My Response to _The New World Translation EXPOSED!_ on Acts 20:28

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My Response to _The New World Translation EXPOSED!_ on Acts 20:28

By Ben Rast

Acts 20:28
NWT: Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed YOU overseers, to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own [Son].

NIV: Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.  Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

NASB: Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

KJV: Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Ben Rast: Going through my collection of legitimate Bible translations (and some not-so good translations), I find the NWT stands alone in their mistranslation of this verse.

Reply: Perhaps it is time to expand your library:

"care for the church of God, which he has bought for himself at the price of the blood of his own One." William Barclay

"be the shepherds of the church of God, which he obtained with the blood of his own Son." Revised Standard Version

"Be shepherds of the church of God, which he made his own through the sacrificial death of his Son." Good News Bible

"to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son." New Revised Standard Version

"to feed the church of God that he bought with the blood of his own Son" New Jerusalem Bible

"Be like shepherds to God's church. It is the flock that he bought with the blood of his own Son." Contemporary English Version

"Tenderly care for God's congregation, which he acquired by the blood of his own Son." 21st Century NT

See also The Pre-Nicene New Testament, The Concordant Literal New Testament, The Translator's New Testament, The Holy Bible in Modern English, by Ferrar Fenton and the Darby, Rotherham and Alfred Marshall footnotes.


Ben Rast: What a powerful biblical testimony to the deity of Christ...a little mistranslation is made to completely change the meaning and deceive...

Reply: To deceive, or adhere to good Greek?

The Greek word IDIOS, especially when it is articular (see below), demands that a noun follows, whether stated, or implied. If not stated in the Greek, it is required in the English translation to fill the meaning.

F.F.Bruce, in _The Acts of the Apostles: Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary_ 3rd ed.). On p. 434 he writes:

DIA TOU hAIMATOS TOU IDIOU: "with the blood of his own one; byz reads DIA TOU IDIOU hAIMATOS, "with his own blood." In the present sense IDIOS is the equivalent of Heb. YAHID, "only," "well-beloved," otherwise rendered AGAPHTOS, EKLEKTOS, MONOGENHS. For the absolute sense of hO IDIOS (but in the plural) cf. 4:23; 24:23; also Jn 1:11; 13:1. (Cf. TA IDIA, "one's own place," 21:6).

In the papyri we find the singular used thus as a term of endearment to near relations, e.g. hO DEINA TWi IDIWi CAIREIN ["So-and-so to his own (friend), greeting']" (J.H. Moulton, MHTI, p. 90).

The more natural way of expressing "through his own blood" in Attic Greek would be DIA TOU hEAUTOU hAIMATOS or DIA TOU hAIMATOS TOU hEAUTOU; or one might find an instrumental dative instead of the preposition DIA + genitive, and, of course, the use of hAIMA here has to be viewed as a Semitism. DIA TOU IDIOU hAIMATOS would also be another way of getting to the translation "through his own blood" and this is what the Majority Text/Textus Receptus shows--but that's not in the ancient manuscripts.

In my list below I ask the reader to take note that IDIOS precedes the noun, whether in Greek, or in the translation English.

The word "own" here creates an expectation of a contrast, as in "his own language" (THi IDIAi DIALEKTWi, Acts 1:19, 2:6, 2:8) which is contrasted to someone else's language, or as in THi IDIAi EXOUSIAi, Acts 1:7, or IDIAi DUNAMEI, Acts 3:12, or IDIAi GENEAi, Acts 13:36, or PERI THS IDIAIS DEISIDAIMONIAS, Acts 25:19. If such a contrast is present, the normal, expected order is for IDIOS to precede its noun. This is what my list of comparable Scriptures using IDIOS will show:

Matthew 9:1 his own city.
Matthew 22:5 his own farm
Matthew 25:14 his own servants
Luke 2:3 his own city (Textus Receptus)
Luke 6:41 thine own eye
Luke 6:44 his own fruit
Luke 10:34 his own beast
John 1:11 unto his own [CEV adds the word "world"; TEV adds the word "country"; God's Word and NJB adds the word "people"; RSV adds the word "home"; NLT adds the word "land"]
John 1:41 his own brother [Textus Receptus]
John 4:44 his own country
John 5:18 his own Father
John 5:43 his own name
John 7:18 hiw own glory
John 8:44 he speaketh of his own [NRSV, RSV, HCSB, NASB, NET, NJB adds the word "nature"; EMTV, NKJV adds the word "resources"; ESV, NLT adds the word "character" NIV adds "native language"; Weymouth adds the word "store."]
John 10:3 his own sheep
John 10:4 all his own [KJV, CEV, Diaglott, EMTV, God's Word, LITV, MKJV, NET, NKJV, WEB and Weymouth adds the word "sheep"]
John 10:12 own the sheep
John 13:1 having loved his own [CEV adds the word "followers"; NLT adds the word "disciples"]
John 15:19 the world would love its own [Weymouth adds the word "property"; God's Word writes "one of its own"]
John 16:32 each one to his own [CEV, HCSB, ESV, TEV, NASB, NET, NIV, NRSV, RSV, Weymouth, Beck, C.B. Williams adds the word "home"; LITV, MKJV adds the word "things"; NJB, NLT adds the word "way"]
John 19:27 took her unto his own [KJV, CEV, HCSB, Darby, ESV, TEV, God's Word, LITV, MKJV, NET, NJB, NIV, NKJV, NLT, RSV, NRSV, WEB, Weymouth, Williams, Beck adds the word "home"]
Acts 1:7 his own power
Acts 1:25 his own place
Acts 2:6 his own language
Acts 2:8 his own language
Acts 3:12 our own power
Acts 4:23 went to their own [KJV, Darby, MKJV, WEB adds the word "company"; HCSB adds thw word "fellowship"; ESV and Diaglott adds the word "friends"; NASB adds the word "companions" etc]
Acts 4:32 which he possessed was his own [Message has "claim ownership of their own possessions" NRSV has "claimed private ownership of any possessions"] ANARTHROUS
Acts 13:36 his own generation
Acts 25:19 their own religion
Acts 28:30 in his own hired apartment
Romans 8:32 his own Son [Textus Receptus]
Romans 10:3 to establish their own [Nestle] [Textus Receptus, HCSB, Darby, NET, Weymouth adds the word "righteousness"; NLT adds "way of getting right with God"; Good News Bible adds the word "way"]
Romans 11:24 their own olive tree
Romans 14:4 his own lord
Romans 14:5 his own mind
1 Corinthians 3:8 his own reward
1 Corinthians 3:8 his own labor
1 Corinthians 4:12 our own hands
1 Corinthians 6:18 his own body
1 Corinthians 7:2 her own husband
1 Corinthians 7:4 her own body
1 Corinthians 7:4 his own body
1 Corinthians 7:7 his own gift
1 Corinthians 7:37 his own will
1 Corinthians 9:7 at his own wages
1 Corinthians 11:21 his own supper
1 Corinthians 14:35 their own husbands
1 Corinthians 15:23 his own order
1 Corinthians 15:38 his own body
Galatians 6:5 his own burden
Ephesians 5:22 to their own husbands
Ephesians 5:24 their own husbands
Colossians 3:18 their own husbands [Textus Receptus]
1 Thessalonians 2:14 your own countrymen
1 Thessalonians 2:15 their own prophets [Textus Receptus]
1 Thessalonians 4:11 your own business
1 Timothy 3:4 his own household
1 Timothy 3:5 his own household
1 Timothy 3:12 their own households
1 Timothy 4:2 their own conscience
1 Timothy 5:4 their own houshold
1 Timothy 5:8 his own people
1 Timothy 6:1 their own masters
2 Timothy 1:9 his own purpose
2 Timothy 4:3 their own lusts
Titus 2:5 their own husbands
Titus 2:9 their own masters ANARTHROUS
Hebrews 4:10 his own the God did [Lattimore, Simple English Bible, NET, CEV, New Life NT, NiRV, International English Bible adds the word "works"; The Power NT adds the word "labors."]
Hebrews 7:27 his own sins
Hebrews 9:12 his own blood
Hebrews 13:12 his own blood
James 1:14 his own lusts
1 Peter 3:1 your own husbands
1 Peter 3:5 their own husbands
2 Peter 2:16 his own transgression
2 Peter 2:22 his own vomit
2 Peter 3:3 their own lusts
2 Peter 3:16 their own destruction
2 Peter 3:17 your own stedfastness
Jude 6 their own habitation

