Hoss vs Doug Kutilek, Colossians 1:14

 Hoss vs Douh Kutilek, Colossians 1:14. Hoss's comments in black, Kutilek's in red.

DO “CRITICAL” NEW TESTAMENT GREEK TEXTS SUBVERT
THE DOCTRINE OF BLOOD ATONEMENT?

An assertion commonly found among rigid advocates of the “King James Version Only/textus receptus only” (KJVO/TRO) point of view is that all modern Greek texts“ critical” or Alexandrian texts such as Westcott Hort, the various Nestle editions (1st1902; 27th1993), or the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament editions (1st1966; 4th1993) and also the “majority” or “Byzantine” texts (HodgesFarstad or RobinsonPierpont) subvert or attack the doctrine of blood atonement by excisingripping out references to the blood of Christ. (Actually, all we say is that the modern versions kicked Christ's blood atonement out of Col. 1:14 ("through his blood") and the prophetic reference to Christ's sacrificial death in Genesis 22:8 ("God will provide himself a lamb ") and that most modern versions omit the word "blood" over 100 times (some 200) in the Bible. We do not say that modern versions destroyed the doctrine--we don't say that at all. We just say that you should never omit the blood atonement. Most Bible correctors say "well we didn't completely kill the doctrine just by omitting it in one place".....to that I say, could I get a wrecking ball and destroy only one room of your house, as long as I didn't destroy your entire home? Could I cut off one of your fingers as long as I didn't cut them all off????) A specific example summoned in evidence to prove this claim is Colossians 1:14. In all nontextus receptus Greek texts Alexandrian, majority, it doesn’t matter whichand in all English translations dependent on those Greek texts NIV, NASB, TEV, NEB, RSV, it doesn’t matter which the words “through his blood” (Greek dia tou aimatoV autou) are absent, gone, annihilated. Does this not prove their case and justify their assertion? What further proof could be needed to demonstrate the reality of this heinous assault on the fundamental doctrine of the blood atonement? Before swallowing this KJVO camel, let us consider the facts of the case. First, the blood of Christ is mentioned 40 times in the textus receptus editions of the New Testament and the KJV (if my count is correct), almost half of which have specific reference to the atoning value of the blood of Christ offered in sacrificial payment for our sins

Acts
20:28 “purchased with his own blood”

Romans
5:9 “being now justified by his blood”

Ephesians
1:7 “redemption through his blood”

Ephesians
2:13 “brought near by the blood of Christ”

Colossians
1:14 “redemption through his blood”

Colossians
1:20 “peace through the blood of his cross”

Hebrews
9:12 “but by his own blood”

Hebrews
9:14 “the blood of Christ”

Hebrews
10:19 “by the blood of Jesus”

Hebrews
10:29 “the blood of the covenant”

Hebrews
13:12 “sanctify the people with his own blood”

Hebrews
13:20 “through the blood of the everlasting covenant”

I Peter 1:2 “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus”

I Peter 1:19 “with the precious blood of Christ”

I John 1:7 “the blood of Jesus Christ his son”

Revelation
1:5 “from our sins in his own blood”

Revelation
5:9 “redeemed us to God by your blood”

Revelation
7:14 “in the blood of the lamb”

Revelation
12:11 “by the blood of the lamb”

Some are used with reference to the symbolism in the Lord’s supper

Matthew

26:28 “my blood of the new testament”

Mark
14:24 “my blood of the new testament”

Luke
22:20 “new testament in my blood”

I Corinthians 10:16 “communion of the blood of Christ”

I Corinthians 11:25 “the new testament in my blood”

I Corinthians 11:27 “the body and blood of the Lord”

Some are used figuratively of procuring salvation through faith

John
6:53 “and drink his blood”

John
6:54 “and drinks my blood”

John
6:55 “my blood is drink indeed”

John
6:56 “and drinks my blood”

A few of them are with reference to the guilt/responsibility for Christ’s death

Matthew

27:4 “I have betrayed innocent blood”

Matthew
27:6 “it was the price of blood”

Matthew
27:8 “called the field of blood”

Matthew
27:24 “innocent of the blood of this man”

Matthew
27:25 “his blood be on us”

Acts
5:28 “bring this man’s blood upon us”

A pair of occurrences are with reference to the literal physical blood of Jesus

Luke
22:44 “great drops of blood falling down”

John
19:34 “came thereout blood and water”

And finally a small cluster from I John that are hard to classify, being of uncertain (to me)
interpretation

I John 5:6 “by water and blood”

I John 5:6 “but by water and blood”

I John 5:8 “the Spirit and the water and the blood”

(I do not pretend that this classification scheme is entirely satisfactory, there being some
overlap in categories, and I certainly see the possibility of improvement; I do think I have
located and listed all New Testament references)

