Revelation 16:5 Beza 1598
From Textus Receptus
Beza himself comments on this change in a marginal note of his Greek New Testament:
- "And shall be": The usual publication is "holy one," which shows a division, contrary to the whole phrase which is foolish, distorting what is put forth in scripture. The Vulgate, however, whether it is articulately correct or not, is not proper in making the change to "holy," since a section (of the text) has worn away the part after "and," which would be absolutely necessary in connecting "righteous" and "holy one." But with John there remains a completeness where the name of Jehovah (the Lord) is used, just as we have said before, 1:4; he always uses the three closely together, therefore it is certainly "and shall be," for why would he pass over it in this place? And so without doubting the genuine writing in this ancient manuscript, I faithfully restored in the good book what was certainly there, "shall be." So why not truthfully, with good reason, write "which is to come" as before in four other places, namely 1:4 and 8; likewise in 4:3 and 11:17, because the point is the just Christ shall come away from there and bring them into being: in this way he will in fact appear setting in judgment and exercising his just and eternal decrees.
(Theodore Beza, Nouum Sive Nouum Foedus Iesu Christi, 1589. Translated into English from the Latin footnote.)
Contents |
And Shall Be
- "And shall be": The usual publication is "holy one," which shows a division, contrary to the whole phrase which is foolish, distorting what is put forth in scripture.
Beza came to this conclusion in 1589. He mentions that "holy one" - "shows a division" in scripture. What exactly is he saying here?
Latin Vulgate
Revelation 1:4
Beza's Ancient Manuscript
- And so without doubting the genuine writing in this ancient manuscript, I faithfully restored in the good book what was certainly there, "shall be."
Notice Beza said:
- "And so without doubting the genuine writing in this ancient manuscript, I faithfully restored in the good book what was certainly there"
Jeffrey Khoo wrote the following about the above words of Beza [1]:
Besides the ancient Greek manuscript that Beza had, it ought to be noted that Beatus of Liebana in the eighth century, in his compilation of commentaries on the Book of Revelation has the Latin phrase, qui fuisti et futures es, for Revelation 16:5 which was found in the commentary of Tyconius which goes back to the fourth century.51 It is entirely possible that there were either early Greek manuscripts or Old Latin versions as early as the fourth century which contained the reading esomenos.
It is also significant to note that the reading hosios preferred by Combs is a harder reading. Robert L Thomas, Professor of New Testament at The Master’s Seminary, citing Swete commented,
- "Taking hosios as parallel with dikaios creates an intolerable harshness, however, and taking the adjective as a predicate adjective with ho on and ho en breaks the pattern of the Apocalypse in not assigning the expression a predicate nominative or adjective."
We note that the reading ho esomenos, the future participle of eimi in its masculine, singular, nominative form with the definite article fits well the pattern of the Apocalypse and functions well as an adjectival participle to describe dikaios—the Righteous One who shall soon come to judge a most wicked world.
Although it is admitted that ho esomenos is not the reading found in the Majority Text, we are wont to agree with Hills that such minority readings "seem to have been placed in the Greek TR by the direction of God’s special providence and therefore are to be retained."53 It is also admitted that the reading of ho hosios in Stephen’s edition of the TR differs from Beza’s ho esomenos. So what do we do with the rare occasions when the several editions of the TR differ from one another? Hills replied,
The answer to this question is easy. We are guided by the common faith. Hence we favor that form of the Textus Receptus upon which more than any other God, working providentially, has placed the stamp of His approval, namely, the King James Version, or, more precisely the Greek text underlying the King James Version.
