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Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faith Forward Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona to talk about how the modern Bible versions are so utterly wrong in Acts chapter 17 verse 22 and the King James Bible is correct. I'm gonna show you a ton of evidence and I'm gonna prove you beyond any shadow of a doubt that this translation that you find in the modern versions is just completely ridiculous and there's no way it could be correct and yet all the modern versions are doing it you know the NIV the ESV even the New King James Version so-called or the MEV you know versions that are from the Texas Receptus they completely ruin this as well. Let me start out by reading you the passage in English and then I'm gonna go over it with you in Greek especially the relevant word right here which is dici de monasteros all right so let me read it for you from the KJV beginning verse 21 for all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said ye men of Athens I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious for as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God whom therefore ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you so the King James Bible has the Apostle Paul talking about the Athenians as being too superstitious that's not a compliment at all that is negative whereas in the modern versions NIV ESV New King James it says oh I perceive that you're very religious which is obviously a compliment a good thing these are two extremely different things being very religious that's good being too superstitious that's bad even the word to their too much that's negative superstition is negative whereas very religious is positive these both can't be right these are two dramatically different ways of understanding this first and we're gonna examine the evidence and see which one is correct so let's just start out by looking at the relevant verse here in Greek I'm just gonna quickly blow blow through this so I can focus on the relevant word here and standing Paul right the Paul just Paul and Meso in the middle in the midst to Ariu Pagu okay so Ariu Pagu this is the Areopagus Ariu Pagu and if you break it down into its components it's basically the hill of Aries Ariu and the King James Bible always uses the Roman names of pagan gods it doesn't use their Greek names he's the Roman name so it instead of saying Aries here it says Mars so basically Paul standing in the midst of Mars Hill said Andres Athenae men of Athens kata panda with respect to all things and then it says Os visi de monasteros imas thero he's saying I see that you all are too superstitious so this is the key word is it too superstitious as the King James says or is it very religious as the modern versions would do well let's break this word down into its components I'm gonna approach this from every single angle every level the first angle I want to approach it from is just breaking down the word into its components because when you see a gigantic big word like this this could be intimidating for people learning languages like German or Greek when they see these super long words but they're they're compound words they're words that combine smaller elements so we can break this down into the two root words that it's coming from the Los and de mon right so the Los means fearful but what we have to understand is that this isn't just any kind of fear okay this is cowardly kind of fearful okay it's used three times in the New Testament one of them is when Jesus says in Matthew why are you fearful oh ye of little faith so this is not a good kind of fear like fearing the Lord this is dread terror scared cowardly another time is in the Gospel of Mark he says to them why are you so fearful how is it that you have no faith okay again see the negative connotation there also the third mention is Revelation 21 8 but the fearful and unbelieving the vulnerable murderers or mongers you get the picture okay now there are two main words for fear in Greek okay there's the one that most people have probably heard of right which is phobos okay like this is where we get phobias and so forth but the Greek word phobos is different than the Greek word deos okay which is more like a terror dread foreboding okay so what it is is that this is the kind of fear this phobos this is kind of fear that shades toward respect okay so they both mean fear but the word phobos is is shading toward respect or awe or reverence whereas deos is fear but it's shading toward dread terror horror you know so for example you know in in Ephesians chapter 5 when the Bible says that the husband should love their wives and it says see that the wife reverence her husband the the verb for reverence there is gonna come from the root pho vuma okay so it's gonna be this this type of fear that's not a scary kind of fear but it's a it's a reference that's why the King James Bible translates pho vuma there as see that the wife reverence her husband but the older Tyndale New Testament from the early 16th century translated it as see that the wife fear her husband but it's not this kind of scary dread it is this kind of all our reverence now ironically English words that use phobia they're using it wrong but then again this is thousands of years later you can't go by English words that are derived from these you have to understand their Greek usage in Greek okay phobos is fear tending toward respect or reverence and deos is tending toward dread and and by the way the the planet Mars okay you know speaking of Mars right the planet Mars has two moons and that are named Phobos and Deimos which are the two kinds of fear okay so the you know because a lot of those things take Greek names because a lot of science words have to do with Greek okay but anyway that's totally off topic so let's talk about this okay so this word right here if someone didn't know Greek and they're just looking things up in a lexicon and they just say like oh okay fear and Deimos and they just get this idea that it means like fearing gods or something now first of all this is not simply a word for God or gods not at all that is completely wrong that's how they're getting religious out of this somehow but let's break this down I'm kind of getting ahead