Luke 14:5 "an ass, a son or a sheep"?

Why should I? Do you think P 45 and 75 are always in agreement? They are not. You guys with no complete and 100% true Bible in any language will always be questioning and changing your "bibles".

Here is an example.

In Luke 11:11 we read: "If a son shall ask BREAD of any of you that is a father, WILL HE GIVE HIM A STONE? OR IF HE ASK a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?"

All of the capitalized letters are omitted in the NASB and NIV. The NASB says :" Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a FISH (not bread), he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?" There is no "now suppose" in any text; they have changed the active verb "ask" to the passive "is asked" and they have omitted "WILL HE GIVE HIM A STONE, OR IF HE ASK". The NIV is similar to the NASB. This is because Vaticanus does not have these words and Vaticanus (B) has substitued "Fish" for "bread". P45 and P75 are also in disagreement with each other, as well as the Majority of all Greek texts. P45, agreeing with Vaticanus, has "FISH" (ixthun not BREAD - arton) BUT P75 has a unique reading not found in any bible version I know of. P75 actually has a completely different word here - isxun - STRENGTH, or MIGHT. These two partial, paprus manuscripts often differ one from the other, sometimes following Vaticanus and at others Siniaticus, and sometimes going their own separate ways. For example, both P45 & 75 omit "neither under a bushel" in verse 33, yet the NASB, NIV include these words because they are found in both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

The reading of the King James Bible in Luke 11:11 is that found in the Majority of all manuscripts including A, C, D and Siniaticus - one of the "oldest and best" (according to modern scholarolatry).

It is of great interest to note that the KJB reading is also that of the Revised Version of 1881 and the ASV of 1901 which was so highly praised by the NASB as being the Rock of Biblical Honesty. So, why did the NASB change the reading? Hey, they can do whatever they want whenever their fancy strikes them. The KJB reading is also found in the Catholic Douay (1950) and the Catholic Jerusalem bible of 1968. It is the Catholics that posses Vaticanus, yet even they did not follow it in this place, as did the NIV and NASB, until later Catholic versions came on the scene, like the NEW Jerusalem in 1985. BUT now the latest Catholic version has come on the merry-go-round bible scene and guess what. It has gone back to the original reading once again. It is the 2009 The Sacred Bible Catholic Public Domain Version and it now reads: "So then, who among you, if he asks his father for bread, he would give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he would give him a serpent, instead of a fish?"

Can we expect the same random changes in the Bible of the Month Club English versions? Most definitely. In fact, it has already happened among those modern versions that follow the ever changing Westcott-Hort, UBS type of fickle scholarship. They are working on a new bible version called the International Standard Version and now in 2010 they have the gospel of Luke finished and "updated" and it too has gone back to the original reading found in the King James Bible all along. The brand new, updated according to $cholar'$ late$t finding$, I$V now reads in Luke 11:11 - "What father among you, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, would give him a snake instead of the fish?" Modern scholarship is nothing if not consistently inconsistent.

The first version the change the Greek and English text to omit the words “WILL HE GIVE HIM A STONE, OR IF HE ASK" and to change BREAD to FISH was the liberal RSV, then followed by the NASB, NRSV, NIV, ESV, Message, the Holman Standard and Wallace’s NET version.

The reading of “if a son shall ask BREAD of any of you that is a father, WILL HE GIVE HIM A STONE? OR IF HE ASK a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?” is found in the Majority of all manuscripts, and in such Bible translations as: the Anglo-Saxon Gospels Corpus Christi Manuscript circa 1000 A.D., Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, Cranmer’s Bible 1539, the Bishops’ Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1557 - 1602, the Douay-Rheims of 1582, the King James Bible 1611, Mace N.T. 1729, Wesley’s translation of 1755, Young’s, Darby, Hebrew Names Version, World English Bible, Lamsa’s 1936 translation of the Syriac, Weymouth Version 1902, the Bible in Basic English 1961, the New Berkeley Version 1969, the Amplified Bible 1987 (put out by the same Lockman Foundation that prints the NASB), the 1994 21st Century KJV, and the 1998 Third Millenium Bible.

Foreign language Bibles that read the same way as the King James Bible are Jerome’s Latin translation of 382 A.D., the Latin Vulgate of 405, the Sagradas Escrituras of 1569, the Spanish Reina Valera 1909, 1960, 1995 - “¿Qué padre de vosotros, si su hijo le pide pan, le dará una piedra? ¿o si pescado, en lugar de pescado, le dará una serpiente?”, the 2003 Castillian, the 2004 Reina Valera Gomez, La Biblia de las Américas 1997 (by the same Lockman Foundation), Luther’s German Bible 1545, the French Louis Segond 1910, the Italian Diodati 1649, and the New Diodati 1991, and the 1997 La Parola e Vita - “E chi è tra voi quel padre che, se il figlio gli chiede del PANE, gli dà una pietra? “, the Portuguese de Almeida, the Chinese Union Traditional, the French Martin 1744, Louis Segond 1910, French Ostervald 1996 - “Qui est le père d'entre vous, qui donne à son fils une pierre, lorsqu'il lui demande du PAIN?”, the Modern Greek used throughout the whole world in the Greek Orthodox churches and the Modern Hebrew New Testament.

