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Many anti-King James Bible critics bring up "the book of life" as found in Revelation 22:19 as an error. One well known such critic is Doug Kutilek. His full article is found at this site
I have included only extracts from his main arguments, but I am by no means misrepresenting his views. Men like Mr. Kutilek have no inspired, complete, inerrant Bible and they often resort to personal opinion presented as fact, and outright falsehood as though it were irrefutable evidence. Let's read some of what he has to say and then we will respond to his criticisms.
In Mr. Kutilek's article he says there are "a number of unique readings in Erasmus' texts, that is, readings which are found in no known Greek manuscript but which are nevertheless found in the editions of Erasmus. One of these is the reading "book of life" in Revelation 22:19. All known Greek manuscripts here read "tree of life" instead of "book of life" as in the textus receptus. Where did the reading "book of life" come from? When Erasmus was compiling his text, he had access to only one manuscript of Revelation, and it lacked the last six verses, so he took the Latin Vulgate and back-translated from Latin to Greek. Unfortunately, the copy of the Vulgate he used read "book of life," unlike any Greek manuscript of the passage, and so Erasmus introduced a "unique" Greek reading into his text."
First of all, Mr. Kutilek says there are no Greek manuscripts that read "book of life". He is flat out wrong about this. Dr. Thomas Holland, Jack Moorman, Dr. H.C. Hoskier and many others have documented the textual evidence that exists for the reading of "book of life" as found in Revelation 22:19.
Dr. Holland responds to this charge at his website -
http://www.purewords.org/kjb1611/html/advanc01.htm
There this question is posed and Dr. Holland responds:
Question: "If the Textus Receptus is the error free text, then why are the last six verses of Revelation absent from the TR, yet present in the KJV? Did you know that for these verses, the Latin Vulgate was translated into English - a translation of a translation?
Dr. Holland replies: "The "TR" has the last six verses of Revelation in it. It is found in the editions of Erasmus, Beza, Stephanus, and the Elzevir brothers.
Codex 1r, which was used by Erasmus, was missing Revelation 22:16-21. The standard teaching is that Erasmus went back to the Latin Vulgate for these verses and re-translated them into Greek. However, Dr. H. C. Hoskier disagreed by demonstrating that Erasmus used the Greek manuscript 141 which contained the verses. (Concerning The Text Of The Apocalypse, London: Quaritch, 1929, vol. 1, pp. 474-77, vol. 2, pp. 454,635.)
Regardless, the textual support for these verses is not limited to the Latin Vulgate. They are also found in the Old Latin manuscripts, additional early translations such as the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic, and some later Greek manuscripts.
Regarding the Greek, it should be pointed out that even today there is not a great deal of textual support for the verses in question. For example, of the early papyri there are no manuscripts of Revelation 22, or for that matter of Revelation chapters 18-22. Further, among the uncials, only five have Revelation chapter 22, and only four of these contain the last six verses (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, 046, and 051). There are several minuscules which have been discovered which contain these verses (94, 1611, 1854, 1859, 2042, and 2138 to name a few).
Of course, the biggest "change" comes in verse 19. Dr. Hoskier has shown that Greek manuscripts 57 and 141 read with the Latin in stating "book of life" and not "tree of life" as found in Sinaiticus and most other Greek mss. There are, of course, other witnesses to the reading found in the KJV here. For example, the Old Bohairic Coptic version also reads "book of life." Additionally, we have patristic citations from Ambrose (340-397 AD), Bachiarius (late fourth century), and Primasius in his commentary on Revelation in 552 AD. Thus, we have evidence of the KJV reading dating from before the Vulgate and maintained throughout Church history in a variety of geographical locations and various languages."
Dr. Thomas Holland
Mr. Jack Moorman, in his book "When the KJV Departs from the 'Majority' Text", says the reading of "book of life" is also found in the Coptic Boharic, the Arabic, the Speculum, Pseudo-Agustine and written as such in the Latin of Adrumentum 552, Andreas of Cappadocia, 614 Haaymo, Halberstadt, Latin 841. "Book of life" is found in the Greek manuscripts of # 296, 2049, and in the margin of 2067.
Libro (book) is the reading of the Latin mss. Codex Fuldensis (sixth century); Codex Karolinus (ninth century); Codex Oxoniensis (twelfth to thirteenth century); Codex Ulmensis (ninth century); Codex Uallicellanus (ninth century); Codex Sarisburiensis (thirteenth century); and the corrector of Codex Parisinus (ninth century)."
Secondly, Mr. Kutilek is very misleading when he says that Erasmus had no Greek texts to consult for the ending of Revelation and so he copied from the Latin Vulgate. It is well documented that Erasmus was exceedingly well acquainted with hundreds of Greek manuscripts from his extensive travels and studies. You can read more about this in a very informative article dealing with the question of Is the Received Text Based on A Few Late Manuscripts?
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/isthereceived.htm
Thirdly, in his article Mr. Kutilek also states as fact what is really unfounded conjecture when he says: "The fact that all textus receptus editions of Stephanus, Beza, et al. read with Erasmus shows that their texts were more or less slavish reprints of Erasmus' text and not independently compiled editions, for had they been edited independently of Erasmus, they would surely have followed the Greek manuscripts here and read "tree of life."
This is pure guesswork on his part. Stephanus had access to many Greek manuscripts that Erasmus did not possess, as well as Beza. For example, Stephanus mentions and John Gill confirms that the three heavenly witnesses of "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one" of 1 John 5:7 was the reading found in 9 of the 16 Greek manuscripts Stephanus used, yet we do not have any of these Greek texts today. Earlier writers like Stephanus, Calvin, Beza often make referrences to the readings of old Greek manuscripts which we no longer possess.