myself sorry so let's let's talk about this next word so we've covered this word right here the loss which means fearful in a bad cowardly kind of way okay now let's talk about the second part Deimos well everybody knows this word even if you just speak English because it's the word demon okay the word demon comes directly from this it's translated in most Bibles as demon or devil okay in the King James Bible it's always translated as devil it's always bad it's always what we would call a demon or a devil that's where we get the word demon okay modern versions will use either demon or devil as well okay but this word in its Greek context like among the ancient Greeks themselves could mean a divinity that's not necessarily bad okay now stop and think about this for a moment if the Greeks are saying well a demon that's just you know that's just a divinity it's not necessarily bad but guess what we know that all the Greek divinities are bad don't we because every God besides the Lord is a false god and the Bible says that the things that the Gentiles offer and sacrifice unto idols they sacrificed unto devils and I would not that you should have fellowship with devils so we know that every false god is a demon or a devil so to us as Christians this is never good this is always bad every time this word is used throughout the New Testament it is always bad the Apostle Paul uses it over and over again bad bad bad we're supposed to believe it's good here though you know oh you're so religious you're fearing your gods you're fearing the gods but here's what you have to understand this word isn't a word that just means the Greek gods just because see and this is the danger of just looking things up in a lexicon and not actually knowing the language not actually reading Greek literature just looking things up in a lexicon like oh you know fearing the divinity oh you know that could be a good thing that could be just they're just religious wrong okay because here's what you have to understand about this word demon first of all in the New Testament it's always this thing bad but even amongst ancient Greeks we have to understand that the gods right here and most people are pretty familiar with the Greek word for God theos which means God and it's where we get theology okay so the gods right here they okay these are not the same as demonis okay it's not the same thing and the way this works is that basically let's say this represents all of these demons right of the Greeks okay basically the thei would be just a subset of that so so the thei are demonis but demonis are not necessarily thei does everybody understand what I'm saying this is a subset of this so this word demonis includes a lot more than just the gods because you know this is gonna refer to like your Olympian gods Zeus and Ares and Hermes Aphrodite those type of people whereas this refers to just every little spirit every little divinity every little entity that you can possibly imagine you know this is a really broad word that would just include anything okay so when you understand what this word actually means even to Greeks and what this word means then when you put it together you basically have a word that is a guy who's basically just scared dreaded terrified of every possible entity there's another word for that it's called being superstitious okay when you're just scared of every boogeyman every phantom every entity not you're not just pious toward your your Greek gods or something no no this is somebody who's scared and terrified of every entity this is a superstitious person now we've covered it from the components of the word now let's talk about its actual usage in Greek literature so there's a really famous Greek philosopher named Theophrastus and here's the thing get the context of the Word of God here the Apostle Paul is speaking on Mars Hill and he's been dragged there by a group of Epicureans and Stoics and the Bible tells us that these people just all they're into is just hearing some new thing they're only into philosophy these people just eat breathe and sleep philosophy they're constantly studying and learning there is no possible way that these people were not familiar with what I'm about to read to you okay this is a famous Greek philosopher that every single person that Paul's addressing would have read would have known and so keep that in mind as I read this for you I can give you a bunch of examples from Greek literature showing you that this word is talking about superstition okay and that it's a bad thing when applied to Greeks period okay not positive but negative but let me just give you the best example I could give you tons of examples but here's the best example from Theophrastus okay so he has a character that's called the guy that the superstitious guy basically toe he's is Oh DC Damon okay the guy who's this Oh DC Damon is one of his characters and I'm just gonna read it for you in English for sake of time okay you can be sure that superstition right DC that you could be sure that superstition would seem to be cowardice about divinity isn't that what I've just been explaining okay I'll read it for you in Greek for those who know Greek Amelie II DC demonia doxian on Ina the Leah pros toe demonium right so it's cowardice about these things this really broad category okay the superstitious man this is the DC them on okay the superstitious man is the sort who washes his hands sprinkles himself with water from a shrine puts a sprig of Laurel in his mouth and walks around that way all day now isn't that what we call a superstitious person they got the rabbit's foot they throw some salt over their shoulder they got the four-leaf clover they got their quartz crystal under their pillow at night if a weasel crosses his path he goes no further until someone passes between them or he throws three stones over the road if he sees a snake in his house he invokes a sebazios if it is a cheek snake but if it is a holy one he immediately founds a hero shrine on the spot when he passes the oiled stones at the crossroads he drenches them with the olive oil from his flask kneels and prostrates himself before he departs if a mouse eats a hole in a sack of barley he visits a theologian and asked what he should do if the answer is to give it to the tailor to be patched