Does Your Modern Bible Version Have a Presuppositional Bias?

We are planning Bible Studies at Saint Athanasius Anglican Church that will use a lightly updated Tyndale translation from the Greek New Testament.  You may ask why would we use an early English translation from the Greek that was even before the King James Version when we have modern versions that are easier to read and probably based on more accurate Greek manuscripts?  Putting aside the more complicated arguments of textual criticism of the Critical Text verses the Textus Receptus, the Tyndale translation we are using has been lightly updated and is easier to read than the King James Version (updated in 1769).  Tyndale’s translation comes from the Received Text or Textus Receptus but apart from the focus on underlying Greek texts I would draw the reader to the presuppositional bias in modern translations imposed upon the Greek New Testament.  For William Tyndale and the Protestant Reformers, they were seeking the new learning from the Greek New Testament now available to them to translate by formal equivalence into English the message of the Gospel on how believers by faith were made and sustained in the one true faith.  This was their focus and so we can rely on their translation because they had no other theological agenda.  The scholar Ruth Magnusson Davis compiled the New Matthew Bible from Tyndale’s New Testament translation and study notes of William Tyndale and John Rogers, both men who sealed their testimony with their blood as martyrs burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English.  Ruth Magnusson Davis in her example below shows us how modern versions show in translation a presuppositional
theological bias imposed on the translation. Ruth Magnusson Davis published an example of the difference in doctrine from a modern translation of Revelation 10:6 from translations from William Tyndale along with other 16th Century Bible translations including the King James Version (1611).

Ruth Magnusson Davis writes: “The Reformers believed that when the Lord returns at the close of this age, he will usher in the end of time, and the end of the world as we know it.  The earth will burn with fervent heat, as Peter says in his Second Epistle.  But in recent times this doctrine has been replaced in popular understanding by the doctrine of a literal 1,000 year rule of when Christ returns.  This is called Premillennialism.  Even teachers I respect teach this doctrine of Premillennialism, and part of the reason why is that modern ‘translators’ have changed the Scriptures to accommodate Premillennialism.  A dramatic illustration of what these translators have done is with Revelation 10:6.

Revelation 10:5-7 in the New Matthew Bible: And the angel which I saw stood upon the sea, and upon the earth, lifted up his hand toward heaven, and swore by him that liveth for evermore, which created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which therein are: that there should be no longer time: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to blow: even the mystery of God shall be finished as he preached by his servants the prophets.

The meaning is, when the 7th angel begins to blow his trumpet, time will be no more.  Creation and time will be swallowed up in eternity as the mystery of God is finished.  A similar rendering in found in older Bibles consistently right through to the King James Version.

However, beginning with the Revised Standard Version 1946, the sense is changed.  Modern Bibles have here that there will be no more delay.  It is important to understand that the difference has nothing to do with the underlying Greek manuscript.  The Greek is the same.  It is simply that modern versions have reinterpreted the Greek to accommodate Premillennial doctrine.  They say that this verse means that after the 7th trumpet, there will be no delaying the thousand-year reign of Christ.  Since this means that time will continue for another 1,000 years, they have to change the Scriptures.  This truly is enormously significant.

Watch the progress of translations over the centuries and see what happens when the Revised Standard Version comes along:

Wycliffe 1380:  time shall no more be
Cranmer 1539  there should be no longer time
Geneva 1557     there should be no more
Rheims 1582 (Roman Catholic): there shall be no more time

Now the change begins:

RSV 1946: there should be no more delay
Jerusalem Bible 1968 (Roman Catholic): the time of waiting is over
New English Bible 1970: there shall be no more delay
The Living Bible 1971: there shall be no more delay
NIV 1973: there will be no more delay
New King James 1988: there should be delay no longer
New Matthew Bible 2016: tiem shall be no more (The October Testament)

The New Matthew Bible October Testament stands alone among all the moderns, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, in guarding the historic doctrines of the Church and the Reformers.”

This is why we are inviting people in the Richmond Virginia area to our unique forthcoming Bible Study in October.  Time and location will be announced soon.

For more information about the New Matthew Bible:
newmatthewbible.org
octobertestament.com