Acts 24:6-8: Are these verses inspired Scripture or do the NIV editors not know how to
count?

In the King James Bible, we read of the high priest and the elders of Israel accusing the
apostle Paul before Herod's judgment hall. Among the things they accuse Paul of are these
words: 24: 6 "Who also hath gone about to profane the temple: whom we took, AND
WOULD HAVE JUDGED ACCORDING TO OUR LAW. 24:7 BUT THE CHIEF CAPTAIN LYSIAS
CAME UPON US, AND WITH GREAT VIOLENCE TOOK HIM AWAY OUR OF OUR HANDS, 24:8
COMMANDING HIS ACCUSERS TO COME UNTO THEE: by examining of whom thyself mayest
take knowledge of all these things, whereof we accuse him."

All the capitalized words are found in the vast majority of all Bible translations throughout
the world in most languages even today, yet they are omitted or called into doubt by
several modern versions that don't seem to be able to count right.

The Absolute Standard has already been set as to how many verses are in The Bible, yet several modern English
versions like the NIV, RSV, ESV, NASB have to continually "skip over" anywhere from 15 to
45 of them, rather than re-numbering the verses in their conflicting versions. (See for
example the NIV in Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44, 46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke
17:36; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; and Romans 16:24.)

The words are found in a multitude of Greek copies and in the Greek texts of Erasmus,
Stephanus, Beza, Scrivener, and the Modern Greek New Testament used throughout the
Greek speaking churches of the world today.

They are found in the following ancient Bible versions: The Old Latin copies (ar, c, dem, e,
gig, p, ph, ro, w), the Vulgate Clementine, the Syriac Peshitta, the Syriac Harkelian, the
Armenian, Ethiopic, and Slavonic ancient versions. These words are quoted or referred to
by Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Bede.

The English Bible translations that contain these words are the following: Wycliffe 1395,
Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, the Bishops' Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1560-1602,
Wesley's N.T. 1755, Webster's 1833, the Douay-Rheims, the Jerusalem bible 1968,
Young's, Darby, the NKJV 1982, Green's Modern KJV, the Amplified Bible, New Life Bible,
the KJV 21st Century 1994, Third Millenium Bible 1998, the 2003 Holman Standard, and
the 1995 NASB, though these later two place the verses in brackets.

The NASB editors can't seem to make up their minds. From 1963 to at least 1972 the
NASB’s omitted all the words in question from their text, but in 1977 and again in 1995
they decided to put them back into the text, but in brackets this time, thus indicating
doubt as to their authenticity. It's reassuring to have a "bible" version with brackets around
some 40 verses of the New Testament like the NASB does, isn't it.

Likewise, the Catholic bible versions can't seem to make up their minds either. The
previous Douay-Rheims version included the words. The 1968 Catholic Jerusalem bible
also included the words, but then the 1970 St. Joseph NAB and later the New Jerusalem
1985 omitted them, but now the latest "official" Latin version has come out and it puts
them back in again.

Modern English versions that have chosen to entirely omit all these words from their text
are the RV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, ESV and a slew of modern English paraphrases like the Living
Bible, TNIV and the Message.

However, all the words these modern English versions omit are found in the following
foreign language Bible translations: the Afrikaans 1953, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian,
Aramaic Peshitta, Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Esperanto,
Finnish 1992, French Martin and Louis Segond, Hatian Creole, the MODERN GREEK and
MODERN HEBREW, the German bibles, Hungarian, Italian Diodati and Rivudeta, Icelandic,
Japanese, Korean, Latvian, the New Vulgate, Lithuanian, Maori, Netherlands, Norwegian,
Portuguese Almeida, Romanian Cornilescu, the Russian Synodal and the 2000 Slovo
Zhizny, the Spanish Sagradas Escrituas 1569, the Spanish Reina Valera 1602 to 1995, the
Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish 1994, Ukranian, and the Vietnamese bibles.

Basically the reason some modern English versions either omit or place these words in
brackets is because the usual suspects called "the oldest and best manuscripts" of
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus omit them. Yet these two Greek manuscripts are continually at
variance, not only with the majority of all other Greek texts, but with each other as well.

For further study on what these two "oldest and best" texts actually say, please see my
studies here: www.geocities. com/brandpl. ..dbest.html and the study on John 5:3-4 and
the troubling of the water by the angel here: www.geocities. com/brandpl. ..John5.html