The Greek Vulgate

The churches are being told by the textual critics that the latest manuscript discoveries and the most recent scholarship demand that we accept a mutilated New Testament. A N.T. where the last 12 verses of Mark, the account of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:57-8:11), and the testimony of the three heavenly witnesses to the Deity and incarnation of Jesus Christ, (1 John 5:7) are edited out, and scores of other deletions, interpolations, and changes are required in an ongoing attempt to get us back to the real text of the New Testament. 

However, as Solomon stated it, there is no new thing under the sun, and Satan has been attacking the word of God ever since Adam and Eve were in the Garden. The Rev. Frederick Nolan published his defense of the Textus Receptus in 1815. At that time already these issues were known and the false theories of the textual critics refuted. Nolan was aware of the manuscripts and the theories of modern textual criticism and his thorough examination of their arguments and his competent defense of the Received Text are still as timely today as they were almost two centuries ago.

Nolan’s work consists of 6 parts and they are listed below with the links to each section.

Chapter 1   This chapter is an examination of the system of the textual criticism by which the Received Text came under attack and especially showing their classification of the known manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and the reasoning by which they reject the vast majority of the manuscripts supporting the Received Text in favor of a few corrupt manuscripts.

Chapter 2   This chapter states a more historically accurate and meaningful classification of these manuscripts, and traces the various ethnic versions or translations to the class of Greek manuscript that it was based on.

Chapter 3   This is a defense of the class of manuscripts that form the basis of the Received Text. Nolan shows that the other two classes are based on rescensions of the Greek Text by errorists or  heretics with theological axes to grind, and that the manuscripts underlying the Received Text are copies of the authentic and original text of the Greek New Testament.

Chapter 4   In this chapter Nolan argues for the general integrity of Received Text and its preservation from corruption during the first few centuries of the Christian era.

Chapter 5   In this chapter Nolan takes some of the more doctrinally crucial verses that are being eliminated or adulterated in the new “Critical Text” and defends the reading of the Received Text in each case.

Chapter 6   In this final chapter Nolan documents the general corruption by heretics of the other two classification of manuscripts (the Palestine Text and the Egyptian text), and again thoroughly and convincingly defends the readings of the Byzantine or Received Text.