So if you are trusting the modern "bibles" to give you the complete truth of God, you are getting something "fishy" instead of the bread of God.

Will Kinney

Hi Aaron. Virtually EVERY verse has variants and the "scholars" who put together today's conflicting, constantly changing and contradictory versions can't even agree among themselves. Nobody defends any modern version as being the complete, inspired and 100% true words of God. The majority of present day Christians no longer believe in the infallibility of the Scriptures and it is only going to get worse.

You statement about how "the differences often don't amount to much!" is completely off base and inaccurate.

Are Bible Versions 99.5% the Same?

http://brandplucked.webs.com/arebibles995same.htm

By His grace, believing the Book,

Will Kinney

P45 and P75 are in complete disarray and obviously not all bible translators (not even many who follow the constantly changing UBS critical texts) give much credit to P45 and P75. The portions of this article are from a man who is not even a KJB onlyist.

Papyri Manuscripts

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/Minton-HS.html

Here only a few facts about these earliest of New Testament manuscripts need to be mentioned. Surely (some would say) the Spirit would want to get things off to a proper start, and would ensure perfection in the copyists of the first few centuries. Yet the best papyri manuscripts indicate serious divergence from each other; this is hardly Holy Spirit perfection. None of them are identical, but my focus will only be on p45, p66, and p75. P45 is from the Beatty collection and p66 and 75 are from the Bodmer collection. All date to about A.D. 200-225, and all are rightly considered among the most valuable because of their great age and considerable length. These three ancient manuscripts have some 78 verses in common, yet they disagree among themselves more times than that. Christians are thankful for these early witnesses and rightly say the Spirit of God had a providential hand in the copying and preservation process. It is clear that the Spirit gave the responsibility and opportunity to publish the Word of God, but he did not impose an artificial infallibility upon the copiers. In fact, the unified testimony of these three seems to reflect a disaster of isolated church copies made in times of persecution. They are not nearly as accurate as one might wish. The details in the chart that follows are sufficient to suggest that the isolated churches or individuals that produced them may not have been able to freely contact well established Christian centers at c. A.D. 200.

There is then a chart of 78 verses taken from John 10:7-25; 10:30-11:10; 11:18-37; 11:42-57 showing where and how often (and it is VERY often) that P45, P66 and P75 disagree with each other.

The chart lists all 78 verses present in both the Chester Beatty (p45, p46, p47) and the early Bodmer (p66, p72, p75) papyri. It indicates when any of them agree. The passages are John 10:7-25; 10:30-11:10; 11:18-37; 11:42-57. The lac indicates a lacuna in p75 (p75 does not have parts of these four verses).

Out of the 72 verses P45 and P75 have in common (P75 is missing 6 of the 78) these two early papyri agree with each other only 4 times out of the 72 examples!

In the 78 verses above, UBS4 cites 12 variants, NA27 cites 147 variants, MT2 cites 77 variants, and the 114 variants above are cited by Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts. More variants could be listed. For example, at 10:16 NA27 lists four variants, and MT2 lists two (but one is not mentioned by NA27). The Swanson text seems to give a good breakdown of the variants. P45, p66 and p75 all agree three times or 2.9%. P45 agrees with p66 six times or 5.3%. P45 agrees with p75 one time or .9%. P45 disagrees with both p66 and p75 104 times or 91%. All of these numbers could be slightly different, depending on which textual apparatus is examined and on how one interprets the data. However, the results will not vary far from the above.

Hi Daniel. I agree that the Bible says God will preserve His words, but I am using the King James Bible promise found in Psalms 12 as my Scripture reference. What verse are you using to get the same teaching from? IF you really believe what you say about God preserving His word(s), then WHERE are they today? I don't care about the "How" He did it (I believe in the absolute sovereignty and providence of Almighty God), but I am concerned about "Where" He did it. My answer is that He generally preserved them in the Reformation bibles and in all their perfection in the King James Bible.

What is your answer? Do you believe there exists now or ever existed at any time in history a Bible (66 books in a single volume) that was or is the complete, inspired, preserved and 100% true words of God? Yes, No, I don't know, or "Who cares?"

What do you say?

Will Kinney

They are both correct. Both words are mere variations of spelling. There is Saviour and Savior, inferiour and inferior, heretick and heretic. No change in underlying Hebrew or Greek text. No change in meaning. This is in sharp contrast to your ever changing NASB, NIV, NKJV, ESV etc. which deliberately change not only their English texts but the underlying Greek and Hebrew as well.

