Preparing for the Revelation 16:5 Debate - Responses to Howe, Jones, Daniels, and McElroy

 In preparing for a planned debate on Revelation 16:5, I checked out the following KJV advocacy books:

"The KJV is for Me: Why I use the King James Bible," by Christopher E. Howe.  While this book from 2021 has a little structure to it, it reads much more like a manifesto than like a piece of persuasive prose, much less a work of pro-KJV scholarship.  Some of it engages in the kind of unintentional blasphemy one would expect to find, given the nature of the book.  For example, at p. 70: "If the Holy Ghost did not give us a Bible that was perfect one that we could not trust at face value, then he cannot be a HOLY Ghost as he would have given us something that has the very name of God on it and it was less than perfect." 

"Ripped out of the Bible," by Floyd Nolen Jones, twelfth edition, 2019.  I have no idea why this work was thought worthy of twelve editions.  It contains lists of words or passages that are "missing" from some versions other than KJV and a lengthy "Epilogue" (about a third of the total book). The Epilogue argues for the KJV along a variety of historical and evidential lines, with a focus on the KJV being linked to the Textus Receptus.  Dr. Jones notes the "omitted" "and art to come" in Revelation 11:17 (p. 12) and the "missing" "O Lord" in Revelation 16:5 (p. 28), but does not deal with Beza's substitution at Revelation 16:5, which was used by the KJV translators.

"Look What's Missing," by David W. Daniels, printed by Chick Publications, apparently originally published in 2009 but updated based on the 2011 NIV.  Even when making somewhat valid points, the book goes overboard into error, such as when claiming, "Roman Catholic leadership does not permit Catholics to read a book or Bible unless it has the Nihil Obstat and/or Imprimatur on its copyright page." (p. 72).  The book does not directly address Revelation 16:5, but mentions Revelation 11:17 in two places. First, Daniels writes: "It eliminates 'and art to come,' part of the future nature of Christ in Revelation 11:17." (pp. 97-98)  Second, Daniels shows Revelation 11:17 with the words "and art to come" struck through and writes, "When you remove 'and art to come,' you take away the eternal nature of the Lord Jesus Christ." (p. 182)  Daniels then lists a series of versions that are "missing" the phrase.

"Bible Version Secrets EXPOSED," by Jack McElroy (2020).  At pp. 443-44, McElroy tackles the question of Revelation 16:5 responding to Dr. White's book, The King James Only Controversy (KJVOC).  McElroy wrote:

I have blacked out the photo of the umpire that was provided in the meme, but otherwise, this is a licensed reproduction of the images provided digitally by the author.

The meme asks: "Did the King James Translators Drop a Routine Fly Ball on Revelation 16:5?" 

The meme then provides quotations from a KJV edition of Revelation 16:5 and an ESV edition of the same verse, showing that the KJV has "and shalt be," while the ESV has "O Holy One."

The meme then quotes Dr. White's comments from "pp. 236-241" of KJVOC.

Next, the meme provides the following seven-point argument:

1. Dr. White is right; there is currently no known Greek NT manuscript support for the reading “and shalt be,” and it doesn’t appear in a printed Greek New Testament until Beza’s 1598 edition. BUT…
2. There are only 4 Greek manuscripts of Revelation 16:5 dated before the 10th century but the 3 earliest witnesses of Revelation 16:5 don’t even agree with each other.
3. Some scholars [Robert B. Y. Scott (1899 –1987) and Charles C. Torrey (1863–1956)] believed the Book of Revelation was originally penned in Hebrew and only later translated into Greek.
4. If it’s true that the reading “shall be” was “unknown to the ancient church, unknown to all Christians,” then how come it appears in a Latin commentary on the Book of Revelation by Spanish theologian Beatus of Liebana in AD 786 which preserved the work of the Donatist writer Tyconius, written around AD 380?
5. If the original was written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek and Latin, then the original reading has just as much chance of showing up in Latin manuscripts as Greek.
6. There are an estimated 10,000 Latin manuscripts in existence. But no one’s got the money, time, or inclination to dope out their contents.
7. Early 20th century textual critic Herman Hoskier cited the Ethiopian version as containing the phrase “shall be.”

As to 1, Dr. White does not specify that it was Beza's 1598 edition that introduced this error, and Dr. White would have been error (as McElroy now is) to have said so, because Beza first printed this error in his 1582 edition.

As to 2, it seems that McElroy must have got his material from "KJV Today" or some site of similar quality, as there are at least five pre-10th century Greek Manuscripts that contain Revelation 16:5.  And while they may disagree about other things, they all have οσιος̣ not Beza's substitute word.

