Which Bible, Which Version? series
In this section, we shall continue examining how the devilish duo, Westcott and Hort, were able to manipulate and dominate the Revision Committee’s work (1871-1881) and keep it all secret until they were ready to “cast upon the world” their horrible magnum opus.
Unfortunately, this monstrosity of a Greek New Testament text (and its successors) has become the basis for the vast majority of English Bibles in the world today.
Note that as is my custom, all emphases and comments [within brackets] are mine, unless otherwise noted.
Continuing the story from our previous post, as told by Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson in his superb book, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated (published nearly a century ago—1930), we QUOTE:
The minority in Westcott and Hort’s Revision Committee was represented principally by Dr. Scrivener, probably the foremost scholar of the day in the manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and the history of the text.
If we may believe the words of Chairman Bishop Ellicott, the countless divisions in the Committee over the Greek text, “was often a kind of critical duel between Dr. Hort and Dr. Scrivener.” Dr. Scrivener was continuously and systematically outvoted. END QUOTE
Further evidence of the shenanigans and manipulations of the conspirators is provided by Dr. Samuel Hemphill, in his book History of the Revised Version of the New Testament, (1906), pgs. 49, 50.
QUOTE: These three men—“the Cambridge Trio,” as they were called—proved the strongest group amongst the Revisers, and indelibly stamped the Revision with their own individuality from the very outset. Hort and Westcott, in the letters already quoted, use the expression “we three,” which is significant of unity of purpose, and similarity of method.
And amongst the disciples or converts of the Cambridge Three was the junior member of the whole Company, W. F. Moulton, the editor of Winer’s Grammar of New Testament Greek, who was also a Cambridge man, and of whom we are told that “in textual criticism he clung to the oldest documentary evidence even more strictly than his friend Dr. Hort.” [oldest documentary evidence referring primarily to the Vaticanus and Constantin Tischendorf’s bogus Sinaiticus.]
And Moulton in turn tells us that William Milligan was a “progressive,” and that he “was perhaps, next to these” Hort, Westcott, and Lightfoot “the chief advocate of the same general principles of criticism.”
In short, the three Cambridge Divinity Professors and their trusty henchmen, Moulton and Milligan, bore a share in revision that can only be described as “preponderating,” which is equivalent to saying that the proceedings of the Company, if it had not comprised these members, would have been of an entirely different character.
Nor is it difficult to understand that many of their less resolute and decided colleagues must have often been completely carried off their feet by the persuasiveness and resourcefulness and zeal of Hort, backed by the great prestige of Lightfoot, the popular canon of St. Paul’s, and the quiet determination of Westcott, who set his face as a flint.
In fact, it can hardly be doubted that Hort’s was the strongest will of the whole company and his adroitness in debate was only equaled by his pertinacity. The conflict was intense and oftentimes the results seemed dubious.
Scrivener and his little band did their best to save the day. He might have resigned, but he neither wished to wreck the product of revision by a crushing public blow, nor did he wish to let it run wild by absenting himself. And his tenacity of purpose is shown in the following couple of extracts from his letters to his wife.
July 25, 1871, “We have had some stiff battles today in revision, though without any ill feeling, and usually with good success, but I, more than ever, felt how impossible it would be for me to absent myself.”
October 13, 1871. “I dare not be away from Revision after former experience of the necessity for both speaking and voting incessantly.” END QUOTE of Dr. Hemphill.
Again, from Dr. Wilkinson, pg. 12. QUOTE:
The “ill-conceived and mismanaged” attempts of the Revision Committee of the Southern Convocation to bring in the radical changes contemplated violated the rules that had been laid down for its control.
Citations from ten out of the sixteen members of the Committee, (sixteen was the average number in attendance), show that eleven members were fully determined to act upon the principle of exact and literal translation, which would permit them to travel far beyond the instructions they had received.
The Committee being assembled, the passage for consideration was read.
[Now here Dr. Wilkinson tells us how the process actually worked. Compare this to what we showed in an earlier post about how the King James Version Translation Committee had done their work.]
The Committee being assembled, the passage for consideration was read. Dr. Scrivener offered the evidence favoring the Received Text, while Dr. Hort took the other side. Then a vote was taken. Settling the Greek text occupied the largest portion of time both in England and America.
The new Greek testament upon which Westcott and Hort had been working for 20 years was, portion by portion, secretly committed into the hands of the Revision Committee.
Their Greek text was strongly radical and revolutionary. The revisers followed the guidance of the two Cambridge editors, Westcott and Hort, who were constantly at their elbows, and whose radical Greek New Testament, deviating the furthest possible from the Received Text, is to all intents and purposes, the Greek New Testament followed by the Revision Committee.
And this Greek text, in the main, follows the Vatican and Sinaiticus manuscripts…
Dr. Scrivener, in the Committee sessions, constantly issued his warnings of what would be the outcome if Hort’s imaginary theories were accepted.
In fact, nine-tenths of the countless divisions and textual struggles around the tables in the Jerusalem chamber [That is the room they met in… nine-tenths of the struggles] arose over Hort’s determination to base the Greek New Testament of the revision on the Vatican manuscript.
Nevertheless, the Received Text, by his [Hort’s] own admission, had for 1,400 years been the dominant Greek New Testament.
[I have been skipping through for about three or four pages here, just to hit the highlights.]
Of course, the minority members of the Revision Committee, and especially the world in general, did not know of the 20 years effort of these two Cambridge professors to base their own Greek New Testament upon those two manuscripts.