Fourthly, when Mr. Kutilek argues in favor of the Westcott-Hort text being based on "the oldest extant Greek manuscripts, plus the earliest of the versions or translations, as well as the early Christian writers", it seems than many "scholars" of equal learning have come to the exact opposite conclusion.
This is a direct quote from the Preface of the New King James Version by people who have attended the same seminaries and have access to the same information. Here is what they say on page vii: "The manuscript preferences cited in many contemporary translations are due to recent reliance on a relatively few manuscripts discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dependence on these manuscripts, especially two, the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, is due to the greater age of these documents.
However, in spite of their age, some scholars have reason to doubt their faithfulness to the autographs, since they often disagree with one another and show other signs of unreliability.
On the other hand, the great majority of existing manuscripts are in substantial agreement. Even though many are late, and none are earlier than the fifth century, MOST OF THEIR READINGS ARE VERIFIED BY ANCIENT PAPYRI, ANCIENT VERSIONS, AND QUOTATIONS OF THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. This large body of manuscripts is the source of the Greek text underlying the King James Bible. It is the Greek text used by Greek-speaking churches for many centuries, presently known as the Textus Receptus, or Received Text, of the New Testament."
Even Dr. Hort of the famed Westcott Hort text said: "The fundamental Text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian Text of the second half of the 4th century." (Hort, The Factor of Geneology, pg 92)
Furthermore, concerning the church Fathers, John Burgon compiled over 86,000 citations and quotes of the church Fathers and found that not only did the Textus Receptus that underlies the King James Bible exist but it predominated.
The early versions like the Old Latin contain many TR readings not found in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus as does the Syriac Peshitta. And both of these predate Sinaiticus Vaticanus by 150 years.
For my article dealing with the Old Latin version which refutes Doug Kutilek's claims see -
http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/OldLatin.html
In summary, we see that the reading of "book of life" in Revelation does have some Greek manuscript support, as well as ancient versions and church Fathers.
The Providence of God has seen fit to place this reading in most Bibles that have been used throughout history to reach millions for Christ. These include Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, the Great Bible, the Bishops' Bible 1568, and the Geneva Bible 1587. "Book of life" is found in Young's, Webster's, Third Millenium Bible, and the New KJV. It is also the reading of the 1569 Sagradas Escrituras, and the Spanish Reina Valera versions from 1602, 1909, 1960 and 1995 used throughout the Spanish speaking world, as well as the French Martin 1744 and Ostervald 1996, and the Modern Greek N.T. used by the Greek Orthodox churches throughout the world today.
Martin Luther's translation of 1545, using Greek texts before Stephanus' 1550 edition, also reads "book of life". I met a Russian pastor a couple years ago and asked him what his Russian Bible said here. He told me it reads book of life too.
Besides all these English, Spanish, French, German and Greek bibles, I have been able to confirm that the following Bible versions also read "book of life": The Afrikaans Bible of 1953, the Albanian, the Basque New Testament (Navarro-Labourdin), the Dutch Staten Vertaling, the Hungarian Karoli, the Icelandic Bible version, the Italian New Diodati, and the Douay-Rheims.
The Catholic versions and the Latin Vulgate also disagree among themselves, with Jerome's Vulgate and the 1950 Douay, and the Jerusalem Bible all reading "tree of life", while the older Douay-Rheims and the Clementine Vulgate both read "book of life".
As a side note, the number 7 is highly significant in the book of Revelation and in the texts that underlie the King James Bible, and the phrase "the book of life" is found 7 times. This is the number of divine perfection. In the NIV, ESV, Holman Standard and NASB it is only found 6 times. Six is the number man, who is weak and prone to fail.
Mr. Kutilek closes his article by saying: "Some writers calculate the differences between the two texts at something over 5,000, though in truth a large number of these are so insignificant as to make no difference in the resulting English translation. Without making an actual count, I would estimate the really substantial variations to be only a few hundred at most. What shall we say then? Which text shall we choose as superior? We shall choose neither the Westcott-Hort text nor the textus receptus as our standard text, our text of last appeal... we refuse to be enslaved to the textual criticism opinions of either Erasmus or Westcott and Hort or for that matter any other scholars, whether Nestle, Aland, Metzger, Burgon, Hodges and Farstad, or anyone else. Rather, it is better to evaluate all variants in the text of the Greek New Testament on a reading by reading basis, that is, in those places where there are divergences in the manuscripts and between printed texts, the evidence for and against each reading should be thoroughly and carefully examined and weighed, and the arguments of the various schools of thought considered, and only then a judgment made."
Do you see where Mr. Kutilek is coming from? He is his own Final Authority. He has no inerrant, complete, inspired Bible to give you or recommend. He is like those of old of whom God says in the last verse of the book of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Judges 21:25.
There ultimately is no certain way of knowing what the "originals" really said, because we simply do not have them, and literally thousands of Greek copies have been lost to time and decay. The King James reading of "book of life" in Revelation 22:19 is not without textual support, be that of Greek copies, ancient versions, Latin manuscripts, early church fathers or modern English and foreign language versions.
I and many thousands of other Bible believers have come to the conclusion that God meant what He said in His Book about His preserved words.
Isaiah 40:8: "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."
Psalm 12:6-7: "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever."
Psalm 138:2: "I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy Truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name."
Psalm 100:5: "For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations."
Psalm 33:11: "The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations."
Psalm 119:152, 160: "Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever. ... Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
Isaiah 59:21: "... My Spirit that is upon thee [Isaiah], and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever."
Matthew 5:17-18: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
Matthew 24:35: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
1 Peter 1:23-25: "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you."
John 10:35: "... the Scripture cannot be broken."
Will Kinney
Revelation 22:15-21
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