A brief discussion of KJV Manuscript History

The Textus Receptus, from which the KJV is translated, was actually three different full manuscripts of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures... the Old and the New Testament.  Here's the thing most KJV Onlyists don't understand... there were variances in the Textus Receptus.  In fact, no two manuscripts of the Bible IN EXISTENCE are exactly alike.

I know that sounds troubling, but it's actually not.





Let me give you an example.

1) I can do things through Christ who gives me strength. 

2) I can do all things through Christ who gives strength. 

3) I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. 

Lets assume that these are three different manuscripts.  Each sentence has been altered in some way.  Number 1 is missing the "all."  Number 2 is missing the "me."  Number 3 is has "Christ" changed to "Him."

This represents three textual variants.  How do we know what the original said?  We compare them, and see what the majority of texts say, giving weight to the earlier manuscripts.  For example, sentence 2 and 3 say "I can do all things...."  so that is the most likely wording of the original.

That's how the KJV translators dealt with textual variants.  But they only had three manuscripts.  What did they do if they came to a place where they had three different readings?

They guessed at which one was right.

That's it.  They guessed, and hoped they were right.

Since 1604, when the KJV was commissioned, or 1611, when it was completed, however, we have found more manuscripts.  Like, a LOT more.  At last count, there were nearly 7000 manuscripts and manuscript fragments.

"But a fragment can be a tiny scrap of paper!" you might object.  And you're right.  But what is the average size of the manuscripts we've found?

400 pages.  That's the average.

If you staked them all up, the stack would be a mile high.

So now, instead of comparing three different manuscripts, we can compare 7000.  And where 500 or even 2000 of them say something different, we can generally rely on the rest to say the same thing.

The KJV is a great translation, don't misunderstand me.  But the modern translations are significantly closer to the original writings than it is.

De-Paganizing Christmas

St Boniface (680–754)

After being appointed by the Pope as a missionary to the Germanic tribes, Boniface spent the rest of his life evangelizing the areas of modern Germany and parts of the Netherlands. He also became a friend of the Frankish court and helped reform and reorganized the Church in that area. From his missionary travels, Boniface knew that in winter the inhabitants of the village of Geismar gathered around a huge old oak tree (known as the “Thunder Oak”) dedicated to the god Thor. This annual event of worship centered on sacrificing a human, usually a small child, to the pagan god. Boniface desired to convert the village by destroying the Thunder Oak, which the pagans had previously boasted the God of Boniface could not destroy, so he gathered a few companions and journeyed to Geismar.
His fellow missionaries were scared and fearful that the Germans might kill them, so they balked when they reached the outskirts of the village on Christmas Eve. Boniface steadied the nerves of his friends and as they approached the pagan gathering he said, “Here is the Thunder Oak; and here the cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the false god Thor.”[4] Boniface and his friends arrived at the time of the sacrifice, which was interrupted by their presence. In a show of great trust in God and born from a desire to enkindle the fire of Christ in the German pagans, Boniface grabbed an axe and chopped down the Thunder Oak of mighty Thor.
The Germans were astounded. The holy bishop preached the Gospel to the people and used a little fir tree that was behind the now felled oak tree as a tool of evangelization. Pointing to it he said,

“This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight. It is the wood of peace… It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it, not in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.”

Awed by the destruction of the oak tree and Boniface’s preaching, the Germans were baptized.
Because of this, the practice grew of German families bringing a Fir (or pine) tree into their homes instead of worshiping the "Thunder Oak."  This also ceased the practice of child sacrifice to the "thunder oak."  Thus, this victory over death and this promise of eternal life is the birth of the Christmas tree.

Another famous German, Martin Luther, who was the father of the Protestant Reformation, is credited with something else... one evening, Martin was walking outside and, looking up, saw the majesty of the stars in the sky and the glory of God in the heavens.  Desiring to have that beauty in his own home, Martin went back to his house and began to hang candles on his Christmas tree, making him the first person to light the tree.

The first Christmas trees began appearing inside Buckingham Palace in the early 1800s, and solidified as a practice of the Royal Family after Queen Victoria married her German cousin, Prince Albert.  Thus, with Albert, the practice spread from Germany to England, and given the popularity of the Royal family, who were not only the authorities but also great celebrities, soon many homes had a Christmas tree in them.

