Dr Kurt Aland is one the most renowned Biblical textual critics of the 20th century. Born in Berlin in 1915, he died in Münster/Westphalia in 1994. The most famous modern English versions of the New Testament—the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New International Version, and the English Standard Version—are all grounded on, and, for the most part, translated from, Dr Aland’s work. These translations utilise the United Bible Societies version of the Greek New Testament, a version over which Dr Aland was a principal editor. It is known as the Nestle-Arnand text.

Aland was a product of the evangelical church in Germany. He earned a doctorate in theology in 1939 and in the same year joined the Wehrmacht. In 1940 he was wounded in France and declared unfit for military service. After recovering he resumed his theological career.  In 1947, he moved to the University of Halle as full professor of church history and Christian archaeology, while continuing to work in Berlin. To his credit Aland did speak out against the oppression of the churches and academic freedom in the GDR (East Germany) and was under investigation by the state police, the Stasi. In 1958 he fled to West Berlin and became a professor at the University of Münster, Germany. In Münster he founded the Institute for New Testament Textual Research ("Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung") in 1959, which he directed until 1983.

Despite his undoubted good qualities Aland inherited a German tradition of examining God’s Word in a highly critical way. Martin Luther made himself a judge over scripture and decided what he thought should be in it, rejecting entirely the book of James. This tradition was continued by “The Higher Critics”.

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"Higher criticism" originally referred to the work of German biblical scholars of the Tübingen School which developed the foundations for the historical-critical method of biblical research at the University of Tübingen in the 19th century. This method picked apart every aspect of biblical texts and in so doing made the bible open to question and interpretation. In reality this meant that scholars could reinterpret scripture in the light of their own particular dogmas. This process was particularly severe in Germany where everything was reduced to rationalism. One outcome of this, for example, was the reaction of evangelicals in Germany to the baptism of the Spirit and spiritual gifts. Resistance to the Pentecostal movement in Germany gained momentum, bringing about an organized opposition that reached its peak with 56 respected Evangelical leaders signing the Berlin Declaration on September 15, 1909.  Among other things it stated:

“This so-called Pentecostal Movement is from below (satanic influence), and is therefore the result of demonic activity in which Satan intertwines truth with lies.” 

Kurt Aland inherited this rationalistic tradition which was in fact a Satanic attempt to destroy the validity of the bible. Also, for some reason, it always seemed to be marked by anti-semitism. Later in the century there was surprisingly little opposition to most elements of Nazism from the evangelical church. The Nazi leadership supported the German Christian movement, a group of Protestants who wanted to combine Christianity and National Socialism into a movement that would exclude all those deemed impure and embrace all ‘true Germans’. This movement was so extreme that it wanted to remove all Jewish influences from the bible including the entire Old Testament.

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Aland himself was a classic German rationalist who examined biblical manuscripts and found problems everywhere. In 1961 he delivered a lecture to the Second International Congress on New Testament Studies which met at Christ Church, Oxford. The lecture was called "The Problem of the New Testament Canon." ‘Canon’ means the listing of books that should be included in the New Testament. In my opinion there is no problem with the New Testament canon. The canon of scripture is what we as believers measure ourselves against. If there is a problem it is with us not with scripture.  At the conclusion of his lecture he seriously advocates that we consider dropping 2 Peter, Hebrews, Revelation, Jude, and 2 and 3 John from the New Testament.

In another work written in 1961 entitled ‘The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries’, Aland denies the apostolic authorship of the Four Gospels, the General Epistles, (James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude) , the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus) and Hebrews. In fact it would be fair to say that there was little in the New Testament that Aland didn’t throw doubt upon. Contrast this with the attitude of the men who were entrusted with producing the Authorised Version of the bible. They took their task as being to translate as perfectly as possible God’s holy Word into English under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

For the first few years of my Christian life I used the NIV bible and was used to seeing footnotes saying something along the lines of “The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have…” such and such a verse or verses. Only later did I realise that these notes largely stemmed from Aland’s views of the unreliability of our Bibles.

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the texts on which Dr Aland relies were rejected by the historic Church because of their known poor quality (high number of spelling and historical errors), or their known parentage from texts that had been corrupted by heretics (as were the so-called Alexandrian texts, which came from upper Egypt, where the Gnostic errorists proliferated). These texts, rejected by the historic Church, are the ones that Dr Aland relies upon.

If you want to know more about this please check out my “Bible Texts Omnibus” video. This is a vast subject but I believe that God wants us to have simple faith and trust in his inspired Word. The best and purest version of this is the Authorised Version.

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