HOW TO TEACH "THE ORIGINAL" GREEK TEXT The complete inside story of what goes on in the classrooms of PCS, BBC, Pacific Coast Bible College, Tennessee Temple, Bob Jones University, Dallas, and Grace Theological Seminaries as they follow the lead of Yale, Furman, Har- vard, Stetson, Fuller, Judson, Fuller, Denver, Wheaton, and Louisville Theological Seminaries in destroying the Holy Bible (Authorized Version) while USING it. Dr. Peter S. Ruckman B.A., M.A., B.D., Th.M., Ph.D. ================================= Other Materials Available t t t By Dr. Peter S. Ruckman: ú Bible Believer's Commentary Series ú Beginning and Advanced Bible-Study Material ú ln-Depth Apologetics ú Numerous Pamphlets of Selected Topics ú Variety of Gospel Tracts ú Audio Cassettes ú Video Cassettes Also Available: ú A.V. 1611 Bibles ú Study Helps ú Concordances ú Biographies ú Evangelistic Material ú Material by Other Authors and Speakers t t t For FREE Current Catalogue write: Bible Baptist Bookstore P.0. Box 7135, Pensacola, FL 32534 (904) 477-8812 ========================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................... i The Greek On The Street..................................... 1 Puffing The Sucker............................................... 11 Destroying The Faith In A "Fortress Of Faith".......................................... 17 Finer Points Of "Scholarship Onlyism"................. 31 Fruits Of Believing The Professional Liars........... 49 How Not To Do It In Greek Class.......................... 69 The New King Jimmy-Wimmy Version.................. 87 Correcting The Greek Textus Receptus With the "King's English"...................................... 97 The Bottom Line On Teaching Greek................. 105 ''I Had A Dream''................................................... 121 Epilogue................................................................ 125 Postscript.............................................................. 129 ============================================ COPYRIGHT (C) 1992 Peter S. Ruckman This work has been reproduced with permission of the author by: Pensacola Bible Institute/The Firehouse bbs FamilyNet 8:1011/0 FamilyNet: pbi@firehouse.org BBS # (904) 478-5320 PUBLISHER'S NOTE The scripture quotations found herein are from the text of the Authorized King James Version of the Bi- ble. Any deviations therefrom are not intentional. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Scanned using Scanman "Easy Touch" =============================================== INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION The "chink in the armour," or the "Achilles Heel,'' of Fundamentalism is a thing that no one has ever mentioned or discussed in print. Since this fatal weakness has been THE cause of apostasy in every generation since 1800, it is carefully con- cealed by Christian educators in 1992, and all of them pretend that no such fatal weakness exists, or has ever existed. Just as there is an iron-clad conspiracy of silence about the sinners who talked our modern Fundamentalist leaders out of their faith in the King James Bible (see the Bible Believers' Bulletin, May- September of 1991), so there is a "black out'' when anyone tries to flnd out what actually goes on in a Christian college, university, or seminary (or even "institute") that turns a Bible- believing young man into a destructive critic of the King James Bible. Someone has been doing something, since the days of Westcott and Hort ( 1880), to completely destroy young ministers' faith in absolute authority, and whoever it is, they have been operating behind CLOSED DOORS: the closed doors of a Christian college, seminary, or university. (See the publica- tion King James Onlyism vs. Scholarship Onlyism, 1992). As these apostate ministers are matriculated (at a rate of nearly one thousand a year since 1940), they take an unwritten oath of loyalty to someone never to tell anyone WHO it was that rlrst destroyed their faith in the Book by which they were saved and called to preach. For two years, we published in the Bible Believers' Bulletin a request for any one of these men to tell us where and when (and under whose ministry) he was converted from a Bible-believer into a professional critic. Not one man ever sent in one word of testimony. Dr. A.T. Robert- ii HOW TO TEACH "THE ORIGINAL" GREEK TEXT son and Kenneth Wuest were both saved under the teaching and preaching of a King James Bible Both pretended the Holy Spirit led them in their ''life ministries'' to alter the Book and destroy people's faith in it. Ditto John Ankerberg and Chuck Swindoll. In a lifetime, Bob Jones Jr. and Bob Jones III never let out a PEEP about WHERE and WHEN they abandoned the Book that got them saved. Neither did Robert Sumner or Curtis