"This absolute use of hO IDIOS is found in the Greek papyri as a term of endearment referring to near relatives. It is possible, therefore, that 'his Own' (hO IDIOS) was a title that early Christians gave to Jesus, comparable to 'the Beloved' (hO AGAPHTOS); compare Ro 8:32, where Paul refers to God 'who did not spare TOU IDIOU hUIOU' in a context that clearly alludes to Gn 22:16, where the Septuagint has TOU AGAPHTOU hUIOU." A Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament p. 426. This same page refers to Hort, who believed that "hUIOU [Son] may have dropped out after TOU IDIOU.

Acts 20:28 has also suffered at the hands of "orthodox" corruptors of Scripture (see The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart Ehrman, pp. 87-88, which has many Bibles and manuscripts reading "Lord" instead of "God." [Incidentally, Ehrman also used the translation "which he obtained through the blood of his own (Son)"]


Ben Rast: Not a single extant Greek manuscript contains the word “son”.

Reply: Have you ever noticed all those words in italics in the King James Version and the New American Standard Version? Those are words that are not in the original text, but are added for clarity. There are thousands of them. In fact, the NASB uses both Italics [Words not found in the original text but implied by it] and Brackets [Words probably not in the original writings]. See https://nasb.literalword.com/about/translation/

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Ernst Kasemann on Romans 9:5

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Subject:  Kasemann on Romans 9:5

From the Commentary on Romans by Ernst Kasemann [Eerdman's, 1980], pp. 259, 260:

It can hardly be the last member in the chain, as the conjecture of a relative link WN hO seeks to assert (according to BAGD, 357a dating from the Socinian J. Schlichting; Barth; Lorrimer, "Romans IX, 3-5"; Bartsch, "Rom. 9, 5," 406ff.; cf. the discussion in Sanday and Headlam; Murray, 245ff.; Michel). We thus have the alternative debated from the days of Arianism (cf Schelkle, Paulus, 331ff.;
Lyonnet, Quaestiones, 11, 21ff.): christological apposition to v. 5a or praise of God in an independent clause looking back to vv. 4-5a. The problem cannot be solved dogmatically, although this has
constantly been attempted. The apostle never directly calls Christ God, let alone the emphatic hO EPI PANTWN QEOS, which would be hard to imagine in view of the subordinationism in I Cor 15:27f. It can hardly be accepted, then, that in an extreme paradox anticipating the later doctrine of the two natures, he is according this title to the earthly Messiah of Israel. On the other hand, like Hellenistic
Christianity in general, he obviously sees in, Christ the pre-existent heavenly being to whom the ISA QEW of Phil 2:6 applies. Theologically interpretation will always build on either the one aspect or the other according to one's total understanding of christology, and arguments to the contrary will be rejected. Today, however, it is only along the lines of stylistic criticism that the debate can be conducted.

One must admit that the form of the doxology is unusual, for elsewhere the predicate comes first, closely related to what precedes (Zahn; Kilhl; Lagrange; Prat, Theology, 11, Calif.; Cullmann,
Christology, 312f.; Ridderbos). Even more unusual, however, would be a Christ doxology, for which the acclammation of the Kyrios in 1 Cor. 8:6; 12:3; Phil 2:11 in Paul, and the DOXA acclamations in Rev. 1:6; 2 Pet. 3:18, only prepare the way, no such doxology being actually found in the NT. In keeping with this is the fact that predicating Christ directly as God is also singular and that it would obscure the emphasis of the context. The main point here is that of Israel's blessings. A doxology is appropriate, since God has given the blessings and in so doing, as in blessings granted to the Christian community (Eph 4:6), he has shown himself to be hO WN EPI PANTWN namely, the one who directs history (Luz, Geschichtsverstandnis, 27; Berger, "Abraham," 79; Cerfaux, Christ, 517ff.; Taylor; Julicher; Lietzmann; Dodd; Kuss, "Rolle," 129). There is a parallel in the doxology in 11:33-36, and such a doxology impressively manifests the solidarity of the apostle to the Gentiles with his people. Insertions between the article and QEOS are to be found elsewhere (Champion, "Benedictions," 124f.). The dominant christological interpretation should be rejected.

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John 1:1, Count Nouns & Mass Nouns in a Nutshell

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A question addressed to me...with spelling errors:
> Please tell me if I get this right, but the reasoning that "a god"
> was used instead of diety, devine, or god like is because Qeos is an
> abstract noun in this case. abstract noun . A noun that denotes an
> abstract or intangible concept, such as envy or joy. (compare acts
> 28:4 ) So it would be improper to use those titles since the context
> of "Ton Qeos" was used. Denoting that the God is not intangible, but
> definatly God. (God with the definate artical The).

Reply: Rather, I might posit the view that "a god" was used to denote membership in a class, as the Grammarian Daniel Wallace points out from the Didache:

"OU PAS hO LALWN EN PNEUMATI PROPHETHS ESTIN
Not everyone who speaks in/by the Spirit is a prophet.

 In Didache 11.3-12 PROPHET... is an anarthrous PN [Predicate Nominative] five times. The focus on the passage is on anyone who claims to have membership in that elite group known as prophets."

Of course, LOVE in "God is Love" is also a similar construction, but viewed as a quality:

"The idea of a qualita­tive AGAPH is that God’s essence or nature is love, or that he has the quality of love. Thus love is an attribute, not an identification, of God." Wallace

The word PROPHET is a count noun, hence we say "a prophet."

Love is a non-count noun, so we view it as quality.

The translation "a god" demands that we view God as a count noun, the translation "Word was divine" tells us to view it as mass noun, a quality.

So we have to decide whether we view God as a count noun, or a mass (non-count) noun.

