HITLER'S SAY IN YOUR NEW VERSION BIBLE

HITLER’S SAY IN YOUR

NEW VERSION BIBLE

By John Aldworth

Hitler speaking in a Bible? I would never have thought it possible. But then, shock, horror, I found out it was true.

Actually, concern some Bibles might owe content to a Nazi past began for me with an innocent-looking press release. Dropped on to my desk at the newspaper where I worked as journalist quite some years ago, it hailed the Bible Society’s milestone achievement of translating ‘the Bible’ into the 3000^th language. The Bible Society of New Zealand was keen to celebrate this fact, but as a journalist I had a question.

“Just which Bible is it that you have translated into the 3000^th language?” I asked a translator at the society’s Wellington headquarters. “Well, it’s not any one specific Bible. It’s an eclectic (meaning: a pick and choose) version,” he responded.

Pressed for further details he explained that modern translators looked at a variety of scriptural texts, manuscripts and readings before arbitrarily choosing a rendering that in their view best fits each word as they translate it.

“For example, you wouldn’t translate ‘snow’ into some languages spoken in the tropics because the people have never seen snow. So you might just call ‘white stuff’’,” the translator explained. OK, but imagine rendering that famous verse, “Though your sins be as scarlet yet they shall be white as white stuff” (Isaiah 1:18)

“But what text and what dictionary do translators mainly use?” was my next question.

“That’s easy,” I was told. “The UBS or Nestle-Aland Greek text is the most reliable and popular, as is the Bible Hebraica for the Old Testament. As for Greek dictionaries well, of course, the one translators use most is Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Naturally, before making his many selections, the translator always prays first.” 

Pursuing my inquiries at the local Christian bookstore, I learned that Kittel’s dictionary was indeed coveted by Bible students and that, yes, it was available – all 10 original volumes of it.  In fact the bookstore owner recommended it as absolutely indispensable for anyone who is really serious about Bible study. There was only one little problem. It cropped up when I found out that Gerhard Kittel, the man who wrote much of the dictionary and edited it over all, had been tried in 1946 as a Nazi war criminal and found guilty.

So, if you are using a modern version Bible you might ask, are you reading ‘Hitler’s Bible’? Of course not, you say. Well, don’t be too sure. Check it out for yourself, using the trusty King James Bible as a reliable benchmark. For example, if your Bible is a New International Version, New American Standard Version New King James Version or the English Standard Version, then it undoubtedly contains amendments and alterations that stem from Nazi thinking. How so? Well, for starters all modern versions of the Bible use the Biblia Hebraica for the Old Testament text, instead of the faithful Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text carefully preserved over many generations by Israel’s scribes, and used in the King James Bible.

So what’s wrong with the Biblia Hebraica, you ask? Well, according to the authoritative Encyclopaedia Judaica, the compiler of the Biblia Hebraica rendition of the Old Testament text is none other than Gerhard Kittel’s father. Old Papa Rudolf Kittel, was a vehement anti-Semite who, far from being a Christian, was a devout believer in Hellenistic religions.  Both father and son Kittel were in fact liberal German scholars and “higher critics” – that is they believed scripture should be understood as scholars interpret and alter it – not as God actually wrote it and preserved it in the King James Authorised Version 1611.

Importantly, during the 1930s both Kittels hailed Hitler’s rise to power as “a blessing from God”. Both joined the Nazi Party. Both became highly influential intellectual leaders in the Fuhrer’s Germany. In fact the younger Kittel became Hitler’s “high priest” of religious propaganda, providing from a so-called “liberal Protestant Christian” perspective the “theological basis” for resolving the “Jewish question”. After the Second World War he was one of few German war criminals selected to stand trial for and be imprisoned for war crimes.

