Trinitarian Bible Society Writes Against PCE Proponents

[bgwilkinson]

Trinitarian Bible Society Writes against PCE proponents.

Do you suppose this was prompted by our poster BP and his PCE?

Article starts on page 16.

"The final part of this report covers a subject on which the editorial
team have received a number of letters and phone calls in recent years:
the so-called Pure Cambridge Edition of the Authorised (King James) Version.

Proponents of this errant view of Scripture have even gone so far as to reject copies
of the Authorised Version published by the Society for not having certain words
capitalised in particular verses and thus not matching the edition that they claim—by
some sort of extra-biblical revelation—is the perfect Pure Cambridge Edition."

http://www.tbsbibles.org/pdf_reports/247-1.pdf

This article eviscerates the claims made for the PCE.

If you don't want to read the article, just read the summery below.

"In summary, there are weighty reasons for rejecting the claims of the proponents of
the so-called Pure Cambridge Edition: they are contrary to Scripture, contrary to plain
reason and contrary to historical testimony. In addition, an examination of the text itself
of the so-called Pure Cambridge Edition reveals that, even by their own standards, it
cannot be the ‘correct, perfect and final’ text as alleged by its proponents."

Statement on the Bible
http://www.tbsbibles.org/basis/doctrine-of-holy-scripture

 

[praise_yeshua]

while I pretty much agree with what they say..... there take on the jot and title of the Hebrew language is entirely ridiculous.

How can anyone claim the tittle has been meticulously preserved through history? Really?

Often such articles are just one nut taking issue with another nut!

 

[FSSL]

Exactly! TBS never heard of the Masoretes? The tittle is the tiny spur on the Daleth.

It is not a dot the Masoretes placed to disquinsh shin/sin.

 

[bgwilkinson]

Masoretic Pointing is a virtual gloss upon the text.


The ability to change the text by changing only the vowels and including the Masoretic bias of unsaved Jews into the text itself.

This has long been of great interest to me, some may call it a conspiracy theory, but Adam Clarke is one heavy weight that does lend credence to it.

Adam Clarke, makes it clear that the work of the Masoretes is, in reality, a commentary which has been integrated into the body of Scripture by unsaved Jews. Clarke points out that the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text (Masoretic Hebrew) is quite different from the Hebrew of the Patriarchs, (Ancient Hebrew) in which Old Testament Scripture was originally written.

In the General Preface to his commentary, Clarke writes:

"The Masorets were the most extensive Jewish commentators which that nation could ever boast. The system of punctuation, probably invented by them, is a continual gloss on the Law and the Prophets; their vowel points, and prosaic and metrical accents, &c., give every word to which they are affixed a peculiar kind of meaning, which in their simple state, multitudes of them can by no means bear. The vowel points alone add whole conjugations to the language. This system is one of the most artificial, particular, and extensive comments ever written on the Word of God; for there is not one word in the Bible that is not the subject of a particular gloss through its influence. This school is supposed to have commenced about 450 years before our Lord, and to have extended down to AD1030. Some think it did not commence before the 5th century A.D."

Adam Clarke Commentary 1810-1881

https://archive.org/details/holybiblecontain01claruoft

Even without adding to, deleting from, or changing a single letter of the Ancient Hebrew manuscripts of Scripture, pointing gave the Masorete power to dramatically change the meaning of almost any given passage of Scripture, for the prerogative of selecting vowels, is, to a large extent, the prerogative of selecting words! As a crude example, consider how the meaning of an English sentence might be changed by substitution of "pair" for "pear" or "peer" which changes the meaning completely with the simple change of the vowels.

I don't think anyone would claim that the Masoretes were believers in the Christ, but rather were unsaved Jews that did not know the LORD.

Clarke appears to be one of the few commentators who have seen fully the significance of the Masoretic Text  namely, that it is a new "version" of the Scripture, written in a new language.

Obviously, Hebrew Scholars have been aware of this fact. They should have called attention to the difference between Ancient Hebrew and the language of the Masoretes, and should have differentiated the two, by use of names such as Ancient Hebrew and Masoretic Hebrew.

However, as the majority of Hebrew scholars are unsaved Jews, and thus cannot be expected to be objective and candid regarding such a matter. They would naturally have a bias against Christianity as is claimed.


Here is a quote from Hebrew scholar Louis Cappel, a French Huguenot divine and scholar who lived from 1585 to 1658. He thinks there might be something to it and lends credence to what Clarke had to say.

"As a Hebrew scholar, he concluded that the vowel points and accents were not an original part of Hebrew, but were inserted by the Masorete Jews of Tiberias, not earlier then the 5th Century AD, and that the primitive Hebrew characters are Aramaic and were substituted for the more ancient at the time of the captivity. . . The various readings in the Old Testament Text and the differences between the ancient versions and the Masoretic Text convinced him that the integrity of the Hebrew text as held by Protestants, was untenable. This amounted to an attack upon the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Bitter, however, as was the opposition, it was not long before his results were accepted by scholars."

1948 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica

This would seem to make the LXX of great importance in determining the reading of the ancient Hebrew text.

 

[FSSL]

Good thing the Pure Cambridge is there to sort out the mess these unsaved Jews left for us!

 

[praise_yeshua]

This would seem to make the LXX of great importance in determining the reading of the ancient Hebrew text.

Exactly...