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Contents (created on a Windows computer):

Ye and You in the King James Version by John Kenyon 1914

A short explanation of obsolete words in our version of the Bible by the Rev H Cotton 1832

A supplement to the authorised English version of the New Testament, being a critical illustration of its more difficult passages from the Syriac, Latin and earlier English versions 1845 by FHS Scrivener

Erasmus Greek Text 1516 Edition

Erasmus Greek Text 1522 Edition

Textus Receptus Greek Text

Ben Chayyim Hebrew Text (Searchable  - not scanned)

The Revision Revised by Dean John Burgon 1883

Hebraisms in the Authorized Version by William Rosenau 1902

A Companion to the Authorized Version of the New Testament being Emendatory Notes by the Rev. Hall 1857

New Marginal Readings and References to the Gospels Adapted to the Authorized Version by William De Burgh 1844

The That-Clause in the Authorized Version by H Shearin 1910

A Harmony of the Four Gospels in English according to the Authorized Version by F. Gardiner 1873

Notes on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians for Readers of the Authorized Version 1882

A Study of Tyndale's Genesis compared with the Genesis of Coverdale and of the Authorized Version by Elizabeth Cleaveland 1911

The Bible Word-book: A Glossary of Archaic Words and Phrases in the Authorized Version by William Aldis Wright 1884

Our Grand Old Bible, being the story of the Authorized version of the English Bible told for the Tercentenary celebration by William Muir 1911

The Emphatic New Testament According to the Authorized Version: with the various readings, in English, of the Vatican Manuscript of Griesbach by John Taylor 1854

The Four Gospels according to the Authorized version with Original and Selected Parallel References and marginal readings, and an Original and Copious Critical and Explanatory Commentary by David Brown (1859)

Bible English - Old and Disused Expressions in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures by Thomas Davies 1875

The Holy Bible Two-Version Edition being the Authorized Version, with the differences of the Revised Version printed in the margins, so that both texts can be read from the same page 1899

The Chronological Bible KJB (light text, sometimes hard to read)

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark by Dean John Burgon

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark by Ivan Panin

The Greatest English Classic - a study of the King James version of the Bible and its influence on Life and Literature by CB McAfee 1912

A Plea for the Authorized Version - Article in the Congregational Magazine 1842

A Plea for the Authorized Version - Article in the Herald and Presbyter 1920

Defense of the Version of King James "The spirits in prison" By Samuel Fuller 1885

The Authorized Version of the Bible and its Influence by Albert Cook 1910

An Authentic Account of our Authorized Translation of the Holy Bible and of the Translators by Henry Todd 1838

The Authorized Edition of the English Bible, its subsequent Reprints and Modern Representatives by FHA Scrivener 1884\

The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version by FHA Scrivener 1873

Early Theories of Translation by Flora Amos 1920

Comprehensive Concordance by Rev. Walker 1894

Studies in the Syntax of the King James Version By James Moses Grainger 1907

The Bible and English Prose Style by Albert Cook 1892

The Romance of the English Bible by John Faris 1911

Nave's Study Bible - King James version with concordance BY Orville Nave 1907

The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version 1611 with an explanatory and critical commentary and a revision of the translation by clergy of the Anglican Church y Henry Wace and Charles F Cooper Volume 1 1888

The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version 1611 with an explanatory and critical commentary and a revision of the translation by clergy of the Anglican Church y Henry Wace and Charles F Cooper Volume 2 1888

The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version 1611 with an explanatory and critical commentary and a revision of the translation by clergy of the Anglican Church y Henry Wace and Charles F Cooper Volume 3 1888

A Memoir of the Controversy of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 1 John 5:7 Including Critical Notices by Writers on Both Sides of the Issue by Ezra Abbot 1875

A New Plea for the Authenticity of the text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses by Charles Forster 1867

Catechesis Evangelica: Questions and answers based on the 'Textus Receptus' Volume 1 by Thomas Law Montefiore 1862

The Englishman Greek New Testament - Stephen's Greek Text with an Interlinear and the KJV

The Bible Students Guide to the more correct understanding of the English translation of the Old Testament, by reference to the original Hebrew by an alphabetical arrangement of every English word in the Authorized Version, the corresponding Hebrew may at once be ascertained, with its peculiar signification and construction by William Wilson 1870

The Holy Bible arranged so as to give as far as Possible the Accuracy, Precision and Certainty of the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures on the pages of the Authorized version, by means of simple and appropriate signs, and with the divine titles distinguished and explained by Thomas Newberry 1890 (The Newberry Bible)

Ought the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures to be Revised by a Royal Commission? Article on the The British Controversialist and literary magazine 1871

The Book of Job translated from the Hebrew on the basis of the Authorized Version, Explained by C. Carey 1858

The Bible in Shakespeare by William Burgess 1903

On the Authorized Version of the New Testament in connection with some recent proposals for its revision by Richard Trench 1858

Reasons for holding fast the Authorized Version by Alexander Maccaul 1857

Memoirs of the Court of King James the First, Volume 1 by Lucy Aikin 1822

Memoirs of the Court of King James the First, Volume 2 by Lucy Aikin 1822

The Bible for Young People arranged from the King James Version by Joseph Gilder 1902

The Pictorial Bible, Volume 1 by John Kitto 1855

The Pictorial Bible, Volume 2 by John Kitto 1855

A Book about the English Bible by Josiah Harmar Penniman - 1919

Dictionary of the Bible by William Smith, Volume 1, 1871

Dictionary of the Bible by William Smith, Volume 2, 1871

Dictionary of the Bible by William Smith, Volume 3, 1871

Dictionary of the Bible by William Smith, Volume 4, 1871

The Pictorial Home Bible 1875

A hand-book of the English versions of the Bible by JI Mombert 1890

English Bible Versions, with special reference to the Vulgate, the Douay Bible, and the Authorized and Revised versions by Henry Barker 1907

The Bible in English Literature by Edgar Work 1917

The Bible as English literature by JH Gardiner 1906

The Making of the English Bible, with an introductory essay on the influence of the English Bible on English literature 1909 by Samuel McComb

The Parallel New Testament, Greek and English by FHA Scrivener 1882

This disk also includes the Bibles that preceded the KJV, and perhaps even influenced it:

The Wycliffe Bible (text to PDF)

Tyndale's five books of Moses

Tyndale's New Testament 1837

The Coverdale 1535 Bible (printed in 1838)

The Psalter of the Great Bible of 1539

The Geneva Bible 1599

plus you get:

Over 25 Different Editions, Corrections and Revisions of the King James Authorized Version Bible


Books mostly scanned from the originals into PDF format:

The King James Authorized Version 1611 edition

The Commonly Received Version of the New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with several hundred emendations by Spencer Houghton Cone and William H. Wyckoff

The Corrected English New Testament: A Revision of the "Authorised" Version using Nestle's Resultant Greek Text by Samuel Lloyd 1905

The King James Version Cambridge Edition (searchable pdf)

The Authorized Version with 20,000 Emendations by John Conquest 1841

The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version with the Text Revised, The Marginal References Remodelled and a Critical Introduction Prefixed 1873 by F.H. Scrivener

The New Testament - the Authorized Version Corrected by Sir Edward Clarke 1913

The Holy Scriptures translated and Corrected by the Spirit of Revelation by Joseph Smith Jr. 1867
This is basically the KJV Bible reworked by Smith.

The Book of Mormon 1920 Edition
There are passages here basically lifted from the KJV Bible.

The New Testament for English Readers Containing the Authorized Version with Marginal Corrections of Readings and Renderings, Marginal References and a Critical and Explanatory Commentary 1868 Volume 1 by Henry Alford

The New Testament for English Readers Containing the Authorized Version with Marginal Corrections of Readings and Renderings, Marginal References and a Critical and Explanatory Commentary 1868 Volume 2 by Henry Alford

The New Testament for English Readers Containing the Authorized Version with Marginal Corrections of Readings and Renderings, Marginal References and a Critical and Explanatory Commentary 1868 Volume 3 by Henry Alford

The New Testament for English Readers Containing the Authorized Version with Marginal Corrections of Readings and Renderings, Marginal References and a Critical and Explanatory Commentary 1868 Volume 4 by Henry Alford

The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: the Common English version corrected by the final committee(1865) American Bible Union Version by American Baptist Publication Society

The Books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth - the Common Version revised for the American Bible Union 1878

The Book of Genesis - the Common Version Revised for the American Bible Union, with explanatory notes 1868

The Webster Bible (searchable pdf)
Webster’s Revision of the King James Bible was translated by Noah Webster and published in 1833. It is nearly identical to the KJV except for what Webster viewed to be corrections of the worst flaws of the text from the standpoint of an educator.

