[Will Kinney]

Excellent points,Steve. Thanks.
Will K

Originally Posted by Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

And before the Reformation zeal and scholarship and faith and the advent of printing you would be hard-pressed to find any Bibles that were the full 66-book canon in one volume. And you would be hard-pressed to find full Bibles that were clearly can unequivocally the 66-book canon and nothing else. You would be, as Will points out, hard-pressed to find the doctrines of infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture clearly expressed.

God providentially used the Reformation Bible in many ways, doctrinally as well as in terms of Bilbiology, its development being in the hands of men seeking God. We saw as well as in the defeat of the Vulgate as God lifted up his word, and we had as well the clear rejection of extra-canonical books, not Scripture.

(Ironically, this Vulgate is even itself far superior to the modern version counter-reformation junque, the Greek NA and UBS and the "modern versions" now peddled by shills of the Bible Version Industrial Complex to the duped and unwary and deceived.)

Thus it is no surprise at all that we cannot point to one extant volume before the Reformation and say what we can say about the King James Bible .. in our hands, for the ploughman and my friends and family and even for the seminarian, is the full and perfect and true and pure word of God.

Also, the Reformation Bible scholarship was an 'uphill' synthesis (the principle of 'scattering and gathering' as Matthew points out) -- not devolution .. this superb analysis and scholarship corrected the small number of mistakes in the generally excellent Greek NT manuscript line. Where most Bibles had lost Acts 8:37, the Johannine Comma, "her purification" and a bit more. Men of faith worked under the anointing of God to give us the pure and perfect Bible.

One key to understanding Bible history is to understand the Reformation Bible .. study Erasmus, Stephanus and Beza, and the defenders like Whitaker and Turretin, learn a bit about the RCC rear-guard .. Cajetan and Catharinus and Bellamine. You will see the excellence of our Bible. Then in the English Bible you will see the complementary uphill action .. Tyndale through to Geneva to the King James Bible (with 4 intermediaries )

The King James Bible was simply the purity and excellence and majesty of this process .. brought to perfection through the providential hand of God.

Shalom,
Steven