Hut- son. In two hundred years of church history, you cannot find one destructive critic of the King James Bible who will testify as to when he began to doubt it and began to follow men, and men's opinions, instead of the Book. Not even Spurgeon, or R.A. Torrey, would dare tell you where they got their infor- mation from. They let you think they got it from the Holy Spirit, without saying so. In vain, one will search the autobiographies of B.H. Car- roll, George Truett, John Broadus, "Hot Dog" Hymers, John R. Rice, Doug Kutilek, Bob Ross, John Gilpin, l. Vernon McGee, Jerry Falwell, Harold Willmington, Arthur Farstad, Zane Hodges, Sumner Wemp, and R. B. Thieme to find the slightest trace of the moment that they began to doubt the Holy Bible and look for flaws in it. But it happened to every one of them. Their silence is ''consent." The Lord taught them NOTHING when it came to their "insights" into ''misleading translations,'' "better renderings," "unfortunate translations," "a better reading should be," etc. They were caught up in a conspiracy. A billion dollar educational conspiracy ($$$). In this work, we will get to the roots of this matter. We will show you who it was, and when it was, and how it was, that they lost their God-given, God inspired faith in the words of God (I Thess. 2:13) and began to take them as the words of men (John 7:17), and misguided men, at that. The trouble began with them, as it began with every apostate Conservative, every unsaved Liberal, every dead orthodox Evangelical, every corrupt Neo-evangelical, every unsaved Catholic, and unsaved "Modernist" on the North American continent. It began with a Greek teacher. If they did not sit in class under this teacher, they at least studied a book written by this teacher, or one of his pupils. If they did not HEAR this INTRODUCTION iii Greek teacher, they ''read after him." If they did not study under him, they believed what was said about him that was passed on to them. Or, if they did not take an actual course under him, they read his comments passed on to them through a commentary, a ''word study," or a sermon note. The trou- ble BEGAN with a Greek teacher. It began that way everywhere it happened and evely time it took place. If the greenhorn never even learned to read Greek-let alone "master it"-he, at least, succumbed to the "wisdom" of the Greek teacher and took his word for some matter over against the words that God gave him when he was saved. There is a Greek teacher at the bottom of every Christian's conversion from fidelity to infidelity. The darnage done by these saved (and unsaved) Greek teachers through a period of one hundred years (1880-1980) is absolutely incalculable. Their in- fluence over five generations of ministers (1880-1980) is what has produced modern, American ''Christianity.'' Every sin, failure, flaw, weakness, and ineffectiveness in modern Fun- damentalism, Conservatism, Orthodoxy, and Evangelicalism can be traced to one root: the minister's loss of authority, so that he speaks as "one of the scribes" and cannot control ANYTHING in his church, or have any scriptural effect on anyone in his neighborhood. For this power and authority, America has substituted money, buildings, and Christian educa- tion. It is as SECULAR as the New Age Movement when it comes to the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Tirn. 3:5), and the authority of the Holy Bible (Mark 7:9). "The word of God'' (see The Christian 's Handbook of Manuscnpt Evidence, 1970, Chaps. 1, 2) was run off the highway. It was run off by a Greek teacher; not one exception in one hundred years of church history. It is the Greek teacher who closes each class period with "DID GOD REALLY SAY THAT?" (Gen. 3:1). It is the Greek teacher who opens each class with "DO YOU REALLY HAVE THE WORDS OF GOD" (Gen. 3:1)? It was the Greek teachers who put Robertson, Sumner, Schaff, Green, Willmington, DeWette, Farstad, Hodges, Melton, Wuest, Nicoll, Kittel, Hackett, Swete, Machen, Knowling, Davis, Trench, Bruce, Thayer, and James Price on the shelf for life. iv HOW TO TEACH ''THE ORIGINAL GREEK TEXT This book will show the Bible-believing Christian how to teach Greek and how not to teach it, or, to put it over the plate waist high: "How Greek has been taught at Pensacola Bible Institute (PBI) for twenty-nine years, compared with the way it has been taught at Louisville Seminary for fifty years.'' Here, you will see the two techniques laid side by side and you will learn why PBI produces soul-winning, Bible-believing, street preachers, and why BJU and Tennessee Temple (and BBC and PCS) produce nothing but smooth, slick, amateur critics of a Book they know little or nothing about. In studying the two techniques, you will see that they are built on two separate