The Primitive New Testament 1745 by William Whiston
Whiston is best known for his translation of Josephus. Here he follows the KJV except where it departs from the "primitive" text.

Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament by John Wesley 1754
This translation is based on the KJV and revised and altered where Wesley thought it needed it.

A New Translation by Gilbert Wakefield (Unitarian) 1820
Follows the KJV but altered where required.

Scriptures Hebrew and Christian Volume 1 (first 543 pages) by Edward Bartlett and John Peters 1888
Follows the KJV but has made changes in idiom, and uses the divine name Jehovah throughout.

Scriptures Hebrew and Christian Volume 2 by Edward Bartlett and John Peters 1888

The Runner's Bible, Compiled and Annotated for the Reading of Him who Runs 1915
Both the KJV and the English Revised Version are used in this compilation

The Holy Bible Two-version Edition being the Authorized Version, with the differences of the Revised Version printed in the margins, so that both texts can be read from the same page (1899)
The Revised Version is the first major revision of the King James Bible

The American Standard Version Bible - searchable pdf (the American edition of the Revised Version)

The Gospel according to Saint Matthew the "modern printed" edition of the King James version, Authorized Version 1920

A Harmony of the Four Gospels in English, according to the Authorized Version, Corrected by the Best Critical editions of the original (1871)
by Frederick Gardiner

The Book of Job Translated from the Hebrew on the basis of the Authorized Version explained in a large body of Notes, Critical and Exegetical, and illustrated by Extracts from Various Works on Antiquities, Geography, Science, with Six Preliminary Dissertations, an Analytical Paraphrase, and Meisner's and Doederlein's selection of the various readings of the Hebrew text from the collations of Kennicott and De Rossi by C.P. Carey 1858

For a list of all of my ebooks (PDF and Amazon), click here

How Accurate Is Your Bible?

One of my favorite Bibles to use is the Revised Version Improved and Corrected (RVIC) which you also can access by going here: https://herald-magazine.com/christian-literature/online-bible/

While perusing through this Bible I found two very interesting charts on the accuracy of Bible Translations and Versions, which I am sharing here:

See my list at: What is the Best New Testament: Colwell's Apparatus 

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John 1:18 and the Reading "God the Only Son."

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Most New Testament manuscripts at John 1:18 read monogenes huios (only-begotten son) while the oldest manuscripts have monogenes theos (only-begotten god). Some deceitful Bible translators have taken it upon themselves to combine the two to give us the following Franken-Scripture readings of:

"the only Son, who is God" Beck

"the only Son, Diety Himself" C.B. Williams

"the only Son, who is the same as God" Good News Bible

"God the only Son" Expanded Bible

"The one and only Son, who is himself God" HCSB

"The only Son, who is truly God" CEV

NAB: "The only Son, God," NAB

"God the only Son" Common Edition

"God the Only Son" Twentieth Century NT

"God the only Son" NRSV

This is clearly a strong case of trinitarian bias and Scripture manipulation in order to promote an extra-Biblical theology unknown off in the 1st Century. Many cry loudly when a translation adds the indefinite article "a" at John 1:1c (even though the "a" is commonly added to anarthrous nouns). The manuscripts we have, have either "son" or "god" but not both. John also has two different readings at John 21:15 where some manuscripts and versions have "Simon, son of Jonah" or "Simon, son of John." However, no one thinks to combine the two to read "Simon, son of John, who is Jonah."

I also don't like the monogenes huios translation of "the only son." (RSV) The Greek already has words for "only," and they are monon/monos.

All of the above seeks to water down what clearly points to generation. I think that there is strong evidence that the original reads ‘an only-begotten god,’ or even, an ‘only-generated God,’ which is why mainstream trinitarian Christians rail against this reading, and which is why it is very likely to have been changed to monogenes huios during later centuries by scribes with this Trinitarian bias, since it clearly proclaims Christ to be a god that has been derived, generated or originated by another. A lesser god in other words.

By translating monogenes as "unique" or "only" and combining "God" with "Son" you can now turn a Scripture that is deadly to your Christology and give it a 180 degree turn to your benefit.

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Jesus as Jehovah - What Does It Mean?

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There is another instance in John that uses language similar to John 7:29's PAR AUTOU, and that is John 1:6's PARA QEOU:
(New World Translation)  There arose a man that was sent forth as a representative of God:  his name was John.
(GNB)  God sent his messenger, a man named John,
(Kleist & Lilly) a messenger from God
(Goodspeed) "appeared...John with a message from God."
(Wuest) "Sent off as an ambassador from God’s presence."
(Christian Bible) "dispatched by God"

Rienecker’s “Linguistic Key to the Greek N.T.” says: "Jn.1:6:
APOSTELLO: Sent forth; pass...to send, to commission, to send as an authoritative personal representative." Significantly, on Jn. 7:29 he says: “To send as an authoritative representative."

Vincent's Word Studies adds: "The preposition means _from beside_. It invests the messenger with more dignity and significance than if the writer had said, “sent by God.” It is used of the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father (Joh_15:26)."

From the Notes on Xenophon's Anabasis 1.9.1 by A.S. Walpole (Macmillan and Co. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1958)
"PARA-by, regarding the agent as the source of the confession."

Let us now turn to Luke 8:49 where we have ERCETAI TIS PARA TOU ARCISUNAGWGOU:
"a representative of the presiding officer."-NWT
"A messenger came from"--TEV, Kleist & Lilly
“A messenger came to”-- Fenton.

Kittel’s “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament” under “APOSTOLOS (XYL$) [as in John 1:6] in Judaism” states: "A saying of the Rabbis was: 'The emissary of a King is as the King himself.’”-Vol. I, pg.416  “Moses, Elijah, Elisha and Ezekiel are called MYXWL$ of God because there took place through them things normally reserved for God. Moses causes water to flow out
of the rock; Elijah brings rain and raises a dead man; Elisha 'opens the mother's womb' and also raises a dead man; and Ezekiel receives the 'key to the tombs at the reawakening of the dead' according to Ex. 37:1 ff...These four were distinguished by the miracles which God empowered them to perform and which He normally reserved for Himself."-Vol. I, pg. 419

And there we come to the crux of whether Jesus, in some capacity, can be referred to as "Jehovah."
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" 2 Cor. 5:19 NKJV
Jesus further said "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" yet Jesus is not the Father, even in Trinitarian theology.

It is understandable, in light of the angelology surrounding ancient Jewish literature, and we are sure that the Christian writers were aware of them, that representatives can indeed bear God's name and title. I see nothing strange about this.
You will find in readings where angels appear in ancient literature that they will mostly have names ending in “el,” meaning “God.” A few examples will be Michael, Gabriel, Phanuel, Uriel, etc. This is in keeping with what the Bible says regarding God’s angel,
“Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee by the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Take ye heed before him, and hearken unto his voice; provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgression: for my name is in him.”
Why, the greatest angel in Pseudepigraphal writings is the angel Metatron (Yahoel), an allusion to Jesus Christ (who also bears God's Name -'Jehovah is Salvation'), who is called “the lesser YHWH.”

