Research about C.I. Scofield and his version, questions about Preterism and Prophecy, Reasons why Scofield
rejected the work of Westcott and Hort, the Failure of Textual Criticism
THE NETWORKS OF WESTCOTT & HORT
I have in my hand a KJV Bible in which Mr. Scoffied has an introduction with the caption "To Be Read" On his note # XI (11), he writes "The discovery of the Sinaitic MS and the labours in the field of field of textual criticism of such scholars as Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Winer, Alford, and Wescott and Hort have cleared the Greek Texus Receptus of minor inaccuracies while confirming in a remarkable degree the general accuracy of the Authorized Version of that text." Please comment.
The T.R. stands as the historic fact of what the Bible is and should be. It has
stood and continues to stand the test of time.
In the time period when Scoffield was around, the T.R. was very much the
undesired child, battered by centuries of attacks from the Vatican and
Inquisitors, as well as from the disguised attacks of God Deniers who were
promoting their particular brand of indoctrination as "Textual Criticism".
During the 1800s, The Bible was assailed from many quarters. Reponses were
published to those verbal attacks. Many were well articulated but they did not
have the same MEDIA presence [in those days] as the forums that the Textual
Critics had. As a result, the replies were drowned out by the Control and the
Censorship used by the Textual Critics.
The replies to Textual Criticism were reasonably strong, loud, accurate
and persistent. But it took a very concerted effort STILL to overcome Textual
Criticism and its advocates. In Seminaries and Colleges today, the T.R. has
still been replaced by Vaticanized Bible Versions with the help of censors and
Bible Attackers who operate as tenured professors. We do our small part to
overcome their walls of censorship and silence, and we are among those who help
with the progress being made.
The T.R. has begun to be restored to its rightfull place, but this has taken at
least the last 100 years to make this a reality.
In the 1800s, the difficulty in sustaining the T.R. as the baseline,
occured because of 4 broad trends:
1. The inability of Archeology & Science to catch up to
the T.R.
2. The inability of the Churches to understand how to respond to the field of
Textual Criticism, and
3. The continuation of Textual Criticism OUTSIDE of formal Christianity (into
Academic Circles) , where it has continued its stranglehold.
4. The use of False Texts by the
leadership of the Bible Societies
to effect theological changes within denominations, using the New Versions for
attacks on historic doctrines of Christianity.
The main attack against Scofield today is led by a group of Anti-Litteral
Millenarians who believe that THEY are the ones who will live to see
1) the ABSENCE of the Rapture, and
2) the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ
achieved through their own efforts.
For better or worse, operationally and theologically, this places them into the
same belief system - about the End of the Age - that the Vatican has: that the
Christians of the world led - by the Vatican - will usher in the Return of their
Messiah whose feet touches the ground and is here on Earth, and who begins his
reign of 1000 years of peace.
-------------
----------------
Hold the Line, until more work [of exposing Westcott and Hort and their efforts]
is done
The main purpose of the Scofield Bible was to cement the T.R. with the views of
Protestant Evangelicalism as they were around 1880 to 1920. There was tremendous
upheaval in the early 1900s.
In 1904, Tregelles led the Bible Societies in their
effort to officially use the Westcott-Hort text and to STOP using the T.R. as
their source text for foreign-language versions around the world.
In 1909, Scofield came out with his first Edition
of the Scofield Bible.
In 1910, The Bible Societies started Publishing
their versions based on Westcott and Hort, and the Nestle Version [which is
based on Westcott and Hort and Tischendorf]
In 1911, a Textual Critic, Professor
Von Soden (Berlin) also published his version in
Germany, that he CLAIMED was based on the T.R. - in practice, it looked very
close to the Westcott and Hort Version. It was the work of his lifetime and was
published in 4 volumes.
This text remained largely dormant and un-used until 1982 when it became the
Base Text of the NEW King James Version. The Greek text of this version was also
Re-named "The Majority Text" to give the impression that it depended on a
Majority of the Greek Text. This is complete fiction, and Von Soden himself
clearly says that he examined less than 10% of the Greek copies. In other words,
this "Majority Text" omits 90% of the ancient Greek Texts of the New Testament.
In 1912, the first European War began again (they
started and stopped roughly every 40 years) in the Balkans.
In 1913, Hoskier, a rare [defender
of the T.R] Textual Critic published a Two Volume work (Codex B and
its Allies) that demolished Vaticanus and Sinaiticus by showing how appealing to
BOTH of them as authorities for any version was absurd, since they contradicted
each other, almost in every verse. Hoskier - Literally - took both Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus Bible verse by Bible verse, line by line, showing how they
contradicted each other all through these two damaged & corrupted manuscripts.
For some reason, Hoskier ALSO included the Von Soden
version Explicitly in this Two Volume work. Because of this, we have
Hoskier, an outstanding scholar who exposed the wrong and errant translation of
the Greek Text of Von Soden, which is the Core
Greek Text that the NKJV uses today.