foun- dations. Our foundation is: "God has given us the words He wants us to have, and has preserved them for us inspite of 'godly Christian scholars' (1800-1990). What is obscure or 'contradic- tory' about these words can be solved by prayer and study com- ing from a BELIEVING HEART and a HUMBLE MIND.'' Directly opposing this position-completely contrary to it in every respect-will be found the position of BBC, Furrnan, Stet- son, PCS, Moody, Bob Jones, Baylor, Wheaton, Fuller, Dallas, Pacific Coast, Pillsbury, Piedmont, BIOLA, and the rest of the Alexandrian offshoots: "Since the Bible was NOT written in English but in Greek, only an accurate knowledge of Greek will reveal the true mind of God. The Authorized Version is filled with mistranslations and should be corrected by 'THE GREEK TEXT.' To do this, the determining factor in finding the truth of God is a knowledge of Greek grammar and syntax.'' The first technique produces Bible-believing pastors, evangelists, and missionaries who never lose their faith in ONE WORD of the Book that got them to Christ and into the ministry. The other technique guarantees a proud, self-righteous Nico- laitan, who not only desires to " Lord it over" the AV translators with his superior "twentieth century (!) Laodecian education," but also to Lord it over every Bible-believer who still believes the BOOK. His desire is to convert the believer to an infidel, when it comes to matters of authoriy (Nicolaitanism), and so place himself in the MIND of the believer as the "last word" as to what the Bible should say, that it doesn't say, in English. We hope you enjoy the book. In it, you will see that any INTRODUCTION v school in America could have preserved the faith of its ministerial students in the Holy Bible. We have never had any trouble in twenty-nine years. The schools chose not to preserve their faith in the Book because they wanted the students to deposit their faith in the school. This is the standard Roman Catholic practise since 325 A.D. The sucker delivers his conscience to the Church as the final authority instead of the Book. In the Moody-Bob Jones-Tennessee Temple-PCS-wheaton-BIOLA- BBC, etc. circuit, ne delivers his conscience to the GREEK TEACHERS and the Greek scholars. The Catholic practise pro- duced the Dark Ages; the modern Fundamentalist practise has produced the present "local church'' condition that one finds in America from "sea to sea" (Amos 8:11). In the deep, dark, shrouded oblivion of every apostate Fun- damentalist's background is the MAN (or the MEN) who planted the first doubt in his mind about the Book. And in the background of that man (or men) is the man (or men) who led him into the same path of destructive criticism. And behind them.... It is a long line of "apostolic succession,'' but it has nothing to do with New Testament Christianity, or Bible- believing pastors and soul winners. It has to do with Genesis 3:1, where the founder of the Scholar's Union tempted a woman to get a "superior education (Gen. 3:1,5). Here is how to teach "Greek" and how NOT to teach "Greek.'' If the apostates had known the right way to do it- which they may, or may not, have known-they did not chose to do it the right way. They took the Darwinian jungle expe- diency (''me first, you next") of all pragmatic humanists, and destroyed the pupil. If they had wanted to know the right way, all they would have to do would be to drop ''Ruckman" a let- ter. They didn't want to know THAT bad. (That is carrying a love for truth too far!) So, they lied to the pupil and turned him into a LIAR. ================================================ THE GREEK ON THE STREET 1 CHAPTER ONE The Greek On The Street We now step into the classroom. We are about to embark on one of the most thrilling and spiritual adventures of the Chris- tian life. We are going to learn Greek so we can study ''THE" Greek New Testament! We are on our way to mastering ''the original tongues' ' from which the A V translators translated, and once this is accomplished, we will know what God REALLY said, instead of what we THOUGHT He said. Man, what a privilege! If our Greek teacher is "up to snuff," he will begin by reading several quotations from Wuest's Nuggets in the Greek New Testament, or a similar work, to prove to the student that a working knowledge of Greek is not only helpiill and desirable, for a pastor or evangelist, but absolutely essential in order to "really understand" the New Testament. "The student of Greek ALWAYS has access to more truth than the student who doesn't," because the "deeper" things in the scripture will never be available to an Englishman since he has only an English translation. (We printed several of these typical Fundamentalist quotations in our works on the Pastoral Epistles and Problem Texts. See samples there (on pages 432-440). It is at THIS point-the very beginning-that we teach our young men two great truths, which are purposely omitted at BJU, PCS, BBC, etc. We do this, after all, because we know Him who is THE truth and believe His words (John 8:32, 45), which are TRUTH (John 17:17), and desire to be led into THE TRUTH (John 14:17). 