CONJECTURE VERSUS TRUTH

Hort and Westcott Greek NT versus Stephanus Greek NT

Opinion	Fact
Alexandrian tests are the earliest and best mss and so are closest to originals	(1) The Bazae texts are earlier than the Alexandrian texts, but have been ignored by some scholars. The current copy of the Bazae dates to the 5th century and is based on a 2nd century copy, without deliberate alterations! (2) On the other hand, the Alexandrian texts can be proven to contain uniquely Catholic/Arian/Gnostic doctrinal accommodations, and thus they are further from originals than the majority of Greek texts. In fact, of the almost 8000 verses¹ in the Alexandrian GNT, about 3000 verses (40%) differ doctrinally from the Stephanus GNT. Stephanus does not accommodate uniquely Catholic/Arian/Gnostic doctrines, while the Alexandrian GNTs do.
The variants are due to copying errors over 20 centuries.	Probability theory says that the variants are deliberate, not accidental, since better than 99% of the variants are in doctrinal verses only. If these were simply errors, then there would be an approximately even distribution of them between doctrinal and non-doctrinal verses¹, but that is not the case at all! In other words, the changes were made deliberately to accommodate uniquely Catholic/Arian/Gnostic doctrines. (BTW, about 2/3^rd of the New Testament contains doctrinal verses, and 1/3^rd contains narrative verses.)
Alexandrian texts came from predecessor Greek texts.	(I.) The Alexandrian texts have in part come from predecessor Greek texts, but over 2400 verses (30%) appear to be back-translated, in some part, from the New Latin of Rome (Catholic church), as attested to by Latin language influenced spellings for names and places, plus numerous Latin grammar vestiges (sloppy translation effort?). (II.) The church at Rome, by their own admissions, changed doctrine and with it the text of the NT, as demonstrated mostly by deletions, word order changes (changes emphasis) and verb tense and mood changes. All of these changes, as seen in the Latin of Jerome of the 4^th century, are reflected in the Latin back-translated Alexandrian Greek text of Hort and Westcott. (III.) Additionally, the Alexandrian scholars also made additional changes, mostly deletions, word order changes (change emphasis) and verb tense and mood changes to conform to Gnostic and Arian doctrinal beliefs. These changes affect about 270 verses, or about 4% of the verses. (IV.) About 3% of the verses in the Alexandrian GNT texts also contain some Medieval Greek spellings, not Koine Greek spellings, which indicates a 4th-5^th century infusion. Also, some spellings in the Alexandrian are Egyptian in origin. (V.) The progression first came from the church at Rome, followed by infusion by the Alexandrian scholars, followed by Hort and Westcott acceptance, who even made a few doctrinal changes to the texts. This then is followed by the UBS, NA and SBL, and other derivatives, and then by modern translations from virtually all publishers except Trinity Bible Society (TBS), as well as both publishers of Hort and Westcott in other languages the world. (VI.) In summary, most all modern translations are, simply put, uniquely Catholic, Arian and Gnostic versions. In fact, the Catholic church today endorses most all modern translations, save a few. This is good news if you are Catholic, but not so if you are seeking a faithful, original version.
The majority of Greek texts are more recent than the Alexandrian texts, and thus less reliable than the older ones (and the more recent ones have added text that was not in the originals).	While it is true that the complete set of 10,000+ majority Greek NT texts are not as old as the Alexandrian texts, more and more older texts are being found, along with numerous external witnesses, from the 2^nd to 4^th century which support the majority text readings over the Alexandrian texts in over 95% of the variants and that number is growing all the time. In fact, many modern translations have gone through dozens of revisions due to these findings and are coming closer to the pure Received Text GNT all the time. Nestle-Aland (NA) is up to revision 29! In fact, even dozens of texts removed in the 4^th century by the church at Rome are quoted by scholars of the church at Rome in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries !!! Thus they made the text match the doctrine, rather then the doctrine match the text.
Modern translations are based on the Received Text and thus just as faithful.	This is only partly true. About 60% of the verses agree verbatim in the Greek NT. The number of Alexandrian text infusions differs from translation to translation, but virtually all modern translations contain some degree of uniquely Catholic/Arian/Gnostic doctrinal accommodation derived from the Alexandrian GNT. Only the pure Received Text translations, reject the uniquely Catholic/Arian/Gnostic doctrinal accommodations. (There are over 150 pure Received Text translations based on Stephanus GNT and derivatives without any accommodations.) Furthermore, some scholars are now "stealing" the name "Received Texts" from the original Received Text line of Bazae, Erasmus and Stephanus, and claiming theirs is the original Received Text, and soon these same scholars are planning to not even acknowledge the Bazae-Erasmus, Stephanus text ever existed, and are producing a new Greek Text that continues to conform to liberal thinking theologians, rather than to God's thinking (our opinion).
Scholarship uses scientific methods, and thus the critical texts discount the Received Text GNTs as faithful texts.	This is an outright lie! There are scholars also working on proving the original Received Text GNT is the true Word of God over the Alexandrian GNT. The evidence above is from scholarly efforts and clearly shows there are two camps: those that support the original, pure Received Text and those that support the Alexandrian GNT, including derivatives Hort and Westcott GNT and UBS, NA, SBL and others.
The Alexandrian texts' scholars are faithful Christians.	Studies show, in their own words, that the scholars are dubious at best and anti-Christ at worst, bringing into question the integrity of all modern translations based on the Alexandrian texts.
Modern translations are more readable.	This is only partly true as: (1) the reading level requirement is higher, say in the NIV than in the KJV and (2) modern translations that drop the 2^nd person singular and plural personal pronouns (ye, thee, thou, thy, thine, etc) introduce the potential for over 15,000 ambiguities in the entire bible. How is that more readable? (BTW, no other language in the world has dropped these personal pronouns, thus making a German bible, for example, more readable than most "dumbed-down" modern English ones.) As for some older words, dictionaries are available, plus most all of the older words have shades of meaning not found in their updated successors. Many examples can be cited. (ex: "Fallen away" means to be wounded or exhausted on the battle field, and without a valid update is now taken to mean you can lose your salvation, instead of updating it in modern versions to "side tracked" from the Greek word "parapipto", which means literally "side-stepped".) There are other pure Received Text versions besides the KJV, such as the Jubilee 2000, so attacking the KJV is pointless.²

NOTES:

Verse numbering is based on modern verse numbering (about 8000 verses in the NT), and is used as a convenient means of probability and statistical analysis.
The authors of this website do not explicitly endorse the KJV, but rather put it in a class with others than conform to the majority of Greek NT texts and to the Masoretic Text.