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Dr. John Cereghin
One of the loudest and most insistent criticisms of the Authorized Version of 1611, popularly known as the King James Bible, is that its Greek Text, referred to as the Textus Receptus, is inferior to "modern" Greek texts. The attack upon the Textus Receptus centers on the one Dutch Reformation scholar responsible for publishing it, Desiderius Erasmus. Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament in 1516 (first edition, followed by four others) which was the foundation for our modern Textus Receptus, which underlies the New Testament of the AV.
The assumption of the enemies of God's Word is that, if you can somehow discredit Erasmus or his Greek text, then you can discredit the AV. These men then level their guns at Erasmus, attacking him personally and his Greek text. Then they sit back in smug satisfaction in imagining they have accomplished their goal.But have they? By no means! Their criticisms have been carefully examined and have been found to be wanting. Every one of their attacks upon Erasmus can be easily answered. Below is an essay I wrote to answer such criticisms that were forwarded to me by an AV opponent by the name of Rick Norris. He wrote me and asked me how I could support Erasmus and his Greek Text seeing he was a humanist, a Roman Catholic and that his text was hastily prepared and fraught with errors? I answered him with the facts that Erasmus was not a good Catholic but a Reformer at heart, that a Reformation humanist was nothing like a modern humanist and his Greek text was a product of careful scholarship and was edited over a 20-year period. I grew weary at the continual stream of propaganda against Erasmus and his Greek text by these men so I decided to do my own research to answer my questions on this matter.
To help you answer these men whose "high calling" is trying to discredit the English Bible, we offer the following replies to the most common attacks based on Erasmus.
These attacks are:
These are the standard accusations. Below is the refutation. If you have any additional information or if you spot a mistake, please let me know.
My address is c/o Maryland Baptist Bible College, P.O. Box 66, Elkton MD 21922.
Footnote:
This material that I will present is by no means new. It is easily and readily available. Yet critics of the TR/AV choose to ignore it and rather parrot old and recycled arguments that they get from each other instead of relying on new research. Examples abound, from the writings of John R. Rice to Robert Sumner's booklet Bible Translations and others. A very recent example is cited by David Cloud in O Timothy, volume 12, issue 6, on pages 19 and 20. Cloud reviews an article published by Bob Jones University in their Biblical Viewpoint (Nov. 1994) by S. E. Schnaiter, in which he simply rehashes arguments he got from someone else. Schnaiter claims that Dean Burgon was not very scholarly in his defense of the AV, that the differences between the majority and minority texts are small and unimportant and that Erasmus edited his Greek text in "great haste" from manuscripts "he happened to have on hand." Now I assume that Schnaiter is no fool, for he could have used the vast BJU library to consult the same books I did. Rather, this material is overlooked and suppressed by enemies of the AV. I would even go as far as to say "conspiracy" and "cover-up." Why do these men ignore and refuse to present this material? If I can find this material, why can't they?* * *