In one and only one of these forty places do the nonreceptus editions uniformly lack the reference to the blood of Christ, and that is in the Colossians 1:14 passage noted above. Is the excision, the exclusion, the deletion of “through his blood” there based on something other than sinister motives of the basest sort? Indeed it is. The simple reason the phrase is excluded from these printed texts is that the evidence in favor of including the phrase is notably weak and evidence in support of its exclusion is quite strong (The evidence for swapping "God" for "He" in 1 Tim. 3:16 is also very week.....but that didn't stop the Bible correctors--they are very inconsistent with their manuscript evidence). Adam Clarke in his famous 180 year old commentary (establishing that the facts have long been readily available to anyone and everyone who was actually interested in discovering the truth) well summarizes the evidence: “The clause dia tou aimatoV autou, Through his blood, is omitted by [Greek manuscripts] ABCDEFG, and most others of weight and importance; by the Syriac, Arabic of Erpen, Coptic, Aethiopic, Sahidic, some copies of the Vulgate and by the Itala [Old Latin]; and by most the Greek fathers. Griesbach has left it out of the text. It is likely that the reading here is not genuine; yet that we have redemption any other way than through the sacrifice
of Christ, the Scriptures declare not. The same phrase is used Ephesians 1:7, where
there is no various reading in any of the manuscripts, versions, or fathers.” [vol VI, p.
515]. Somewhat more evidence is known today, but it merely confirms the thrust of
Clarke’s summary. (Yes, there was also ZERO manuscript evidence for changing "orthotomeo" (cut straightly=rightly divide) to "correctly handle" in 2 Timothy 2:15 (ESV, NIV, NASB, etc.)....again, you Bible correctors are not consistent with your manuscript evidence decisions.)

If it were true that the words “through his blood” were omitted in many ancient Greek
manuscripts and modern printed editions at Colossians 1:14 in an attempt to suppress
and eliminate the doctrine of blood atonement, those hypothetical textual corrupters who
carried out this doctrinal assault would have proven themselves as perhaps the most
inept enemies of the Gospel in all history, since they left the reference to the blood of
Christ unchanged in the Ephesians 1:7 (That is like saying that Satan wouldn't have possessed people with devils just because he couldn't possess everybody......) parallel, but more amazingly, did the same just 6
verses later in Colossians 1:20, where the words “having made peace through the blood
of his cross” stand unchanged and unchallenged in all witnesses. No, at Colossians 1:14,
the weight of evidence declares that the words “through his blood” were never an original
part of the text here (Have you ever seen the "original text"?), but were added later by scribes, in conscious or unconscious imitation of Ephesians 1:7 (Who says that Colossians was written after Ephesians? I haven't seen any proof of that.), with perhaps a bit of influence from Colossians 1:20.
[For additional and somewhat more detailed presentation of the evidence at Colossians
1:14, see Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (Moody Press 1958 reprint), vol. 3, p. 201;
Alexander Souter, Novum Testmentum Graece (Oxford: University Press, 1947, revised
edition); Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad, The Greek New Testament According to the
Majority Text (Nashville: Nelson, 1985; second edition); A. Merk, Novum Testamentum
Graece et Latine (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute; seventh edition, 1951). In many
commentaries and Greek New Testaments, this variant is simply ignored, since the
exclusion of the phrase as the true original reading here is not a matter of dispute among
informed writers.] (So we need to look at man's sources to dictate what is part of the Bible?)

In only one other place is reference to the blood of Christ involved in a variant reading
where exclusion is favored by some Greek Testament editors, namely Luke 22:43, 44.
This passage, involving an appearance of an angel in Gethsemane and the bloody sweat
incident, is not quite unique to Luke in Greek manuscripts (it is actually found in one small
group of Greek manuscripts at Matthew 26:39). It is absent from several very early and
important witnesses (manuscripts, versions, and fathers).

[Any detailed treatment by us here would become too involved and distract us from the
larger issue; for a presentation of the evidence, let the interested reader consult The
Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, et al. (1st ed., 1966; 4th, 1993) where there
is a full presentation of the evidence; Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the
Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1971), p. 177 briefly discusses
the evidence and how he evaluates it; F. H. A Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the
Criticism of the New Testament (3rd edition, 1883), pp 599602 discusses in much fuller
detail the evidence known in his day, arriving at a conclusion contrary to Metzger, Aland,
et al. Scrivener’s presentation of evidence requires supplementation today; much of the
more recently discovered evidence goes against Scrivener’s conclusion.]
(So we need to look at man's sources to dictate what is part of the Bible?)