he pays no attention but hurries off and performs an expiation he's apt to purify his house frequently claiming that Hecate has bewitched it if owls hoot as he passes by he becomes agitated and says mighty Athena before he goes on he refuses to step on a gravestone view a corpse or visit a woman who has given birth and says it's the best policy for not to incur pollution folks this goes on and on and on what English word is coming to mind right now about Odesidemon Odesidemon is clearly a superstitious man all of this is not what we would describe as religion it's what we describe as super stician and just for sake of time I'm not gonna read you all that but you could look that up for yourself Theophrastus his character the superstitious man or Odesidemon all right so anyway if we look at the usage in Greek literature this is this is a bad thing being terrified by every little sprite and fairy and demon and phantom and ghoul and whatever this is not about piety toward their false gods okay so we approach it from that angle now let's approach it from a different angle okay let's talk about the context of the passage okay in the passage he says I perceive that you're too superstitious because when I passed by your devotions I saw that you had this altar to the unknown God now if they have all these devotions to their gods and then they make one to the unknown God doesn't it kind of sound like that they're acting like this guy where they're just just scared of every little entity even ones that they've never even heard of like just afraid that some phantom or some spirit is gonna do wrong to them if they don't make this altar to the unknown God that is clearly in context a superstitious thing to do all day long that is not religion that is superstition okay so even if we just look at the evidence of the passage itself okay then we think about the New Testament usage of this word demon stop and think about it let's let's pretend for a second let's have this fantasy this fake fantasy where where this somehow this this word is a good thing fearing the gods or something here's the thing do you really think that the Apostle Paul would use this word in a good way when he's constantly rebuking demons and so forth well wouldn't it make more sense that he's using this word in a bad way talking about people that are superstitious using a negative word about this since this is his favorite word for devils and demons in the in the Christian sense in the New Testament sense they say where is this bad translation coming from and isn't it funny how the New King James reads just like the NIV reach just like the ESV they're all doing this how are they all getting this wrong when it's so wrong because of the fact that these people aren't always doing their own work or their own study or actually learning Greek and reading Greek literature they're just busting open a lexicon and it's the lexicon that gives them this wrong definition it lists definition number one in the Bible lexicon is religious in a positive way and then definition number two is superstitious in a bad way and then definition number three is just religious in a neutral way okay so these guys they just pop that open they go with definition number one and then folks the New King James is not even a translation I've never seen anything in the New King James that was unique all the New King James does is just take what the new versions have done and smuggle it into the King James smuggle bad translations like this into the King James it's just a gateway drug trying to wean people off the King James and get them on to these modern versions and the problem with the New King James because a lot of people wonder you know well what's wrong with the New King James I mean it's from the Texas Receptus or the MEV why not go with the MEV it's translated from the Texas Receptus I'll tell you why because if the modern versions jump off a cliff that the New King James gonna jump off the cliff too okay because these versions just follow the the stupidity of these modern versions and without even apparently critically analyzing it that's why they just go with every dumb translation that are in these other modern versions now here's the thing so if you look in the Bible lexicon it's funny if you actually look up the supposedly positive mentions because you know they give some mentions for the so called positive uses of this word and then the neutral and the negative let's let's pretend for a minute that the lexicon is actually right let's indulge in that fantasy for a moment well even so the context would dictate that it's superstition because they have an altar to the unknown God that's clearly superstitious the context would dictate that the Apostle Paul is using it in a Greek philosophy context since he's standing on Mars Hill talking to an audience of Greek philosophers that have brought him there because they're epic urines and Stoics and because they study Greek philosophy all day that's what the passage shows so it would make the most sense to see what this word means in that context so if we look in Greek philosophy Theophrastus for example lots of other places it's always gonna mean superstition in that context but I went and looked up the so-called positive mentions that the lexicon is claiming where this is supposedly a positive word and I looked up the Greek references and and here's the thing none of them are about Greek religion now the Apostle Paul is talking about Greek religion I mean he's walking up and looking at a bunch of Greek altars to Greek gods and saying you guys are too superstitious okay these three so-called positive mentions that the lexicon gives none of them are about Greek religion so how can they be applied to Greek religion this word is never good in regard to the Greeks okay but they're so-called positive mentions two of them aren't even positive anyway only one of the three is and I'm gonna explain that in a moment the first one is a guy named Polybius okay and it says Camido qui toparatis alis anthropis onidizomenon tutos in ehi and a Romeo no pragmata Lego that teen visi demonion and he goes on I'm just gonna do it in English for sake of time he says for I conceive in fact let me back up a little give you context but the most important difference for the