The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established | John W Burgon

Burgon travelled the world and personally studied ancient Greek manuscripts to determine the accuracy of the English translations of the Bible. He found the Received Text used to translate the King James Version of the Bible to be the only accurate foundation, and fought to his dying day to stop the modern changes being introduced that only changed and corrupted the truth! This book is old and hard to read, BUT worth every effort to understand the evidence proving that modern alterations are wrong.

John William Burgon^[a] (21 August 1813 – 4 August 1888) was an English Anglican divine who became the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in 1876. He is remembered for his poetry and his defence of the historicity and Mosaic authorship of Genesis and of biblical inerrancy in general.

In 1863 he was made vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, having attracted attention by his vehement sermons against Essays and Reviews,^[2] a series of messages on biblical inspiration in which he defended against the findings of textual criticism and higher criticism the historicity and Mosaic authorship of Genesis, and biblical inerrancy in general: "Either, with the best and wisest of all ages, you must believe the whole of Holy Scripture; or, with the narrow-minded infidel, you must disbelieve the whole. There is no middle course open to you."

In 1867 Burgon was appointed Gresham Professor of Divinity. In 1871 he published a defence of the genuineness of the twelve last verses of the Gospel of Mark. He then began an attack on the proposal for a new lectionary for the Church of England, based largely upon his objections to the principles for determining the authority of manuscript readings in the Greek New Testament adopted by Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort.^[2] Westcott and Hort led the team producing the Revised Version of the Bible. Burgon assailed Westcott & Hort in a memorable 1881 article in the Quarterly Review, and collected his Quarterly Review articles and pamphlets into books, such as "The Revision Revised", in which he denounced Westcott and Hort for elevating "one particular manuscript,—namely the C (Vatican Codex (B)), which, for some unexplained reason, it is just now the fashion to regard with superstitious deference". He found their primary manuscript to be "the reverse of trustworthy."

Protests against the inclusion of Unitarian Dr Vance Smith among the revisers, against the nomination of Dean Stanley to be select preacher in the University of Oxford, and against the address in favour of toleration in the matter of ritual, followed in succession. In 1876 Burgon was made the Dean of Chichester.^[2]^[b]

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