Gospels
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The ESV along with most if not all the other versions that follow Westcott and Hort have a note stating “Some manuscripts insert, wholly or in part, waiting for the moving of the water; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had“. Stick with the King James Bible!
‘Brett McCracken is the senior editor and director of communications at The Gospel Coalition and an elder at Southlands Church. He released his ‘Best movies of 2022’ and unsurprisingly, at least one of the films is full of graphic sex and nudity.
Last year his top 10 movies featured many that were rated ‘R’ for language, violence, and frequently for scenes of sex and nudity. Then he released his top 20 TV shows, and they were also full of sex and nudity, including graphic scenes of homosexuality. He would later suggest that watching this sinful content makes him better at evangelizing. ‘https://protestia.substack.com/p/the-gospel-coalitions-2022-best-movies
‘The interaction of the angel with the shepherds was so engrained in the hearts and minds of the early church that Luke wrote that his record was “most surely believed,” that he had “perfect understanding,” from which Theophilus and subsequent readers might know “the certainty of those things.” If it was not God Himself who preserved the infallible, inspired word, how could the Church ever know with certainty that the events of Acts 2 ever historically transpired, and if the events did not transpire, then the written record of these non-events are spurious. So, let’s say for the moment, we discount the historic orthodox manner these verses have been rendered and consider what might be an empirical defeater to this paradigm for manuscript transmission?
There is no empirical evidence of this event except for the witness of the shepherds. Manuscripts at this point are meaningless. Luke, or someone calling herself “Luke” may have just recorded a happy story that became a wide-spread myth. This event cannot be supported scientifically. Indeed, this announcement can be easily erased simply by arguing that the author’s fabricated account was a local fable that found its way into the real Luke’s gospel. The whole Gospel is not spurious only the conflation that includes Luke 2:1-20. After all, what makes these verses any different that John 7:53-8:11? It’s all just words on parchment. Luke was not in the field with the shepherds, nor was anyone else to corroborate the event. Even if it did happen, how reliable are shepherds to accurately report something of this magnitude. The story sounds like something out of a bottle not of divine significance, kind of like “snake handling” in Mark 16, or maybe like an Aesop fable of wonder and amazement but not an actual inbreaking of heaven to earth.
Before you can argue transmission, you must agree or believe the event being recorded happened. Luke recorded an event of the angel’s announcement to the shepherds. Was there a moment in time when the Apostle John wrote 1 John 5:7? Was there a historic event when Christ interacted with the woman caught in adultery? Did Mark write the long ending? How many times did Mark’s heart beat before he completed the Gospel? Because special revelation is grammatical/historical, word and event, if there is no written record, there is no way of knowing whether the historic event happened; if the event is in the text, because it is God’s word, it did happen. The present critical reconstruction of the text reconstructs the past when the unchanging past has already limited the veracity of the record. The past did not manifest itself in two simultaneous, contradictory events. Text critics are not so much students of ancient literature as they are manipulators of time. Call the manipulation what you want, just not truth or the New Testament. Did redemptive history unfold in the Biblical record or did it not? Orwell was correct, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” By critically reshaping the past, the future has been the splintering of the Church with multiple modern bible versions, and it is the present information dominance of the evangelical text critic that continues to reshape the past.
The witness of the shepherds is confirmed by Anna and Simeon, and then by the Wise Men, and then by the Father, Holy Spirit, and John the Baptist at Christ’s baptism, then the ministry of Christ, his death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, the Apostolic message, and the founding of the Church based upon inspired writings. All of this either confirms the witness of the shepherds or we are witnessing a complete 1st century ruse. Indeed, much of the Church is about to reinforce this transgenerational ruse on Christmas Sunday if it is not believed that all the past events of Holy Scripture are forever, unchangeably settled. And the only means of exercising that kind of faith this Christmas is to believe that the Gospel record has been providentially preserved by God and based on the introduction to Luke’s Gospel to have “certainty” of those things through the Word and Spirit.
Merry Christmas!’https://standardsacredtext.com/2022/12/13/christmas-providential-preservation-and-certainty/
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)
‘Editorial introduction: The verse above is well-known to all. It has been read in the churches since the time of the Apostles and sung by congregations since the second century. It can therefore be mentally jarring to hear modern translations of it read during the advent season.
Some translations even seem to be communicating an entirely different message. Were the angels continuing to proclaim God’s universal benevolence toward all people (v. 10) or only his particular grace to “those with whom he is pleased” (ESV)?
