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and 15: "How then shall they call
on him in whom they have not
believed? a nd how shall they
believe in him of whom they have
not heard? and how shaJI they hear
without a preacher? and how shall
they preac h , except they be
sent? ..."
The Greeks, too, received "the
word of God." God sent to them a
special apost le- Paul. Paul went
almost exclusively to Greeks. He
spoke to other genti les only as they
were found in the Greek-speaking
world . Paul wrote to G reek-speak–
ing churches, not to Ethiopian-,
Chinese-, German- or Persian–
speaking churches. There was a
very special reason .
Let us read further- Romans
10:19-20: "But
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say, Did not Jsrael
know? [That is, did not Israel rec–
ognize God's message? But they
refused it, as a nation, a nd were in
part blinded spiritua lly .] F irst
Moses saith, J wi ll provoke you to
jealousy by them that a re no
people, and by a foolis h nation [the
Greeks were then a foolish nation,
filled with vanity of mind]
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wi ll
anger you. But Esaias is very bold,
and saith,
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was found of them that
sought me not;
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was made mani–
fest unto them that asked not after
me."
Notice that Paul applied these
prophecies to his day- the New
Testament period .
When the J ews, as a nation,
rejected the message of J esus
Christ, God raised up the apostle
Paul to go to the Greek-speaking
world with that same message. The
Greeks would hear! They did hear!
They received the oracles of Jesus
C hri s t - th e New Testament–
even if most of them were never
.conver ted! And they have pre-
served it! Jesus declared : " My
word shall not pass away"- and it
has not passed away. The Greeks
alone of all peoples copied, genera–
tion after generation, the New Tes–
tament in the very language God
inspired it to be written! No other
people did it! The Samaritans cor–
rupted it, the Latins and Egyptians
translated and sometimes altered it.
Only the Greeks have accurately
copied it in its original language.
Today about 4 ,500 examined
Greek ma nuscripts confirm the
integrity and purity of the New
December 1981
Testament text. In 1935 a fragment
of John's gospel in Greek, dating
from the time of Emperor Trajan,
A .D. 98 to 117, was discovered in
Egypt. The fragment was part of a
codex or book, indicat ing that the
entire New Testament
IN PROPER
ORDER
was circulating within a
score of years following the death
of the last apostle. This and other
fragments and texts witness to the
accuracy with which the G reek
New Testament has been preserved
through fire and sword.
But what about minor variations
in the Greek New Tes tament?
Blble a Living Book!
The answer is that Scripture is a
living book, using living languages.
In English, for example, if we are
to understand the Bible, we need
new wordings from time to time as
old wordings become difficult to
understand. Many readers of the
English Bible would be unable to
read with understanding the trans–
lations into English made in the
ce~tury
before the King J ames
Version was published . We have
these versions in the libraries of the
Ambassador Colleges.
lt
would be
useless to quote from them in
The
Plain Truth- they
are too difficult
to understand. Old English almost
seems to be a foreign language
today.
In the same way sl ight changes
were necessitated over the centu–
ries in the Hebrew and Greek
because of the gradual changes in
wording and expression in those
two languages. For his word to be
understandable in public reading,
God permitted over the centuries
minor scribal variations in spelling
and word order for clarity. That is
why no two hand-copied codices or
complete manuscripts of either Old
or New Tes tament agree 100 per–
cent in every detail. God has pur–
posed it! He intended his word,
even in the original languages, to be
living, active, intelligent channels
through which his will might be
expressed .
These minor changes-contrary
to the usual opinion- prove rather
than disprove the inspi ration and
.divine preservation of Scripture.
lnspiration is not of any value
whatsoever in a dead, unintelligible
language! The Greeks, as also the
Jews, have not been left to decide
for themselves whether or not they
want to preserve it. God has made
them preserve his word correctly.
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have before me, as
1
write, the
G reek New Tes tament in the first
printed
edition publ ished in Con–
s tan tinople in 1912.
It
is the
G reeks' official authorized printed
text of the Greek New Testament.
When the Greeks published this
edition they checked their author–
itative manuscripts. The Greek
religio us author itie·s are he ld
responsible by God f0r it. In the
reproduction of this first edition
(in Constantinople) before me, a
typog r aphica l error occurred.
Mark 7: 16 was, by accident, left
out of the printed text! So, in later
production, when the printing of
the new edition carne out , in all
faithfu lness to the original printed
edition, the Greeks did not insert
this accidentally missing verse
(Mark 7:
16)
in the text. They
placed a note in the text and put
the verse at the foot of the page
for all to read. In other words,
once an officially approved printed
edi tion was made, there were to
be no add itions or deletions in the
printed edition. And if an error,
due to human oversight, later is
found, it is required to be printed
be1ow. Every Greek must thereaf–
ter, when reading, insert the acci–
dentally missing verse p1aced at
the bottom of the page!
This is fundamentally the same
way the Jews prese rved the
Hebrew Bible! When the J ews had
officially approved a manuscript for
synagogue use, if, at a later time,
they found a scribal error which
they had not noticed, they left the
text j ust as it was-with the afore–
said scribaJ error. But in the mar –
gin of this officially approved text,
they inserted the correct reading
and every man who read in the syn–
agogue had to read what the mar–
gin had! When they recopied that
manuscript, they recopied the
aforesaid scribaJ error in the text
and the true reading in the margin!
That is how they have preserved
the Bible. God has not left it to the
individual to decide these matters.
Greek Text Arrives in the West
For centuries, during the Middle
Ages, the only Bible accessible to
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