BRETHREN IN CHRIST:
This matter is very simple. It is about a false attack upon the 1611 King James Bible, and in particular against the Greek
Textus Receptus (
Received Text) that was used for the New Testament, and came from the Traditional Greek texts, or
Majority texts, which make up the majority of Greek New Testament manuscripts. A lot of these manuscripts are from Antioch, where those in Christ were first called Christians (Acts 11:26).
The
New King James Version Bible is still 'different'... than the original 1611 KJV in the New Testament. Influence of the scholars of Textual Criticism just couldn't stand leaving it alone, as the
Preface of the
NKJV reveals it contains additional... readings from '
different'... Greek texts which the 1611 KJV translators did not use.
The following is from the
Preface of the
New King James Version Bible, as presented at blueletterbible.org.
The King James New Testament was based on the traditional text of the Greek-speaking churches, first published in 1516, and later called the Textus Receptus or Received Text. Although based on the relatively few available manuscripts, these were representative of many more which existed at the time but only became known later. In the late nineteenth century, B. Westcott and F. Hort taught that this text had been officially edited by the fourth-century church, but a total lack of historical evidence for this event has forced a revision of the theory. It is now widely held that the Byzantine Text that largely supports the Textus Receptus has as much right as the Alexandrian or any other tradition to be weighed in determining the text of the New Testament.
Since the 1880s most contemporary translations of the New Testament have relied upon a relatively few manuscripts discovered chiefly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such translations depend primarily on two manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, because of their greater age. The Greek text obtained by using these sources and the related papyri (our most ancient manuscripts) is known as the Alexandrian Text. However, some scholars have grounds for doubting the faithfulness of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, since they often disagree with one another, and Sinaiticus exhibits excessive omission.
Wescott and Hort in 1881 released their Greek New Testament revision for the revision committee of English scholars, handing each scholar in secret a copy of their personal Greek revision. 19th century British Bible scholar Dean John W. Burgon studied Wescott and Hort's revision and balked at their revised text, claiming they had actually created a 'new'... Greek NT text.
This revision committee came about as a result of the discovery of the
Codex Sinaiticus in 1859 by Tischendorf. In that same era the Vatican's Greek Bible based on
Codex Vaticanus, was published.
The
NKJV Preface goes on to explain about new Footnotes it contains, revealing the Greek texts used in the translation for the
NKJV New Testament...
"Where significant variations occur in the New Testament Greek manuscripts, textual notes are classified as follows:
- NU-Text — There variations from the traditional text generally represent the Alexandrian or Egyptian type of text described previously in "The New Testament Text." They are found in the Critical Text published in the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (N) and in the United Bible Societies’ third edition (U), hence the acronym, "NU-Text."
- M-Text — This symbol indicates points of variation in the Majority Text from the traditional text, as also previously discussed in "The New Testament Text." It should be noted that M stands for whatever reading is printed in the published Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text, whether supported by overwhelming, strong, or only a divided majority textual tradition."
Do you see that
NU-Text symbol above? That is the Critical Text by Nestle-Aland from the United Bible Societies. It is a Greek text taken from
Codex Vaticanus and
Codex Sinaticus, and
Codex Alexandrinus. These were the very same Greek NT texts which Wescott and Hort used for their Greek NT revision of 1881. So basically, the
NKJV Bible is NOW using those later discovered corrupt... Greek texts which many Bible scholars have shown doubt about. The
New King James Version Bible was released in 1982.
What caused me to look into this matter many years ago was when I was invited to do a Bible study at some friend's house, and they were using the
NKJV Bible while I was using and reading the
1611 KJV Bible. When I was baptized in the early 1990's, I was handed a NKJV Bible by my pastor, but I never bothered to check it out, as I stayed in the 1611 KJV. During the Bible study, when I would read a passage from the KJV New Testament, my friend using a NKJV would make sounds of disgust, and I asked him what the matter was. He said his NKJV Bible does not read anything like what I was reading from the 1611 KJV.
That is when I began to look into the
NKJV Bible more, and discovered ADDITIONAL READINGS had been ADDED to the
KJV in that
NKJV. I see their putting Footnotes in the
NKJV to account for their ADDITIONS as their attempt to belay assigning guilt for their having revised... the 1611 KJV which did NOT come from the
Codex Vaticanus, nor
Codex Sinaiticus, nor
Codex Alexandrinus. The 1611 KJV New Testament Greek text was translated from the
Textus Receptus taken from the
Majority Texts, or Traditional Texts, even as the
Preface above states.
What that toying with the 1611 KJV by those of Textual Criticism suggests is that their later modern Bible translations, or revisions, just weren't working well enough, as too many Christians were still using the 1611 KJV Bible instead. So they decided to use a direct attack upon the 1611 KJV with a 'modified' New King James Version that contains readings like their later modern New Testament translations, thus adding corruption to the original KJV New Testament.
