Emails with Doug Kutilek on Bible Versions

These emails were prompted by a search on the net on 1John 5:7 because a friend said that it wasn't in the originals. I found support for it on several sites, including the Chick Publications site which is mostly straight on. Then i saw a page by Doug Kutilek saying that there was no ancient support for this text at all. I agree my first email to him should have been worded different, but his scorning of any research by anybody without degrees in the field of Biblical research, and his quiet acknowledgement of not wanting to keep the 10 Commandments which he disparaged on his site, speaks volumes to me. On his site he also writes that the first printed NT was in the early 16th century, and that none of the differences in the manuscripts affects doctrine, which prompted some questions to him which he did not answer. While disparaging Wilkinson and Fuller and others who point out problems with the NIV, RSV, Critical Text etc., he holds up Westcott, Hort, and translators of the NIV and other books.


2002/12/10
Your work on this text is very poor. Please look a little harder, and you will see abundant evidence from ancient manuscripts for this text.
Daniel Winters


12/11
Mr. Winters--

I have made a very thorough search. Of some 350 to 400 Greek manuscripts
of I John, exactly 4 have v. 7 in the text; all four are very late
manuscripts (15th-16th century), and, interestingly enough, not a single
one of these manuscripts agrees precisely, word-for-word with the text as
printed in Erasmus' 1522 Greek NT. Four additional manuscripts have the
words written in the margin; in all of these cases, the marginal addition
is very late--in at least two of the cases later than the printing of
Erasmus' text.

Further, no ancient translation of the I John--whether into Syriac,
Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, etc. had these words, except some
latin. And even here, the few Old Latin manuscripts which have the words
in some form disagree among themselves as to the precise wording, no two
agreeing precisely one with another. The Latin Vulgate in its earliest
form (ca. 385 A.D.) did not have the passage, though later Latin Vulgate
manuscripts do have it in various and varying form.

No ancient Greek writer ever mentions the passage, even though it would
have been ideally suited to the great Trinitarian controversies in the
3rd/4th centuries.

You may examine the evidence for yourself by consulting the commentaries
on this passage by Adam Clarke, Henry Alford, B. F. Westcott, Bruce
Metzger, and Raymond Brown; this last has the latest presentation of the
facts. More information can be found in the various Greek New
Testaments, especially the Nestle/Aland 27th edition, and the United
Bible Societies' Greek New Testament, 4th edition.

If you are clinging to the hokey list of manuscripts put out by D. A.
Waite, allegedly from the Trinitarian Bible Society, I suggest that you
contact the TBS, who will inform you that that list is wrong and that it
did not come from them. John Gill's claim, based on Matthew Poole's
Latin commentary, is also simply wrong.

I attach an article by me about Luther re: I John 5:7.

Any questions?

Doug Kutilek


12/12
Thank you for your reply Mr. Kutilek,
I saw several places on the net that had information contradictory to yours,
so yours looked inferior. I apologize if my assumptions about your research
were incorrect.

The major thing that is involved, is are the words themselves from God, or
are just the ideas from God? I see you fully agree that the words are from
God. So it is troubling to see you refer one to works by Westcott etc.
Probably after Darwin and Marx, Westcott and Hort have been most influential
agents for Satan during the last 200 years.

No i'm not a King James only advocate. But when people make new versions
not believing the words are from God, then i must reject those versions.
There are huge doctrinal differences between some of the versions, something
you surely must be aware of? The first printed NT was not in the early 16th
century as you say, but in 1454.

In reading some other articles by you, it seems that you do not love Jesus,
because he said that those who love him would keep his commandments. Do you
keep his commandments?

May we follow the Lamb wherever he leads!
Daniel Winters


12/13

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 15:15:07 +0900 "danny winters" <tenkoku1@hotmail.com>
writes:
> Thank you for your reply Mr. Kutilek,
> I saw several places on the net that had information contradictory
> to yours,
> so yours looked inferior. I apologize if my assumptions about your
> research
> were incorrect.

First of all, just because you find something posted on the net is no
guarantee that it is accurate. You need to be more careful in your
reliance on sources.

> The major thing that is involved, is are the words themselves from
> God, or
> are just the ideas from God? I see you fully agree that the words
> are from
> God. So it is troubling to see you refer one to works by Westcott
> etc.
> Probably after Darwin and Marx, Westcott and Hort have been most
> influential
> agents for Satan during the last 200 years.

