I dont want to bog down the discussion on the KJV, so I am making this specific to Westcott and Hort and what IMHO was their purpose in coming out with their version.

The King James Bible was printed in 1611 and by 1640 the King James Bible was clearly the Bible of the English people and was beginning to be picked up in Europe. The Geneva and Matthew’s Bible, once greatly used, went out of print as there was simply no demand for them anymore with the King James Bible coming out.

The Church of England used the King James Bible exclusively and it was the Bible of the Puritans, Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Quakers, the Baptists and became the Bible of the Pilgrims (some had used the Geneva Bible earlier).

The King James Bible was the Bible of evangelicals in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It became the Bible of the English colonies across the Atlantic Ocean. When the Methodist Revival stirred England in the 1700's, it did so with the preaching of the King James Bible. John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodists, made his own translation of the New Testament but it found little acceptance, even among Methodists. Over one hundred fifty English translations were produced between 1611 and 1880, however, they found no audience. In America, it was read from American pulpits and in the great majority of American households during colonial times, the Authorized Version shaped the style, informed the intellect, affected the laws, and decreed the morals of the North American Colonies and American public schools were built around the King James Bible.

The only religious group of any size or importance in England that didn’t use the King James Bible was Roman Catholicism. In America, the Roman Catholic minority objected to the King James Bible and so they developed their own school system. With the exception of the Catholics, the United States was clearly King James only.

The King James Bible was the Bible of the great modern missions movement of the 1700's and 1800's. The missionaries from England and the United States translated the Bible into 760 languages from the King James Bible.

Then there was a rise of Darwinism and Humanism by the 1870's, and a challenge arose in the English world to the primacy of the King James Bible. This challenge came from men who were officially Protestants: Church of England Bishop Brooke Foss Westcott and Cambridge University Professor Fenton John Anthony Hort.

The crux of Westcott and Hort's theory was that the New Testament was preserved in almost perfect condition in two manuscripts, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. (The Sinaiticus was discovered in a wastebasket in St. Catherine’s Momentary near Mt. Sinai in 1844 and the Vaticanus was first documented in the Vatican library in 1475 and was 'rediscovered' in 1845.)

Westcott and Hort, abhored the King James Bible and even after its widespread use now declare it an inferior translation. Westcott and Hort determined to replace the King James Bible and the Greek Textus Receptus. In short, their theory was that for fifteen hundred years the preserved Word of God was lost until it was recovered in the nineteenth century in a trash can and in the Vatican Library.

Hort showed a bias against the Textus Receptus, calling it "villainous" and "vile". Hort aggressively taught that the School at Antioch (associated with Lucian) had loosely translated the true text of Scripture in the second century A. D. So this supposedly created an unreliable text of Scripture which formed the Textus Receptus. This was called the Lucian Recension Theory.

Hort did not have a single historical reference to support taht the Lucian Recension took place. He simply theorized that it must have taken place so the Textus Receptus must be discarded. In spite of the fact that there is not a single historical reference to the Lucian Recension, but it became held as fact.

The great textual scholar of the time, Dean John Burgon, referred to Westcott and Hort’s "violent recoil from the Traditional Text" and "their absolute contempt for the Traditional Text". He refers to their theory as "superstitious veneration for a few ancient documents."

Another famed textual scholar and contemporary of Westcott and Hort, F.H.P. Scrivener wrote, "Dr. Hort’s system therefore is entirely destitute of historical foundation. He does not so much as make a show of pretending to it; but then he would persuade us, as he persuaded himself...". More later..

Now here is some of the ideas that show the bent of these men:

Hort:

1. Was a follower of Darwin...in other words, he believed in Evolution.

2. Did not believe in blood atonement. What a surprise that the NIV removes “through his blood” in Col.1:14.

3. Doubted angels were for real.

4. Was pondering several degrees of salvation. That’s why the newer versions always say “are being saved” or “were saved”, but unlike the KJB which says we “ARE SAVED”.

