For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude 4
Brooke Foss Westcott Fenton John Anthony Hort
(1825-1901) (1828-1892)
‘ …. ye have perverted the words of the living God, …’ Jeremiah 23:36
The 4th Century Roman emperor Constantine wanted to bring unity between Christians and pagans. He therefore commissioned the creation of fifty Alexandrian ‘bibles’. It is speculated that the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts, which underlie modern versions, are part of this fifty but if so, why are there so many differences between them?
In 1844 Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf claimed to have found 86 sheets of vellum, in a wastepaper bin which were to be burned, in the Roman Catholic St Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai in Egypt. He later claimed that by 1859 he obtained what they came from: a huge codex he called Sinaiticus. This included parts of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament, as well as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. A Greek palaeographer, Constantine Simonides, really threw the cat amongst the pidgeons and infuriated Von Tischendorf, who was glorying in his ‘discovery’ and his publication of Sinaiticus in 1862, when he claimed that same year to have produced Sinaiticus himself twenty years earlier!
Questions regarding the alleged antiquity of Sinaiticus remain to this day and indeed new research has uncovered many new facts which really seem to back up the claim of Simonides! The Vaticanus manuscript, which has the appearance of a 15th Century manuscript, has been stored in the Vatican Library in the Vatican since at least the 15th Century. It has been claimed by those who promote these corrupt manuscripts that they are ‘the oldest and best’. This false claim has long been disputed by many Bible-believing Christians who have sought to honour God and his pure preserved words. The Lord is bringing into the light the hidden things of darkness!
Two 19th Century liberal Anglican churchmen, Westcott and Hort, studied Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and liked what they saw! They set out to create a NEW bible and saw their inclusion on the committee formed to undertake a modest revision of the King James Bible as a golden opportunity to introduce their radical and heretical changes, even insisting on the inclusion in that committee of the Unitarian scholar Dr. Vance Smith! (This revision of the King James Bible was sanctioned by the Southern Convocation of the Church of England.) Using Vaticanus and Sinaiticus they changed the historical Greek New Testament text to conform to those corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts! The result was the notorious English Revised Version of 1881, which horrified evangelical Christians on its publication and caused an outcry! This was the start of the counter-Reformation in earnest! The rot truly set in in 1881. (NB The New Testament was published in 1881, the Old Testament in 1885)
A wicked plan was put in place to flood Bible colleges, churches and bookshops with fake ‘bibles’ produced from these corrupt manuscripts and to attack by all means the pure preserved words of the Lord in English – the King James Bible. This plan continues to this day with a vengeance!
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit..
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Matthew 7:18-20
Statements of Westcott and Hort
The following quotes are taken from the diaries and letters of Westcott and Hort.
1846 Oct. 25th – Westcott: “Is there not that in the principles of the “Evangelical” school which must lead to the exaltation of the individual minister, and does not that help to prove their unsoundness? If preaching is the chief means of grace, it must emanate not from the church, but from the preacher, and besides placing him in a false position, it places him in a fearfully dangerous one.” (Life, Vol.I, pp.44,45).
Oct., 22nd after Trinity Sunday – Westcott: “Do you not understand the meaning of Theological ‘Development’? It is briefly this, that in an early time some doctrine is proposed in a simple or obscure form, or even but darkly hinted at, which in succeeding ages,as the wants of men’s minds grow, grows with them – in fact, that Christianity is always progressive in its principles and doctrines” (Life, Vol.I, p.78).
Dec. 23rd – Westcott: “My faith is still wavering. I cannot determine how much we must believe; how much, in fact, is necessarily required of a member of the Church.” (Life, Vol.I, p.46).
1847 Jan., 2nd Sunday after Epiphany – Westcott: “After leaving the monastery we shaped our course to a little oratory…It is very small, with one kneeling-place; and behind a screen was a ‘Pieta’ the size of life (i.e. a Virgin and dead Christ)…I could not help thinking on the grandeur of the Romish Church, on her zeal even in error, on her earnestness and self-devotion, which we might, with nobler views and a purer end, strive to imitate. Had I been alone I could have knelt there for hours.” (Life, Vol.I, p.81).