This confusion is due not to any difference in translation philosophy, but to a textual variant. A textual variant is a difference between the wording of two or more manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and, in the case of Luke 2:14, the difference consists of a single letter.
Many claim that textual variants affect no doctrine, but this is clearly a case in which the interpretation and application of a verse is affected by the presence or absence of a single letter. So which reading is correct? What did the angels actually say?
Below is an essay (lightly edited) by the late John William Burgon (1813-1888) in which he defends the traditional reading by tracing its consistent use throughout church history and by showing how the few witnesses against its authenticity are at discord among themselves.
We encourage all Christians to study his argument and also to share it with their pastors so that the good news which rang out of heaven on the night Jesus was born will continue to be heralded in the churches and to all mankind.
– Christian McShaffrey
A more grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture is scarcely to be found than occurs in the proposed revised exhibition of Luke 2:14, in the Greek and English alike; for indeed not only is the proposed Greek text (ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας) impossible, but the English of the Revisionists (“peace among men in whom he is well pleased”) “can be arrived at” (as one of themselves has justly remarked) “only through some process which would make any phrase bear almost any meaning the translator might like to put upon it.” [1]
More than that, the harmony of the exquisite three-part hymn, which the angels sang on the night of the nativity, becomes hopelessly marred, and its structural symmetry destroyed, by the welding of the second and third members of the sentence into one.
Singular to relate, the addition of a single final letter (ς) has done all this mischief. Quite as singular is it that we should be able at the end of upwards of 1700 years to discover what occasioned its calamitous insertion.
From the archetypal copy, by the aid of which the old Latin translation was made (for the Latin copies all read “pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis”), the preposition ἐν was evidently away — absorbed apparently by the ἀν which immediately follows. In order therefore to make a sentence of some sort out of words which, without ἐν, are simply unintelligible, εὐδοκία was turned into εὐδοκίας. It is accordingly a significant circumstance that, whereas there exists no Greek copy of the Gospels which omits the ἐν, there is scarcely a Latin exhibition of the place to be found which contains it. [2]
To return however to the genuine clause: “Good-will towards men” (ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία)
Absolutely decisive of the true reading of the passage—irrespectively of internal considerations—ought to be the consideration that it is vouched for by every known copy of the Gospels of whatever sort, excepting only ℵ A B D: the first and third of which, however, were anciently corrected and brought into conformity with the Received Text; while the second (A) is observed to be so inconstant in its testimony, that in the primitive “Morning-hymn” (given in another page of the same codex, and containing a quotation of Luke 2:14), the correct reading of the place is found. D’s complicity in error is the less important, because of the ascertained sympathy between that codex and the Latin.
In the meantime, the two Syriac Versions are a full set-off against the Latin copies; while the hostile evidence of the Gothic (which this time sides with the Latin) is more than neutralized by the unexpected desertion of the Coptic version from the opposite camp. The Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Arabian versions, are besides all with the Received Text.
It therefore comes to this: We are invited, on the one hand, to make our election between every other copy of the Gospels, every known Lectionary, and (not least of all) the ascertained ecclesiastical usage of the Eastern Church from the beginning, or, on the other hand, the testimony of four Codices without a history or a character, which concur in upholding a patent mistake.
Will anyone hesitate as to which of these two parties has the stronger claim on his allegiance?
Could doubt be supposed to be entertained in any quarter, it must at all events be borne away by the torrent of patristic authority which is available on the present occasion:
Second Century
– Irenaeus [3]
Third Century
– Origen, in three places [4]
– Apostolical Constitutions, in two [5]
Fourth Century
– Eusebius, twice [6]
– Aphraates the Persian, twice [7]
– Titus of Bostra, twice [8]
– Didymus, in three places [9]
– Gregory of Nazianzus [10]
– Cyril of Jerusalem [11]
– Epiphanius, twice [12]
– Gregory of Nyssa, four times [13]
– Ephraem Syrus [14]
– Philo, bishop of Carpasus [15]
– Chrysostom, in nine places [16]
– A nameless preacher at Antioch [17]
Note: All these were contemporaries of B and ℵ, and are therefore found to bear concurrent testimony in favor of the commonly received text.
