I was in a discussion with Faith recently and the issue of the King James Bible came up. Specifically the fact that the King James Bible, in her private possession, didn't have Apocryphal texts in it, therefore the books should not be considered inspired. I made the point that the original translation of 1611 actually did have them. It caused me to go out shopping and search for something to help me research the issue. On Sunday, I found a 21st century book, on a used book shelf, titled In The Beginning and it was a historical work dedicated to and about the King James Bible. It had positive blurbs by leading conservative scholars on its back cover.
Here are reviews of the book:
Where Is It Written? Right HereAuthorised by God | History books | The Guardianhttp://www.deliriumsrealm.com/king-james-bible/http://www.tyndale.org/tsj21/norton.html(many more on google plus a lot of the book can be read for free using google's search)
I will take quotes page 72 to 73 of this work, but before I do I need to advise people that the 1526 Tyndale New Testament was NOT the first work by Tyndale. There was a 1525 work (now lost) produced in Cologne before he was forced to go to Worms to complete the famous 1526 work we all know of.
He had to flee England- for Germany - to make his printing run possible. The first English Old Testament.
quote:
The evidence available suggests that Tyndale undertook his translation from about May 1524- July 1525. In August of that year, Tyndale settled in the German city of Cologne, with his new assistant William Royce. The translation of the New Testament into English was complete; the task was now to ensure its printing and distribution. They choose to produce the work in the printing house of Peter Quentell. However, Quentell's presses were also producing the works of Johannes Cochlaeus, a noted opponent of Luther, who happened to learn of Tyndale's project. It seems that some of Quentell's printers became drunk in a public tavern one evening, and let slip that three thousand Lutheran New Testaments were being produced in English, right under the noses of the Catholic authorities. Word of this soon reached Cochlaeus, who was no fool, and could see his star rising in the German Catholic firmament if he were to expose and block this project. He arranged for a raid on Quentell's presses.
Tyndale and Royce, however, managed to escape and salvage at least some of their printing, along with the text of the translation. As far as can be ascertained, they had managed to print only ten sheets of paper - making up eighty quarto pages - which took them roughly three quarters of the way through Matthew
....they moved their printing operation...to...Worms.
...avoided detection. Their work was completed by the end of February 1526.
It had been long assumed that the Cologne quarto sheets of 1525 had been lost. However in 1834, eight of those original sheets were discovered; they had been bound into another work, having been unrecognized for what they really were. These sheets are fascinating, as they help us gauge the influence of Luther upon Tyndale's work. Three factors are of special interest:
1. The pages include a "prologue," which is dependent at points upon Luther's own prologue of his 1522 German New Testament. This was not included in the 1526 printing of Tyndale's work, although Tyndale subsequently revised and reprinted it as a separate work entitled A Pathway into the Scripture.
2. The list of contents of the New Testament follows a convention that existed within Lutheran circles at this stage, which regarded four New Testament works - Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation - as being of dubious authenticity. These were placed at the end of the contents, and not numbered. Tyndale appears to have been obliged to follow the convention by Peter Quentell himself. The 1526 printing abandoned this convention.
3. The 1525 printing included marginal notes. The pages have survived included ninety such notes, suggesting that Tyndale envisaged a high level of comment on the text throughout the New Testament. ...There are no such notes in the 1526 edition.
(his notes included many notes from Luther's Bible.
We might have heard of Martin Luther describing the book of James as something that should be burned, but his Bibles actually put that work (and Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation) on a par with the Apocrypha.
Here is a Wikipedia article on Luther's canon
Luther's canon - Wikipediafrom the article:
quote:
In his book Basic Theology, Charles Caldwell Ryrie countered the claim that Luther rejected the Book of James as being canonical.[6] In his preface to the New Testament, Luther ascribed to several books of the New Testament different degrees of doctrinal value: "St. John's Gospel and his first Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter's Epistle-these are the books which show to thee Christ, and teach everything that is necessary and blessed for thee to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book of doctrine. Therefore, St. James' Epistle is a perfect straw-epistle compared with them, for it has in it nothing of an evangelic kind." Thus Luther was comparing (in his opinion) doctrinal value, not canonical validity.
However, Ryrie's theory is countered by other biblical scholars, including William Barclay, who note that Luther stated plainly, if not bluntly: "I think highly of the epistle of James, and regard it as valuable although it was rejected in early days. It does not expound human doctrines, but lays much emphasis on God’s law. I do not hold it to be of apostolic authorship."[7]
Luther also rejected the Old Testament book of Esther as inspired.
It helps us understand the concept of "Sola Scriptura" much better, doesn't it?
The first English New Testament had annotations accompanying the Biblical text. So did the founder of the reformation. Their goal was not to hold the man-made Bible as an idol to worship word for word. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and their online Bible, actually follow the convention set by leading lights of the protestant reformation (Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Lutherans, etc.)!
The great scholar Adolf von Harnack said that the very first man to make the first New Testament (Marcion of 138-144 AD) was what should be thought of as the first "Protestant man" against the Roman Catholic church.
The 15th century Luther and Tyndale seemed to have a protest that did infact have some commonalities with the man Marcion (born around 70-80 A.D.), who was birthed (somewhat)fairly early in the Apostolic Period of the 1st century BCE. Marcion invented the New Testament that the Roman Catholics would later become supreme dictators of. Luther and Tyndale attempted to remove over 1 dozen and a half of the books from the "inspired" category (while leaving them in the Bible but identified as dubious and perhaps better used as straw for the oven).
But we shall stick with Luther and Tyndale.
These famous Christian men predated the "higher critics" by centuries. The first New Testament work to be identified as a forgery, by critical scholars, was the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) and that wasn't till around 1800.
Fundamentalist Protestants should take note. The founders of your faith , and their "God-inspired" translations, actually considered certain New Testament books to be forgeries. Don't hold your Bible up as an idol. Be faithful to Jesus, not 1611 translations. And this applies to the (very) late manuscripts that were the basis for their translation too. Use annotations and textual commentaries to try to find accurate manuscripts. Even the "better manuscripts" are far removed from the 1st century AD and the founders of the faith.
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