Brian, your insistence that Luke 23:45 is an issue here is laughable to be honest. I can just see “the conspirators” sitting around a table saying, “Shall we corrupt their New Testament manuscripts?” “Yes, yes!” the throng agrees. “What shall we do first–change something that denies the deity of Christ?” “No, no, let’s change the word ἐσκοτίσθη to ἐκλιπόντος to really mess with their heads!”

Come on.

If you look at the first comment under my blog post at http://tinyurl.com/33gcyz you will see the concern of one gentleman who says knowing Greek isn’t enough. We have to understand philology, too. That is the understanding of how language is used in different contexts and how it changes over time. Does the English word eclipse come from the Greek word, ἐκλείπω? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that it should be translated as eclipse anymore than δύναμις should be translated as dynamite although I’ve heard preachers mistakenly make this claim.

However, I’ll concede to you that ἐκλείπω was sometimes understood as the verb eclipse, but to speak in terms of philology, never in the context of the the Koine Greek in the New Testament. In fact in the standard Greek lexicon that translators and Greek students and scholars use today,–A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, revised and edited by William Frederick Danker (commonly known as the BDAG)–there are four suggestions for understanding ἐκλείπω in English, and not one of them–NOT ONE–uses the word eclipse. Instead, you find,

1. to be no longer in existence, fail, give out, be gone
2. to go away from a place, depart
3. to cease as state or event, fail, die out
4. to be deficient in one’s appearance, be inferior

The problem is this is what the later monks did not understand. These Byzantine monks (God bless them) didn’t understand philological matters and saw ἐκλιπόντος as “eclipse” and for the same reasons you describe, this caused problems for them.

But this is the word that Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, used. And for the Byzantine monks to change Luke’s writing from ἐκλιπόντος to ἐσκοτίσθη is simply wrong.

Consider the explanation of this issue from the NET Bible, which has the best set of textual notes of any English translation I know:

The wording “the sun’s light failed” is a translation of τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος/ ἐκλείποντος (tou hēliou eklipontos/ ekleipontos), a reading found in the earliest and best witnesses (among them P75 ℵ B C✱vid L 070 579 2542 pc) as well as several ancient versions. The majority of MSS (A C3 [D] W Θ Ψ ƒ1, 13 M lat sy) have the flatter, less dramatic term, “the sun was darkened” (ἐσκοτίσθη, eskotisthe), a reading that avoids the problem of implying an eclipse (see … below). This alternative thus looks secondary because it is a more common word and less likely to be misunderstood as referring to a solar eclipse. That it appears in later witnesses rather than the earliest ones adds confirmatory testimony to its inauthentic character.

This imagery has parallels to the Day of the Lord: Joel 2:10; Amos 8:9; Zeph 1:15. Some students of the NT see in Luke’s statement the sun’s light failed (eklipontos) an obvious blunder in his otherwise meticulous historical accuracy. The reason for claiming such an error on the author’s part is due to an understanding of the verb as indicating a solar eclipse when such would be an astronomical impossibility during a full moon. There are generally two ways to resolve this difficulty: (a) adopt a different reading (“the sun was darkened”) that smoothes over the problem (discussed in the [textual comment] problem above), or (b) understand the verb eklipontos in a general way (such as “the sun’s light failed”) rather than as a technical term, “the sun was eclipsed.” The problem with the first solution is that it is too convenient, for the Christian scribes who, over the centuries, copied Luke’s Gospel would have thought the same thing. That is, they too would have sensed a problem in the wording and felt that some earlier scribe had incorrectly written down what Luke penned. The fact that the reading “was darkened” shows up in the later and generally inferior witnesses does not bolster one’s confidence that this is the right solution. But second solution, if taken to its logical conclusion, proves too much for it would nullify the argument against the first solution: If the term did not refer to an eclipse, then why would scribes feel compelled to change it to a more general term? The solution to the problem is that ekleipo did in fact sometimes refer to an eclipse, but it did not always do so. (BDAG 306 s.v. ἐκλείπω notes that the verb is used in Hellenistic Greek “Of the sun cease to shine.” In MM it is argued that “it seems more than doubtful that in Lk 23:45 any reference is intended to an eclipse. To find such a reference is to involve the Evangelist in a needless blunder, as an eclipse is impossible at full moon, and to run counter to his general usage of the verb = ‘fail’…” [p. 195]. They enlist Luke 16:9; 22:32; and Heb 1:12 for the general meaning “fail,” and further cite several contemporaneous examples from papyri of this meaning [195-96]) Thus, the very fact that the verb can refer to an eclipse would be a sufficient basis for later scribes altering the text out of pious motives; conversely, the very fact that the verb does not always refer to an eclipse and, in fact, does not normally do so, is enough of a basis to exonerate Luke of wholly uncharacteristic carelessness.

