PART 1
It has been said "The Textus Receptus or Majority Text which is what the King James is based on has been attacked with changes, amendments, deletions, and to diminish God's truth.
This is wrong and I encourage you, as well as others, to read slowly, carefully and digest the following.
Any boldings or color changes are mine for emphasis.
A Short History of the Textus Receptus
in KJV... 8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.)
It has been said "The Textus Receptus or Majority Text which is what the King James is based on has been attacked with changes, amendments, deletions, and to diminish God's truth.
This is wrong and I encourage you, as well as others, to read slowly, carefully and digest the following.
Any boldings or color changes are mine for emphasis.
A Short History of the Textus Receptus
(my note: I find the following to be interesting)QuoteA Short History of the Textus Receptus
Posted by Jason Dulle under Bible, Textual Criticism, Theology
Many people are under the impression that the Textus Receptus (TR) printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society was the Greek text used by the KJV translators to translate the NT. Not so.
The TR was not the Greek text used by the KJV translators. Instead, it is a Greek text based on the KJV, created 270 years after the KJV was published! To understand why, let's explore the history of the TR in a little detail.
The story begins in 16th century Europe. Catholicism was the religion of Europe, and Jerome's Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the church—and had been for over 500 years.[1] In 1504, however, the Catholic humanist scholar by the name of Desiderius Erasmus came across a manuscript by the Italian humanist Lorena Valla (1407-57)—an event that would forever change Erasmus' life, as well as the future of Bible translations.
Valla's manuscript contained a host of annotations to the Vulgate, noting those places where it was not faithful to the Greek text. Erasmus became enamored with Valla's approach, and determined to carry on his work.
In 1516 Erasmus published his Novum Instrumentum.[2] This work was nearly 1000 pages in length.[3] It contained several articles regarding the work, Erasmus' annotations on the Vulgate, a Greek text, and Erasmus' own Latin translation. It might be more accurate to call it an emendation of the Vulgate rather than a new Latin translation since Erasmus used the Vulgate as his base text, correcting it wherever he thought it departed from the Greek text. Even in its final 1535 form (5th edition), it was still ~60% identical to the Vulgate.[4]
Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum is historically significant because it challenged the Vulgate translation, and it contained the first published Greek text.
I emphasize that it was the first published Greek text because the distinction of the first printed Greek text belongs to the bishop of Toledo, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, and his mammoth work: the Polyglotta Complutensis.[5] It was printed on January 10, 1514, nearly two years before Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum, but was awaiting papal approval.[6] Pope Leo X did not give his permission to publish it until 1520—approximately four years after Erasmus published his Greek text—and even then Complutensis did not hit the streets until 1522, approximately five years after Cardinal Ximenes had died.[7] Due to its size (6 volumes) and its late arrival in the market, only 600 copies were ever produced. Contrast this to Erasmus' work which sold approximately 300,000 copies in 20 years![8]
Erasmus prepared his manuscript in approximately eight months. By his own admission he was rushed. He said it was "hurried out headlong," and "precipitated rather than edited." It is popularly believed that Erasmus was working feverishly on the project because he wanted to beat Cardinal Ximenes to market with the very first published Greek text. While this may have been the motive of Erasmus' printer who encouraged him to publish a Greek text in his Instrumentum, there is no good reason to believe Erasmus was similarly motivated. His interest was not in publishing a Greek text, but in publishing his annotations to the Vulgate. A Greek text was included merely to justify his own Latin translation against the Vulgate.