You have bought into somebody's propaganda regarding W & H, and have
slandered the names of men about whom I suspect you know next to nothing
by direct contact with their writings (much that has been published
slamming the theology of Westcott and Hort has been grossly
misrepresented by out of context quotations, half quotes, misquotes, etc.
I attach an article on their alleged "occult" involvement). Actually,
Westcott made many valuable contributions to Biblical scholarship,
including outstanding commentaries on John, Hebrews and John's Epistles,
plus books on the history of the Bible through the centuries, the history
of the English Bible, the study of the Gospels, and numerous scholarly
articles (one on the "Latin Vulgate" in Smith's Bible Dictionary, 4 vol.
ed., is outstanding). So outstanding a Baptist as John Broadus highly
praised Westcott's writings, as did Charles Spurgeon. I have read far
less of Hort (limited in fact to a single book on the early church
fathers, which I found to be poorly done)., and therefore refrain from
characterizing him.

In fact, the men who have caused the greatest turmoil among
fundamentalists in the past 40 years, and who have done so by
disseminating blatantly false information far and wide are D. O. Fuller,
Peter Ruckman, and D. A. Waite (and to a somewhat lesser degree David
Cloud and Gail Riplinger). If you want to identify the "agents of Satan"
(albeit unwitting) in the Bible version controversy, you must look to
these people.

> No i'm not a King James only advocate. But when people make new
> versions
> not believing the words are from God, then i must reject those
> versions.

So then, you DO accept the NKJB, the NIV and the NASB since all the
translators of these versions put in writing their belief in verbal,
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures?

> There are huge doctrinal differences between some of the versions,
> something
> you surely must be aware of?

I have no doubt that I am much more aware of these matters than you
appear to be. I reject such tainted versions as the Good News Bible,
Contemporary English Version, the RSV and NRSV expressly because of the
willful mistranslation done by the translators of each of these.

The first printed NT was not in the early 16th
> century as you say, but in 1454.

Depends on the language. Earliest printed NT in any language--Latin
Vulgate NT in the famous "Gutenberg Bible" of ca. 1453; first printed
Greek NT, 1514 (first one published, 1516); first printed English NT,
1526. In my letter, the printed edition I mentioned was Erasmus' Greek
NT of 1522, which was his third edition (others, 1516, 1519, and later
1527, 1535), and THE FIRST OF HIS TO INCLUDE THE WORDS FOUND IN 1 JOHN
5:7. You apparently do not read with much attention given to accurate
understanding.

> In reading some other articles by you, it seems that you do not love
> Jesus,
> because he said that those who love him would keep his commandments.
> Do you
> keep his commandments?

I will excuse your ignorance and accusations and ascribe them to the
folly of youth (I perceive that you are a very young man, early 20s at
most, and likely less--perhaps a first semester Bible college student?).

I suggest that you actually inform yourself from reliable sources before
you write me again. I suggest that you get and read--

1. Carson, D. A., The King James Version Debate (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1979).

2. Beacham, Roy E., and Bauder, Kevin T., eds., One Bible Only? (Grand
Rapids: Kregel, 2001).

3. Geisler, Norman L., and Nix, William E., A General Introduction to the
Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986. Revised and expanded edition).

4. Metzger, Bruce M., The Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford
University Press. 3rd edition).

5. Moulton, William F., The History of the English Bible (London: Charles
H. Kelly, 1911. 5th edition).

Some of these are still in print and available for purchase; others can
be borrowed through local libraries. If you are serious about being
properly informed on this issue you will hunt up these works and read
them.

Doug Kutilek

PS. See attachments that deal with some of the issues you mention.


12/15
Thank you for your second response here Mr. Kutilek,
It is certainly correct that there is a lot of rubbish on the internet. In
looking for information on 1John 5:7, i found several sites, one of which i
know and trust, that had information referred to earlier. Then i saw your
site which had opposing information, so considered it flawed. In reading
this 2nd email from you, my first impressions are strengthened.

Perhaps some, or even all of the translators of the NIV believed in the
verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. But that was not required by
the Committee on Bible Translation which oversaw the translation of that
book. They say: "The first concern of the translators has been the accuracy
of the translation and its fidelity to the thought of the biblical writers.
They have weighed the significance of the lexical and grammatical details of
the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. At the same time, they have striven for
more that a word-for-word translation."
http://www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/background.php This is very clear - they
did not translate the words, but the THOUGHTS, and so they strove for BETTER
than a word-for-word translation.