“In a first century Jewish writing entitled "The Apocalypse of Abraham," Abraham is described as being granted a visit to heaven, in much the same way that John is said to have done in the New Testament's "Apocalypse" or "Book of Revelation." Sent to guide him on his heavenly visit is an angel, who identifies himself as "Yaoel." The name Yaoel is made up of the two main names for God in the Old Testament, "Yah" or "Yahweh" (rendered in some English versions as "Jehovah") and "El." The angel thus has the same name as God. This is not because that angel is really God himself or is confused with God. No; it is because God has given his name to the angel in order to empower him. This is explicitly stated in the book itself. This is thus one of a number of examples from Jewish thought of God's agent being given God's name in order to empower him for his mission. In later times, the Samaritans made much the same sort of claims for Moses.”
Are Christians Monotheists? The Answer of St. John's Gospel by James F. McGrath

Consider the angel at Exodus 23:20:
"Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for MY NAME IS IN HIM."

God's Name is in Jesus name.
This name empowers him, as the CEV puts it:
"Carefully obey everything the angel says, because I am giving him complete authority, and he won't tolerate rebellion."
What does Jesus say at Matthew 28:18?
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." RSV

NOW, notice how the NLT renders Exodus 23:21:
"Pay attention to him, and obey all of his instructions. Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sins. He is my representative--he bears my name."

He is God's REPRESENTATIVE!!
Jesus is God's REPRESENTATIVE!
John is God's REPRESENTATIVE!

Interestingly, the name John means what?
"Gift of Jehovah."

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Tartarus, Peter and the Book of Enoch

by J.W. Hanson, D.D. 1888 

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THE BOOK OF ENOCH

Peter alludes to the subject just as though it were well-known and understood by his correspondents. "If the angels that sinned."-what angels? "were cast down to Tartarus," where is the story related? Not in the Bible, but in a book well-known at the time, called the Book of Enoch. It was written some time before the Christian Era, and is often quoted by the Christian fathers. It embodies a tradition, to which Josephus alludes, (Ant. 1: 3) of certain angels who had fallen. (Dr. T. J. Sawyer, in Univ. Quart.) From this apocryphal book, Peter quoted the verse referring to Tartarus Dr. Sawyer says: "Not only the moderns are forced to this opinion, but it seems to have been universally adopted by the ancients. 'Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Hilary,' say Professor Stuart, 'all of whom refer to the book before us, and quote from it, say nothing which goes to establish the idea that any Christians of their day denied or doubted that a quotation was made by the apostle Jude from the Book of Enoch. Several and in fact most of these writers do indeed call in question the canonical rank or authority of the Book of Enoch; but the apologies which they make for the quotation of it in Jude, show that the quotation itself was, as a matter of fact, generally conceded among them.' There are it is true some individuals who still doubt whether Jude quoted the Book of Enoch; but while as Professor Stuart suggests, this doubt is incapable of being confirmed by any satisfactory proof, it avails nothing to deny the quotation; for it is evident if Jude did not quote the Book of Enoch, he did quote a tradition of no better authority." This Book of Enoch is full of absurd legends, which no sensible man can accept.

WHAT DID PETER MEAN?

Why did Peter quote from it? Just as men now quote from the classics not sanctioning the truth of the quotation but to illustrate and enforce a proposition. Nothing is more common than for writers to quote fables: "As the tortoise said to the hare," in Aesop. "As the sun said to the wind," etc. We have the same practice illustrated in the Bible. Joshua, after a poetical quotation adorning his narrative, says: "Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? Josh. 10: 13 and Jeremiah 48: 45 says: "A fire shall come forth out of Heshbon," quoting from an ancient poet, says Dr. Adam Clarke. Peter alludes to this ancient legend to illustrate the certainty of retribution without any intention of teaching the silly notions of angels falling from heaven and certainly not meaning to sanction the then prevalent notions concerning the heathen Tartarus. There is this alternative only: either the pagan doctrine is true and the heathen got ahead of inspiration by ascertaining the facts before the authors of the Bible learned it-for it was currently accepted centuries before Christ and is certainly not taught in the Old Testament- or Peter quotes it as Jesus refers to Mammon rhetorically to illustrate the great fact of retribution he was inculcating. If true, how can anyone account for the fact that it is never referred to in the Bible, before or after this once? Besides, these angels are not to be detained always in Tartarus, they are to be released. The language is, "delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." When their judgment comes, they emerge from duress. They only remain in Tartarus "unto judgment." Their imprisonment is not endless so that the language gives no proof of endless punishment even if it be a literal description.

But no one can fail to see that the apostle employs the legend from the Book of Enoch to illustrate and enforce his doctrine of retribution. As though he had said: "If, as is believed by some, God spared not the angels that sinned, do not let us who sin, mortal men, expect to escape." If this view is denied, there is no escape from the gross doctrine of Tartarus as taught by the pagans and that, too, on the testimony of a solitary sentence of Scripture! But whatever may be the intent of the words, they do not teach endless torment, for the chains referred to only last unto the judgment.

On the So-called "Trinity Proof-Texts"

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Bible Texts Supposed To Refer To The Trinity by Hugh H. Stannus 1899

"There is scarcely one text alleged by the Trinitarians which is not otherwise expounded by their own writers".—John Locke (Common Place Book)

In quoting the language of eminent Trinitarian divines who say that the word Trinity is never found in the Divine Records", that "you never find in the Sacred Scriptures 'three persons in one God'"—that "the phrase Holy Trinity is dangerous and improper"—that "there is no such proposition as that one and the same God is three persons"—"where in the Scriptures is the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved, and obeyed"?—we do not wish to convey the idea that our Trinitarian neighbours do not produce any texts from the Bible as indirect support of their views. We know they do advance Scriptural proofs; but the fewness of such texts is notable. In Wesley's "Sermon on the Trinity", one text alone, 1 John v. 7, is relied on. This is now removed from the New Testament as spurious. In the "Complete Analysis of the Bible," by the Rev. Nath. West, D.D., a most extensive work, four texts are relied oh; one of these, as we have already said, is removed. In this work there are probably five hundred texts on the person of Christ, and only four texts as Scriptural proofs of the Trinity. In Dr. Eadie's "Classified Texts of the Bible", a most elaborate work, like Dr. West's, founded on Talbot's "Analysis of the Bible", while there are twenty-eight pages of texts devoted to the person of Jesus Christ, there are only six texts adduced as Bible proofs of the Trinity. Let us examine these, and we shall find that what John Locke said of the concessions of Trinitarians is verified.

(1) Isa. 48:16- "The Lord God and His spirit hath sent", &c We have before us over a dozen concessions on this text, but let the words of Luther and Calvin suffice. Luther says, "This passage has been amazingly darkened. The Jews understood it of the prophet; and this opinion I adopt. ... It will not validly support the mystery of the Trinity". Calvin says, "Many apply it to Christ, but they are not supported by the language of the prophet. We should beware of violent and forced interpretations". ["Eminent theologians, as Jerome, Vatablus, Calvin, our own Dutch divines, and others, will have these to be the words of Isaiah to himself —Witsius on the Creed, Diss. vii. 15.]

(2) Matt. 3:16, 17: "The spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and lo a voice from heaven, saying,'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased'". There is nothing said here of three co-equal and co-eternal persons in the Godhead. We agree with the words of a Calvinistic commentator on this text, that "the spirit of God is said to come upon men when they are eminently qualified to undertake any great office"—Rosenmuller. "The epithet beloved, given to the Son on this occasion, marks the Father's greatness of affection for him"^-Macknight. "This is my Son whom I have sent on purpose to reveal my will by him; and whatsoever he teaches comes from me, and is perfectly my will or law"—Hammond. When Dr. Adam Clarke says, "This passage affords no mean proof of the doctrine of the Trinity", we reply there is no proof here of three persons in the Godhead. All Christian Unitarians, as well as Trinitarians, believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It would be a great mistake to infer from this that all believe that these three are one God.