5. Rejected an eternal hell. Maybe that’s why “hell” is taken out 40 of the 53 times in the NIV.

Wescott:

1. Did not believe in a literal heaven...much like the pope today.

2. Said there is no second coming of Christ. My friends, Titus 2:13 says, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

3. He believed the writings of mystics was profitable to read.

4. Thought the first three chapters of Genesis could not possibly have given a literal history.

5. Rejected the infallibility of scriptures.

6. Claimed it was improbable that the miracles of the Bible really occurred.

Wescott went on to say that he could not speak of the Old Testament with adequate knowledge. Hort even admits his ignorance of the Hebrew and Greek. He said, “I have all but discarded them.” Can you people HONESTLY tell me that these are the kind of men we are to trust in translating the Bible truthfully. Does not 2 Tim.2:2 instruct that the word should be committed unto “FAITHFUL MEN”?

Here is comment from Wescott, quote: “As far as I could judge, the idea of La Salette was that of God revealing Himself now, and not in one form but many.”

( La Salette is the place in France where two young children ssaid they saw and talked with an apparition of the Weeping Virgin)

From their letters:

Westcott: "After leaving the monastery we shaped our course to a little oratory...It is very small, with one kneeling-place; and behind a screen was a 'Pieta' the size of life (i.e. a Virgin and dead Christ)...I could not help thinking on the grandeur of the Romish Church, on her zeal even in error, on her earnestness and self-devotion, which we might, with nobler views and a purer end, strive to imitate. Had I been alone I could have knelt there for hours." (Life, Vol.I, p.81).



1848 July 6th - Hort: "One of the things, I think, which shows the falsity of the Evangelical notion of this subject (baptism), is that it is so trim and precise...no deep spiritual truths of the Reason are thus logically harmonious and systematic...the pure Romish view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to, the truth than the Evangelical...the fanaticism of the bibliolaters, among whom reading so many 'chapters' seems exactly to correspond to the Romish superstition of telling so many dozen beads on a rosary...still we dare not forsake the Sacraments, or God will forsake us...I am inclined to think that no such state as 'Eden' (I mean the popular notion) ever existed, and that Adam's fall in no degree differed from the fall of each of his descendants" (Life, Vol.I, pp.76-78).

Aug. 11th - Westcott: "I never read an account of a miracle (in Scripture?) but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it." (Life, Vol.I, p.52).



Hort writes to Rev. Rowland Williams, October 21, 1858, "Further I agree with them [Authors of "Essays and Reviews"] in condemning many leading specific doctrines of the popular theology ... Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue. There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of the Bible."

We must also confront Hort's disbelief that the Bible was infallible: "If you make a decided conviction of the absolute infallibility of the N.T. practically a sine qua non for co-operation, I fear I could not join you." He also stated:

"As I was writing the last words a note came from Westcott. He too mentions having had fears, which he now pronounces 'groundless,' on the strength of our last conversation, in which he discovered that I did 'recognize' 'Providente' in biblical writings. Most strongly I recognize it; but I am not prepared to say that it necessarily involves absolute infallibility. So I still await judgment."

And further commented to a colleague:

"But I am not able to go as far as you in asserting the absolute infallibility of a canonical writing."

Some strange comments for supposedly Christian scholars....

Indeed. Regarding Hort's fascination with Darwin, the following quote sheds some light.



Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Now what is interesting is the unique Catholic beliefs or doctrines which they subscribed to...

Hort was a very real believer in the Roman Catholic doctrine of "purgatory." To Rev. John Ellerton he wrote in 1854:

"I agree with you in thinking it a pity that Maurice verbally repudiates purgatory, but I fully and unwaveringly agree with him in the three cardinal points of the controversy: (1) that eternity is independent of duration; (2) that the power of repentance is not limited to this life; (3) that it is not revealed whether or not all will ultimately repent. The modern denial of the second has, I suppose, had more to do with the despiritualizing of theology then almost anything that could be named."

and in another letter to others.....

The idea of purgation, of cleansing as by fire, seems to me inseparable from what the Bible teaches us of the Divine chastisements; and, though little is directly said respecting the future state, it seems to me incredible that the Divine chastisements should in this respect change their character when this visible life is ended.

"I do not hold it contradictory to the Article to think that the condemned doctrine has not been wholly injurious, inasmuch as it has kept alive some sort of belief in a great and important truth."

