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I read your exchange with OPie and thought I'd add a note.

In the period preceding the Reformation, many scholars of the Eastern church fled to the West, carrying with them precious and rare manuscripts, many of them entirely unknown at that time in the West. Among these, were the Received Text which was the scripture of the Eastern church and which they had very faithfully preserved with an astonishing accuracy. So, if some might consider the institutionalized rigor of certain Eastern practices to be a deadening influence on a vibrant spiritual life, one might also observe that it was, at least in part, likely to have helped to preserve the purity of Received Text.

It was those texts and their unified historical and geographically diverse testimony which Erasmus (a less than entirely loyal Roman priest/scholar) assembled and edited into the great Textus Receptus which became the basis for the creation of all the great Protestant bibles, starting with Luther's bible and later with versions for all the European languages. The most visible modern member of this family is the King James Bible, a Bible that in many ways evangelized the world in the hands of English-speaking missionaries under the British and American commercial empires.

Without your guys bringing us the manuscripts when they fled to the West, we'd have been stuck with Rome's Bible, an impure scripture. I don't agree with Orthodox theology but I think that it's hard to picture how the Reformation would have unfolded without the great Reformation bibles and their roots in the Received Text of the Eastern church. It's one of those strange historical connections between different churches.

It would have been quite difficult for a Reformer to holler sola scriptura while waving one of Rome's bibles. Just one of those tidy tidbits of history where one can see how God preserves the purity of His Word in extraordinary and completely unexpected ways and how He turns all things to His own ends. We Calvinists like to observe how He does these things so neatly and surprisingly.

To continue on with the Textus Receptus, one can observe that it is the modern translations, the supposedly superior manuscripts held by Rome which now dominate in modern Protestant and evangelical churches. As these Bibles are translated, they take increasing liberties with the text to try to reinterpret it to allow female and/or sodomite clergy, the diminution of many references to Christ which debases Him. One new version even refers to God the Mother. In short, we have an explosion of new translations with a new one appearing every few years. Even in the same church, no one can quote the Bible anymore without someone else having a different verse in their bible. Not all of these modern translations are inherently bad but it is the proliferation of different versions which allows modernist apostates to create so much mischief. And some of the worst mischief has been caused by liberal modernist Protestant churches. And, in part, I believe that much of this happened simply because we allowed the proliferation of so many divergent readings. We've created something of a tower of Babel with an ever-changing scripture. It's inherently problematic and it is increasingly obvious.

We who favor the Textus Receptus line of the Eastern church are biding our time, waiting for God to once again dash down these modern corrupted bibles based on conflicting and inferior secret Vatican manuscripts of narrow geographical origin and poor unity in their readings and completeness.

Another interesting bit of history is that if Rome had never betrayed the Eastern church as it did at crucial junctures, it is far less likely that those scholars would fled to the West with the manuscripts that became the basis of the Protestant Reformation in the form of the sola scriptura bibles which were based on those Eastern manuscripts. Strange, eh? I wish I could understand how God makes all these things work together...

It was those texts and their unified historical and geographically diverse testimony which Erasmus (a less than entirely loyal Roman priest/scholar) assembled and edited into the great Textus Receptus which became the basis for the creation of all the great Protestant bibles

The Textus Receptus was compiled from a total of 7 Greek manuscripts, none of which was dated earlier than the 11th century. The texts used are still available today and are generally judged to be of low quality. So incomplete were these texts that Erasmus had to translate part of the Vulgate from Latin to obtain the Greek, and he even acknowledges the poor quality work. Today there are over 5000 Greek manuscripts available to scholars, many of these older than those available to Erasmus.

I don't agree with Orthodox theology but I think that it's hard to picture how the Reformation would have unfolded without the great Reformation bibles and their roots in the Received Text of the Eastern church. It's one of those strange historical connections between different churches.

Temporarily laying aside a vast gulf of theological differences, this is a true enough statement by GWB as far as history goes... were it not for the careful preservation of the Greek Manuscripts in the monasteries of the East, I don't know that John Calvin would have had any copies of the Original Text from which to translate his "Geneva" Bible, nor King James his "Authorized".

As these Bibles are translated, they take increasing liberties with the text to try to reinterpret it to allow female and/or sodomite clergy, the diminution of many references to Christ which debases Him. One new version even refers to God the Mother.

Lord have mercy. I have a friend at work who is currently attending a methodist church and seems to have found a desire to become more conservative, cautiously asking me questions about Eastern Orthodoxy as of late... and stated that her family is praying for guidance in moving to a new church.
Although she has hinted at such things, I confess I am shocked by what you have posted here.

Thank you also for the other information, which again I was not aware of at all.