OzSpen said:
brakelite,
If you dealt accurately with textual criticism, you would know that it is the later MSS of the Textus Receptus that have ADDED verses and it is not the earlier MSS that have omitted them.
Oz
On what basis is it considered that the earlier MSS, the Vaticanus (and Sanaitcus (found in a rubbish bin at a monastary in Sinai, and discarded because of the number of erasures and re-renderings) are necessarily better?
Dean John William Burgon,a well reknowned Bible scholar, personally collated the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts. In his book, "The Revision Revised", which he wrote in 1881, he gives his opinion and lists undeniable facts about what these two manuscripts say.
Mr. Burgon states on page 11; "Singular to relate Vaticanus and Aleph have within the last 20 years established a tyrannical ascendance over the imagination of the Critics, which can only be fitly spoken of as a blind superstition. It matters nothing that they are discovered on careful scrutiny to differ essentially, not only from ninety-nine out of a hundred of the whole body of extant MSS. besides, but even from one another. In the gospels alone B (Vaticanus) is found to omit at least 2877 words: to add 536, to substitute, 935; to transpose, 2098: to modify 1132 (in all 7578): - the corresponding figures for Aleph being 3455 omitted, 839 added, 1114 substitued, 2299 transposed, 1265 modified (in all 8972). And be it remembered that the omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications, are by no means the same in both. It is in fact easier to find two consecutive verses in which these two mss. differ the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree."
On page 319 of he remarks, "In the Gospels alone Vaticanus has 589 readings quite peculiar to itself, affecting 858 words while Aleph has 1460 such readings, affecting 2640 words."
As far as the Vaticanus is concerned, as you are likely aware, most og Genesis is missing, both books of Timothy, most of Hebrews, and all of Revelation. Thus the so-called "more reliable" minority texts rely on the Sanaiticus text for much of Christian theology and which had its origins in Alexandria. And this is the basis for most modern Bibles. It is no coincidence that the portions of scripture missing from Vaticanus if included counter much of Roman theology. And the apocrypha? Are you serious?