1. We call to the young man's attention that the greatest Greek and Hebrew scholars the Conservatives and Fundamen- 2 HOW TO TEACH ''THE ORIGINAL" GREEK TEXT talists ever produced, in the last one hundred years, were NOT great preachers, they were NOT great pastors, they had NO evangelistic zeal, they were NOT great soul winners, and the Junior Departments in the Sunday Schools of Bob Gray, John Rawlings, J. Frank Norris, and Beauchamp Vick had a better grasp of the scriptures. When Truett, Falwell, Criswell, Wiersbe, Broadus, McGee, Riley, Scarborough, John Rice, and others attack the AV, they do it on the basis of what these non- evangelistic, anti-New Testament, barren, fruitless speculators had written. This explains (see the Introduction) why the men who were great pastors and soul winners (1880-1980) were ASHAMED to tell you where they got their information from when they corrected the AV text. They knew the source. They were ashamed to associate themselves with this crowd because it was not their present crowd. The scholars-Nicoll, Robert- son, Knowling, Hackett, Dummelow, Schaff, Hort, Nestle, Aland, Metzger, Ellicott, Rendall, Alford, Wendt, Myer, Davidson, Conybeare, Ridderbos, Machen, Wilson, Warfield, Toy, Kenyon, Vincent, Thayer, Frankenburg, et al.-are five- point hard-shell Calvinists, A-millennialists, Post-millennialists; cold, barren, powerless, fruitless professing Christians (many of them unable to tell you, within ten years, the date of their "conversion"), and the stupid Fundamentalists who took them seriously (Wuest and Thieme for example), have a "track record" that includes nothing but parading book knowledge before upper middle-class Christians, who were led to Christ by someone else. Their personal evangelism and personal "church planting" is a joke. Wuest taught that the "falling away" of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 was the RAPTURE, and Thieme taught the BLOOD of Christ was not even effective in your salvation; it was only His DEATH that was connected with it. (See comrnents on The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, by Kittel, in The Anti-Intellectual Manifesto, p. 83). Robert Dick Wilson believed in sprinkling babies. A.T. Robertson couldn't find the Judg- ment Seat of Christ, or the Millennial Reign of Christ, in the Bible. Machen and Warfield didn't think Israel would ever be restored to the Promised Land. And Blackwelder (NKJV com- THE GREEK ON THE STREET 3 mittee, with Curtis Hutson and Harold Ockenga) taught that any Christian could lose his "new birth'' and go to Hell after his conversion. Nestle, Kittel, Driver, Keil, and Delitzsch never left a piece of paper on this earth saying when and where they were born again; neither did Knowling, Hackett, Plumtree, Hort, Westcott, Lightfoot, or Philip Schaff. So, at the beginning, Pensacola Bible Institute gets off on a different foot than the offshoots of Alexandria. Those unfor- tunate young men who are gullible enough to believe their Greek teachers, start with the RIGHT FOOT (positive) by covering up the negative truth. They don't even mention what you just read above. And what you just read above is as TRUE and FAC- TUAL as any copy of the ''Majority Text" or the ''Textus Receptus" that anyone ever published. Our starting point was THE TRUTH. Their starting point was "the smarter you are the better you can understand the Bible." 2. We teach the student of Greek that the KEYS to understanding anything and everything in the scripture-both the fundamental truths and the "deeper things"-are a HUM- BLE HEART and a BELIEVING MIND. If these two keys are used, with constant study of the Book (2 Tim. 2:15), they will yield truths which no Greek scholar has ever been able to find in any set of Greek manuscripts studied, or collated, by ANY Greek scholar. Throughout the course, from time to time, we point out exact illustrations of this truth. We do this because it is SO. Our foundation begins with TRUTH, so the student can find out the TRUTH; not what some deluded apostate sup- poses is the ''intent of the original author.'' Now that we have our "orientation"-note that I have listed two different orientations, from two different approaches, where two different goals are in mind-out comes the Freshman's text- book. The usual textbook is something by Davis, Robertson, Machen, Mantey, or Dana, although there are a dozen more on the market today. At