(3) Matt. 28:19, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit". On this text Michaelis remarks, "We know how frequently this passage is quoted as a proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. ... I must confess I cannot see it in this point of view. The eternal Divinity of the Son which is so clearly taught in other passages is not here once mentioned, and it is impossible to understand from this passage, whether the Holy Ghost is a person. The meaning of Jesus may have been this: Those who were baptised should, upon their baptism, confess that they believed in the Father, and in the Son, and in all doctrines inculcated by the Holy Spirit". [The Burial, &c, of Jesus Christ, pp. 325—327.] We are at one with the view of this divine, and also with Rosenmuller, who says, "We are baptised into the Father, as the Author of a new religion; into the Son, as the Lord of a new Church; and into the Holy Spirit, as the guardian and assistant of this Church". We have before usother testimonies, such as "Though the three persons are indeed named, no mention is made of a unity of essence and of a real distinction of persons".—Nihusius.

(4) 2 Cor. 8:14- "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost". In this passage, as in all others which mention the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nothing is said of their being one God. We all believe in the Father as the only true God. We believe in the Son as the messenger of God; and in the Holy Spirit as a gift from God. We use most freely the New Testament language touching the Father. Son. and Holy Spirit, while we hold that there is not the least suggestion in it of a tri-personal Deity. "These and the like words", says Hammond, "are a form of greeting which includes in it all good wishes, but not a solemn prayer to those persons named in the form".

(5) It must be noted as a very remarkable thing that the only passage in which Father, Word, and Holy Spirit are spoken of as One (1 John v. 7) is excluded from the Revised New Testament as spurious.

(6) Another text quoted by Dr. Eadie is, "For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father". It must puzzle the most ingenious person to discover how this proves that there are three persons in the Godhead.

We will now quote, without comment, certain other texts which we have known produced as Scriptural evidence of the Trinity, which show how hard pressed the defenders of the doctrine must have been to have had recourse to them:—Ps. 33:6, "By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth". Numb. 6:24, "Jehovah bless thee and keep thee: Jehovah make his face to shine upon thee: Jehovah lift up his countenance upon thee". Isa. 6:3, "And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts". Isa. 34:16, "Seek ye out of the book of Jehovah and read: ... his mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them". 1 Cor. 12:4-6, "There are diversities of gifts but the same spirit, and there are diversities of administration but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God who worketh all in all". Rev. 1:4-5, "Grace be unto you and peace from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits that are before the throne, and from Jesus Christ". On these texts learned Trinitarians have wisely said that the triple use here and there of words like "Jehovah," or the word "Holy" is a very unsubstantial proof of so important a doctrine. Grotius remarks, "Surely such repetitions are void of mystery; and imply nothing but the unparalleled excellence of the thing spoken of, or some extraordinary emotions of the speaker". ["The threefold repetition is thought to have so little of an argument in it as to scarcely merit any answer".—Dr. South.] Calvin says, "Plainer texts ought to be adduced, lest in proving the chief article of our faith we should become the ridicule of heretics". But where are those plainer texts? We are not aware of any texts, except the above, which have been used as Bible proofs of the Trinity. Again we challenge anyone to find us one passage in the whole compass of the Bible where the doctrine of three persons in one God is stated or even hinted at. It is only "by inference" says one, "by collection" says another, "by the authority of the Church," says another, that we derive the doctrine of the Trinity.

The first teachers of Christianity were never charged by the Jews (who unquestionably believed in the strict unity of God), with introducing any new theory of the Godhead. ["Monotheism was the proud boast of the Jew".—Canon Farrar, "Early Days of Christianity", vol. i., p. 55.] Many foolish and false charges were made against Christ; but this was never alleged against him or any of his disciples. When this doctrine of three persons in one God was introduced into the Church, by new converts to Christianity, it caused immense excitement for many years. ["In the Fourth Century", says Jortin, vol. ii., p. 60, "were held thirteen Councils against Arius, fifteen for him, and seventeen for the semi-Arians,—in all, forty-five".] Referring to this, Mosheim writes, under the fourth century, "The subject of this fatal controversy, which kindled such deplorable divisions throughout the Christian world, was the doctrine of Three Persons in the Godhead; a doctrine which in the three preceding centuries had happily escaped the vain curiosity of human researches, and had been left undefined and undetermined by any particular set of ideas".

Would there not have been some similar commotion among the Jewish people in the time of Christ, if such a view of the Godhead had been offered to their notice, and if they had been told that without belief in this they "would perish everlastingly"?

................

"When we say God hath revealed anything, we must be ready to prove it, or else we say nothing. . . . Some men seem to think that they oblige God by believing plain contradictions, but the matter is quite otherwise".—Archbishop Tillotson.

While there is no mention in the sacred Scriptures of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, it is equally certain that in the field of nature no hints or suggestions of it are to be seen. "Where is the people to be found", asks Robert Hall, "who learned the doctrine of the Trinity from the works of nature"? It is true that by the light of nature many of our race have been led to believe in the existence and the providence of God; but the mystery of the Trinity has in no instance been shadowed forth in the glory of the heavens, in the beauty of the earth, or in any of the forms or combinations of matter. Many divines who have had an interest in finding all the support they can for this view of God, declare, like Dr. John Owen, that "Nature recoils from the doctrine"; or, like Hackspan, that "From the principles of nature the Trinity cannot be made known to us".

It is not only admitted by learned Trinitarians that there is no mention of a Triune Deity in the Bible, and no suggestion of that doctrine in the phenomena of nature, but, in addition, it is stated that this view of the Godhead is hostile to reason. Cardinal Wiseman asks, "Who will pretend to say that he can, by any stretch of his imagination, or of his reason, see it possible how three persons in one God can be but one Godhead"? Dr. Hey, a Cambridge Divinity Professor, also confirms this statement in the following passage:—"When it is proposed to me to affirm, that in the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, .... I profess and proclaim my confusion in the most unequivocal manner". Dr. South has pronounced the result which this doctrine involves, "so very strange and unaccountable, that were it not adored as a mystery it would be exploded as a contradiction". "That three Beings should be one Being," says Soame Jenyns, "is a proposition which certainly contradicts reason—that is, our reason " The language of Bishop Beveridge sets the matter in the clearest light, as an inconceivable mystery: "That God the Father should be one perfect God of himself, God the Son one perfect God of himself, and God the Holy Ghost one perfect God of himself; and yet that these three should be one perfect God of himself, so that one should be perfectly three and three perfectly one; that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost should be three and yet be one, but one and yet three! O heart-amazing, thought-devouring, unconceivable mystery!" In view of this doctrine, and its relation to the scheme of redemption, Bishop Hurd confesses that at it "reason stands aghast, and faith herself is half confounded"!

Now, if it be true that the Christian religion is a simple, natural, and rational religion, and if it be impossible so to describe the doctrine of "three persons in one God" the question may well arise, whether this doctrine forms any part of the Christian system. The strict and absolute unity of God is the doctrine of the Bible, and accords with the works of nature and the intelligence and reason of man. All the forms of prayer which we find in the Bible are invariably addressed to one God, one Mind, one Person. There are no appeals in the sacred volume to a "holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God"; the idea of God is everywhere strictly Monotheistic. This truth of the Unity of God appears clear, and the proofs of it are as abundant as blades of grass on the landscape, or as leaves in the forest. The language of the Bible, about God, endorses the plain language of nature, reason, and common sense. Why, then, do so many of our brethren fall back on inconceivable mysteries and palpable contradictions? Why does the great body of the Christian Church suffer itself to be trammelled by the jargon of a scholastic theology, and by notions about our heavenly Father which have completely obscured the "simplicity of Christ", and introduced creeds and forms of worship not only unknown to the pages of the New Testament, but opposed to both its letter and spirit.

