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John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Title Page, Dedication, Introduction, Forward & Table of Contents to: Westcott’s New Bibles - Changing the Truth of God Into a Lie
Westcott’s New Bibles
Changing
the Truth of God Into a Lie
Romans
1:25
Who changed the truth of
God into a lie,
and worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.
Amen.
James H. Sightler M.D.
Sightler Publications
175 Joe Leonard Road
Greer, SC 29651
1-864-877-1429
www.sightlerpublications.com
First Edition
Copyright 2001 by Sightler Publications.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For information address Sightler Publications, 175 Joe Leonard Road, Greer, SC 29651
ISBN
0-9673343-2-2
Printed in
the USA
To all those who continue in the old paths
Jeremiah
6:16
Thus saith
the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths,
where is the good way, and walk therein,
and ye shall find rest for
your souls.
Foreword
viii
Introduction
ix
Chapter One: Westcottian Theology
The Difference Between 1611 and 1881
1
Westcott and Resurrection
2
Westcott’s Tract Rejected
8
The Western Omissions
9
Westcott’s Education and Early Thought
11
Alcohol in the Lord’s Prayer
12
Darwinism
13
The Myths of Plato Carried On
14
Westcott on the Nature of Revelation
15
The Birth of the Broad Church
17
From Coleridge to Westcott
19
Valentinus and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi
Library
20
Valentinus and the One Life
21
Can we show that Westcott was a Platonist
and Monist?
22
A Current Anglican Statement of
Westcottian Theology
23
Chapter Two: Westcott and Incarnation
Westcott and
Frederick Denson Maurice
24
Westcott and
Incarnation
25
Did Westcott’s
Views Affect His Translation?
27
The Life Rather
Than The Blood
28
Did Man Fall?
Westcott and John Scotus Erigena
30
Incarnation
Harmonized with Evolution
31
Incarnation by
Natural Selection
33
Chapter Three: Westcott’s Socialism and Mysticism
Westcott’s
Socialism
36
Testimony to
Westcott’s Socialism
38
Westcott as
Alexandrian Mystic
39
Westcott and
Theosophy’s Lost Island
41
Incarnation,
Mysticism, and Spiritualism
45
The Beginnings
of Psychical Research
45
The Egyptian
Connection
46
The Society for
Psychical Research Matures
48
Westcott
Counsels Edmund Gurney
50
Gurney’s Tragic
End
51
Spiritualism
Leads To No Good
52
Westcott and
Annie Wood Besant
52
The Fabian Left
Grows from the SPR
56
What Kind of
Spiritualist Was Westcott?
56
The Communion of
Saints
58
The Dominion of
the Dead and the One Life
59
By Commemoration
and Meditation
60
Chapter Four: Westcott and India
Westcott’s
Disciple, William Marshall Teape
62
Teape and
Southeastern Memories
64
Teape and
Westcott’ Fear
66
Teape and the
Secret Lore of India
67
Annie Besant and
India
72
Teape’s Will and
the Brooke Foss Westcott Lectures
74
A Listing of the
Teape Lectures
75
Westcott’s
Twentieth Century Legacy in Owen Chadwick
77
John Arthur
Thomas Robinson, Westcott’s Legacy Continued
78
The Sacred
Rivers of Hinduism
80
Although
Westcott was not the first to use the minority Alexandrian
manuscripts, he was the man who, more than any other, gave academic
respectability and a false sense of orthodox sanction to what has
become known as the critical text.
The modern “eclectic” Nestle-Aland text of the New Testament
differs in less than 400 places from the Westcott-Hort text.
So in a very real sense the new versions can be said to be
Westcott’s. How did this
come to be?
There
is a little known story in the Life and letters of John Albert
Broadus, founder of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
which can instruct us.
This biography was written by Broadus’ student, A. T. Robertson, the
great Greek scholar, advocate of the critical text, and Professor at
the Seminary. In July
1868 Broadus wrote an article in the Baptist Quarterly strongly
defending the last 12 verses of Mark, which Burgon quoted from
freely. On Sept. 3, 1868
Westcott wrote a letter to Broadus, thanking him for sending to
Westcott a copy of the article, and said: “I have read with interest
the careful and sound criticism which you have kindly called to my
attention…With regard to the passage of St. Mark, which you most
ably analyze, external evidence leaves no doubt, in my opinion, that
it was a very early addition to the Gospel and not, I think, by St.
Mark…My experience too, in dealing very minutely with the Greek text
lead me to think that such a combination as Aleph, B, k Arm is never
wrong.” Robertson
comments that “Doctor Broadus afterward felt more uncertain about
these last verses of Mark”.[1]
Then
in 1870 Broadus went to London, and on Oct. 15 he wrote home: “On
Wednesday at two o’clock I went to Westminster Abbey, at the
suggestion of Bishop Ellicott…I went to the Deanery (A. P. Stanley
is Dean), sent in my card with the luncheon, and his Lordship[2] came out saying that he had asked leave of the committee
just to bring me in for the half-hour of luncheon.