Thus, the origin of the Christmas tree is not only entirely Christian, but also very anti-Pagan.




Santa Clause

In the Third century, in Turkey, a boy named Nicholas was born.  Nicholas was raised by wealthy parents as a devout Christian, but both parents died of a plague sometime before the boy reached adulthood, and he inherited a substantial sum of money.

But moved by Christ's words to the rich man to "sell everything you have and give to the poor," Nicholas gave away his entire fortune.  One story goes that a father of three daughters had nothing to give for their dowries, and thus was unable to have them married off.  Unmarried women at that time were often forced to support themselves in whatever way possible, and this usually meant working in some very un-Christian areas.  Nicholas, moved with compassion for these three girls, tossed bags of gold through the window to pay for their dowries.  Some versions of the story say that the gold landed in socks which were hung by the fireplace to dry, and it is from these stories what we get the modern practice of hanging stockings by the fireplace and filling them with gifts.

Nicholas, because of his extreme generosity and excessive piety, was quickly promoted to Bishop of Myra, and was later cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian. He was released after the accession of Constantine and was present at the Council of Nicaea, in 325 AD.  This council was responsible for solidifying the understanding within Christianity of the Deity of Christ and of Christ's relationship with the Father... in essence, the early understanding of the Trinity.  The council was also responsible for fixing the date of Easter on the church calendar, and for early work on the codification of the Cannon... that is, deciding what books belonged in the Bible.

There is a story from the Council of Nicea regarding Arias, who is the father of the Arian heresy. Arias taught that Jesus was created by the Father, and thus was a subordinate being... that is, that Jesus was little more than a great prophet or a mighty angel.  Bishop Nicholas, so incensed at this teaching, leapt from his seat, rushed to the stage, and punched Arias in the mouth.

Bishop Nicholas died on December 6th, but the year is not well known.  It was sometime between 343 and 352 AD.

Bishop Nicholas was later confirmed as a Saint by the church, and the idea of "Saint Nicholas" was born.  There are many other stories of St. Nicholas, many of which are likely fabrications as his legend grew, but St. Nicholas soon found himself as the patron saint of many things, including bakers, pawn brokers, sailors, and especially, Children.

Over time, as the fame of St. Nicholas spread, so too did the pronunciation of his name.  In Norway, for example, he became known as "Scinter Klause," which is a minor evolution of the name in the Norwegian tongue, and when the Norse immigrated to America, the brought with them the legends of Santa Clause.

Then, in 1823, a poet named Clement Moore wrote the work we all remember him for, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," which begins "T'was the night before Christmas, and all through the house..."  The legends of St. Nicholas grew from there, and later Santa Clause took shape when Coca Cola adopted him for their advertising.  The story goes that St. Nicholas acquired his trademark red hat, coat, trousers, and boots from the red and white coca cola cans, but this isn't the case... ancient depictions of St. Nicholas show him wearing a very similar garb long before Coke made him and advertising figure.  He wore a Bishop's Miter instead of the stocking cap we know him with, and instead of the coat and trousers he wore a long red robe with white trim, but red and white are the traditional colors of the clergy of Turkey, probably because red symbolizes the Blood of Christ and white symbolizes the righteousness Christ brings.


Is Christmas pagan?

No.  There is no sense in which Christmas is a pagan celebration.  The world often accuses us of co-opting the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia for the date, but even this is incorrect.  Saturnalia was a week-long festival beginning on December 17th and going through December 23rd.  If we were going to borrow the date for Christmas, we would likely have use one of those dates.

There is no sense in which Christmas is a pagan holiday, and every sense in which is it not.  Although it is not ordained in the bible as a commanded holiday, it is the one season every year where we hear the gospel message on every radio station and loudspeaker in the country... Joy to the world, the LORD has come.  Let Earth receive her King!  Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.

Correcting the WWUTT guys on the NAME of God

Normally, the WWUTT guys are spot on. This one is problematic, though. In the past, the letter "J" has done double duty by making the "Y" sound, as in the word "Hallelujah." We have retained both the "Y" pronunciation of the "J" as well as the old spelling of "Hallelujah," and that makes this just about the perfect example for this illustration.