So Ron, instead of straining at gnats and swallowing a camel, can you tell us where you think the complete, inspired and 100% true Bible is? You can't say? Don't have one? Don't even believe there should be one? How far down the road of apostasy are you at this point? Have you reached Bart Ehrman's level yet?

Thanks,

Will Kinney

Hi Ron. I don't have to know you at all to be able to ask you some simple questions about what you believe. You just dodged answering them; now I know you a bit more. You are free to read whatever you want to read. I sometimes read and compare the various Geneva bibles too. But since you refused to answer my questions to you, let me at least ask you the same question you asked me - "which publisher produces the inspired translation?" Ooops. Wait a minute. Now we are back to those questions again that you refuse to answer. Sorry;-)

Will K

Hi Jay. Very good question. The first part of the doctrinal statement about the "plenary divine inspiration of the Scripture in the original languages" is fine but ultimately means nothing if it stops at that. There ARE no originals. Now if you try to obscure things while still trying to sound "orthodox" then you say something like "in the original languages", but what does this phrase "the original languages" mean? Hebrew and Greek texts or copies or manuscripts? Then the question is WHICH Hebrew and Greek manuscripts? Are ALL the thousands of variants found in these "original languages" equally inspired and infallible? That would be utterly absurd.

So your doctrinal statement in a very real way says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about what or where this "word of God" is to be found either today or at any time in history. You have identified nothing concrete, tangible or in print that any of us can hold in our hands and read by this mumbo-jumbo "doctrinal statement". If you say you hold these "original languages" as your inerrant and infallible words of God, would you please do us all a favor and tell us where we can get a copy of them so that we can compare them to whatever we are using now (KJB, NASB, NIV, RSV, ESV, NKJV, Holman, ISV, NET, Spanish Reina Valera, French Ostervald, Luther's German, or Swahili) to see the differences and similarities?

When you can do that for us, then I will admit that your doctrinal statement actually has some substance to it. Otherwise it is just pious sounding, poorly thought out double speak, that means absolutely nothing.

Something to think about,

Will Kinney

I'm not a troll. I'm just trying to get you to THINK about what you say you believe and see how inconsistent and shallow it really is. You have no complete and 100% true Bible and your case is getting worse with each new version to come down the pike.

Will K

Good questions, Kevin. It looks like maybe you didn't read the other article I wrote about this issue called "Does the KJB position "blow up"? There I address the issue of before 1611. I dealt with the 7 purifications in the first article. I think there were some good bibles, but God did not bring forth the perfect Bible until the King James Bible. I don't believe there was a perfect Latin bible or any other language before the English of the KJB. This may sound shocking at first, but look at what the other side believes.

The Bible of the Month Club promoters (bible agnostics who do not believe that any bible is the perfect words of God) not only do not believe there exists a complete and 100% true Bible NOW, but they don't believe there ever was one.

Here is the article that I think addresses the questions you bring up in the second half of your post.
http://brandplucked.webs.com/kjbonlyblowup.htm

God bless,

Will Kinney

Hi Aaron. Thanks for the question. Brother, First, to say that all translations are the inspired word of God is simply indefensible and ridiculous. Secondly, how could you possibly know if they "match the original" or not? You do not have any originals to compare them to.

Regarding your second question, Yes, I believe God has sovereignly placed His pure and inspired words in the English language of the King James Bible and that they match the content of the non-existent originals. Only God can do this because only God knows what the original were.

Here is something I wrote about this in the past.

Scholars tell us God has preserved His words somewhere in a few thousand conflicting manuscripts which only they can read. Yet they cannot agree among themselves as to which texts to put into their "bibles", nor how to translate the meaning once they agree on the text.

Get 10 scholars into a room and you will come up with 12 different opinions. They try to piece together the original words from the remaining, conflicting manuscripts. Yet God can work through this "scholarly process" Himself much better than they, and place His true words in one volume, because He knows which words are His and which ones are not.

I often hear objections raised by "scholars" who themselves do not believe that any Bible in any language, including "the" Hebrew and "the" Greek, is now the complete and inerrant words of God. They ask such things as: "Well, how do you know the King James translators got it right?" or "What was their textual source for deciding which readings were inspired and which ones were scribal additions or omissions?". Implied in their very questions is the idea that there is no such thing as an inerrant Bible now, nor ever was one.

Don't the "scholars" who put together the constant barrage of "new and improved, based on the latest findings" type of bible versions that keep coming down the pike go through a similar process, at least in their own minds and on their best of days? Don't the modern scholars get together and pray asking God to guide their efforts, hoping that perhaps their's will be the best bible version to ever appear in print and be "the closest to the originals" of any of them? (This scenario is, of course, giving them the best of all possible motives for their work).