While the source of the doctrine of a tri-personal God is not to be found in the Bible, it can be traced to pagan notions and scholastic subtleties, which the writer of the following pages-—the Prize Essay-—has laid open. We are not without hope that the intelligence of the present age, aided by the wide diffusion of the Scriptures, will speedily lead the great body of thinking Christians to the re-discovery of (what Sir Isaac Newton once called) "that long-lost truth of the Gospel, the Unity of God". The philosopher is not alone in his wish for Church reform. Neander, the historian and theologian, gives utterance to a similar hope in the words of Wickliffe. "I look forward to the time when some brethren, whom God shall condescend to teach, will be thoroughly converted to the primitive religion of Christ, and that such persons, after they have gained their liberty from AntiChrist, will return freely to the original doctrines of Jesus; and then they will edify the Church, as did Paul".

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Isaac Newton's Rejection of the Trinity Doctrine

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"Also at this time, the Archbishop of Canterbury offered him the position of Master of Trinity. Newton was forced to refuse this honor because he would have had to take holy orders and, as is known from his secret papers; he harbored doubts about orthodox Protestantism.  In particular, he did not accept the concept of the Trinity.” 1
_________________________

“An important feature of grammar school education in the seventeenth century was the reading of the Bible.  It is known that Isaac studied the Bible, in the classical tongues, and developed a lifelong interest in theological questions.” 2
_________________________

“He abjured this central dogma of his religion: three persons in one Godhead, holy and undivided.  He denied the divinity of Jesus and of the Holy Ghost.” 3
_________________________

“He compared the Scriptures in the new English translation and in the ancient languages; he collected Bibles in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French.  He sought out and mastered the writings of the early fathers of the church...” 4
_________________________

“...Arius was excommunicated and condemned.  His writings were burned.  But enough survived to persuade Newton, brooding over them a millennium later, that the Trinitarians had carried out a fraud upon Christianity.  The fraud had been perfected by monks and popes.  The word TRINITY never appears in the New Testament.  For explicit foundation in Scriptures, the orthodox looked to the First Epistle of John:

‘For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’ 

Only the King James Version had the last phrase.  Newton’s critical reading persuaded him that the original texts had been deliberately debased in support of false doctrine a false infernal religion.” 5
_________________________

“He marshaled his arguments and numbered them:

1.  The [word] God is no where in the scriptures used to signify more than one of the three persons at once.

2.  The word God put absolutely without particular restriction to the Son or Holy Ghost doth always signify the Father from one end of the scriptures to the other ...

6.  The son confesseth the father greater than him [and] calls Him his God ...

11. The son in all things submits to the will of the father, which could be unreasonable if he were equal to the father.” 6
_________________________

“He felt Trinitarianism not just an error but as sin, and the sin was idolatry.  For Newton this was the most detested of crimes.” 7
_________________________

“They discussed theology -- [John] Locke amazed at the depth of Newton’s biblical knowledge and these paragons of rationality found themselves kindred spirits in the dangerous area of anti-Trinitarianism.”8
_________________________
                                                                                                                           
“On his deathbed he refused the sacrament of the church.” 9
_____________________________________________

FOOTNOTES:

1 Heisenberg Probably Slept Here, chapter titled: Isaac Newton. page 37, by Richard P. Brennan, 1997, John Wiley & Sons Inc, ISBN 0-471-15709-0

2 ibid, page 16

3 Isaac Newton, page 107, by James Gleick, Pantheon Books, year 2003, New York, ISBN 0-375-42233-1

4 ibid, page 109

5 ibid, page 110

6 ibid, page 111

7 ibid, page 113

8 ibid, page 145

9 ibid, page 190

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Contents (created on a Windows computer):

The Taverner Bible 1539

The Great Bible 1540

The Bishop's Bible 1568

Matthews Bible 1537

King James Authorized Version 1611

The Gospels: Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Wycliffe and Tyndale Versions Arranged in Parallel Columns 1907

The New Testament in English According to the Version by John Wycliffe 1879

The English Hexapla exhibiting the 6 important English translations of the New Testament Scriptures, Wiclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Genevan, Anglo-Rhemish, Authorised

Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books by John Wycliffe Volume 1, 1850

Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books by John Wycliffe Volume 2, 1850

Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books by John Wycliffe Volume 3, 1850

Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books by John Wycliffe Volume 4, 1850

The Hexaplar Psalter - being the book of Psalms in six English versions 1911 (Coverdale (1535) Great Bible (1539) Geneva (1560) Bishops (1568) Authorised (1611) Revised (1885) in parallel columns)

The Psalter of the Great Bible of 1539: A Landmark in English Literature - John Earle 1894

Bishop's Bible New Testament (typed - searchable pdf)

Coverdale Bible (1535) 1838

Geneva Bible 1560 Edition

Geneva Bible NT 1607

Geneva Bible 1599

Geneva Bible NT 1557

Matthews Bible (typed - searchable pdf)

Catholic Douay Bible (Challoner)

Elzevir Greek Text 1633

Erasmus Greek Text 1516

Erasmus Greek Text 1522

William Tyndale, a biography, being a contribution to the early history of the English Bible by Robert Demaus 1886

Tyndale New Testament Published in 1526, 1836

William Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible by William Dallman 1905

The Sources of Tyndale's Version of the Pentateuch by John R Slater 1906

Tyndale's Five books of Moses 1884

The Romance of the English Bible by John T Faris 1911

The Annals of the English Bible, Volume 1 by Christopher Anderson 1845

The Annals of the English Bible, Volume 2 by Christopher Anderson 1845

A Study of Tindale's Genesis Compared with the Genesis of Coverdale and of the Authorized Version (KJV) by Elizabeth Cleaveland 1911

The Bible of the Reformation by WJ Heaton 1910

The Prophete Jonas by William Tyndale 1531

H.G. Wells on the Trinity Doctrine

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H.G. Wells on the Trinity Doctrine, from God The Invisible King

Christianity also began with an extreme neglect of definition. It was not at first anything more than a sect of Judaism. It was only after three centuries, amidst the uproar and emotions of the council of Nicaea, when the more enthusiastic Trinitarians stuffed their fingers in their ears in affected horror at the arguments of old Arius, that the cardinal mystery of the Trinity was established as the essential fact of Christianity. Throughout those three centuries, the centuries of its greatest achievements and noblest martyrdoms, Christianity had not defined its God. And even to-day it has to be noted that a large majority of those who possess and repeat the Christian creeds have come into the practice so insensibly from unthinking childhood, that only in the slightest way do they realise the nature of the statements to which they subscribe. They will speak and think of both Christ and God in ways flatly incompatible with the doctrine of the Triune deity upon which, theoretically, the entire fabric of all the churches rests. They will show themselves as frankly Arians as though that damnable heresy had not been washed out of the world forever after centuries of persecution in torrents of blood. But whatever the present state of Christendom in these matters may be, there can be no doubt of the enormous pains taken in the past to give Christian beliefs the exactest, least ambiguous statement possible. Christianity knew itself clearly for what it was in its maturity, whatever the indecisions of its childhood or the confusions of its decay. The renascent religion that one finds now, a thing active and sufficient in many minds, has still scarcely come to self-consciousness. But it is so coming, and this present book is very largely an attempt to state the shape it is assuming and to compare it with the beliefs and imperatives and usages of the various Christian, pseudo-Christian, philosophical, and agnostic cults amidst which it has appeared.

