Why the continual frenzy for more and more English translations? Could it be partly the lure of copyright royalties from prosperous English-speaking nations? Who knows, that might be one factor—but it’s also an admission that at least some of these words must be coming from a human rather than heavenly source, since no one can presume to copyright beyond planet earth. The early English translations from the 1500’s and 1600’s had no copyright. The aim in those days was simply to get the Word of God to the people, not to gain fortune or fame. Souls were won to Christ, lives were transformed by reading those early English Bibles. And yes, that can still happen today if our focus is sound and our motives sincere.

The Bible, of course, was not written first in English. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew (the Masoretic text, meticulously preserved by God-fearing Levites) and the New Testament in the (Koine) Greek that was commonly used when Jesus came as the Son of man on earth. Scribes reverently copied these manuscripts with the utmost care.

“The Waldenses were the first of all the peoples of Europe to obtain a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the Reformation, they possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution.”6

“For a few years, under the guidance of the noble apostles, believers in Christ were privileged to have the unadulterated Word of God. But soon the scene changed; the fury of Satan, robbed of further opportunity to harass the Son of God, turned upon the written Word. Heretical sects, warring for supremacy, corrupted the manuscripts in order to further ends. . . . The true church fled into the wilderness, taking pure manuscripts with her.”7

“The history of the Protestant world is inseparable from the Received Text. A single nation could break loose and plunge into anarchy and license. The Received Text shone high in the heavens to stabilize surrounding peoples. Even many nations at one time might fall under the shadow of some great revolutionary wave. But there stood the Received Text to fill their inner self with its moral majesty and call them back to law and order.”8

Through the careful stewardship of faithful believers, by the year 1516, the Textus Receptus (Received Text) of the New Testament was printed—not handwritten—thus allowing for a continually high level of accuracy and consistency. Besides being the source for other great translations of the Reformation (such as Martin Luther’s translation into German and the Reina Valera for Spanish), starting with William Tyndale’s translation in 1525, the Received Text continued as the tried-and-true basis of English translation among Protestants for the next 360+ years. Over 95%—more than 5,650 copies from the early years of the Christian faith—match up with the Received Text, often referred to as the “Majority Text” that had been preserved by those who had fled into the wilderness during the Dark Ages.

“The defenders of the Textus Receptus were of the humbler class who earnestly sought to follow the early church.”9

“Because of its purity, the Majority Text was used by all the 15th, 16th and 17th century Protestant Reformers of Europe to make their translations.”10

In the mid-1800’s, the everlasting gospel including the judgment hour message began to be proclaimed with power, preaching with a loud voice “unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters” (Revelation 14:6, 7).

Almost as if in rebellious retaliation, another voice triggered some disruption and distraction soon after the proclamation of this vital message began. Instead of giving glory to the One “that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters,” Charles Darwin penned On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Besides being alarmingly racist by the standards of anyone today who might pause to notice the blatant implications in the title, the aim of Darwin’s scope seriously undermined the authority of the Genesis account in Scripture as well as an appreciation of God’s love for all dwellers on the earth.11 It was not long before Darwin’s evolutionary theory grossly overshadowed a large degree of faith in the Creator and replaced it with the fallible god of secular humanistic scientism to be a new supposed authority, dominating educational systems across the globe. Despite its flaws, prominent scientists have juggled with adept determination over the years to try to keep afloat some level of credibility in the unproven evolutionary theory.

Around this same time came along another harbinger of doubt. At the apex of “textual criticism” in Germany, University of Leipzig scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf (1815–1875) had been taught by his professors that the Bible was unreliable—full of errors and falsification. So, in a search for some “better” manuscript, Tischendorf claimed to have found in 1844, by chance, 43 leaves in a tinder pile intended to heat the premises of a monastery renamed for St. Catherine of Alexandria, Egypt.12 For centuries, the monastery had had three Bibles which they had carefully kept on their premises—not a fourth—so the plausibility of a chance account to find something this different is not so likely, also since the fine quality vellum was made of animal skins, which would surely have caused quite a stench in the building if the monks had really discarded it for burning.

