Chapter 20
Defaming Scripture
Some sincere folk believe that it is a defamation of
God’s Word, if not downright blasphemy, to oppose the various modern
translations; after all, is not
All Scripture . . . given by inspiration of God. 2
Timothy 3:16
It would be a perilous stand to uphold that all human
perversions of Scripture are inspired of God. Do not the Roman Catholics
confidently assert that the Apocrypha is part of Holy Writ? They do. Is
it blasphemy then for Protestants to rightly ignore these books? Of
course not. Manifestly Paul’s statement refers only to the pure
Scriptures, unadulterated by human reasoning and additions and
subtractions.
Other Bible students point out that the Septuagint
was a faulty version of the Old Testament, yet Christ at no time
condemned it, and indeed He and His disciples quoted freely from it.
Suffice to say that the biblical writers were very selective in their
use of this version, and that, in any case, silence upon an issue is
often less than a persuasive argument in its favor.
What is certain is that many godly authors have
freely condemned corrupted Scriptures. The Latin Vulgate from which John
Wycliffe translated his version of the English Bible was seriously
defective.
Wycliffe’s Bible had been translated from the Latin
text, which contained many errors. . . . In 1516, a year before the
appearance of Luther’s theses, Erasmus had published his Greek and
Latin version of the New Testament. Now for the first time the Word of
God was printed in the original tongue. In this work many errors of
former versions were corrected, and the sense was more clearly
rendered. Ellen White, The Great Controversy, 245
Undoubtedly the Protestant Reformers were far from
inhibited in this matter. They freely condemned false versions.
Again, that your vulgar Latin text is full of many
errors and corruptions, I have showed by the confession of Isidorus
Clarius and Lindanus, two of your own profession; . . . and where you
say that Luther and his followers forsook it for none other cause in
the world, but that it is against them, is utterly untrue. For besides
that they have made clear demonstration of many palpable errors
therein (which they that have any forehead amongst you cannot deny)
they have and do daily convince you of horrible heresies, even out of
your own vulgar translation. Fulke, Defense of Translations,
1583, 70
It is certainly a remarkable circumstance that so
many of the Catholic readings in the New Testament, which in
Reformation and early post-Reformation times were denounced by
Protestants as corruptions of the pure text of God’s Word, should now,
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, be adopted by the
Revisers of our time-honoured English Bibles. Dr. Edgar, Bibles of
England, 347
As early as about the turn of the fifth century,
Helvidius condemned the Latin Vulgate, then only recently translated by
Jerome, in the most strident terms.
You cannot for shame say Joseph did not know of
them, for Luke tells us (Luke 2:33) "His father and His mother were
marvelling at the things which were spoken concerning Him." And yet
you with marvelous effrontery contend that the reading of the Greek MS
is corrupt, although it is that which nearly all the Greek writers
have left in their books, and not only these, but several of the Latin
writers have taken the words of the same way. Jerome against
Helvidius, from The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Scribner’s
Edition, vol. vi, 338
Noting this condemnation, Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson,
president of Columbia Union College, commented:
You will see by this that Helvidius, the great
scholar of the Italic Church, which was the predecessor of the
Waldensian or the pre-Waldensian Church, accuses Jerome of using Luke
2:33 just as we find it now in the American Revised Version from
corrupt Greek MSS. It is clear that Helvidius had the pure Greek MSS,
which were older than the corrupt Greek MSS used by Jerome. The pure
Greek MSS read Luke 2:33 as we now read it in the King James Version;
so on this one text the present battle between the King James and the
American Revised Versions is the centuries-old battle fought between
the pre-Waldensian Church and the growing Roman Catholic Church. B.G.
Wilkinson, The Attitudes and Teachings of Mrs. E.G. White Toward
Different Versions of the Bible, 2
Rather than being a defamation of Scripture, it is
the proper duty of sincere Christians to point out corruptions of the
precious Word of God. To do less is to condone satanic perversions of
Scripture.
|
