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Revelation 16:5

Posted on August 20, 2024August 20, 2024 by dmgreen99

One of these is different than the others…see if you can see what I am seeing.

“And I herde the aungel ʽof watirs seiynge, Just art thou, Lord, that art, and that was holy, that demyst thes thinges;” (Wycliffe Bible, published 1382-1395)

“And I hearde an auugell saye: Lorde which art and wast/thou art righteous and holy” (The 1536 Tyndale Bible)

“And I heard the Angel of the waters say, Lord, thou art just, Which art, and Which wast, and Holie, because thou hast judged these things.” (Geneva Bible, 1560)

“And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.” (King James Version)

“And I heard the angel of the waters saying, ‘You are righteous, the one who is and the one who was, the Holy One, because you have judged these things,” (Lexham English Bible, 2012)

“And I heard the angel of the waters saying, ‘Righteous are You, who is and who was, O Holy One, because You judged these things;” (Legacy Standard Bible, 2022)

So how is it that the King James Bible stands alone in this sea of translations? Was Revelation 16:5 lost to man kind until 1611? The King James Onlyist would have us to believe it to be so, but there is a better explanation.

I quote from James White’s book The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (pp. 104–106). Bethany House.

“Three men were primarily responsible for the creation of the Greek text utilized by the KJV translators in their work on the New Testament: Desiderius Erasmus, Robert Estienne (better known as Stephanus), and Theodore Beza. One can trace the text from Erasmus, who died in 1536, through Stephanus (d. 1559), through Beza (d. 1605), to the KJV translators. While the text that each produced is substantially the same, there are variations among their various editions.

In the years that followed Erasmus’s death, his Greek text continued to enjoy great popularity and was the basis of the editions published by Stephanus. The third of his four editions, that of 1550, was very popular in England and was for most the “received text” of that day. Significantly, this edition had variant readings printed in the margins, taken from the Complutensian edition (which was finally released in 1522) as well as about a dozen other manuscripts, showing that, along with Erasmus, the originators of the TR were not averse to showing the textual variations within the Greek text.

Theodore Beza, the other individual most responsible for the final form of the Textus Receptus, was the successor of the great Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin. Nine editions of the Greek New Testament were published under his name during his lifetime, four of which were independent works, the others being smaller-size reprints. Beza drew from Stephanus’s listings of variant readings and added many more of his own, drawing from important manuscripts in his possession. He also placed the information on the variant readings immediately under the text in the same style used by modern critical editions. Often his critical notes anticipate modern scholarship; while maintaining the reading of Erasmus at Luke 2:14 in his text, for example, Beza disputed this in his comments. Modern Greek texts agree, resulting in the differences between the KJV’s “good will toward men” and the NASB’s “among men with whom He is pleased.”

While following Stephanus’s editions closely, Beza did introduce changes based upon his own textual expertise. Some of these were “conjectural emendations,” that is, changes made to the text without any manuscript evidence. A few of these made it into the KJV, the most famous being in Revelation 16:5, “O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be” rather than the actual reading, “who art and who wast, O Holy One.”

Two decades after the publication of the KJV, brothers Bonaventure and Matthew Elzevir, and later their nephew Abraham, produced their second edition of the Greek New Testament. In the preface is the claim that this text was the “text … now received by all,” which in Latin is “textum … ab omnibus receptum,” from which came Textus Receptus, the “received text.” This 1633 edition mainly followed Beza but also drew from other sources. Even the standard Textus Receptus (printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society) used today by nearly all KJV Only advocates is not identical to Erasmus, Stephanus, or Beza but is instead an “eclectic” text that draws from various sources.”

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