Fifth Century
– Cyril of Alexandria, fourteen times [18]
– Theodoret, four times [19]
– Theodotus of Ancyra, five times [20]
– A homily preached at the Council of Ephesus on Christmas-day, AD 431 [21]
– Proclus, archbishop of Constantinople [22]
– Paulus, bishop of Emesa (preached before Cyril of Alexandria on Christmas-day) [23]
– The Eastern bishops at Ephesus, collectively, AD 431 [24]
– Basil of Seleucia [25]
Note: These witnesses were contemporaries of codex A.
Sixth Century
– Cosmas, the voyager, five times [26]
– Anastasius Sinaita [27]
– Eulogius, archbishop of Alexandria [28]
Note: These were contemporaries of codex D.
Seventh Century
– Andreas of Crete, twice [29]
Eighth Century
– Cosmas, bishop of Maiuma near Gaza [30]
– John Damascene [31]
– Germanus, archbishop of Constantinople [32]
To these twenty-nine illustrious names are to be added unknown writers of uncertain date, but all of considerable antiquity; and some are proved by internal evidence to belong to the 4th or 5th century [33] — in short, to be of the date of the fathers whose names sixteen of them severally bear, but among whose genuine works their productions are probably not to be reckoned.
One of these was anciently mistaken for Gregory Thaumaturgus [34], a second for Methodius [35], a third for Basil [36]. Three others, with different degrees of reasonableness, have been supposed to be Athanasius [37]. One has passed for Gregory of Nyssa [38]; another for Epiphanius [39]; while no less than eight have been mistaken for Chrysostom [40], some of them being certainly his contemporaries.
Add one anonymous church father [41], and the author of the apocryphal Acta Pilati, and it will be perceived that eighteen ancient authorities have been added to the list, every whit as competent to witness what was the text of Luke 2:14 at the time when A B ℵ D were written, as Basil or Athanasius, Epiphanius or Chrysostom themselves. [42]
For our present purpose, they are Codices of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries. In this way then, far more than forty-seven ancient witnesses have come back to testify to the men of this generation that the commonly received reading of Luke 2:14 is the true reading, and that the text which the Revisionists are seeking to palm off upon us is a fabrication and a blunder.
Will anyone be found to maintain that the authority of B and ℵ is appreciable, when confronted by the first fifteen contemporary ecclesiastical writers above enumerated? Or that A can stand against the seven which follow?
This is not all however. Survey the preceding enumeration geographically, and note that besides one name from Gaul, at least two stand for Constantinople, while five are dotted over Asia Minor; ten at least represent Antioch; and six other parts of Syria, three stand for Palestine, and twelve for other churches of the East: at least five are Alexandrian, two are men of Cyprus, and one is from Crete.
If the articulate voices of so many illustrious Bishops, coming back to us in this way from every part of ancient Christendom and all delivering the same unfaltering message — if this be not allowed to be decisive on a point of the kind just now before us, then pray let us have it explained to us — what amount of evidence will men accept as final? It is high time that this were known.
The plain truth is, that a case has been established against ℵ A B D and the Latin version, which amounts to proof that those documents, even when they conspire to yield the self-same evidence, are not to be depended on as witnesses to the text of Scripture. The history of the reading advocated by the Revisionists is briefly this: It emerges into notice in the 2nd century; and in the 5th disappears from sight entirely.
Enough and to spare has now been offered concerning the true reading of Luke 2:14, but because we propose to ourselves that no uncertainty whatever shall remain on this subject, it will not be wasted labor if, in conclusion, we pour into the ruined citadel just enough of shot and shell to leave no dark corner standing for the ghost of a respectable doubt hereafter to hide in.
Now, it is confessedly nothing else but the high estimate which Critics have conceived of the value of the testimony of the old uncials (ℵ A B C D), which has occasioned any doubt at all to exist in this behalf. Let the learned reader then ascertain for himself the character of codices ℵ A B C D hereabouts, by collating the context in which Luke 2:14 is found, viz. the thirteen verses which precede and the one verse (v. 15) which immediately follows.
If the old uncials are observed all to sing in tune throughout, hereabouts, well and good: but if on the contrary, their voices prove utterly discordant, who sees not that the last pretense has been taken away for placing any confidence at all in their testimony concerning the text of v. 14, turning as it does on the presence or absence of a single letter?
He will find, as the result of his analysis, that within the space of those fourteen verses, the old uncials are responsible for fifty-six “various readings” (so-called). Singly, for forty-one; and in combination with one another, for fifteen.