BJU in 1949-1953, we were given the one by Davis; Machen has been used since then. For our pur- poses, here, we take a standard Broadman publication used throughout all of thc Baptist schools (seminaries, universities and colleges) in the ''convention." It is written by Ray Sum- 4 HOW TO TEACH ''THE ORIGINAL'' GREEK TEXT mers, who professes to believe EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS RECITED IN THE "BASTlON OF OR- THODOXY," in their official creed (BJU). He believes ex- actly what A.T. Robertson, Broadus, Scarborough, and Truett believed (all Southern Baptists). He could recite the creed at Bob Jones without batting an eye, or crossing his fingers. Well, the class starts. What kind of Greek is the New Testa- ment written in? The student is told that it was the language commonly used in the Greek speaking world from the time of Alexander the Great to about 400 A.D. It is called ''koine, " in distinction "from the classical Greek of the world of letters." ''Attic" was the language of Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and other demoniac bullshooters (see 7he Chris- tian's Handbook of Science and Philosophy, 1987, chapters 1-2). The literary style of Attic is more ''stilted and fixed, less flexi- ble and changeable than the vernacular.'' Robertson will tell you that some Greek teachers consider only literary ATTIC to be "first class" Greek; these were the educated jugheads (see Gen. 3:1-3) who thought if the New Testament was inspired, it had to be written in COLLEGIATE GREEK. As it turns out, the language of the New Testament is the common, ordinary, everyday language of New Testament times. Then quietly, subtlety, in the most inobtrusive manner possible, Dr. A.T. Robertson tells us that "There was developed also a LITERARY KOINE, seen in such writers as Polybius, Josephus, and Plutarch.'' (p. 10, Grammar). Now, how will this information be disseminated in an Alex- andrian Cult institution, and how will it be handled at Pensacola Bible Institute? I am sure you know, by now, that the systems will be absolute "polarities" (to cite the press and the NEA). First, I will give you how every Greek teacher in America taught this information, from the time of Deissmann and forward, and then I will show you how we uncover TWO TRUTHS that are (again) purposely concealed from the young ministerial student who is supposed to be engaged in learning THE TRUTH. If the young man has access to these two truths, he will still be able to retain his faith in the King James text; if he is denied these truths, his foundations will begin to crumble, for he has THE GREEK ON THE STREET 5 already been seduced from the "simplicity of Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3) into thinking that intellectual mastery of a DEAD LANGUAGE is going to make him spiritually superior to his congregation, or his pupils-if he ever has either. Party Line: ''This shows us why, today, the archaic Elizabethan English needs to be updated every so often, so it can keep up with the common ''man in the street." The ar- chaic words such as "let," "prevent," "trow," and so forth, no longer communicate to modern man. We would actually be failing to follow in the footsteps of Tyndale and the martyrs if we did not constantly alter the AV to make it match the modern American vocabulary. Otherwise, we are preventing the knowledge of truth and the spread of the Gospel!" Would any Christian dare take this outrageous position? Absolutely; John R. Rice's daughter put it in print and we published it in The Last Grenade (1991), p. 106-109. Observe, that here, the sucker is being set up for ''revi- sions.'' He is not told that the alibi given above had already been given ninety times (literally) between 1880 and 1980. The men who spread this false rumor, followed through by declar- ing the English Bible-translated by anyone-becomes ''ar- chaic" every fourteen months The student (the sucker) is not told this. Instead, he is led to think that the NASV, or the NIV, are illustrations of this much needed ministry." At some places (Wheaton, for example) the Living Bible will be the example given. There will not be a peep about Haymann, Rutherford, Mou]ton, Gowen, Dake, Wand, McFayden, Pym, Weaver, Kissane, Lenski, Vernon, Beck, Burke, Bruce, Nols, Wuest, and the other eighty. In the Book by Kubo and Specht, you will find a few listed, but there the alibi will be that you cannot stop at simply "up- dating" the RV and the ASV; you must meet the "need" of the individual (humanism) by creating one version for each need. This is the prescnt condition of ''Biblical'' Christianity in America today. Now here is what the student is NOT told. He is not told that every Fundamental, missionary-minded school in America, AFTER 1880, was