Ouch. Yeah, sorry, that's kinda' hitting below the belt, I know. However, it's 100% true and historically accurate. You doubt? It's easily ascertained.
Anyone who's very familiar at all with the Bible version debate knows that there are two main families of manuscripts (mss.), the Byzantine or Antioch, known as the "Majority Text," and the Alexandrian, known as the "Critical Text." For almost 1800 years, the only Scriptures available to the people were those of the Antioch line (where they were first called Christians, etc.). Antioch is located in Asia Minor, the location of the vast majority of Paul's missionary journeys.
These mss. are found in dozens of different languages the world over, and have resulted in every Reformation-Era Bible besides Wycliffe's, from the Gutenberg Bible down through the Bishops, Geneva, Great and Authorized Bibles (KJB). These, while differing and varying somewhat among the 10,000 or so different scraps and portions in so many different languages, still exhibit an incredible coherence as a whole, and to any objectie observer have resulted in every major revival and awakening movement on the globe since the time of Christ.
However, this family of mss. has been villanized by modern Christian scholarship as being newer and more modified from the "Original Autographs." They in turn offer the Critical line of mss. in their place, but even a cursory examination of these raises an immense number of red flags. For instance, the proponents of the Alexandrian family of manuscript were from Alexandria, Egypt, a place that no Apostle nor church father of character came from nor even visited. Alexandria was a hotbed of corruption and debauchery from the political sphere down through its culture and even into its band of Christians. This group included Origen, who castrated himself, and other men whose philosophy came directly from the humanistic philosophers of Greece. It's clear from their writings (Origen was a most prolific writer) that they held very few of the "orthodox" or fundamental doctrines, instead many times believing in multiple paths for salvation and other hereisies.
To return to the title, however: in the middle 1800s, Christian scholars who had studied in humanistic German schools of philosophy began uncovering new manuscripts and codices that had never been seen before. These included Alexandrianus (A), the least-known of the three main mss., Siniaiticus (
א), found in a garbage heap in a monestary in the Siniai desert, and Vaticanus (B), a script that no Christian scholar, liberal or not, has ever actually studied in person. Dean Burgeon, a great defender of the Majority Text in the late 1800s, described the aforementioned codices as sloppy and lacking the care that important documents of any type merited, let alone the Scriptures themselves. It's believed that Origin and others actually modified at least two of these codices, though there are contradictions and ommissions located throughout.
The reason that Vaticanus (B) has never been actively studied is because it is kept securely locked away in the Vatican library. While photocopies have been made available, on which the overwhelming majority of modern translations are based, the codex itself is unattainable.
But all this doesn't necessarily answer the customary query or the reader: why would the Pope and the Catholic system look favorably upon the modern versions, while by implication frowning upon traditional translations? Simple this: thousands of people, from unknown thousands during the Dark Ages down through John Huss and William Tyndale, died for hiding, reading, posessing or memorizing the words of Scripture from the Majority Text, and their deaths were completely at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. While the "church" used political powers to carry out the public torture and executions, they were behind it and in control of it nonetheless.
After the Bible was out in the open and impossible for the Papists to control (thanks to men like Luther, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale and others), they decided on another tact: if you can't beat them, join them. So as a result, the Chamelion Catholic Church changed their stance on the Bible, and manipulated Christian "scholarship" to use their "older," extremely corrupt manuscripts and codices to produce new versions of the Bible. In essence, the NIV, NASB, NLT, ESV, and ASV are all based on the same source from whence came the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible, while the King James Bible, the Bishops, Tyndale, Great Bible, Luther's German Bible, and all other Reformation-Era Bibles, are based on the manuscripts that Bible-believing men ans women died for through the centuries.
Hard words, yes, but very true. Not only are "updates" to the Bible unnecessary, but the very foundation for those updates is the corruption that the Roman Catholic Whore has infiltrated Christianity with to undermine the Authority and Power of the Scriptures. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together wouldn't accept the doctrines of Purgatory, Infant Baptism or Transubstantiation, but those same individuals turn around and correct the words of God with the corruption that the Catholic Bible is based on. Hardly makes sense, does it?
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