The proof is there, for those who want to find it.
In 1914, World War I was officially declared. The
Austro Hungarian Empire was disolved. Many nations went through times of great
turmoil. Germany had an ally: the turkish Islamic Ottoman Empire.
1917, When Germany lost the War, so did its ally,
the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
Turkey had control of Jerusalem until that point. The Ottoman empire surrendered
Jerusalem in 1917 as part of their surrender in World War
I. The Mandate to govern Jerusalem was given to Great Britain. Ever
since then - loosing in World War I, Islamist have lamented the return of
Jerusalem to Jews.
Jews and Christians had the status of Slaves in the Islamic Nations and Empires.
Now, in 1917 a bunch of uppety Jewish slaves - the Jews - actually wanted their
own nation. As a result of the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the defeat of
Islam (though temporary) in the Middle East itself was overwhelming.
Islamists have been trying to eliminate jews and also capture Jerusalem
ever since 1917, when they were forced to give it back. To this day, Islamic
Nations STILL practice slavery, STILL promote slavery, and STILL continue to
trade and sell slaves (Christians) all over the World. There is MORE slavery
today around the world, than there was either in the 1800s at the time of the
Civil War. Millions of Americans went to war to END slavery. But the
slavetraders had no such act of contrition or repentance. The practice STILL
continues in islamic nations today.
In Islamic Nations, there are NO civil rights for ANYONE who is not islamic, and even less rights for women.
1917 As a result of World War I, Great Britain won
the control of Jerusalem, and declared the Balfour Declaration to be the policy
of the British Empire (inviting Jews abroad to return to found Israel and join
those who were already in Israel).
However, in World War ONE [ WW I ], it was
Churchill who had converted the British Navy from Steam power to Petroleum based
engines. That was to have major global implications.
in 1917, the world being entirely different and re-arranged from what it had
been previously, Scofield issued his second edition of the Scofield Bible, which
is the version that we have with us today.
Through that process of the use of the Scofield Bible, Scofield
arrested the progress of liberalism throughout Evangelical churches.
To that extent, Scofield has done this, and led a succesfull effort -
through his notes and the Bible which bears his name - to do this.
(The loss to errant doctrine overall though was still severe, and many
denominations today have entirely capitulated to Textual Criticism and
Liberalism, even while their congregations were mostly asleep and did not
realize this was taking place. Worse, some within those denominations realized
there were problems but did not understand how or where to find the answers ).
Scofield wrote several books in addition to his notes, and we recommend them to
others. But we need to remember that his notes, just like any notes for any
Bible, are only a place to START, not a place to end.
Let's examine the quote above, a bit more:
You are right in your quote, but it is the last half that deserves the point:
Scofield is NOT agreeing with the critics of the
T.R. On the contrary, he is brushing them off, in a scholarly academic manner.
"...Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Winer, Alford, and Wescott and
Hort have cleared the Greek Texus Receptus of minor inaccuracies while
confirming in a remarkable degree the general accuracy of the Authorized Version
of that text."
Here is the Emphasis:
...while confirming in a remarkable degree the general
accuracy of the Authorized Version of that text"
Today we miss the significance of how the words are
phrased.
Griesbach was the leading
Bible Attacker in Germany. He is the one who gave rise to all of the rest. He
began cutting out portions of the New Testament and altering it in many places,
with his falsified version of 1805. He was acclaimed and praised by the German
university system.
Lachmann was next to alter the Bible and propose his own version.
Soon after, another German Textual Critic, Tischendorf came along,
and attacked the T.R. having accepted - more and more - the FALSE premise that
the T.R. was "hopelessly corrupt".
After Tischendorf went to visit the Pope PERSONALLY, he received help to find versions of the Bible that would be OPPOSED to the Textus Receptus. The Pope was glad to help.
People today have forgotten [or not been told] the context in which the TR
advocates had to
stand for truth. That phrase "hopelessly corrupt"
was the mantra of the day.
Today, discoveries have been made in the thousands of portions of the New
Testament in Ancient Koine Greek, so we KNOW that the copies that we have
are in fact the same content as the original and first
copies.
However, in the time of Scofield this was not known.
And a bit earlier, in the time of Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort, those
discoveries had not yet been made.
The premise in academic circles was that the T.R.:
1. was "hopelessly corrupt" and,
2. it was a translation that had survived from the
Middle Ages into the 1800s.
In other words, led by Anti-God religious professors, the people in the 1800s
made the mistake of mistakenly conclusing that the T.R. was not original and
authentic, but was simply a terribly corrupted text dating from not much earlier
than the time of the Middle Ages.
They believed this because of their professors who fed them this trash (F.C.
Baur comes to mind, to name one of hundreds).
Tregelles whom Scofield mentioned changed from a
T.R. defender, to a champion of Sinaiticus and Tischendorf,
To call Alford a heretic would probably be an
understatement.
Westcott and Hort were very dependent on German Textual Criticism for their
efforts, and they specifically cite Tischendorf in many places
throughout their corrupted works.