better which the Roman Commonwealth appears to me to display is in their religious beliefs for I conceived that what in other nations is looked upon as a reproach and I speak of visi demonion is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together many people might think this unaccountable but in my opinion their object is to use it as a check upon the common people now folks who is putting together this lexicon how is this a positive mention this is bizarre this is the first thing the lexicon mentions oh of course it can mean religious here's the proof here's where it's positive did you hear what it just said that what in other nations is looked upon as a reproach a reproach is when someone says something derogatory about you so this passage is people saying derogatory things about Roman religion specifically talking about their superstition it's derogatory okay and then here's the so-called positive mention is that it says well it keeps the Roman Commonwealth together the superstition keeps the Commonwealth together because it's used as a check upon the common people he's saying look yeah the Romans use superstition to keep the people in line so they want them to be superstitious this is just like in the Middle Ages in Europe or whatever superstitious Catholics you know being more easy to control and keep down in a feudal system so here's the positive mention yes superstition keeps idiots from causing trouble you know it keeps the lower classes in check that's what this guy is saying in a condescending way and he's saying other people look at the Roman religion and they think of it as superstition and it's derogatory to them but hey yeah we think it's great because it keeps people in line that's a positive and yeah great job author of the lexicon all right and then the next one is Diodorus where he's describing Egyptian religion not Greek religion he's describing Egyptian visive ammonia and if you just back up if you actually look at it in in the Greek language in context and you just back up a paragraph he says okay now I'm gonna paraphrasing but he says now I'm gonna tell you about some Egyptian religious practices and he says I'm gonna tell you about the ones that are the most strange I'm gonna tell you and it's strange in the sense of like weird I'm gonna tell you about the weirdest stuff and then he goes on to describe their visive ammonia so that's a so-called part chalk that up as a positive mention in the lexicon right now the only one in the lexicon that's actually a truly positive mention that they can find is from Josephus in his antiquities of the Jews which is being written like 50 years after this not by a Greek author not to a Greek audience but rather written by the Jew Josephus to a Roman audience and he talks about in a good way he talks about Manasseh I'll just give you the context he talks about Manasseh basically coming back from the Babylonian captivity and getting right with God and he devotes himself to visive ammonia okay so that seems like a positive mention right okay but here's what you have to understand about that is that to the Greeks and to the Romans Jewish religion is called visive ammonia in fact we have a mention of this in the New Testament itself let me flip over there but a little bit later on in the New Testament in Acts chapter number 25 verse 19 I'll back up to verse 18 this is Festus speaking okay so this is the Roman Festus verse 18 again whom when the accusers stood up they brought none accusations of such things as I supposed but had certain questions against him of their own superstition and of one Jesus which was dead whom Paul affirmed to be alive and because I doubted of such manner of questions I asked him whether he would go to Jerusalem and there be judged of these matters so Festus is saying here like you know here's this criminal the Apostle Paul that was left in bonds by Felix and you know I'm expecting this guy to be accused of something really bad or you know turns out it just it had something to do with the Jews and their superstition and he's like I don't care about that I don't know anything about I don't want to deal with that I want to send him to Jerusalem to be judged because I don't I don't have time for the Jews superstition okay so that's what the King James says Jews supers of course the new version they're gonna say is religion because remember they think this is good okay you know being terrified of every possible demon is a good thing according to modern versions it's very you're very religious but here it's clear that he's speaking in a derogatory way about the Jews religion calling the Jews religion VC them onia okay now here's the thing about that Josephus 50 years after this is happening here with the Apostle Paul using VC them onia to talk about the Jewish religion of Manasseh that does not mean that this is a positive mention in regard to Greek in regard to the Greek language in regard to the Greek people in regard to the context of the actual verse we're reading here's what you have to understand the Greeks and the Romans have referred to the Jews religion as superstition oh that's their superstitions we just saw an example of it in Acts chapter 25 okay so here's the thing a lot of times when a derogatory word is used about a group of people they will own that word and start to use it themselves like for example you know Christian was originally something that that we were called by outsiders you know they were called Christians at Antioch and even like the term Anabaptist that's something that they were called by outsiders but then eventually they owned that term and they like that term okay you know in modern times you could think about the word queer right queer is a derogatory term for homos and so you know if you call someone a queer that's being negative toward them but yet now homos are embracing that word in fact at Arizona State University you can actually get a four-year degree in queer studies and I'm not calling it that they called it that okay and I'm not saying it's a class I'm not saying it's a minor it's a major you could literally major in queer studies over at Arizona State University okay so that's them taking a derogatory term and just using it and just owning it okay and we could think of lots of other examples of that