The writer's sympathies and convictions are entirely with this that he speaks of as renascent or modern religion; he is neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian. He will make no pretence, therefore, to impartiality and detachment. He will do his best to be as fair as possible and as candid as possible, but the reader must reckon with this bias. He has found this faith growing up in himself; he has found it, or something very difficult to distinguish from it, growing independently in the minds of men and women he has met. They have been people of very various origins; English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians, French, people brought up in a "Catholic atmosphere," Positivists, Baptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans. Their diversity of source is as remarkable as their convergence of tendency. A miscellany of minds thinking upon parallel lines has come out to the same light. The new teaching is also traceable in many professedly Christian religious books and it is to be heard from Christian pulpits. The phase of definition is manifestly at hand.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between this new faith and any recognised form of Christianity is that, knowingly or unknowingly, it worships A FINITE GOD. Directly the believer is fairly confronted with the plain questions of the case, the vague identifications that are still carelessly made with one or all of the persons of the Trinity dissolve away. He will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that he is neither the maker of heaven nor earth, and that he has little to identify him with that hereditary God of the Jews who became the "Father" in the Christian system. On the other hand he will assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is a spirit, a person, a strongly marked and knowable personality, loving, inspiring, and lovable, who exists or strives to exist in every human soul. He will be much less certain in his denials that his God has a close resemblance to the Pauline (as distinguished from the Trinitarian) "Christ." . . .

The modern religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of universalism; he will assert that whensoever men have called upon any God and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense of God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the religious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the True God is a generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of that bickering monopolist who "will have none other gods but Me"; and when a human heart cries out--to what name it matters not--for a larger spirit and a stronger help than the visible things of life can give, straightway the nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man answers to the call. The True God has no scorn nor hate for those who have accepted the many-handed symbols of the Hindu or the lacquered idols of China. Where there is faith, where there is need, there is the True God ready to clasp the hands that stretch out seeking for him into the darkness behind the ivory and gold.

The fact that God is FINITE is one upon which those who think clearly among the new believers are very insistent. He is, above everything else, a personality, and to be a personality is to have characteristics, to be limited by characteristics; he is a Being, not us but dealing with us and through us, he has an aim and that means he has a past and future; he is within time and not outside it. And they point out that this is really what everyone who prays sincerely to God or gets help from God, feels and believes. Our practice with God is better than our theory. None of us really pray to that fantastic, unqualified danse a trois, the Trinity, which the wranglings and disputes of the worthies of Alexandria and Syria declared to be God. We pray to one single understanding person. But so far the tactics of those Trinitarians at Nicaea, who stuck their fingers in their ears, have prevailed in this world; this was no matter for discussion, they declared, it was a Holy Mystery full of magical terror, and few religious people have thought it worth while to revive these terrors by a definite contradiction. The truly religious have been content to lapse quietly into the comparative sanity of an unformulated Arianism, they have left it to the scoffing Atheist to mock at the patent absurdities of the official creed. But one magnificent protest against this theological fantasy must have been the work of a sincerely religious man, the cold superb humour of that burlesque creed, ascribed, at first no doubt facetiously and then quite seriously, to Saint Athanasius the Great, which, by an irony far beyond its original intention, has become at last the accepted creed of the church.

The long truce in the criticism of Trinitarian theology is drawing to its end. It is when men most urgently need God that they become least patient with foolish presentations and dogmas. The new believers are very definitely set upon a thorough analysis of the nature and growth of the Christian creeds and ideas. There has grown up a practice of assuming that, when God is spoken of, the Hebrew-Christian God of Nicaea is meant. But that God trails with him a thousand misconceptions and bad associations; his alleged infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange preferences, his vindictive Old Testament past. These things do not even make a caricature of the True God; they compose an altogether different and antagonistic figure.

It is a very childish and unphilosophical set of impulses that has led the theologians of nearly every faith to claim infinite qualities for their deity. One has to remember the poorness of the mental and moral quality of the churchmen of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries who saddled Christendom with its characteristic dogmas, and the extreme poverty and confusion of the circle of ideas within which they thought. Many of these makers of Christianity, like Saint Ambrose of Milan (who had even to be baptised after his election to his bishopric), had been pitchforked into the church from civil life; they lived in a time of pitiless factions and personal feuds; they had to conduct their disputations amidst the struggles of would-be emperors; court eunuchs and favourites swayed their counsels, and popular rioting clinched their decisions. There was less freedom of discussion then in the Christian world than there is at present (1916) in Belgium, and the whole audience of educated opinion by which a theory could be judged did not equal, either in numbers or accuracy of information, the present population of Constantinople. To these conditions we owe the claim that the Christian God is a magic god, very great medicine in battle, "in hoc signo vinces," and the argument so natural to the minds of those days and so absurd to ours, that since he had ALL power, all knowledge, and existed for ever and ever, it was no use whatever to set up any other god against him. . . .

By the fifth century Christianity had adopted as its fundamental belief, without which everyone was to be "damned everlastingly," a conception of God and of Christ's relation to God, of which even by the Christian account of his teaching, Jesus was either totally unaware or so negligent and careless of the future comfort of his disciples as scarcely to make mention. The doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the relationship of the Third Person goes, hangs almost entirely upon one ambiguous and disputed utterance in St. John's gospel (XV. 26). Most of the teachings of Christian orthodoxy resolve themselves to the attentive student into assertions of the nature of contradiction and repartee. Someone floats an opinion in some matter that has been hitherto vague, in regard, for example, to the sonship of Christ or to the method of his birth. The new opinion arouses the hostility and alarm of minds unaccustomed to so definite a statement, and in the zeal of their recoil they fly to a contrary proposition. The Christians would neither admit that they worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor deny the divinity of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be polytheistic; equally did they dread the least apparent detraction from the power and importance of their Saviour. They were forced into the theory of the Trinity by the necessity of those contrary assertions, and they had to make it a mystery protected by curses to save it from a reductio ad absurdam. The entire history of the growth of the Christian doctrine in those disordered early centuries is a history of theology by committee; a history of furious wrangling, of hasty compromises, and still more hasty attempts to clinch matters by anathema. When the muddle was at its very worst, the church was confronted by enormous political opportunities. In order that it should seize these one chief thing appeared imperative: doctrinal uniformity. The emperor himself, albeit unbaptised and very ignorant of Greek, came and seated himself in the midst of Christian thought upon a golden throne. At the end of it all Eusebius, that supreme Trimmer, was prepared to damn everlastingly all those who doubted that consubstantiality he himself had doubted at the beginning of the conference. It is quite clear that Constantine did not care who was damned or for what period, so long as the Christians ceased to wrangle among themselves. The practical unanimity of Nicaea was secured by threats, and then, turning upon the victors, he sought by threats to restore Arius to communion. The imperial aim was a common faith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the Arians and of the Paulicians and suchlike heretics, and more particularly the systematic destruction by the orthodox of all heretical writings, had about it none of that quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a real knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left to work themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist of Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the sword of the executioner and the fires of the book-burner were added to the weapon of the human voice. Priscillian was the first human sacrifice formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory of the reinforced Trinity. Thereafter the blood of the heretics was the cement of Christian unity.

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