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Is the Nestle-Aland Bible against the deity of Christ? No!

It is the narrative in a few remote corners of Christendom that only the Textus receptus reflects the original text of the New Testament. Some would add a second chapter, that newer critical editions – which, in fact, are based on almost 6000 manuscripts, let alone ancient versions and church fathers – are part of a conspiracy to destroy the church’s faith. Their editors are supposedly hell-bent on erasing any Bible verse that affirms the trinity, the deity of Christ, redemption by his blood, justification by faith, and other cardinal doctrines. Or so the legend goes.

The evidence for this curious notion simply does not add up. Take a look at the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, and you will find all of those doctrines fully and clearly taught; and you will find no evidence of any systematic dismantling of the faith once for all handed down to the saints. This will be evident to those who can read Greek: they can freely access the NA28 online, as well as other information. [1] English readers might look over the ESV on the same quest.

And in fact, there is some nice counter-evidence to the theory. It appears in the little epistle of Jude, where the deity of Christ is more clearly set forth in the latest critical edition than it has been in previous ones.

First, let’s place the critical version in context. (more…)

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on March 17, 2017 at 6:56 pm Comments (1)
Tags: NA28;Bible;Christian;evangelical

Strong’s Concordance – a Good Tool Gone Bad

To download the entire article, click here Shogren_Strongs Concordance or take a photo

Strong’s Concordance – a Good Tool Gone Bad

For Bible students who don’t use Hebrew and Greek, the Strong Concordance is a popular tool, available online. [1]

But it has a serious limitation – namely:

the “dictionary” in the back of Strong’s is not really a dictionary at all, and should not be used to find the “real, true, or root meaning” of a word

I will use the KJV version of Strong’s, since that is the one version I have on hand, but the same thing applies with the ESV or NASB editions.

We are all familiar with Matthew 1:20 –

But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Let’s say I want to learn more about the words angel (Strongs #G32). (more…)

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on August 16, 2016 at 3:12 pm Comments (8)
Tags: Bible, Christian, concordance, Strong

Is the KJV a perfect translation? According to its translators, no

George Guthrie has an informative and edifying article on the King James Version. In particular, he explores how the translators themselves regarded what they were doing and how it stood in relation to other versions. They also expected the KJV to be later corrected and improved!

By implication, they did not hold to the doctrine that their King James Version is the product of “divine preservation” which supposedly kept one single edition or one single version of the Bible absolutely perfect; this doctrine is recent and not taught in Scriptures.

http://georgehguthrie.com/new-blog/2016/7/5/what-the-kjv-translators-thought-about-other-translations

Yeshua? Iesous? Jesus? Some other form? Who’s right?

The reader may download the entire article as a pdf file, especially given the presence of long technical footnotes׃ Shogren_Yeshua Iesous Jesus Some other form Who’s right. The results from the TLG search, mentioned in the article, may be downloaded here: Ιησους in TLG first 1000 references

The headlines are usually IN BOLD PRINT!! With lots of COLOR!!!

Having studied the matter, I believe that the Hebrew name for Jesus is Yeshua, but here I’m talking about the extremists. For example, “Satan has had 2000 years of infiltrating the Church, and look at it, full of every sin and evil imaginable and all under the name of Jesus.”[1] The most extreme blog I have found includes this rant: in Spanish it goes on about how those who use the name Jesus instead of Yeshuaʿ are (supposedly) responsible for the Inquisition, the papacy, Satanism, Christian rock music (!), charging people money to go to heaven. Oh, and they are the ones responsible for killing 6.5 million Jews in the Holocaust.[2]

So far, the most extreme rant I have found

“Ah,” we hear, “but we must explore the Jewish roots in order to appreciate the gospel!” And of course this is true: I myself spent some years learning how to read Hebrew, and this year I am reading the daily Parashah (the Torah in a year) in Hebrew with a group of friends. I teach our graduate-level course on Jewish backgrounds of the New Testament. I read the Mishnah, the Dead Sea Scrolls. All to say that I do appreciate, I think, the Jewish background of the faith.