Whatever the case, enter Codex Sinaiticus. The claim was soon made that this codex (originating virtually from the headquarters of Gnosticism) was boasted of as older and better than the Received Text. Strangely enough, the snow-white parchment mysteriously changed to a dark-stained hue soon afterwards.13, 14

Another cause for concern was that Constantine Simonides, a highly skilled calligrapher, testified in writing (with a Greek monk as witness) that he himself was the one who had penned the codex in 1839 as a gift for the Russian czar.15 Either way, their conflicting stories have continued to trigger much debate, of course, as do the tens of thousands of corrections scribbled throughout, the transposed sequences, plus an odd mixture of Koine and Modern Greek found within the manuscript.16, 17, 18

The codex became known as Aleph.

In his travels throughout the Mediterranean world, Tischendorf also learned of another manuscript called Codex Vaticanus. Its roots also appear to be traced to Alexandria, Egypt and it became known simply as B. 19

Dean Burgon describes: “Codex B comes to us without a history: without recommendation of any kind, except that of its antiquity. It bears traces of careless transcription in every page. The mistakes which the original transcriber made are of perpetual recurrence.”20

These two manuscripts, Aleph and B—which don’t agree with each other in over 3,000 places in the Gospels alone—form the primary essence of what is referred to as the “modern critical” text.21 Some scholars say that neither of these manuscripts were originally Greek, but having come from Egypt, were first in the early Egyptian Coptic language.22

Honestly now, knowing Bible history, would Egypt—a place where Paul never wrote to nor visited even once in his three missionary journeys to scores of cities—really likely be a better, more reliable source of Inspiration than where most of the early Christians dwelt in Judea and Antioch?

The Lord declares: “And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor [the Nile]? . . . Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria” (Jeremiah 2:18, 36). “Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor. The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land; but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria” (Hosea 9:1–3).

In the world of fine art, famous, world-class auction houses take great pains to ensure that whatever is presented for sale is authentic. It must have:

Provenance (verified by witnesses as to the history of where it came from).

Chain of custody (a meticulous record of every place and in whose care it has been before arriving at the auction house).

Forensic-style chemical analysis to verify actual age and composition.

If the secular world of fine art is this careful and conscientious in verifying the authenticity of a product, how much more must we be with the sacred Word of the living God? For some reason, these basic prerequisite steps were never done, neither in Tischendorf’s discovery nor in the continuation of the story:

In the 1880’s, two British scholars and textual critics (Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort) caused a worldwide stir in their subsequent belittling of the Received Text. Firsthand biographical information about their lives reveals that they heartily embraced Darwin’s evolutionary theory rather than the biblical creation account in Genesis. Hort detested as “villainous” and “vile” the Authorized King James Bible, and both even seriously dabbled in the occult.23–29

According to 19th-century conservative textual expert John William Burgon, besides adding 2,213 words plus apocryphal as well as outright heretical books, the result was an alarmingly butchered Greek text from their influence, which removed 3,704 words and substituted 2,121, transposed 3,471 and 1,772 modified, totaling 13,281 changes to the Received Text.30 The aim was to cast doubt on the Received Text, dismissing it for not having been the Egyptian manuscripts they promoted.31 Among the more than 5,650 fragments of New Testament manuscripts in Greek still in existence, this “modern critical” text matches only about 1% of that total.

Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, the other 99% of existing manuscripts which support the Received Text are often set aside today, typically mocked and scoffed at even at seminaries training clergymen around the world. Extensive deletions and footnotes are increasingly being added as caveats and disclaimers calling into question certain portions of Scripture, thus inciting cynicism against the Received Text that had brought forth the truths of the Great Reformation. Too often, textual “criticism” thus becomes exactly what the word “criticism” implies—not a path to faith but a path to doubt.

The 20th century has brought new generations and even more textual criticism and revisions—including by some editors who do not even believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God at all.32

This might perhaps explain another factor that could be contributing to more and more translations into English: Since the Bible is so readily available to people, the enemy uses different tactics to limit its influence by subtly undermining confidence in it. As English is the most widely used language today, to sit in a circle with a group reading the Bible, ironically enough, can actually become a bit confusing when everyone has a different twist from a different translation. So, it would appear that what the enemy could not do in his suppression of Scripture in the Dark Ages he attempts by triggering Babylonian confusion with an overwhelming mass of new translations, nearly all based on Westcott & Hort and the Jesuit Bible of 1582 designed to counteract the Protestant Reformation.33