Robert P. Ericksen, author of Theologians Under Hitler (New Haven, Yale University Press 1985 pp 45, 207, 86-88), who received the 1987 Merit of Distinction Award from the International Centre for Holocaust Studies for this work, wrote that Gerhard Kittel’s writings between 1937 and 1945 were highly instrumental in causing the death of millions of Jews in Germany and the territories it conquered in the Second World War. He established a solid ‘Christian’ foundation for opposition to the Jews’. Kittel also proclaimed himself “the first authority in Germany on the scientific consideration of the Jewish question”.  Ericksen records:  Kittel and a group of twelve leading theologians and pastors issued a proclamation that Nazism is ‘a call of God’ and they thanked Adolf Hitler

Michael Haskeem Ph.D. writes in The Protestant Reaction to the Nazi Holocaust, that  Gerhard Kittel went on to deprive Jews of their civil rights, bar them from marrying Germans, prohibit them from teaching Germans and impose on them other disadvantages and hardships. Evaluating the comparative evil found in the leading figures in Hitler’s death-dealing Nazi hierarchy, archaeologist and Semitic scholar William Fox Allbright wrote:

Kittel is darker and more menacing than either Goering or Goebbels. He has the grim distinction of making the extermination of the Jews theologically respectable.

Importantly, to justify his Jewish extermination policy Adolf Hitler wanted both a new church and a new Bible. Incredibly, all but a tiny handful of German church leaders were willing to sign up to join Hitler’s church, the Deutsche Christen. They did so because Kittel had urged:

Agreement with the state and Fuhrer is obedience to toward the law of God.

Ericksen observed:

(German) theologians who stressed gospel … tended to be immune to Hitler’s charms. (Given this) Kittel’s work cannot be seen as anything but a satanic distortion of Christianity.

Meanwhile an institute founded at Hitler’s explicit command rewrote Bible texts under the supervision of the Kittels, eliminating mention of the special role of the Jewish people. More than 100,000 copies of the resultant new ‘Holy Scripture’ were published. Entitled “Germans with the Lord – the German Book of Faith” this Nazi Bible aimed to replace Luther’s traditional German Bible, Der Heilige Schrift. Based on the Majority Text, on which the KJB also rests, Luther’s Bible, then 400 years old, was, dismissed by Kittel as “archaic”. To update it he oversaw changes to words such as “Messiah” and “hallelujah”, and renamed “Jerusalem” as the ‘eternal city of God’. ‘Honour your Fuhrer and master’ and ‘keep your blood pure and your honour holy’ were added to the 10 commandments.

Gail Riplinger is author of the authoritative book, New Age Bible Versions, which exhaustively exposes the “message men and manuscripts moving mankind to the antichrist’s one world religion” through the new bible versions. On pp 596- 597 of her book, she quotes a secular historian’s assessment that:

Ego involvement must have played a role in Kittel’s career after 1933 (the year he joined the Nazi Party). After 1933 Kittel’s word changed in tone. Before 1933 Kittel defended Judaism, afterward he attacked it.  Kittel produced a body of work between 1933 and 1944 filled with hatred and slander toward Jews … the bulk of Kittel’s research between 1933 and 1945 was devoted to a rigorous and harsh anti-Jewish stance. It corresponded to the worst of Nazi propaganda

Also between 1933 and 1945 Kittel, whose name, ironically, also means the special shroud worn by Jews on the Day of Atonement, was churning out volume after volume of his lengthy Theological Dictionary. Clearly, Hitler, who repeatedly proclaimed himself ‘a good Christian doing the will of the Lord’ by pursuing his anti-Semitic policies, favoured Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, based as it was on the Leningrad B 19a manuscript of the Old Testament, because of its clearly anti-Semitic character. Here’s the proof of its anti-Jewish slant:

In the King James Bible God’s name, JEHOVAH, (Heb. YHWH), is named as such and presented as JEHOVAH in seven key places where the context demands the specific use of the name.  However, in the same verses JEHOVAH has been replaced by the LORD in the NIV, ESV, NKJV and all other modern Bible versions.  For example:

Exodus 6:3 KJB: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. NIV: … but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.”