• P47 (3rd Century) has "και οσιος̣"
• Manuscript 01 aka Sinaiticus (4th century) has "ο οσιος"
• Manuscript 02 aka Alexandrinus (5th century) has "οσιος"
• Manuscript 04 aka Ephraemi Rescriptus (5th century) has "ο οσιος"
• Manuscript 025 aka Poryphrianus (9th century) has "ο οσιος"

As to 3, contemporary scholarship and Reformation-era scholarship agree that Revelation was written in Greek.  Considering that the text of Revelation includes the phrase "I am Alpha and Omega," it seems very unlikely that it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic, which end in Tav or Taw.  Nevertheless, even if it had originally been written in Hebrew or Aramaic, there is no ancient Hebrew or Aramaic manuscript of Revelation in existence.  Worse yet, there is no reason at all to think that Beza's substitution would be more likely if the book had originally been written in another language than Greek, but we will come to this more under 5.

As to 4, the Beatus commentary, and the reconstructed prior commentary by Tyconius, which is assumed to have served as the basis for Beatus' commentary here, have an Old Latin translation that includes a future tense verb.  However, "qui fuisti et futures es" is a paraphrastic translation of "εἶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν."  We can see that this understanding is correct from the fact that there are only two forms of the Latin equivalent of the verb "to be" in Beatus/Tyconius, just as in the Greek text. More importantly, Beatus/Tyconius have the Latin of equivalent of "holy."  Thus, they were not based on a text that had Beza's substitution.

As to 5, if the original were Hebrew and then translated from Hebrew to Latin, the reference to "Omega" in the Latin makes no sense.  However, the Beatus commentary at Revelation 1:8 states: "But why might it be that these elements from the alphabet, that is, 'the Alpha and the Omega," are recalled by Truth Himself? ... Omega is its completion in the Greek alphabet ...."  There would be no reason to insert reference to Greek into the text of Revelation (and therefore to provide commentary on it) if the work was not originally in Greek.

 Additionally, Beza's substitution does not show up in the Latin manuscripts.  Gryson's critical edition (from 2003, I believe) of the Vetus Latina has:

Specifically, the Old Latin translations have either "pius" or "sanctus" for οσιος.  There is a lot of variation amongst the Latin translations of the Greek, but there are two forms of the verb "to be" and a word that translates in English to Holy (namely either "pius" or "sanctus").  Jerome likewise, according to the most recent critical reconstruction of the Vulgate, has "qui es et qui eras sanctus" (two forms of "to be" plus "holy").  That critical edition likewise does not mention any Latin textual variant that would correspond to Beza's change. 

As to 6, it's simply not true that no one has interest in reviewing the Latin manuscripts.  Admittedly, it is a lower priority than the Greek for most New Testament scholars, but Roger Gryson and others have been dutifully looking at Latin manuscripts and reconstructing both the Old Latin translations and the Vulgate translation from those manuscripts.  Also, of course, there is no reason to think that we are likely to find some Latin manuscript that matches Beza, both because we haven't seen one yet, and because we haven't seen that in Greek or any other language.

As to 7, Ethiopic aka Ge'ez, like Beatus/Tyconius, is a witnesses to the Greek text with οσιος.  I've gone into it in much more detail in a previous post (link to post), but suffice for the moment to say that the Ge'ez employs two forms of the verb "to be" plus a word that corresponds to "holy."  Thus, like the Old Latin of Tyconius, the Ge'ez is simply a paraphrastic translation.

McElroy continued (numbering is now mine, not his):

1. How can you come to any conclusion until you’ve seen all the evidence?
2. The Lord can reveal as much manuscript evidence as he wants. But He has promised to preserve his words. His promises never fail. (See Psa. 12:6–7).
3. The King James translators not only had all seven earlier English Bibles and all the editions of the Greek New Testament sitting on their table but also had access to some manuscripts no longer available today.
4. Nobody knows what evidence they had when they made the decision to go with the “shall be” reading.
5. The King James translators made a CHOICE. They chose to go with Beza’s 1589 reading. James White calls their CHOICE “an error.” But a CHOICE based on evidence isn’t an error—it’s a CHOICE.
6. Did the CHOICE the translators made slip by the Lord?

As to 1, you can come to a conclusion based on the evidence that each side offers.  If one side offers nothing (or at least nothing of weight), and the other side offers hundreds of Greek manuscripts and multiple ancient versions, then you can conclude that the remaining evidence (if personally examined by you) would no more favor the empty-handed side than the evidence you've already seen.

