Authorized Version Defence WASHED IN THE BLOOD

WASHED IN THE BLOOD

Rev 1:5: And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

Virtually, if not all, of the modern revisions want to change this verse to say loosed instead of washed.

ASV … Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his
blood;

NIV: To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins, by his blood,

RSV … To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood

Living Bible: … to him who always loves us and who set us free from our sins by pouring out his life blood for us.

The so-called New King James version Revised with Study Notes has: “… To Him who loved us and washed* us from our sins in His own blood.

The footnote under this verse states: *”NU loves us and freed; M loves us and washed. This is how NU is explained by the NKJV translators: “NU the most prominent modern Critical Text of the Greek New Testament, published in the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament and in the third edition of the United Bible Socieites’ Greek New Testament…

The NKJV liars claim to rely on the TR, but then turn around and use the Westcott-Hort, Nestle-Aland pseudo-text to cast doubt upon it! As if New Age, Marxist, Darwinist, Bible scoffers were valid authorities.

What we have is an obvious scribal error. The word in question is the Greek word louo, which means to wash. On the other hand, luo, means to loose, set free, or the like. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to realize that leaving out an ‘o’ would be an easy error. On the other hand, what is the likelihood of a scribe adding an ‘o’? Of course, the more likely mistake would be the omission. We can’t really fault the scribe for the error, because it was an easy one to make, and it was undoubtedly unintentional. On the other hand, we can fault those who intentionally repeated the fellow’s error, for overlooking what they had to know was an error. The overwhelming majority of texts do have luow.

Some of the corrupt Alexandrian texts do not, and the revisers will always choose error-ridden texts of heretics over the Majority Text.

The following appearance of louo (to wash) shows up later in Revelation. This not only gives us a good indication that the earlier appearance of the word also is louo.

Rev 7:14: And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

So not only are the modern perversions trying to remove the blood, as they do in numerous verses, but they are trying to eliminate its purpose for us.

John Hinton, Ph.D.
Bible Restoration Ministry
A ministry seeking the translating and reprinting of KJV equivalent
Bibles in all the languages of the world.