Ultimately, it becomes evident that one fruit that has resulted is a subtle casting of doubt on the Word of God, basically echoing the challenge of the serpent to Eve in Eden: “Yea, hath God said?” (Genesis 3:2) rather than simply treasuring what the Majority Text had provided to the reformers for centuries.34

This miasma of doubt in Scripture that began escalating in the 1880’s may have partly been what prompted Ellen G. White to pen some inspired words in 1886:

“There are men who strive to be original, who are wise above what is written; therefore, their wisdom is foolishness. They discover wonderful things in advance, ideas which reveal that they are far behind in the comprehension of the divine will and purposes of God. In seeking to make plain or to unravel mysteries hid from ages from mortal man, they are like a man floundering about in the mud, unable to extricate himself and yet telling others how to get out of the muddy sea they themselves are in. This is a fit representation of the men who set themselves to correct the errors of the Bible. No man can improve the Bible by suggesting what the Lord meant to say or ought to have said.

“Some look to us gravely and say, ‘Don’t you think there might have been some mistake in the copyist or in the translators?’ This is all probable, and the mind that is so narrow that it will hesitate and stumble over this possibility or probability would be just as ready to stumble over the mysteries of the Inspired Word, because their feeble minds cannot see through the purposes of God. Yes, they would just as easily stumble over plain facts that the common mind will accept, and discern the Divine, and to which God’s utterance is plain and beautiful, full of marrow and fatness. All the mistakes will not cause trouble to one soul, or cause any feet to stumble, that would not manufacture difficulties from the plainest revealed truth.

“God committed the preparation of His divinely inspired Word to finite man. This Word, arranged into books, the Old and New Testaments, is the guidebook to the inhabitants of a fallen world, bequeathed to them that, by studying and obeying the directions, not one soul would lose its way to heaven.

“Those who think to make the supposed difficulties of Scripture plain, in measuring by their finite rule that which is inspired and that which is not inspired, had better cover their faces, as Elijah when the still small voice spoke to him; for they are in the presence of God and holy angels, who for ages have communicated to men light and knowledge, telling them what to do and what not to do, unfolding before them scenes of thrilling interest, waymark by waymark in symbols and signs and illustrations.

“And He [God] has not, while presenting the perils clustering about the last days, qualified any finite man to unravel hidden mysteries or inspired one man or any class of men to pronounce judgment as to that which is inspired or is not. When men, in their finite judgment, find it necessary to go into an examination of scriptures to define that which is inspired and that which is not, they have stepped before Jesus to show Him a better way than He has led us.

“I take the Bible just as it is, as the Inspired Word. I believe its utterances in an entire Bible. Men arise who think they find something to criticize in God’s Word. They lay it bare before others as evidence of superior wisdom. These men are, many of them, smart men, learned men, they have eloquence and talent, the whole lifework [of whom] is to unsettle minds in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures. They influence many to see as they do. And the same work is passed on from one to another, just as Satan designed it should be, until we may see the full meaning of the words of Christ, ‘When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?’ (Luke 18:8).

“Brethren, let not a mind or hand be engaged in criticizing the Bible. It is a work that Satan delights to have any of you do, but it is not a work the Lord has pointed out for you to do.

“Men should let God take care of His own Book, His living oracles, as He has done for ages. They begin to question some parts of revelation, and pick flaws in the apparent inconsistencies of this statement and that statement. Beginning at Genesis, they give up that which they deem questionable, and their minds lead on, for Satan will lead to any length they may follow in their criticism, and they see something to doubt in the whole Scriptures. Their faculties of criticism become sharpened by exercise, and they can rest on nothing with a certainty. You try to reason with these men, but your time is lost. They will exercise their power of ridicule even upon the Bible. They even become mockers, and they would be astonished if you put it to them in that light.

“Brethren, cling to your Bible, as it reads, and stop your criticisms in regard to its validity, and obey the Word, and not one of you will be lost.”35

“When men venture to criticize the Word of God, they venture on sacred, holy ground, and had better fear and tremble and hide their wisdom as foolishness. God sets no man to pronounce judgment on His Word, selecting some things as inspired and discrediting others as uninspired.”36

(While Ellen G. White on occasion made sparing use of the Revised Version—which is no longer available today—as well as employing other translations in some rare instances in a few of her books, she chose to discontinue that practice altogether in later years.)