Psalm 83:18 KJB: That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH  (NIV: the LORD), art the most high over all the earth

Granted, JEHOVAH is translated LORD in many places in the KJB. This is done out of respect to the Hebrews who feared they might profane the name of God by spelling the Tetragrammaton YHWH in full. However, in seven cases referred to above the context demands the specific use of the name JEHOVAH. Ignoring this necessity, the modern versions bow to anti-Semitic pressure and, for example, where the KJB renders ‘Jehovah-jireh” (lit. The Lord will provide) in Gen. 22:14, or ‘Jehovah-nissi’ (lit. The Lord is my banner) in Ex. 17:15, or ‘Jehovah-shalom’ (lit. The Lord is peace) in Judg. 6:24, all simply replace JEHOVAH with the LORD.

Thus the ESV and the NIV, both relying on Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, remove Jehovah, the very name by which the Hebrews knew God as their deliverer and saviour from the key verses which explain his importance as the God of Israel. This distortion comes directly from the Biblia Hebraica. Note how prominently the ESV acknowledges this text in its introduction:

The ESV is based on the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (2nd ed., 1983), and on the Greek text in the 1993 editions of the Greek New Testament (4th corrected ed.), published by the United Bible Societies (UBS), and Novum Testamentum Graece (27th ed.), edited by Nestle and Aland. The currently renewed respect among Old Testament scholars for the Masoretic text is reflected in the ESV’s attempt, wherever possible, to translate difficult Hebrew passages as they stand in the Masoretic text rather than resorting to emendations or to finding an alternative reading in the ancient versions. In exceptional, difficult cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, and other sources were consulted to shed possible light on the text, or, if necessary, to support a divergence from the Masoretic text.

So we see that in two ways modern bible translations are deeply influenced by the product of Nazi thinking: first through the Biblia Hebraica, which tones down and in places removes the direct linkage between God and his people Israel; second through the use of Kittel’s New Testament Dictionary which redefines many Greek words in terms of their “pagan” meaning, rather than that of their spiritual and special Jewish usage as found in the King James Bible.

But there’s more. You should know that both Rudolf and Gerhard Kittel played important leadership roles in the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage, a Nazi organisation and publication specifically dedicated to stirring up hatred and persecution against the Jews. Furthermore, as Hitler’s religious adviser on Jewish affairs, Rudolf Kittel officially and publicly advised German Jewry that “some elements” in their Talmud (commentary on the Tanach, the Hebrew Old Testament) were “objectionable to the Master of the Third Reich”. According to Ericksen, Kittel “found it difficult to accept the autonomy and worth of Judaism.”

But surely, you say, you wouldn’t find real Nazi hatred of Jews reflected in a modern Bible today, would you? Well, why wouldn’t you when, according to Riplinger, Gerhard Kittel, definer of words in the Greek New Testament,  publicly stated, writing in Goebbels’ Anti-Judische Aktion:

Today many harsh things do occur and must occur … It was not despotic brutality or barbarism … for the Fuhrer in his radical resolve … to place the Jewish problem on a wholly new foundation. The radical suppression carried out by National Socialism is not, as almost the entire world maintains, an unheard of cruelty against the Jews

Kittel, says Riplinger, knew about the mass murder of Jews. In fact, as late as 1944 he was lecturing at the University of Vienna, speaking of the “depraved” Jews who were the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. She continues (p. 599):

His writing showed attempts to rationalise the murder of Jews by twisting Talmudic (Jewish commentary on the Old Testament) thoughts. Kittel writes: ‘… full freedom to murder … just as you should smash the brains of even the best snake … [this is] justification for the most anti-Jewish acts

At the end of his life Kittel confessed that the years of both his editorship of the Theological Dictionary and his propaganda ministry for Hitler were:

 … based upon the most bitter deception of my life.

