“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory”. 

If you use a modern English version, you won’t have the above reading which is such a powerful testimony to the deity of Jesus Christ; indeed, it is one of the clearest declarations that Christ is truly God; and you will be very much the poorer for its absence in your bible.  This verse is an early creed with clear concise statements of doctrine, and at the top of this creed is the central doctrine that God became truly human.  Without this fundamental and crowning statement, the others don’t have any value for us.  If the Divine Son of God did not become truly human and die in our place, our sinless Substitute and atonement, what does it matter if he was justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, and received up into glory?  Is he not that anyway?  And what does it matter if he was preached unto the Gentiles and believed on in the world – what would be the point?  What would we be putting our faith and our trust and believing in – a great teacher?  There are plenty of great teachers for us to choose from.  A great example?  What good is that to fallen sinners who are at enmity with God?  What did he achieve for us if he was not God manifest in the flesh?  He couldn’t die in our place if he wasn’t human, and his death would be of value only to himself if he wasn’t God; so who really cares about what else he did, however kind, loving and noble?  I speak metaphorically, of course – the things that Jesus did are important, but if we don’t have salvation, we will end up in hell; consequently, no matter how lovely Jesus is, we’d never be able to have anything to do with him.  Without his being God and born as a human being, all the rest is useless to our eternal salvation, and we’ll languish in hell, for ever without him.

So what reading do the modern versions based on the Critical Text have if they don’t tell us that it was God who was manifest in the flesh?  Instead of “God”, they have “He” or “Who”, or “He who”, or “Which”, or “the one”.  A couple even have “Christ”, but even that isn’t an unequivocal declaration that Jesus is God.  And besides, the word “Christ” isn’t even in the text.  A Jehovah’s Witness can say that Christ came in the flesh but they don’t believe that he is Jehovah.  Even a Muslim will say that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and thus came in the flesh, but they categorically deny his deity.  Unless you have a King James Bible, you will be without the clearest statements of Jesus’ divinity.  And with all the enemies ranged against us as Christians, we need every such verse with all their clarity and unequivocal and unapologetic definitions we can get.

Which is Correct, and how did it Happen?

The Greek word for “God” is “Theos” and it consists of three letters – the first letter, “th”, is named “theta”;  The second letter, “e”, is named “epsilon”; the third letter, “s”, is named “sigma”.  Theta is signified by “O” with a bar or stroke across the centre; sigma is signified by a symbol identical to our capital “C”.  It was normal practice for scribes when copying the early manuscripts to write everything in capital letters, or “uncials”; and it was also normal for them to abbreviate the name of God to Theta Sigma, with a short line above the word to indicate it had been shortened.  Thus, “God” appears as “OC” with a little stroke through or across the centre of the “O”, with both letters beneath a small horizontal line.

There is another word in Greek which is almost identical to this contracted form of God; it is the word for “who” or “which” or “that”.  It consists of two letters – the first letter is named “omicron” and is signified by “O”.  The second letter is named “sigma”.  So “who” appears as “OC”, and the difference in appearance between “Theos” and “who” is a little stroke of the pen.  When copying these words it would be very easy for a scribe to miss the pen stroke in the letter “theta”, especially if the manuscript was worn and faded, and would therefore be written as “O”.

The verse only makes sense and becomes significant if it reads “God was manifest in the flesh”.  To say “Christ was manifest in the flesh” is obvious, because he was a man, and it doesn’t necessarily ascribe deity to him anyway.  To say “who” or “which” or “that” was manifest in the flesh doesn’t make sense.  You don’t start a sentence with a relative pronoun out of the blue – it must refer to something antecedent to itself.  But there is nobody in the passage to whom it could refer except God (verse 15).  And the word “he” isn’t even in the text; it had to be inserted into it by the translators to try and make the verse more intelligible than leaving it as “who”, “which” or “that”.  David W. Daniels writes, “Without a doubt, the Scripture says, ‘God was manifest in the flesh.’  The vast testimony of history shows us clearly that the word in question is ‘God’, not ‘he’ or ‘who’” (Daniels, 2003, p 62).

Too many passages which declare the deity of Christ can only be found in the King James Version of the bible because the modern versions have abandoned the Greek Textus Receptus (TR), or Received Text upon which it is based, and prefer the localised, minority reading, corrupt, Critical Text which is drawn from the corrupt Vaticanus and Sinaiticus Greek texts.  The Received Greek texts of the KJV have antiquity and majority and were widely spread around the Roman world, and this is very much in their favour.  Those manuscripts which omit, weaken, or change them, while being relatively early, are in the small minority and are restricted geographically to one area i.e. Alexandria, Egypt.  Unfortunately the promoters of the modern versions have chosen to base their translations on this corrupt text, a text which undermines the deity of Jesus Christ.

There is a danger, if the Church is not more diligent, that this doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ will be virtually lost in the next generation or two because our Evangelical youth are being brought up on corrupt versions such as the NIV, ESV, NLT, and even the NKJV because of its Alexandrian text readings and its marginal notes which usually prefer those same Alexandrian text readings over the TR; versions which are the darlings of today’s Evangelicals because of their “accuracy of translation” of the latest version of the Critical Text.  On the one hand, these versions dilute, undermine, or deny the deity of Christ in many places, while on the other hand, in other places, they uphold his deity.  Our youth will be confused because of such contradictions they see in their bibles and will look for answers; consequently they will be vulnerable to false teachers such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.  And when these and other avowed enemies of Christianity such as atheists and militant ex-Christians, and false religions such as Islam, attack the bible because of its apparent contradictions and discrepancies which, on the surface, look very intimidating, these young people may well be so confounded that they will abandon the faith, just as the ex-Christians did for the same reason.  Perhaps this is the means by which the final apostasy will commence (2 Thess 2:3)?

“And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.  I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (Jn 8:23-24).

References

Daniels, David W. 2003, “Answers to your Bible Version Questions”, Chick Publications, Ontario, California