Is it impossible for God to work through a group of dedicated men, though fallen, sinful and imperfect, to bring about the truth of His preserved and perfect words and place them in a real Book between two covers printed on paper with ink, that the children of God can actually hold in their hands and believe every word? Why do the Bible critics mock at the idea that God may have actually already guided through this "scholarly process" and done what they themselves think they are trying to do today? I don't get it.

The indebtedness of the King James Bible translators to their predecessors is recognized most clearly in the Preface to the reader where they state in no uncertain terms: "Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought, from the beginning, that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but TO MAKE A GOOD ONE BETTER, or OUT OF MANY GOOD ONES ONE PRINCIPAL GOOD ONE, NOT JUSTLY TO BE EXCEPTED AGAINST that hath been our endeavour, that our mark."

The King James Translators also wrote: "Nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are the thoughts to be the wiser: so if we build upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labors, do endeavor to make better which they left so good...if they were alive would thank us...the same will shine as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished."

God is under no obligation to give equal light or gifts to all people. Psalm 147:19,20: "He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD."

He has not promised to give every individual a perfect Bible. Even modern scholars will admit there are inferior translations. Yet using the Jehovah Witness version, or just a gospel tract, someone can come to know the Lord. We are only responsible for the light we have received.

I believe in the sovereignty of God in history. "For the kingdom is the LORD'S; and He is the governor among the nations." Psalm 22:28. God has set His mark upon many things in this world that reveal His Divine hand at work in history. Why do we use the 7 day week instead of the 10 day week? Why are dates either B.C. (Before Christ) or A.D. (Anno Domini - year of our Lord)? (although the secular world is now trying in vain to change this too to BCE and CE.) England just "happens to be" the one nation from which we measure the true Time (Greenwich time, zero hour) and from which we measure true Position, zero longitude.

In 1611 the English language was spoken by a mere 3% of the world's population, but today English has become the closest thing to a universal language in history. He used the King James Bible to carry His words to the far ends of the earth, where it was translated into hundreds of languages by English and American missionaries for over 300 years. The sun never set on the British empire. It was even taken to space by American astronauts and read from there. God knew He would use England, its language and the King James Bible to accomplish all these things long before they happened. It is the only Bible God has providentially used in this way. It is the only Bible believed by thousands upon thousands of believers to be the inspired, infallible and 100% true words of God.

Will Kinney

Hi Aaron. Let's look at the way you identify what the very ambiguous doctrinal statement says about the words of God. You interpret the statement "in the original languages" as being "the originals" or "the autographs". If that is what is intended, then I do agree with it. I imagine most Christians would agree that the originals WERE inspired. However, no one can reasonably or factually say "the originals ARE inspired and infallible" simply because the originals DO NOT EXIST; no one living has ever seen them; they never did make up a Bible (66 books in one volume) and you wouldn't recognize them if they fell out of the sky and landed at your feet.

Even in your statement here you use a past tense verb, not a present tense verb. You just got done saying that "inspiration occurred" and then you tell us that God did not continue to inspire. This clearly implies the contrary of what a Bible believer believes. God's words ARE inspired. They are alive and are able to give life now, even if they are in another language. Your present view maintains that inspiration only occurred once and is no longer operative in God's true words, because you think ONLY the originals WERE inspired, and the simple fact is there are no originals.

So, IF you look at your doctrinal statement as referring to the non-existent and unknowable originals as being what you say you believe, then you are professing a faith in something that you know does not exist, and you are implicitly affirming that there is no such thing as a complete, inspired and 100% true Bible NOW.

Is that what you believe? Is membership in this Iron Sharpens Iron forum only for Bible agnostics and not for Bible believers?

If you guys want to ban me from your forum because I actually believe I have a real and tangible Bible in print that I can hold in my hands, read and believe every word, and you guys hold to the idea that "IF the originals HAD BEEN put into a single volume Bible then they WOULD HAVE BEEN the inspired and inerrant words of God (but we do not have them and don't know what they said for sure)", then go right ahead and do it. Maybe I don't belong here.

Will Kinney

Hi Nathan. I'm not quite sure what your point is because you don't really say anything nor ask a question, but my guess would be that since I merely asked a basic question about whether or not people here really believe "the Bible" IS the complete, inspired and 100% true words of God, and all I get are vague, undefined answers and threats of banishment, then I must be trying to start a quarrel.

Or when I show that the doctrinal statement concerning the Scriptures here in fact does not say anything of substance, has no clear meaning and defines nothing, that I must be some sort of a trouble maker for pointing this out. Is that what you are trying to say?

Do you or do you not believe there exists or ever existed such a thing as the complete, inspired and 100% true words of God in any Bible in any language on the face of this earth? "Yes, No, I don't know, or I don't care - don't bother me with pestering and uncomfortable questions that make me think"?

Will Kinney