Three brief answers to questions about the Authorised Version
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1992.
Was it divine overruling that excluded the Vatican, Sinaitic and Alexandrian manuscripts from the 1611 AV translation, and thus kept it free from corrupt texts?
That question begs another: who said that the Vatican, Sinaitic and Alexandrian manuscripts were corrupt texts anyway? And if they were, how would you prove that divine overruling had kept these manuscripts from the knowledge of the translators of the AV? And why is it that people who pose this type of question forget to tell us that the translators of the AV were seriously influenced by the humanist Erasmus?
Do the clandestine circumstances of the ten-year preparation of the 1881 RV exclude it from the deeper study of Scripture?
No, of course they don\'t. A translation is to be judged by its accuracy and faithfulness to the original, and not by whether it was produced quickly or over a long period, in private or publicly. And that applies to all translations. The worst of them have occasionally some good points; and where that is so, they are worth referring to.
The so-called Septuagint is a motley collection of ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament. Some are moderately good, some are poor, some are bad. It is instructive to observe that the New Testament writers, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not infrequently quote from these translations. That does not mean that the Holy Spirit approved of all those translations in every part; but where they could safely be quoted, he quoted them.
Were Westcott and Hort corruptors of the purity of the AV when they introduced their Greek New Testament?
I didn\'t know that Westcott and Hort set out to corrupt the AV. The AV remains in all its pristine glory. What they were offering was a revision of the AV. It was always open from the very beginning, as it still is, for people to compare the AV with the RV and to come to their own conclusions. I don't know of any serious textual critic nowadays who would wish to maintain completely the views of Westcott and Hort. In attacking them, the supporters of the Majority Text are really setting up a straw man argument.
Your brother in Christ,
