(3) ANCIENT GREEK MANUSCRIPTS It is true that several thousand mss have been discovered since 1611. This is the major factor that has been used to justify to the church at large the need for a major revision of the King James. It seems logical that if a vast amount of data not available to the King James translators has been brought to life – these new materials must be considered. This especially seems reasonable as some of these mss were dated between 350-380 A.D. whereas Erasmus' five mss were from the 10th to 15th centuries. Admittedly this rhetoric seems very compelling. However, of the several thousand manuscripts discovered since 1611, the great majority (90-95%) agree with the Greek text of those five mss which Erasmus used. Nevertheless, the new translations are rife with footnotes informing the reader that "the oldest, the best manuscripts read such and such" as opposed to the King James. But is it not devastating to realize that what has been kept from the church at large is the fact that the vast majority (c.90-95%) of these more recent finds read the same as the Traditional Text which underlies the Reformers Bibles and the King James translation?
The Alexandrian manuscript ("A") arrived in London in 1627. Consequently, we often hear how unfortunate that was for the King James translators as it arrived sixteen years too late for their use.1 Being untrue, this serves as an example of the unreliable manner in which most of the history concerning the Authorized Version is reported. In the first place, Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph2 were well known not only to translators of the King James but to Erasmus. The Old Testament portion of Vaticanus was printed in 1587 so the King James translators in 1604 knew all about Vaticanus insofar as the Old Testament was concerned.
Thus the men working on the 1611 publication of the King James Bible knew the variant readings in Vaticanus B and since they knew about B, they already knew about Sinaiticus and its variant readings even though the first portion of it was not discovered until 1844 (the remainder in 1859) as the two of them read so similarly. In fact, the translators of 1611 had available all the variant readings of those vaunted manuscripts – and they rejected them! They also knew the readings of the codices of Alexandrinus A, B, C and D (the "old uncials"), where they differed from the Received Text and they denounced them all. How can this be so? The readings of those much boasted manuscripts recently made available are essentially the same as Jerome's Latin Vulgate3 which finds its foundation in the works of Origen. The Reformers knew all about the variant readings of the Vulgate and they rejected them which is the same thing as rejecting Origen. In rejecting Origen, they rejected Codex Vaticanus as it was copied from his work. Thus, the Reformers had all the material necessary for the task at their disposal.4
As to the oft heard claim that since much of the newly discovered material was older than that used by Erasmus and subsequently the Reformers, they were more reliable, the reader is reminded that the mighty Apostle Paul testified to the corruption of the Word in his day. Hence "oldest" is not necessarily the best. This point will be more thoroughly dealt with later in our exposé (pp. Error! Bookmark not defined. ff.).
2 A 4th century uncial MSS closely akin to Vaticanus (see p. 68.).
3 Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, op. cit., pp. 81-83; completed around A.D. 405, Jerome's Vulgate contains a revision of the Latin New Testament.
4 Ibid., pp. 83-85; also Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., pp. 198-199.