So diverse, however, is the testimony they respectively render, that they are found severally to differ from the Text of the cursives no less than seventy times. Among them, besides twice varying the phrase, they contrive to omit nineteen words, to add four, to substitute seventeen, to alter ten, and to transpose twenty-four.
Lastly, these five codices are observed (within the same narrow limits) to fall into ten different combinations: viz. B A, for five readings, B D for two, ℵ C, ℵ D, A C, ℵ B D, A ℵ D, A B ℵ D, B ℵ C D, A B ℵ C D, for one each.
A, therefore, which stands alone twice, is found in combination four times, C, which stands alone once, is found in combination four times [43], B, which stands alone five times, is found in combination six times, ℵ, which stands alone eleven times, is found in combination eight times, D, which stands alone twenty-two times, is found in combination seven times.
And now — for the last time we ask the question — with what show of reason can the unintelligible εὐδοκίας (of ℵA B D) be upheld as genuine, in defiance of the whole body of Manuscripts, uncial and cursive, the great bulk of the Versions, and the mighty array of (upwards of fifty) church fathers exhibited above?’https://www.textandtranslation.org/the-textual-variant-in-luke-2-14/
The Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Traditional Received Text gives the Bible believing Christian stability knowing they have the very Words of the Living God. John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Luke 10:30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. 36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
Well, in the Big Apple ‘Samaritan’s Purse, are stepping up on a large scale. This Christian nonprofit has built a field hospital in the epicenter of America’s COVID-19 outbreak. While others are fleeing the New York Metro area because it is a coronavirus hot spot, Samaritan’s Purse is running toward the need. The organization sent a rapid response team of chaplains to serve the city and even built a 68-bed field hospital near the Mt. Sinai hospital to help with overflow of patients.
Samaritan’s Purse has no ulterior motive. Rather, the ministry aims to serve those who are vulnerable, and ultimately, as a Christian organization, to serve God.
It’s a good thing they are not looking for the praise of men, because that is in short supply. Indeed, Samaritan’s Purse has found itself in the middle of a storm of controversy because of a tweet from its president, Franklin Graham.
The tweet links to the Samaritan’s Purse website where they ask for volunteers to help serve the vulnerable and who agree with the mission statement of the organization. One of the 11 points in the mission statement is at the root of this controversy:
We believe God’s plan for human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of marriage, that God created man and woman as unique biological persons made to complete each other. God instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society. For this reason, we believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.
This statement is nothing radical; it just espouses what the Bible teaches and what Christians have always believed about marriage and sexuality.
For this, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio attacked Samaritan’s Purse as “biased” and accused the charity of discrimination. But Samaritan’s Purse has never discriminated against its patients. It has always served everyone who needs care. But it does ask that those who represent the organization agree with the organization’s beliefs. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
But the ideological opponents of Samaritan’s Purse are using this as an opportunity to score partisan points.
Mayor de Blasio expressed outrage at Samaritan’s Purse and promised action: “I said immediately to my team that we had to find out exactly what was happening…Was there going to be an approach that was truly consistent with the values [of] New York City.”
New York State Senator Brad Hoylman piled on by suggesting that Graham has something to learn from the coronavirus: “COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, and neither should Franklin Graham.”
Ross Murray, the Senior Director of the GLAAD Media Institute went even further and claimed that “Graham is capitalizing upon a crisis to inflict more pain and suffering on an already marginalized population.”
Each of these statements overlook a simple fact: Samaritan’s Purse gladly serves everyone. As Kaitlyn Lahm, a spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse explained: “Our doors at the Emergency Field Hospital in the East Meadow are going to be open to all New Yorkers who need our help. We are here to save life, which is precious in God’s sight — and we do it all in Jesus’ Name.”
Facing a health crisis, New York officials allowed Samaritan’s Purse to stay. But de Blasio promised “to send people over from [his] office to monitor” Samaritan’s Purse’s field hospital. Hoylman stuck a similar note, claiming “homophobic pastor Franklin Graham and his field hospital operation in Central Park must guarantee all LGBTQ patients with COVID-19 are treated with dignity and respect. We’ll be watching.”
The message was clear, the insinuation ugly: While we need you now, Christian beliefs are intolerable, and we have our eye on you.’ https://mychristiandaily.com/why-is-new-york-targeting-samaritans-purse-for-serving-them/
This is the story of the man who met the Lord Jesus on his last day alive.
whatyareckon 