The Spanish-American War & the 1960 Reina Valera Bible

By Dr. Carlos Donate

The secular history of Spain at that time speaks of the persecution of true believers. The Bible they used and preached from was the Antigua de Valera. Spain and North America fought a war in which Spain was defeated. Sentiments in Spain declined to such an extent that it was difficult for the evangelical churches of that time to do anything to counteract this defeated spirit at the national level. A country without freedom of religion and worship is a country that is submerged in sadness, moral apathy, and ignorance.

I think that the enemy took advantage of this situation of political and spiritual chaos to introduce even more critical science from England, France, and Germany. The situation at that time prevented the free movement of evangelical preachers due to the religious intolerance that had always existed in Spain. On the one hand, the Catholic Church blamed the current government; on the other hand, the government blamed the Catholic Church. The solution seemed to be for both sides to blame the evangelical churches for all political and spiritual problems. Therefore, the solution was to further suppress the work of evangelicals.

Under the Catholic regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who in August 1953 signed a concordat with the Vatican, there was more persecution of believers who did not profess Roman Catholicism. In fact, a few years earlier, almost at the beginning of his government, Franco prohibited the distribution of the 1909 to the point of suffering the loss of more than 10,000 Bibles in 1940 in a raid in the city of Madrid. The 1909 Bible was considered very “subversive” and “anti-Catholic” by the government and the Catholic Church. Thus, from 1900 to 1950, or even more recently, there was little religious freedom, to the point of almost crushing the evangelical movement in Spain.

Over time, evangelical leaders of liberal and ecumenical tendencies seem to have designed a plan to end this intolerance. Although the evangelicals of Spain did not like the idea at first (and in fact there was great opposition), they ended up embracing it as the best solution to the terrible persecution against them in Spain. What solution am I referring to? What was the way in which they would try to appease the hatred against them? Let us read the words of Don José Flores himself, who lived and experienced this so-called solution:

“Ecumenical groups, such as Taizé , with Father Robert Giscard, who appears on Spanish television, give money to the Catholic publisher Herder to print a million ecumenical Testaments. At the same time, some priests buy the Reina-Valera version (the one from 1960, recently released by the Spanish Bible Society.—Own note), confessing that it is better and that they use it for their children’s catechism, in the new environment of Catholic openness.” All this agrees with the new policy assumed by the Spanish Bible Society, the Alliance of Spanish Evangelical Churches, and the evangelical movement in general, as a strategy to unify criteria, and to return to the Catholic (universal) fold under the idea that we are all “brothers” and “one Church.” This given the recent Vatican II Council, whose objective was the reunification of Protestant believers to the Catholic Church.

Societies in Spain looked to New York and London for early action. Nida says , in his book entitled “Understanding Latin Americans ” 1974, William Carey Library, South Pasadena, California, ISBN 0-87808-117-8 (in Spanish, “Understanding Latin Americans”), in his preface, that there were three important factors that motivated him to produce a Bible adapted to everyone:

1)            The ecumenical movement promoted by the Catholic Church.

2)            The great social interest on the part of the Catholic Church, and

3)            The biblical renewal, which has stimulated more interest in the message of the Bible and the proclamation of the Good News in Catholic churches.

What better idea to unify the Catholic and Evangelical Churches than to unify their Bibles first? All indications are that Mr. Nida and his people had already begun consulting the Pontifical University in Rome and its Greek department during the 1950s in order to establish a common text. It was during this terrible time for true believers in Christ that the World Council of Churches launched the English Bible in 1952 entitled the “Revised Standard Version” (RSV), which has been pointed out as very corrupt, taking the example of Isaiah 7:14 where it says that the “maiden” or “virgin” (Hebrew—“ almah ”) will bear a son, which attacks the doctrine of the deity of Christ who was born of a virgin. The owners of the RSV are the Lockman Foundation, the same people who produced the Bible of the Americas in Spanish.