so here's the thing Josephus living in the house of Caesar you know writing about the Jewish history the antiquity of the Jews he basically just owns this word that used to be negative and now he's just using it about the Jews religion it's just the Jews these see them only you know it doesn't really surprise me anyway because you know Jews are the Jewish religion is demonic you know the Christ rejecting Judaism is demonic anyway but but the point is you know later this word is being used by Josephus later Jew talking to Romans about a religion that they think is superstition calling it superstition that doesn't apply to this at all it's ridiculous to apply it to this because these are Greek people and this word is never gonna be good about their religion okay it isn't you you can look up tons of Greek literature I mean if you want I can read for you more about you know this superstitious guy all the stuff that he does because you know for example if you ever notice that someone at the crossroads reaved in garlic he goes away takes a shower summons priestesses and orders a deluxe purification by sea onion or dog if he sees a madman or epileptic he shudders and spits down at his chest that is superstition my friend that's what this meant to Greeks that's what this specifically would have meant to Greek philosophers that's the audience that's the context and the modern versions have got this a hundred percent wrong okay so in summary and then I'm gonna get to the bonus point over here in summary if we look at the components of the word we have a cowardly fear of demons that's superstition not religion okay if we look at the context they're making an altar to the unknown God that's a very superstitious thing to do and it reminds me exactly of something that you would read in a theophrastus all that stuff I listed you know about all the garlic and spitting on himself so it could be like hey just in case you missed a God he makes it also to an unknown God that would fit in perfectly with that document okay so Paul is basically you know showing them the foolishness of that okay so there's the context itself then there's you know the fact that this word is always in reference to Greek religion negative in the history and that the only so-called positive mention is by Josephus 50 years later a Jew writing to Romans owning a derogatory term about Judaism that had probably stopped being derogatory sort of like the queer studies down at ASU and so you know that is totally not relevant to this it comes after this doesn't come before this his audience wouldn't have been thinking about that they would have been thinking about theoprastus for sure okay now let's get to the bonus point okay so there are two problems with the modern Bible versions problem number one is this kind of bad translation that they do okay where they they translate things wrong there's a lack of scholarship the scholars who put together the King James Bible were far more knowledgeable that Greek literature they did a better job and you know I'm not going to go into all the problems with modern translation philosophies and methods of the new versions but there they abound but then there's another problem with the modern Bible versions and that's the textual problem you know the King James Bible comes from the traditional text the received text the textus receptus whereas the modern versions come from what's called the critical text okay now I want to show you here in the bottom corner one difference between the textus receptus right here which I'll label as TR and the critical text which I'll label as CT here okay so because we've learned the difference between these two kinds of fear remember we learned the difference between fovos and deos right two moons of Mars right fovos and deimos so fovos is the fear shading toward respect reverence awe and of course deos is the one that's shading toward dread terror horror scared to death okay well if you remember the famous verse in Hebrews chapter 12 where it says let us serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire let's serve God with reverence and godly fear what kind of fear do we have in that verse well in the textus receptus from which the King James Bible is translated we have this word right here edus right metta edus and edus means respect reverence all so this is the right word for that but the critical text says metta deus which is the negative the bad that the cowardly scared horrified terrified and you know what the fear that we have of God yes we do fear and tremble before God but the fear that we have toward God shades toward respect reverence awe okay and and and here's the thing yes there is an element of terror and dread about the Lord but you know if you're if you're if you're under grace if you're on God's good side which is the context of Hebrews chapter 12 yeah we know there's chastening and punishments and the Lord will judge his people but you know what this right here this word is just it's just not used in the New Testament in this manner it isn't okay so this would be the only example this would be the only possible example so what the critical text is doing here is it's giving us this anomaly this word that doesn't fit whereas the TR actually has the right word that doesn't fit and you can see how these two words could get mixed up because look how look how similar they are because you've got of course the Delta and you've got the Omicron the epsilon the Sigma right so basically you've got four of the same letters the difference is just whether you have this epsilon or whether you have the Alpha Yoda here but but you can see how these could get mixed up well guess what this is a mistake this is an anomaly this is wrong and the critical text is filled with strange anomalies and weird readings like for example in John chapter 1 when the King James Bible says the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father and then the New American Standard says the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father begotten God is foreign to scripture begotten Son that is something that fits scripture so anyway that's just a little bonus point because it kind of ties in with what we're talking about here with this root word right here anyway God bless you and have a great day