The evidence we have seems to indicate that Erasmus was prodded by Froben et al to substitute a new Latin translation for the Vulgate, and to include the Greek text.[9] In the introduction to the Instrumentum Erasmus wrote that the "Greek text has been 'added' so that the reader can convince himself that the Latin translation does not contain any rash innovations, but is solidly based." As Erika Rummel writes:
The theory that Erasmus had begun work on a translation before 1506 was, however, at odds with his own testimony, for he consistently claimed that the idea of adding a translation to his New Testament edition occurred to him only when the project was already well advanced. In polemics against Edward Lee, Johannes Sutor, and Frans Titelmans, Erasmus declared that the plan was conceived by friends when the publication was already in progress. He claimed that it had not been his own intention to add a new translation—scholarly friends had urged him to do so—and insisted that nothing had been further from his mind at first. He described the circumstances surrounding the publication of the translation in similar terms in a letter to Budé: "When the work was already due to be published, certain people encouraged me to change the Vulgate text' (Ep 421:50–2). In 1533 he repeated this version of events: "When I had first come to Basel I had not even thought about translating the New Testament—I had merely noted down some brief explanatory notes and had decided to be content with that" (Allen Ep 2758:12–14).[10]
Evidence that Erasmus' interest in the Greek text was only secondary to his interest in his Latin translation is found in the fact that title of his work never advertised the Greek text,[11] he never consented to publish the Greek text by itself, and he arrived in Basle, Switzerland without any Greek manuscripts with which to produce a Greek text.[12]
(my note: He had no other manuscript of Revelation???)It's not entirely certain which Greek manuscripts Erasmus used to produce his Greek text. He had as many as 10 manuscripts: six of these manuscripts were from the Dominican Library in Basle, dated between the 11th and 15th centuries (one 11th century text, four 12th century texts, and one 15th century text).[13] Erasmus' friend, John Reuchlin, had borrowed two of these manuscripts, who lent them to Erasmus in turn.[14] One was borrowed from the family of Johann Amerbach in Basel,[15] and at least three others were from England. One of Reuchlin's manuscripts, Codex 1rk, was the best of the bunch, but Erasmus did not trust it, and thus only used its text of Revelation (he was forced to since he had no other manuscript of Revelation).[16]
( my note: except for the last 6 verses ???)We have been able to ascertain that Erasmus had access to at least the following manuscripts (key: e=Gospels; a=Acts and Catholic letters; p=Pauline letters, including Hebrews; r=Revelation:
Codex 1eap (12th century minuscule manuscript containing all of the NT except Revelation that Erasmus borrowed from Reuchlin)
Codex 1rK (12th century minuscule commentary Erasmus borrowed from Reuchlin, containing all of the book of Revelation except for the last six verses)
(my note: "In Revelation 17:8 kai parevstai ("and is to come") was copied as kaivper estin ("and yet is") is alsoCodex 2e (12th century minuscule containing the gospels)
Codex 2ap (12th century minuscule containing Acts, Catholic epistles, and Pauline epistles, borrowed by Erasmus from Johann Amerbach in Basel)
Codex 4ap (15th century minuscule containing Acts, Catholic epistles, and Pauline epistles)
Codex 7 (11th century minuscule containing the epistles of Paul)
Codex 817 (15th century minuscule containing the gospels).
We also know from Erasmus' annotations that he had knowledge of Codex 69 (15th century manuscript of the entire NT with some lacunae[17]), and used certain readings from this manuscript in his text (probably from notes he had taken on this manuscript prior to his arrival in Basel), but he did not have access to the full manuscript in Basel.[18]
In all, Erasmus only had three manuscripts of the Gospels and Acts, four manuscripts of Paul's epistles, and one manuscript of Revelation to produce his Greek text.[19],[20]
Erasmus used Codex 2e and 2ap extensively. In fact, they served as his base text. He made text-critical notes directly onto these codices, and then gave these edited codices to Froben for publishing (Froben did not incorporate all of Erasmus' edits)![21]
Since the Greek text for Revelation was contained within a commentary, and because it was a borrowed manuscript, Erasmus had a scribe copy the Greek text into a new manuscript for the printer.
The scribe made several copyist mistakes in the process that still appear in the Textus Receptus.
For example, in Revelation 17:4 the scribe wrote ajkaqavrthto instead of ajkavqarta ("impure"). This is not even a Greek word! In Revelation 17:8 kai parevstai ("and is to come") was copied as kaivper estin ("and yet is").[22] These errors are still found in the TR to this day!
in KJV... 8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.)