He introduced me
in general at the door, and then various gentlemen came up and shook
hands…Some of them invited me to visit their cathedrals,
others asked
about the South…Professor
Lightfoot…invited
me to
x
Cambridge quite
cordially…Mr. Westcott (you know how I like his books) is a gentle,
lovable-looking man, with a mild, sweet tone, and with a devotional
feeling predominating in all his talk.
I talked principally with him and Mr. Hort about their
forthcoming text of the New Testament, in which I am much
interested. Mr. Westcott
invited me warmly to Peterborough, where he is Canon.”
Unbeknownst to Broadus, the Westcott-Hort text was already in
the hands of the revisers.
Robertson then commented “Bishop Ellicott was all courtesy
and kindness to Doctor Broadus and left nothing undone that he could
do for his enjoyment.
Nisbet & Co. of London, issued a reprint of (Broadus’ book)
Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, with introduction by Doctor
Angus.”[3] Angus was the
English Baptist and Reviser who came to America to negotiate with
Schaff about the ASV.
Ezra
Abbott, the Harvard professor and Unitarian member of the ASV
Committee, in 1876 sent Dr. Broadus his notices of Tischendorf and
Tregelles and his discussion of his readings of John 1:18 (only
begotten God) and Acts 20:28 (which he has purchased with the blood
of his own).[4]
Political appeal to Broadus, through “the pride of life”, eventually
had its intended effect.
On Oct. 28, 1891 Broadus wrote to G. B. Taylor “I beg your pardon
for not having acknowledged the receipt of the photo-lithograph of
the Codex Vaticanus, which arrived in due time, and which I am at
present having my class examine with great interest and profit.”[5] He had moved a
great distance, from defending the last twelve verses of Mark to
teaching his impressionable students, “with profit”, the Vatican
Codex, which omitted the last twelve verses of Mark along with many
others.
The same thing, appeal to pride, both of scholarship and of
life, carried out by Tischendorf in addition to Westcott and Hort,
happened to Warfield at Leipzig and thus found its way back to
Princeton, from whence it came to America’s present day
fundamentalist seminaries.
xi
This
book is intentionally limited to Westcott, to give the reader a
shorter and quicker path to understanding his true beliefs, which
did influence his choice of Codices Aleph, B, and D as sources for
his Greek text. These
beliefs, as is shown at the beginning of Chapter One, have been
passed over either through ignorance and carelessness, or deliberate
failure of reporting, by those in positions of influence at some of
the most influential of our fundamental schools, where the same
scholarly pride that so completely gripped John Albert Broadus is
still in full flower today.
The
title of the book is appropriate because of Westcott’s academic
influence, which was worldwide and continues to the present time; so
that the modern versions indeed can be said to be Westcott’s Trojan
Horse brought into our churches.
As Cassandra warned, “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”.
And how did Westcott change the truth of God into a lie?
Principally by teaching his doctrine of The One, The One
Life, which he said is the life of Christ,
universally incarnate into all
of creation. Translation
consistent with this doctrine can be found in numerous places in the
new versions.
James H. Sightler, M.D.
Greenville, SC
January 1, 2001
The Trojan
Horse, in Greek legend, was a huge, hollow wooden horse used by the
Greeks to gain an entrance to Troy.
They had been unable to capture the city after a siege of ten
years with a powerful army and the thousand ships “launched by the
face of Helen”. They
then built the horse, filled it with armed warriors, and sailed away
to a place behind an island where they could not be seen, leaving
the horse on the shore.
Sinon was left behind to tell the Trojans he no longer wished to be
a Greek, and he skillfully persuaded the Trojans to take the horse
into the city, telling them that it would mysteriously, as an idol,
an offering to the Goddess Athena, make Troy invulnerable.
The Trojans were so captivated by the horse and the apparent
disappearance of the Greeks that they did not investigate.
They themselves attached ropes to the platform on which the
horse stood and dragged it on logs through the wall and up to the
Temple of Athena.
“With song and rejoicing they brought
death in
Treachery and destruction.”
Lacoon, a Trojan
priest, said “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, and Cassandra,
daughter of the Trojan King, repeated his warning and predicted that
the horse would be the death of Troy.
While the Trojans slept Sinon opened the hatch in the horse’s
belly and let out the Greeks.
They opened the gates to their comrades, who had sailed back.
They entered, set the city afire, and killed the Trojans.
In 1870
Brooke Foss Westcott, like Sinon, was able to persuade many that he
was orthodox, and his claims went almost unquestioned for 60 years
until Wilkinson wrote Our Authorized Bible Vindicated. But
over the last two decades his views and the Greek text he
constructed and persuaded others to bring into orthodox churches
have been investigated by Dr. David Otis Fuller and Dr. D. A. Waite
and others and have been shown to be as dangerous as the Trojan
horse. And again another
Cassandra, Dr. Gail Riplinger, plainly has predicted the effect of
Westcott’s text on our churches.
The present book, limited to Westcott and his views and
shortened to put them into bolder relief and help to make them more
widely known, and including the latest discoveries about his
philosophy, once more says beware and consider.
James H. Sightler, M.D.
Greenville, South Carolina