Hort seem to think we all need to do the Catholic style severe self-afflicted penances or suffering in his rejection of Christ's atoning death for the sins of all mankind.

"The fact is, I do not see how God's justice can be satisfied without every man's suffering in his own person the full penalty for his sins."


Hort also believed that the Roman Catholic teaching of "baptismal regeneration" was more correct than the "evangelical" teaching.

"...at the same time in language stating that we maintain 'Baptismal Regeneration' as the most important of doctrines ... the pure 'Romish' view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to, the truth than the Evangelical." (Life, Vol.I, pp.76-78).


He also states that, "Baptism assures us that we are children of God, members of Christ and His body, and heirs of the heavenly kingdom."

Here we find Hort assuring his eldest son, Arthur, that his infant baptism was his salvation:

"You were not only born into the world of men. You were also born of Christian parents in a Christian land. While yet an infant you were claimed for God by being made in Baptism an unconscious member of His Church, the great Divine Society which has lived on unceasingly from the Apostles' time till now. You have been surrounded by Christian influences; taught to lift up your eyes to the Father in heaven as your own Father; to feel yourself in a wonderful sense a member or part of Christ, united to Him by strange invisible bonds; to know that you have as your birthright a share in the kingdom of heaven."

Hort said he saw no difference between Jesus worship or Mary worship, and said, “They have much in common in there causes and results.”

Hort seemed almost intent on taking down the beliefs held from the Textus Receptus and Antiochian text in the Authorized Version: "Further I agree with them in condemning many leading specific doctrines of the popular theology as, to say the least, containing much superstition and immorality of a very pernmicious kind...The positive doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue...There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of the Bible" (Life, Vol.I, p.400).

Here comes what I think was behind what drove Hort (with 'substantial Church' I take as meaning the Catholic chuch): "I believe Coleridge was quite right in saying that Christianity without a substantial Church is vanity and dissolution; and I remember shocking you and Lightfoot not so very long ago by expressing a belief that 'Protestantism' is only parenthetical and temporary. (Life, Vol.II, p.30,31).

As for Westcott, here are some of quotes and review of his beliefs which give you an idea of his bent: "After leaving the monastery we shaped our course to a little oratory...It is very small, with one kneeling-place; and behind a screen was a 'Pieta' the size of life (i.e. a Virgin and dead Christ)...I could not help thinking on the grandeur of the Romish Church, on her zeal even in error, on her earnestness and self-devotion, which we might, with nobler views and a purer end, strive to imitate.

Westcott did not believe that Genesis 1-3 should be taken literally. He also thought that "Moses" and "David" were poetic characters whom Jesus Christ referred to by name only because the common people accepted them as authentic. Westcott states:

"No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history - I could never understand how anyone reading them with open eyes could think they did - yet they disclose to us a Gospel. So it is probably elsewhere. Are we not going through a trial in regard to the use of popular language on literary subjects like that through which we went, not without sad losses in regard to the use of popular language on physical subjects? If you feel now that it was, to speak humanly, necessary that the Lord should speak of the 'sun rising,' it was no less necessary that he would use the names 'Moses' and 'David' as His contemporaries used them. There was no critical question at issue. (Poetry is, I think, a thousand times more true than History; this is a private parenthesis for myself alone.)"

Westcott believed that the second coming of Jesus Christ was not a physical coming but a spiritual coming and in 'other comings' which I can only think of as manifistations such as the virgin Mary appearing or as such events: "As far as I can remember, I said very shortly what I hold to be the 'Lord's coming' in my little book on the Historic Faith. I hold very strongly that the Fall of Jerusalem was the coming which first fulfilled the Lord's words; and, as there have been other comings, I cannot doubt that He is 'coming' to us now."

So if you look at the Wescott La Salette quote again. “...the idea of La Salette was that of God revealing Himself not in one form but many.” Now you see what he believed.



Westcott, denied the existance of Heaven and believed Heaven to be a state and not a literal place: "No doubt the language of the Rubric is unguarded, but it saves us from the error of connecting the Presence of Christ's glorified humanity with place; 'heaven is a state and not a place.'"

