A Critique of New Age Bible Versions, Part 8

March 2, 2024 at 10:27 am (Textual Criticism)

We are finally to the Introduction, which is where the pagination starts. She starts with some immediate slander of some of the finest men in the Christian world. The translators of the best modern versions (original NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB) as well as others which I do not think are so fine, but which are still attached to illustrious names (the LSB, for instance) are here caught in her crossfires. If we are to believe Riplinger, men like Mark Boda, Simon Gathercole, Richard Hess, Douglas Moo, William Mounce, Andrew Shead, and Mark Strauss (for the NIV) are all engaged as “chief conspirators in the New Age movement’s push for a One World Religion.” For the ESV, it’s men like Lane Dennis, Vern Poythress, J.I. Packer, Clinton Arnold, Frank Thielman, R. Kent Hughes, Douglas O’Donnell, and Kevin DeYoung. For the NASB, it is men like Gleason Archer, Kenneth Barker, Charles Feinberg, John Hartley, Moises Silva, Merrill Tenney, Robert Thomas, and Kenneth Wuest. For the CSB, it is men like Iain Duguid, Robert Bergen, Craig Blomberg, George Knight, Andreas Kostenberger, Duane Garrett, Eugene Merrill, and Robert Mounce. For the LSB, the main name is John Macarthur, of course. She is saying all these men (and more) are the chief conspirators in foisting New Age One World Religion on the world. She needs to repent for such gross slander as this. She also claims that she “objectively and methodically documents the following discoveries.” I do agree that her “discoveries” stun the reader, but not quite the way she thinks they should. As for objectivity, I see none. Instead, there is a conspiracy-theory-laden twisting of words out of their contexts to kinda-sorta match up with New Age speculation, as if meaning only occurs on the word level.

In her numbered paragraph one, she acts as though modern versions have absolutely zero evidence in the manuscript traditions for their readings and translations. I will continue to beat this drum, since Riplinger continues to ignore the problem: if she is going to blame modern versions for this, she will also have to believe that the conspiracy goes all the way back to the 5th century and the copying of the manuscripts on the basis of which modern translations have largely relied.

In paragraph two, she commits several fallacies. She thinks that the mere presence of the phrase “new age” in a letter of Westcott proves that he was a New Age proponent. The phrase “new age” can mean many things. The reader can see for himself (page 252 of the file) whether Riplinger has fairly represented Westcott or not. She elsewhere accuses Westcott of spiritualism and occultism, which confuses two different people with the last name of Westcott, as the link below of Timothy Berg and Mark Ward shows.

She then calls the entire Reformed tradition heretical. The Reformed world indeed believes that regeneration must precede faith, and that this means the language of being born again (which is synonymous with regeneration) happens before faith in Christ. She quotes Kenneth Barker as saying that “Few clear and decisive texts that declare that Jesus is God.” This is true, even for the KJV. There are not that many texts. There are enough to establish that truth quite decisively even in the modern versions. But Barker didn’t lie here.

Riplinger is quite unclear as to what she means by attacking the NASB’s progenitor, and then quoting David Schaff’s life of Phillip Schaff. The page in question is a letter from B. Weiss to Phillip Schaff, and has nothing to do with what Riplinger thinks it says. Read it for yourself. She references Alex Jack’s work in the same footnote. I could not find the Alex Jack quotation in the version online at Internet Archive. The whole point is completely muddled.

She strangely lumps together people from different millennia (“authors of the Greek editions, manuscripts, lexicons and dictionaries”) as people who “hold beliefs which an orthodox Christian would find shocking.” I would like to know what her definition of “orthodox Christian” is. Some of the editors of the TR held positions she might find shocking. She believes they hold seances, and are in mental institutions, prison cells, and have been tried for heresy. She gives no documentation at this point. Given the number of times she says “documentation to follow,” I expect she will tell us what this means. I am already familiar with one of her slanders of Westcott, accusing him of dalliances with the occult. For refutation, see the excellent work of Timothy Berg and Mark Ward.

She makes the bizarre claim that some editors of new versions have permanently lost their ability to speak (even if this true, why in the world would that prove her point? If she believes that losing one’s ability to speak can only be explained by her theory, then she is solidly placing herself in the company of Job’s errant friends).

She makes an equally bizarre claim that is not referenced at all that another new version editor went insane. There is no footnote here to give us any particulars.