Ericksen considers that Kittel’s lack of spiritual discernment or his “diseased conscience” was accompanied by serious defects in his scholarship. Citing one error in Kittel’s work, he writes:

This example throws a shadow of doubt on all of Kittel’s research. Kittel’s factual base may not always have been strong enough to support the conclusions he drew.

Yet it is precisely Kittel’s flawed dictionary definitions that are used to shape the wording of much of today’s modern Bible translations.  According to Riplinger there is a single root to these flawed Bibles, to the rise of Hitler, to Kittel’s warped theology and to the attack on truth mounted both by the twisted theology of text compilers, such as the heretical and spiritualist channellers, Westcott and Hort, and the patently unsaved authors of the most widely used lexicons and dictionaries, such as Thayer, Alford and Trench.

This root is also the source of hostility toward Israel’s seed down the ages. Connected to it is “replacement theology”, which a denies a special place for the Hebrew race in God’s eternal purposes, and claims the present professing church has replaced the chosen nation. This unsound doctrine began with Origen and Eusebius and was carried down to our time by pagan Roman persecution, the Inquisition and Augustine, Luther and Calvin. Today it is the motive for removing from modern bibles reference to the future kingdom of heaven on earth in which Jesus will truly be King of the Jews and the king of nations.

This root, says Riplinger (p. 604), is the “root race theory” found in the occult theosophy of devil-worshipper H. P. Blavatsky’s and her books The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled (both were Hitler’s bedtime reading).  Recovered from the pseudo-Christian heresies of Egypt by way of channelling evil spirits, Blavatsky’s teachings are blatantly anti-Semitic. Not surprisingly, resultant New Age teachings predict a soon coming “cleansing action” to “purify the race.”

Thus the New Age treatise, Cosmic Countdown, says “… these people (meaning the Jews) will eventually be replaced by a new root race about to make its appearance in a cleansed world.”

Riplinger (p.605) reports that Kent State University English professor, Diane Culbertson, has found numerous examples of anti-Semitism in the modern Bible paraphrase, The Living Word.  Examples:

John 1:17 KJB: For the law was given by Moses. LB by contrast:  Moses gave us only the Law with its rigid demands and merciless justice

Matt. 12:45 KJB: this wicked generation. LB: this evil nation

In his Nazi hey-day Kittel falsely claimed there was “a murderous spirit” among Jews. There was, he said, a Talmudic mandate to “kill Gentiles in general”. Sadly, in Acts 23:12 the NIV and NASB (New American Standard Bible) act similarly in altering the Greek to say the Jews (as a whole) were conspiring “under a curse” to kill the Apostle Paul. By contrast the KJB correctly limits the plot to “certain of the Jews”.  And you know, of course, that on the cross Jesus prayed for the Jews, saying:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

But in Luke 23:34 both the NIV and ESV cast doubt on the matter, saying in a footnote:

          Some early manuscripts do not have this sentence.

The Living Bible goes further, denying a special place for the Jew, even removing the greeting in James 1:1:  To the twelve tribes of Israel

Of course, it was Blavatasky who infamously said the Jews were created by Jehovah, “an inferior God”, and were therefore “not of the same essence” as the Aryan race.  This in defiance of God’s word in Acts 17:26 in the KJB, which says: God hath made of one blood all nations. The new Bible versions fall in line with Blavatsky’s anti-Semitic root race theory by ominously omitting the word blood from this verse. What’s more all new versions stop Mark 16 twelve verses short, omitting or casting doubt on verses 9-20, which detail the special signs that accompany Jewish preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

There’s much more, but I think you’ve read enough now to know that modern Bible versions can’t be trusted, that the ghost of Hitler and the Third Reich haunt parts of them and that, actually, as Gail Riplinger asserts, they form part of a New Age/Satanic plot to undermine God’s truly anointed, preserved word in English the King James Bible, Authorised Version 1611.  After reading this you can’t say you haven’t been warned.

Inquiries: John Aldworth phone: +64 7 856 4655. Or email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com.