No, what I am talking about here is the kind of people who blog and YouTube about Hebrew Roots and Sacred Names but who themselves know a little Hebrew at best, relying on others’ comments or the Strong’s Concordance for their information, people who must resort to copying and pasting Hebrew and Greek words from other sources.[3]

The premise of their argument, with some variations, is:

“It is impossible to ‘translate’ a name from one language to another. Therefore, the Savior’s name has to remain in its Hebrew form.”
“The name Iesous (the Greek form of the name of Yeshuaʿ) did not even exist before the crucifixion; it was invented by the Romans (or the Jews. Or the Catholic Church. Or Constantine[4])!”
“Iesous is a pagan Greek name.”
“Iesous has nothing to do etymologically with the Hebrew name Yeshuaʿ.”
“Yeshuaʿ has a meaning in Hebrew, but Iesous does not mean anything in Greek.”
“Iesous was fabricated by an enemy of the faith and means ‘Behold the horse!’ Or maybe ‘a pig’ or ‘Hail, Zeus’ or some such thing.”
“The use of Iesous or Jesus or other forms is a plot by the Vatican to blaspheme God and the Savior. If you use that form, you have fallen into their trap and are apostate.”
“Greek or Latin names are by definition polluted with paganism; therefore, the Lord could not have the name Iesous.”
“If you claim to follow Jesus, then you cannot be saved, because there is ‘no other name by which we can be saved’ except for Yeshuaʿ.”

This line of thinking is rife with historical and linguistic errors, and is logically self-contradictory. It fails to explain how the name Iesous could be applied over 1270 times to the Lord in the New Testament, let alone in all the literature of the early church, without a single exception. Let’s take these arguments one by one

1. “It is impossible to ‘translate’ a name from one language to another.” FALSE!

The example that always come up is, “George Bush is George Bush all around the world! You wouldn’t say ‘Jorge Bush,’ because names cannot change!” Well, let’s retire this claim from the outset: two minutes with Google reveals that George H. W. Bush is sometimes called Jorge in Spanish,[5] Giorgio in Italian,[6] and with the French form Georges, as in this article.[7]

In fact, names can change from one language to another. We could multiply examples: Why do the Italians call the king of France Luigi XIV, but the Spaniards say he is Luis XIV? Why don’t they say Louis XIV, like the French do? In English why do they say Christopher Columbus; in Spanish Cristóbal Colón? Why don’t they say it the right, Italian, way, Cristoforo Colombo? (more…)

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on June 14, 2016 at 12:53 pm Comments (4)
Tags: apostle, Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Hebrew roots, Jesus, Sacred Name

The Emperor Constantine the Great – a villain or a hero, or something in-between?

Download the article as a pdf: Shogren_The Emperor Constantine the Great – a villain or a hero, or something in-between

To many, the Emperor Constantine was a saint: in the Orthodox church he is one of the “Equal-to-Apostles” (isapóstolos) a title given to people (such as Patrick, Cyril the evangelist of Russia and others) who were especially effective in establishing the gospel.

To others, Constantine is Great was a tool of evil, a corrupter of the church.

The attacks against Constantine come from several quarters. Some Messianic believers imagine that he turned the church into a Gentile movement. Others charge him with introducing pagan practices into the church. Seventh-Day Adventists credit him (or some pope) with changing the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.[1] Jehovah’s Witnesses think he turned Jesus into God, made the cross a symbol of Christianity, and established Easter and Christmas. All of these parties tend to gang up and use the same materials as the basis for their attacks – for example, many anti-Constantine groups hale back to Babylon Mystery Religion – Ancient and Modern, by Ralph Woodrow (1966). And they and Woodrow borrow much of their “information” from Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons (1858), another sketchy attempt to connect Catholicism with Babylonian religion.[2] More on this later.

Who was Constantine? (more…)

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on November 11, 2015 at 6:23 pm Comments (6)
Tags: Catholic, Christian, Church, Constantine, History

Ancient scrap of Mark’s Gospel

This little piece of papyrus is an amazing find, and it looks like it’s now regarded as authentic. It is a scrap of the gospel of Mark, hand-copies in the 80s AD at the very latest. It comes from Egypt and was dated by its handwriting style, by Carbon-14, and by other texts found near it.

I have told my students about early manuscripts of the New Testament and usually I end with, “But they will find even older and more remarkable ones over the next few years, I’m sure of it. From the first century, even.”

Here we are.