Another example of poisoning the well fallacy (or “guilt by association”) is in her claim that “the reference dictionary” used to research Greek etymology (I question this, as etymology is not a reliable guide as to a word’s meaning) was edited by a Nazi war criminal. Again, no footnotes. Does Riplinger really think that, as horrible as Nazi war crimes were, and as horrible as the Holocaust was, that God could not use such people for any good purpose whatsoever? God used Satan Himself to bring about His mighty plan of salvation in the cross of Jesus Christ. If she is talking about the BDAG lexicon, the first edition wasn’t even published until 1957.

As to the reading level required by the KJV, see Mark Ward’s excellent series of videos on false friends, and his book Authorized for refutation.

Her claim in paragraph four is too general to be very clear. In paragraph five, she goes off the deep end by actually claiming that “the few Greek manuscripts underlying new versions contain yet unreleased material which is an exact blueprint for the antichrist’s One World Religion” (3). Apparently, she thinks they haven’t been translated yet. All of these manuscripts are online for searching, at the Center. The only way she can make this claim is to wrench words and phrases out of their contexts, find New Age authors who kinda-sorta say something similar, and then claim a connection between these 1600-year-old manuscripts and modern New Agers (whose familiarity with 5th-century biblical manuscripts might justly be held in some doubt).

The last section of her introduction asks the question “Why this book?” In it, she thinks she will “scatter to the wind many false arguments and confident conclusions” (3). Ironic, given how many false arguments and conclusions I have already pointed out in her book.

An utterly bizarre shift to Kent State University points to a question about Lucifer, the morning star, and the various interpretations of the phrase. Here Riplinger shows that she shares a hermeneutic with heretics. Heretics take opaque passages, drive a truck through them, and make clear passages accord with the unclear, when the proper procedure is to take the clear passages and use them to help interpret the unclear. Isaiah 14 has many different interpretations attached to it. There is no particular reason why both could not be called “morning star” in different senses, as in this scenario: Jesus is the true morning star, and Lucifer is the counterfeit. The principle of Satan’s counterfeiting is now well established in the literature on the book of Revelation. He has a counterfeit Trinity, counterfeit death and resurrection, counterfeit church, etc. Why not counterfeit titles? Scholars on Isaiah 14 tend to favor the interpretation that the morning star there is a reference to the king of Babylon, incidentally, and that the passage has nothing to do with Satan or Jesus, an interpretation which has some merit.

She calls Manuscript D (Codex Bezae) “esoteric,” a bizarre claim. She shows no knowledge that the HCSB in its newer edition is no longer called with the name “Holman,” but is simply the Christian Standard Bible now. I agree with Riplinger that the changes to the NIV 2011 are not good. However, she immediately follows this truth with the claim that BHS is corrupt. The BHS’s Hebrew text is very similar to the Asher text that Bomberg used in the edition most likely used by the KJV translators.

She commits the statistical fallacy on the bottom of page 4, or what I call the argument of the beard, explained in previous posts. She writes, “Is it any wonder the NKJV omits ‘Lord’ 66 times, ‘God’ 51 times, ‘heaven’ 50 times, ‘repent’ 44 times, ‘blood’ 23 times, and ‘hell’ 22 times. It mistranslates and thereby demotes Jesus Christ, teaches progressive salvation, and introduces other heresies.” The number of times a word occurs has no relevance as to the security of the doctrine related to the words. Remember, words are not the same thing as ideas. So, the KJV has the word “lord” (which would include secular uses of the word) 7836 times, whereas the NKJV has it 7773 times. That means there are 63 (not her 66) more instances in the KJV, a less than one percent difference between the two versions. Does this mean that the NKJV weakens the doctrine of God, because a word does not occur in 63 texts? This is illogical. The KJV has the word “God” 4444 times, and the KJV has it 4394 times, a difference of 50 times. This is a little over one percent difference. Color me unimpressed. Even when we get down to the lower numbered words, the argument of the beard still holds. Heaven is mentioned 582 times in the KJV compared to 532 times in the NKJV, again a less that one percent difference. Apparently she thinks that mentioning something 532 times in the NKJV is completely insufficient to establish the doctrine of heaven. On repentance, she does not show any possible understanding that the word “repent” can be translated another way, such as “turn away from,” or “return to Me.” Has she accounted for these possibilities? It does not appear so. I will tackle the last table in the Introduction in the next post.