Attacks on the Deity of Christ - Part I

(Act 2:47) Praising God, and hauing fauour with all the people. And the Lord added to the Church dayly such as should be saued. 1611 KJV

No marginal note in the 1611.

 

Act 2:47 Praising God, and hauing fauour with all the people. And the Lord added to the Church dayly such as should be saued.

 

Sorry, David, I was clipping and pasting before your post showed up. Oh well, now we have the 1611 is "STEREO"!

 

It was directed at anybody who wishes to answer.

How do you hold an error free position on the KJV? If you do, which version might that error free translation be found in? I would certainly not want to read the wrong one.

 

Now that I understand your position on "translations" as a whole, I can accept your posts as having much more authority. Thank you for explaining your position on translations.

I guess we are a little bit "trigger happy" when it comes to remarks that could be construed as pointing towards a 100% word-for-word translation in English. I appologize if I was a bit harsh on you are the beginning. Now that I see the direction you are going, I have much less disagreement with the details of your posts.

Thanks,
Phillip

 

Um, because as scripture says, and as I believe "Jesus is the Lord". Also because I am, like I believe Paul was, monotheistic and Trinitarian. Thirdly, from the context itself, where the NIV says just a couple of verses earlier in the same chapter:

"[1] For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. [2] They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. [3] They all ate the same spiritual food [4] and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ."

I agree the KJV is acceptable in those verses. However, it is not as conclusive on the deity of Christ in those verses. I have several Mormon and JW friends, and I asked them specifically about John 1:18, Rom 9:5, Titus 2:13, and 2 Pet 1:1 in both the KJV and the NIV, and they could accept the KJV's reading but not the NIV's reading.

 

Why? The word "Kurios" is used as the Greek translation for the tetragrammaton, the name of God. I could provide dozens and dozens of verses as proof, but this single comparison should be enough:

Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Matt 3:3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Jehovah is not the name of the Father. Jehovah is the name of God (as Trinity). Once I show this to Mormons and JWs, using the above (and many other OT/NT comparisons, I actually get very far with them and they go home with much to think about.

 

I know this isn't addressed to me but if it was, I would say probably not.

If I were going to use a single passage to prove the deity of Jesus Christ, I would use John 1:1 or John 8:58.

However it can be done in 1 Corinthians because as natters pointed out the NIV identifies in the same context, same chapter "that rock was Christ".

HankD

 

Perhaps you missed my comments on context. The chapter opens with:

"[1] For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. [2] They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. [3] They all ate the same spiritual food [4] and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ."

Later in the passage, it talks about communion, the "blood of Christ" and "body of Christ" (verse 16). It calls this the "Lord's" cup and the "Lord's" table in verse 21.

Christ is the Lord in this chapter.

I agree. That is not what I'm doing.

I agree again. But that does not prove the reading was that way originally.

 

If we added a verese to Scripture that said "Jesus is God" there would be no mistake about the doctrine either. Does that mean we should? Of course not.

Your method of argumentation shows a flaw. It assumes that textual variants should be decided on teh basis of doctrine. That is incorrect. Textual variants should be decided on the basis of evidence that God has preserved. We could change a number of verses to make doctrine more clear, and in fact, some suggest that is what happened in the Byzantine text family and that is why it differs from the Alexandrian text family. They argue (rightly I believe) that the Alexandrian text is more pristine in this sense because there was not scribal changes to clarify doctrine. This is argued in Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of the Text. Suffice it to say for our purposes that this objection to the 1 Cor passage is wholly without merit. Christ may be the right reading, but not because it is more clear on doctrine. If this verse reads "Lord," there is still overwhelming evidence to the deity of Christ in the NIV.

 

Again, if it was "clearly" so, there would be no discussion. And what is "more true to the heretics" is largely irrelevant - AGAIN we do not do textual criticism based on what someone would/wouldn't like it to say to better fit their doctrine.

 

I didn't say your conclusions were based on theology, at least I don't think I did. What I said was theology is not a criteria in textual criticism. Your methodology that says "this is a better theological text with this reading" is a flawed methodology.

The external evidence may indicate that Christ is correct. I lean towards that conclusion. I don't know why the NIV chose something different. But the external evidence also gives weight to "Lord" meaning that it is not necessarily the corrupted reading. Furthermore, it is not wrong in its theology. It is right theology as the NIV has it since Jesus is Lord (I don't suppose you deny that, do you?)

It is purely ridiculous to say that "Lord" is the reading that is more true to heretics. I can show numerous places where the KJV uses "Lord" to refer to Christ, and therefore could be charged with being more true to heretics. I bet you don't want to apply your standard evenly though. One of the greatest weaknesses of arguments like this is that they cut both ways, but most people don't think through it enough to realize that. An argument, in order to be effective, has to be consistent. Your argument works against you in numerous passages.

Lastly, I am not defending the NIV. It doesn't need my defense. It is a good translation, worthy of use, though probably wrong in this passage. I am merely showing a flaw in the methodology used to reach the conclusion argued in this thread.

 

To address your questioning of my position on the Bible... I would say to you that I do hold to an error free position. You apparently read into my statement something that i did not intend however. I believe that the bible laying on my desk is error free (A Cambrige probably a 1769?) and is exactly the words that God intends for me to have. I would say the same thing about the 1611, 1613, 1644, 1664, 1701, 1769, and 1850. Not one of the 24,000 so called variations was ever a rejection of the recieved text of the Old or New Testaments. And not one of them was an intentional departure from the original words as translated by the AV translators. What we have before us in the AV is a genuine updating and a genuine revision, in line with the intention of the translators and the intension of the Holy Spirit in preserving and giving to us the words he intends for us to have.

Yes, I have na error free Bible!

Then to address the acts 2:47 issue... I think the problem comes from a misunderstanding of the different uses of the word "should." This is solved with a little study into the usage of the word...not a judgment on the text as calvinistic.

The word "should" can be used in the sense of..."such as were (should be) saved."

We use the word in this manner sometimes..."should I (were I to) go on the trip the family, would go with me."

You also see it used differently in John 3:16... "should not perish" If taken as we use the word today it seems to imply that they "might" not perish, but with a little word study we understand the strenght of the word as originally used.

Thanks for reading...
Max

 

How can you say this? These versions are all different. Where the same verse has different words, by your position, one of them must be wrong. How do you know the one on your desk is hte right one, and the one on my desk is the wrong one?