So, in antiquity, the English "J" has done double duty as a "Y." (In the same way the "C" does double duty as both an S and a K, as in the words "city" and "cat.")

In the second century, after the fall of the Temple, the Jews continued to rebel against the Romans. So Rome made it a crime to speak the name of the Jewish God in public... Read THIS article on "Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion" to find someone executed for "speaking the NAME as it is written." The Romans wrapped him in a Torah scroll and lit him on fire. Shortly after this comes the ban on speaking the NAME from the Jews.

How do I know?

For a very clear example, take a look at Ruth 2:4, where both Jewish nobility and Jewish peasantry speak the name openly to one another.... but really, in the OT, the name appears almost 7000 times, and was obviously in very common use.

So how is it pronounced? Take a look at the following image:





 This is the NAME of God written, with all the vowels, from the Aleppo codex from the 10th century... a thousand years ago, and 600 years before the video suggests that someone borrowed the vowels from another word and changed the HOLY NAME of God.

From right to left, those letters are

Yud........... י

Hay............ה

Vav.............ו

Hay............ה

or "YHVH" like we transliterate them. But every Hebrew letter must be followed by a vowel... the vowels are the dots and dashes above and below the letters.

so the Yud is followed by a "schwa," which makes the same sound as the "schwa" in English.. that is, a short "eh" sound.

The next letter is an "Hay." It has no vowel either above or below it... its vowel is above the "Vav," which follows. That vowel, the dot above the Vav, is called the "Cholem," and makes the "o" sound.

The final vowel is below the Vav, and is the "Kamatz." it makes the short "a" sound, or "ah."

The final letter is another "hay," which ends the word by slightly extending the "ah" sound of the "Kamatz."

According to the Aleppo codex, published in the 10th century, the proper pronunciation is

Yehovah.

Now, remember how the "J" used to do double duty as a "Y?"

Jehovah is the ancient English spelling of Yehovah, which actually is the proper NAME of God.



For MUCH more information on this (and MANY other Hebrew topics!!) check out the work of my good friend Nehemia Gordon at his site, www.nehemiaswall.com

The Language of Heaven

While doing preparation for a recent Bible Study on Revelation 19, I discovered an amazing thing.
I know what language they speak in Heaven.

Let me show you.

Revelation 19:1-2a reads:

After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, 
“Hallelujah! 
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, 
for his judgments are true and just;

The author, commonly thought to be St. John the Apostle, is looking into the end times with the help of the Holy Spirit, and the last judgments on the earth are about to be completed.


But look what he says in 19:1...

"After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,"

He's telling us what the voices from Heaven said, and that's all well and good, but the interesting thing is this word...

“Hallelujah!"

I thought that was an interesting word, so I dug into it a bit to see what I could find.  The Greek word is "Ἁλληλουϊά," and in the ESV (English Standard Version, my preferred translation) the word appears exactly 4 times.  All four of those occurrences are right here, in Revelation 19.

That can't be right, I thought.  "Hallelujah" is a Hebrew phrase, meaning "Praise the LORD," or more specifically, "Praise Yah," where "Yah" is the poetic form of the Holy NAME of God.

But the Revelation was written in Greek, according to most scholars.

Well, I thought, surely it appears elsewhere in the Bible, possibly in the Hebrew?

Since the phrase means "Praise the LORD," I looked for that, and found the Hebrew phrase

הַלְלוּ־יָהּ

occurs 23 times in the Old Testament, all in the Psalms.  The first occurrence is in Psalm 104:35, the final occurrence in Psalm 150:6.  150:6 is the final verse of the Psalms, and so the book ends with the phrase
הַלְלוּ־יָהּ, or "Praise the LORD!"

So, armed with this knowledge, I went back to the Revelation and looked more closely at the Greek.

The Greek word "Ἁλληλουϊά," pronounced "Alleluia," has no meaning.

None.

Then it hit me, suddenly; John is recording what he is hearing from Heaven.  Ἁλληλουϊά is not a translation, it's a transliteration.

By this, I mean, John records the sound of the word he hears, rather than its meaning.

