You have to understand, the Septuagint was not one manuscript, and certainly not in use during the time Christ was with the apostles, and it had many problems not just the prophecies as all the manuscripts/versions had the same prophecies as they were too many to take out or change. So this charge is not valid.

Rick, could you carefully choose some verse which would conclusively determine if a Bible came from these so called "corrupted" manuscripts? I'd like to compare a version.

Mr Green, I was absolutely not trying to hide anything, just quoting from one of those versions using the universal rendering.

So you consider the KJV to contain the "universal rendering." As universal as it might be, most modern versions differ from it rather widely in places.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

We were discussing Luke 23:43. and the placement of the comma in that text. Which of most of the modern versions not published by SDA nor JW differ widely from the KJV in where they place the comma?

Are there actually some non-SDA published Bible translations/versions that have the comma in the correct place?

I do not recall having seen any.

Rick, Kinda hard to follow your grammar here. Your assertion that the Septuagint was not used by Jesus and the Apostles simply flies in the face of common knowledge. Our denomination's Biblical Research Center has covered the bible versions issue pretty well. The vast majority of the time I read the SDA Commentary and run across their suggestion for a better rendering (which overwhelmingly supports our teachings) and then look it up in my NASB, my NASB agrees with the suggested rendering. The idea that our message is undermined by virtue of the fact that a translation is derived from the NU/Alexandrian text is simply not true. One could just as often use the renderings of the KJV against our teachings. Each translation must be read with regard to the context of the text itself. However, you and many other conservative SDA's have taken an extreme stance (just as liberals take wrong positions on certain issues) and are thus in a position where you have to cite sources such as ScionofZion.com just to save face. As someone who has been on the conservative extremity of our denomination (and promoted people like Walter Veith) I tend to recognize things in other people. In the end, you'll lose your mind. Hopefully you'll regain your balance someday.

KJV Translators on the Septuagint:



Taken from: Septuagint: Riplinger's Blunders

Dave,

I'm certainly no fan of Riplinger's book on Bible versions. She ends up being a supporter of the modern versions by simply turning us educated folk against her inaccuracies and over-exaggerations to the point that the pendulum has swung the other way. People see that and throw the baby out with the bathwater--the same as many do with Christianity upon having witnessed a particularly egregious hypocrite.

But just as I do not reject Christianity nor Adventism on account of the hypocrites in the church, so also I don't turn away from truth just because it has been misrepresented and made to appear shameful. Truth must be accepted, whatever the form in which it may have been presented to us.

My journey into understanding the fallacies of the modern versions began almost as a joke. A gentleman who recently passed away would lead an English Sabbath school on the campus of our school, for those students wishing to practice their English during the church service. Being one of the English-speaking staff at the school at that time, I helped with that Sabbath school. The leader used his NIV Bible, and almost without fail, from one week to the next, there came up a verse or two that read rather differently between his version and mine. Mine, of course, was the KJV--mostly because it was the Bible I had always used from my childhood up, had memorized from, and the one I actually owned. I don't think I even owned any other version at that time.

I wish I had written down all the verses that differed, as there were some rather unusual and unexpected differences. Invariably, the version differences would start a mini-discussion in our Sabbath-school class, and I would tease the leader with a smile and a quip about his "Catholic" Bible. I don't know where I got that...just something someone had said or something. I didn't have anything substantial, as far as I remember now, behind that statement, only that I suspected the Catholics had been somehow involved in the making of the NIV.

Unbeknownst to me, the leader of the class, and my boss at the time, thought he would settle the argument with me more definitively, and ordered a book about Bible version differences called "Battle of the Bibles" by H. H. Meyers. (I guess he wanted to prove that his Bible was just as good as mine, so he chose to read up a bit on Bible versions. He may have acquired other books as well, but it was this one that I found out about later.) One day, some weeks after he had read the book, I was visiting in his home when I saw the book on his coffee table. He saw me looking at it and said "Oh, you should read that book! It's a good one." And he proceeded to have me take it home to read it. The book outlined some fascinating facts relative to the Bible's history in Europe going centuries back, and laid down the two major parties involved in Bible translation through the years. Lo and behold, it was Catholics versus Protestants! Remember the Spanish Armada? The Pope had offered a large sum of money to the Spanish king to support his fleet of warships and to send them to conquer England, in part to recover the religious ground they were fast losing on account of the freedom to translate and publish the Bible in that country, for even then the KJV translation was underway. God overruled. The armada was soundly defeated, and the pope, having not yet paid his share of the money to the Spanish king, went back on his agreement and gave nothing. After all, the armada had failed miserably, and the pope saw no benefit in paying up. This was a major blow to Spain and to Spanish colonization. But all that is history. The King James Bible is here today because God defeated the armada that was sent to prevent its completion. Meyers did a wonderful job with detailing interesting bits of history like that. But, though interesting, that did not convince me.

What convinced me most were the examples that Meyers included toward the end of the book of actual differences between the Bible versions; examples which showed the trend of changes the modern Bibles tried to make. One can say the modern versions are accurate translations of the original Greek or Hebrew, but then one would be ignoring the fact that those original languages have themselves been edited. The Catholics have documented their involvement in editing the original manuscripts. While I cannot read the original languages, their English representations make the agenda behind these edits plain enough. All one need do is but think a bit about some of the changes, and one knows that the version containing them cannot be true.

For example, take the most famous verse of the Bible. In the modern versions, it will say that Jesus was God's only son. But in the KJV, it says Jesus was the only "begotten" Son, a term meaning "engendered" or "fathered" in a more genetic sense. If Jesus were God's "one and only" son, as the modern versions like to suggest, then those portions of the Bible like John 1:12, just two chapters prior, which speak of "as many as received him" becoming "sons of God" would not be possibly true. Essentially, the Bible has contradicted itself when it speaks of both plural "sons of God" and "one and only" son of God. The KJV does not have such misguided contradictions as this. Its language is much more clear and distinct, not muddled nor self-contradictory so much as the modern versions have become.

One cannot edit the Word of God and introduce no error. A liar eventually must contradict himself, and those who change the Word of God do likewise.

As for the Septuagint, it is an interesting fact that the New Testament writers would sometimes quote the phraseology of the Septuagint, showing their acquaintance with it, but at times they would retranslate from the Hebrew to the Greek themselves, rejecting the phraseology of the Septuagint. This indicates, to me, that the Bible writers themselves did not consider the Septuagint to be a particularly pure or inspired translation, and they would use it where the translation was suitable, but were careful to choose their own words where the Septuagint may have been weak or unsuitable.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.