George Ricker Berry
From Textus Receptus
George Ricker Berry, D.D., Ph.D., (15 October 1865 24 May 1945) was an internationally known Semitic scholar and archaeologist, and Professor Emeritus of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School.[] His Interlinear Greek-English New Testament is a widely used Bible study aid.
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Family
George Ricker Berry was born 15 October 1865 to William Drake Berry and Joanna Floyd Lawrence in West Sumner, Maine, USA. He was the sixth of ten children.[] Berry married Carrie Leola Clough (1877 04 March 1909), in Liberty, Waldo, Maine, on 17 August 1893. They had three children, Hilda Marion Berry (17 March 1895 April 1974), Miriam Clough (b. April 05, 1897), Lawrence Worthing (22 June 1903 30 July 1936).[] After Carrie died, he married Edith Van Wagner.[] Berry died on Thursday, 24 May 1945, in Cambridge, Massachusetts he was 79 years old.[]
Education
Berry received his A.B. degree from Colby College in 1885, and graduated from Newton Theological Institution in 1889. He was one of the first students to attend the University of Chicago when the new school opened in 1892, where he studied Semitic languages. After earning his Ph.D. in 1895, he was an instructor there for a year. In 1896 he was appointed Instructor of Semitic Languages at Colgate University. When Assyriologist Nathaniel Schmidt left Colgate and went to Cornell that year, Berry continued Schmidt's history course. He was promoted to Professor in 1897 and in the following years expanded the Assyriological offerings at Colgate.[][] Berry was a member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity.[]
Interlinear
Although called the George Ricker Berry Greek to English Interlinear, Berry's Interlinear was compiled by Thomas Newberry. G. R. Berry wrote only the Greek-English New Testament Lexicon and the New Testament Synonyms found at the back of the Greek to English Interlinear that bears his name. Newberry regarded the Received Text as "faulty" and represented the KJV as having many inaccuracies, errors, and obscurities in renderings:
- The Revised Version.— This is the result of repeated expressions of dissatisfaction with the Authorised Version, repeated attempts to amend it, and repeated calls for its revision, on account of the faulty state of the original text it proceeded upon, the comparatively defective knowledge of the original languages on the part of the translators, and the proved presence of many inaccuracies, errors, and obscurities in the renderings. [Bold emphasis added]
(Quoted from The Newberry Reference Bible, Portable Edition, pg. 944)
The author of the George Ricker Berry Greek to English Interlinear boldly exalted the Revised Version over the KJV:
- This Revised Version gives evidence of being the work of men well qualified as scholars for their task, and animated with an equally tender regard for both the original Scripture and the Authorised Version. It is certainly much more accurate in text and translation than the older version, but less pure and musical in its English. [Bold emphasis added]
(Quoted from The Newberry Reference Bible, Portable Edition, pg. 945)
Why would Thomas Newberry, a Plymouth Brethren leader, who like John Darby, regarded the Textus Receptus to be inferior to the critical Greek Text, translate the Received Text into English? The answer is obvious: to attempt to discredit the King James Version and cause people to accept corrupt modern definitions as true.
The interlinear uses the 1550 Greek text of Stephanus, and not the 1598 of Beza. Newberry's collated six critical Greek texts which are referred to in his marginal notes. Newberry revered Codex Sinaiticus.
- Evidence of his minute attention to the sacred text lies before me as I write, in a beautiful copy of Tischendorf's transcription of the New Testament according to the Codex Sinaiticus, presented to him by friends in London in 1863, which is annotated throughout in his neat handwriting. It was after twenty-five years devoted to such study that he conceived the plan of putting its fruits at the disposal of his fellow-Christians in The Newberry Study Bible."
