Which Bible, Which Version? Series
We pick up from where we left off in Chapter 8, Section 4.
We recall from a previous section how Westcott was telling his fiancée how he hoped that he could be a part of aiding the truth in the battle over the inspiration of the Bible. We are now quite aware of what these two pious scoundrels already had fixed in their minds as to the truth of the inspiration of the Bible. They did not believe it was verbally inspired.
I hope you recall the distinction that I drew in the early messages in this series, that if the Bible is not verbally inspired, then it is not inspired at all.
The greatest opponent of Westcott and Hort, who was contemporary with them, was a man whose name we have mentioned several times before, Dean John William Burgon.
In contrast to Westcott and Hort’s position on inspiration, let me give you Burgon’s position. These excerpts come from a work by Wilbur Pickering’s 1968 thesis called, An Evaluation of the Contribution of John William Burgon to New Testament Criticism. QUOTE:
How many present-day users of the New Testament in Greek, in whatever capacity and whatever edition, recognize the name J. W. Burgon? Probably very few.
To judge from the New Testament introductions and the introductions to textual criticism of the New Testament that have appeared in the English language during the past 70 years, very few, even of the professed scholars in the field, have ever read Burgon’s published works.
To most, therefore, the following words of E. M. Goulburn, Burgon’s biographer, must come as a surprise.
‘Burgon was, in this country, England, the leading religious teacher of his time.’ He defended the writing of the biography in these words.
‘His friends claimed for Dean Burgon that in regard of the variety and versatility of his intellectual powers, the intensity of his moral faculties, and that profound veneration for the Word of God, which formed the chief feature, both of his spiritual character and of his teaching, he showed a preeminence among the men of his generation.’
John William Burgon was a scholar.
John William Burgon was a committed conservative Christian and held without apology to the doctrine of the verbal, plenary inspiration of the scriptures.
From a letter by Reverend R. G. Livingstone, who commented on Burgon’s manner in leading a Bible study, ‘we could not but notice the profound reverence with which he regarded the Bible as being from first to last, to every part of it, the Word of God.
‘The unspeakable importance which he attached to everything which it contained, a name, a word, a date was of importance and interest to him because he found it there.’
That part of Burgon’s contribution which derives from his consistent and open avowal of the consequences of this faith must not be overlooked. It would be unfair to him to do so.
The prevailing ignorance concerning Burgon and his work may be largely attributed to the circumstance that he has either been ignored or misrepresented in every handbook that the author has seen published in English in this [20th] century that touches on the method of New Testament textual criticism.
This is no doubt due to the hegemony enjoyed by the Westcott and Hort critical theory ever since they published the New Testament in the original Greek in 1881.
Burgon strenuously opposed the Westcott and Hort text and theory and is generally acknowledged to have been the leading voice in the opposition.
Much of their theory, Westcott and Hort borrowed from such predecessors as Griesbach and Lachman.
In fact, they themselves admit that they contributed little to the common stock of materials for textual criticism.
Although men such as Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford had done much to undermine the position of the Textus Receptus, Westcott and Hort are generally credited with having furnished the death blow and with beginning a new era, an era in which we still find ourselves.
That this is true, the following affirmations may suffice to show.
Aland and Colwell, in 1965, wrote, ‘the common heading of the papers presented at this conference is New Testament textual researches since Westcott and Hort, thus taking as their starting and reference point the work accomplished by those two scholars.
‘The dead hand of Fenton John Anthony Hort lies heavy upon us. In the early years of this century, Kirsopp Lake described Hort’s work as a failure, though a glorious one.
‘But Hort did not fail to reach his major goal. He dethroned the Textus Receptus. And after Hort, the late medieval Greek Vulgate, meaning the Textus Receptus, was not used by serious students, and the text supported by earlier witnesses [meaning the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus] became the standard text.
‘This was a sensational achievement, an impressive success.
‘Hort’s success in this task and the cogency of his [allegedly] tightly-reasoned theory shaped and still shapes the thinking of those who approach the textual criticism of the New Testament through the English language.’ END QUOTE from Pickering’s thesis.
Side Notes: Wilbur Pickering earned his undergraduate degree from William Jennings Bryan College in Tennessee in the 1950s. He earned his Master of Theology (ThM) from Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And still later, he took a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Toronto in Canada.
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Did Westcott and Hort really dethrone the Textus Receptus? It is sad, but true that yes, in one way they did. I understand that the New International Version (NIV) is now outselling the King James Version.
This is a first. Since the 1880’s, no other version has ever outsold the King James Version. But now the NIV is beginning to outsell the King James. Sad, but true.
Moreover, the phony scholars (W & H) did dethrone the Textus Receptus, in that most so-called scholars today blindly follow Westcott and Hort, either directly or indirectly, by following other so-called scholars who follow Westcott and Hort.
And dare I repeat myself, that this is very similar to the situation in the scientific world where virtually all the textbooks, and the vast majority of so-called scholars, blindly believe and blindly follow Darwin’s theory of evolution.
But in another way, no. They have not dethroned the Textus Receptus. It is still there. And those who will take the time to study the facts with an honest heart and with an open mind will undoubtedly conclude, as I have, that the Textus Receptus and associated texts types are by far the most trustworthy texts available today.
We are coming to the close of this chapter in our series on Bible versions, so rather than get into the thick of Westcott and Hort’s textual theory itself and have to leave it hanging, we will close this chapter here.
As I close here I do think and believe that it was very important that we understand from the very words and pens of Westcott and Hort themselves just what positions they held in respect to important and very basic Christian biblical doctrines.
Those in this audience now realize the slippery slope to which modern Christianity has been subjected because of them. Later on we will see where we as Christians are being led if we continue to follow the path which was paved so smoothly by the “great scholars” Westcott and Hort. May God open our eyes!
(Series to be continued.)
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Additional data: AI-generated information as of July 30, 2026. All emphases and comments within [brackets] are mine. QUOTE:
U.S. Bible sales have surged to multi-decade highs, with 19 million units sold in 2025, marking a 21-year peak and a 12% increase from 2024. This growth follows a 22% rise in 2024 (13.7 million copies) and continues a upward trend from 9.7 million in 2019.
In terms of specific translations, the market has shifted toward modern-language versions among younger demographics and first-time buyers. The New Living Translation (NLT) leads in U.S. Christian retail unit share at approximately 23% in 2025, edging out the New International Version (NIV) at 19.5%. The King James Version (KJV) holds about 18% of the unit share, while the English Standard Version (ESV) captures just over 15%.
While the NIV remains the most distributed [as opposed to highest-selling] modern English translation globally (over 500 million copies), the NLT and ESV are the fastest-growing versions in retail and academic sectors, respectively.
[I do not consider the NLT to even be a translation; it is one man’s paraphrase, which frequently butchers the sacred Scriptures, about which we shall comment more in a subsequent chapter. …Which is one reason why we posted that particular meme at the top of this blog.]
The English Standard Version (ESV) New Testament is translated from the critical Greek texts found in the 2014 editions of the two standard [i.e., Westcott and Hort-derived, so-called] scholarly editions:
The Greek New Testament (5th corrected edition), published by the United Bible Societies (UBS).
Novum Testamentum Graece (28th edition, 2012), edited by Nestle and Aland.
These editions primarily rely on the Alexandrian family of manuscripts (such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus), which are generally considered by scholars to be the oldest and most reliable [the oft-repeated propaganda].
This textual basis distinguishes the ESV from the King James Version (KJV) and New King James Version (NKJV), which are based on the later [implying that is a bad feature] Byzantine text-type (Textus Receptus). END QUOTE
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