James White refuses to even look at refutation

So after being told by James White that I was basically wasting my time with an Urdu Bible version, and labeled as someone to stay away from for pointing out that the 1549 Ethiopic has Beza's reading,  I wrote an 80 page response here.

So I went up to see Mr White last night in Brisbane and asked him to take the printed form of the text,  and he refused it saying that they would not allow it on the flight! But only moments before he was holding up a football Jersey that he was taking with him. Hmm. He looked at me like he had trod in dog poo.  I am guessing he hopes this issue will be easy to ignore. 

Revelation 16:5 and the Triadic Declaration

In the past 6 weeks I have been examining the evidence for the reading of "shalt be" in the KJV in Revelation 16:5. Although rushed, I have compiled about 80 pages of evidence in an article on this issue that I believe is irrefutable. Below is the PDF of the article "Revelation 16:5 and the Triadic Declaration - A defense of the reading of “shalt be” in the Authorized Version."

Download PDF here

Again, I challenge James White to a debate on the topic. I know he is in Australia in the next few weeks, perhaps in Brisbane a debate could be arranged. 

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James White and the Dividing Line

I am aware that James White from Alpha and Omega ministries has mentioned this blog and the contents of it on his Dividing Line program. (see the YouTube clip here at about the 24 minute mark.)

I expected White to be vitriolic and mocking. I have encountered White before in his forum a few years back when I politely asked him if I could present a view about Easter that he may not have seen before. He said it was fine for me to do so. After I posted some material concerning Easter (see my website here), he asked me some questions about my position, as did others in the chat group. As I was answering them, White became very annoyed and irrational and then called me a Ruckmanite (as I mention in my latest Easter Video here) and banned me from his forum. So to see White mock those who translate the Textus Receptus / Reformation Text and scorn at the evidence revealing that "shalt be" is indeed in bibles older than Beza's, was not a shock. In stark contrast concerning Easter, world leading expert on the English language David Crystal read the first article and said it was correct and gave some pointers on it. 

Anyway, I thought I would put all of my information about Revelation 16:5 into a large study/small book which should be finished within a month, and I guarantee that White and many others who reject the reading of "shalt be" will have their boat rocked, perhaps even tipped over.

I also challenge White to a debate on the issue, Either here in Pakistan or in Australia. I also challenge him to a debate concerning Easter and the claims that it is a mistranslation in the King James Version. White and his team claim it is mistranslated here.

Stay tuned for my study on Revelation 16:5...

Nick Sayers.

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Other scholars who reject ὅσιος

In 2002, on the Ankerberg show James White said:

“But to Dr. Strouse, what about places where those King James translators followed conjectural emendations? Theodore Beza, for example, in Revelation 16:5 looked at the Greek text and all the Greek texts say the same thing, but he didn’t like the way it went. And so he changed the word “holy” to the future form of the verb “to be,” sort of, to make it nice and poetic and rhythmic. And your King James this day reads that way, even though there’s not a question about it on anyone’s part as to what that passage actually reads. Why should I take Theodore Beza’s conjectural emendation where he decides a reading on the basis of what he likes and say that the mass of Christians believe this when nobody before Theodore Beza ever had the idea that Revelation 16:5 read that way? Why should I believe that?”

(The King James Controversy Revisited - 2002, on the Ankerberg show, with Dr. Kenneth Barker, Dr. Don Wilkins, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, Dr. James White, Dr. Samuel Gipp, Dr. Thomas Strouse, Dr. Joseph Chambers.)

James White said that Theodore Beza had “changed the word...to make it nice and poetic and rhythmic” and “there’s not a question about it on anyone’s part as to what that passage actually reads”. Obviously this verse is one of the rare verses in Beza and the KJV where the majority reading in the manuscripts is at odds with what was printed (which is rare for KJV/TR readings, but not for CT readings). But is it true that nobody before Theodore Beza ever had the idea that Revelation 16:5 read that way?

Besides the Ethiopic mentioned in the previous blog, if we go back, it seems the seeds sown for Beza’s intervention against ὅσιος and for ἐσόμενος also included the scholarship of Erasmus. Erasmus said concerning Revelation 16:5 in his 1535 Annotations:

Qui es, & qui eras.) Quanquam interpres mutauit perfonam, tamen to tidem syllabis dictu est, quibus superius, qui est, qui erat, qui uenturus est, ὁ ὢν, ὁ ἦν ὁ ἐρχόμενος.

Translated as:

Thou, who art, and who wast.) Although the interpreter changed form, however to flow with the list mentioned above, who is, who was, who is to come, ὁ ὢν, ὁ ἦν ὁ ἐρχόμενος.

Erasmus’ 1535 Annotations

Although Erasmus used ἐρχόμενος and not ἐσόμενος, the meaning is very similar, and both usurp the awkward reading of ὅσιος. This is challenging and discursive to those who have claimed Beza grabbed his “conjectural emendation” out of thin air. 

Isaac Newton in 1693 saw that Erasmus had ἐρχόμενος in his notes on Revelation 16:5:

καὶ ὁ ἦν, καὶ ὁ ὅσιος Erasm. \Syr. Primas/ At in Notis Erasmus pro ὅσιος legit ἐρχόμενος 

καὶ ὁ ἦν, καὶ ὁ ἐσόμενος Bezæ codex antiquus.