Westcott accepted and promoted prayers for the dead as both believed it possible to communicate with the dead. Wescott and Hort even went into the occult and started a society to investigate ghosts and the supernatural.

They slowly fed others the changes they were making and so were ready when the Revision Committee of 1871-1881 met and steered it away from the Textus Receptus and Antiochian text and into the Alexandria codices and its changes.

They had compiled their own Greek text from Alexandrian manuscripts, which, though unpublished and inferior to the Textus Receptus, they secreted little by little to the Revision Committee. The result being a totally new 'Alexandrian' English Bible instead of a "revision" of the Authorized Version or KJV, as it was claimed to be.

In Samuel Gipps book, An Understandable History of the Bible, we read:“In 1870 the…church of England commissioned a revision of the Authorized Version. A gleam of hope shone in the eye of every Roman Catholic. An eager anticipation filled every Jesuit inspired Protestant scholar…although it was meant to correct a few supposed “error” in the Authorized Version, the textual critics of the day assured themselves that they would never again have to submit to the divine authority of the Universal Text.”

When they finished, the pure text was changed in 36,191 places. The result of all these changes is confusion in the diety of Christ for new readers or mistrust by others of the scriptures, so in my opinion their purpose was accomplised in one form or the other.

Now I feel from their quotes and ideas that they were being influenced towards Catholic doctrine and traditions and since during this period there was a stiring of Jesuit or Catholic ideas in England and that Westcott and Hort became entagled with them. I cant find evidence for Hort but Westcott was deeply involced with John Newman. Lets take a look at who he is...


John Henry Newman, D.D., C.O. (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890[2][3]), also referred to as Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman, was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s.[4]

Originally an evangelical Oxford academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman was a leader in the Oxford Movement. This influential grouping of Anglicans wished to return the Church of England to many Catholic beliefs and forms of worship traditional in the medieval times to restore ritual expression. In 1845 Newman left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church where he was eventually granted the rank of cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.....

Interesting to say the least, a Jesuit hiding in plain sight, seems posible.

It seems that many things were unleashed after 1844 as evil sought to push back with diverse philosophies and theories rejecting God, and I wont even go into the religious movements stirring and appearing with strange doctrines...

Now this is interesting but it makes sense if they were into the occult....Westcott and Hort were big fans of Madame Blavatsky - a necromancer, and the "queen" of Theosophy. Let's just put that in English: she was a new ager..."The New Age movement is based on mysticism (contact with demons) and Westcott and Hort were close friends with a woman, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who was at the forefront of that occult revival in that she produced some of the texts books for such while in a trance state under the influence of Satan. Hort was himself a practicing psychic who while acting as a medium produced a number of letters. He even circulated those articles among his inner circle of mystics which society later produced a major center for modern studies and research into psychic phenomena and paranormal experiences. Both Westcott and Hort were involved in séances hosted by Helena Blavatsky, a famous Satanist, and founder of Theosophy; that mystic philosophy being a resurgence of ancient Egyptian Gnosticism.

The production of the Westcott and Hort text was a New Age project designed to compromise Christians in the direction of the New Age movement in that the spirit behind the Gnostic corruptions is not of God and is indeed slowly moving people away from New Testament faith based on God's word and into New Age mysticism. With believers tied into falsified bibles their faith can also be undermined and transformed into a mystical, counterfeit Christianity; that is but one facet of the New Age movement."- http://lol.witnesstoday.org/New-Wine-Babylon.htm

I suppose you may find some good everywhere. I searched the source you give and found some interesting statements.

This authority seems to be very much against the headship doctrine entertained by some on this forum.



<http://www.thywordistruthkjv.com/ONE%20HEAD-Biblical%20Authority%20in%20the%20church%202.htm>

If you really believe the KJV is the word of God, you will also reject any other headship in the church but Jesus Christ, seems to be his message.

Johann,

The world can say whatever it likes. Many people claim to "divide the word" to us properly. We have a more sure word of prophecy.



That doesn't sound like Christ is the head of the church without assistance. But He certainly is the Head of the church.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.