When I go to Bible Study on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I bring a New American Standard Bible (NASB). When I summarize the Bible study on my web site later, I use a King James Version (KJV). In today's Bible study our passage began with a verse that is different in those two versions. In Romans 1:16, the KJV says that Paul is not ashamed of the "Gospel of Christ." The NASB just has "Gospel." Does this matter?
There are "KJV-only" people that say it does matter. What's left out in the NASB are the words "of Christ." Surely that's important! KJV-only folk also love to point out Colossians 1:14, where the KJV mentions redemption "through his blood," while the NASB, NIV and other modern translations just have "redemption." Many of these KJV-only folks even accuse those who produce the modern translations of a conspiracy--or at least they accuse the devil of a conspiracy through them--trying to get "the blood" and "Christ" removed from the Scriptures.
But let's look at this. Those who have put together modern translations aren't making up their versions. There really are manuscripts that don't have "through his blood" in Colossians 1:14. Second, if this is a conspiracy, it's a very bad one. Ephesians 1:7 uses almost exactly the same wording as Colossians 1:14, and in Ephesians 1:7 both the KJV and modern translations have "through his blood." If there were a conspiracy, the modern versions would leave out "the blood" in both verses, not just one. And no matter how many verses don't have "Christ" in them, you certainly are not going to miss the fact that Jesus is the Christ in the NASB and NIV.
Even more importantly than these things, let's consider whether God himself has done anything to preserve the exact wording of Scripture? We can argue about what should and shouldn't be in certain passages, but let's go to somewhere where God's opinion is more obvious.
Look at Hebrews 1:6. There we read in the KJV: "And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he said, And let all the angels of God worship him."
He does? Where does he say that? My NASB reference Bible doesn't even give a reference for that verse. Some reference Bibles will. It is quoted from Deuteronomy 32:43. However, if you look in Deuteronomy 32:43, you'll find nothing remotely like "And let all the angels of God worship him." Why is that?
The writer of Hebrews was using the Septuagint (LXX), a Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures translated around 200 B.C. Christian writers immediately after the time of the apostles not only used the LXX, but they believed it was inspired word for word. Justin Martyr, for example, claims that Ptolemy, king of Egypt, brought 70 Hebrew scholars to Alexandria and locked them in separate rooms, preventing their communication with one another. Despite this, all 70 scholars produced exactly the same translation, word for word, of the entire Old Testament. No one today believes this really happened, but it was a common belief of the early church, and the LXX was the only translation they employed in Greek-speaking countries (Hortatory Address to the Greeks 13).
The writer of Hebrews also used the LXX, and there are places where the apostle Paul used it. For example, have you ever looked up the reference for that famous verse about death's sting and the grave's victory in 1 Cor. 15:55? In the KJV of Hosea 13:14, which is the reference for 1 Cor. 15:55, we read, "O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction." How close is that to "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory"?
The NASB is better but still not the same. In it Hosea 13:14 reads, "O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?" My English translation of the LXX is much closer: "Where is thy penalty, O death? O Hades, where is your sting?" Even there, the wording is not exact. Paul was almost certainly quoting from memory, and the LXX suffers from the same problem all our New Testament Greek texts suffer from. Many have come down to us, so it's hard to reconstruct the exact texts.
We can long and hope for exact wording in the Scriptures, but we're hoping in vain. The story is still circulated that when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the scroll of Isaiah matched the one in our Bible, which comes from what is called the Masoretic text. While it is true that such a report was issued in 1947, the story was retracted in 1948 once scholars took a closer look at the scroll. It turns out that Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls matches neither the LXX nor the Masoretic text. It represents a third text type.
No problem, the differences are not major. However, the Dead Sea scroll of Jeremiah poses us a bigger problem. It matches the LXX, not the Masoretic. (Do you notice that this story hasn't circulated like the other false, retracted story?) And the differences there are not minor. There are seven completely new chapters in the LXX version of Jeremiah that are not in our Masoretic version. Seven chapters of the Masoretic version are also not in the LXX version, so that they're both the same length. Notice how no one has ever told you that?.
All of this is important. Our Gospel is not that God preserved the Scriptures word for word. The Gospel is Christ. If you want to be saved, you need to give up your life and follow Christ. He can save you. You don't need a word-for-word preservation of the Scriptures. He will give you the Spirit of God, guide you through your life, and you will be a child of God. The Scriptures say, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:14). The Scriptures are useful for rebuking, reproving, correcting, and instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16), but you don't need word-for-word preservation to do any of those things. In fact, the battle to defend word-for-word preservation can be as much a distraction as any other false doctrine. The Scriptures are for "instruction in righteousness" so we may be "equipped for every good work"; they are not for the doctrinal battles for which we so often use them.
So what about the verse that says that not one jot or tittle will pass away from the Law (Matt. 5:18)? Jesus is not talking about preserving the smallest letters and marks of punctuation in the Scripture down to our day. If he was, then God failed to do it, Jesus was wrong, and we might as well scrap everything. The smallest letters and marks of punctuation are not preserved down to our day. The early churches and the apostles read a Bible that had seven whole chapters different than ours in Jeremiah! We're Christians; let's be honest!
Matthew 5:18, however, is not wrong. The word "fulfilled" that Matthew uses there is the Greek word genoito. It means "to happen," and it is clearly a reference to fulfilled prophecy. Nothing at all, not the smallest thing, will pass away from the Law until it all comes to pass. This is true. What is not true is that God is worried about exact words and letters in the Scriptures.
To cite just one example, there came a point when John the Baptist began, apparently, to doubt that Jesus was really the Messiah. So he sent messengers to Jesus to ask if he was really "the One." Both Matthew and Luke record the incident. The wording in the two Gospels is remarkably similar considering that decades elapsed before Matthew or Luke wrote about the incident. Further, Matthew was there and Luke was not. However, the two accounts, no matter how similar, differ. For those who believe that God is concerned about exact wording, this is a problem. Matthew says that Jesus told the messengers to tell John what they "hear and see," in that order and in the present tense. Luke says that he told them to report what they "have understood and heard," in that order and in the second aorist tense. Obviously, this makes no difference whatsoever in the story, but it nonetheless establishes that God is not concerned about inspiring Matthew or Luke to get "every jot and tittle" right in the story.
Not only did God leave the Greek text at question, but he left even greater questions about the Hebrew text. The next time you go to purchase a Bible, feel free to choose that Bible based on the style of translation that you prefer, and don't spend time worrying about which Greek text you should be using. God doesn't.
Paul Pavao is the owner of The Rest of the Old, Old Story, an innovative web site on fascinating, little-known aspects of Christianity and Christian history ("Snakes in heaven?") meant to provoke readers to a deeper and more practical faith in God. Paul has been an avid student of church history for almost twenty years, and has traveled the U.S., Asia and Africa teaching Christians and churches how to experience the power that comes from unity and commitment to Jesus Christ. He has talked about the early church on radio and in seminars and publishes the Early Church Newsletter each month. He is available for teachings and seminars through his web site at http://www.oldoldstory.org
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