Herbert Wolf (one of the NIV translators) writes, "While it may be true that
AT TIMES THE NIV TRANSLATORS HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF READING SOMETHING INTO THE
TEXT, I would contend that overall this version has achieved a high degree
of accuracy by its philosophy of translation" (Barker, p.146).
http://www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/mct/NIV_MCT.pdf (bolding-mine). I don't
care for anyone's philosophy of translation. God gave his words, and they
should be translated carefully. I have done translation myself, and know
how difficult it is. The same God who guided the hands of the writers will
guide the hands of the translators if they put aside their pride and
preconceived ideas.

I do accept the KJV, NKJV, LITV, and ALT versions as the inspired Word of
God.

Mr. Westcott did not believe in the infallibility of the Scriptures and
expressed his unbelief in the miracles of Jesus this way: "I never read an
account of a miracle but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and
discover somewhat of evidence in the account of it."(Westcott, Arthur, Life
and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott. New York, 1903 Volume1 p.52). His
unbelief in the Creation account in Genesis is stated by himself as: "No one
now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example,
give a literal history - I could never understand how anyone reading them
with open eyes could think they did..."(Ibid.Volume2 p.69).

Does the above sound like a man who: "made many valuable contributions to
Biblical scholarship"???

Thank you for clarifying that you do see differences in doctrine between the
various Bibles. Perhaps you still believe there is no doctrinal difference
between texts? You quote Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, in a article regarding the
traditional text and Alexandrian text at: http://www.ibri.org/45whvstr.htm
saying: "the differences between the rival types of text is not one of
doctrine".

You write at: http://www.kjvonly.org/doug/simple_outline.htm that: "=The
doctrinal teaching of all 1,500 printed editions of the Greek NT is
identical. 3. Most scribal errors are immediately recognizable, and the
text of the NT can be established with 99.5% certainty, and the remaining
.5% does not affect doctrine." This does not stand up to scrutiny.

This is a quote from your article at:
http://www.kjvonly.org/doug/simple_outline.htm "b. from the 1st century
until the printing of the NT in the early 16th century (more than 1,400
years), all copies of the NT were hand-written manuscripts." That is why i
pointed out that the first NT was actually printed in 1454 instead.

This last one is a very small point, but it is representative of your
responses - well do you compare with religious leaders in a small Middle
Eastern country around 2,000 years ago who rejected the truth because it
came from a bunch of unlearned fishermen.

Please do not continue to reject the commandments of God, as they are good
and just. When he said not to have other gods, he meant it. When he said
to keep the 7th day of the week holy, he meant it. When he said not to bear
false witness, he meant it.

May we align ourselves with the great hewer, fall on the rock, and be ready
at all times,
Daniel Winters
PS: Neither am i young or a Bible College student as you suggest....sorry.


12/17
I could reply at length, but will not.

Wolf's comment is unremarkable--EVERY translator or group of translators
puts their own views into the text; Luther did so by adding" alone" to
Romans 3:28; the KJV translators certainly did it by using "church"
instead of "congregation", "baptize" instead of immerse, "bishop" instead
of "overseer," etc.

As for seeking to achieve something more than a word-for-word version,
this too is commendable, as such a word for word version would very often
be unintelligible. The KJV not infrequently also paraphrases--"given by
inspiration of God" at 2 Tim. 3:16, which literally is "God-breatherd,"
as the NIV has. In Matthew 27:44, "cast the same in his teeth" is a
remarkably "free" rendering, to say the least. "God forbid" throughout
the KJV is at best a paraphrase, a "thought-for-thought" rendering.

I assumed you were a neophyte to the issue because of the level of
gullibilty, ignorance and arrogance you display. Pardon my mistake.

Read and examine my posted writings. No further correspondence is likely
to be profitable.

Doug Kutilek

Well, while his translation of the Analytical-Literal Translation New Testament is very good, he shows that he has lots of pride in himself, doesn't believe the words in the Bible are from God (begging the question why he even felt it necessary to translate them), and that he is currently not interested in keeping God's commandments. Doug Kutilek, I pray you will repent, and turn to Jesus, and keep all of His holy words.


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