Thus only less than 3% of the text does not agree with 90% of the MSS.1 Furthermore, we are not judging between two text forms of, say 90% versus 10%. As the minority disagree among themselves (Only P-75 and B agree closely2), the percentage is more like 90% versus 1%. For example, in I Tim. 3:16 which the King James renders as:

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, ...

 Over 300 mss read "God was manifest", only 8 mss say something else; of those 8, five say "who" instead of "God" and three have private interpretations - which is 97% versus 2%. Yet, since Westcott and Hort, critics have adopted the Alexandrian reading "who was manifest in the flesh" as preserved in Aleph and have translated the word "who" as "He who", all the while insisting that Paul is quoting here from a fragment of an early Christian Hymn.3 Thus, according to the critics, Paul quoted an incomplete sentence, one having a subject without a predicate and even that has been left dangling.4 I think not!

According to the 500 page study by Hoskier which detailed and discussed the errors in Codex B and another 400 on the idiosyncrasies of Codex Aleph, Sinaiticus Aleph and Vaticanus B were found to differ from each other in the Gospels alone about 3,036 times - not including minor errors such as spelling or synonym departures.5 Their agreements are even FEWER - and these two manuscripts are "the best and most reliable"? Considering all the preceding data given in this section, one is left to wonder if rational, logical, intelligent life has yet arrived on planet earth.

The 1881 Revision Committee made between eight and nine changes every five verses. In about every ten verses, three of those changes were made for "critical purposes".6 In so doing, their justification was almost exclusively the authority of only two manuscripts, Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus A. The testimony of Vaticanus B alone is responsible for nine-tenths of the most striking innovations in the Revised Version.7

ERASMUS VINDICATED

We are constantly being told that Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus A are the oldest extant Greek manuscripts, hence the most reliable and best; that they are in fact the Bible. The New Greek text which has replaced the Textus Receptus in the minds of the vast majority of the scholars represents the private enterprise of two men, two very religious albeit unregenerate men, Westcott and Hort. These men based their work almost completely on Origen's fifth column for their Old Testament and his edited New Testament. Their New Testament readings are almost exclusively derived from only five manuscripts, principally from only one.

"B" supplies almost ninety percent of the text for all the new Greek versions upon which the new translations are based. In other words, they use one manuscript to the exclusion of nearly all others! Seven percent is from Sinaiticus A, almost three percent from Alexandrinus A, a portion

1 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 112.

2 But P-75 cannot be regarded as a guarantee that B's text is of the 2nd century. It is unjustified to conclude from the agreements between P-75 and B in portions of Luke and John that the whole N.T. text of B is reliable. There also exists a sufficientlly large number of disagreements between the two which must be deemed as important as the agreements.

3 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 138.

4 Ibid.

5 Herman C. Hoskier, Codex B and its Allies, A Study and an Indictment, 2 Vols., (London: Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1914), Vol. II, p. 1.

6 Charles John Ellicott, Submission of Revised Version to Convocation, (n.p., 1881), p. 27. Bishop Ellicott chaired the 1881 Committee.

7 Frederick Charles Cook, The Revised Version of the First Three Gospels, (London: Murray, 1882), pp. 227, 231.

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