad guys are part of such an account. They also had one other co-conspirator Joseph Barber Lightfoot. Westcott wrote Hort on May 28, 1870: “…I feel that as we three (including Lightfoot) are together it would be wrong not to ‘make the best of it’…” It being the systematic change in the 1611 English Bible, based on their systematic change in the Greek text. To this point Westcott wrote Hort concerning Dr. Ellicott, the chairman: “The Bishop of Gloucester seems to me to be quite capable of accepting heartily and adopting personally a thorough scheme.” Of Westcott and Hort, Dr. Benjamin G. Wilkinson wrote in his 1930 book, entitled “Our Authorized Bible Vindicated”: “Westcott believed that the death of Christ was of His human nature, not of His Divine nature…Dr. Hort agrees…Both rejected the atonement of the substitution of Christ for the sinner, or vicarious atonement; both denied that the death of Christ counted for anything as an atoning factor. They emphasized atonement through the Incarnation. This is the Catholic doctrine. It helps defend the Mass.” This root of the understanding of the Roman Catholic beliefs of Westcott and Hort reveals what motivated their changing of God’s Sacred Scriptures. When and if this foundational understanding is recognized, then the knowledge of these modern versions are all variations of the Catholic Bible and not that of the one and only “God- Breathed” Word!! Dr. Dean John William Burgon, a conservative Anglican Minister, wrote five books; several articles; and much correspondence (even with Hort) all about his corruption of God’s Pure Word. Dean Burgon wrote: “The Text of Dr. Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared, or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred Autographs, or the furthest from them. There is no room for both opinions; and there cannot exist any middle view.” This recognized scholar went on to write: “Those who first invent their facts, and then proceed to build their premises on them, do but go astray themselves, and then hopelessly mislead others… I repeat- for I wish it to be distinctly understood and remembered- that what I assert concerning those Critics is- not that their (Westcott and Hort’s) superstructure rests upon an insecure foundation; but that it rests on no foundation at all. My complaint is – not that they are somewhat and frequently mistaken; but that they are mistaken entirely, and that they are mistaken throughout. There is no possibility of approximation between their mere assumptions, and the results of my humble and laborious method of dealing with the Text of Scripture. We shall only then be able to begin to reason together with the slightest prospect of coming to any agreement when they have unconditionally abandoned all their pre-conceived imaginations, and un-reservedly scattered every one of their postulates to the four winds.” He concluded his criticism of Westcott and Hort’s involvement and influence in corrupting the Word of God thusly: “The issue of this prolonged contention I now commend, with deep humility, to Almighty God. The Spirit of Truth will (I know) take good care of His Own Masterpiece the Written Word…if my conclusions are sound throughout, then may He enable men freely to recognize the Truth; and thus effectively avert from our Church the supreme calamity…of having an utterly depraved Recension of the Greek Text of the New Testament thrust upon it, as the basis of a very questionable ‘Revision’…of English”. If Dean Burgon lived past his seventy-five years of life, having died in 1888, he would have witnessed that the common public population did “recognize the Truth” of the matter. The English Revision died quickly and quietly as people soon returned to their familiar 1611 Authorized Bible with its beautiful inspired language.   Copyright 2011 Stephen and Lola Lee Grisham. All Rights Reserved. Concerning Hubble Images, Non-commercial use: For all its copyrighted materials, STScI allows reproduction, authorship of derivative works, and other transformations of the original work strictly for educational and research purposes without further permission, and subject to the General Conditions. For other non-commercial uses, permission should be obtained from AURA/STScI http://hubblesite.org/copyright/.