1848 July 6th – Hort: “One of the things, I think, which shows the falsity of the Evangelical notion of this subject (baptism), is that it is so trim and precise…no deep spiritual truths of the Reason are thus logically harmonious and systematic…the pure Romish view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to, the truth than the Evangelical…the fanaticism of the bibliolaters, among whom reading so many ‘chapters’ seems exactly to correspond to the Romish superstition of telling so many dozen beads on a rosary…still we dare not forsake the Sacraments, or God will forsake us…I am inclined to think that no such state as ‘Eden’ (I mean the popular notion) ever existed, and that Adam’s fall in no degree differed from the fall of each of his descendants” (Life, Vol.I, pp.76-78).
Aug. 11th – Westcott: “I never read an account of a miracle (in Scripture?) but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it.” (Life, Vol.I, p.52).
Nov., Advent Sunday – Westcott: “All stigmatise him (a Dr. Hampden) as a ‘heretic,’…I thought myself that he was grievously in error, but yesterday I read over the selections from his writings which his adversaries make, and in them I found systematically expressed the very strains of thought which I have been endeavouring to trace out for the last two or three years. If he be condemned, what will become of me?” (Life, Vol.I,p.94).
1850 May 12th – Hort: “You ask me about the liberty to be allowed to clergymen in their views of Baptism. For my own part, I would gladly admit to the ministry such as hold Gorham’s view, much more such as hold the ordinary confused Evangelical notions” (Life, Vol.I, p.148).
July 31st – Hort: “I spoke of the gloomy prospect, should the Evangelicals carry on their present victory so as to alter the Services.” (Life, Vol.I, p.160).
1851 Feb. 7th – Hort: “Westcott is just coming out with his Norrisian on ‘The Elements of the Gospel Harmony.’ I have seen the first sheet on Inspiration, which is a wonderful step in advance of common orthodox heresy.” (Life, Vol.I, p.181).
1851 Dec. 29,30th – Hort: “I had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus. Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late MSS.; it is a blessing there are such early ones” (Life, Vol.I, p.211).
1858 Oct. 21st – Further I agree with them in condemning many leading specific doctrines of the popular theology as, to say the least, containing much superstition and immorality of a very pernmicious kind…The positive doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue…There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of the Bible” (Life, Vol.I, p.400).
1860 Apr. 3rd – Hort: “But the book which has most engaged me is Darwin. Whatever may be thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be contemporary with. I must work out and examine the argument in more detail, but at present my feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable.” (Life, Vol.I, p.416).
Oct. 15th – Hort: “I entirely agree – correcting one word – with what you there say on the Atonement, having for many years believed that “the absolute union of the Christian (or rather, of man) with Christ Himself” is the spiritual truth of which the popular doctrine of substitution is an immoral and material counterfeit…Certainly nothing can be more unscriptural than the modern limiting of Christ’s bearing our sins and sufferings to His death; but indeed that is only one aspect of an almost universal heresy.” (Life, Vol.I, p.430).
1864 Sept. 23rd – Hort: “I believe Coleridge was quite right in saying that Christianity without a substantial Church is vanity and dissolution; and I remember shocking you and Lightfoot not so very long ago by expressing a belief that ‘Protestantism’ is only parenthetical and temporary. In short, the Irvingite creed (minus the belief in the superior claims of the Irvingite communion) seems to me unassailable in things ecclesiastical.” (Life, Vol.II, p.30,31).
1865 Sept. 27th – Westcott: “I have been trying to recall my impressions of La Salette (a marian shrine). I wish I could see to what forgotten truth Mariolatry bears witness; and how we can practically set forth the teaching of the miracles”.
Nov. 17th – Westcott: “As far as I could judge, the ‘idea’ of La Salette was that of God revealing Himself now, and not in one form but in many.” (Life, Vol.I. pp.251,252).
Oct. 17th – Hort: “I have been persuaded for many years that Mary-worship and ‘Jesus’-worship have very much in common in their causes and their results.” (Life, Vol.II, p.50).
1867 Oct. 17th – Hort: “I wish we were more agreed on the doctrinal part; but you know I am a staunch sacerdotalist, and there is not much profit in arguing about first principles.” (Life, Vol.II, p.86).
1890 Mar. 4th – Westcott: “No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history – I could never understand how any one reading them with open eyes could think they did – yet they disclose to us a Gospel. So it is probably elsewhere.”