This day in history: Dean John William Burgon died on this day in 1888. Burgon was an English Anglican theologian who is now mostly remembered as the father of the King James Only Movement. In Burgon's day the King James Bible was the dominant Bible among Protestants, and had been so for hundreds of years. Since the time that the King James Bible was released, some much older manuscripts of the New Testament had been found, and these findings brought into question some of the readings the in the Common Bible at the time. Two scholars, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort created a new Greek Text which would supplant the Received Text (Textus Receptus) underlying the King James Version. So, towards the end of his life, British Bible scholars took the Westcott and Hort Greek text and produced the Revised Version of the Bible which corrected the King James Bible by taking these new findings into consideration.
John Burgon was absolutely not happy with this development and published volleys against the new Bible, and he combined these works into one book called "The Revision Revised." If you look at most newer Bibles, there is a section at the end of the Gospel of Mark that is now relegated to the footnotes, or in brackets. This is a strange section that includes, "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" which is taken literally in some Appalachian churches. Burgon also published a book defending those Last Twelve Verses of Mark.
Dean Burgon claimed to have found over 85,000 quotations in the early church fathers that he said used the later Byzantine Greek text used by the King James translators. However, Burgon appears to have used later medieval texts of those fathers. A modern patristic text-critical scholar, Gordon D. Fee, has said that there are NO ante-Nicene fathers (i.e. before 325 A.D.) who quoted the Byzantine text.
Two of the most considerable Scriptures that the Revised Version corrected was argued about earlier by none other than Sir Isaac Newton himself. Newton even wrote about them in his Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, I. John v. 7, [For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one] and I. Tim. iii. 16, [God was manifest in the flesh]. The much older Greek manuscripts do not contain these words as written.
John Burgon's legacy can be found in the King James Only Movement whose adherents believe that the King James Bible is superior to all others, and newer Bibles based on older manuscripts are corruptions, perhaps even Satanic.
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2021/07/help-mark-jones-stage-4-cancer-journey.html
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