chick's a screwball

Found an interesting history of the Bible in translation by Jack Chick, accidental comic and writer extraordinaire of gospel tracts. (Chick tracts, as they are commonly known, are a guilty pleasure of many, because they are so full of hatred and because they so badly misrepresent Christianity, and just about everything else they cover.)

Chick's history has some kernels of truth to it, but he misses the mark in several areas. For starters, the Puritans were incensed that James actually was translating the Bible all over again. They wanted the Geneva Bible to receive official status, which made James and his supporters uncomfortable because the Geneva Bible had a lot of explanatory notes with an anti-royalist bent. By the time of James, the whole Catholic/Protestant issue had been pretty much settled because of Queen Elizabeth I; the struggle over the Bible was waged between Anglicans and Puritans, the latter of whom ultimately lost the fight.

He also falls into error by claiming that Elizabeth was a Protestant counterweight to Bloody Mary. True, Queen Mary did persecute the Protestants -- hence her nickname -- and Elizabeth I did not, but Elizabeth never "renounced Catholicism." She regarded her throne as too unstable to do anything but allow Catholics and Protestants alike to worship according to the dictates of their conscience. Pity Jack Chick can't learn a lesson from her.

He also links Guy Fawkes and the November 5 gunpowder plot to destroy Parliament to the Catholic Church. I'm fuzzy on all the details, but I think Fawkes was a Puritan hoping to overthrow the ungodly institution of monarchy as headed by King James.

What can I say? Chick's a screwball.

Anyway, the other reason for this post: I'm not as familiar with the history of the different manuscripts. Does anyone know if Chick's information about the Textus Receptus is generally correct, aside from his usual sinister gloss on everyone he disagrees with? His contention is that the KJV was translated from the Textus Receptus, which more closely resembles the Signatures than the Alexandrian texts he claims were the basis for subsequent, satanic Bibles like the RSV and so on.

Have to say, I find it amusing that he cites 1 John 5:7 as an example of meddling with the Bible. Unfortunately for Chuck, that verse doesn't exist in older, more reliable manuscripts. In the KJV, 1 John 5:7 states the doctrine of the Trinity pretty clearly, but it's generally regarded as an error a transcriber made by copying somebody's margin notes into the text proper as he copied. So much for cutting verses.

Maybe he should be more worried about adding them.