1. <411609>MARK 16:9-20
These verses which contain a record of the ascension are acknowledged as authority by the King James, but separated by the Revised from the rest of the chapter to indicate their doubtful value. This is not surprising. Dr. Hort, the evil genius of the Revision Committee, cannot say anything too
derogatory of these twelve verses.f391 In this he is not consistent; for he believes the story of the ascension was not entitled to any place in any Gospel:
“The violence of Burgon’s attack on the rejectors of the conclusion of St. Mark’s Gospel seems somewhat to have disturbed Hort’s calmness of judgment, and to have made him keen-sighted to watch and close every possible door against the admission of the disputed verses. In this case he takes occasion to profess his belief not only
that the story of the Ascension was no part of St. Mark’s Gospel, but that it ought not to find a place in any Gospel.”f392
The rejection of the last twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel, or rather setting them off to one side as suspicious, either indicts the church of past ages as a poor keeper and teacher of Holy Writ, or indicts the Revisers as
exercising an extreme and unwarrantable license.
WHOLE SECTIONS OF THE BIBLE AFFECTED BY THE REVISED VERSION
The Revised Version mutilates the main account of the Lord’s prayer in the Gospel of Matthew, by leaving out the words, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever, Amen.” <400613>Matthew 6:13.
It mutilates the subsidiary account of the Lord’s prayer in <421102>Luke 11:2-4, so that this last prayer could be prayed to any man-made god. It omits
“which art in heaven,” from “Our Father, which art in heaven;” leaves out the words, “thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth,” etc. It is worthy to remark here that this mutilation of the Lord’s prayer in both these places was the subject of fierce controversy between the Reformers and the Jesuits from 1534-1611, the Reformers claiming Jerome’s Vulgate and the Jesuit Bible in English translated from the Vulgate were corrupt. The Revisers joined the Jesuits in this contention, against the Reformers. Dr.
Fulke, Protestant, said in 1583:
“What your vulgar Latin translation hath left out in the latter end of the Lord’s prayer in St. Matthew, and in the beginning and midst of St. Luke, whereby that heavenly prayer is made imperfect, not comprehending all things that a Christian man ought to pray for, besides many other like omissions, whether of purpose, or of negligence, and injury of time, yet still by you defended, I spare to speak of in this place.”f393
<401721>Matthew 17:21 is entirely omitted. Compare also <410929>Mark 9:29 and
<460705>1 Corinthians 7:5. On this the Dublin Review says: “In many places in
the Gospels there is mention of ‘prayer and fasting.’ Here textual critics suspect that ‘an ascetic bias,’ has added the fasting; so they expunge it, and leave in prayer only. If an ‘ascetic bias’ brought fasting in, it is clear that a bias, the reverse of ascetic, leaves it out.”f394
It sets off to one side and brands with suspicion, the account of the woman taken in adultery. Jno. 8:1-11.
See how <420955>Luke 9:55,56 is shortened:
KING JAMES: “But he turned, and rebuked them and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.”
AMERICAN REVISED: “But He turned, and rebuked them. And they went to another village.”
<440837>Acts 8:37. This text is omitted in the English and American Revised.
Notice Eph 5:30:
KING JAMES: “For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.”
AMERICAN REVISED: “Because we are members of His body.”
Behold how greatly this verse is cut down in the Revised!
See how, in 2 Timothy 4;1, the time of the judgment is obliterated, and Christ’s Second Coming is obscured.
KING JAMES: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.”
AMERICAN REVISED: “I charge thee in the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom.”
It changes <661310>Revelation 13:10 from a prophecy to a general axiomatic statement, and, in the margin, places a black mark against the passage:
KING JAMES: “He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity.”
AMERICAN REVISED: “If any man is for captivity, into captivity he goeth.”
Without presenting any more examples, — and the changes are many, — we will offer the words of another which will sum up in a brief and interesting way, the subject under consideration:
“By the sole authority of textual criticism these men have dared to vote away some forty verses of the inspired Word. The Eunuch’s Baptismal Profession of Faith is gone; and the Angel of the Pool of Bethesda has vanished; but the Angel of the Agony remains — till the next Revision. The Heavenly Witnesses have departed, and no marginal note mourns their loss. The last twelve verses of St. Mark are detached from the rest of the Gospel, as if ready for removal as soon as Dean Burgon dies. The account of the woman taken in adultery is placed in brackets, awaiting excision. Many other passages have a mark set against them in the margin to show that, like forest trees, they are shortly destined for the critic’s axe. Who can tell when the destruction will cease?”f395
CHAPTER 12
BLOW AFTER BLOW IN FAVOR OF ROME (Revised Texts and Margins)
IT is now necessary to present the Revised Version in a new phase. To do this, we will offer some passages of Scripture the Revisers have changed to those Catholic readings which favor the doctrines of Rome. On this Dr.
Edgar says:
“It is certainly a remarkable circumstance that so many of the Catholic readings in the New Testament, which in Reformation and early post-Reformation times were denounced by Protestants as corruptions of the pure text of God’s Word, should now, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, be adopted by the Revisers of our time-honored English Bibles.”f401
Tobias Mullen, Catholic Bishop of Erie, Pa., calls attention to a number of passages, whose readings in the Catholic and in the Revised Version are identical in thought. He comments on one of these as follows:
“It will be perceived here, that the variation between the Catholic Version and the Revision is immaterial, indeed no more than what might be found between any two versions of different but
substantially identical copies of the same document.”f402