Greek text additions

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> 
>     KATHLEEN> Mind you, I am not disagreeing with the very real
>     KATHLEEN> possibility that 1 John 5:7 may be a total fabrication
>     KATHLEEN> of Erasmus' Trinitarian mind.  I just wanted to know if
>     KATHLEEN> anyone could give me verification of the background of
>     KATHLEEN> Scofield.

	I am goin to be myself and do some correcting then report some new
research I've done into text history.  Since I have recently made some
progress at understanding the history of the text of the new testament and
what is in the new text compared to the old text. 

	1. John 5:7 is not in Erasamus' text, or the Byzantine majority
text (I will explain the difference between the two later in this
posting.) It in fact appears only in later texts of the latin vulgate (not
in older texts) and in parts in Greek Texts produced after 1700 (the
Byzantine period ends in 1500 so we can say this appears in no Byzantine
text at all.

	2. Erasamus was not a Trinitarian and was in fact one of main
inventors of what we now call the Secular Humanists.  This proves very
little because the editors of all the later tests tended to be either
humanists or have a pro-humanist anti-religious bias.
	
	3.It was included in earlier translatiions because any one who
omited it would be accused of denying the Trinity and not because anyone
realy thought it belonged there. On the other hand, from what I can tell
the new translations make many more concessions to politicts of today than
the King James to the politicts of yesterday.

	While the King James as a rule is more accurate than other
translations, this one verse is suspect to the extreme because it not only
absent from majority text but absent from Byzantine text completely.

	Now I would like to report some discoveries.  Jesus is called the
One and Only God in the new (trimmed down) greek texts in John 1:18 but
not in Byzantine Majority text where the words " begotten Son of" are
added (the new translators who often have the darndest time figuring how
to handle these different passages often don't convey this.)  I learned
this in the Anchor Bible Dictionary under the heading of "Incarnation"
(ths dictionary concedes that the bible is Onenness.)

	Clearly the new texts differ from the old ones in that they omit a
lot.  I have been digging into why (no serious scholar would advance the
theory "older text is better text" but that seems to be the accusation.)
So the question is why new texts? 

	To start with Erasamus' text was edited from only  a few
manuscripts and made no claim to be a critical edition based on majority
Byzantine text.  The term "Texus Receptus" (text accepted by all) first
appeared in 1636 on a text which used used more than a dozen manuscripts
for its base.  In the early 19th century when true critical editions were
produced from the true majority of texts from Byzantine period the words
"Texus Receptus" were retained and these differed little, it turned out,
from Erasamus' early 16th century text.  

	So what changed.  When Hort and Westcott did a geographical survey
of ancient texts they began to suspect that certain passages had
geographical reasons for being there (one that appears only in old African
texts but not other very old texts could be suspected of  being invented
in Africa.)  They then discovered that the two oldest complete manscripts
of the New Testament lacked what they belived were additions (this is
their theory not mine) so they published a criticle text based mainly on
these two manuscripts, Codex Syracus and Codex Vadicanus (see the appendix
to the Thompson Chain Bible for a discription of these two texts.)

While later cricle editions of the New Testament have profitted from new
research, the text theory of Hort and Westcott has remained in place and
remains difficult to trust.  After all we may trust humanists to count
documents from the Byzantine period, but do  we trust two humanist from
the 19th century to guess at what may or may not be an addition to the
text.  After all, their bias  must appear in these theories to some
degree.

The Hort and Westcott New Testament, preceeded an explosion of
translations into English which began with the English Revisded Version
and the American Standard Version.

	As for the litteral majority text, well that remains to be
translated, and I don't know how to even get it in Greek.

	These facts truely bother me.

	Love and Grace in Christ,

		Yeaton