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Front I of VII
The Counterfeit Bibles
“The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.”Psalm 12:6–7
For nearly three hundred years, the English-speaking world had one Bible. Since 1881 it has been handed hundreds of competing versions, no two alike, each one asking the reader, quietly, in the margins and in the missing verses: yea, hath God said?
God warned of this.
“For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”2 Corinthians 2:17
“…for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the LORD of hosts our God.”Jeremiah 23:36
Paul did not say a few. He said many. Through Jeremiah the Lord told the people to their faces, “ye have perverted the words of the living God.”
Hundreds of competing English versions, no two alike. And of every verse in the Book, the one that warns about corrupting the word of God is one of the verses they changed.
“Yea, hath God said... in words? Surely he meant only the ideas. Surely a modern reader deserves a modern bible. Surely they all say the same thing.”How the question is asked on this front
Here is the claim you have heard: the modern versions are just the same Bible in easier English. It is the one claim this page will test. Because if they all say the same thing, then comparing them side by side should prove it. And if they do not say the same thing, then somebody changed something, and the only honest questions left are what was changed, who changed it, and why.
One Book became a marketplace. Every new version must differ from the versions before it, because a translation must be sufficiently new to be owned, licensed, and sold. The King James Bible belongs to nobody and can be printed by anybody. A modern version is intellectual property with a rights department. Novelty is not a byproduct of the modern bible business. It is a requirement of it.
The missing sixteen.
Sixteen whole verses, present in the King James Bible, are gone from the text of the NIV. Not retranslated. Gone. The verse numbers remain, stepping over the empty places. Here is every one of them, with the words you lose.
Show all sixteen
Open an NIV and check any of them. The text runs Matthew 17:20, then 17:22. A footnote may whisper that some manuscripts include the verse. The page does not.
Not translated. Subtracted.
Where whole verses were too obvious to remove, words were. Watch what happens to the blood, to every word, and to the name of God in the flesh.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:
in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” but by every word of God
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh...
God He appeared in the flesh...
Notice the pattern in what gets touched: the blood, the deity of Christ, and the authority of every word. The knife is not random.
The doubt is printed on the page.
Where verses could not be cut outright, they were fenced. Open a modern version to the end of Mark and you will find twelve verses, the resurrection appearances, the Great Commission, the ascension, set behind a bracket and a note: “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.” Open it to John 8 and the woman taken in adultery stands behind the same fence.
Read that footnote again and ask what it is doing. It is not translating anything. It is asking the reader a question about the reliability of the page in his hands. It is, word for word in function, the question of Genesis 3:1 set in eight-point type. Don't get me wrong, the King James men printed notes in their margin too, and at Luke 17:36 they noted that the verse was wanting in most of the Greek copies... which was true, and they left every word of it in the text anyway. The note on Mark 16 runs the other way. Those twelve verses stand in the great mass of the Greek copies, and less than a handful of old manuscripts is all it takes to hang a question mark over the ending of a Gospel. That isn't reporting a fact about the copies. It's casting doubt where none belongs.
And this is why the versions can never stop multiplying. Once the text is a scholarly reconstruction rather than a preserved Book, there is always another edition, another committee, another copyright, another decade's bible to replace the last decade's. The reader is not being given the Word. He is being subscribed to it.
The gateway.
Nobody walks from the King James Bible to the NIV in one step. There is a version built for the first step.
The NKJV was sold to believers as the King James with nothing but updated English: same underlying text, same Bible, easier words. It is the modern version most widely marketed specifically to people who trust the King James Bible, which is exactly why it deserves the closest look on this page. A counterfeit aimed at strangers is one thing. One aimed at family is another. Here is what “nothing but updated English” actually changed:
For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.
For we are not, as so many, corrupting peddling the word of God...
They changed the verse that warns about corrupting the word of God, and the word they changed was “corrupt.”
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
...but to us who are saved who are being saved it is the power of God.
The KJB sets two groups side by side: them that perish, and us which are saved. The NKJV turns the believer's standing into a process.
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Because narrow is the gate and narrow difficult is the way which leads to life...
In the KJB the picture is its shape: wide gate and broad way to destruction, strait gate and narrow way to life (Matthew 7:13–14). “Difficult” turns the narrow way into a hard road.
And the margins do the rest
Even where the NKJV keeps every verse, its footnotes do the NIV's work. At Matthew 18:11 the verse stands in the text while the margin reports that the “NU-Text”, the same Alexandrian critical text behind the NIV, omits it. Hundreds of notes like it run through the New Testament. The reader is introduced, politely and repeatedly, to the rival authority.
That is the gateway's whole function. It does not take the Book out of your hands; it teaches you to check your Book against another one. Once the footnote is the referee, the next version is a formality. The serpent did not hand Eve different fruit first. He handed her a question about the tree she already had.
What saith the Scripture
It is written.
“Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.”Proverbs 30:5–6
“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life...”Revelation 22:18–19
“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”Matthew 4:4
God's standard is stated in his own Book: every word, pure words, kept and preserved from this generation for ever (Psalm 12:6–7). Not the general drift of the ideas. Words. The modern versions fail that standard by their own printed admission, sixteen missing verses at a time, one footnote of doubt at a time. The King James Bible does not ask you to trust a committee's latest reconstruction. It asks you to trust that God did what he said he would do: keep his words.
“For God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33). Look at the shelf of competing versions and ask yourself plainly who authored that.
This front, on film.
Two of David W. Daniels's books cover this ground in full. Look What's Missing! sets roughly fifteen modern versions beside the King James text and marks every omission. Why They Changed the Bible turns from what was changed to who changed it, and quotes their reasons in their own words.
All recommended readingBefore you go
“What must I do to be saved?”
And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.Acts 16:31 Read the Gospel