Finally, you point out that 8 (count ‘em, eight) translations based on the standard eclectic text that have translated ἐκλιπόντος as “eclipse.” Did you make this number up? No translation that I use and no major contemporary translation uses the word eclipse in Luke 23:45. I don’t care if the Moffatt translation used eclipse. Nobody uses that translation today, and it did not win wide use when it was published.

Consider the following versions as evidence that your so-called “8 translations” was nothing more than a straw man argument:

“he sun’s light failing: and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.” (ASV)

“when the sun stopped shining … and the curtain hanging in the Temple was torn in two.” (TEV)

As you can see above, NOBODY is translating ἐκλιπόντος as eclipse because that’s simply not what the word meant in the Koine Greek of the NT. Anyone who does translate it this was is producing a bad and uninformed rendering.

By the way, the standard eclectic text is based upon more than five manuscripts. Whoever told you this is uninformed.

The leadership of the Reformation used the Textus Receptus because it was the best tradition of its day. Heck, if I’d been around at that time, I would have used it, too. We’re better informed now.

Why would I believe that Christians (and not heretics) would change the Word of God? Because there are always Christians who simply are uninformed to certain principles of translation, such as the philological issues surrounding a word like ἐκλείπω. There were also Christian scribes who misread a word (or misheard for those instances where it was being dictated) and copied down an incorrect one. I’m not accusing any scribe of meaning to harm the words of the NT writers. I’m sure they they either made natural mistakes or thought they were working in the best interest of the reading. Again, I would refer you to Metzger’s book, The Text of the New Testament: It’s Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration for a complete listing of the kind of errors that led to those found in the Byzantine tradition.

Finally, in regard to the Vulgate and ch. 13 of OABV, I believe you are misreading your sources, and yes, I still call this a red herring. That chapter has to do with the 1881 Revised Version of the Bible. This was a translation that was widely rejected by protestants of the English speaking world and corrected 20 years later in the ASV. I don’t care whether the RV agreed with the Vulgate or not. I don’t rely on the RV any more than I’d rely on the Westcott Hort Greek New Testament (which incidentally Hendrickson recently republished). We’ve come a long way since both of those editions and our understanding of the Greek text, the manuscripts that support it, and how to render it in English has greatly increased.

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament
and
The Text of the New Testament: It’s Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration

The Anchor Bible Dictionary has this to say about the issue:
“Nympha’s place in the NT as a female Christian has been retained only at the cost of some debate. While her gender is assumed to be feminine by the RSV, since her name in Greek is cited only in the accusative case, Nymphan, which could refer to a woman named Nympha or a man named Nymphas, other translations have variously interpreted this person. The issue has been complicated by variations in manuscripts for the possessive pronoun modifying “house” in Col 4:15. Some texts read autēs, “her,” others autou, “his,” still others, autōn, “their.” Since the feminine reading is the hardest to explain, it is most likely to be the original. The masculine form was probably a correction of the feminine by copyists who could not envision a woman in such a leadership role. The reading “their” could have been substituted when scribes included in the pronoun the earlier mention of “brethren” in Col 4:15.

The fact that a woman would have a church in her house doesn’t seem that odd to me in light of 2 John.

As for the article, I skimmed it yesterday. I’ll be honest, and I rarely am so blunt in my characterizations, but it’s KJV-only (and anti-Catholic) nonsense. I’ve read stuff like it before, and this type of rhetoric is used to defend the use of the KJV as the only proper scripture. You realize those boys wouldn’t approve of your NKJV either, don’t you?