Bible Versions: Does It Matter Which Greek Text Your Follow?
When I go to Bible Study on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I bring a New American Standard Bible. When I summarize the Bible study on this web site, I use a King James Version (though I update the language and sometimes translate a word differently). Today, the passage we studied began with a verse that is different in those two versions. In Romans 1:16, the KJV says that Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. The NASB merely says that Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel. Does this matter?
There are “KJV only” people that say that it sure does matter. What's left out here? Isn't it “of Christ”? How can that not be important? These people love to point out Colossians 1:14, where the KJV mentions redemption “through his blood,” whereas the NASB and NIV and other modern translations just have “redemption.” Many of these KJV-only folks even accuse those who produce the modern translations of a conspiracy, or at least they accuse the devil of a conspiracy through them, trying to get “the blood” and “Christ” removed from the Scriptures.
Really, this is silly. First, those who have put together modern translations aren't making this up. There really are manuscripts that have just “redemption” in Colossians 1:14. Second, if this is a conspiracy, it's a really lousy one. Ephesians 1:7 uses almost exactly the same wording as Colossians 1:14, and in Ephesians 1:7 both the KJV and modern translations have “through his blood.” And you certainly are not going to miss the fact that Jesus is the Christ, nor that the Gospel is about Christ, in the NASB and NIV.
To me, the ultimate opinion about these matters is God's opinion, and sometimes God's opinion can be determined. What has God done to preserve the exact wording of Scripture? Basically, nothing at all. Let's skip the KJV vs. NASB discussion, and let's go to somewhere where God's opinion is a lot more obvious.
Look at Hebrews 1:6. There we read, in the KJV, “And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he said, And let all the angels of God worship him.” He does? Where does he say that? My NASB reference Bible doesn't even give a reference for that verse. Some reference Bibles will. It is quoted from Deuteronomy 32:43. However, if you go look in your Bible for such a statement in Deuteronomy 32:43, you'll find nothing remotely like “And let all the angels of God worship him.” Why is that?
The writer of Hebrews was using the Septuagint (LXX), a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures done across the course of a couple centuries. Writers of the 2nd century not only used the LXX, but they believe it was inspired word for word. Justin Martyr, for example, claims that Ptolemy, king of Egypt, brought 70 Hebrew scholars and locked them in separate rooms, preventing their communication with one another. Despite this, all 70 scholars produced exactly the same translation, word for word, of the entire Old Testament. No one believes this today, but it was a common belief of the early church, and the LXX was the only translation they employed, being Greek speakers (Hortatory Address to the Greeks 13).
We do not know the opinion of the apostles about the LXX. It seems impossible that they believed it was translated the way Justin Martyr describes. We do know, however, that the writer of Hebrews used it, and we know that there are places where the apostle Paul used it. For example, have you ever looked up the reference for that famous verse about death's sting and the grave's victory in 1 Cor. 15:55? In the KJV of Hosea 13:14, which is the reference for 1 Cor. 15:55, we read, “O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction.” How close is that to “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?”
The NASB is better, but still not the same. Its Hosea 13:14 reads, “O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?” My English translation of the LXX is much closer because that's where Paul got it from: &147;Where is thy penalty, O death? O Hades, where is your sting?” Even there, the wording is not exact. Paul was almost certainly quoting from memory, and the LXX suffers from the same problem all our New Testament Greek texts suffer from. Many have come down to us, so it's hard to reconstruct the exact texts.
We can long and hope for exact wording in the Scriptures, but we're hoping in vain. The story is still circulated that when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found they proved that the copy of Isaiah in our Bibles was the correct one. The scroll of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls matched the one in our Bible, which came from what is called the Masoretic text. It is true that such a report was issued. That happened in 1947. However, that story was retracted in 1948 once scholars took a closer look at the scroll. It turns out that the Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls matches neither the LXX nor the Masoretic text. It represents a third text type.
No problem, the differences are not major. However, the Dead Sea scroll of Jeremiah poses us a bigger problem. It matches the LXX, not the Masoretic. (Do you notice that this story hasn't circulated like the other false, retracted story?) And the differences there are not minor. There are seven completely new chapters in the LXX version of Jeremiah that are not in our Masoretic version. Seven chapters of the Masoretic version are not in the LXX version, so that they're both the same length but they have seven completely different chapters in them. Notice how no one has ever told you that? You can verify it in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, which is where I found it out. That's a very respected Bible Encyclopedia in four volumes, used in Bible colleges and available from Christian Book Distributors.
All of this is important. The Gospel is not a word-for-word preservation of the Scriptures. The Gospel is Christ. If you want to be saved, you need to give up your life and follow Christ. He can save you. You don't need a word-for-word preservation of the Scriptures. He will give you the Spirit of God, guide you through your life, and you will be a child of God. The Scriptures say, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). The Scriptures are useful for rebuking, reproving, correcting, and instruction in righteousness (2 Tim: 3:16), but you don't need word-for-word preservation for those purposes. (Notice, too, that those purposes all have to do with being equipped for obeying God and nothing at all to do with all the doctrines we modern Christians fight over. I take every opportunity possible to send people to Titus 2 so that they can see what healthy doctrine really is.)
So what about the verse that says that not one jot or tittle will pass away from the Law (Matt. 5:18)? Jesus is not talking about preserving the smallest letters and marks of punctuation in the Scripture down to our day. If he was, then he was wrong, and we might as well scrap everything. The smallest letters and marks of punctuation are not preserved down to our day. The early churches and the apostles read a Bible that had seven whole chapters different than ours in Jeremiah! Let's face reality and not stick our heads in the sand. Matthew 5:18, however, is not wrong. The word “fulfilled” that he uses there is the Greek word genoito. It means “to happen,” and it is clearly a reference to fulfilled prophecy. Nothing at all, not the smallest thing, will pass away from the Law until it all comes to pass. This is true. What is not true is that God is worried about exact words and letters in the Scriptures.
One last example. There came a point when John the Baptist began, apparently, to doubt that Jesus was really the Messiah. So he sent messengers to Jesus to ask if he was really the one. Both Matthew and Luke record the incident. The wording is remarkably similar considering that decades elapsed before Matthew or Luke wrote about the incident. Further, Matthew was there and Luke was not. However, the two accounts, no matter how similar, differ. For those who believe that God is concerned about exact wording, this is a problem. Matthew says that Jesus told the messenger to tell John what they hear and see, in that order and in the present tense. Luke says that he told them to report what they have understood and heard, in that order and in the second aorist tense. Obviously, this makes no difference whatsoever in the story, but it nonetheless establishes that God is not concerned about inspiring Matthew or Luke to get “every jot and tittle” right in the story.
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