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REVELATION 20: 5

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 30, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 38.

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REVELATION 20: 5.

By Editor

Is It Spurious?

A RELIGIOUS publishing house and tract society continue to circulate the following:—
In Rev. 20: 5 the words, "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished," are spurious. They are not found in the oldest and most reliable Greek MSS., the Sinaitic, Vatican Nos. 1209 and 1160, nor in the Syriac MS. We must remember that a few passages found in the modern copies are additions which do not properly belong to the Bible. Since [it is] commanded not to add to the Word of God, it is our duty to repudiate such additions as soon as their spurious character is established. The words indicated probably crept into the text by accident, in the fifth century; for no MS. of earlier date (either Greek or Syriac) contains this clause. It was probably at first merely a marginal comment made by a reader, expressive of his thought upon the text, and copied into the body of the text by some subsequent transcriber who failed to distinguish between the text and the comment.
What are the facts?—Simply these: (1) The Revelation itself is not found in Vatican MS. 1209; of course Rev. 20: 5 would not be there. (2) In Vatican MS. No. 1160, the words in question were probably omitted by copyist; for (3) they are found in A Codex Alexandrinus, of the fifth century; (4) in B Codex Vaticanus, of the seventh century; (5) in C Codex Ephrami Rescriptus, No 9, probably of the fifth century. (6) The words are printed by Dr. Robert Young in his "Bible Translation" with no marks of doubt; (7) the same with Hind's Interlinear Translation, the text of which is the combined results of Greek scholarship; (8) Rotherham's Emphatic Translation, based on Tregelles' Greek text, does not even question the words. (9) Alford, a noted Greek scholar and translator, raises not even a question concerning them; and (10) the Revised Version, and we know not how many other authorities, are likewise in harmony. The genuineness of the text is not questioned by good authority. The above note is published for a purpose foreign from truth, not perhaps by the human agent, but by Satan.