Tischendorf [with the personal help and intervention of
the Pope who had run sections of the Inquisition still active in the 1800s]
discovered the corrupted Codex Sinaiticus and changed his own previous version
[which had formerly depended on the T.R] in more than Six Thousand Places.
People today might not understand this background about what Scofield is saying
in his Introduction to the Scofield version.
Scofield conceded theoretical potential defeat on irrelevant
points in order to underscore and emphasize Victory on the more important ones.
There is a Textus Receptus. It does exist and it is in Heaven. We affirm that IT
is the one without error.
What we CAN state with certainty is that we are able to differentiate between
the Modern Versions and the TR that we have.
If Scofield is willing to concede "minor innacuracies", that is not a surrender,
that is a victory.
What Scofield was affirming was that
1. despite the work of Griesbach to cut out sections,
2. despite the interventions of Lachmann,
3. despite the defection of Tregelles, ( who was intellectually seduced by
Nestle)
4. despite the changes to the Biblical Text by Tischendorf, and
5. despite the changes and attacks made by Westcott and Hort,
The MOST that could be said was that the T.R. had - at most - MINOR
innacuracies.
Given the choice between accepting the premise of 6000 changes, or "minor
innacuracies", minor innacuracies is... the obvious better point.
-----------------
And you will notice what Scofield did: he acknowledged the efforts and the labor
of the Textual Critics, and the RESULTS.
In his introduction and the section of that posted above, Scofield took
NOTICE of their work, their labor, their efforts.
He also however noted that they had failed -
FAILED - IN their objective to replace the
KJV.
It was very injurious to the Revised Version (Westcott, Hort & Co) to realize
that their sales, as Scofield takes pain to note, was MINOR. See the same Note #
11: "None of the Revisions have commended themselves to the people at large"
That is academic diplomatic-speak for "your version has flopped". And he notes
it with a measurement that can be measured: SALES
The people had NOT accepted the version of Westcott and Hort.
-----------------
That is another reason why there are so many new versions. It is the same
corrupted Nestle-Aland Westcott-Hort version underneath,
but they keep coming up with new translations hoping each new one will
keep taking market share away from T.R. based editions.
Scofield continued his work: he worked with other good professors, and helped to
work through at least 2 other seminaries. They remained faithful to his vision
until the 1980s when they started to breakdown.
Scofield oversaw the projects of the Scofield Bible. If we knew of a substitute
that was better, we would recommend it, but we have not found one yet.
Where people have a conscious intentional dislike of the Scofield edition, the
main reason why people dislike Scofield is because they don't WANT to believe
the Rapture. This is basically a variation of the "Denial of God" theory.
Just because people Deny that God exists will not make the Rapture go away. God
is not dependend on what any of us believes.
The real problem is that the desire to see the Rapture not exist, is the desire
actually to NOT take the New Testament literally.
So the crux of the Rapture issue is really instead a question of how
literally the New Testament should be believed and taken.
Those who aspire to the 1000 Year Millenial Reign have a not-so-hidden-agenda of
running their own show. Jesus is more the after-thought.
That plan is not likely to work, and it will instead lay the groundwork for one
who calls himself the Christ, but he will Not be the CHRIST OF GOD.
---------------
We affirm what we do about Scofield the same as
we do with all authors that we use or refer to:
A. We do not agree
with any ONE author 100% that we know of.
B. We do not agree
with ourselves 100%.
C. Where an author is
accurate, we endorse their work and agree. Where they are not accurate,
obviously - we would not agree with them.
We continue to caution all that what counts is placing our security in Jesus
Christ and God alone.
Depending on men leads to mistakes. we can afford to trust leaders only to the
extent that their wisdom and leadership is Biblical. All humans make mistakes.
We have endorsed much of the work of both Calvin and Luther on our website. But
Calvin and Luther made Mistakes, some of those mistakes being rather large ones,
and we are obviously NOT endorsing their mistakes.
We thank God that as people get to learn more about History, that they will find
the Heroes, the Examples, and the Encouragement that they need, through the
MULTITUDE of examples of great conduct and strong and Biblical leadership that
our time-period seems to lack.
But we must remember that while most people will wait for others to prepare, it is up to each of us to prepare
ourselves for our spiritual journeys. It is up to each of us to study to show ourselves approved, a workman that
needeth not to be ashamed.
It is up to us to search the scriptures daily, to see if these things be so. The responsibility for our conduct rests with
each of us. THAT is what disturbs people about Scofield, not only that he tried to advocate for Truth, but also that
he affirmed that GOD is sovereign, and it is up to each of us to adjust to God's plan, rather than trying to force God
into a mould that is designed to accomodate the plans of mostly failed global influencers who will only build a very
temporary empire of Iron and Clay.
Questions & Answers to ask Pastors
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(with Secular and Early Church sources in Ancient Greek)
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(By Christian Scholar Fluent in Arabic)
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