Jesus bids us, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

We need to search the Scriptures and study with a pure heart longing for God’s will. The Bible version we choose should extol the divinity of Jesus as God as Creator,37–40 and the efficacy of His blood to save sinners, empowering us to be overcomers through His strength. It should reveal that He is now in Heaven, interceding in our behalf. Nothing that undermines or deletes these vital truths or discredits or belittles the work of the Reformation simply because it does not suit the fancy of Westcott and Hort with their dangerous Alexandrian mentality of doubt should be deemed acceptable.41 Nothing that subtly waters down the Word to promote today’s sprawling axis of one-world religion42 should be considered pure.

“Where is to be found the cause of the widespread infidelity, the rejection of the law of God, and the consequent corruption, under the full blaze of gospel light in an age of religious freedom? Now that Satan can no longer keep the world under his control by withholding the Scriptures, he resorts to other means to accomplish the same object. To destroy faith in the Bible serves his purpose as well as to destroy the Bible itself. By introducing the belief that God’s law is not binding, he as effectually leads men to transgress as if they were wholly ignorant of its precepts. And now, as in former ages, he has worked through the church to further his designs. The religious organizations of the day have refused to listen to unpopular truths plainly brought to view in the Scriptures, and in combating them they have adopted interpretations and taken positions which have sown broadcast the seeds of skepticism.”43

“The truths of the Bible are as pearls hidden. They must be searched, dug out by painstaking effort. Those who take only a surface view of the Scriptures will, with their superficial knowledge, which they think is very deep, talk of the contradictions of the Bible, and question the authority of the Scriptures. But those whose hearts are in harmony with truth and duty will search the Scriptures with a heart prepared to receive divine impressions. The illuminated soul sees a spiritual unity, one grand golden thread running through the whole, but it requires patience, thought, and prayer to trace out the precious golden thread. Sharp contentions over the Bible have led to investigation and revealed the precious jewels of truth. Many tears have been shed, many prayers offered, that the Lord would open the understanding to His Word.”44

“The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times” (Psalm 12:6). When re-acquainting the Hebrew people with Scripture after their long captivity in Babylon, Ezra could have made a new, altered, Revised Babylonian Version of the scriptures to please his congregation likely entrenched in non-biblical habits. But he did not do that. Instead, he re-educated his hungering people the good, old-fashioned way by patiently teaching them: “So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8).

We are bidden: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 18:18–20).

“Go” and “teach” are essential action words found here in the King James as well as in Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva, and Bishops translations dating from 1380–1611. It cannot be replaced with “make disciples.” We cannot make disciples—only God can do that. But we are called to search and to teach what we have learned from God’s word.45 The path is narrow (Matthew 7:14), yet with the creative power of God’s Word that brought the entire universe into existence, it is neither difficult nor discouraging, despite what some have tried to adjust the Bible to say.46

“The Word of God, even when it is injured and mutilated, and even misrepresented, is still the Word of God. Man cannot alter its nature by hacking away at it. If you injure a man, he does not become a snail or an elephant through that injury. He remains a man still, even as the Word of God remains the Word of God whatever injuries man may inflict upon it. And we need to note the irony of the fact that, though Westcott and Hort and the entire army of their colleagues, predecessors and successors, hoped to blind the entire world by corrupting the Word of God, millions are still turned to Christ by it even though all they have to guide them is this ‘revised’ text of the Bible.Moreover, the global effort to swamp out the Textus Receptus has led to a great multiplication—shall we say an explosion—of Bibles being marketed around the world. . . .

“That is not to say that the W&H [Westcott & Hort] text is in any way authenticated or is any way to be preferred. The fact that after mutilating the Word, W&H were still left with the Word, albeit in bits and tatters, in no way exonerates them. On the contrary, it condemns them utterly. But the Word it remains, and it still has power to save in spite of all their efforts, and if that living power is not the grandest mark of its Authenticity, then I don’t know what is. . . . Being the Living Word of the Living God, the Bible has a living power that its enemies can only dream of.”47

How great is the power of God’s divine Providence!

“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Revelation 22:17–19, emphasis added).

What a privilege is ours to have access to God’s Word, the Holy Book of heavenly writ—praying “without wrath and doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8)! Let us truly cherish it!