The underlined translates as:

“At the Notes Erasmus for ὅσιος read ἐρχόμενος”

('Variantes Lectiones Apocalypticae' [version 1])

The very learned King James translators disagree with White on this issue. They left no note or italic as they did on other verses revealing their certainty of this reading. But many other notable scholars and translators of the reformation also nominated the reading. The fact remains that White is not simply attacking the scholarship of the 57 - 60 KJV translators, or Beza, but an entire generation of scholarship.

Theodore Beza was a world class expert in the Greek language. Having provided so much material on the bible, from translating the French bible, Geneva Bible, Geneva French, including many Greek editions, commentaries, dictionaries, and so much literature on the Greek and Hebrew biblical text for so many years, I would suggest that Beza’s familiarity with the text and with similar issues, demonstrated to him that this was an error and to reject his reading one should firstly show that they are on the same level of scholarship as Beza, or the KJV translators to provide an adequate refutation.

The 1637 Dutch Statenvertaling which is renown to be an equivalent of the King James Version in the Dutch language, has the same reading of Beza and the KJV in Revelation 16:5:

En ik hoorde den engel der wateren zeggen: Gij zijt rechtvaardig, Heere! Die is, en Die was, en Die zijn zal, dat Gij dit geoordeeld hebt;

Translated to read:

And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord! Who is and who was and who will be, because thou hast judged;

Renown linguist Elias Hutter's also used ἐρχόμενος in Revelation 16:5. The Nuremberg Polyglot a New Testament Polyglot in twelve languages of 1599, which has a similar reading to Beza & Erasmus in the Greek, which differs from Beza in many other places:

Kαὶ ἤκουσα τοῦ ἀγγέλου τῶν ὑδάτων λέγοντος, δίκαιος, κύριε, εἶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὅτι ταῦτα ἔκρινας· 

 καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος in Hutter's 1599 Nuremberg Polyglot. 

Hutter has ἐρχόμενος while Beza has ἐσόμενος. Hutter’s ἐρχόμενος translates as is to come (see Revelation 1:4) while ἐσόμενος means shalt be, or will be. 

(Novum Testamentum Domini: nostri: Iesu. Christi. Syriacè, Ebraicè, Graecè, Latinè, Germanicè, Bohemicè, Italicè, Hispanicè, Gallicè, Anglicè, Danicè, Polonicè. 2 vols. Edited by Elias Hutter and Jacob Coler.)

So we can see that Beza is certainly not alone in rejecting the awkward reading “and holy one”. It seems that the top echelon of biblical scholarship agree with Beza. Esrasmus, the translators of the 1549 Ethiopic bible, the King James Version translators, the Dutch Statenvertaling translators, Elias Hutter, the list is rather impressive. Even the Elzevir family in their 1633 Textus Receptus has ἐσόμενος.  So James White’s claim that “there’s not a question about it on anyone’s part as to what that passage actually reads” is historically wrong. There were, and are, many very credible people who question such places where grammatical errors and awkward readings exist in biblical mss. 

For more information see the Textus Receptus website on Revelation 16:5.


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Beza Vindicated

James White said in his book The King James Only Controversy:

“Beza did introduce... “conjectural emendations,” that is, changes made to the text without any evidence from the manuscripts. A few of these changes made it into the KJV, the most famous being Revelation 16:5, “O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be” rather than the actual reading, “who art and who wast, O Holy one.”

Well Mr James White, it looks like Theodore Beza wasn't the first to have “and shalt be” (G. ἐσόμενος; L. eris) at Revelation 16:5!

Revelation 16:5 in the 1549 Ethiopic (Geez) Bible

Brian Walton (1600 – 1661) was an English priest, divine and scholar. He published a massive polyglot between 1654 and 1657 in nine languages: Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek and Latin. Among his collaborators were James Ussher, John Lightfoot and Edward Pococke, Edmund Castell, Abraham Wheelocke and Patrick Young, Thomas Hyde and Thomas Greaves. It has been considered as the last and most scholarly ever printed.

Walton's Polyglot

In Revelation 16:5 his 1549 Ethiopian (Known today as Amharic, and formerly as Ge'ez) version has a Latin translation with the words:

Justus es Domine, et rectus qui fuisti et eris,..

Eris is a Latin Verb that is the second-person singular future active indicative of sum "you will be"

The Latin translation in the Polyglot says et eris - shalt be!

Herman Hoskier also noted this. So in addition to the early commentaries on the book of Revelation in Latin, the reading found in Revelation 16:5 "and shalt be" is also that of the Ethiopian Version. The early 20th century textual critic Herman Hoskier cited the Ethiopic version as containing the phrase "and shalt be" in Revelation 16:5. This information is found in Hoskier's 'Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse: Collation of All Existing Available Greek Documents with the Standard Text of Stephen's Third Edition Together with the Testimony of the Versions, Commentaries and Fathers', 2 volumes, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1929.

Hoskier mentions Justus es, Domine, et Rectus qui fuisti et eris

The Ethiopic version as cited by Herman Hoskier in Latin:

• "...Justus es, Domine, et Rectus qui fuisti et eris".

Translation of Ethiopic from Latin =

• "Just thou art, and Righteous that was and will be".:

King James Version

• "Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be..."

For more information see the Textus Receptus website on Revelation 16:5.

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