Hort’s excursion into cloud land, as one authority describes his fourth-century revisions, was apparent to Dr. Scrivener, who uttered his protest.
As Westcott and Hort outnumbered Scrivener two to one, so their followers outnumbered the other side two to one, and Scrivener was systematically outvoted. END QUOTE.
So how did they determine the text there in the Revision Committee? What a contrast between the W-H “revisers” and the true scholars that comprised the KJV Committee. What a difference! In the W-H Committee, a majority vote wins the day. A majority vote determines what God actually said in His holy Word.
Moreover, the Cambridge Three had stacked the Committee with their own partisans from the outset. There you have it, dear reader. Could there be a more revealing contrast between the methods of the King James Translating Committee versus the Revision Committee of 1881?
The differences are like night and day. And I think, spiritually speaking, that is an accurate analogy. The day, the light of God’s truth, which was brought out in the Protestant Reformation, culminated in the English language in the King James Version which followed the Received Text.
But by 1881, certain men had crept in unawares (Jude 1:4), and analogously, in the darkness of night, by trickery and deceitful plots, had conspired to supplant the Received Text and the King James Version with a pro-Catholic text and a perversion called the Revised Version.
It is interesting to note that even in the preface to the newly-published Revised Version, that no mention whatsoever was made that a new Greek text was used for the New Testament. Can you believe that? Yes, we can. Because the current followers of the Westcott-Hort perversion must continue to cloak their deeds in the darkness. Keep the flock ignorant is their modus operandi in this regard.
They come out with that new version, and they fail to even acknowledge that they used an entirely new Greek text for the New Testament. Disgusting!
Some time after the “Revised” Version was cast upon the world, Dean John Burgon was able to see that this new Bible was radically different. He was able to pinpoint the truth that indeed the Textus Receptus had been trashed and a new Greek text had been used.
Not long after that, Burgon was tracing this conspiracy to Westcott and Hort and their “cohorts” on the Committee.
We still have much more to be discussed as we go on next time. In the next chapter, we are going to discuss the “extracurricular activities” of Westcott and Hort, namely their participation in occult activities.
We also will demonstrate that the changes or differences between the Hortian Bibles and the King James Version are no small matter.
It is my hope, however, that even at this point in our study, that if you had any doubts about which Bible is to be the preferred version, that you would now have sufficient evidence to make a decision.
Nevertheless, we will continue next time because there is still much more persuasive evidence to come.
(To be continued.)
ADDENDUM (for “extra credit”)
In Chapter 7, Section 3 of this series we gave some background about the Oxford Movement in England in the mid-1800s. Here is some further information from Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson’s later work called Truth Triumphant, first published in 1944.
Many readers are familiar with what many historians call the cycle of history, showing the rise and fall of nations as related to the character of the people. Wilkinson alludes to that as he describes the Oxford Movement. On page 397, he writes QUOTE:
As prosperity increased, character declined. The fathers won freedom and happiness through blood and suffering. The children turned back in their hearts to the vices and luxuries of the Old World.
The Oxford Movement arose in 1833, and rapidly growing in strength and gathering these worldly desires of the next generation into an organized society, began the glorification of the Dark Ages and the belittling of modern freedoms, as wee as those who won them.
The papacy in its leading publications gives credit to Dr. J. H. Newman, of Oxford University, who later became Cardinal Newman, and the Oxford Movement for the present world-wide Catholic revival.
Of him The Catholic Encyclopedia writes: “No finer triumph of talent in the service of conscience has been put on record. From that day the Catholic religion may date its re-entrance into the national literature.”
Why was it that in 1833 England believed that the Reformation was the work of God, but fifty years later it believed that the Reformation had been a rebellion, as was pointed out by the historian Froude, whereas in 1833 the pope was looked upon as antichrist, in 1883 he was considered the successor of the apostles?
The deadly wound to tyranny was being healed and those who inflicted it were being vilified. All the arts of tricky reasoning and of corrupting the records of history reappeared in the Oxford Movement.
Its leaders, many of them Jesuits in disguise, began to build up a case for Romanism. This movement, assisted by gold and by disguised agents from the Continent, spread through the Church of England.
It then entered the Protestant theological schools of America. Now is being witnessed the de-Protestantization of the English-speaking world. The pope has now been made king. The “deadly wound” [a reference to Revelation, chapter 12] is reaching complete healing. END QUOTE
While we have substantial agreement with the facts of history as Dr. Wilkinson has written in both his major works, we do not necessarily agree with his assessment here that the papacy, the Roman church, and their Jesuit order are the complete picture vis à vis Bible prophecy.
The Seventh Day Adventist church “majors” in that viewpoint. Nevertheless, we still admire Wilkinson’s works and that of another Seventh Day Adventist scholar, Dr. Le Roy Edwin Froom (1890–1974), whose four-volume history, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, I have in my library.
In all our reading and study, we always keep in mind one of the principles of critical thinking: eat the meat and spit out the bones.
Also keep in mind that Truth Triumphant was published in 1944, so we have about 80 further years of hindsight to put historical events in their proper biblical prophecy context.
As we have written and taught extensively for decades now, the beast system foretold in the prophecies of Daniel still exists. However, the primary locus of this system is now in the international banking houses and their owners behind the scenes, the rulers of nations via the control of money.
While the Roman Catholic church still holds sway over the minds of hundreds of millions, their power has been eclipsed since 1798 by the power of the Rothschilds and their allied families, corporations, etc. And then there is the Zionist and Christian Zionist nexus to be factored into the full picture who’s who in the religio-geopolitical paradigm. But that is another story.
~END~