founded by a man who was saved under 6 HOW TO TEACH ''THE ORIGINAL'' GREEK TEXT the teaching and preaching of a King James Bible and had to USE the King James Bible (even if he might have lost his faith in it later!) in order to keep the institution from going Liberal or Neo-evangelical. Further. he is not told that this mammouth plague of ''updating''-so one can ''communicate'' to modern man-brought in the Laodicean period of apostasy with a na- tional and international ''falling away" from Biblical truth com- parable to the beginning of the Dark Ages (500 A.D.). Fur- thermore, at this point (where it would have been cruciual to tell him), the student is not told that ninety-eight percent of these ''updatings" came from the Roman Catholic text that brought in the DARK AGES (Jesuit Rheims, 1582, from Jerome's Alex- andrian, New Testament Vulgate). This would include the NASV of Bob Jones University, the NRSV of the NCCC, the NIV of Moody and Fuller, and the ASV, RV, Living Bible, etc., of the other Alexandrian offshoots. (See the documented evidence in The Last Grenade, op cit., pp. 22, 52.) We tell our Greek student one more thing about the "street koine'' and the "literary koine'' that Bob Jones and PCS would not dare breath about. We refer him to page 63 of Nestle's Greek New Testament, which, for eighty years, published these words: ''The Greek orthography which in Hort, Tischendorf and Weiss was substantially that of the Greek writers of the fourth and fifth centuries [SINAITICUS, VATICANUS, ALEXAN- DRINUS, etc.] has now been regulated according to that ac- cepted by philological scholars for the time in which the NEW TESTAMENT WRITlNGS ORIGINATED." Who would think to do a thing like this? I owe these determinations to Ed Schwyzer, Prof. of Classical Philology in Bonn, through the Mediation of Prof. Schmiedel (of Zurich). The philological scholar, Friedrich Blass, also proceeded, earlier, in a similar way, in his editions of the New Testament writings, likewise Von Soden in his New Testament and Rahlfs in his edition of Genesis" (Nestle, p. 63). When Nestle printed his Greek text (which was used as a replacement for the Textus Receptus by the British Foreign Mis- sionary Society in 1904), he had the Greek texts of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus-written in 330A.D.-changed in regards to ac- THE GREEK ON THE STREET 7 cent, breathing, iota subscriptum, word separation, and proper names, so they would look like they were written before l00 A. D. Do you realize what Nestle said? He said the "orthography" of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus-written more than 220 years after the completion of the New Testament-had been altered (revised, changed, messed with) so that they APPEARED to have been written in the first century, at the time of the "original autographs.'' Who would do a thing like that? With what motive in mind? At PCS and BJU, they dare not even mention such matterc; neither does anyone at BBC, Tennessee Temple, Lib- erty University, Santa Rosa Schools, or any other Bible-rejecting institution that has replaced the final authority of the Bible with the final authority of Christian Scholarship (See King James Onlyism vs. Scholarship Onlyism, 1992). Someone wanted you to think that the writers of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were writing VERNACULAR KOINE because Deissmann upset their applecart after those manuscripts were discovered. They (? and B) both contained the earmarks of LITERARY koine, long after the street koine was in print. Scholars; scholars at work. Scholars at work in a Christian university! Scholars, revising the koine vernacular to bring it into line with "refined sensibilities" and "good taste." And now, here is your Greek teacher, in 1992, telling you that you should bring the king's English down to street level and ignore culture and taste! The same man is talking out of both sides of his mouth at one time. This is the typical Alexandrian "stance" (see pp. 49, 50 in The Last Grenade). But there is still more "hidden truth" in the English ''nug- gets,'' which your Greek teacher is not going to discuss. Walk- ing carefuly, as circumspectly as a wounded tom-cat nagivating a gutter on a tin roof, your Greek teacher will give a wide berth to the truth behind ''bring the language down to the common man on the strect." No greek teacher would dare do it. None of them ever did. Kenneth Taylor (The Living Bible) tried it by inserting "son of a bitch" and "toilet" in his remarks, but his attempt was far short of an "update" on "dung." Dodds (NEB) attempted to have Caleb's daughter-in-law "breaking 8 HOW TO TEACH ''THE ORIGINAL" GREEK TEXT wind'' (see Josh. 15: 18) when she ''got off her ass'' (see Judg. 1:14) but he couldn't