Now we ask, what influences did Eugenio A. Nida have in 1946 when he recommended taking caution so as not to offend others in translating that word? His book, “ Bible Translating ” (ABS; 1947) did not indicate the prohibition of using “maiden” instead of “virgin” at all, but merely used caution, since not doing so could offend others, which represented a good idea at the time. However, years later Eugenio Nida , together with Mr. Jan de Waard, published a book entitled “ Functional Equivalence in Bible Translating-From One Language to Another ” Thomas Nelson, p. 23, 1986, where Nida ’s true apostasy is revealed by saying this time that Isaiah 7:14 should be used “maiden” (English: “ young woman ”) because if not, then “there is a double virgin birth in the Scriptures, that of Mary in Matthew 1:23, and that of Isaiah 7:14.” That is why I suspect that Nida consulted the RSV Nida was the “expert” on translations. If this is true, and I am convinced that it is, we have the same apostate directing the revision of the Reina-Valera 1960!

Flores continues to narrate what happened in Spain (page 302): “In the month of May 1965, the visit of Dr. Eugenio Nida , of the American Bible Society, to the biblical office in Madrid, accompanied by the Capuchin fathers Serafín Ausejo and Fuenterrabia , those contacted in Zurbano 8, with the brother of Taizé , and then with the scripturalists Angel Gonzalez, Juan Prado, a Redemptorist (Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer), Evaristo Martin Nieto and Manuel Herrainz showed that the Protestant Bible Societies had taken a marked turn towards ecumenism, and that the silent struggles among Catholic editors and their misgivings about mutual competition in the field of scholarship hid the underlying truth of a commercial competitiveness.” What was Nida doing with these Catholic “brothers”? Why did he accompany them?

He accompanied them because ecumenism had already begun. It all began in 1946, when the American Bible Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society and others joined together to distort and eventually eliminate the Received Text and because it was intended to reach everyone for Christ, then it was necessary to begin by breaking down the prejudices between Catholics and Protestants, and enter into a new harmonious and ecumenical relationship. By “checkmating” the Receptus this objective would be achieved. Beloved brother, do not believe the arguments of the defenders of the new revision of 1960 who insist that this revision was only done to improve the grammatical quality, and to make it easier to read. This is what is officially reported, but we know from the facts that the reality is different.

When we were visited in Guatemala in 1996 by the distinguished editor of CLIE, Dr. Eliseo Vila, I had the opportunity to speak with him regarding our position on the Received Text. To my surprise, I heard from Vila’s own lips that indeed, in the 1950s, his father, the great Baptist leader in Spain, Dr. Samuel Vila, had strongly disagreed with Adolfo Araujo and others in order for this “solution” to be carried out, since the new revision (that of the 1960s) and subsequent inter-denominational editions would seek the eventual unification of Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals by introducing, in this new revision, the critical apparatus of the “United” Bible Societies. For this great Spanish Baptist leader, the promulgation of this revision ended up ruining the fundamentalist evangelicals.

The Reina-Valera 1960 is a mixture of the Received Text with parts of the Critical Text which is based on the work of the German Eberhard Nestle and his colleague Kurt Aland . I quote from the book entitled “The Text of the New Testament” page 232: “A principle added to the first list of the Reina-Valera Revision Committee was that: Wherever the Reina-Valera version has departed from the Textus Receptus, the text of the New Testament is of a different nature, and ... Receptus to follow another better text, we will not return to the Receptus . Point 12 of the Working Principles says: In cases of doubt as to the correctness of the translation of the original, we will preferably consult the English Revised Version of 1885, the American Standard Version of 1901, the Revised Standard Version of 1946, and the International Critical Commentary .” -By Dr. José Flores of the Reina-Valera 1960 Revision Committee.

The elaboration of the UBSGNT in the late 1940s included liberal scholars such as Bruce Metzger, Matthew Black, Alan Wikren, Eugene Nida, and Barbara Aland . Then in 1966 or 1968 came the Catholic Cardinal of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini, head of the department of biblical sciences at the Pontifical University of Rome. His work was based on the disastrous work of the Greek Westcott and Hort of 1881. It should be mentioned here that Martini worked with the Society of Jesus (read the “ Jesuits ”) from July 13, 1952, according to the Catholic website hierarchy.

It was during this time that Bible societies began to revise traditional Bibles, such as the Valera Antigua and others, in order to introduce changes that would make them consistent with Westcott and Hort .

There is no doubt, dear reader, that the 1960 revision was what propelled the wave of subsequent revisions of corrupt Hispanic Bibles that have been released to the ignorant and uneducated evangelical public since the 1960s, 1970s and up to the present.