It is just a tiny portion of Mark 5:15-18 (the account of the exorcism of Legion), and is about the size of two fingers. On the sixth line you can see part of the word for “demon-possessed” – (δαιμο = …daimo…)

The short text is letter for letter in agreement with the text of the critical New Testament – the Nestlé-Aland 28th edition – in use around the world today and is the basis for all new Bible versions. Even if you don’t read Greek, the letters are clear as can be.

See the full story and a video here – http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/mummy-mask-may-reveal-oldest-fragment-of-the-gospel-of-mark

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on January 21, 2015 at 4:34 pm Comments (4)
Tags: Bible, Christian, Mark, papyrus

The Eclectic Text of the New Testament – a conspiracy against the Word?

God’s beloved Word – you’d better believe I study it daily. Yes, as a Bible teacher, since my ministry is teaching the New Testament in Spanish and English, and also from the Greek. But more fundamentally I read the Bible simply as a Christian, because it is through the reading, meditation, and obedience of God’s Word that we grow as believers. [1]

Therefore it concerns me when I read about a supposed conspiracy, made up of people who secretly despise God’s Word and are paving the way for antichrist, out to destroy the Bible and leave us in spiritual darkness. These charges are leveled against the Nestle-Aland edition of the Greek New Testament, the exact same “critical” edition I and my students read and interpret. [2]

That’s why I am impelled to read up on the so-called Alexandrian Conspiracy to ruin the Bible. If it is a real and present danger, I want to know. If it is a false alarm, then I must communicate that to you, the readers.

“Don’t destroy God’s Word! Or change it!”

My conclusion:

If the critical edition of the New Testament be treason against God’s Holy Word, then it’s the most poorly executed conspiracy in the history of Bible study.

Let’s see why. One extreme theory has it (more…)

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on October 9, 2014 at 2:37 pm Comments (20)
Tags: Bible, Christian, critical text, Gipp, Greek, Hort, inspiration, Nestle Aland, New Testament, Textus Receptus, Westcott

“But the Greek REALLY says…”: Why Hebrew and Greek are not needed in the pulpit, Part 2

“…Okay, wait, so then, hah, hah, so then the second guy says to the first one, ἐκεινος οὐκ ἐστιν ὁ κυῶν μου!! Oh, that one gets me every time!"

“…Okay, wait, so then, hah, hah, so then the second guy says to the first one, ἐκεινος οὐκ ἐστιν ὁ κυῶν μου!! Oh, mercy, that one gets me every time!”

In Part 1, I argued in favor of a sharply minimalist use of ancient Hebrew and Greek words during a sermon, especially if there is no compelling purpose or, worse, if the goal is to impress the crowd: it is a pitiable housepainter who departs the job with his scaffolding still up, hoping you’ll notice how far he had to climb. See “But the Greek REALLY says…”: Why Hebrew and Greek are not needed in the pulpit, Part 1 and Part 3.

Now, I believe an interpreter of the Word should invest the time necessary to work through it in the original, just as you would learn Spanish if you were going to teach Don Quixote, week in and week out, for the rest of your life. However, in our sermons we should avoid Hebrewfying and Greekitizing, simply because it is rarely of help.

Now we will explore some issues with the Greek language (more…)

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on June 29, 2013 at 11:15 am Comments (22)
Tags: Aramaic, Bible, Christian, expository preaching, Greek, Hebrew, inspiration, priesthood of the believer, Word study

“But the Greek REALLY says…”: Why Hebrew and Greek are not needed in the pulpit, Part 1

Para la versión castellana, vaya AQUI.

Come with me to ESEPA Seminary in Costa Rica: we meet at night around a table, and with me are all my advanced students of Greek. Throughout four semesters we have studied the ancient dialect, koinē, and they have found blessings as they read the New Testament in the original.

Tonight we’ll take a different tack: “I’m about to impart something very important to you,” I alert them. Nodding, they lean forward.

“Here’s the mystical wisdom: (1) With almost no exceptions, whenever I preach, I study deeply the passage in the original language. But, (2) I almost never mention a Greek or Hebrew word from the pulpit. In fact, I go for years without making a peep in those languages.”

I let that sink in.

Then: “If you cannot state in plain, precise Spanish what you have found in the text, then you don’t really understand the passage and you shouldn’t be preaching on it.” (more…)

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