Saturday, December 16, 2023

Reception of Beza's Change to the Text of Revelation 16:5

Around 1611, the King James Version translators edited the Bishop's Bible at Revelation 16:5 to conform to Beza's reading.  This was a significant and intentional change on the part of the King James version translators, because the Bishop's Bible (1568) followed the original Greek: 

Even the 1599 Geneva Bible (which was printed after Beza's emendation), continued to follow the original Greek and made no mention of the issue in the notes:

Likewise, Elias Hutter's 1599 Polyglot New Testament mostly did not follow Beza:



You may notice that there is some inconsistency amongst the various languages.  The French with "& qui seras" appears to adopt Beza's reading, whereas the Greek itself has "ἐρχόμενος" (which Erasmus hypothesized but Beza rejected).  

The Elzevier printers (a family descending from Lodewijk Elzevir) reverted to the Greek original (from Beza's reading) in the 1624 printing of the New Testament, but then returned to Beza's reading in 1633 (see comparison here), only to return to the Greek original in 1641, which was maintained in the Leers printings of 1654 and 1658.  


(1641, vol. 1 Gospels and Acts, "Ex Officinam Elseviriorum")(1641, vol. 2 Remainder)(1654, single volume "Ex Officinam Arnoldi Leers")(1658, single volume "Ex Officinam Leers").  I have not confirmed whether the text of the Amsterdam Elzevier editions (1656, 1662, 1670, 1678) also agrees.  

Scrivener's 1894 Textus Receptus, because it aimed to show the Greek underlying the King James Version, shows Beza's reading rather than the later reading of the Textus Receptus family of printed texts (the boundaries of this family are not well defined, but the term "textus receptus" was first used in the Elzevier 1633 edition in the form, "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum").  The 1641, 1654, and 1658 printings mentioned above also maintained the textus receptus claim.

Walton's Polyglot (1657) likewise maintained the original Greek reading:

Bishop Fell (1675) maintained the original Greek after consulting the Coptic and Gothic versions maintained the original Greek:


John Mill (1707) continued the same reading (shown below), even after consulting the Ethiopic text.

Wettstein (1751-2 with additions by Semler, 1764, and further additions by Lotze, 1831) continued the same:


We could go on, but the point is fairly straightforward.  New Testament textual scholars after Beza generally were not persuaded as to this change.  Thus, the only reason for the inclusion of this reading in today's "Textus Receptus" edition is because it happens to be the Greek text that corresponds to the 1611 King James Version, not because the Reformed churches "received" this text for a lengthy time.

That said, the Dutch 1637 did adopt the reading, as did numerous English editions following the KJV, and translations made from the KJV.  In some cases, such as the French by Jean-Frédéric Osterwald (1744) or the Spanish Valera 1602, I am not sure the basis for the adoption of the Beza/KJV reading.

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