Even among text editors who conclude from the evidence that these two verses were not
an original part of Luke’s Gospel, they nevertheless commonly (but not universally)
include them in the text (Then they are DISHONEST DECEIVERS that should not have stamped "Holy Bible" on a book that they didn't believe was holy!!!!), albeit with markers that indicate that the verses are a later though very early insertion into the text. However this variant arose (either as an insertion
of nonoriginal material into the text, or the deletion of original material from the text either
deliberately or accidentally) (Oh, ok. What did the original say and what did it look like? Did you get a picture made of you standing next to it?), there is nothing to suggest that an assault on the doctrine of blood atonement is afoot, since the nearby reference to the same“The new covenant in my blood” in Luke 22:20 stands untouched in all printed Greek New Testament editions. At any rate the verse Luke 22:44 is not one that speaks directly of the redemptive value of Christ’s blood (in contrast to Colossians 1:14, textus receptus). Having considered these two places Colossians 1:14 and Luke 22:44 it is notable that in none of the other thirty eight references in the New Testament to the blood of Christ, is
there a question as to the genuineness of the text as it stands in the textus receptus, and
all other printed Greek texts (Westcott & Hort, Nestle, HodgesFarstad, etc.). Clearly,
there has been no wholesale assault on the doctrine of blood atonement either in the
Greek manuscripts or in modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament (Says you....mean while "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" --Galatians 5:9).
On the other hand, there is some small evidence on which it could be claimed, using the
same criteria as the KJVO/TRO advocates, that the textus receptus (and all English
translations based on it, including the KJV) attack the doctrine of blood atonement by their
omission of a reference or two to Christ’s blood found in some Greek manuscripts but
excluded by the textus receptus. Specifically, at Matthew 27:49, some early and
important manuscripts, with limited support from ancient versions and a church father add
“and another took a spear and pierced his side, and water and blood came out,” words
nearly identical to a sentence found in John 19:34 (They must not be too "important"....the ESV, NASB, NKJV, and NIV left it out as well. You are trying to pretend that this is unique to the King James Bible when it is not. Naughty naughty Mr. Kutilek, mama have to spank.). Shall we fault the textus receptus
here and accuse its editors of assailing the doctrine of blood atonement for excluding this
phrase? Defenders of the textus receptus would counter that the evidence favoring the
inclusion of the words at Matthew 27:49 is especially weak, and besides, we have the
words in a parallel passage with absolute certainty of genuineness (and from which
passage the words in Matthew 27:49 were likely borrowed). (You have never seen the dead and decayed originals so you really don't know what was "borrowed" and what wasn't.) And to this we would readily
assent; the situation here is very much parallel to the variant at Colossians 1:14 visavis
Ephesians 1:7. We could add to our “evidence” of something “sinister” in the textus receptus the absence
of the “bloody sweat” passage from the textus receptus at Matthew 26:39, where, as
already noted, it is present in one group of related Greek manuscripts. Neither the textus
receptus, nor, consequently, the KJV has this reference to the blood of Christ, at least not
in this place (the ESV, NASB, NKJV, and NIV left it out as well. You are trying to pretend that this is unique to the King James Bible when it is not. Naughty naughty Mr. Kutilek, mama have to spank.). But I suspect that no KJVO/TRO partisans will begin denouncing the textus receptus or the KJV for this “shocking assault “ on the doctrine of blood atonement.

If it were true that modern critical Greek text editors were making a deliberate attempt at
eliminating blood atonement from the Bible, we would expect many, if not most or even all
references to Christ’s blood to be eliminated or at least questioned in these critical Greek
texts, but we do not find this to be the case. In only two of forty places is there a textual
variant, and the conclusion of many text editors to exclude these two passages as nonoriginal
parts of the New Testament is not based on theological reasons, but on an
evaluation of the actual evidence from manuscripts, ancient translations and authors.
The absence of reference to the blood of Christ in some modern English Bible
translations most notoriously “Today’s English Version” (TEV), also known as “The Good
News Bible” (GNB)is a different matter altogether. There, the theology of the translator,
namely Robert Bratcher, who is a theological modernist, likely did play a major part in deemphasizing
blood atonement by sometimes (but not always) substituting “death” or
“sacrificial death” where the Greek literally has “blood.” (see Romans 5:9; Ephesians 1:7;
Colossians 1:20; Revelation 1:5; etc.). The issue here is the theology of the translator,
not the reading of the Greek text followed.

In summary, we must conclude that there is no assault on the doctrine of blood
atonement in modern critical Greek texts (LOL). All claims to that effect are false and are
attempts to incite emotional reactions and passions against those texts, rather than to
correctly inform interested listeners of the actual truth of the matter and the facts of the
case. The alteration of references to the blood of Christ in some few modern Bible
translations is a wholly unrelated issue, having nothing to do with the Greek text on which
those versions are based, and everything to do with the theological disposition of the
translator. (Says you.)
 

Doug
Kutilek

(Hoss

Cartwright)