What sound did he hear?

הַלְלוּ־יָהּ

Hallelujah

Heaven speaks Hebrew.

The great Rabbi, Rashi, called Hebrew "לשון הקודש"... Lashon haKodesh.  The Holy Language.

I completely agree.

Atheists can too be moral!

We're not saying that Atheists cannot BE moral, we're saying they cannot tell us WHY they are moral, or why other people are not moral.

What does that mean?

It means that you can say "X is moral, and Y is immoral." But you cannot say WHY those things are so. You can say "Society has dictated that X is moral, and Y is not," but that is a flimsy argument. Based on that argument, we must conclude that the practice of Bride Burning in India was a moral thing, because it was the societal norm. (When a man would die, his widow would be thrown onto his funeral pyre to die, most often against her will.)

Was it ever moral to burn the widow? For the Atheist who demands that society determines morality, we must say yes, it was a moral thing to do.

Other atheists will say "I determine my own morality." This is an even worse argument. Why? Because you and Jeffry Dahmer are both autonomous beings. If you think it's immoral to kill and eat people, but Jeffy disagrees, to what standard will you direct him to show that he is wrong and you are right? To society? We've dealt with that. To your own sense of morality? Why is yours better than his?

Someone once asked the great Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias why he was so afraid of moral relativism. Ravi responded brilliantly: "Do you lock your doors at night?"

We're all fine with our own morality, but we want other people to behave as we do. For instance, one person might say that X is perfectly moral when he does it, but be outraged when someone else does X to him. As C.S. Lewis writes:

"But the most remarkable thing is this. whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking on to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong--in other words, if there is no Law of Nature--what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?"

Another common answer from the Atheist is that morality comes from nature. But what we find in Nature is far different from our understanding of morality. For instance, only a few species mate for life. Most species will engage in reproductive acts with several others, often in the same mating season. While this sounds good on the surface, why do people then get upset when their spouse or significant other cheats on them? Isn't that just nature?

One more brief example for morality from nature: After copulation, the female praying mantis kills and consumes her partner. Nature is not the source of our morality.

Allow me to end with another C.S. Lewis quote, and I'll thank you for having read this far:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

Wait, I say, upon Aviv

Jesus or Yeshua? What's the deal?

The word "Jesus" appears nowhere in written form before the 16th century. It was used in the first modern English translation of the Bible and was created by William Tyndale.


Where does it come from? It's a transliteration of a transliteration of a transliteration.


What does that mean?


A transliteration is different from a translation, in that a transliteration attempts to preserve the sound of the original word, rather than its meaning. It's often done with names. The first man mentioned in the Bible, for instance, doesn't actually have a name. The Hebrew word "אָדָם" simply means "the man," but we transliterate it as "Adam," which mimics the sound of the word, without giving its meaning.


Now, Jesus had a rather common name for the time. His name was "יְהוֹשֻׁ֣עַ", which is transliterated "Yehoshua." This is also the name of Moses' lieutenant, Joshua. Translated, it means "The Salvation of the LORD."

But linguistic convention being what it is, names get shortened. We don't often call a man "Laurence," we call him "Larry." "Michael" becomes "Mike." and by the Second Temple Period, "יְהוֹשֻׁ֣עַ" had been shortened to "יֵשׁוּע"... that is to say, Yehoshua had been shortened to Yeshua.


So in Hebrew it is Yeshua...

יְשֻׁ֣וֹעַ

and it gets transliterated into Greek, which is

Ἰησοῦς (Yaysous)

which is a transliteration, not a translation. Then it goes from Greek into Latin and is spelled

Jesu

(which is still pronounced Yaysu, by the way... this pronunciation of the letter "J" is preserved in the word "Hallelujah.")

and from Latin it gets transliterated into to English as "Jesus" in a time when the J could do double duty, making the sound it makes in "jar" or possibly making the "Y" sound like in "Hallelujah."


In fact, there was an 11th century copy of the New Testament written in period English (called Old English) which calls His name

Haelend

because Haelend is the TRANSLATION of the Hebrew word, and means "Savior."


So the reality is, people call His name "Yeshua" because that's what His friends called him in that day.