handle any proposition in 2 Samuel 11:4 or 2 Samuel 13:14. All of the fanatical ''updaters'' seemed to be plagued with cowardice as well as stupidity. That ''ain't the half of it' (vernacular koine). Everytime the updater was shocked by a plain, street language word likc "vile," ''damned," "bastard," or "hell," he suddenly de- cided to get rid of the word and tone it down ''to fit ears polite, and snugly keep damnation out of sight." (For example: see the NIV, NASV, and NKJV in Matt. 16:18, Phil. 3:8, 21, and Rom. 14:21.) Who can forget the modern twentieth century "updating" of Job's "white of an egg" into "the slime of the purslane" (lob 6:6)? And who can forget the NKJV's 1990 rendering of "file" as "pim," to help communicate to the reader in the com- mon vernacular? I will tell you "who can forget," for the sim- ple reason they never knew about it to start with. They were not informed in the classroom. They were not given the TRUTH. They were not told the information given above, in the context of studying Greek in a Greek class, under a Greek teacher. Are these reprobates sincere? Are you trying to be funny? Well, they are trying to be funny. Street Greek would sound like this, if the man in charge (any modern Greek teacher or Bible revisor) really believed what he said he believed about vernaculars: "God Almighty is put out with two bit punks who hang on to a Book that they don't believe and are messin' with. As far as He is concerned, this is just as ungodly as hell; there ain't nothin' right about it! They act like they don't believe this, but God already showed it to the rascals and He stuck it inside 'em where they could git it. Any nut can tell what God is like by lookin' out the window at what He made. Hey man! You can dig the Trinity by studying the sun. You ain't got a cotton- pickin' alibi in the world for pretending you don't know God. Da trouble with you is the same trouble all of these monkey men have had ever since they began to mess with the Book. THE GREEK ON THE STREET 9 They quit glorifying God, then they quit thankin' Him for life, food, breath, clothes, and a pad, so they blanked out, man. The lights shorted out all over the circuit, and instead of gettin' some ''smart''-like they acted like they did-they got phased out. That is Romans 1:18-22 in the Vernacular Koine of the twentieth century. The collegiate crowd at the twentieth century Christian universities would turn up their noses at it, just like they would turn up their noses at the original autographs written by com- mercial fishermen (Peter, James, and John). The Alexandrians never ehange. They will lie like a Persian rug. Their discovery of street language koine (Deissmann) did nothing for them but lead them to make one more hypocritical ''profession of faith," about as genuine as a Federal Reserve Note in 1980. Every new discovery which sheds "new light'' on the "wealth of material'' and embarrassment of riches in the Greek New Testament, simply leads them further into the pit of sin. Having begun with a lie, they must end with a lie. Having removed the truth from the foundation, the whole superstructure is subject to a catastrophe. By deliberately evading the truth, at the beginning of the course, they guarantee a crop of liars when the harvest comes in. It has been coming in now for one hundred years. The first place a saved preacher loses his faith in the Holy Bi- ble is in a Greek class under a Greek teacher. If he does not attend the class, he believes what the teacher WRITES or what his pupils wrote. Here is John Gill, telling you what you must believe about a final authority that doesn t even exist. "This is to be understood (2 Tim. 3:16) of the Scriptures, as in the original languages and not of translation, unless it could be thought that the translators of the Bible into the several languages of the nations [see Acts 2 and Luke 23] were under the divine inspiration also in translating, and were directed of God to the use of words they have rendered the original ["The original what, John? Having a little trouble there? Original text, original language, original manuscripts?], but this is not reasonable to suppose (John Gill, The Body of Divinity, Sovereign Grace Publishers, Grand Rapids, 1971). "Only the 10 HOW TO TEACH 'THE ORIGINAL'' GREEK TEXT original exemplar is authentic, and to the Bible [?] in its original languages [Having a little trouble there Johnny?] is every translation to be brought.' Note! There is no "original exemplar'' to bring the transla- tions to. "And so far as they (the translations) agree with the ORIGINAL Ithe original what, Johnny? That is three faked passes in a row.] that they are the rule of taith and practise" (ibid) . The ''rule of faith and practise," therefore, does not ex- ist. Period.