As to 2, God's word "οσιος" was preserved and the word Beza substituted for it was not preserved. Therefore, by this reasoning, "οσιος" is correct.

As to 3, even assuming this were true (and I have reasons to doubt it), the King James translators did not leave evidence of any other manuscript (or other evidence) to support the conclusion that Beza was correct.  Essentially, the King James translators themselves are irrelevant to the question, except that they used Beza's printed text.

As to 4, we know that they had Beza's printed text, so it's reasonable to conclude that they based their decision on that.  Arguments from "well, we don't know if they may have had something else" are just - in effect - appeals to ignorance.

As to 5, McElroy surely means 1598, although 1582 would be better, while 1589 is plainly a typo.  More importantly, though, a choice can still be an error.  It's not an error in the same way that McElroy's typo is an error, but choosing to amend the Bishop's Bible to follow Beza was an erroneous choice by the KJV translators.

As to 6, of course the translator's error did not slip by the Lord.  However, is McElroy claiming that all the printers' errors in the 1611 KJV slipped by the Lord? This idea of treating the KJV translators choices as if they were the Lord's choices is as ridiculous as treating the printers' choices as if they were Lord's choices.

McElroy concludes this way (again, the numbering is mine):

1. If it’s an error and NOT the original reading, then is the Lord the village idiot by allowing a bogus reading (even of only 2 words) to be reproduced literally billions of times in King James Bibles over the years?
2. He could’ve easily moved the King James translators to stick with the old reading, but He didn’t.
3. Instead of rolling on the floor laughing and yelling “gotcha” because he thinks he found an “error” in the King James Bible, maybe Dr. White should try to figure out WHY the Lord and the translators PURPOSELY placed a reading with little Greek manuscript support in the Bible when they didn’t have to.
4. And besides ... Who's the official scorer, James White or the Lord?

As to 1, this borders on unintentional blasphemy.  Notice the same problem for all the printers' errors and the numbers of copies.  And what about all the copies of all the other versions before and after the KJV that the Lord allowed to be reproduced?  Of course the answer is not to call God names because your favorite version has a few flaws.

As to 2, again - the King James translators were not specially moved just as the KJ printers were not specially moved.  If they had been, we would not need to address anything else.  The fact that a defense of Revelation 16:5 in the KJV requires claiming that the translators were specially moved just demonstrates the virtual emptiness of the evidentiary scale on their side on this particular point. 

As to 3, it's not a reading with "little Greek manuscript support," it's a reading with no Greek manuscript support, and no support in any language before Beza made the change.  As to why the KJV translators did it, the answer is pretty simple: they went with the published text of Theodore Beza, because he had the most recent critical text of the New Testament at the time.  Why did the Lord permit it? Perhaps to remind us that even the best men are men at best. 

As to 4, this is just assuming that the Lord has "scored" the matter one way or another.  As that's not the case, one wonders why McElroy would imply the opposite of the truth.

On a semi-related note, I also came across an interesting book by Rick Norris, "Practically Identical Bibles: The Geneva Bible, the KJV, and the NKJV?" (Sixth Edition, 2019) Norris is not KJV-only, in case that might be the assumption by mentioning him in this post.  Norris comments on the difference between the KJV and the 1560 Geneva Bible thus: "KJV followed conjecture introduced by Beza in his Greek text." (book is unpaginated, but the page is around 90% through the book)

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Update: Another book I encountered in the preparation for my debate with Nick Sayers is called, "The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures," by Lynn Lundquist (1998).  The book seems to be influenced by and targeted toward self-styled Jehovah's Witnesses, although Lundquist says he attends the meetings but has never been a Jehovah's Witness. Lundquist's analysis does not address the "which is, and was ..." passages, at least that I could find, and contains no meaningful discussion of Revelation 16:5.  I mention this work only for the sake of completeness.

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Further Update: The "Scion of Zion" website has a page on Revelation 16:5.  

As you can see from the screenshot above, the bulk of the page is quotations from various versions, with an emphasis on the fact that the KJV follows Erasmus (and the Vulgate) in inserting "O Lord" into the text against the weight of the vast majority of, and the oldest of, the manuscripts.  There is a brief mention of the "Holy One" difference, but it seems to be treated as if it is a substitution of "Holy One" for "Lord," rather than correctly understanding the substitution that Beza made.

The post also suffers from English-gesis inasmuch as the author implies that everyone in heaven is Holy, and therefore it would not make much sense for the angel to refer to him in this way.  This overlooks that the angel says hosios, not hagios.  Everyone in heaven may be hagios, but according to Revelation 15:4 (about 10 verses before our text), only the Lamb is hosios.